Travel Echoes

Full Moon Hike in Wissahickon Valley Park

2018-02-09T13:33:00.000-08:00

I did a night hike under the super blue blood moon! On Wednesday, January 31, the Wissahickon Environmental Center hosted a full moon hike from 8-9:30 pm. It was really more like a walk than a hike, about 1 ½ miles at a leisurely pace, a little bit of uphill but not steep and overall mostly flat. We walked for about 45 minutes. We could have done a longer route, but our tour leaders opted for the shorter one as the evening temperature was 31 degrees. The relaxed pace made it easy to walk and gaze at the moon and to stop and grab pictures. There wouldn’t have been time to set up my tripod and get shots with my DSLR camera which is what really needed to be done, but a slight sense of community was forged in the collective attempt to get our iPhones to focus.

Twinkling tea lights lined the dark path from the parking lot to the Environmental Center where a campfire greeted and warmed us. There were plenty of sticks and a bag of marshmallows, so of course I roasted one! I couldn’t really see it but it came out perfectly warm and gooey. My modus operandi at campfires is usually to roast a bunch of marshmallows and hand them out to others, but between the darkness and all the hats, hoods, and scarves, I couldn’t really see anyone in the group. We were all incognito which added to the mystical atmosphere.

The moon was absolutely brilliant and we had no trouble seeing our way without any flashlights or head lamps (which the leader actually asked us not to use). I felt like I was partaking in a pagan ritual, awed into reverence by the great orb and filled with peace. Those who wanted to walk in silence stayed in the front of the line, ostensibly to listen for animals, while others chatted quietly in the back. The moonlight seemed to command a hushed presence from everyone.

The hike was a really beautiful experience; I’d recommend it for everyone. They had a family friendly version earlier in the evening too. For the adult hike I was on, there were probably 30 people in attendance although I think the guide said that around 40 had registered. If you want to attend – register early! The hike is free but registration is required and attendance is limited. It fills up fast.

The next one is planned for the spring – don’t miss it!

Philadelphia: the City of Ghostly Love

2012-10-29T20:52:00.002-07:00

I was on my way to Philadelphia’s Triumph Brewing Company to meet with my boss, Joe Wojie of Grim Philly Twilight Tours, and Laurie Hull, a paranormal investigator from Tri County Paranormal. We were going to discuss and map out the route to our Halloween tour, a hands-on historical ghost hunt. I had been waiting at my South Philly bus stop for over 40 minutes, alone. An older man, tall and skeletal, inappropriately dressed for the sweltering summer day in a bright red sweatshirt and winter beanie, chain smoked across the street and stared at me through his large, eighties-style sunglasses. Definitely a serial killer. I work as a guide for Grim Philly’s walking tours which feature the darker, seedier side of the city’s history. I’m an expert now on colonial prostitution, mass graves, eighteenth century diseases and their macabre treatments, and yes, serial killers. It makes for nervous travel on public transit. Fortunately, it appeared he was only interested in watching me, not following me, so I boarded my bus and made it to Triumph without incident.

I had been hoping for a more substantial group so that we could actually test out the ghost hunting equipment, but the only attendees were Joe, Laurie, and I. Joe’s thin brown hair, strong nose, and cleft chin are all completely eclipsed by his intensity, coiled up in his medium build and spilling out almost uncontrollably in his words and gestures. He presents history on the tours with his gravelly South Jersey accent, in a street vernacular that revels in the oddities of distant history while transforming it into present experience. It’s truly wonderful to watch, though the occasional customer does find his visceral style offensive. I’m amazed at the freedom with which he expresses himself.

Laurie I was meeting for the first time. Though the black sundress, black wavy hair, and snakelike tattoo encircling her arm might have given a first impression of harshness, I was immediately struck by her softness. She has an ethereal, gentle quality about her, from her delicate handshake to her large, bluish-green eyes. She said little and listened intently, her eyes revealing something – compassion, understanding, maybe knowledge – whatever it was, it made me uncomfortable. As if she could not only see the pain and vulnerability inside of me that I work so hard to hide, but might actually care.

Also present was Peter, another guide I hadn’t met before. He is very tall, athletic, and younger than the balding top of his head would indicate. He’d had a few beers when his tour ended at Triumph and was getting ready to go home. The ghostly aspect of the walk-through didn’t seem to appeal to him, but he agreed to join us if we’d wait for him to run home and pick up a box of wine to bring along.

While we waited, I asked Laurie some questions. I hardly knew where to begin; I had so many, and I’d never met a paranormal investigator before. Quite a few members of my family see ghosts, but I don’t, and I’m actually glad. I gave up meditating at night a few years back – I was worried that my relaxed state of consciousness at the witching hour might be misconstrued as a willingness to befriend lonely spirits. The number of nighttime noises I could hear in my apartment when I was still and silent freaked me out terribly. Still, I’m fascinated by the subject, and I collect ghost stories from anyone who will tell them to me.

