I've had the privilege of being able to see a lot of the world and Marblehead, Massachusetts stands as one of the most beautiful places I've been. I live here everyday and the beauty of the place never diminishes. I walk it's streets as often as possible. I walk for exercise but I always bring a camera and coffee shop change. Even the grays and whites of winter can't put a dull veneer on our old town. It just redecorates it for the new season and adds it's own distinguishing features.
As the first snow of the season fell I had to be out in it. Being a born & bred Western New Yorker I love a good snow storm, I love the white out immersion and the snow blowing in my face. I feel alive, I feel 10 years old again, bundled up in leggings, my winter coat and a stocking hat. My mittens and scarf covered with dingle berries of frozen snow. Inside my buckle-up boots my feet are warm and dry protected by the Wonderbread bags wrapped so snugly around my feet as I seek the protection of the igloo bushes pretending to be an Eskimo in the Arctic. ...I digress.
Reveling in my arctic past I make my way into old town. Snow makes it's angled way onto our faces. I stick my tongue out to catch a few flakes.
Marblehead was founded in 1629 and it's "Old Town" may be the greatest living collection of 17th and 18th century buildings in America. The streets are crooked and narrow and have a distinctly European feel. The town is not a museum. It's a living breathing community full of activity and pride of place and onto this antique visage falls a sparkling highlight of crystalline white adding a measure of magic to the accepting Christmas decorations.
My favorite coffee and breakfast shops offer cover from the storm, their windows fogging from the collective sighs of warm customers and their cups-of-joe.
Window displays reflect the holiday spirit.
Lobster shanties sit quiet.
But Gatchells' Playground and Redd's Pond come alive with sledders, skaters and hockey games.
Once again Marblehead enlivens my soul and inspires me.
I remember sitting under the canopy of trees in the northern forest, darkness swallowing us. We have a campfire blazing, sending light to highlight the underside of the trees and our faces. Shadowy figures pass by on the road outside the camp. In the distance we hear the muffled sound of conversations and laughter, of car doors slamming, of the high pitched banging of hammer on stake. Mesmerized by the dancing light and crackling of the fire I'm pulled out of my bliss by the sizzle of water on fire. Rain is beginning to fall. We'd spent the day in the sun, boating, fishing & swimming in the moss green waters of the camp lake. Warm and full of tan bodies we swam to the rafts, all sitting on one side trying to tip them over and over. Laughter and water filled our mouths and hearts.
As the rain sent steam to mix with the smoke we folded our chairs and decided to head for the restaurant & pub. Yes, a campground with a restaurant & pub. Thank you God. In the darkness we made our way, flashlights illuminating the mini explosions of water meeting ground.
Inside the pub we smell burgers, pizza & beer. We order thick crusted chewy pizza and cold, cold beer. Pitchers of beer. We move through the crowds of families to sit outside. Under a covered deck at picnic tables we mingle with about 60 other folks. Warm & dry we enjoy the rainfall and the patter on the roof of the deck. Fabulous Phil starts to entertain the crowd. Phil plays an acoustic guitar and familiar songs that we all sing along to. Neil Diamond's "Sweet Caroline" is the standout with all of us singing along full voiced in the moist summer heat.
We order another round of drinks, this time mixed. My brother takes a pull and balks at the strength of the drink. He goes back to the bar and tells the bartender that the drink is too strong. The barkeep looks steely eyed at Dan and says "This is Maine, drink it!". What can you say to that? We drink up. Must have been sleeping potion, within an hour we're out for the night. Happy camping. :)
Saturday night we went to Harvard's Sanders Theater for the Christmas Revels. It was a bitterly cold and brutally beautiful night. A foot of snow had fallen Friday and the white mantle of winter laid it's winter coat across Harvard's quiet quads. The students were home for the holidays leaving the solitude and quiet of Harvard Yard to us alone. The towering silhouetted trees, each with one side coated in white, stood sentinel like over the Georgian buildings as our feet crunched the cleared but frozen white pathways to Sander's Theater.
