THANKSGIVING AND GIVING THANKS

It is gently snowing outside. The air is crisp and very cold – it must be around the low 20s. It is growing dark; the moon is not up yet. I know it will be beautiful when I take my last trek to the communal toilets. I am reluctant to leave my tent. The quiet huffing of my Buddy heater gives me at least an illusion that it is somewhat warmer here inside the tent than out but in all honesty, my frozen fingers keep hitting the wrong keys. I haven’t slept outside in a tent in this kind of cold for years.

And this night I would rather be here on the South Rim of the Grand Canyon than anywhere else in the world -  except perhaps down at the bottom with my adventurous friends at Bright Angel Campground near Phantom Ranch. I should be there, too; that was the plan. But life often provides one doors for one to decide to step through or to resist opening, all the while lamenting that the door is too heavy or sticky or whatever to move forward.

I’ve had to step through a lot of doors in my adventurous life. I’ve been laid up with a case of cellulitis from a kayaking injury off the Channel Islands, fractured my shoulder, sprained my ankle yet another time, torn yet another ligament. If you live adventurously, injury is part of the package no matter how careful you might be. Fortunately, while all of these may have left small tokens for me to remember them, I have always recovered – quickly. In each case, the doctors admonished me to be still, give up my activity for a few months, give my body time to recover. Honestly, giving up activity even for a 62-year-old person who has been hyperactive all her life is almost impossible.

This morning I was supposed to awaken in the relative warmth of my down sleeping bag at the bottom of the Grand Canyon. The Grand Canyon is very familiar to me; I have been down into its inner canyons many times. I raised my son backpacking there. This trip was my way of going ‘home’ for the Thanksgiving Holiday.

But then again, there’s Life erecting one of those doors. A door that prompted decisions. Late this July, not feeling well, I visited my doctor. From my doctor’s office, I was taken in an ambulance to the emergency room at which I was declared as actively having a heart attack. From there I was whisked up to intensive cardiac care to await an emergency surgery. As I was wheeled through the door, my adventure buddy and cardiac case manager Alice leaned over my gurney and asked me “I was wondering if the Beth Haas on my chart was you. What are you doing here?”

Darn good question. No heart disease in the family that wasn’t brought on by old age. No diabetes. A long, long active life. Honestly, it seemed at the time that this was happening to someone else - not me, not the 15-year-old who was still climbing trees. Not the 30-year-old that hiked across the Grand Canyon for the first time. Not the 40-year-old who backpacked her 5-year-old across that same Canyon for the first time. Not that 50-year-old who danced under the Eiffel Tower at midnight on her birthday. Not that 60-year-old who snowshoed around by herself in a beautiful quiet snowy forest for several hours with only the breadcrumbs of her snowshoe imprints to lead her back to safety. Not the 62-year-old who had planned and already obtained the coveted permits for a Thanksgiving trip down into the bottom of the Grand Canyon, taking 5 of her adventure buddies with her. Not me. Not that active woman.

But there I was. As I was wheeled in to my room, the door to the cardiac unit started swinging shut behind us. That door. That extremely inconveniently timed door. Eventually, my doctors and I finally figured out that my heart does not respond to activity in the way everyone else’s does. And THAT is a condition with which I am stuck. That door. That most inconvenient, life-altering door. And every day I am reminded as I start to ride my bike or even step on a treadmill that my physical heart is just not into it without chemical help. Really. My choices for the future will be dictated by this heart that generously let me do all kinds of things for years without letting me know that part of it was wearing out.

I can think of the heart attack as the end of something that feels so intrinsically ME that I stop in my despair and decide to no longer go on my adventures. Be safe. Live a long life. OR I can decide to test out the limits of my condition and keep on adventuring within new limits. Perhaps testing my limits may mean a shorter life as I place my dicky heart under more strain than I ‘need’ to. Same door but the outcome will be very different depending upon my response. And I have made my choice to live – truly live.

So here I am at the freezing South Rim while my buddies are down in the Canyon, eating dinner at the Phantom Ranch Cantina. It’s so cold here that I am not even TRYING to cook anything. My fingers are too cold to turn the gas valve on my Jet Boil. And I am completely at home. I know my down sleeping bag will keep me warm. I trust that my friend Max’s deluxe tent is sound and safe if the winds pick up. I am grateful that he left me a super-sized, super-warm sleeping bag in which to burrow into with my own down bag. 

And I have decided in just the last few days that the day after tomorrow I will join them at Indian Gardens, half-way down the canyon. Testing my limits. Asking my heart to give me at least one more backpack. More if I stick to my bargain with my dicky heart and take it easy on the 4.5-mile trek back up to the South Rim with 30 pounds on my back.

I can hear the whoosh of the ravens as they check my campsite for orts of anything interesting. Haha ravens – I am a clean camper and I win this game.  I hear the yips and howls of the coyotes hunting in the night reminding me that I am not the only one in this nearly deserted campground. I hear small clumps of snow gain enough weight to lose their purchase on the slanted top of the tent and fall quietly to the ground.

And I am so very grateful that I am here at all. That door, that very inconvenient door, may lead me to wondrous things that I might never have thought of before its opening. That door. That beautiful door of uncertainty and promise.

THE ALOHA MIND

Having only visited Maui and Kaua’i, I cannot speak for the entire Hawaiian archipelago but on those two islands, and particularly Kaua’i, the warmth and generosity of the Hawaiian culture is literally palpable. Upon arrival, you are immediately greeted with that all-encompassing and beautiful word – Aloha. Your first Aloha on Hawaii is delivered with genuine smiles, warmth and most importantly welcome.

Aloha means significantly more than ‘hello’. Curby Hoikeamaka-Rule, a Hawaiian dedicated to furthering the understanding of Aloha Spirit, recounts one of the ‘old teachings’ of early Hawaiians:

Aloha is being a part of all, and all being a part of me. When there is pain - it is my pain. When there is joy - it is also mine. I respect all that is as part of the Creator and part of me. I will not willfully harm anyone or anything. When food is needed I will take only my need and explain why it is being taken. The earth, the sky, the sea are mine to care for, to cherish and to protect. This is Hawaiian - this is Aloha!

Embedded in Aloha is commitment to balance – a system that is sometimes also used to describe Huna, an ancient way of thinking about the earth and its beings. For Hawaiians, living on a remote archipelago of relatively small islands, this meant devising complex resource management systems for living off the land and the sea, taking only what was needed with an eye to the needs of future generations and working in tribal groups to provide food and shelter for all who would help. Young Hawaiians grew up being told “if you help, you eat”. 

As island life encouraged and was dependent on a cooperative culture for food and safety, sharing became a very important part of the culture. These intrinsic cultural values of environmental stewardship and cooperation were passed down through oral traditions that included songs, storytelling and dance. These values and ways of existing varied little among the various islands of the archipelago even though each island had its own unique governmental systems.

