An interview with Denise Astorino
1. How long have you been a professional musician?
Well, "Professional," I believe, is a rather subjective term. Technically, I am a professional because I get paying gigs from time to time, but I am not a full-time employee of any particular professional [paid, I presume] enterprise. In addition, some of the non-paid performances I've done have received higher acclaim and involved significantly more qualified musicians than almost all of my paid performances....which leads me to question things, which generally leaves me QUITE confused. SO, let's just say that my first paying gig was as a soprano section leader at a United Methodist church in Birmingham, AL in 2003. My first professional accolade, however, was in the Boston Globe last summer for performing the Berio Folk Songs at the Gardner Museum--for free. Oy. The same goes for my life as a composer. My heaviest-hitting, highest profile commissions are often the ones that fall somewhat short in the funding department. I hope to remedy these things in the future and prevent myself from falling deeper and deeper into an already debilitating existential crisis.
Thankfully, a healthy sense of bitter angst helps with my creativity. It's better this way. Really.
2. Where did you receive your training?
I took my first voice lessons as a high school student under a particularly devoted choral/theater teacher, Brenda Sue Holcombe. After High School, I remained in private voice and composition lessons throughout my time at Birmingham-Southern College and during my Master's at Cleveland State University. To this day, my teachers are still my strongest influences as a composer/performer.
3. How long did you study your instrument prior to your first paid public performance?
...As per the paid gig rant in above, I had taken two years of voice lessons before I was hired as a soprano section leader in Birmingham.
4. What style (s) of music do you play?
As a performer, I specialize in the music of living composers. Gotta help out my own kind, I suppose. Other than specialization though, I have performed in various styles, as have most performers--the sign of someone devoted to music is versatility. I'm not sure I believe that. I may have just made it up. But it sounds nice.
5. How often do you practice?
10 hours a week for voice, significantly less for piano. The later, I only practice out of obligation, because it's just shameful for a composer to suck as a pianist.
6. Do you perform as a solo artist or in an ensemble? Explain.
Vocalists generally rely on an ensemble or at least a piano for support--nature of the instrument. But I prefer to sing as a member of a chamber ensemble [preferably with disassociated instruments] and not necessarily as the center of attention [which is difficult for sopranos and for audiences--historically speaking, and again with the nature of the instrument thing]. I like the experience of collaboration and mutual exchange with other performers, especially when each performer brings a different sound color and instrument quality to the group. To me, that's what making music, and perhaps art in general, is all about--interaction--a means of enhancing human connectivity through individualized contribution.
7. How has playing an instrument and performing added to your life?
As a member of the field of music, I feel like I have a strong grasp of subjective thought in a world where objectivity dominates a lot of artistic perception. Music communicates in a manner that can mean many things to many different people. Everyone approaches music on a different level and with a different set of mental constructs that influence the way it affects them. It's beautiful for many reasons, but its subjectivity, I believe, makes it transcendent. One must open the mind and allow him or herself to be affected--and to embrace a work of art for its own individual quality, discarding other language. It enhances one's worldview and ability to have exchange, I think: the ability to immerse oneself in a foreign language [be it musical, visual, Czech, or otherwise] and to embrace a mode of communication that transcends what one may already know.
So yes, as a musician, my life is enriched by a sense of purpose--to teach communication.
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Friday, December 18, 2009
Just look at this mess!
"For if you suffer your people to be ill-educated, and their manners to be corrupted from their infancy, and then punish them for those crimes to which their first education disposed them, what else is to be concluded from this, but that you first make thieves and then punish them? "
— Thomas More
Last night, I had a particularly interesting conversation about the state of musical affairs in the U.S.--and I suppose the world, why not. We were discussing the place for contemporary music in the recession era orchestra's programming. Two glasses of Cabernet into the chat, I was feeling kind of fiery, so things may have gotten a bit heated...not that anyone was surprised.
There will always be the questions of how to bring more patrons to concerts and how to secure repeat funding from donors. Some around the table approached the issue from the standpoint of accessibility, making the concert experience enjoyable and understandable to the audience. This meant increasing the more easily-embraceable factors of the concert [Old Favorites, if you will] and decreasing the factors that might alienate attendees [most commonly, New music]. It's excellent in theory, but the problem with this stance is that it perpetuates its own mess. When, in the history of concert programming, were pre-existing works given more stature than those happening in the present day? Had I more motivation, I'd research it, but seeing as how I'm sitting in Starbucks avoiding writing personal statements, I'm just going to throw out the question.
When?
