Month: July 2023

A few nights ago I was in the square in Santa Fe, killing time before my dinner reservation. I overestimated my shopping time and had 45 minutes to kill before my reservation. I’ve spent many a morning or afternoon finding my way through the countless shops and galleries in Santa Fe and have always enjoyed the thrill of the hunt, but on this latest visit, it seemed that every shop had a whole lot of what I already owned, so after wandering through a few galleries and getting dreamy eyed about the antique rugs or paintings with price tags that had too many digits, the shopping didn’t hold my attention, I went inside the courtyard where the outdoor tables for Casa Sena were and saw three people seated at the bar. Bars are always a good spot to land because bartenders are usually more than happy to chat or lend an ear. I set my things down and took a stool in the center of the bar and ordered a club soda. When the woman seated at the end of the bar, three stools down, heard my order, she turned in my direction and said in a loud and bossy voice,
“Froze! (as in frozen rose)… you have to get one of these. Not a club soda, Carla, get her a froze!”

I noticed the almost empty glass of frozen rose in front of her and two empty glasses lined up next to it. Maybe the bartender hadn’t removed them as she was using them to keep count. She later told me that three drinks were the limit without food and five with food. I wasn’t sure if that was their restaurant rules or Santa Fe rules, but it looked like they were being enforced.

“No, I’m good. It’s too hot out right now for alcohol. Club soda’s fine.”

She readjusted herself on her barstool so she was facing me and told me her name, which I immediately forgot and told me the couple’s names of who were at the other end of the bar, along with Carla, the bartender. I followed with my quick introduction, as I didn’t really want to get involved in conversation with her. Some situations are easy to sniff out and you instinctively know to stay clear. I was perfectly content chatting with the bartender or just keeping to myself, but the anchor at the end of the bar had other ideas.

“Carla, get her a frose.”
“Maria,” the bartender said. “My name’s Maria! I don’t know why you keep calling me Carla.”

The lady whose name I immediately forgot ignored Maria and leaned towards me and said,
“I bet you’re a writer. You look like a writer.”

OK, annoying as she was, now she had my attention, even though I still wasn’t interested in engaging in a conversation with her.

“I am,” I answered, “and that’s interesting you’d say that.”

i already knew I had said too much when she started leaning towards me even more. She said something about the couple at the other end of the bar, who just gave a nod and I could tell they were also trying to keep their distance and were likely grateful that I had moved into the spot closer to the getting drunk on frozen rose woman.

She asked questions and I gave one word answers, trying my best to subtly let her know I wasn’t interested in engaging in conversation. She didn’t take the hint.

“Where are you from? I’m supposed to be meeting a man here but he didn’t show up. I’m 60, he’s 45. Do you think that’s strange? Good or bad? Carla! I think Laurie needs a froze! Are you staying here? I’m not from here. I live outside of Denver, but I’ve lived everywhere. My husband was in the military.”

“It’s MARIA, not Carla,” Maria the bartender said, then glanced over to me and shook her head.

The one sided conversation continued with me answering only when I had to. She became more and more persistent and given that I didn’t want to be rude, I gave short answers and no eye contact, but it didn’t seem to be slowing her down. After I finished my drink, I went over to the hostess stand and asked if I could be seated. She told me they had staffing issues and wouldn’t be able to seat me until my reservation time – in 15 minutes.

“You don’t have to do anything.. just give me a glass of water and I’ll wait at the table.”

She looked confused.
I continued, “I’m trying to get away from the woman at the end of the bar.”
“Oh… of course. Maria told me she had to cut her off and she didn’t seem very happy about it. She told me not to worry, they’d find me a table and she then led me to a table that was as far away from the bar as possible. As soon as I was seated, the woman , who in my mind I’m now calling “Flo,” approached my table, seeming much more drunk to me now that she was upright.

“How come you’re sitting here all by yourself? Are you waiting for someone?”
“No, I’m by myself.” This was all information I had told her earlier.
She nodded with a string look of concern on her face then asked,

“Do you want me to join you? It seems so sad that you’re going to be eating alone. I’m an extrovert. I would never eat alone.”
“No, I don’t. I’m fine. Actually, I like eating alone. And I’m also an extrovert.”

