SEP-B-9

RETURN FROM IOWA

TO RE-ENTER DC AND DERWOOD AND A WEEK

OF PACKING UP FOR THE NEXT INTERNATIONAL TRIP:

SIKKIM!

September 28, 2003

Abruptly, it feels like fall: cool days with windy scattered clouds and shorter evenings with a hint of frost on the pumpkin in the morning. I felt very much like the “back-to-school” fall feeling in the Midwest, as there were talks of football games and the college camaraderie that comes from such a shared reunion as that which the Croskerys have had for 26 years straight going to a University of Michigan home football game in the Big House in Ann Arbor. I wish I were there!

I am aloft, over the Midwest, coming out of Des Moines and going through the Twin Cities Minnesota, and labeling a full album of Alaska hunt pictures. I had a strong fall feeling there including a layer of ice on the waters around me each morning, but the long light at evening in the Northern sun gave me a chance to postpone the short evenings that follow the Autumnal Equinox here in the temperate zones. I am reliving the experiences of the Alaska hunt, which, as Virginia noted, is in an exciting and beautiful environment, but the kill instants are not for everyone, nor should they be. But, the whole of the experience is one that is wonderful to experience and to relate, and the trophy is a tangible memory of the whole of that experience.

I had another chance to experience “Her Kind of Hunt” on a return to Maiffat Lake Farms and the barn and stall where Porte Bonheur (or “Porter”) is regally housed in a large stall on the end. Virginia has the drill down to a very classic model, with here large tack trunk, and a peg for Porter’s bridle and bit, and another peg for his halter and halter lead rope, and still another for the saddle and the blankets and pads that go along with it. I watched here put Porter through his paces in the ring and around the racks, even doing a few low jumps. He was behaving and enjoyed his workout—even though it was windy at the start and he does not like wind. That was also true for us as we went out the front door of 712 W. Ashland to run the areas around the Country Club, Simpson College and the town of Indianola. We even passed the near neighbor President Lagree of Simpson’s administration. We were not eager to get out for the run since it was cold and windy, but with a few scattered bursts of sunshine, we overcame that to have a good forty five minute neighborhood run. It is a quiet town in a college setting—reminding me—once again—of Ann Arbor on a football weekend.

I have learned a bit more about “Virginia’s world”—watching her in the studio, classroom and recitals. I have also met some of the most important people in her life—Robert Larsen, the cross street neighbor, who was the chairman of her department, and is the director of the DesMoines Opera, and is one of her principle advisors and best supporters. We had a brunch of a superb soufflé that Virginia made amid her other activities of a busy day, not to exclude the animal husbandry of a new (old) large foxhound and a perky (old) Welsh Corgi, and a do-nothing imperialist cat and –not least of them all—a very large jumper, a bay gelding that needs a lot of high class attention, and two carrots and an apple as a reward for good behavior after h is workout is over. In the middle of this all, Virginia bought a bookcase kit and assembled it after we returned from dinner last night with one of her closest friends in Iowa, Melinda, the horse trainer at her barn. Melinda and/or her friend John would pick Virginia up on each of her return trips to Iowa during her summer on the road with the Phantom crew, and she also stayed with Melinda who remains her advisor on many other points of experience—horsy and otherwise.

Virginia is happy in her smaller world, with her new little house, her 22 students and “full-time” but rather easy teaching job, her recital and performance schedule, her overabundant and quite luxury-consumption livestock, and her great new diesel truck (“How does anyone get along without one?”) and ht spectacular brand-new Trailette two horse slant trailer with the goose neck fitting. I would like to live in the trailer myself, and there is a space for me over the goose neck shelf ahead of the tack room in the front of the trailer! For one of the only times of her life she is alone and productive and enjoying it. She does not do the “alone thing” as well as I have so long, so she is sure that this will pass and she will be looking for something else, but just now she is not eager to change her rather comfortable niche for any other, so this may mean we will wait and see. Several of the plans around Derwood and visits to family and trips planned conjointly in the near future may be put back, but the trip to San Antonio in the pre-Thanksgiving week and the Michigan trip to deliver the Bronco and pick up the Audi as well as a post-Christmas visit around the Grand Rapids families seems still to be able to work into our near-term plans.

I have to get back to a scramble that includes much of the postponed academic work—all of the readings and reportings of the ELDP, and a couple of articles and editorials that have been promised, and a whole series of projects that will require early completion before the crush of year end events overwhelms them—like the photo albums I have been labeling and the year-end letter they will become a sample part of, and a number of trips still booked, as to the Berkshires and the Eastern Shore.

So, it was a poignant and beautiful low-key visit to Iowa and Indianola, and I hope to do three things postponed from this visit on the next one: the first two include driving the big diesel truck and riding Porter—all three of which were offered and postponed until the next rendezvous!

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