Betsy Devine: Funny ha-ha and/or funny peculiar

Too red or not red enough?, a photo by betsythedevine on Flickr.

Fourteen people are coming to lunch today. The entire half-salmon has already finished grilling, now it’s the turn of a marinated flank steak to join our really, truly enormous sausage.

Plenty of good things for the vegetarians too.

But I love the primordial look of this family grill. Half a big metal drum rests on NH lake rocks. Rocks and bricks inside it hold up the actual charcoal. The grid is two overlapped shelves from some long-ago stove. The chefs are people who, as children, were themselves fed food from this very grill.

I love NH.

In praise of Folly, a photo by betsythedevine on Flickr.

This mountain laurel bush blooms every year in early July. Mickey planted it in memory of her cat Folly, who arrived in our family one similar but long-past summer.

Folly was an orphaned kitten, very small, a tigery-tabbyish caramel and white boy kitty whose malnourished hipbones felt very, very fragile through his baby fur. He loved food, he loved to play, and he loved people. He was the most dog-like cat I’ve ever known.

Something, we later found out, was wrong with his heart. The vet said it would be dangerous to give him the tiny dose of antihistamine other cats often receive as long-trip tranquilizers. Folly, she told us, would have to get valium. She wrote us a prescription with kitty-sized doses, and the pill bottle lived on a shelf of our medicine chest. “Valium … Folly” it said on the bottle of pills.

One morning, ten years ago maybe, I telephoned Mickey in Somerville from a NH Burger King parking lot (we have no phone up here and this was before we had cellphones). “How’s it going?” I rather inanely began.

“Not very well,” said Mickey, very softly. “Folly just died.” She woke up and he had just … died. He was still a young kitty but now he would never wake up. Oh, how sad we all were, to lose Folly. Beautiful dancing Folly, who loved to chase Mickey upstairs and down, Folly who loved to be patted and held, Folly who had even learned to turn a doorknob.

Now his body is here, and it will always be here, under the mountain laurel. And every July, it will bloom again, just to remind us.

Day 12: Just Frank and Betsy IMG_0965, a photo by betsythedevine on Flickr.

How crazy was this project to celebrate Frank’s 60th birthday with a 192 mile hike across England with our two daughters and one son-in-law?

And yet, here we are, near the end, two people who have just spent two weeks of nights in hotel rooms — one man with sore feet and one woman with a lot of experience driving on the left of narrow roads. And we are happy.

And how much less crazy was this crazy trip idea than the project we set out on back in our twenties to get together and start a family despite having little money and little experience and lots of fondness for having our own way? That crazy project back then worked out pretty well too.

Day 10: View from high moorland, a photo by betsythedevine on Flickr.

In The Secret Garden, by Frances Hodgson Burnett, orphan Mary Craven lives in her strange uncle’s lonely mansion, set somewhere in Yorkshire. The moorland stretching for miles, its lambs and its flowers, the wind that “wuthers” all night, the broad Yorkshire accent — all these made a huge impression on my childhood, and I longed to know them all someday for myself.

It is wonderful to be here, finally. I believe that part of my real job as a grown-up is to discover or do (or refrain from doing) the special things my childhood self vowed to do someday, somehow — or never to do.

It was also funny, both ha-ha and peculiar, to discover just now that Burnett based her book on a house she loved somewhere in the southern counties, not Yorkshire at all. So that house will be a new goal for some new future journey.

Day 10: A beautiful day in Yorkshire, a photo by betsythedevine on Flickr.

The walkers are having a glorious time, not too hot, not too cool. Lakeland gales and scree are a memory fading away. Yorkshire sunshine pours down onto cropland, cow pastures, and now they have walked into moorland.

We spent three luxurious nights at the Frenchgate Hotel in Richmond — elegant dinners, wonderful beds, awesome and most helpful staff. Tonight we are high over moorland listening to wind wuther outside the Lion Inn Pub and Hotel, many centuries old with the low timber lintels to prove it. What internet there is is best from tall stools at the bar.