I picked up the menu and started scanning my options while trying to give her the message to leave me alone, which clearly wasn’t working.
“Are you sure? You’re just sitting her all alone… and….well it seems….
I interrupted her, “Yes. I want to eat alone. I like eating alone. Have a nice evening.” And I went back to my menu reading, watching her out of the corner of my eye. She stood next to the empty chair at my table for at least a minute, rocking back from one foot to the other, then left. My waitress showed up right behind her.

“We’re so sorry… the bartender cut her off but she doesn’t seem to want to leave,” the waitress told me apologetically.

“No worries,” I said, then placed my order and enjoyed a lovely dinner but the drunk frozen rose, Flo, said something that I would subconsciously tuck away. That subconscious thought would resurface the next night when I decided to dine at the lodge. As usual, I arrived for my reservation 20 minutes early so went to the bar and ordered an aperol spritz because it seems like the thing to do these days. During my 15 minutes of sitting, I was asked by the bartender, two waiters and the hostess if I was waiting for someone. The hostess, who I had said earlier that I wanted a table for one, said she was ready to seat me but had the other person in my party arrived? When I said no, there wasn’t another half to my party and it was just me, Flo’s words entered my mind…”it just seems kinda sad…”. Everyone but me seemed to be concerned about the missing person at my table for one. I regretted that I added the “just” before “me.” It sounded apologetic and I wasn’t. As I was being led to my table, I couldn’t help but scan every visible table in the room and a few on the patio for a head count. I confirmed what I was already pretty sure of — I was the only table for one. Even at the bar everyone was paired off. I sat at my table, suddenly aware of an awkwardness I was feeling that hadn’t been an issue when I sat at almost the same table two nights ago. But it was drunk Flo that put these ideas of “aren’t you sad, don’t you want someone to eat with you?” into my head.

I’ve done a lot of things that I now look back on as a scary and by myself — hiking to the top of 5 14’er mountains in Colorado, flying to Ghana to volunteer on my own when my friend who was supposed to go with me ended up sick in Atlanta and driving from Boulder to western Massachusetts to see my sister during Covid. I could go on, but now, I wonder if dining alone should be added to my list? I didn’t feel sad, much to Flo’s dismay, I’m sure, to be led to a table for only me, but have to admit, watching the hostess scoop up the extra place setting, almost like she was trying to do it so fast that I won’t notice, gave the dinner for one an awkwardness that I hadn’t thought of before. Flo had me overthinking the whole “dining solo” concept, or doing anything alone, which also concerned Flo, but it was exactly what she was doing given that her date had stood her up.

As I was leaving the restaurant, there was a man, probably about my age setting up scaffolding for an art show next to the pool. It was going to be projected onto the water and although he explained what he was doing, I had no idea what he was talking about. We had a nice chat though and he invited me to the show but I told him I was leaving the next day.
“Flying home?”
“No. Driving. With some stops along the way, not exactly sure but probably Taos and eventually Boulder.”
“Oh, kind of like a Jack Kerouac, on the road, trip?”
“Well not really but I appreciate the comparison.”
“Are you by yourself?”
“Yes.”
“You’re brave.”
I didn’t think so, but I had dined alone and that act was starting to sound brave to me, but I decided not to share that with him.
“Have a good trip, ‘on the road,’ and be careful.”
I smiled, wondering how I’d live up to the ‘on the road’ name as well as the brave comment. Brave? Hardly. I have a cell phone, AAA road insurance and a car that’s in good shape. Brave is when you have none of those and are in a country whose language you do not speak and you don’t know where you’ll be sleeping after dinner, which now has you concerned having downed all the water that has been poured for you as well as eaten the lettuce garnish. That’s brave. Maybe dining alone is also brave, but I’m still thinking about that one as it seems too easy. I guess we all have our own version of bravery.