Why do ghosts appear to some people and not to others? Laurie asserts that anyone has the ability to see ghosts, just as anyone can write or play basketball, or learn to, but some people will have more of a natural affinity for it than others. Many people are afraid, or busy, or just don’t believe, and so are not interested in cultivating those skills. She believes that children who seem to see things that adults don’t should be encouraged so that this talent can be nurtured. She encourages participants in her ghost hunt tours to be open to having a paranormal experience. One can even invite a ghost to touch him or her, but without making an open invitation for the group, since some people in the group might be opposed to that level of familiarity. Sometimes feeling a presence means experiencing extreme cold, or heat, or a nauseated feeling, or dizziness, or the feeling of having walked through a spider web. Each reaction is unique.

My mother sees dark shadows in her peripheral vision, particularly when she’s working the night shift at a hospital for mentally retarded children. Laurie says that happens fairly frequently. Other occurrences include seeing a person as if in real life, but a few seconds later that person is not there. When my aunt was staying at an inn in Gettysburg, she woke up in the middle of the night to the sound of someone trying to get into her room. She opened the door to see who it was, and saw a man walking away in a what looked like an old, threadbare Civil War uniform. At the end of the hallway, he turned into where the bathroom was and disappeared. Laurie maintains that hearing one’s name called is common as is having one’s arm or hair stroked. When my nephew was little, he frightened his babysitter one night when he came out of his room and asked her why she woke him up stroking his head. She hadn’t been in his room at all. They lived then in a historic area of Scranton in an old Victorian house that my sister always swore was haunted.

I told Laurie my one almost ghost story, the one that probably frightened me enough to keep them from ever appearing to me again. When I was about 11 years old or so, I woke up in the middle of the night to the sound of a basketball being dribbled in the dining room downstairs. I remember straining to listen clearly – definitely a basketball. Terrified, I hid my head under the covers so the sound was muffled and tried desperately to go back to sleep. (Had it called my name, I’m sure I would have died of fright.) When I went downstairs in the morning, a basketball was on the dining room chair in the corner. There was absolutely no reason for a basketball to be in the house at all; we kept all of our balls and sports equipment in a bin on the back porch. That was my only experience with a presence of any kind, if I didn’t in fact just dream the whole thing, and I’ve always been pretty happy to leave it at that.

Laurie commented that it had probably been a child ghost. That hadn’t even occurred to me! (No one else at home had ever seen it. Where was it now? I thought of all the time I had spent up in the attic alone, sorting through my boxes of stuff leftover from college or my overseas travels. Had it been watching me? Had I been too absorbed in going through my old things to notice?) Laurie said child ghosts creeped her out worst of all. I agreed that they were scary, though I was surprised that someone who dealt with paranormal encounters for a living would feel that way. I told her that I considered clowns creepier than child ghosts. Joe, distracted from his texting by the mention of clowns, thought clown ghosts were the worst. We all shuddered in agreement. Laurie silenced us all though with her pronouncement that what she was really afraid of was mirrors – thought to be portals – hands down the creepiest thought of all. (I am still unable to look in my bedroom mirror before going to bed at night, and Joe told me afterwards that a friend of his who lived in a house he believed to be haunted got pictures of the spirits with a digital camera pointed into the mirror, though he hadn’t been able to see them himself. If there are ghosts in any of my mirrors, I don’t want to know!)

“Come on, try it, “ she told me, bringing me back to the present with those unsettling eyes. “Do you sense anything?” I held on to the bar to steady myself, screwed my eyes closed, and concentrated. Nothing. “I feel it,” she said. “I think it’s upstairs.” The bartender jumped in and informed us that Triumph did in fact have a ghost. He had been heard on the second floor and in the basement but didn’t seem to like to be out when a lot of people were around. The bartender told us that he had heard him say the word ‘precision’ once, very clearly, in the area of the kitchen where the knives were sharpened. That gave me chills. No one there seemed to know who he had been or why he had stayed; the bartender thought the tavern had been a mill previously.

Peter returned with his box of wine and some plastic cups in a backpack, and we were off. We went to City Tavern, whose building and surrounding yard are supposed to be haunted, a supposition Laurie quickly confirmed.

“I was standing right about here, taking pictures of the third floor windows, when I felt a searing pain on my hand. I thought I had been bitten by some kind of big bug! It hurt so much I dropped my camera, which luckily was hanging on my wrist. Later my husband said that it looked like a burn on my hand. It was a burn. My husband said, ‘Weren’t the bride and bridesmaids who are supposed to haunt the place killed in a fire?’ They were. I was completely creeped out.”