One of the curious things about this days-long journey has been watching stone wall vernaculars change. In the lake district, flat fractured stones were stacked in predictable patterns. As we move east, the stones get more rounded and holes between stones get more roomy. This would be good country for
the NH chipmunks and squirrels that haunted my mother’s stone walls and woodpile all winter long.

Tomorrow is yet another day of big changes, some of which I know about and some of which … I’ll know tomorrow. Wish me luck!

Day 9: Setting out by the book!, a photo by betsythedevine on Flickr.

Today is the day they walk from Reeth to Richmond. Since we slept in Richmond last night (many thanks to Frenchgate Hotel, which we are all enjoying), I drove them to Reeth this morning soon after breakfast.

It was sunny — it was raining — it was not raining but still cloudy — it was (in a word) England.

We barely got out of Richmond before roads shut down for a bank holiday parade. People were already lining up on sidewalks as we drove by. To avoid driving back into the huge parade-chaos, I walked with Team Wilczek a while, then happily dawdled in Reeth’s Swaledale Museum. More photos on my Flickr pages, of course.

Day 8: Rainy day beginnings, a photo by betsythedevine on Flickr.

As I drove across the Yorkshire Dales to drop my four walkers in Keld, for their walk day to Reeth, cold rain blew sideways and up from the valleys below us. What a first day for the two new arrivals from Boston!

Still, they all set off in good spirits, windbreaking jackets pulled tight over warm layers, hoods up — and at least the main wind was behind them. By lunchtime they had reached the Ghyllfoot Teashop in Gunnerside, which I’d found when I got lost.

Then, as Salieri would say, a miracle! The clouds opened up, the sun came out, and they walked through buttercup meadows all afternoon. So it was a very good first day for two new after all!

Poster in Richmond beauty shop, a photo by betsythedevine on Flickr.

I saw this poster this morning, in a small beauty shop in Richmond. I couldn’t wait to show it to Mickey — and how we both laughed!

A few minutes later, walking along, she remarked, “I’ve experienced that, of course, but I’ve never paid for it.”

Yes, up in NH lakes you can get your toes nibbled by cute little fish at completely no charge!

Day 7 offtrack: When in doubt, stop for tea, a photo by betsythedevine on Flickr.

Today, I drove seven miles in the wrong direction on a narrow windy road beset with stray sheep. Oops! Fortunately, I had noplace I had to hurry toward or away from.

Eventually, I saw a place to park with some people nearby, getting ready for hiking. They told me that I had arrived in Gunnerside, in between Keld and Reeth. The working blacksmith shop seemed to be closed that day, the pub would not open until noon, but there was a very nice tea shop just around the corner.

And so there was, the Ghyllfoot Tearoom, where they serve not only tea but amazing strawberry pavlova. That is English thick cream on the top, not American whipped cream.

After tea, I turned around and drove back to Kirkby Stephen, 17 miles on the same winding road to which had been added an 80-mile bicycle race. It was all smooth sailing. One good Pavlova can work travel-trouble miracles.

Day 7: Near Keld , a photo by betsythedevine on Flickr.

Today, on the West to East hike, the path starts in Kirkby Stephen (Cumbria) and ends up in Keld, in the Yorkshire Dales. In between those two places, you cross the watershed peak — rain that lands on its west side will drain toward the Irish Sea; rain that lands on its east side runs into streams and rivers that feed the North Sea.

Thanks to an extremely clever suggestion from Katie, who runs the Castle View Bed and Breakfast in Kirkby Stephen, they decided instead to get driven this morning to Keld, and walk back, East to West, ending up at our nice comfortable bed and breakfast instead of waiting somewhere in Keld at the end of the day for me to drive over and find them.

After dropping them off, I saw quite a bit more of the Yorkshire Dales (James Herriott country) because I drove 7 miles in the wrong direction before deciding to turn around again. So I have seen part of the route they will take tomorrow, and it is beautiful.