Christmas Letter 2023

 

December 2023

Holiday Greetings,

 

What a year (actually 14 months) this has been. I’d written my last missive prior to traveling to Fiji, New Zealand and Australia. Maybe that’s the reason it seems Minnesota has been like a magnet, keeping me home this Fall. I think I’ve only been home for six months in the past 3 years so there’s much to do at home.

 

How wonderful to be scuba diving in Fiji after a several year hiatus. What do I remember most: staying at a resort a 3 hour drive from the airport, a fun roommate, meeting the partner of a friend I met traveling when in college, traditional Fijian customs of dances, waterfalls and a horseback ride, and of course, 9 days of 2-3 dives per day. Oddly most memorable of being in the water was the 50+ long armed Blue starfish I counted snorkeling near the resort. 

 

I met up with my Minnesota friend Amy in Auckland. We traveled from the bottom tip of the south island to almost the top tip of the north island. I now understand the reasons people recommend seeing the South Island. The scenery is more varied than its sister to the north. We hiked around Queenstown, searched unsuccessfully for kiwi on Stewart Island, took an overnight cruise and kayaked through Milford Sound, were besotted by Little Blue penguins near Christchurch, rode horses on the beach at low tide in Abel Tasman National Park, and toured Marlboro Sound by boat before being ferried to the north island.

 

Traveling on the north island from Wellington, we gazed high up at glow worms in the Waitomo Caves. It was like thousands of strands of Christmas lights hanging straight down. We saw Christmas lights strung from hundred year old redwood trees from California, seemingly the only thing not indigenous that’s not trying to be irradiated, like lupine or “wilding trees”. Not to be forgotten was the sulfuric smell of the nearby natural hot springs, taking in the sun at the Bay of Islands on the north end and kayaking between the islands in the Coromandel Peninsula.  Being on the water, by islands is my happy place. And happy I was to see Lord of the Rings’ Hobbiton movie set.

 

My two weeks in and around Auckland were on the waterfront. A day at the Maritime Museum, an afternoon at the Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron helping the race committee judge the race, and another racing, a third day bussing to the suburbs to meet a friend from Minnesota who was building sails. A bike ride and picnickers on Christmas Day felt more like our 4th of July.

 

2023 was celebrated in Australia, a second chance to see Little Blue penguins, the smallest in the world in Melbourne. Fun, too, to meet up with a former colleague “under the clock” at the main train station. Then up to Cairns to scuba dive and reconnect with a dive friend on my final night down under.

 

Another whirlwind back in the States—seeing family and friends that I missed during the holidays in Colorado and back home, cruising on a trawler with a friend in Florida—before heading off to Greece. Favorite Grecian memories: visiting the pinnacle-high monasteries in Meteora, sailing around the Cyclades, meeting up with former students from Lake Superior at anchor on Paros, the food, the ruins everywhere, and seeing Madame Butterfly at the Pantheon. A very different experience than my first visit in 1975.

 

Time to re-pack for a summer sailing again out of Bayfield on Lake Superior. Good students, great concerts at the gazebo and at Big Top Chautauqua, and now Wednesday evening Open Mics. How do I have time to teach!!! Though the teaching season on Lake Superior wraps up at the end of September, I still got out one more time in San Diego for another team building experience with executive MBA students.

 

My home was calling for me. With all this time away, there were lots of dust bunnies in the house and a garage demanding my attention. That might not sound good to you, but it’s been nice to reconnect with my home and be able to foster a cat again. But if course this didn’t last for long. I was off again to go trawling with my friend Lee in Florida, finally/hopefully getting to the Dry Tortugas, after several failed sailing attempts.

 

Florida during an El Niño apparently isn’t the best time to try to go from the Tampa/St. Pete area to the Dry Tortugas. We didn’t make it but had fun along the way watching boat parades, street parades, Christmas tree lighting and shopping strolls, and a Winter Wonderettes musical. In addition to meeting up with “loopers”, those going around the eastern half of the US by water from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico, I met up with a friend I hadn’t seen since I moved to Minnesota in 1985. How easy it was to reconnect after all that time.

 

Now I’m off to Boston to spend a quiet Christmas with my sister and brother-in-law and back home to celebrate New Year’s with good friends.

 

My wish for 2024 is to share love and light with the world and to make it better.