Harvard Yard by dave o. on Flikr
Inspired by Christopher Wren's Sheldonian Theatre at Oxford, England, Sanders Theater is famous for its design and its acoustics. The theater is part of Memorial Hall which was built following the Civil War by alumni who petitioned the college to let them raise funds for a memorial to those Harvard graduates who fought for the Union cause. Many venerable academic, political and literary figures of the nineteenth and twentieth century have taken the podium at Sanders Theatre including Winston Churchill, Theodore Roosevelt, Martin Luther King, and Mikhail Gorbachev.
The Christmas Revels are a celebration of Christmas and the Winter Solstice, the shortest day of the year. Every year the Revels choose a cultural location from around the globe that celebrates Christmas and re-enacts their songs, dances & rituals. This year it was back to the Revels' English roots and we were to find ourselves merrymaking in early 19th Century Wessex England. It is told that the vigorous country musicians of the time had little respect for the boundaries between tavern and church so long as they made a joyful noise, and that they did.
Mellstock Band dance by Roger Ide
Participants were costumed in the appropriate attire and the wassailing began as the light hit the stage illuminating the town's church choir as they were partaking of wassail, (not to be confused with wassailing) holding their tankards and pouring some 19th Century anti-freeze down their throats. There were men's, women's and children's choirs that came together and mixed at will. The singing was boisterous and full throated and ocasionally accompanied by The Mellstock Band to recreate a village "quire" -- singers accompanied by string and wind instruments.
More photos here. http://www.revels.org/the-christmas-revels/christmas-revels-photos/
The whole of Sanders Theater is done in a High Victorian Gothic style and the interior is gorgeous. The walls & ceiling were gleaming polished wood that had been milled and carved into a fanciful and majestic Victorian symphony. I felt as a whole as if I was transported and sitting in an English theater in the early 1800's.
The intermission was prompted by the Lord of the Dance. White clad MorrisMen dancers, with bells on their shins, started on stage literally ringing holiday cheer with each step they made. They made their way into the audience, took our hands and led us dancing into the vaulted lobby. we joyfully made our way across the entire lobby hand in hand and snaked back on each other over and over until the entire theater was in the lobby packed together cheek to jowl all singing The Lord of The Dance, smiling and nodding knowingly at each other. You can see the dance at the end of the video below.
Before we made our frozen cheek-burning way back to the car we peered through port-hole windows into Annenberg Hall which makes up the long nave-like west side of Memorial Hall. Check this out. How Harry Potter-ish is this. Wow, what a space.
With the first snow of the season falling heavily and the temperatures quickly falling into the teens it's fun to revel in the season and take part in the timeless traditions that we are a part of and continue to add too. So participate in your holiday Wassailing and when the holidays are over a nice Wassail with friends & family can get us warmly through winter, including that dreariest of months, February, :) ... and into spring.
Christmas has snuck up in the middle of my Westward Ho travel posts and when the muse hits, you gotta write.....
When I was a kid I remember going to Midtown Mall in Rochester, NY at Christmas time. It was magical. I was the same height as the display windows and I distinctly remember being bundled up and looking up into the displays out on the sidewalk before entering the mall. I'll never forget the sight of it. It was awe inspiring, the lights, the animatronics, the miniature village scenes, the fake ice canals and sparkling snow. The visuals of Christmas layered on the bustle of the city was new and exciting for a suburban boy like me. I think I fell in love with cities that day too. I wished Rochester could be Christmas bright and bustling all the time. It wasn't, but I found cities like New York and Boston were.
Years later I moved to the jewel that is Boston. Physically being in the streets always inspires me, surrounded by the moving masses, beautiful buildings, lights, signs, cafe's and the criss-crossing movement of traffic, subways, streetcars and buses. In the winter I love the steam rising from the underground, food vendor stalls and people's breaths. Christmas time takes the city stew and heightens all the effects.
Quincy Market by Mazda6 (Tor) Flikr
I'm in Boston as I'm writing this. Walking through the Prudential Center Shops snapped my memory back to that moment at Midtown Mall. Surrounding me, Christmas lights reflect off the floor and walls, a giant Christmas Ball hangs glowing from the ceiling and display cases are full of the red and green of the season. Perfect 24 foot cone shaped Xmas trees wrapped in white lights and ribbon stand guard along the walkways and golden 10 foot starbursts hang from the night black atrium ceilings.