I used to think it was brave to bring three kids under the age of four into a restaurant, which I did many times solo, and is also probably where I developed the bad habit of eating so quickly. But a road trip with a few stops, hardly. So along with the notion of dining alone being sad according to Flo, now I had artist Jack’s words about bravery to contemplate (my made up name, short for Jack Kerouac of course). His words hold more weight than Flo’s and they were delivered to me sober.

At breakfast the next morning, I asked for a table for one, eliminating the “just,” but breakfast isn’t the same as dinner. I wasn’t alone with my table for one. In fact, I’d say the majority in the lodge coffee shop were tables set for one, with lap tops as their dates. I couldn’t help but think about Flo’s words “but you look so sad.” No one looked sad. They all looked happy to be left alone.

Flo’s words returned to me while dining alone, again, in Taos the next day, now comfortable with dropping the apologetic “just” at the hostess stand. Flo was wrong. Flo was also drunk. It doesn’t feel sad or lonely or conspicuous to me to be solo in restaurants. In fact, it makes me feel brave and brave makes me sit up a little straighter in my chair and ask the waiter what their top shelf gin is. Not that I’m a gin drinker, but it sounds confident — like something a brave person eating alone would ask.

I have loved the Adirondacks from the first time I experienced them almost three decades ago, thanks to my sister, Susan, who showed them off to me when she lived in Montreal. I love the smell of balsam in the air when you enter the small town where we stay and take Susan’s cue to roll down the window and stick my head out like a Labrador retriever — taking it all in, one inhale at a time.  I love that most of the businesses that line the main street in town have not changed and the waitresses at the Noonmark Diner are still not friendly and the pies are still good.  

On my most recent visit, Susan and I stayed at the same inn where I had stayed during one of my first visits to Keene Valley— The Trail’s End Inn, a 1902 Adirondack lodge that sits at the end of a long dirt road with views of mountains and trailheads within walking distance. Iconic, picturesque, and once you’ve stayed there a few times, you get to add “home” to that list.  There are several other lodging options and another favorite is the Dartbrook Lodge, where I’ve stayed a few times.  It has a grouping of log cabins with large front porches and interiors that look like Ralph Lauren had his hand in the decorating decisions.  Not one detail of the interior, or exterior for that matter, had been overlooked.  It was my idea of absolute decor perfection, Adirondack style.  As beautiful as the cabins were in their rustic, aged, distressed, bent-willow style, I prefer the creaking floors and lumpy mattresses to the Navajo inspired rugs,  large stone fireplaces and beds with down comforters. Maybe because it holds so many memories for me and as much as I love walking into a hand-hewn log cabin whose decor I’ve tried to emulate in places I’ve lived, give me mismatched quilts, bad water pressure and lumpy mattresses.  Especially when those lumpy mattresses are in a screened-in sleeping porch that is so divine that not sleeping in it simply is not an option, even if that means going to bed in your coat.

When Susan and I started making plans for the Adirondacks portion of my visit to see her in Massachusetts,  my only request, besides our lodging, was to hike Rooster Comb.  I wanted to revisit the trail that had challenged me every time I’ve been on it, even though Susan insists it is not a hard hike.  Out of the many hikes I’ve been on in the Adirondacks, I have the most history with Rooster Comb.  Actually, my family has the most history with Rooster Comb.  My son-in-law proposed to my daughter at the top of Rooster Comb, I earned a 3 inch scar just below my left knee when I slipped on a mossy piece of granite on the way down once and my family has all done the hike and probably more than once.

And so we did just that.  After the rain had cleared, kind of, we made our way up the trail, a gradual climb that one local guide book refers to as a “relentless uphill hike.”  After almost four years of hiking a few times a week, I now have a better grasp of the assent of a trail’s relationship to distance to determine difficult and with 1,900 feet of assent and only 4.7 miles to cover that assent, I now understand my years of whining about the difficulty of the trail.  There’s only one tiny stretch that is level and every inch of that level feels welcoming.  Susan said I’d feel differently about Rooster Comb after hiking as many miles as I have in Colorado, and with altitude, which is why I needed the revisit.  I needed to know if what my memory had been telling me all these years was accurate (probably 10 since I last hiked it).

