This is just a post--on Women's Equality Day in the U.S., a day that commemorates American women gaining the right to vote in 1920--to congratulate our Austrian sister and mountain climber Gerlinde Kaltenbrunner on becoming the 1st woman to climb the world's 14 highest peaks without artificial oxygen. Kaltenbrunner achieved this feat just this Tuesday, August 23, 2011, when she and her team reached the summit of K2 in Pakistan. The National Geographic has this article with great pictures and daily dispatches recording Kaltenbrunner's team's bid for the summit. Here's my favorite quote from the article:
4th Update—6:18 p.m. Kyrgysistan Time (8:18 a.m. EDT): Gerlinde stands on the summit of K2 as the eleventh person and first woman in the world to successfully climb all fourteen 8,000-meter peaks without the use of bottled oxygen. She reports that the view is incredible and the sun is out.
For anyone interested in more background and history on women mountain climbers, a book I recommend is Savage Summit by Jennifer Jordan. Jordan's book details the lives and careers of the first 5 women to make the summit of K2. It's a bit overwritten and unnecessarily melodramatic in parts, but it's still fascinating to read about these women's particular challenges in the male-dominated world of mountaineering. And for fans of Jon Krakauer's best-seller Into Thin Air, Jordan's book should prove interesting as a counterpoint to some of the claims made by Krakauer and the media about female socialite and climber Sandy Hill Pittman's role in the disastrous climbing season of 1996 on Mt. Everest, which saw 9 lives lost.
Thankfully, we now have the reports from Kaltenbrunner's successful 14-peak bid to add to women's mountaineering history. Congratulations to Gerlinde Kaltenbrunner and her team!! Well done!
In a few weeks I'll be starting my 400-mile pilgrimage walk on the Camino de Santiago in Spain. Yep, I decided I'm gonna do it. I'll be heading to southern France from Ireland in mid-September. How long it will take me to get to Santiago de Compostela, and whether I'll even make it to Santiago, I don't know. But I don't expect to be back in Ireland before middle of October and back in the U.S. before Halloween.
Reading up on the Camino and getting ready for it has made me think about why I'm doing this--and what even attracted me to the idea. The answer to the first question is complicated, because even while I may have a reason in mind, I think I'm likely to find that will change considerably as I start and go along on the pilgrimage. As for the second question, that's a bit easier.
Apart from the spiritual aspect of the Camino and all the mysterious, intangible stuff that entails (inner peace, healing, confidence, that kind of thing), the fact is the Camino is really about the act of walking. Yes, some people cycle the Camino, some people travel it by donkey, and some even have the cheek to drive it--but the majority of pilgrims undertake the Camino on foot. This is an important distinction to me. I think if the Camino was primarily a cyclist's journey or a rock-climber's or sailor's, I wouldn't be interested. I've always been a walker. Out of necessity and intention. Necessity because I never learned to drive (shocking for an American, I know), and intention because...well, because walking's what the truly cool people in this world do.
Cool people like one of my longtime heroes, John Francis, aka Planetwalker. That's his picture at the top of this post. He may look like a hobo or a wandering musician, but in truth he's a pioneering environmentalist and a genuine visionary--a man who spent over 20 years walking everywhere and refusing to ride in any motorized transport and 17 years without speaking.
Born and raised in Philadelphia, John Francis was in his late 20s and living the laid-back hippie life in Point Reyes Station, California, when a major oil spill devastated the San Francisco Bay Area in 1971. In his autobiography, Planetwalker, Francis recalls how angry people in his community were about the spill. While there were some pretty far-out protests involving dumping oil and dead fish at the headquarters of Standard Oil, the company responsible for the spill, only Francis was the one who came up with the simpler, more personal, more peaceful, and ultimately more powerful protest of giving up driving and riding in cars. In essence, he gave up his own dependence on oil and gasoline. But this being California, where everyone drives and where cars have truly shaped the local layout, Francis' sacrifice meant it took him hours to get anywhere, sometimes even days. Point Reyes being a small community, this also meant everyone in town knew about Francis' personal protest, and some people took it as an offense, as a judgement on their own continued reliance on cars. As Francis went about his way walking everywhere, he'd find people would drive up alongside of him and get into arguments with him about his new mission. So he decided a further sacrifice was necessary, one even more personal--he stopped talking. His vow of silence ended up lasting 17 years, and his vow of traveling everywhere by foot lasted nearly a quarter of a century.