Christmas Ball. Prudential Center Shops by Inecita, Flikr.
Boston is a beautiful city any time of the year and Christmas is no exception. With the days short the city lights and sky begin to twinkle early in December.
Boston's North End by spin979 Flikr
Couples walk a little closer together. Scarves are wrapped fashionably around necks with matching hats and gloves.
Brownstones are dressed with holiday wreaths and serenaded by salvation army Santa's.
Boston dressed for Christmas by cupidboi79, Flikr
The fogged windows of restaurants and bars look inviting with silhouetted shapes of friends and lovers inside .
Green Dragon Tavern by angelocesare, Flikr
Jacob Wirth's by tpl108, Flikr
I settle into the M Bar to the muted sounds of bells and carols outside. Watching the passers by brings a little melody to mind.....
City sidewalks busy sidewalks .Dressed in holiday styleIn the airThere's a feelingof ChristmasChildren laughingPeople passingMeeting smile after smileAnd on ev'ry street corner you'll hear
Silver bells silver bellsIt's Christmas time in the cityRing a ling hear them singSoon it will be Christmas day
Cody is Cowboy Country but the new range rider roaming the west is the biker. All across the west roamed bands of steel horses. The clans were outfitted in leather & bandanna regalia but they weren't the outlaw gangs of the 60's & 70's. The bikers encompassed a wide variety of ages and demographics enjoying the freedom of the road and the sun & wind on their faces....and just like men of all stripes, cowboys & bikers also have to wait for their wives as they shop!
We poked around in all the Cody shops. Tourist shops, American Indian shops, Western Wear and Home Furnishing stores.
Bob looking ridiculous in a Hoss Cartwright hat!
Molly & I actually found a Cambridge style coffee shop in town, The Beta Coffee House. It seemed quite out of place but we loved the coffee!!
We had a great meal one night in a place called Wyoming's Rib & Chop House. Boring name and decor in the restaurant but the food was fine. The most memorial part of the meal, not to diss the food, was watching Michael Phelps win his gold medal in the 100 meter Butterfly. The whole restaurant stopped eating as the race started and watched in anticipated silence for the outcome. Michael was behind in the race. Slowly he began to gain ground and edged into second place as he and his Serbian rival swam for the final wall. We gritted our teeth, our toes curled and our hands clenched as we squinted our eyes and watched the TV ....and Bam!!, Michael lunged. A split second later the finish results popped on screen, #1 Michael Phelps. The room erupted! We didn't know another sole in the place but we all had arms up, voices raised and hearts beating with the pride of America. It was cool to be here in the middle of the country sharing this event.
We also signed up with River Runners for a morning run on the Shoshone River. This was our first ever white water rafting experience. It was really more of a float than a white water experience but never the less we had a rollicking good time. Us four Welches were matched up with a local Wedding Party. The wedding crew had been up howling with coyotes and wolves until the sun came up the night before and they continued to be in rare form on the river. The bride was from Cody but all her friends were from the Idaho college they all attended. We paddled, caused trouble and splashed the other rafts. We discussed every Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard CD I should own. We tipped the raft as we ran white water trying to increase the danger and fawned at the deer we saw foraging in the gorge.
Everywhere we went we found out we were a few days behind the Travel Channel's Samantha Brown. She ran the Shoshone with the River Runners, went to the Cody Nite Rodeo and hit Cassie's too. Check out her Wyoming.
After a couple days we got the call of the wild again. Cody is known as the Eastern Gateway to Yellowstone Park, and it beckoned. I packed the car but before we left I snuck next store to our hotel to take a brief look at Old Trail Town. Old Trail Town is a collection of 26 buildings dating from 1879 to 1901 reflecting the Wyoming frontier and it's colorful historical figures like Jeremiah Johnston, Butch & Sundance and the "Hole in the Wall" Gang. I loved the weathered collection of buildings.
If these walls could talk I'd love to hear the tales they told.
We're headed to Cody, Wyoming. Founded by William F. Cody, Buffalo Bill. I'm not talking about that football team from western NY. I'm talking about the real Buffalo Bill, the original, an American icon, a legend. Time to breathe the same air Cody did.