I slapped nervously at mosquitoes in the encroaching darkness, feeling a little nauseated, which I hoped wasn’t contact with a paranormal presence. Peter broke the silence by deciding it was a good time to break out the box of wine. We all had some, though we hadn’t been too keen on the idea back at Triumph.

The story that is told, though historians have been unable to substantiate it, is that the tavern is haunted by ghosts of the members of a bridal party that burned to death in an 1854 fire. Supposedly, on the night before the wedding, the women were up on the third floor putting the final touches on the bride’s dress when a candle or whale oil lamp was knocked over. Fabrics were not flame-retardant as they are today, and the room was completely sealed off by flame before any of the men could get up to help. All of the women died and the tavern burned to the ground. The night before a wedding! How does one recover from a tragedy like that? I asked Laurie about the story being rumored to be a hoax, and she said that while her research didn’t uncover any proof of the bridal party deaths, some kind of entity had most definitely burned her.

I was a bit surprised that her paranormal experience had weirded her out and asked her whether she wasn’t used to occurrences like that by now. “It was the first time I was hurt physically by a presence,” she told me. “It was a little unnerving.” I asked her whether she thought the ghost had meant to hurt her. She didn’t think so, but she said that evil spirits did exist. I told her I didn't believe in evil, but she countered that everything in the universe has an opposite, for balance, so if there were good spirits, there had to be bad ones. I don’t recognize though a qualitative differentiation between good and bad; I think there are simply actions and results. She explained that it might be better to think of some spirits as constructive forces, made up of constructive energy, while others are destructive forces, with energy that destroys. Apparently, ghosts do not harm with conscious malicious intent, any more than a tornado intends to cause damage. She does carries holy water with her just in case.

I wondered whether ghosts or spirits knew that she had an ability to see or sense them. Were they more likely to reach out to her? Why were they reaching out anyway? Laurie believes that she stands out to ghosts like a light in a dark room. She explained that most ghosts simply want someone to listen to their stories. How very human of them! It must be frustrating for ghosts with so many people closed to their presence and unable to hear them.

A common reason that ghosts don’t cross over into the afterlife is that they are too attached to the life they had on earth, such as the ghost reported to be at the Thomas Bond Boarding House who sits on guests’ beds as they are about to go to sleep. It never appears on the first floor, which suggests to Laurie that it is the ghost of a servant who is completely committed to serving there. I looked at her quizzically. It seemed to me that the afterlife should be better than life on earth, and I couldn’t imagine why a servant of all professions would choose to stay here. She answered that ghosts just get extremely attached to something on earth – a job or career, a particular place - and don’t want to move on. It seemed very unhealthy to me.

“Oh, it’s completely unhealthy!” she asserted. “Healthy people do not become ghosts.” (I made a mental note to find a good therapist in Philadelphia once I was financially secure enough to do so.)

Joe then reminded Laurie that she had noticed a friendly spirit, elderly, maybe a grandmother, following a waitress once at one of their meetings. She distinguished between a ghost – a presence who had not crossed over and was sort of unhealthily trapped on earth, and a spirit – a presence who had crossed over but chose to come back occasionally to check in on loved ones, such as the spirit of a deceased grandmother or grandfather. She maintained that everyone had spirits, guardian angels in effect, watching over him or her.

“But you saw one following her, right?” Joe asked. “Can you see them all the time?” Joe can talk on and on around any subject that he doesn’t want to discuss, and if something makes him feel uncomfortable or vulnerable, he won’t ask directly. She saw right through him with those all-knowing eyes.

“And you wanted to know whether I could see one following you?” she asked. Joe shrugged sheepishly. Don’t we all want to know that? I’d never ask though. I wonder if that is my own mechanism for avoiding disappointment. It would make me particularly uncomfortable to ask Laurie a question like that since being clairvoyant and psychic is what she does for a living. “Yeah, I don’t know about all this ghost stuff,” Peter said uncomfortably and poured a little more wine in our cups. Laurie evaded the question, and I got the sense that either she didn’t see a spirit following Joe around or just didn’t see them all the time.

As we left the City Tavern yard, Laurie pulled out her EMF meter. It didn’t register anything, so we headed into the haunted areas that would wrap up the Grim Philly Halloween tour. She pulled it out again near the Bishop William White house, next door to where Dr. Benjamin Rush’s house had been, and it blinked yellow. She explained that the EMF meter measures disruptions in the electro-magnetic field that are believed to be caused by spirits (if there is no other known cause). The meter shows a green light for safety, a yellow light for caution (spirit may be in proximity), and a red light for – GET THE HELL OUT OF THERE! (Laurie looked at us expectantly. “Come on guys, it’s the joke I tell my group participants!” Joe laughed nervously while Peter and I just stared. I was a little wigged out by the yellow light.) Presumably a red light would indicate a very strong and close paranormal presence.

