Blog #13. God's light in us.
Thomas Merton, in Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, wrote: “At the center of our being is a point of nothingness which is untouched by sin or by illusions, a point of pure truth, a point or spark which belongs entirely to God. It is never at our disposal, but from which God disposes our lives. It is inaccessible to the fantasies of our own mind or the brutalities of our own will. This little point of nothingness and of absolute poverty is the pure glory of God in us…. It is like a diamond, blazing with the invisible light of heaven.”
Blog #12 Dylan Thomas at Christmas
One of your family traditions is to listen to a wonderful recording of Dylan Thomas reading his memorialized “A Child’s Christmas in Wales.” Absolutely delightful! There is a section in there about snow. “ But that was not the same snow” I say. “ Our snow was not only shaken from whitewash buckets down the sky, it came shawling out of the ground and swam and drifted our of the arms and hands and bodies of the trees; Snow grew overnight on the roofs of the houses like a pure a nd grandfather moss, minutely white-ivies the walls and settled on the postman…”
My recent painting Is an attempt to show a possible home in Dylan Thomas’s village after the snow storm
Blog #11 - My appearance on the television program To Tell The Truth in 1960
Nancy Schrock found the episode of "To Tell the Truth" I appeared on back on January 28, 1960--just after I arrived in New York City. Wow, this brings back memories!
Definitely worth a watch. Fast forward to 16:30 on the timeline. I’m the third contestant. Fun!
Blog #10 - Preparing for a Hannibal Hike. July 2018
Every four or five years members of our 1959 expedition that took Jumbo over the Alps have a celebratory climb up to the Col de Clapier. We think that this was the pass Hannibal took with his army and thirty-seven war elephants when he attacked Rome over two thousand years ago. Jumbo, our beloved elephant, was our pacemaker and travel companion.
I am only a few days away from this year’s climb on July 31 and am beginning to get excited. It looks as if we will be about forty strong and, as before, we will meet at the Youth Hostel at Lanslebourg, the nearest town to the pass, on the French side, for the send-off. There will be lots of family and friends, from England, The Netherlands, The USA, Switzerland, France and Italy. What a great family reunion!
As an organizer of the climb, I have prepared this e-mail to bring everyone on the climb up to date so here it is:
Each of our separate climbing groups is responsible for all its reservations, equipment and safety. The climb to the Col de Clapier is considered safe, weather being the only variable. The downhill trail from the pass to Giaglione, the first village in Italy, can be dangerous, with possible landslides making the trail disappear. I do not advise taking it unless you are fit and willing to take the risks. Allow 6-7 hours and have a plan to be picked up.
POSSIBLE PLAN FOR THE DAY OF THE ASCENT:
We would go over this the evening before, (July 30) so that everyone can pre-decide which route to take, as we are going to split up into two separate groups.
Group 1 will take the 40 minute drive from Lanslebourg to Le Planey, the last village up the valley from Bramans. This was, we believe, Hannibal's route. The hike from there to the pass will take 4-5 hours. (See map attached).
Group 2 will take the easier route. We go by bus or car from Lanslebourg to the Col de Petit Mont Cenis. The drive will take about an hour and twenty minutes. From there it is a fairly level 2.5 to 3 hour hike to the pass. (See map attached).
Our aim for both groups is to be at the pass by 12:30-1:00 pm for a brief ceremony, toasts for Hannibal, for elephants, especially for Jumbo, and the reading of Hannibal's famous speech to his exhausted army. In the afternoon the fittest will take the downhill climb into Italy while the rest of us can saunter back to our bus or cars at the Col de Petit Mont Cenis.
There will be time for a shower before we meet for our special banquet at the Hotel La Vieille Poste, Lanslebourg, at about 7:00 pm. We will have songs, magic tricks and other surprises and awards as has been the custom over the last few years.
If time permits, I plan to send blogs of our climb and hope you will follow along. To put you into the picture, here is a map showing where we will climb.
Blog #8 May 1, 2017
Inspired by the water colors of Pat Yager
Inspired by the water colors of Pat Yager
Blog #6 Tolstoy Speaks
I just found this wonderful passage from Tolstoy's novel "Resurrection."
Blog #5 Alaska Adventure
September 2016
Luci and I had the adventure of our lives, attending a writers' workshop at a fish camp on a remote island off the far west side of Kodiak Island, Alaska. The dear people, the wild beauty, the sense of sacred space and of wonder will be with us for years. Here are some sketches to keep the memory fresh and in gratitude to Leslie and to the Fields family who made it all possible.
Kodiak Island from Harvester Island. If you enlarge the picture you might see the seagulls on the spit.
Dave Densmore, our fisherman-poet reading one of his sagas.
Dave Densmore and Luci, two poets on the island
Blog # 4. April 2016 Hannibal's Pass. Was it elephant dung?
Dr. Mahoney of York University has located horse dung on the Col de la Traversette, in the French Alps. This has led to a new debate as to which route Hannibal took to cross the Alps with an army of 30,000 men and 37 elephants.
You can follow this in more detail if you go to this blogspot. It includes the chart comparing possible routes in the postlude to my book: "Alpine Elephant".
BLOG #3: A great Lenten poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins
Easter Communion
Pure fasted faces draw unto this feast:
God comes all sweetness to your Lenten lips.
You striped in secret with breath-taking whips,
Those crooked rough-scored chequers may be pieced
To crosses meant for Jesu's; you whom the East
With draught of thin and pursuant cold so nips
Breathe Easter now; you serged fellowships,
You vigil-keepers with low flames decreased,
God shall o'er-brim the measures you have spent
With oil of gladness, for sackcloth and frieze
And the ever-fretting shirt of punishment
Give myrrhy-threaded golden folds of ease.
Your scarce-sheathed bones are weary of being bent:
Lo, God shall strengthen all the feeble knees.
Blog #2 - Sketches at our mini family reunion
Venice Summer 2016 From right to left: Jonathan, Rachel, Martina, Nick, Helena and me.
Hello, I'm John Hoyte This is Blog #1
Reading my memoir aloud at the Chrysostom Society meeting at Camp Casey, WA.
This, my first blog, is to introduce you to my web site. Through it I am hoping to give you an overview of my life, which I might call, “A journey into Light”. The journey goes on, here in Bellingham, Washington, and is as rich and challenging as it has ever been. I am deeply in love with Luci Shaw, a well known poet, whom I married twenty five years ago. I make little claim to the remarkable things that have happened over the years and can only echo what Oliver Sacks expressed in his latest book, “Gratitude.” That title is the word that keeps coming to mind.
This overview covers some of my deeper interests, writing, sketching, acrylic painting, engineering, music and finally “expeditioning.” Two of the expeditions took place in the Alps and the third in the Sierra mountains of California. I plan to go into them in some detail as, in each case, they were unique and had a profund impact on my life. The fourth is the creation of a symbiosis, a forging of a new life together with Luci.
From time to time I plan to update this blog and try to convey the profound richness of life we experience in our eighties.