We drove across southern Montana, skirted Billings and headed south down Route's 310, 72 and 120 into Wyoming and the driest valley I've ever seen. It looked right out of a John Ford movie. It was a brown hardscrabble landscape that stretched west to the vertical wall of the Rockies and east to a wall of bluffs. Sagebrush & tumbleweeds textured the ground that baked under the brilliant deep blue sky.
Late in the afternoon we crossed the Shoshone River gorge into Cody. Sheridan Ave is the main drag. It's an attractive street populated with buildings built between 1875 and 1949. Buffalo Bill formally founded Cody, Wyoming in 1895. In 1902, he built the Irma Hotel which is named for his daughter and which he called –"just the sweetest hotel that ever was."
Here's the Irma in 1908.
It was built from uncut boulders scoured from the surrounding area. The Irma Hotel is a living museum, it's a way to walk into the old west, today. It's a place to lay your footsteps over the paths Annie Oakley, Frederic Remington, Calamity Jane and Buffalo Bill himself walked. The hotel is open for business and it's Grill & Silver Saddle Bar are popular with locals and tourists.
Here we are wandering the halls of the Irma Hotel.
At the end of Sheridan Street is the Buffalo Bill Historic Center. It's a treasure trove of the American West. Going through the Buffalo Bill Museum you can see this guy was something else. He must have been a force of nature. William F. "Buffalo Bill" Cody was an American Soldier, Scout, Buffalo Hunter, Entrepreneur and international showman extraordinaire with his Wild West Show. The original museum has grown over the years and is now five museums in one. The Buffalo Bill Museum, the Draper Museum of Natural History, the Cody Firearms Museum, the Whitney Gallery of Western Art and the Plains History Museum. We had time to see the Buffalo Bill Museum, the Gallery of Western Art and a literal "run through" of the Plains History Museum. I want to spend more time there. I'll be back.
We stayed at Cody Cowboy Village. This was a great find. It was a brand new development with a main lodge and an inner and outer group of modern spacious cabins. We stayed in the inside loop. Just outside our door was a small pool. Basically a large hot tub! Outside the "circled wagon" of cabins was a dry landscape of sage and tumbling tumbleweeds....and rabbits, lots of rabbits. We now have a tumbleweed from Cody on our mantle for a souvenir.
About a half mile from Cody Cowboy Village is the Cody Nite Rodeo Arena. The rodeo was my favorite Cody attraction. Cody calls itself the Rodeo Capital of the World and every night from June 1 to August 31 this dance between man & beast is held. Rodeo permeates the culture out here. Along with football and baseball they even offer rodeo as a high school sport. The bull riding was our favorite. It's by far the most dangerous. Watch the third rider in this video get his hand stuck on the bull. Yikes, his arm is about to get pulled right out of his shoulder socket!!
There were a lot of different events, roping, calf tying, barrel races and even a calf chasing event where the kids in the audience were invited to enter. My son Drew got his Cowboy Up! Watch this video. The rodeo clown was hysterical all night telling funny stories. Here he takes the kids though a warm up excercise before letting the calves loose. The goal here was to grab a ribbon off a calf to win one of two prizes.
One of the surprises of the trip were the number of Europeans on their own Wild West tours. We sat next to a family from Vienna, Austria at the rodeo. They were all decked out in cowboys hats with still and video cameras at the ready. There were French people everywhere we went on the whole trip and the Irma Hotel and Yellowstone lodges (as we'd soon find out) were heavily staffed by Russians and Eastern Europeans. The summer of '08 was before the global financial crisis hit and America was still a 1/2 price sale for anyone living off Euros. I expected cowboys, rednecks, truckers and god fearing folk but if I think about the real history of the west I guess the sound of European tongues has always been here as the peoples of the world migrated across America.... and there's definitely always been French. After all they owned the center of the continent until they sold it to Thomas Jefferson, and French fur traders traversed coast to coast helping to open up all of North America.
We walked back to Cody Cowboy Village after the rodeo really feeling like we'd found where the old west meets the 21st Century. The walk between the rodeo arena and our hotel was through open sage land. There were no lights. The silhouetted Rocky Mountains were at our back. Stars speckled the sky to the east where a faint red glow tipped the hills and ridges that pierced the flatlands. The smell of sage filled our noses and tumbleweeds blew across the path.
