Coastal Voyager

Echos of the past: Exploring Boston's Public Garden and Freedom Trail

My exploration of Boston began a bit late in the day. After a therapeutic morning massage, I had napped for hours in my room at the Four Seasons trying to sleep off a bad cold. When I awoke that afternoon the overcast sky had cleared, as had my head, and the Public Garden was green and inviting outside my bay window.

The concierge gave me a map of the area and pointed out a few area attractions, including the Freedom Trail, and the street where I had dinner reservations that evening. I was a little on edge because of my lack of familarity with the city. A bit dazed and wondering what I might happen upon, I walked out and crossed Boylston Street to the garden. It was a start.

I instantly felt at ease in the charming Victorian-style park. Bands of colorful tulips lined the paths surrounding an elevated bronze statue of George Washington and his horse. Tall weeping willows lined a central pond traversed by a swan boat. The many cherry trees in the park were in bloom and their blossoms fell like snow. While the park was busy with visitors it wasn't crowded. After meandering awhile, I walked on across the garden and soon came to an exit that lead toward Boston Commons.

The commons, although just as vibrant green, was a larger, yet simpler park by far. The people in it who weren't resting on benches were walking decisively across the commons on their way somewhere. As the Freedom Trail began in the park, I decided to look for the beginning of the narrow red brick trail that's lead millions of visitors down sidewalks and across streets to 16 historic sites. Might as well follow the trail for a bit, I thought, since I had an hour or two before dinner. I couldn't help but marvel at the striking, gold-domed State House high on Beacon Hill.

As I continued on the way, I noted Park Street Church and then the Granary Burying Ground. School children were listening to their teacher tell them about Paul Revere, Samuel Adams and other historic figures buried there. It's something we all have in common growing up in this country and learning about these heroes of history as children. Being in the place where they were buried hit home with me. They no longer seemed like characters out of story, but real men who lived and died.

I paused for a bit at the Benjamin Franklin statue at the Boston Latin School he briefly attended, then smiled to see a Starbucks next door. The old and the new make for such an interesting contrast in the city. Skyscrapers tower above historic churches, meeting halls and other civic buildings.

Soon I came upon the Old South Meeting House, which was built in 1729 by a Puritan congregation. It was the largest building in colonial Boston, according to the history books. A placard noted Franklin had been baptized there and that African-American slave and poet Phillis Wheatley worshipped there. Something about the old church beckoned me to go in.

There in the main hall the high white walls seemed to echo with the words of Samuel Adams and others who fomented the American Revolution by protesting the Boston Massacre, impressment of Americans into the British Navy and tax on tea. Here the Boston Tea Party was set off as 5,000 colonists heard Adam's secret signal. Later the British used the hall as a riding stable for their calvary as they occupied the city in response to such civil unrest. Our country might be different if not for some of the words said here. But eventual independence seems to have been inevitable.

I had sometimes worried before that the politics of our time was more antagonistic than it had ever been, that liberals and conservatives have too often demonized each other and were polarizing the country. But any current conflicts are a lovefest compared to the rancor between Tories/Loyalists and Whigs/Patriots, I was learning.

The Loyalists, only 15 to 20 percent of the population, were frequently tarred and feathered or otherwise punished by mobs of "Patriots" if they voiced their loyalty to the crown or were suspected of it. It was a brutal time, but perhaps not quite as brutal as our beginnings with witch burnings and overrunning of Native Americans. We've come a long way, and if we do continue to falter, still we have made much progress by eventually opening our eyes to wrongdoing time after time, and correcting it.

I can't help but think it's because men and women continue to speak out against what they perceive be injustice and debate public issues, as they did and continue to do in the Old South Meeting House, that our country has become more civilized. These days we are less prone to tar and feather those whose opinions differ from our own. Our individual rights and freedoms are more often protected.

After the Old South congregation moved to a different location the old meeting house was to be torn down, and would have been if not through the efforts of early historic preservationists, including Ralph Waldo Emerson. Their efforts started a national wave of preservation. It's fitting that the Old South Meeting House, a museum and historic site since 1877, set off that revolution as well.

Walking our way back to Charleston, S.C.

If you ever visit Charleston it's sure to stay in your mind as a near-perfect place. "If only more cities could be as charming and gracious," I thought the first time I visited. And when I recently returned, more than 15 years later, I felt the same way, yet even more so. Although I've visited many more cities now, Charleston is still one of my favorites.

Like such destinations as New Orleans, Key West, St. Augustine and San Francisco, it's a U.S. city I will always want to get to know better. Charleston reminds me that we have more than a bit of the elegance of European capitals like London and Amsterdam here.