At the time Captain Cook arrived on the Islands, the archipelago was divided into monarchies which had been consolidated into island groups. These kingdoms were briskly trading with each other and even other Pacific Polynesians. By 1795 King Kamehameha's monarchy consisted of all islands but Kauai and the King had banished the old Kapu system of behavior which particularly discriminated against women. 

With this abandonment, Hawaiians largely gave up their belief in their ancient polytheistic gods and Missionaries brought Western culture and Christianity to the Islands in 1820, the Christian god, with his rules and Commandments, quickly filled the void. To this day, Hawaiians are very religious and a tour guide may start his or her visitors’ tours with syncretic prayer that blends the ancient beliefs with the Missionaries Christian God, praising and thank God for the gift of the Islands and asking safety for the guests on the tour (as did our tour guide in Maui on the Road to Hana).

The missionaries also brought something else to the monarchies - written language. By then the monarchies were already enthusiastically engaged in trade with western countries and readily assisted the missionaries in building schools so their subjects could learn to read and speak English. The missionaries also developed an alphabet to capture the previously oral Hawaiian language. In 1896, the Hawaiian population was one of the most literate in the world.

Eventually, even with the development of the Hawaiian alphabet, the Hawaiian language was abandoned as English became the legal language of public education in Hawaii. Dancing the hula, which had been forbidden by the very conservative missionaries who had introduced Christianity to the Hawaiians, along with much of the accompanying traditional chants and instruments became a lost art. Western cultural values began to overcome the Aloha mind.

By then, Western entrepreneurs had begun to turn their attention to the verdant valleys of the volcanic archipelago and much of the cooperative subsistence cultures on the islands were lost to large corporate plantations of sugar and pineapple. Native rights to tribal lands were severely limited and Hawaiians started working for pay in the sugar, pineapple and taro farms, losing their intimate connection to the land, a historical connection that informed their very cultures and ways of belonging and behaving in groups.

The Aloha Mind, however, though submerged by Western culture, was never entirely lost. After Hawaii became the 50^th State in March 1959, Hawaiian culture began a slow reemergence. Hawaiians began to reclaim their culture, and interest in ancient indigenous arts and skills was rekindled. In the early 70s, an Oahu based artist named Herb Kane, deeply interested in ancient Polynesian sailing, began a giant country-wide effort to revive the lost ancient skills of building sea-worthy outriggers as well as navigating, route-finding and wayfaring. 

These ancient skills had been completely lost to Hawaii but with the help of native Micronesian Mau Pialiug, Kane and other sailing enthusiasts were able to launch the Hokule’a, a double-hulled outrigger built in the traditional way, on March 8, 1975 for its first visit to the other islands of Hawaii. At its first port, Honolua Bay on Maui, it was met with enormous enthusiasm by the public. Kane’s efforts to revive Polynesian voyaging were credited with lighting the fire under what was to become known as the Hawaiian Cultural Renaissance. In 1978, just a few years after the launching of the Hokule’a and over 80 years since English was given legislative status as the ‘official’ language of Hawaii, the state’s constitution was amended and the study of ‘Hawaiiana’ was accorded special promotion by the state (timeline provided by http://www.summ.org/tj/hi-report/timeline.htm). 

The Hawaiian Cultural Renaissance would continue into the 80s with the first ‘immersion school’ opening on Kauai to encourage knowledge of the culture and language of Hawaii. Soon others were to follow on the other islands. Old ones still adept at making ropes and leis began teaching a new generation of craftsmen and women. And classes in hula, the quintessential Hawaiian dance and story-telling, once again were offered in cultural centers.

Natives are once again proud of their heritage and eager to share it. Most visitors to the Islands will attend at least one ‘luau’, a traditional dinner and celebration of dance and culture. We did. What we witnessed and experienced in Old Lahaina Luau felt much more than just theater and entertainment to the dedicated and talented dancers and musicians at the luau. It was evident in their descriptions and their movements that these ancient arts are ways they demonstrate their pride in their heritage.

As a visitor to the Islands, it is hard not to be caught up in the Aloha Mind. It is much easier, even briefly, to let the island pace and courtesies flow into your own experience of Hawaii and then to want to carry that mindset back to the mainland. And when you get back, you might even wish for opportunities to share the Aloha Mind, with its beautiful ‘aloha’ and ‘mahalo’ with your friends and family back on the mainland, remembering and teaching others that "The earth, the sky, the sea are mine to care for, to cherish and to protect." 

SWIMMING WITH SEA TURTLES

The first time I ever saw the beautiful set of Elvis Presley’s 1964 Blue Hawaii I was only 10 and had no idea the movie was filmed on Kauai. My Mom, an avid Elvis Presley fan, took my sister Jenny and me to every Presley movie that was shown at a local drive-in movie theater called the 40-Hi Drive-in.  I watched Elvis swivel his hips to vaguely Hawaiian rhythms (and probably swiveled my tiny hips along with Elvis) but had no cultural context in which to appreciate the amazing beauty of the scenery and the remarkable abilities of the surfers and hula dancers filling in the ‘local color’ for the movie.

I finally got to visit beautiful Kauai in person last week. Little did I know that by the end of my visit not only would I have waxed nostalgic over those late-night Elvis movies with my Mom and sister Jenny but I would have shared a swim with ‘Honu’ (Hawaiian Sea Turtles).

Kauai is called The Garden Island for good reason. Kauai’s beautiful beaches and stunningly green craggy mountains have attracted many famous movies since White Heat in 1934. But as beautiful as movie-set Kauai is, it has a very residential, almost rural, feel with lovely resorts, like The Point at Po’ipu and the Grand Hyatt next door, interspersed among residential neighborhoods of all types. To get to the resorts, most of which are on or near a beach, it is not uncommon to drive past pastures and orchards, horses and cows. You wind up at your resort destination already prepared to relax and enjoy the slower pace of this lovely island.

Po’ipu, where we stayed, is an area with several beaches, including Shipwreck (just to the east of Point and right behind the Grand Hyatt) which is aptly named for its big waves and rocky reefs. Po’ipu Beach, just 5 minutes away, is a neighborhood beach where high school surfers practice on the bigger waves at the west end of the beach while paddle boarders, well beyond the breaks, make it seem really easy to stand on a board just a little bit bigger than a surfboard, paddling through the genesis of waves that send small children tumbling to the shore. In the safe waters protected by the outer reef, families play while snorkelers like my sister Becky and I enjoy the many species of tropical fish that inhabit the area (see my blog post The Chubs in Paradise). Po’ipu is also a favorite beach for the endangered monk seal which shares the warm white sands with the families, surfers and snorkelers.