While many of the founding fathers fled Philadelphia during the yellow fever epidemic in 1793, Dr. Rush stayed to help patients. Unfortunately, he was a big fan of blood-letting, which probably hurt his patients much more than it helped them. Presumably many died in the area of his house. A guide at the Christ Church Burial Ground maintains that Dr. Rush trained his servants to drain patients’ blood, and when they ran out of containers to put the blood in, they were instructed to take the patients outside and drain their blood at the curb, to let it run along the street.

“Did you see that?” Laurie asked me. The grassy area next to the houses, where Dock Creek formerly ran, is a little eerie, but I hadn’t seen anything, and the men were up ahead of us. She said she saw a dark shadow in her peripheral vision, behind us closer to the street. I quickened my pace.

Two things Laurie says are guaranteed to result in a ghost are beheadings and grave robberies. I was a little surprised that grave robbery was so problematic – if I had died and moved on, would I really come back as a ghost because someone dragged my body out of its burial plot? I would have thought that once a soul moved on, that was it. Laurie’s answer was unequivocal – if someone robbed my grave, I would absolutely, most definitely, come back as a ghost. Beheadings weren’t big in Philly, but unfortunately stealing buried bodies was. (Or fortunately, I guess, for ghost hunting.) The Surgeon’s Hall site in the square by the Robert Morris statue is rumored to be haunted with the ghosts of corpses dug up illegally from Washington Square for medical research.

Washington Square is a busy site for ghosts, as any graveyard could be. Estimates of the number of dead bodies buried in the park range from 4300 to 7500. The square served as a ‘potter’s field’ for the dead of the poor as well as unknown visitors to the city since the 1600s. Thousands of American soldiers were executed by the British and buried at the park during the Revolutionary War, and victims of the yellow fever epidemic were thrown in mass graves in the square as well. Laurie says the message she gets from spirits there is that they want people to know it’s a cemetery, not a park. It is sad that most of the people who walk through the square have no idea that they are walking on a burial ground. I guess I would want my resting place to be honored too.

In addition to the EMF meters, she also uses dowsing rods, which are L-shaped and made of lightweight metal. If the participant holds them while thinking very clearly of what it is he or she wants to find, the rods will cross in the area of that energy. The rods can also be used to ask yes/no questions, as can a digital voice recorder. She had a digital voice recorder with her, and once we got the men to be quiet, she and I used it to ask some questions of spirits in the park. When she played the recording back, there wasn’t any response. She thinks the yippy little dogs carrying on there that night were probably annoying the spirits. (I can sympathize.)

In one of the versions of the film What The Bleep Do We Know, there is a scene describing how the native Americans could not see Christopher Columbus’ ships when they arrived. Those massive ships with their rippling sails were so out of the everyday realm for the natives that they literally could not see them. One of them, the chief or medicine man, noticed the change in the ocean wave patterns caused by the ships and concentrated until he could see them. He was then able to ‘show’ the ships to the others. Seems impossible to believe, but according to the film, that’s what really happened. Perhaps there is another reality coexisting with ours, overlapping and intersecting our layers, other energies not seen by our untrained, unconcentrating eyes. Maybe the apparitions pop in and out of our reality at a rate that can’t be seen by (most of) our eyes, but can be caught with the speed of a camera lens. Perhaps I am too obsessively analytical, too much in my head, to truly be aware of the presence of ghosts or spirits around me.

Maybe life energy is transformed but not lost. Perhaps death is not an end but a beginning of a new stage, in a new dimension. At any rate, Laurie Hull offers an opportunity for people to hone their perception skills, to have an experience out of the everyday realm. Maybe allowing a ghostly spirit or two to tell their stories, to make connections, will help them rest in peace.

I’m looking forward to playing with Laurie’s paranormal investigation equipment at one of Grim Philly’s Halloween ghost hunting tours. I’m hardly daring to hope that I’ll have some kind of experience with a presence, but this time, I might even ask. I’m ready.

Information about this year’s hands-on historical ghost hunt can be found at www.grimphilly.com. For more information about other ghost hunts in the Philadelphia region, check out Tri County Paranormal’s website at www.delcoghosts.com. Learn more about local haunted areas in Laurie Hull’s books Philly’s Main Line Haunts and Supernatural Pennsylvania.

Hiking My Spectacular Home: Prowling the Sproul State Forest in PA

2011-07-31T17:10:00.000-07:00

“There’s a view there, but I’m not too sure how good it will be.” View? I was all about the view. That was the reward for a difficult hike. That was the explanation I gave to my mother who could not understand “why anyone would want to walk up a mountain” – how else would I get to see wonderful vistas? How else could I stand in awe at my own puniness in the face of nature’s grandness? And this hike had promised three vistas, at least one of them spectacular. Spectacular! I was in for every single one. Our guide, Mike Eckley of The Nature Conservancy, said it was only one hundred yards up or so. Yes! I started up behind him, and the women who caught up to us at the end of the conversation followed along dutifully.