In a car culture like America's, this would've been impressive enough even if Francis just stayed in the Bay Area, traversing the same long roads year in and year out. But no--Francis decided he wanted to take his message farther, and get an education in the environment as well. He ended up walking all the way to Ashland, Oregon, to study at the university there and earn a bachelor's degree in 2 years. Eventually he walked on to Missoula, Montana, to complete a 2-year master's program in environmental studies and even taught class there--remember, without talking. After his master's he would go on, by foot of course, to the University of Wisconsin in Madison to earn his PhD. Along the way of walking countless miles for a good education, he also managed to learn boat-building in Washington state, start a newsletter called Planetwalk about his journey, be interviewed by a show called West 57th (a kind of early version of Dateline or 48 Hours), and play the banjo to keep himself company.
Francis finally broke his silence in 1990 at an Earth Day rally in Washington, D.C., where he was a speaker. Next he was appointed a UN ambassador for the environment and hired by the U.S. Coast Guard to write oil spill regulations. Then he sailed down to the Caribbean, walked throughout the islands, sailed to Venezuela and began walking down South America. After 22 years of walking and eschewing all motorized vehicles, he accepted his first lift in a car in Brazil, after realizing he had trapped himself in his "walking man" persona to the point of turning a sacred and sacrificial mission into a selfish and static one. He tells his story beautifully in this video from the TED talks:
I first learned about John Francis way back in the mid-80s when his West 57th interview with Meredith Vieria aired. I don't even remember why I was watching the particular episode, or why I was watching a newsmagazine show at all since I was only about 14 at the time. (The best I can figure is that since the show was aired on a Friday or Saturday night and since I was a wallflower girl who no one wanted to date, watching the news is how I spent my weekend nights as a teenager. Wild.) Unfortunately there's no video available for West 57th interview, but there is this video of another news program that shows footage of Francis back in the 70s and 80s.
I remember the interview on West 57th really struck me. Probably because I had never heard of anyone before doing what John Francis was doing. I never heard stories like his. Certainly not in the suburban Midwest, where I grew up. Where I come from, it was regarded that all I should be focusing on life was getting my driver's license, getting a boyfriend, getting good grades, and getting into a good college. If you deviated from those goals in any way (and I did in neraly every possible way), you were perceived as strange or lost or hopeless. There was next to nothing mentioned about seeing your country or the world, on foot or otherwise, or taking care of the planet or practicing more responsible consumption.
I never forgot John Francis--never. I started taking more interest in people like him, or people who represented different aspects of his lifestyle. I read about monks and monastic communities. I read On the Road and everything I could find about the Beats. I read everything I could find about old-time hoboes and the early socialist movement in the U.S. I read about car-free lifestyles and the advantages of living car-free--and the disadvantages of car dependence, especially laid out in a book called Asphalt Nation. Learning about John Francis opened up so many doors to learning and life for me. And I think for a long time, I wanted to be like him, live like him--but apart from never getting my license and choosing to walk whenever I could, I didn't know how. Even at 14 I appreciated that as a black man in America, John Francis was challenging stereotypes about what black men, and people of color in general in the U.S., are supposed to be interested in and care about and what roles they are too often still constricted to in our society. But for a long time I was hung up on my own socially inherited limitations and expectations as a girl. I can't do what John Francis did, I would think. I'm a girl. Women can't walk the earth. We just can't. It's too dangerous.
Now, I understand that what attracted me to the Camino de Santiago is that it gives me a chance to live for awhile like my childhood hero, like John Francis, Planetwalker. And I think so much of what I've been doing in the last few years--traveling around America by Greyhound on my own, starting up a tour business for women only, writing about my experiences as a solo female traveler, planning on walking through Spain on my own--is a challenge to my own childhood (and adolescent, and adult) fears and society's expectations about what women are supposed to do, how we're supposed to live and travel, what we're supposed to want and believe in life. It's no accident that I started doing all this crazy stuff within a couple years after stumbling across an article online about John Francis and his newly published autobiography, two decades after I first heard about him and never forgot him.