Po’ipu has the equivalent of a neighborhood bar with the  bartenders at Brennecke’s Beach Front Restaurant pulling a regular’s drink choice before the person has pulled up a bar stool, as locals converse about how improved some of the high school surfers have become and how long the migrating monk seals napped on the beach. Brennecke’s, on the second floor across from the beach’s lifeguard station and restrooms, is the kind of place locals rub elbows with the guests, dispensing advice on everything from where to sun, snorkel and surf to which local beer is the best.

I admit, places like Brennecke’s can be found all over the island; Brennecke’s was just the fun, welcoming bar in OUR neighborhood. Driving up the east coast to the end of Highway 50 to the trailhead of Kauai’s famous Na’Pali Trail, we stopped at the popular and crowded Kalypso’s for a delayed breakfast. Here, too, the locals, an interesting mix of flaxen-haired surfers, families, grizzled islanders and businessmen and women stopping by for breakfast, were friendly and generous with their advice.

The little village of Hanalei is the last one along Highway 50 as it rather abruptly ends a few miles later at Haena State Park. There, Becky and I toured the ‘wet and dry caves’ and I had a chance to talk to one scruffy local who has walked the 22-mile round trip Napali Coast Kalalua Trail - twice. He confirmed the beauty and the treachery of the trail which follows is a thin shelf cut above the beautiful but dangerous rocks and cliffs of Kauai’s Napali Coast. I had seen a couple (well really kind of a bunch for one trail) of warning signs at the beginning of the trail, vowing if I could, I would be bringing my fellow adventurers here in the next year or so to experience this once in a lifetime trail. 

Backpacker Magazine ranks the Kalalau Trail as one of the ‘world’s most paradisical (sic) beaches’, despite it also being ranked one of America’s 10 most treacherous. The trail ends in the gorgeous Kalalau Valley and Beach which can only be visited by boat or on foot along this particular trail. Beautiful, remote and treacherous – sounds like it might be a place that offers astounding beauty and solitude. Just my kind of trail.

The next day we first toured and snorkeled the Napali Coastline from water on one of Captain Andy’s beautiful catamaran sail boats. Captain Rick was full of information about the early settlers (Hawaiian) to the Napali Coast valleys and pulled the catamaran close to the cliff walls so we could enjoy the many waterfalls falling from the cliffs. The winds were too tricky that day to sail but our boat’s engines carried us up to the last waterfall on the west side of the island well past Kalalau Valley carved out by rain drainage of millennia. As the boat moved north from Kalalau Valley, I could track the thin horizontal line of the Napali Coast Kalalua Trail above.

On our way back, although Captain Rick noted that the ‘little swim’ we would be offered would be in waters too murky for really good snorkeling, we were encouraged to gear up and enjoy what we could. My sister Becky was one of the first to notice a sea turtle which kept dipping down to hide in the coral below us. A small group of us, further away from the boat and closer to the ever-present danger of the reefs nearer the cliffs, tracked that turtle and a larger one until one of the Captain’s sailors paddled his surfboard over to tell us we were too close to the reef for safety. Exhilarating.

After the snorkel, the catamaran flew swiftly back the direction of Port Allen. As we rounded the southwest corner of the coast we encountered a headwind and ‘reverse waves’ which have the effect of slamming the waves together so quickly that the front of the boat is just recovering from one wave before it gets hit with the next. This can have the effect of causing serious seasickness but if you have the courage to sit on the front of the boat, hanging tightly to whatever chrome safety bar is available or lie on the ‘trampolines’ which cover the area between the hulls and the main platform of the boat, you will escape sea sickness AND have the ride of your life.

Anyone lying prone on the ‘tramps’, holding tightly to the ropes holding the tramps up, WILL get wet. A group of giggly little girls, having commandeered one tramp, screamed with scary pleasure each time the wave came up from underneath and through the tramp, lifting their small bodies, still prone, up and off the tramp. Their infectious fun spread like a virus to us adults. I swear it was better than DisneyWorld’s Splash Mountain. Oh the other hand, the less adventurous on the boat gathered in a miserable seasick clump in the most stable part of the cabin, wishing the ride was over.

Safely back ashore, Becky and I headed to the end of the paved road on the west side of the island, past the very beautiful red rock and greenery of Waimea Canyon, called the ‘Grand Canyon’ of Kauai.  We stopped in verdant and tidy Koke’e State Park to find out about cabin rentals and trail descriptions in its tiny museum and visitor center. Now pay attention to this. The paved road ends beyond Koke’e above Kalalau Valley (remember the trail?) but by the time we got there we were literally in cloud. Had we been able to see the valley, we would have been looking down one of the same valleys we had seen from the boat.

After almost every trip I wind up asking myself ‘Would I go again?’ Most of the time, I admit that if I have a choice of somewhere I’ve never been before rather than a place I’ve already been, I opt for the potential of the unknown. But Kauai is justifiably proud of its beautiful interior and coastline. And although Kauai is one of the smaller islands of the Hawaiian archipelago, only 33 miles across, I feel like I have barely experienced the beautiful genuinely sweet island of Kauai. I am already planning my next trip.

CHUBS IN PARADISE

I made my acquaintance with a most unusually colored fish today. It looked like a cartoon fish colored by a kindergartner with a box of 500 crayon colors. The fish is as brightly adorned as one of those jungle parrots which is probably why it’s called a parrotfish – but since it’s a Hawaiian parrotfish its way more complicated but colorful name is Uhu Bullethead Parrotfish.

The parrotfish, which I named Matey, was one of many circling my sister and me as we snorkeled off Poi’pu Beach in Kaua’i. We were cheating just a bit. The young Hawaiian cashier sold us a tube of fish food (the tube itself biodegradable and edible for the fish) to dribble out around us to attract the colorful reef fish as we snorkeled. Good idea, right?

Yeah. Matey and his buddies were hard to woo any closer than the near ocean floor while a group of more burly fish, called Enenue Lowfin Chub, muscled right up to the bag to nibble on either it or our fingers depending on which was easiest. The chubs circled us like hungry sharks, almost touching our bodies with their lightly striped yellow and gray bodies. Nudging us, pushing us. Kind of disconcerting. You’d think since they didn’t mind pushing us around a bit, they wouldn’t mind if I reached out to touch them. But no, I’m pretty sure they do not grasp the idea of reciprocity.

All this togetherness was going on at the same time the swell was pushing us back and forth in the water. I don’t snorkel that often and it always takes me a bit of time to relax and trust my diving mask and snorkel. Living with asthma adds a layer of discomfort at the idea of breathing through a skinny tube that could be swamped by salt water while swimming above an ocean floor which is too deep for me to stand to recover myself.

However, when one is in Kaua’i, trust me, you really should snorkel off one of the beaches. Renting a snorkeling package means you get the mask, the snorkel and the fins (if you want them the fins really help when you are swimming against the wave action). Surf and snorkel shops are ubiquitous; every beach will have one or more nearby.

