First Impressions of Buenos Aires

Having landed in Buenos Aires at 7:05 a.m. local time, having Sergio transport me from the airport to my first lodging, Caseron Porteno, via taxi, and having had a fitful night, I spent today slowly settling in. I first got acquainted with my lovely, simple, spare, unpretentious, but very warm and cozy and comfortable Bed & Breakfast, or, Tango Guest House, Caseron Porteno. I met Maria and Daniel & Cynthia. I got into my room and began getting my computer set-up, with the correct plug adaptor (and glory be, by HP provided AC adaptor cord does work here in Argentina with its 220 volt power source.) My computer is up and running, fully charged and running on alternating current coming from the wall socket! I then went exploring in this little corner of Buenos Aires. My first impressions:
1. BA is a large, busy city, with the emphasis on "city"! It is definitely an urban landscape. Much of this neighborhood appears old, poor, run-down and falling apart. They seem to be repairing almost every sidewalk, or needing to repair it. It is actually a very dirty city, with lots of dogs and their resultant dog waste. There is also lots of trash, paper, etc., blowing around on the streets. There is much that is not attractive about this city, but at the same time, walking around, I did notice that there are spots, here and there, where the old European or colonial architecture is very good and intriguing, it actually looks quaint and attractive.
2 There is not much English spoken in this neighborhood. The B & B staff are very bilingual, but walking around, the average retail, bank, service, eatery & restaurant personnel are not very bilingual. I had an adventure trying to change money at the local banks, where very few of the tellers seemed to understand English. Ordering lunch was another adventure and I ended up with an extra "platillos" to go along with my empanadas. I did not realize I had ordered it, but it was good and created a very filling lunch.
3. I was surprised to see palm trees here. As well as Blockbuster Video, many of the familiar brand names in the pharmacy, such as Pantene shampoo and conditioner, Colgate toothpaste, etc. Also, gasoline costs about the same as it did back home in Miami!
4. I enjoyed a very low-key day. I basically got settled in, did some initial exploring, and just took it easy recovering from my flight. I did nap a little in the afternoon, but not much and I am really fading now. It is about 10 p.m. local time, only 9 p.m. Miami time which is what I am on, except I have not really had much sleep in the past 36 hours. So I will end my post here. Tomorrow I am going to explore further afield. I plan to take the subway downtown and identify some of the future locations, like where I am moving to on Sunday, where the school site is, the bus terminal, etc. I will take some pictures and post them when I get back.

The Plane Ride to Argentina

To arrive in Buenos Aires, I had an 8+ hour flight from Miami to Buenos Aires overnight last night. Not the most fun. It is always difficult to try to sleep in tourist class (or coach, or economy). The seat was hard and I could not get in a comfortable position. However, I must say that the foreign airlines, like LAN Argentina which I flew, still know how to fly and provide hospitality to their customers at the same time. We were fed both dinner and breakfast. We had personal video screens at each seat which played movies, television, video games, music, etc. All as part of the service. They provided pillows and blankets for each customer as well as black-out eye shades. They did all they could to make it comfortable and pleasant. Plus, we left on time, landed about 20 minutes early, and my luggage arrived same as me! I was wired up on the flight, filled with a variety of emotions: excitement, nerves, anxiety, so I could not really sleep. I have been running on adrenaline all day today and I will be turning into bed early, but it was a wonderful start to my South American adventure.

Deer in Texas

After traveling all the way up to the Boundary Waters in upstate Minnesota to see wildlife in its natural habitat, Paul and I encountered lots of white-tailed deer, does and fawns, roaming around my Aunt and Uncle's place in Sun City, Texas. We saw them every day, sometimes multiple times, as we drove around or sat on the back porch. So, in a way, we began and ended our trip in the company of wildlife!

Visiting with Family

After Paul and I emerged from the Boundary Waters we spent the next two weeks visiting with family in Chicago, St. Louis, and Texas. Family is so important, yet it can be such a difficult reality. While the time in the Boundary Waters was a physically taxing time as we pushed our bodies to their limits in canoing and portaging, the time with family was an emotionally taxing time. Our families of origin are something we do not get to choose, yet they are one of the primary shapers and molders of our personalities and our reality and stay with us our entire lives long. We are always in relationship to them, whether that is a good, strong relationship or a bad, weak relationship, we are always connected to them by virtue of our birth and our early time spent in their presence. We really cannot even choose not to be in relationship with them, for even then, they are still our family, even if we have no contact. We are able, many of us, to choose another family to participate in, through marriage, or through the choice of friends who become like family. But even then we are still always part of our family of origin. It is like holding dual citizenship in two countries. The time Paul and I spent with family these past two weeks was important time. We reconnected and strengthened many of our family relationships and we learned some things about ourselves and our places in those families. Now we are back home, Paul in Brevard County with his mother, beginning to enjoy his "new" car (new to him, but a hand me down from his Aunt in Alabama) and I in Miami, preparing for the next leg of this adventure, my travel to Argentina. Again, we are reconnecting with family, which we had left behind on our three week trip. A very important step, before I leave them again, for 2-3 months.