Well, whenever it was, it was the beginning of the downfall of artistic vibrancy in society, and perhaps even the downfall of creative, subjective thought on the part of arts patrons. And it makes perfect sense, because the later is required for the maintenance of the former. Thriving communities depend on creativity--not only in their leaders but in their constituents as well--and this extends beyond the arts [though whether we realize it or not, they are part of every element of culture]. The creator is not the only member of the equation for whom it is necessary to think creatively. We can and must absorb/follow/listen/view creatively. We're Capitalists, for Pete's sake! Somewhere along the road to where we are, the creative following process became unnecessary [Maybe it was television.], and we developed a preference for the things we already know, hence the popularity of the Old Favorites and the disapproval of the unknown. We began to experience music the way I experience grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup, as comfort food. Now don't misunderstand me; I LOVE tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches, but I also get excited about the opportunity to taste butternut squash manicotti or edamame and tofu succotash. [On a sidebar, Luxe Kitchen & Lounge on Detroit, the Chef's special--pay $22, pick a protein, and let the chef go wild for three courses--might just change your world...but I digress] And I'll always be a sucker for Judy Garland and Loretta Lynn recordings, the second movement of the New World Symphony, and the third movement of the German Requiem, especially if Thomas Quasthoff is the soloist.
I do not dare discredit the historical concert or the validity of older works...The old is to be revered on the same level as the new. Without what has gone before us, we would have no precedent for anything that exists now. The trouble arises when we revere the old OVER the new, to the extent that we exclude it altogether. And I'm afraid that if we don't take action soon, exclusion of the new is the direction in which we're headed, toward living in a more humdrum world than we could ever imagine. So by attempting to please and pacify listeners...donors in particular, by giving them only what we think will be approved, we do our entire society a disservice [pardon my melodrama]. We teach stagnation. But isn't that the issue in the first place?
Obviously, something has to change. Every bleeding heart liberal [myself included] can complain about lack of progress, but by what means do we bring progress into being? We've tried the gingerly, not to mention somewhat cowardly, route--In an orchestral setting, this sometimes takes the form of opening with a ten minute contemporary overture by the composer-in-residence and then apologizing for it with Strauss waltzes and pieces akin to Beethoven's 5th for the rest of the concert. In the Cleveland Orchestra's case, this certainly takes the form of a single new music concert at the end of the season...to placate the New Music lovers...on a holiday weekend when everyone's out of town...with a truncated single performance concert schedule...because THAT'S not obvious at ALL. There have, of course, been other organizations who preferred to keep a certain kind of music all in one place. I believe one of them was called the Nazi Party. Bitter, am I? Rather than acceptance and embrace of newness, we perpetuate tolerance, at the very most. We've also taken the more divisive route of shoving a new piece in the middle of a concert with no relevance to anything else in it.
What I suggest: We have to take into account "those crimes to which [our] first education disposed [us]," to at best tolerate the new and revere the old above all else. And it is indeed, I believe, a crime. By steeping our culture in a particular aesthetic, we've deprived it of its ability to examine anything without a palette for excellence [i.e. the old "I just like things to have a pretty melody" adage]. That, I think, is our mess. To clean it up, we must educate compassionately. We should provide a context for the new and bridge the gaps in understanding. Give 'em a frickin' palette. Pre-concert lectures are a good beginning, but perhaps we should more often incorporate MID-concert discussion-- Explain how a new piece relates to an older piece--preferably with both on the same concert. I once heard a composer say that "we all have our own ways of dealing with the past [-Keith Fitch, 2009]." Sometimes these dealings are obvious, whether outright rejection of the past, pronounced continuity, or otherwise, and sometimes they require a bit of study to find in a work--but they are present. Concert administrators should take a studious and linear approach to programming, and please, for the love of God, something other than finding pieces that are Old, New, Borrowed, and Blue, etc. [that's a whole other rant for another day]. I'm speaking chronologically here. A good program can explain how Serialism relates to German Romanticism, how Minimalism relates to the classical Ostinato concept, or how Spectralism relates to Klangfarbenmelodie, whether intentionally or not. And I realize that in some cases we limit art by comparing it to everything that happened before. BUT, for the listener who needs a bridge, where else are we to turn?
I'm not writing revolutionary things here. I'm sure they've been expressed before, and more eloquently than I'm expressing them now. And these steps are likely being taken by certain arts organizations and more industrious orchestras. I'd just like to see them taken with more gusto. I'd like to see more steps taken in general, if not in the direction of my suggestions, then toward SOMEthing.