The fish food is optional – you might see lots of brightly colored fish anyway but the fish food is like crack to the reef fish. In just seconds you can be surrounded by a crowd of brightly colored reef creatures that include Matey and Chubby’s chums as well as Manini Convict Tangs wearing their black prison stripes over their yellow bodies, the Nunu Pekes (Coronetfish) looking as anorexic as haute couture models, the tiny Pennant Butterflyfish with its long spikey dorsal fin emerging from its back. These colorful creatures are just the showiest of the native species. Many other perhaps less colorful but no less interesting fish also circle with their show-off buddies.

Once we were tired of defending our honor among the gluttonous chub, we swam back toward the beach over the submerged rock to find not one but two endangered Hawaiian monk seals taking a break on Poi’pu Beach. Monk seals are treasured in the Islands and lifeguards are equipped with yellow caution tape to encourage us humans to leave them alone while they nap right next to sun-screened sunbathers before returning to the water.

All in all, quite an adventurous two hours on a Hawaiian beach. I’m glad we had a chance to practice snorkeling; we are headed for the world-famous Na Pali Coast on Sunday. Here we will snorkel over living coral reefs from a comfortable catamaran.  Kaua’I is called Hawaii’s Garden Island which is obvious even before your airplane touches down at Kauai’s Lihue airport. Between the colorful fish and the tunnel of trees we drove through to get to our resort, we truly feel like we are in a Garden as beautiful as Eden. And the most snake-like thing we’ve seen so far are tiny spiney lizards doing pushups on the sidwalks before disappearing into the bushes at our resort.

ALOHA!

AFFAIRS OF THE HEART

I haven't blogged for awhile. I had a reason. It's not that I haven't had adventures to write about. Matter of fact, I've recently been on one of the biggest, scariest adventures of my life.

Eight weeks ago, I suffered a heart attack. Believe me, when I called my ‘medical power of attorney’ and told her she might be needed we were both REALLY surprised. I’m only 62. I consider myself an ‘active’ senior. I hike regularly, backpack when I can, have been practicing yoga for years, and cycle in the annual El Tour de Tucson road race. I rarely eat packaged foods and really love my fruit and veggies. How could this possibly be a heart attack? The hardest call I had to make was to my 26-year-old son who would shortly be leaving Tucson for seminary in Washington DC.

I’ve always prided myself on my rather intimate relationship with my body. I can scan my body in the morning and know just what yoga poses would help me limber up in preparation for the day. I have a good sense why a particular muscle hurts or exactly which muscles I need to keep in shape to keep those torn ligaments from hurting so much. I’ve exercised or yoga’d my way out of chronic back and shoulder injury. I opt for physical therapy instead of pain relievers. By god, I am active. But I soon realized I had no such relationship with my heart. I'd always taken it for granted.

Now I am living with a history of ‘heart disease’. I’m eight weeks out now and have just recently got the diagnosis. In my case, the diagnosis is really important because I don’t ‘fit’ the demographics or the common medical signs for people living with heart disease. And I didn’t have to be shown how to properly perform a squat the first day in cardiac rehab. I already can do a pretty decent standing row. I could easily plank for 30 seconds and immediately pushed it up to 60 seconds while most of the newbies to rehab were being taught how to sit in a chair safely without crashing over.  And all along, my EEG’s have been showing nice even little mountains and absolutely no valleys. Zero heart disease, especially of the common clogged artery type – at least until the heart attack.

I've thought a lot about whether I would publicly give any details but since the diagnosis is kind of an equal opportunity diagnosis I thought it might be helpful for the people I hang with and other family members and friends who are generally also healthy and some quite fit. My diagnosis is exertion- or exercise-induced hypertension. Great. A diagnosis that is just becoming more common and is still not well understood. Just like me to wind up with something a little out of the ordinary and susceptible to 'trial and error' treatment.

Generally, when exercising or climbing mountains or hiking up and down with 30 pounds on your back, your body sends signals to the heart to relax its arterial walls in order to accommodate an increased need for oxygen which is delivered by blood volume going up. For some reason, my heart no longer can respond to this signal so when I reach a certain level of exertion (IMHO not a very high one at that), my blood pressure literally spikes through acceptable pressure limits. So it's kind of like a big flood coming through a small culvert. Something's got to give.

This type of hypertension can be treated somewhat with ordinary heart drugs prescribed to a person with hypertension caused by more normal reasons but ultimately ‘treatment’ is about finding a 'new normal' for exertion - one which will not cause the culvert to burst. This entails a lot of exercise and exertion under very controlled circumstances in cardiac rehab to help the patient better ‘read’ his or her heart’s signals that things are about ready to blow.

In the meantime, I'm working VERY hard on becoming fitter than I've been since my 20s and 30s in the hopes that this, too, will help. It's unknown and perhaps unlikely whether this will have much of an effect but it certainly can't hurt, especially since I am constantly monitoring my blood pressure as I exercise to determine where the heck my 'new normal' is.

So if you are healthy and like high exertion sports that may go on for fairly long periods of time (running, backpacking, hiking, cross country skiing, cycling, etc.) and begin to experience shortness of breath, redness in your face, pain in your chest, or angina that does not go away during or after periods of high exertion that you think is ridiculously out of sync with your overall condition, please visit your doctor and get a stress test.

It's amazingly apparent once you know what to look for. Your blood pressure will be going up as to be expected during exertion then BOOM it hits pressures over 200. You do not have to have super high cholesterol levels or resting blood pressures for this to happen. Pay attention please. Don't wait like I did until a heart attack brought this problem to my attention. By the way, doctors might miss it if you don't press them on this issue. I was in urgent care with what I thought was some pretty serious angina but because my bloods were acceptable and I have a history of activity, I was sent home. That night I had the first serious heart attack. Three days later I had my second heart attack in the emergency room of the hospital.

Recovery takes time and patience (yup, I'm also not good about patience). Depression often accompanies a heart attack. I experienced a little of that at the beginning but then I realized my addiction to the endorphins I was not getting sitting on my ass on the couch for a week was likely to be one reason for my ‘blues’. I negotiated a different get-well regime with my primary care doctor (she says every appointment is a ‘negotiation’ with me) and then I got up and went for a walk along the Rillito. I bought a Fitbit to shame me into getting up and moving the days I am not hiking or in cardiac rehab. I am not yet confident I will be able to backpack down and back up into the Grand Canyon but I am working my heart out to get there. I promise you - I'll see you down the trail.