Well, they followed along dutifully, but not silently! I felt the slightest twinge of guilt as we fought our way through thick brush (following an almost invisible trail made, we decided, by a very thin deer who had leapt most of the way), uphill, in hundred degree heat. The low brambles wound around our legs, untying shoes, tripping us, and leaving a long scratch of blood from my knee to ankle. One hundred yards hadn’t sounded very far, but it was a football field after all, in less than ideal conditions. I almost ran into the woman in front of me who had stopped. We all looked at each other quizzically.

“It’s actually really amazing in the fall, with all the leaves. It just pops.” Oh. We could barely make out a mountain across from what we guessed must be a chasm, though there were too many trees on our side obscuring our sight to be sure. The forest was too dense to get any closer to the edge, though after all we had just done, I was tempted to try it. If I strained and used all of my powers of imagination, I could see the view’s potential. In the fall. We sighed and turned around. One woman good-naturedly joked that it was a good thing Mike had left his gun behind. He apologetically shimmied to the end of our line and led us back to the main path. The view really hadn’t been that great, but I was still glad we had checked it out. It’s all about exploration and adventure!

I attended the eighth annual “Prowl the Sproul,” a Keystone Trails Association hiking and camping weekend extravaganza held at Sproul State Forest near Renovo in central Pennsylvania. Camping was at the Western Clinton Sportsmen’s Association, and less adventurous hikers could stay in local hotels. Originally from Scranton, PA, I had been living abroad and in other states for the last twenty-five years or so, and I recently left Los Angeles to move back east. In the LA area, there were thirty or so meetup hiking groups, so I had my pick of trails every weekend. My search for hiking clubs wasn’t going so well in northeastern PA. I did find the NEPA Trail Mix group on meetup, but they seemed to focus on kayaking and mountain biking. It was extremely frustrating to look out of the windows of my parents’ house and see nothing but mountains in any direction – but not have anyone to hike with! When trail leader Karen Verchimak posted on the NEPA Trail Mix site about KTA’s “Prowl the Sproul,” I couldn’t have been more excited.

Karen and I arrived Friday morning, set up our tents, and had lunch. We could choose between two hikes for Friday afternoon. First was The Nature Conservancy Loop Hike: Hike and explore parts of Nature Conservancy Property. Explore new territory only seen at Prowl the Sproul with three scenic vistas, including the spectacular (emphasis mine) Bear Pen Vista, 4.5 miles. The second one was Pat Reeder’s Loop: See Reeder’s Trail, historic Pat Reeder’s Tavern and Little Boyer Trail. This hike resembles many hikes in Ireland, since this hike will start and finish at historic Pat Reeder’s Tavern. The trail will traverse near a gas well site, 6 miles. It was an insanely hot weekend in late July, in the nineties already, so Karen opted for the shorter hike. I was torn. I preferred a longer hike for more of a challenge, and I was curious to see the historic Irish tavern. Still, those vistas, and one of them spectacular… Karen assured me that the tavern was just historic, not necessarily cute or quaint, and the other guide said we would drive near it anyway and could stop on our own after our hike. It was settled – on our way to vistas!

When we arrived at The Nature Conservancy property, our guide Mike gave us an overview of his work directing stewardship for the forests. As we started out, he showed us a tree whose bark had been gouged out by a bear marking his territory and told us how easy it had been to see them in the spring when they were mating. We weren’t fortunate (or unfortunate) enough to see any on our hike, but Mike did point out various trees to us and explain the Conservancy’s work repopulating the forest. When I walk through a forest, I only think about the beauty of the trees. I had never considered what kinds of trees were there, what was happening to them, and how their appearance or disappearance could affect wildlife in the area. The chestnut blight of the early 1900s devastated the American chestnut tree population, and the Conservancy is involved in a project to create disease-resistant hybrids with Asian chestnut trees that seem to have some resistance. The chestnuts were really important as a source of food for wildlife in the area, and they were a hard wood tree that was widely used for lumber.

Another hard wood tree, oak, picked up some of the slack, since acorns are also a vital nutrient for so many animals, but various insects and diseases have been plaguing those trees as well. The Nature Conservancy has been working to replant oak trees, but mountain laurel and other low growing plants and shrubbery overwhelm the young shoots, and those that do make it to sapling get eaten by deer. The Conservancy was working with hunters to control the deer population, but Mike came to the conclusion that fences to keep away the deer were the best answer. Unfortunately, it’s an expensive solution, and one that is only being used minimally now, as the Conservancy’s budget will allow.

