Williamstown, Massachusetts

I had to check my blog to see how long it had been since I visited Laura and Ken on a spring bike tour when they were living in Oberlin, Ohio.  It seemed like just a few years ago, though I knew it had been at least ten.  It was actually sixteen.  Having let such a long time pass between connecting with these exceptional friends was a gross negligence on my part, especially since they had been regularly asking when I was going to include them on a bike tour. It seemed as if I was biking everywhere in the US except in their neck of the woods.

I first met them some thirty years ago when Ken was working for the Federal Reserve Bank in Chicago and was a fellow volunteer at Facets.  We’d seen countless movies together, not only in Chicago, but at Telluride,  where I’d recruited them to the volunteer ranks.  We also shared a commitment to the bicycle, further deepening our friendship.

It was a sad day when Ken accepted a position at the New York Fed, but I was at least able to join Ken driving a U-Haul with all their belongings to Brooklyn, a U-Haul with a faulty fuel gauge we learned when we ran out of gas somewhere in Ohio, putting a bike to use to go to a not too distant gas station for fuel.  After ten years in New York, Ken elected to switch to academia, teaching economics at Oberlin for four years before moving on to Williams in Williamstown when it offered him a position with tenure.  

I had been eager to see their new environment in the northwest corner of Massachusetts, putting it off until I took my Carnegie crusade to New England, which I knew I could do at any time.  It had been, “I’ll do it next year,” for all too many years.  I was happy it was finally going to happen this year and wouldn’t let the increasingly wintry conditions deter me from continuing on to Massachusetts, when it was tempting to stop biking.

The final fifty-mile stretch to Williamstown was over the two longest climbs of these travels, one of twelve miles and another of six.  It was the closest I came to five thousand feet climbed in one day and in just sixty miles.  Neither climb was marked by a summit sign, though the longest, Hogback, had a scenic overlook and restaurant.  

When I alerted Laura from the library in Wilmington after crossing Hogbsck that I was thirty miles away and wondered if I had much more climbing ahead, she warned me of one more big climb and if it slowed me enough to prevent me from reaching them before dark, she could come pick me up somewhere along the way.  And being ever-considerate, often replying to blog posts with suggestions of places to visit wherever I might be,  she added that she could drive me to Schenectady, seventy-five miles west, if I was concerned about making the train I had booked for two days hence. Neither were necessary, but I greatly appreciated the gesture.  I  reached their home shortly before dark after one last steep climb to their cul-de-sac, so steep that Laura at first didn’t wish to move there when they were house-hunting. 

The entry to their driveway was marked by a dazzling arched stone sculpture constructed by their twenty-eight year old son Iain, who works for an architectural landscaping firm in Boston.  Their yard was also marked by various cairns, just as that of Janina and I.  Janina would have liked their grass-free front yard too, turned into a flower bed.  The back yard was home to three chickens.

Greeting Laura and Ken was a joyful reunion.  We eased into a conversation that we seemed to have left off just yesterday as they sliced vegetables for a salmon and dahl stew while I sat in a chair and nibbled on nuts and grapes and pasta.  It was like being home and reunited with brother and sister.

My post-dinner options were a movie at the local art cinema where they volunteer or a dvd or attending the monthly Planning Board meeting where Ken was the most recently elected of the five members.  Nothing would be better than an immersion into local issues.  Ken had won the election by going door-to-door in this community of eight thousand along with two thousand students at the college, not a university, as it doesn’t have a graduate program.  His lone opponent was a woman of a prominent local family.  Not even breaking the stranglehold of the all-male board could defeat Ken, as his rare combination of personal warmth and brilliance of a Harvard PhD prevailed.  

All twenty or so seats in the room were occupied when the meeting began.  I sat next to a blue-haired woman who said she had just registered to run in next year’s Chicago marathon.  When the meeting adjourned I was the lone member of the audience remaining.  The two main topics of the two-hour session were the specifications of a new fire station and the regulations on the construction of smaller homes.  Ken had done considerable research on the standards other communities had established for the residential housing.  

It was as fascinating as a movie listening to the board members and the town manager, who serves in lieu of a mayor, hashed out all the details.  It was a fine evening other than Ken not being able to charge his e-car at the lone charging station in the parking lot, as someone who wasn’t using it had parked in the spot.  

Though it was later than I’d been staying up, I was happy to watch a pair of twenty-two minute mockumentaries from Documentaries Now featuring Werner Herzog and Klaus Kinski, a favorite director of ours and his frequent actor.  As we talked afterwards Ken reminded us it was getting late and we ought to turn in, especially since I wanted an early start the next day and he had a full day of teaching.  It couldnt have been a more relaxing and fulfilling evening, as satisfying a day as if I’d dropped in on three or four Carnegies.

As it was, it had been a day without a Carnegie.  The only sight-seeing for the day had been a slight detour early in the day to the home of Rudyard Kipling, Naulahka, that he built in 1893 and lived in with his wife and two daughters until 1896.  It was on ten acres off in the woods down a dirt road bearing the name Kipling three miles north of Brattleboro.  

He was twenty-eight when he settled in Vermont and already an accomplished writer and wrote much more during his time there including the Jungle books.   He might have lived the rest of his life there if not for a dispute with his wife’s brother and anti-British sentiment in the US triggered by England being upset with the US invoking the Monroe Doctrine regarding a disagreement between Venezuela and British Guinea over the border between the two countries that remains unresolved to this day.  The lack of relations between Venezuela and British Guinea prevented me from crossing into British Guinea from Venezuela when I bicycled to the tepui region of Venezuela.  I finally gained entrance to the Guianas several years later when I bicycled three thousand miles through Brazil from Uruguay on my way to the lone Carnegie in South America. 

Four final Carnegies await me in the vicinity of Schenectady and then it is Amtrak home.