A SOUTHWESTERN SMALL TOWN 4TH OF JULY

I heard the splash before I felt the droplets. I turned to see my friend Patty and her children armed and ready. A steady stream erupted from yet another fire truck. Patty was fairly soaked by the larger stream of water emitted from the fire fighters bravely manning their stations. She was plainly outgunned. Her fault, really, being armed with her small single-stream water pistol; she was David in a losing battle with a Goliath armed a water bazooka hooked to a hose which lead to a tank of water.

Oh well, it’s the Fourth of July in Patagonia and veteran parade goers (I am one) know you best wear quick-dry clothes if you are right on the street during Patagonia’s 4^th of July Parade and Festival. Patagonia is a pretty little village nestled between the Patagonia and the Santa Rita Mountains, along Sonoita Creek. It is basically a two main street affair. A row of artsy shops and yummy restaurants in addition to its only general store sits along the north road and a large historic hotel, its local craft store, more yummy restaurants, a coffee shop and a beautiful church line the south road.

Patagonia is now a place people move to get away from the big city (the biggest nearby being the millionopolis of Tucson) or ranch lands that have been in families for generations. There are organic farms along the verdant Sonoita Creek bed and Spiritual Retreat Centers in the hills above the town.

There are several mining ghost towns on the dirt roads up in the Patagonia Mountains, quiet reminders of a booming industry that left a train station turned into Civic Center on a generous patch of park that stretches the two long blocks between its two main streets. It’s a place where neighbor absolutely knows neighbor and with that comes the civility of having to live next door to people you might not exactly agree with. It’s one of my favorite places to be on the 4^th in these United States.

Patagonia’s 4^th festivities are pretty downhome. Families arrive plenty early to stake out their canopy spots on the grounds of Patagonia’s generous central park. The Senior Center’s volunteers arrive early to organize the brat and root beer float concession in the Center’s spotless cafeteria. The Tombstone Vigilantes drive up in their colorful period costumes and noisy pistol replicas.

Sonoita horse ranchers show up with their horse trailers and their best-looking and calmest steeds for the Parade. The floats, fire engines and trucks, a flotilla of historic and really cool looking Model T’s and A’s and whatever else there are line up behind them and somewhere near the middle those adorable 4H kids tote the flag and sometimes drag their fairly well-behaved goat or dog or other 4H project turned life-long friend along. On July 4^th, Patagonia is a western Norman Rockwell painting.

Patty, her two children, my own grown son Daniel and I got there an hour later than usual but there was still plenty of spaces down the block in the Post Office lot. It was Patty’s first time but she had done her research (she is part of my adventure group and we all tend to do research before we head somewhere – it’s just what we do). We both had our snacks and our drinks. We had a camp chair for each of us. Patty and her kids had three water pistols plus a gallon of water for recharging the ammo. We all had sun screen which we forgot because that’s what one does in Arizona when the clouds provide some cover and your skin is not broiling from the sun.

We walked up the north road and started hunting ‘our spot’ along the long line of revelers already waiting in polite lines all the way down the three-block northern part of the loop around the City Park. In front of a beautiful villa-style stone house, I spotted an unattended sidewalk space big enough for our raucous group of five. The lone gentleman sitting on one of a row of patio chairs assured me it was just waiting for my group to come along. His name was Eric and he and his wife were LA transplants, migrating to Patagonia to escape the overwhelming busyness of the big city. It was his second Patagonia Parade. I could tell from his constant stream of visitors that he had already embraced the small town friendliness that comes with living in Patagonia.

To protect our ‘spot’ I added a couple of our own camp chairs to the line barricading the vehicle parking lane and got down to business of waiting for the parade to start. The other four, this being their first time in Patagonia, explored the Park where Dan investigated the many tasty food options at the Festival grounds on the other side of the Senior Center. Mexican foods are naturally a big favorite here in this village that might have been around since before it was even part of the United States.

Finally, we could hear before we could see the Parade color guards marching down the street. Then came the Parade Marshall followed by fire trucks and engines from pretty much all the volunteer and professional fire departments

in a 50-mile radius. A Navajo Hot Shot crew walked in front of the trucks carrying their pulaskis, picks and shovels. Firefighting is an honored tradition in these dusty hills and mountains and every year, and to thank them, these firefighters are given the special honor of being one of the first groups to lead the parade.

Float after float came drifting by. Many of them had water-soaking bandits hiding out in the interiors or on the decorated buckboards. Water, another of the village’s precious commodities, came raining from both the spectators and participants alike. Patagonia knows how to throw a really good water fight.

It didn’t take Patty and her kids long to realize blasts from their small streams of water usually was followed by perhaps a larger response from the parade participants but that was quickly followed up by the traditional wrapped candies now so ‘not allowed’ in other parades across the country. Patagonia trusts its neighbors to deliver safe candy and to stick around to pick up the mess.

Finally, the last float drifted by and the crowd began to collectively move toward the Festival grounds. A side trip back to our parked cars to stow our camp chairs made us a little late getting to the ‘hanging’, a skit with volunteers from the crowd being ‘tried’ by a judge from the Tombstone Vigilantes with trumped up charges being attested to by a ‘sheriff’ intent on having justice served. With ice cream if possible. After the hanging, we were treated to the music and dancing by the Redhouse family, proud Navajo traditional dancers Lenny and Tony with their musical sister Mary. Mary sings, chants, drums and plays the Native flute while her brothers celebrate Navajo culture with ritual dances.

 

As the festivities continued, our group headed to the cars and to the Patagonia-Sonoita Creek Preserve, a beautiful 873 acres of the richest riparian habitat left in Southern Arizona which is home to the first 2 miles of the permanently flowing Sonoita Creek. The kids (even my 25-year-old who might just be more of a kid than Patty’s tween boy) hunted crayfish in the meandering stream and watched the four indigenous and tiny fish species play out the ancient circle of life with the crayfish. Barefoot and bareheaded, it could have been a scene from Huckleberry Finn’s days.

Everything about Patagonia and that day remind me of what’s best of the United States – friendly and patriotic people willing to lend a hand to the community, happy people offering thanks for their freedoms and gratefulness for their families.

On our way back to Tucson, Dan and I saw a fountain burst somewhere near “A” Mountain, the official firing site for the Tucson 4^th of July firework display. Heading toward the parking garages at the University of Arizona, we parked and hiked up four levels to the top where an entirely different group of Americans waited patiently on the camp chairs with their coolers, dogs and kids for the traditional explosion of patriotic feeling we call the 4^th Fireworks. It’s tradition. It’s what we Americans do to celebrate ‘the bombs bursting in air (that) gave proof through the night that the flag was still there.”

I hope I continue to do something like this every Fourth – get away to a small town holding a celebration of being able to do small town things, then meet up with friends who come from all parts of the country and even other countries to view the 4^th of July fireworks. I hope I never lose the magic of patriotic music and flags and 4H kids with goats. I believe in what America has come to stand for and the reason so many people from other countries (including my own forefathers and mothers) float, fly, drive and even walk into this country.

