"Exploring Freud's World" with Chris Downing

Sunday, May 26. Bus to Heathrow, flight to Denver, car ride to Littleton. Monday May 27 in Littleton. Tuesday May 28. Leaving for Iowa and Grinnell College reunion in the afternoon.  Dear Trail Friends, London is 7 hours ahead of Denver, and my Sunday is stretching itself  out (as we fly in the same direction as the sun, postponing sunset) into a 31-hour day. Okay. I know the sun doesn’t actually travel from East to West - it’s really our little planet’s rotations that make it seem so. Trying to visualize this comes up against my difficulty with directions and spatial thinking, and I associate my confusion with time and rotations to the spiral staircase at The Wolseley, and the sense of time as a little vertiginous and dizzying, and also to the sunrise illuminating the stone circle at Castlerigg. I hope you find my associations as fascinating as I do. Maybe it gives you a chance to empathize with analysts (with yourself, if you dare one, and certainly with my imaginary Profess...

Saturday, May 25. Driven to Keswick bus stop by owner of our cottage (Judy). Bus to Penrith. Train to London Euston Station. “Tube” to Paddington Station. Heathrow Express train to Heathrow (Terminals 2 and 3).  Walk to Heathrow Central Bus Station - then free Heathrow bus to the Marriot.  Dear Trail Friends, I can’t say that bus and train rides or the return to urban crowding are my idea of true bliss. But I will say that the kindness of strangers - our ability to ask for help and their readiness to give it - was for me a very sweet spot in an otherwise not so beautiful day. Not even the weather was as good. After the prediction of a week of rain it was truly amazing to get as much sun as we did - and to really not take a minute of it for granted.  Judy, who was the manager of a customer service department much of her working life, says the secret to good customer service is to create very low expectations and then exceed them. That’s, she said, what the weather gave us ...

Friday May 24. Goodbye walk around Derwent Lake. Goodbye dinner at Farmers Arms.  Dear Trail Friends, We walked around the lake on Sunday to say hello, and now we walked around the lake again today to say goodbye. It was very different to walk today - now that we have some familiarity and memories associated with the countryside.  Photo 1 is a photo from the walk - I chose it because when I look at it I feel some of what I felt walking. Easy, relaxed, glad to be alive, glad to be in a beautiful place sharing it with two of the people I love most in all the world.  It was fun to walk past Catbells (that I climbed to yesterday - Photo 2).  We stopped for scones and clotted cream on the walk, to my great delight. (Much as I am enjoying breaking my sugar abstinence for the moment, I do not enjoy being in the thrall of sugar addiction, so I will return to abstinence tomorrow).  Our pace was relaxed, often a saunter rather than a brisk walk, and we bathed ourselves in...

Thursday May 23. High Portinscale. Pre-dawn solo walk to Castlerigg stone circle. Late morning hike with Chris to Catsbell (451 meters). Total 15 miles.  Dear Trail Friends, I woke up spontaneously this morning about 3:30am and started walking around 4am. I was able to reach the Castlerigg stone circle just after sunset. I was not alone - two men with cameras set up on tripods were also there. But it felt fine. It was a gorgeous morning sunrise and wonderful to watch the stones in the bright slanted morning light. I especially loved watching the young lambs stand on the rocks.  Photo 1 shows the circle in the dawn light.  I sat with my back against one of the stones and watched the changing light and the sheep and lambs who seem to be very much at home in the stone circle before all the tourists arrive.  Photo 2 is a collage of lambs and sheep near the stone circle.  When I walk up I received an email about a dear friend having a medical procedure that I was con...

Wednesday, May 22. An exploratory walk (headed nowhere) around the countryside. Then a visit to the Pencil Museum. Then a nap, then high tea at The Skiddaw Hotel. Then drawing, and a short walk around the neighborhood. (10.3 miles).  Dear Trail Mates, It was such a simple day. I had forgotten life could be so easy. My friend Kathi wrote that when she tried to sum up her whole life in a sentence (like my climbing Pink Mountain) she thought she had spent her whole life holding her breath. So she decided to breathe out. Today was like that. Just one long slow exhalation.  Around 8 pm this evening Judy and I finished our drawings, and Chris and I went out for a short walk. We were gone about 15 minutes and when we came back Judy had done a second drawing (photo 1).  Judy did it in part for Chris who loves it when she uses bright colors (and who loves the azaleas so lushly in bloom all over the neighborhood). She also did it to experiment with the new set of Derwent markers we...

Monday and Tuesday, May 20-21.  Walk to Walla Crag (elev. 376 meters) with side trips (10 miles) Monday. Tuesday walk to  Castlerigg Stone Circle, circling back along lake (9 miles).  Dear Trail Friends,  Monday Chris and I hiked up to Walla Crag, a beautiful varied footpath with gorgeous views (photo 1).  Judy  decided to wander around town and in the course of her wandering she visited the Derwent Pencil Museum. She had previously noticed that the pencils she uses for drawing were called Derwent, and we all were intrigued by the coincidence. Judy bought a whole new larger set of pencils at the museum shop. Photo 2 shows her with her pencils (new and old) and photo 3 is her Monday drawing (inspired by watching mother geese with goslings on the river on the walk home from town.) We continue to love the walk to town. My drawing Monday was inspired by the colors of blooming azaleas (photo 4).  Since I don’t have the artistic skill to render the flowers r...

Saturday May 18 to Sunday May 19. From London to Penrith (by train) to Keswick (by bus) to High Portinscale (by taxi) Saturday. Walk around Derwentwater (9.5 miles) Sunday.  Dear Trail Friends, I’m not really ready to stop writing about the Freud tour. I think when a tour group bonds it’s a little like falling in love. Although I didn’t connect with every individual tour mate, I felt the warmth of the connections all around me and felt appreciation for every single person on the tour - and felt appreciated by them. That’s a rare experience. There was a culture of generosity and kindness - I picture Ben and Chris and Kevin so eagerly helping to  unload luggage from the bus - everyone really on the lookout for how they could help and support others and clearly finding joy in being of service. The same kind of culture of kindness I so fell in love with on the trail between hikers and from trail angels. This was a group full of trail angels in that sense - people who get joy from ...