After a stop to use the outhouse and dip our bandanas in the icy cold stream (heaven!) at Dark Hollow Camp, we finally came to Bear Pen Vista, the spectacular one. It was definitely worth it! We threw off the shadowy veil of the forest and stepped into a wide expanse of sunny green mountain range, blue-edged and hazy in its brilliance. Where one mountain ended, another began, staggered at angles like the humps of slumbering dinosaurs, guarding the valley. The western branch of the Susquehanna River snaked off along the outer edge of the bowl, protected in its fortress, oblivious to the horizon.

I stopped and took a deep breath – this was my forest, my mountains, my vista – or I suppose more accurately, I belonged to it. I was born in Pennsylvania, spent the first seventeen years of my life in it, and never hiked its mountains. I saw them just about every day as I was growing up, their majesty, their brilliant colors in the summer and fall; I drove among the quaint coal mining towns that grew up in their hollows, and I completely took them for granted. Until I was gone, of course, and felt an ache that I only recognize now, back among them. The mountains of Pennsylvania are comfortable and familiar; I feel like I know them and they know me. Everywhere has something to offer, and I’ve spent most of my life traveling around appreciating other places. How wonderful to finally love what my own state, what my home has to offer.

The last mile of the hike from the vista back to the cars was all uphill, so Mike left us on the road to the vista while he went to get his truck to shuttle us back. I would have preferred the longer hike, even with the ungodly heat (at its full length it was only 4.5 miles), but I really wanted to see the view. In hindsight, I guess I could have walked back with him; he did come back to the vista with the truck, but at the time I wasn’t really clear on that. I’m okay hiking in the heat; it’s only when I stop to rest that I feel overheated. It was a fantastic vista, but the hot temperature didn’t allow us to enjoy it for long! When Mike came back, we took photos and piled into the back of the pickup truck. Many of the women had never ridden in a pickup before and were quite excited, so I didn’t feel too badly about missing the end of the hike.

On the way back to our campsite, Mike pointed out Pat Reeder’s Tavern, so we stopped in to check it out. There really wasn’t anything Irish about it except the name, and it was a bit of a dive, but everyone inside was chatty and friendly, and it was air conditioned. I hardly needed a beer to dehydrate myself further, but I was not about to go back outside before cooling off, and they had Pennsylvania’s own Yuengling. Sold.

We sat next to a young man from Arkansas, one of the men working with the gas company, drilling for natural gas in the area. He drove the excavator to create and maintain the roads needed for the drilling to progress. He didn’t seem to have an ethical problem with his work. (I was horrified at his story of hanging doughnuts and marshmallows off tree branches to get black bears to stand up for photos, so I didn’t think we’d agree on the repercussions of natural gas drilling.) It made me wonder what The Nature Conservancy’s take on it was; I hadn’t thought to ask Mike, though after that I think I discussed it with every guide and hiker who would listen. How much advocacy did the Conservancy's budget allow, particularly in this tough economic climate? And what was I doing to learn about the environmental issues in my own backyard? How was I contributing to the preservation of the natural wonder around me? Would future generations be able to enjoy it as I had? Was I enjoying it to the fullest extent that I could be?

I sipped my Pennsylvania Yuengling and remembered the spectacular view. I was off to a good start.

Ventura’s The Cliff House Inn: Close to LA but Worlds Away

2010-09-08T22:24:00.001-07:00

We heard the surf pounding the rocks in front of us, though we couldn’t see the waves in the inky blackness. Far out on the water’s surface a flame flickered and glowered, illuminating the edges of a wooden pier. Festive white lights ran up and around the palm trees next to our table, and I read the menu by the dim light of the candle. It was too beautiful not to sit outside, though my dress-up skirt and cute jacket were obscured by layers of towels from the room and my fiance’s extra jacket, a navy blue workman’s number with Loctite written in bright yellow letters. We were staying at The Cliff House Inn and Shoals Restaurant, a locale more reminiscent of a weathered bungalow in Maine than a beachfront hotel off the 101 in Ventura.

It’s probably the most romantic getaway we’ve found in such close proximity to Los Angeles. The Inn is set right on the edge of a low cliff, affording every room an up close and personal view of the ocean. We could even see the waves while lying down, if we reclined at 45 degrees and kept the curtains open, and we heard them crashing along the shoreline all night long. The sound of the surf helped to keep out the noise of our elderly neighbors’ television, but fortunately they went to sleep early. The wood balcony leading to the rooms is a bit warped, and the rooms are desperately in need of some repainting, but I find the slightly dilapidated nature of the place charming.

Between the Inn and the ocean is a good-sized pool, though we’ve only been there when it was too cool to swim. Lounge chairs line the shoreline for a relaxing nap outside, especially nice in the early afternoon when the marine layer lifts. My favorite amenity is the ping pong table, and a rousing game with my fiancé always puts me in a good mood, particularly when I win – which isn’t as often as I’d like. I used to play regularly with my brother when I was growing up. He usually won too.