The United States of America’s freedom is disorderly. Often my freedom impinges on someone else’s. But in the United States, our traditions would have us settling these disputes in legislatures and courts rather than by bullets. Of course, we Americans have the right, which we so often and deeply rely on, to disagree on how we want to live. And sometimes the far left or the far right act in ways which, although sometimes fueled by honest and heart-felt beliefs, take their resistance way too far into violence like the recent shooting in Charleston. But I don’t see a system out there that has been able to manage the great Melting Pot in the same way we have. Freedoms for one to be extended to all has meaning. Even just this past week our freedoms were expanded as gay couples finally were given the green light by the freedom arbitrator of our country – our Supreme Court - to marry who they love and with whom they want to be celebrating their 4th of Julys.

Freedom has a forward trajectory in our country. We are a messy and loud bunch of people where the beliefs might not all be the same but the love of freedom is constant. Living under our flag means being able to sew it on a pocket of my jeans in college just so I could sit on it as a protest against what I thought was wrong with these United States. Even then, I viewed the flag as important and I treat it with respect, but I’m glad I can live in a country that does not require me to think of it as a sacred icon, one that would wave at me as I hobbled to the jailhouse because I had a different way of believing than others. Long live these United States and its community celebration called the 4^th of July.

THE SOUL OF MAROC

I wrote much of this just a few hours before leaving Maroc, the name Moroccans give their ancient land. From the first moment of arriving, I felt its great welcome. I was asked am I tired? Am I hungry? How could my hosts help me feel better right in this moment, these first moments in Marrakech? It had not been a long flight from Madrid but the lines through immigration and customs made me both hungry and tired.

My hosts listened with ears that heard my needs and immediately began to address them as their guest in their beautiful country. And from that moment of arrival, they were constant in their desire to see my needs were addressed. I experienced many, many news things in Morocco and I have written about them in other blog posts.

My experiences in Morocco's South has made me believe that the desert, the great golden Sahara, has been a constant and guiding influence in the long history of Morocco and might just be its heart. The constant threat of danger formed a culture in which hospitality became the key to survival.

When I first pulled up Southern Morocco on Google Earth, I saw great swaths of mountains and plains (which I learned were called hamadas) slashed with stripes of verdant green. Southern Morocco's desert may be it's heart, but the life-giving rivers coming from the Atlas Mountains in the South's verdant and cultivated valleys are its blood, providing water for homes and crops in this otherwise seemingly inhospitable landscape.

But surely, it is the Moroccans themselves that are its soul. Moroccans, and particularly Amazigh Moroccans (who the English called Berbers) are very modest people. They are kind and thoughtful; they are clean and tidy, always ready to receive a guest as commanded by the Koran and the exigencies of an unforgiving desert. They are justifiably proud of the gifts their country can offer - the exotic adventures, the ancient kasbahs, the beautiful dunes of the desert, the stunning gorges cut by constant waters, the green and productive river valleys. But this pride does not make them arrogant. They are a humble and loving people. In writing this, I hope I do not offend their sense of modesty but how can I possibly explain why I think its people are the soul of Morocco without offering my readers a chance to meet some of the wonderful people I have met there?

For some, I have kept their names since they are businessmen and women and would love for my friends who might be traveling through Morocco to consider them for goods or services. For others, I have changed the name so that it might be less easy to identify them. For any offense, I beg apology.

As I was repacking and trying to cram my gifts into the one small suitcase I brought, my host Adrienne told me she hoped I wasn't 'disappointed' that we hadn't made it to Fez, one of the oldest and most historic of the Royal Cities. I was actually taken aback by the thought that I might be disappointed and took a few seconds to gather my thoughts about my stays in Boumalne Dades and areas further south. I finally settled on the truth of my visit which is even without tourist sites that surely must be listed in every guidebook known to the traveler, I had been given far more than memories and beautiful pictures to show my friends. I had given me the gift of getting to know its people, surely a gift far more valuable.

My last night in Boumalne, my hosts and I went from new friend to friend so I could say goodbye as would be proper in the desert where friendships mean a great deal. Almost all of these people had given me a small gift or a memory that is irreplaceable. Spending my last few hours seemed the courteous way to thank them for taking time to not only meet me, but to let me know they felt getting to know me was the most important thing they had to do whenever we spent time together.

Had my trip not been exactly the way it was, I would not have met Masu, my driver up and into the Tanghir Gorge (the subject of another blog post to come) whose smile is as as wide as the ocean and whose sense of humor exceeds the restrictions of the lack of common language. The three of us, Adrienne, Masu and I had a lively conversation all about the lack of common language and we laughed at our ignorance while acknowledging how much fun we were having together regardless. Masu reaffirmed my belief that lack of a common language is only a barrier if you NEED something but if your intent is to have a good time, to enjoy common experiences, common language is down the list of important ingredients.

Had my trip not been exactly the way it was, I would never have gotten to know Odmane, the general director of Xaluca Dades, the luxury hotel that was the site of my blog post HOT IN THE HAMMAN. When our overnight stay in the nomad encampment in the Sahara Desert was aborted due to an impending sandstorm, Odmane assisted us by making sure we had rooms in another Xaluca Hotel, Kasbah Hotel Tombouctou, outside of Merzouga and right under one of the Sahara's enormous collection of dunes, Erg Chebbi. Before the sandstorm hit, the hotel staff helped us hire camels and a camel guide to fulfill my deepest Moroccan wish - to sink my toes on the top of a sand dune in the Sahara.

Back in Boumalne on my last night in Marocco, we told Odmane of our experience riding our camels into the dunes to return to the hotel where the sandstorm rattled the doors on their hinges and sent sand drifting under the door, affirming our gratitude that we could still experience the desert but safely. Odmane, whose entire family had been in the Sahara tourism trade for generations, told of his first wild drive through a sandstorm, at 16-years-old, after the driver of the vehicle he was in refused to continue in the blinding storm. Feeling a heavy responsibility for his guest, he took over the wheel even though he was a very inexperienced driver, intent on finding a safe place in which he and his guest could weather the storm, only knowing he really was on the dirt road when he felt its washboards under his feet. From Odmane, I learned how deep runs a sense of responsibility in desert families for their guests.


Had my trip not been exactly the way it was, I would never have met Odman, the merchant, a lanky, good-looking Amazigh (Berber) who invites his customers to Moroccan 'tea' right outside the door of his shop, one of the many doors down one of the many narrow alleys that form Boumalne Dades. I would not have met his beautiful sister who brought us tea with just a bit of saffron, a luxury spice even rare and valuable in Marocco. From Odman and his sister, I learned that Moroccan merchants take an interest in their customers needs and are willing to spend whatever time is necessary to fulfill them. I learned that a transaction with a Moroccan merchant provides an opportunity that goes beyond the purchase into friendship.