I know if I do end up achieving a kind of liberation or even greater confidence and awareness at the end of this road I'm currently on, I have John Francis to thank for it--and the courage his story has endgendered in me.
There was a time when the town of Galena, Illinois, was the kind of place that made my maternal grandmother (God rest her soul) cross herself at the thought of having to live there. There was also a time when people in Galena probably crossed themselves at the thought of having to live in Chicago. Both these times in Galena were long before the artists and antique sellers and old-timey ice cream parlor owners got there, long before Galena became a chicks' paradise.
On the way
Downtown Galena
Galena is a small river town in northwestern Illinois, just a few miles from the Mississippi River, the border of Iowa, and the much larger river city of Dubuque. Outside the Chicago area, Dubuque, and the nearby Quad Cities I have no idea how well-known Galena is. But in this era of sky-high gas prices and "staycations," Galena's popularity as a vacation destination among Chicagoans and the residents of the river cities of Iowa and Illinois has soared. At its farthest from Chicago, Galena is only about a 3 to 4-hour drive away. That ain't bad. The downside is (as is the case nearly everywhere in Illinois) that those 3 to 4 hours are taken up passing riveting scenery such as this:
Illinois. Why isn't this state a bigger tourist draw???
The difference a red barn makes in a cornfield.
Galena's current popularity as a vacation town for Midwesterners comes a full century and a half after its heyday in the mid-19th century, when Galena was a thriving lead-mining town (hence, its name) and steamboat stop with a population of roughly 14,000. Sure it was popular enough for Ulysses S. Grant to move there just before the Civil War. Meanwhile, in the years Galena was building itself as the country's lead-producing capital (at its peak in the 1840s Galena produced 85% of lead in the U.S.), Illinois' current urban powerhouse, Chicago, was just getting started and had a population of only a few hundred to 4,000 or so. Fortunes would change fast for both cities. Chicago would go from a backwater trading post to become, well, Chicago, one of the mightiest cities in America. Galena's importance as a river and mining town would suffer with the rise of the railroad as the country's main form of transport, a major economic recession in the 1890s, and various disasters such as floods and fires that damaged the town.
It would never fully recover. It became a depressed little town with historic but rundown old homes and buildings--the kind of town my grandma (who grew up on a pig farm in Iowa) was grateful she didn't have to live in, as long as times never got so hard. Even today, Galena's population is only about 3,500, as if it's traded places with the backwater reputation Chicago once had.
The Galena River. In the city's heyday the river was over 300 ft. wide (almost the length of a football field) and accommodated over 100 steamboats.
The river alongside the railroad. Competitors.
The Dowling House, oldest surviving house in Galena, built in the 1820s as a trading post.
The good news is that even if Galena never recovered its population, it did recover its charm. Beginning in the 1960s the old homes in the area were snapped up for rock-bottom prices by preservationists who restored them to their former grandeur. Grant's home was among those restored and was designated a National Historic Landmark and opened for view to the public. Over time artists began moving in to the area, the old homes were turned into guesthouses and B&Bs, the downtown was revitalized with boutiques and antique shops galore, and skiers and wine lovers copped on to what Galena's vineyards and natural hills and cliffs had to offer. A new local tourism industry was born--and just keeps growing.
Annie Wiggins Guesthouse--where the ghost tours begin.
Downtown Galena
Street musician in Galena
Trolley tours, ready and waiting
Today, Galena is the kind of place that my grandma probably would have loved. She liked shopping and wearing nice dresses and handsome jewelry and high-heeled shoes (even when she was scrubbing the kitchen floor or washing dishes!), and downtown Galena has morphed into the kind of town where you can't swing a cat without hitting a dress shop or antique store or handmade jewelry boutique. Also in abundance are bakeries, fancy candle stores, beauty product shops, spas and salons, ice cream parlors, and candy stores. Women flock to this town--flock.
Me and a bakery--true love forever.
Yes, like the Energizer bunny.
Hog heaven on the mean streets of Galena.