As we turned to head back to our cabin Molly & I spotted the lights of Cassie's Dance Hall.
Cassie Waters, a young widow, sportin' lady, Madam and respected businesswomen opened her establishment in 1922 and it's been a Cody favorite ever since.
Interior of Cassie's
We got the boys settled into the cabin and Molly pulled on her two-stepping cowboy boots. As the moon rose over Cody we gave the boots a workout accompanied by a little pedal steel, boogie-woogie piano, cold beer and a dance floor full of cowboy hats.
We left South Dakota with the sun at our backs and drove across the southern Montana prairie under the occasional but watchful eyes of antelope and deer. Rt 212 west was our "trail ride" for the day. The road switched back & forth between four lane highway and simple two lane country road. We stopped for lunch on a country road stretch in a town who's name I can't remember but if you blinked you'd have missed it. We went into a roadside grocery store where they had a country deli. We loaded up for an in car picnic with homemade sandwiches, chips, soda, water and fried chicken. The gas station across the street pulled quadruple duty as a country craft shop, mini-mart, high school booster store and oh yeah, a gas station. I don't know who used the grocery store and gas station because there was literally no town here and nothing around for miles. In talking to people though you realize distance is measured differently out here. Driving 20-30 miles to get to school or a social event is a common occurrence. Homesteads themselves are separated by miles & miles of rolling prairie. Eventually we entered the Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation and the abutting Crow Indian Reservation where arrived at our destination.
The reason we went up to Montana was to see the place where Custer's Last Stand occurred; otherwise known as the Battle of Little Bighorn. This is a place of legend.
Custer is a name out of my school boy history books. The Battle of Little Bighorn and June 1876 were highwater marks in the American West. The battle marked the last major Native American resistance against the unending encroachment of the Wasi'chu. (the Souix word for white people meaning greedy person). General George Custer led his 7th Calvary against a combined Indian force of Lakota Sioux, Northern Cheyenne and Arapaho who were camped at a bend in the Little Bighorn River. The tribes utterly defeated and destroyed Custer and the US Army. Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse became names of legend, as did Custer.
It was interesting to consider this event and the colorful history of the American West in contrast to where I live now. New England had been settled for 200 years by 1867. My town was 238 years old. Our cemeteries at Old Burial Hill and Waterside were already established and had generations of families installed. Boston and London were building the Victorian style cities we know today. The Sioux and other western tribes could not even have comprehended the tidal wave of change that was slowing choking off their way of life.
I've seen the location of the battle in films and on TV specials but you can't understand the location from seeing it that way. Standing on the rolling and golden brown prairie in August it feels like being on ocean swells. The swells are large enough to allow approaching armies, regiments, clans and tribes to hide out and hide from each other. The landscape felt so good and looked glisteningly beautiful. I wish I could have gotten on a horse and rode out to let it swallow me up.
The battle occurred across a 7 mile stretch. The park service has put markers up in every location a fallen soldier or Indian was found. We didn't take the time to walk the trails that have been built. I wish we had. Since we were here I wanted to immerse myself in the landscape and the breadth of the clash. The markers really lend gravity to the site and give a human face to the triumph and tragedy.
Custer and his "Last Stand" soldiers from the 7th Calvary are remembered in a cluster of markers where they fell. They are just below the top of Last Stand Hill. A memorial stands at the top for all 200+ soldiers who lost their life there on Battle Ridge.
On the back side of the ridge is the Indian Memorial. The memorial honors the Native Americans who struggled to preserve and defend their homeland and traditional way of life. It also strives to rise above the the cultural conflict promoting Peace through Unity.
The site was amazing. I'm very glad we made the trek there. Historic, mythical, somber, spiritual, environmentally immense with it's amber waves of rolling prairie under brilliant blue skies and a scorching sun. Fascinating.
Bob is a travel writer and designer/ producer of interactive entertainment. He's traveled through Europe, North America and Australia. Bob loves immersing himself in local cultures and writes about the food, drinks, architecture, music, history, people and experiences along the way.