 



Had my visit not been exactly the way it was, I would not have encountered a traditionally-raised woman, whom I shall call Fatima whose marriage had been arranged as it was at that time in Marocco at the very early age of 13. She lost the husband of her 4 children also very early and, without any education, she has managed to raise a family of professionals - a lawyer, two sons certified to work in the tourist trade (very important in Marocco), and a budding mathematician who was studying for her finals during my visits. Now, with all of her children only home for visits, she lives in her spotlessly clean house in the family's kasbah and grows fruit and vegetables in the family plot along the river. She is younger than me. Fatima's happiness, peace and strength are palpable. From her, I learned the Moroccan family relationships, especially her right to bring her children to live in her family's kasbah, mean men and women are supported by their extended family in whatever way is needed. An offshoot of this strong family relationship (to the extent family members are not denied housing) is that homelessness is practically unheard of in Marocco.

Had my visit not been exactly the way it was, I would never have met Aziz Bolouz , who is a sports trainer that offers his family's stunning Kasbah Assafar perched high above the Valley of Roses to groups of athletes wanting a special place to train. Aziz, a runner, takes them up and down the mountains and valleys of the High Atlas, knowing every nook and cranny. Aziz told me he has met so many different kinds of people he wanted to know how people come to believe what they believe so in addition to his study of sports training he took a degree in philosophy. The night we were guests in his family's kasbah was spent dancing and accompanying the two Asafari who sang traditional songs until I could no longer keep my eyes open at 2am.

Aziz and I understand each other's need to be more outside than inside. We both constantly check the sky and track the sun on the mountains' many canyons. I hope to put together an adventure hike in the High Atlas in 2017 with Aziz as the provider of tents and other support. From Aziz, I learned of secret places in the High Atlas and of the great and ever-changing beauty of the sweeping Valley of Roses below his kasbah. He also reinforced the multi-faceted character of the Amazigh, living both in the modern world yet respecting very old fashioned traditions of respect for nature and for hospitality.

These are the people that are the soul of Morocco. Strong, resilient, honest, trust-worthy and reliable. Proud of their heritage but humble by nature. Important and honorable characteristics. I'm sure I would have loved seeing the ancient university in Fez or the great palaces in the other royal cities, but if my trip had not been exactly the way it was would I have made friends like these? I think not and for that I feel very blessed indeed.

CAMEL RIDING IN THE SAHARA

Riding a camel is a lot like riding a mechanical bull.  I think. My time spent on a mechanical bull was pretty short and a long time ago after a few beers in a Country Western bar near Boulder CO in the 70s. But from what I can remember, sometimes it’s kind of fun but other times it is just plain terrifying. Nonetheless, after taking my one and only camel ride in the actual dunes of Erg Chebbi in the Moroccan Sahara, I still recommend camels as the best transportation vehicle for the monster dunes of the Sahara Desert.

For one thing, camels don’t take a lot of fuel to go many miles. For another, you don’t need to pack spare tires; their feet are leathery pads with two toes that spread out on the sand, easily overflowing a standard dinner plate. Unlike other four-footed animals, camels move both feet on the same side forward when they walk so riding one is like sitting astride an overturned kayak on a sometimes stormy sea. Camels have huge doe-shaped eyes with long lashes that either make you think they are the ‘soulful’ animals of Lonely Planet’s musings on the 'Desert of Dreams', or remind you of some cartoon. Camels seem to be a bit self-centered and stubborn to me, but they eventually follow the lead of the camel herder and provide the function they have provided for millennia – taking wanderers across the great expanse of the mother of all deserts – the Sahara.

When I headed to Morocco, I already knew I would miss the Royal Cities to the north, choosing instead the wide open barren spaces to the south. I have an addiction to wide open spaces having lived in the USA’s Desert Southwest for nearly 35 years. If the choice is between desert and city, I’ll most always opt for desert. And that is where I headed, the day after my plane landed in Marrakech.

My first stop was Boumalne Dades and Tanghir, the subject of another post. That far south in Morocco, even though Boumalne is in the Dades Valley, just south of the imposing High Atlas Mountains, the land is already dry and scrubby, looking not unlike my own desert, the Sonoran Desert, but with different vegetation. The contrast of the verdant and well-tended gardens along the rivers in the valleys coming down from the High Atlas to the scrubby hamada is striking. But then it seemed everywhere I looked I could spot incongruencies like this that added to the surprise of Morocco.

As my hosts and I traveled from Tanghir even further southeast into the desert, the hamada became even more sparse and empty. We saw camel herds and camel herders on the hills. My hosts pointed out what looked very much like the top of ancient kivas but turned out to be underground watering holes (think ‘rest stops’) for the Amazigh (Berbers) living their nomadic lives in this dry, inhospitable country. The further south we drove, the smaller the villages became; autos often replaced by all manner of wagons and carriages drawn by donkeys and horses.

Finally, Erg Chebbi, one of the two enormous dune systems of the Moroccan Sahara and looking just like it did in the 2005 movie Sahara, appeared. I could not take my eyes away. Here was the stuff of my travel dreams. I so wanted to stick my toes into the Sahara sands. I’ve climbed some pretty impressive dunes in my own Desert Southwest and I know what climbing mountains of sand can do for unused muscles. I just hoped the dunes weren’t quite as high as they looked from my window at the Kasbah Hotel Tombouctou, one of the beautiful Moroccan Xaluca Hotels.

This trip was supposed to end up with a 4WD ride up and over the dunes to a Amazigh encampment for two days but because of the real threat of a sandstorm (even the camel herder who sleeps with the camels in a small shack mentioned that sandstorms are the least favorite part of his job), an overnight stay in this beautiful hotel with a sunset camel ride and walk into the dunes was Plan B. Not a bad Plan B at all.

After settling in and having tea (you are always offered ‘tea’ here in Morocco and you should always accept – it’s just polite and the cookies are generally quite good), we met our camel herder in back of the hotel at the base of the Erg. I wasn’t too concerned about mounting the camel. The camel was cushed (lying down) and my camel was the smaller of the two. To mount a camel, you literally throw one leg over the saddle and pull yourself up onto it. The saddle has no stirrups but does offer a smallish ‘rod’ tied in the middle to the saddle directly behind the camel’s rather large head. This operates as your ‘saddle horn’ and believe me, you are going to use it as a drowning man hangs on to his life ring buoy.

The camel herder then shouts camel-type commands to the camel, the camel responds in kind (although it seemed my camel was saying “nope it’s late and I’m staying right here jerk”) and this continues until the camel herder wins. Or at least mine did.