Surfers and others wanting to explore the shoreline can make their way carefully down to the beach. The sandy area is not very wide, so those who don’t want to get their shoes or themselves wet should go during low tide. (High tide is more fun though.) Big boulders make nice seats to view the scenery, and little tide pools offer the chance to check out crabs and mussels. We don’t surf, so I don’t know how good the waves are for that, but we did see 2 or 3 guys in wetsuits heading out that way as we were leaving. For a place right off the freeway, it feels amazingly remote.

Shoals Restaurant is the perfect final touch. The inside is classically decorated, white tablecloths and candles, but we’ve always chosen to sit outside by the water. The food is wonderful, creative and tasty, and reasonably priced for such high quality. The scallops appetizer is our absolute favorite, and we’ve always enjoyed the menu entrees as well as the specials – particularly the fish. A room stay comes with complementary continental breakfast until 10 am – boiled eggs, bagels, toast, cold cereal, and fruit. For those who wake up later or want to drive up from LA in the morning, they have a delicious brunch menu as well, though there were not as many “breakfasty” items as I had expected. The salmon was excellent.

Rooms run about $150-$200 a night, with frequent Internet specials, particularly for weekday stays. The Inn prefers Friday and Saturday stays, but they will release rooms for one night if they are still available on the preceding Thursday.

The Cliff House Inn and Shoals Restaurant, 6602 W. Pacific Coast Hwy, Mussel Shoals, CA 93001.

Houdini Séance Evening: a Crazy, Kooky Way to Spend a Birthday

2009-02-10T20:07:00.000-08:00

“Open sesame.” I asked the secret passageway through the bookcase to reveal itself. “Open sesame!” I commanded, an octave lower. Nothing. I looked at my friends, the ten of us pressed close together in the bustling hallway, but they were all there for the first time as well. I stomped my foot. “OPEN--” The creaky bookcase swung open, and we hurriedly followed the guide inside. For my fortieth birthday I had decided to celebrate with the Houdini Séance Evening at The Magic Castle in Los Angeles.

My boyfriend at the time had told me about The Magic Castle’s Houdini room. A magician friend of his who used to live in LA had given him a tour once, and apparently the room, filled with actual Houdini artifacts and memorabilia, could be reserved for dinner and a séance. A séance! What a crazy, creepy, kooky way to spend my fortieth birthday! Apparently Houdini himself had enjoyed séances, and one could be arranged along with a five-course meal in this private room. I had never been to The Magic Castle, a formal dinner club famous for its fabulous magic shows. Only members of the Academy of Magical Arts or their guests could get in, but the Houdini Séance Evening was actually open to the public without a member’s assistance.

I called to reserve the room a little under one month in advance and there was a seating available for a Saturday evening, a few days before my actual birthday. I was lucky to get a date with such little notice. The event was for 10-12 people, no less, no more, and a deposit of $300 had to be made up front. Cancellation for a full refund of the deposit could be made up to 14 days before the event. The remainder was due in one payment on the night of the séance. The total came to $177 per person, which included a five-course meal with wine and gratuity, the séance, and seating at the Palace Mystery Magic Show (in the Castle’s largest theater). The only things not included were valet parking ($8 per car) and additional drinks. It was certainly more expensive than I could logically afford, but I was only turning 40 once.

Every now and then I listen to Hay House Radio on the Internet, an inspirational talk radio station billed as “radio for the soul.” A week or so before the séance, I heard two different speakers who discussed communication with the dead. One was a woman on a cruise ship who led a session that was more talk show format than strict séance, with the spirits talking to her, not through her, about people there in the room. Another was a man who could do séance-like readings for listeners who called in to his show. I wondered what the process was for transfer of information between listener’s ghost and radio host across state - and phone - lines. A bit of a stretch, particularly as he seemed to be wrong quite frequently, but I got to thinking – and worrying – about the séance. There were likely mediums who could legitimately call upon spirits of the dead, and it seemed logical enough that these spirits might have messages of comfort or encouragement for the living. But like psychics or palm readers, there were probably many more swindlers than mediums with authentic talent, and I had no way of knowing which we would have at The Magic Castle.

The idea of a séance was creepy, but then I didn’t really know too many people who had died. Either of my grandmothers was the best bet for someone who might try to contact me, and I was sure that both of them would only have messages of love and support. (My one grandmother might complain that I was dating a Jewish man, but she wouldn’t say anything scary.) I had to submit a seating chart to The Magic Castle a few days before the event – full names for everyone - maybe so the medium could google us for séance-worthy material? At any rate, I decided to seat the medium between me and my sister, who also lives in LA. At least I’d have familial back-up.