When you stay within the historic center of the South Carolina city, you feel as if you are more in a neighborhood than an urban area. It's neither too big nor too little, rather "just right" as Goldilocks would say. Plus it's beautifully set on peninsula between the Ashley and Cooper rivers coming together at Charleston Harbor.

Walking down Charleston's streets with lush landscaping, many parks, and carefully restored historic homes, churches, government buildings and businesses, you can't help but feel at home. Especially when one of the locals gives you a neighborly smile. There's something substantial and reassuring about all the wrought-iron gates and fences.

It's no wonder Charleston has served as an inspiration for the development of new walkable communities across the country where residential neighborhoods are footsteps from town centers and schools. Seaside, Florida, which was designed based on Charleston and other small historic cities, kicked off the New Urbanism movement in the early 1980s. The planning style, also known as Traditional Neighborhood Development, was later famously used for Disney's Celebration. One of my favorite of such new communities is Rosemary Beach, Florida.

Now the return to traditional city planning vs. separating suburban residential developments from business districts has become commonplace. Historic downtowns and their surrounding residential areas have been revived, restored and are highly sought after these days. While I'm definitely a fan of the original versions with their old-style craftsmanship, evolution over time and quirky character, I too respect how much easier it is to live in a brand new home built in a historic style vs. a charming money pit.

But you can never fully reproduce historic ambience. Charleston's past as a player in the Revolutionary War, a bastion of the plantation-focused, slave-driven South, and a reinvented modern Southern city, can not be replicated as if a movie set. There is no Charleston but Charleston. The angels and ghosts that protect and haunt it are part of what you feel when you walk its streets. While you and I may not be able to afford to live in Charleston, we can't afford not to saunter down its streets and listen to its stories.

As for myself I grew up in Homewood, Alabama, one of thousands of original traditional neighborhoods where you can easily walk to school, the library, church and town. As I adore to walk and look and think without crowds around to distract me, it was the perfect upbringing for me. Since then I have sought out such communities to live in where ever my work has taken me.

When I travel it's always a great pleasure to take a stroll anytime I'm in a walkable city like Charleston. It not only gives me a better feel for the place, I find that my experiences while walking remain memorable. I'm less apt to remember what I've only seen while zipping by in a car, van or bus. Probably that's because walking engages all the senses. While I'm walking I am smelling the fresh cut grass or the blossoming jasmine, sweating in the humidity or relishing a gentle breeze.

Perhaps that's why so many of us long for traditional communities and cherish those that come across our path. By luring us to walk rather than jump into a car, they wake us up to life.

Mass transit, movies and mayhem in San Francisco, California

I only had a few hours to check out San Francisco via mass transit and walking, so I thought I'd be doing good to navigate from the airport in San Mateo to the Golden Gate Bridge. You can't have watched Albert Hitchcock's Vertigo without wanting to see the bridge in person. I had dutifully researched the route to get there, but was a little nervous. Although I have been a frequent traveler in recent years, I've rarely visited cities, and when I have it's been with a group via a shuttle bus. I hadn't used commuter rail, a bus or the subway in more than a decade.

All those movies and TV shows I've watched with crime-ridden city subway scenarios didn't help, not to mention Zodiac. Maybe I have seen too many movies. Still all the memorable movies and gorgeous photographs of San Francisco have made me long to see the city, and be willing to face some mass transit discomfort to do so. As the poet John Berryman said "We must travel in the direction of our fear."

Luckily I met a friendly lady from Israel on my San Mateo County hotel shuttle to catch the Bay Area Rapid Transit train. She soon was asking me if I wanted company on my foray into the city. Along the way we learned from the helpful BART attendant that we could see the Golden Gate Bridge from Fisherman's Wharf, and that Chinatown was not too far from the wharf on the way back to a BART station. That sounded good to us.

So we disembarked from the Embarcadero station and began the 20-minute walk down Embarcadero to Pier 39 and the wharf. Our route past the city's many neat-and-clean piers and warehouses gave us great vantage points to take in the San Francisco skyline, including the signature Transamerica Pyramid, and the rolling hills that give the city its unique character. I thought about how photographs, film and video capture such small parts of cities, landscapes, etc. You have to be surrounded by a place to really get some sense of it, even a real taste of it. Photographs and words are just invitations to the party.

After awhile we passed an Alcatraz tour boat, and then there it was rising serenely from the bay: the infamous Alcatraz. Talk about movie locations. The ironic contrast of the brutal history of the prison with its huge popularity with popcorn-chewing tourists today cannot be missed when you're there to witness it. Of course if I'd had the time I would have gone to get an eyeful myself.