Back in Miami!

Paul and I have arrived back home in Miami after our 22 day adventure to begin my Sabbatical. In that time we traveled to the upper Midwest, almost to Canada and then down to the heart of Texas, stopping in Chicago and St. Louis along the way. We saw amazing wildlife up close in their natural habitat, pushed our bodies to their physical limits, lost weight, ate good food and bad food, as well as freeze-dried food. We reconnected with family, much of which we had not seen for 4-5 years. It was a more draining trip than either of us imagined, but a very important piece of this Sabbatical. My plan in scheduling this trip at the start was to provide myself a month to decompress, de-stress and disconnect from my daily routine at the Church. From the research I did about sabbaticals it seemed important to provide this buffer between my regular schedule and the meat of the sabbatical, the trip to South America to learn Spanish. This trip certainly accomplished that goal. The Boundary Waters expedition at the beginning did exactly what I expected it to do: get me away from computers, cell phones, TVs, radios, newspapers, all means of communication with the wider world. For six days I was alone with my son in the middle of a portion of the world still approaching the virgin state God created. Even though I came out of the woods and began using my cell phone to call home and my laptop to check email, it helped me begin to let go of that world and those responsibilities. I have learned it is very difficult for me to let go and not keep checking on what is happening at the Church, but this time away has helped me begin to let those ties loosen and drop away. It also helped me begin to get in the right frame of mind to be gone from home for 3 months. After three weeks I was definitely ready to come home. I realize now it will be a little more difficult than I anticipated to be gone for such a long stretch. I trust that I will be helped in dealing with the absence by the routine of taking classes each morning and the task of learning and practicing my Spanish language skills. It will also be important for me to develop some routines, such as walking, regularly praying & meditating, and daily journaling to reflect on my experiences. I must also be sure to be kind and gentle with myself and not expect or push for too much. Tomorrow I will share a little about the experiences we had visiting family.

Learning to Appreciate Small Pleasures

One learning I was reminded of by the time in the Boundary Waters was how important simple pleasures can be toward bringing comfort to us in our daily lives. Dealing with the basics of living in the wilderness is so difficult that you become much more aware of the simple things which can bring true pleasure and joy to life. For instance:

1. It was a great thing when I finally cleaned off the lenses of my glasses with soap and water in the lake rather than using the soft lens cloth I was carrying, which only worked to a certain extent in removing the grease and grime of daily life. Having a clean pair of glasses I realized was almost a greater joy than having clean skin or hair. To have my glasses clean and have clear vision again - a true joy!

2. When you are truly hungry and physically spent almost anything tastes delicious - even Peanut Butter & Jelly sandwiches (which I ate for three lunches, and which I could not even begin to remember when I last had a PB & J sandwich before this). Even freeze dried fruit, which actually tastes sort of like Styrofoam, with a little bit of flavor added.

3. Being able to spend a lazy afternoon with my son, laying on the rocks by the shore of a beautiful lake, gazing up at the clouds floating by, changing shapes as they go, watching what they turn into and transform into and just chat with him about whatever comes to mind. A true Sabbath experience.

4. And the hot shower when you emerge from the wilderness that the Outfitters provides. This is by far the best shower, most luxurious feeling, you can have, after spending 6 days in the woods with only cold lake water to provide bathing options for you and even then tempered by the need to almost immediately recover your body with DEET mosquito repellent. Every time I have ended one of these trips I have luxuriated in the hot shower for at least 30 minutes (I know, probably very wasteful of water to all my eco-friendly, green friends), totally scrubbing my body with soap twice and shampooing my hair with large quantities of shampoo and conditioner. It is a true taste of heaven!

5. The taste of Dairy Queen hot dogs and Blizzards for a first meal after eating freeze dried food for a week. There is a Dairy Queen in the Two Harbors, the first sizable town we drive through after leaving the wilderness and heading south along the northern shore of Lake Superior. We stopped there five years ago for our first meal when I first took Paul and Rebekah on one of these trips with me and Paul and I stopped again this time. I would never, ever, order a Dairy Queen hot dog any other time or place, but at this moment after emerging from the wilderness it tastes divine.

The dilemma is how to be aware of these simple pleasures upon returning to the hustle and bustle and daily grind of regular life. I am sure that if I could be more aware of life at this level my life would be much richer and less stressed. I will have to keep meditating on this truth during the sabbatical.