Remember that little rod? It is going to keep you from tumbling over the camel’s head when the giant beast pushes off the ground with his back legs to stand up. Your entire body is suddenly vertical to the ground and your feet are desperately hunting for the afore-mentioned missing stirrups. But in the end, you are up in a pretty comfortable saddle feeling pretty good about not making a complete fool of yourself. Until you realize your legs are further apart than they ever were when you birthed your firstborn.

The camel's front end goes up a bit easier; this movement will bring the saddle parallel to the ground, a much more comfortable position. And then, your ‘ship of the desert’ (called so because of the rocking motion of your camel as it moves both legs on one side forward) begins its slow plod up and into the erg.

A camel going up into the dunes isn’t too bad. The camel’s giant dinner-plate feet are perfectly designed for walking in sand. I could feel my core muscles moving and reflected on how much more fun this was than pilates. Yet, once up a dune, the other side usually goes down. This means that occasionally a camel has to go down too. Once more I had the notion of impending tumbling over the camel’s head-except from a higher plane. I tightened my grip on the rod and gripped with my inner thighs, inwardly thanking my fitness trainer for those thigh strengthening exercises using one of those inflatable exercise balls.

After riding the camel for what was all too short a time, we were several dunes back into the Erg and ready to climb up to the tallest dune around for the sunset. Getting off a camel is pretty much the reverse of getting on one. Same feeling of insecurity, same sense of the imminent foolishness of tumbling over the camel’s head onto the soft, forgiving (thank god) sand.

Climbing your way up a dune entails a good amount of work. But once on top, we could see the massive Erg Chebbi with its continuous flow of dunes all the way to the horizon in three directions. I nearly cried. I had asked my host to leave time for me to give thanks to the Maker and closed my eyes so I could affect a graceful and grateful posture and listen to the sound of the sand constantly shifting around us.

Almost before I had enough time to express my gratitude, sand started providing me an unwanted microdermabrasion. Fortunately, my host had stopped in at a roadside ‘strip center’ in order for us to purchase the necessary length of cloth from which to make a Berber turban.

Following his instructions, I had wound my turban around my head, leaving a ‘tail’ I could tuck into my turban’s folds in case the sand got there before we got down from the dune. That ‘tail’ quickly found its way across my face.

There is something incredibly unique and mystical about sitting on top of a giant dune at the very beginning of a sandstorm. We stayed just a bit longer, watching the orange-red Sahara sun slide slowly down over the hamada to the west, until the camel herder and my host felt we really needed to leave because of the blowing sand. It is quite easy to lose your sense of direction in a sandstorm. But if you are ever provided an opportunity to safely experience the swirl of sand around you on a darkening dune before riding your camel back to civilization, it is an experience that I can truly say might just be once in a lifetime.

HOT IN THE HAMMAM

It's not easy getting virtuallly naked in front of a perfect stranger who doesn't speak the same language. Even if it is a professional massage therapist in a Moroccan hamman. Especiallly if you are with your girlfriend who also doesn't speak the language and there's two massage therapists. If one of them says anything to the other you are just sure it's going to be like "I hope my skin isn't this wrinkled when I'm her age." Or "Hmmmm.....she could lose a few kilos, heh."

But I love massages. I love saunas. So when I read about the Morrocan version of a Turkish bath, I couldn't wait to try it. The fanciest resort in town, Xaluca Hotel, offers the 'tourist' version for guests in a spa not unlike those in the resorts in my home town of Tucson. The moment you enter the spa, you feel its humid heat. It smells of rose water, the favorite scent of a region that grows roses for a living. My massage therapist gave me a quick tour of the spa then showed me to our dressing room.

In the dressing room, we stripped down to our undies and wrapped bath towells (that felt all too small) around us as one of the therapists came in to direct us further into the spa to a very warm room that reminded me of a sauna. We were invited to drop the towell and lay faceup on what looked like yoga mats on a vinyl-covered bed. My therapist deftly began smearing some kind of goo on my legs and tummy after which I was instructed to "Over". The goo-smearing continued on my bare back and legs.

After this short ritual we were instructed by the therapist that spoke the best English to "Rest. We be back." Adrienne and I 'rested' getting hotter and hotter in the steamy little room. We talked of our families and mutual friends while the heat of the room and our bodies warmed the goo into a liquid that our bodies began absorbing. It felt really warm and really good. I think if one were alone, one might be tempted to nap.

In about thirty minutes our therapists came back. Each had a big bucket and a black mitt. I had heard of the 'scrubbing' part of a hammam visit and was used to 'polishing' my skin with a loofa every once in awhile but had never experienced anything quite so rough. I began to feel sorry for the rough wood tables that undergo sandpapering in order to be made into a fine table. Under the scratchy pad, gobs of dead grey skin peeled from my body, the therapist constantly dipping her hand into her hot bucket to rinse her mitt. I concentrated on how beautiful the wood looks after all that buffing.

Adrienne, thank goodness, knew what to expect having been there before. She had warned me to bring dry panties because we would be 'getting wet'. But I still didn't anticipate the large bucket of hot water splashed over my mostly naked and prone body. "Over." Came the command. Hot water crashed down my back, spreading out over my exposed back and legs. Actually, it felt really good. I was being 'washed' and was enjoying being washed instead of washing myself.

"Sit." Hmmmm, wonder what's going to happen. Splash came the hot water, soaking my head. My therapist reached for some wonderfully smelling shampoo and proceeded to wash my hair and scalp. Splash, again the hot water. I felt like my dog must have felt when I washed her funny face. I also felt very, very clean.

After helping me with my towell, my therapist crooked her finger at me. I wasn't exactly sure that meant 'stay' or 'follow me' but in instant fear of being left in a very small towell half-naked, I followed her on her heals. She led me to a room not unlike the room of my massage therapist at home. Low lighting, good smells, soft music. This tme the music was a bit Morrocan-exotic. That was a nice change.

The rest of the massage was not much different from a Swedish massage in the States. There wasn't a head rest but I rolled my towell up in a 'U' and placed my face on it. It worked just fine. The massage therapist worked confidently over my body, draping my 'bits' with a fresh towell as needed. I relaxed, smelling the scent of rose water and feeling the tension I didn't even know I had flowing out of my body and into her capable hands.

When my therapist had finished, she told me to 'relax' and I took the opportunity to lay still for just a few more minutes before sitting up and finding a new barely big enough towell to cover my now oily body and underpants, still wet from the bath. My therapist must have been right outside because the minute she heard noises, she politely came in to the room, crooked her finger, and commanded me 'Come'.

Back to the dressing room where my friend Adrienne was waiting. Remember the dry underwear? At this point of the hammam experience, it was time to blot off the excess oil with more fresh towells, dress in dry, comfortable clothes and retire to the Xaluca Hotel terrace, high above the city, to enjoy the wonderful view of Boumalne Dades and have that refreshing glass of Morrocan rose'.