We kept walking and watching, and then I saw something that shocked a forgotten image from my memory. It was a bank of trees in two parallel rows. Their almost leafless branches reached up in a contorted gnarly way that was both beautiful and alarming. I remembered seeing a line of such trees about 30 years before in the 1978 remake of the Invasion of the Body Snatchers. The trees, which do look to be from an alien planet, figure prominently in the horrifying ending of the film. I was mesmorized looking at them again.

Could these be the same peculiar trees? I had never seen them before anywhere else. The background was different I vaguely remembered. Later I saw them again when touring the picturesque Filoli Gardens in San Mateo, and learned from our guide they were London plane hybrid sycamores. Their knobby branches are created by the ancient practice of "pollarding," a type of pruning which gives them a unique look for gardens and keeps them from outgrowing their urban environment. See, I told myself, they're not so spooky afterall.

Through googling I learned the film was indeed set in San Francisco and the background of the trees in question is the San Francisco City Hall.

After nosing around Pier 39 and the Wharf, seeing the ghostly outline of the Golden Gate through a light foggy haze, and being introduced to the delights of Dungeness Crab, my friend and I took a cable car to Chinatown. The ability of the cable car to easily climb and descend the many steep hills of San Francisco helped me get why it's still so popular a means of transportation there. Soon the cable car attendant was calling out the stop for Chinatown and we disembarked for our next adventure: tea tasting.

When it was time for me to get back to my hotel so I wouldn't miss my San Mateo tour reception I walked to the downtown shopping district with my new friend where we parted ways. And then in possession of a good mass-transit map and having the ability to ask strangers for directions, I found my way to the Civic Center BART station and was soon speeding back to my hotel with a big smile on my face.

Getting the bounce back in my step in Bermuda

Just was talking to Dr. Lana Staheli, PhD, a Seattle-based life strategies coach, for a story I'm doing on life coaching for a health magazine. I met her several weeks ago at Cambridge Beaches Resort in Bermuda.

Our interview reminded me how much has changed in my life because of my "life balance" retreat with her at the secluded, luxurious oceanfront resort. One of the biggest new developments is my launching this Coastal Voyager website to share my journeys in a personal way on an ongoing basis. I'm also planning to hit the road intensely beginning in August for a tour of the coastal U.S. and Canada with the goal of gathering material for my first book. I'll still be visiting the Caribbean and other coastal international destinations as well. You can follow my travels here.

Before my visit to Bermuda I was floundering a bit wondering about what new strategies I needed to employ in the down economy to kick-start my freelance business. Like other journalists and freelancers I know, my pocketbook has been hit hard by the recession. It's become ever more difficult to maintain an apartment, and frustrating to make those monthly payments because I'm often on the road on travel assignments anyway.

Talking with Dr. Staheli on the beach in Bermuda, looking at where I was and where I wanted to be, I got a whole new perspective on my life. My biggest lesson was that in my obsession with trying to make more money I wasn't taking the time to refresh and replenish myself with activities like walking and getting together with friends. Because I have gained some weight in the last few years, only allowing myself two or three days a week to exercise was keeping me from taking the weight off.

Dr. Staheli helped me see that all that work, work, work was counterproductive and to come up with an action plan, which I started putting into play at Cambridge Beaches. Walking more when I came home to Orlando ended up being the key that unlocked the idea of Coastal Voyager in my mind and gave me the inspiration for my new mission. And walking more is helping me take off the weight slowly but surely.

Her coaching turned around my idea of being forced to put all my stuff in storage to wanting to pare down to my most essential possessions and storing them while I travel. I'll be staying with family and friends between my trips.

When I talked to my About.com editor about the idea, she loved it, and mentioned that I was becoming unstuck. "What do you mean?" I asked. She had just read the National Geographic Traveler magazine ombudsman Christopher Elliot's April 13 MSNBC travel column on "What's the secret to an endless vacation? Nine tips for becoming a 'new' nomad" In it he talks about people who are responding to this crazy economy by traveling full time. He's even planning his own extended trip with his family next year!

Dr. Staheli believes this economy is helping nudge many of her clients to reinvent themselves. Changing ourselves periodically is energizing and enriching whether it comes from either an internal impetus like a desire to do something different or an external one, like the economy. Her book Bounce Be Transformed, which is available to be ordered or for free download on her site, will tell you how you can reinvent yourself for the better. She'll be back at Cambridge Beaches to lead another weekend retreat next March.

As for my journey, more to come!