Hanging the Pack

One of the tasks you must deal with at each campsite is identifying one or two trees which you can use to hang your food pack. This must be done to protect it primarily from black bears, who are voracious scavengers, but also from other critters such as chipmunks and squirrels. This is always a difficult chore because you must hang the pack at least 10 feet off the ground and at least 6 feet from any tree. The area is loaded with trees, but not many of them are good bear trees. The outfitter provides you with two ropes, one with a metal pulley attached to one end, which you can use for this project. Paul and I were able to hang our pack the first night by having him climb on my shoulders against one tree to wrap the rope around a high branch and the trunk and then eventually through a stick with the other rope attached over another tree, high enough so we could get the pack elevated. It was more than 6 feet from either tree, but we not quite 10 feet off the ground. Paul, who is 6 feet could just touch the bottom the pack with his fingers stretched high, so it was probably about 8-9 feet high. But it worked and we had no problems that night. The next campsite was on an island about 100 yards from shore. The water was very shallow between the island and the shore. Nevertheless, knowing a bear could probably get over to the island if it really wanted to, we did not hang our food the three nights we were on this campsite. We took this risk primarily because we absolutely could not find a decent tree to use. There were trees, but either they did not have large branches, or they were way back from the campsite area in the woods. So we closed everything up tightly, covered it with the tarp, and prayed. Again, we have no problems. The final campsite we did find a pretty good tree to use by throwing the pulley over a thick branch, lowering it to the ground and running the other rope through the pulley and then tying both ropes off to another tree. This time the pack was much higher than 10 feet. But, it was also right up against a lower branch of that tree that looked rather dead and I was trusting it would not hold the weight of a bear. Again, we had no problems. This rather lengthy post illustrates the amount of concern this chore elicits in me. The above pictures illustrate the two different times we got the pack hung.

Mosquitoes!!!!

There is another piece of the wildlife in the Boundary Waters which I did not mention last post. MOSQUITOES!!!! They are extremely numerous in the wilderness and you must find creative ways to deal with them or they can ruin a trip. Since we booked the upgraded outfitting package this time they gave us mosquito netting we could wear on our heads (The picture shows Paul wearing his netting as a "hoody" so it was at the ready and he could flip it over to cover his face whenever necessary.) This was a tremendous asset. The nets were especially handy on the portages, for this is one of the worst areas for mosquitoes. Especially when carrying a canoe over your head. It becomes like a long, hollow hat and the mosquitoes become trapped in the hull with you. The other handy place for this netting was going to the latrine (which is lovingly depicted in the other picture), another location where the mosquitoes congregate, waiting for fresh meat (or I guess it is really the blood they are after.) The mosquitoes were especially bad this year since they have had such a wet spring and early summer. The blessing to that is the water levels are high which sometimes means shorter portages because you can paddle up some of the beaver creeks and ponds. It also means there is no fire ban so you can have a wood fire, although we only did that twice. (More about that later.) There are two refuges from the mosquitoes: out on the water for they do not fly out there, unless they have attached themselves to you when you push off from the land. But those few mosquitoes you eventually kill or the breeze on the lake blows them away. The other refuge is in the tent. So, besides applying massive qualities of DEET mosquito repellent, far beyond what the manufacturer's label recommends, we often stayed out on the water in our canoe, or we went to the tent, often turning in before daylight was completely erased from the sky. (At this northern latitude during the summer the sun rises about 5:30 a.m. and does not set until about 9:30 p.m. We did stay up late enough to see some stars on one of the evenings and I saw the millions of stars that appear when the night is darkest on one of my late night latrine trips. It was disappointing that we did not get to see the Northern Lights, the Aurora Borealis. We were especially hoping for them on July 4th to be our fireworks show.

Wildlife in the Boundary Waters

It has been a few days since I last posted. We have been visiting my family (my Dad and one brother and one sister with her little boy) since landing in St. Louis on Sunday, July 13. I will share reflections on this part of the trip in a later post. With this post I want to share the wonderful wildlife Paul and I encountered in the Boundary Waters. This was, without a doubt, the most richly blessed trip I have ever made to this wilderness area in terms of the variety and amount of wildlife I observed. The list included:
2 white-tailed deer
4 Bald Eagles, one up close
1 Golden Eagle, very close (right above our campsite in a tree)
Many loons, some in flight
Vultures
Crows
numerous song birds
Canadian Jays
3 Beaver
4 - 7 otter
Several wood ducks
Several sea gulls
A leech
A painted turtle laying eggs on one of our campsites
several frogs
several different kinds of butterflies
Dragonflies
1 Pine Marten
squirrels
1 Snake
1 Moose!