The weather was perfect—cloudy, with a few sporadic raindrops and neither hot nor buggy.  I  remember doing the hike one August several years ago with bandanas that we had tied onto our faces from our necks to just below our eyes because of the annoying swarms of black flies.  But on this journey up Rooster Comb, the black flies stayed away.  They’d make their appearance later in the summer. 

When we got to the huge rock with the tree growing up and around it, Susan told me we were half way.  Already?  The guidebook was right that it was an uphill hike, but relentless?  Hardly.  When we got to the top, we didn’t even bother to get comfortable and start fishing snacks out of our packs because the gnats were thick.   Better than black flies, but not great.  We lingered long enough though to take in the incredible views — softer and gentler than the rocky views I’m used to, but just as spectacular and grand in their beauty. The revisit felt good and my return as a seasoned hiker became a measure of not only the strength I’ve gained in my last few years of hiking, but my patience as well.  We only passed a few other hikers and Susan hiked ahead of me, as she always does as her pace is faster than mine.  We’d stop periodically to share something we had thought of (or so I could catch up), but most of the conversations that morning were with myself, inside my head, as I tried to absorb what every mountain trail tries hard to tell me and that is to slow down, have a closer look and enjoy the incredible gifts that nature is offering up that so often go unnoticed.  That morning I noticed.  

I was mindful of my steps as we neared the end of the trail, when legs tend to get wobbly and sharp mossy rocks are tripped over, leaving scars as memories.  When I fell on one of those mossy rocks, 15 years ago, I was wearing shorts and my leg was bleeding so badly that I took the bandana off of my head and tied it on my leg like a tourniquet, although I knew nothing about tying tourniquets, but it kept the blood out of my socks.  I remember both of us laughing, I mean really laughing, with Susan taking her cue from me that it was OK to laugh after seeing I was OK, because for some reason, falling is funny, whether on a slick floor or a mossy rock.  We patched the cut up when we got back to our room and I made the hasty and probably unwise decision to not go to an emergency room for stitches, given the scar I have today.  As Chris Cleave says in his book “Little Bee,” scars are reminders that we survived.  My reminder is front and center for me, where I see it so often that I no longer see it, short of a random reminder to slow down around wet, mossy rocks.

It rained all night and we slept in twin beds, with our beds pushed up against the screens — a familiar sleeping arrangement for us that dates back to our childhood. There was a roof overhang, so we didn’t get rained on, but I don’t think even the rain would have stopped us.  We probably would have just pushed our beds away from the window and stayed on the porch.  The bed in the room on the other side of the sleeping porch, remained unused.  It was two of the best night’s sleeps I’ve gotten in a long time.  According to my fit bit, 10 hours of good sleep.  Susan thinks they should use the room for sleep deprived people — a sleep clinic that would offer guarantees of a good night’s sleep, especially if there was rain in the forecast.

There are some places that get under your skin and crawl their way right into your soul.  They find their way into your happiest day dreams and become the backdrop to so many scenes  where stories are told to others and silently to yourself.  Keene Valley, New York and the Trail’s End Inn are two of  those places for me.   This most recent visit felt different though, almost like an itch that was finally getting scratched.  I started thinking about solo writing retreats and tucking myself into the sleeping porch with a notebook and a pen and a steaming cup of tea on the night stand with the coziness of a Rosamunde Pilcher novel.  I’m not sure why I haven’t done it before.  Maybe because I have had so much fun with Susan on our Keene Valley trips, a place she knows well having rented a cottage there for weekends of hiking when she lived in Montreal.  I have no doubt that my itch of my own pieced together writing retreat will get scratched and the views and the sounds of the early morning birds and the gentle breeze that holds the scent of balsam will be my fodder for words on the page.   If I’m lucky, it will rain every night because  getting to sleep in a screened-in sleeping porch with the background sounds of a gentle rain, is just about as good as life gets.