All of the people attending were my friends, but none of them really knew each other. My friend Nancy came out to visit from Baltimore with her mother-in-law Galina who was visiting from Russia. My Russian friend Tanya attended, so she sat next to Galina and gave Nancy a break from translating. Nancy talked to my former roommate, and my sister yelled across the table at Tanya’s husband who spoke a little Russian but couldn’t really follow his wife’s conversation, and at Fred, a friend of my boyfriend’s. While they discussed detective novels, my boyfriend was deep in a music conversation with David, Fred’s husband, and I was… feeling a little left out. The feeling was short-lived; my boyfriend leaned in to give me a kiss, Tanya led everyone in a toast, and I opened my present from Galina, a beautiful crystal vase that she brought from Russia. It was “an empty vase to be filled up with wonderful things,” as she hoped my life would be too. It felt really good to have all of them there, and once I moved to a shelf the creepy, crystal ball marking the medium’s place next to me and pulled away his or her chair, I relaxed completely.

The dinner was very good: lobster bisque, shrimp cocktail, Caesar salad, followed by a choice of beef tenderloin flambé with morel mushrooms, cognac cream sauce, a ragout of summer vegetables and roasted potatoes; or salmon with scallion risotto, Mediterranean salsa, and summer vegetables. The server told us flat out not to order the vegetarian dish. For desert was banana’s foster flambé and a little brandy. Wine was plentiful, though there wasn’t really time for sipping and chatting; the wait staff was rushing us so that we would fit dinner and the séance in before the Palace Mystery Magic Show.

After dinner, we were asked to leave the room for 20 minutes or so; the staff wanted to clean up our table for the séance. We headed downstairs. The Magic Castle exterior really is castle-like, sitting high on hill above Hollywood. The interior is lush and elegant, glamorous and haunted, all velvet and candelabras, the way Poe’s House of Usher would have looked before it fell. The piano bar purportedly has the ghost of Aunt Irma who can play any song requested, if you ask her nicely. I was delighted to hear “Heart and Soul” – not a tough one if I can play it, but then, she had to play both parts by herself. We thought we’d stump her with a Russian song, but she did know “Moscow Nights” (Moskovniye Vechera), as did Fred, surprising us all with his hidden knowledge of Russian.

When we returned, the heavy crystal ball was back in its place between me and my sister. Our medium had arrived, a balding man with glasses and neatly trimmed goatee. He stood behind his chair in a black tuxedo and welcomed us all to the séance. I was completely on edge, and it wasn’t until we reached the end of the séance, all of us holding hands in utter darkness listening to a spooky recording of spirit voices and thunder crashes, that I realized we were partaking in a magic show, not an actual experience with the occult. I was a little disappointed, not only because I was curious, (if not terrified), but also because a couple I am friends with had bowed out, uncomfortable with the supernatural aspect of the evening. Oh well. The magician put on a wonderful show, and at least half of us were able to actually participate in the performance, which was a lot of fun. For one of the tricks, the spirit of a woman who had lived with Houdini as a little girl was supposed to contact one of our group, and my boyfriend swore he was tapped twice on the back. The magician was very knowledgeable about Houdini and related several interesting anecdotes about his life. He answered all of our questions and explained the artifacts in the room, including the only pair of handcuffs that Houdini couldn’t unlock and his famous milk can.

Following the séance, we all got in line for the Palace Mystery Magic Show. The performance had a little of everything - comedy, great magic tricks, even a juggler. I think it was about an hour. Audience members near the front rows were chosen to participate. Our two Ketel One vodka cranberry cocktails came to $30, but otherwise there was nothing to complain about. On the way out of the theater, we saw Natalie Portman in line for the next show, looking just as fresh and cute as she does in her movies. One of The Magic Castle staff members, a young guy in his twenties, confided in me that he was going to ask her out. I advised him to join the circle of admirers soon or he might miss his chance, but he said he was waiting for just the right moment. I wished him luck.

A few of us stayed after the big magic show to check out one of the intimate magic rooms that seated about 12 people. We were all crammed in right up next to the magician, a woman with a deep booming voice and thick eyebrows, who I think was really a man. Even that close, the sleight of hand was absolutely imperceptible. I was really impressed with the professionalism and high quality of all the magicians we saw.

In short, the Houdini Séance Evening is great for special occasions. For more ordinary nights out, dinner and a few shows at The Magic Castle, sans séance, is much less. The trick is to be sponsored by a member, but just about everyone in LA knows someone who knows someone who is a member. The Magic Castle also offers brunch on the weekends at a reasonable price.

No spirits, no grandmothers, no messages of support or encouragement – or were there? Who’s to say that my deceased grandmothers weren’t passing on their blessings through my friends and magical experiences? At any rate, it was a wonderful night out and very special birthday.