But Galena isn't just for chicks. One of the surprisingly cool things about Galena is all the different types of tourists and visitors it attracts. Galena is as popular with suburban families, seniors and retirees, and honeymooners as it is with high school groups, LGBT folks, skiers and snowboarders, artists, and bikers (you will see motorcycles while in Galena--you will see them and hear them).
Nevertheless, Galena seems to have begun playing itself up as a chicks' paradise of the Midwest, no doubt with the growing market for women's travel and such mini-break ideas as "women's weekends" and "girlfriend getaways." One of the hottest eating spots in town for awhile has been Fried Green Tomatoes, named after the great chick lit masterpiece by Fannie Flagg and uber-popular chick flick with Kathy Bates, Jessica Tandy, and my former doppelganger (when I was younger and thinner) Mary-Louise Parker. Men can eat there too, of course. Men who get sick of shopping, meanwhile, can hang loose in the official Men's Time Out Room at the At Home In Galena store, which is proudly advertised in the store window. What exactly is a Men's Time Out Room anyway? I haven't a clue--I'm a woman and didn't go in. But more importantly, where's Galena's Women's Time Out Room, for women like me who don't like to shop and can only stand to smell so many fancy candles? Then I remembered--oh yeah, the Women's Time Out Room is at the top of the street, and it's called Galena Cellars. Sample 6 wines for only $3, 12 for $6. !!! Women and wine--the world's most enduring romance.
Wine tasting at Galena Cellars
That's right, bartenders. Set 'em up and keep the samples coming.
Can't handle your drink? No problem. While there's no Starbucks in Galena, there are a few other, independent coffee shops in town. I was excited to find Rendezvous, a newish, classy-looking place that serves my favorite brand, Intelligentsia, and showcases truly intriguing local art and schedules fun stuff like Scrabble Night. I spent some real quality time in Rendezvous. As I drank my strong mocha latte and watched the shoppers pass on Main Street beyond the front shop window, I found myself thinking, "I want to live here." Inside Rendezvous I mean, not in Galena.
Inside Rendezvous
My sister and me, outside Rendezvous
It's not all shopping and drinking and eating in Galena though--there's outdoors stuff too, and you don't have to wait for the winter and ski season to do it. But it might be better if you do--you won't have to deal with the summer's heat and mosquitoes. If you can handle some sweat and bug spray, though, you can handle the opportunities for golfing and hiking among the area's beautiful rolling hills and high riverside cliffs and kayaking or canoeing down the Galena River. The nice thing is that while these activities are popular in Galena Territory, they get much less crowded than Main Street shopping, and you get a real chance to see how pretty the surroundings are.
Kayaking up Galena River
Me cruising into a low-hanging branch
Banks of the river
Paddler's view
In the shade
My niece and sister
Another activity to give you a sense of the area's history as well as the steepness of Galena's streets and hills is to take a walking tour. Since Galena's streets really are steep and some still covered over in old cobbles, you do need to be sure you can handle the walk and climb. And the sweating. And the mosquitoes. The last you only need worry about for night walking tours, like the ghost tours in town. We tried out Annie Wiggins Ghost Tour, because we liked the look of the guesthouse where it begins (pictured above) and we heard the tour guide dresses up in all black like a Victorian witch (pictured below). While the females in our personal group (4) really enjoyed the ghost tour, the males (1, so just male actually) didn't care for it. Maybe he (my brother) expected more gore. Or maybe us women (my sister, nieces, and I) were extra-impressed by our guide going through the whole tour in full costume--layers of long-sleeved and long-skirted black clothes, old-fashioned shoes, a hat, and a veil--on such a hot and humid night. How did the women of Galena's past put up with wearing all that stuff?
Ghost tour at the railroad
Our guide
On 4th St., what was once Galena's main road
In the graveyard
Pretty scary. The thought of having to dress so stifingly, that is. It's enough to make me want to cross myself, like my grandmother did at the mere mention of Galena. Thank the universe those days are over though--girls today can dress more free, and Galena has gone from a town on the river skids to a pretty getaway destination for Midwestern girls and Midwestern guys.
My nieces crossing the river, dressed for their time and the heat.