I have seen most of these things before on trips to the Boundary Waters, but I cannot recall ever seeing this much variety and this many critters all in one trip. I can certainly enjoy the wilderness without seeing many of these animals, but they truly add to the joy and excitement and wonder of the trip. If you would like to see some photos of some of the wildlife, click on this link to go to my gallery. http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=6d2p4u6.4zlns29e&x=0&y=rcj95a&localeid=en_US

Wilderness Camping Brings Life Down to Basics

It was most definitely the best decision I made to begin my Sabbatical with 6 days in a wilderness setting where I was literally disconnected from the rest of the world. It helped me to begin making the shift from working pastor to renewing pastor and I am confident it helped the Church to make the shift from relying on me to trusting their own resources and capabilities. In the woods life is reduced to its most basic functions. You spend your time preparing your meals, eating, sleeping, bringing water from the middle of the lake (where is more pure) to your campsite, taking care of your campsite, moving camp -- in otherwords, you basically spend your time taking care of yourself at the level of very basic needs , along with taking care of those immediately with you. There is not time to strive after things, possessions -- not much you could do with them if you had them anyway. There is just basic life, taking care of yourself and those you love. Which is really all life is about and all it really needs to be about. We have laid so many layers of expectations over life in civilization that at times we really lose the essence of life and what is most important at its core. Taking care of our basic needs and taking care of those we love. That is what Jesus called us to remember: Love God and love our neighbor as we love ourself. He also expanded our circle of love to include everyone around us, including those we don't much like or are afraid of. Take care of those you love! Do that and in truth most of life will take care of itself.

We Made It!

Paul and I have survived and emerged from the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. Six days in the north woods was amazing, wonderful, enriching, exhilarating, relaxing, physically demanding and a great time. We are now in Chicago. We arrived here on July 9th, and were instantly engulfed in the family life of my step-son and his family, including a 3 year old and a 3 month old. Needless to say there was no time to post yesterday. Today Paul and I are off to the city to visit the Art Institute of Chicago Museum and do some other sight-seeing. I will post more about the Boundary Waters later tonight and hopefully be able to include some pictures. (Assuming I can figure out how to post pix.)

The Sabbatical Begins

My son Paul and I have traveled in 4 hours from hot, humid Miami to hot (90 degrees this afternoon when our plane landed), dry Minnesota. The adventure has begun! What seemed so far away when I first began writing the grant proposal over 15 months ago and then when I received the grant in September, 2007, has finally arrived. I am on an actual, honest to goodness Sabbatical. For the next 4 months I do not have to think about Church stuff. I do not have to write any sermons, or plan worship, or teach a class, or mediate a conflict, or plan a program, or keep a calendar. For the next 4 months I have only one have-to: to learn Spanish. I don't even start that for a month.

These first 3 weeks Paul and I will just spend time "being". No expectatioins. No requirements. We are going into the Boundary Waters Wilderness Canoe Area (BWWCA) for 6 days/5 nights. We will paddle and swim, camp and cook, eat and relax, take pictures and see what we can see. We will be without cell phones, laptops, ipods, TV, video games. We will be spending life at its most basic level. I am excited and looking forward to these first 8 days almost as much as the entire rest of the sabbatical. I am very excited about my time in South America, but I love the Boundary Waters. This is my sixth trip into this wilderness and it always restores and renews my soul. This place touches the romantic in me and evokes my yearnings for closer connections with the natural world in all its wonder and glory.

Last Sunday was my final worship service and really my last day of responsibility at the church for the next 4 months. I did not have to preach, thanks to my friend and colleague, Bill Koch, Southeast Regional Conference Minister of the Florida Conference UCC who joined our celebration and delivered the sermon. It was a relatively easy Sunday for me and the congregation threw a wonderful Bon Voyage Luncheon/Party after worship. Lots of heartfelt well wishes and encouragement was shared and a generous gift that surprised me. The gift of the time away was generous enough, but this additional support speaks of a deep love and sense of support. My heart was deeply touched. They truly sent me off in style!

There were a million details to arrange before I left. I feel I have done all I can and everything needed to prepare them to function well in the next 4 months. It was a much larger task than I envisioned and I am not sure I started preparing the congregation and myself early enough, but all has been done and at this point I can do no more. I leave them in God's care and in the capable hands of the Rev. Dr. Sheila Guillaume, who is Sabbatical Interim Pastor, and in the capable hands of many leaders in the Church, all of whom are very capable. I know they will do well and the church will do fine. It will be most interesting when we come back together to share our experiences.

This was a long post, but I will not be posting anymore for the next seven days until we come out of the woods. Until then, I pray you find your own time for sabbath.