We've made the mess, and now we have to clean it up.
— Thomas More
Last night, I had a particularly interesting conversation about the state of musical affairs in the U.S.--and I suppose the world, why not. We were discussing the place for contemporary music in the recession era orchestra's programming. Two glasses of Cabernet into the chat, I was feeling kind of fiery, so things may have gotten a bit heated...not that anyone was surprised.
There will always be the questions of how to bring more patrons to concerts and how to secure repeat funding from donors. Some around the table approached the issue from the standpoint of accessibility, making the concert experience enjoyable and understandable to the audience. This meant increasing the more easily-embraceable factors of the concert [Old Favorites, if you will] and decreasing the factors that might alienate attendees [most commonly, New music]. It's excellent in theory, but the problem with this stance is that it perpetuates its own mess. When, in the history of concert programming, were pre-existing works given more stature than those happening in the present day? Had I more motivation, I'd research it, but seeing as how I'm sitting in Starbucks avoiding writing personal statements, I'm just going to throw out the question.
When?
Well, whenever it was, it was the beginning of the downfall of artistic vibrancy in society, and perhaps even the downfall of creative, subjective thought on the part of arts patrons. And it makes perfect sense, because the later is required for the maintenance of the former. Thriving communities depend on creativity--not only in their leaders but in their constituents as well--and this extends beyond the arts [though whether we realize it or not, they are part of every element of culture]. The creator is not the only member of the equation for whom it is necessary to think creatively. We can and must absorb/follow/listen/view creatively. We're Capitalists, for Pete's sake! Somewhere along the road to where we are, the creative following process became unnecessary [Maybe it was television.], and we developed a preference for the things we already know, hence the popularity of the Old Favorites and the disapproval of the unknown. We began to experience music the way I experience grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup, as comfort food. Now don't misunderstand me; I LOVE tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches, but I also get excited about the opportunity to taste butternut squash manicotti or edamame and tofu succotash. [On a sidebar, Luxe Kitchen & Lounge on Detroit, the Chef's special--pay $22, pick a protein, and let the chef go wild for three courses--might just change your world...but I digress] And I'll always be a sucker for Judy Garland and Loretta Lynn recordings, the second movement of the New World Symphony, and the third movement of the German Requiem, especially if Thomas Quasthoff is the soloist.
I do not dare discredit the historical concert or the validity of older works...The old is to be revered on the same level as the new. Without what has gone before us, we would have no precedent for anything that exists now. The trouble arises when we revere the old OVER the new, to the extent that we exclude it altogether. And I'm afraid that if we don't take action soon, exclusion of the new is the direction in which we're headed, toward living in a more humdrum world than we could ever imagine. So by attempting to please and pacify listeners...donors in particular, by giving them only what we think will be approved, we do our entire society a disservice [pardon my melodrama]. We teach stagnation. But isn't that the issue in the first place?
Obviously, something has to change. Every bleeding heart liberal [myself included] can complain about lack of progress, but by what means do we bring progress into being? We've tried the gingerly, not to mention somewhat cowardly, route--In an orchestral setting, this sometimes takes the form of opening with a ten minute contemporary overture by the composer-in-residence and then apologizing for it with Strauss waltzes and pieces akin to Beethoven's 5th for the rest of the concert. In the Cleveland Orchestra's case, this certainly takes the form of a single new music concert at the end of the season...to placate the New Music lovers...on a holiday weekend when everyone's out of town...with a truncated single performance concert schedule...because THAT'S not obvious at ALL. There have, of course, been other organizations who preferred to keep a certain kind of music all in one place. I believe one of them was called the Nazi Party. Bitter, am I? Rather than acceptance and embrace of newness, we perpetuate tolerance, at the very most. We've also taken the more divisive route of shoving a new piece in the middle of a concert with no relevance to anything else in it.
What I suggest: We have to take into account "those crimes to which [our] first education disposed [us]," to at best tolerate the new and revere the old above all else. And it is indeed, I believe, a crime. By steeping our culture in a particular aesthetic, we've deprived it of its ability to examine anything without a palette for excellence [i.e. the old "I just like things to have a pretty melody" adage]. That, I think, is our mess. To clean it up, we must educate compassionately. We should provide a context for the new and bridge the gaps in understanding. Give 'em a frickin' palette. Pre-concert lectures are a good beginning, but perhaps we should more often incorporate MID-concert discussion-- Explain how a new piece relates to an older piece--preferably with both on the same concert. I once heard a composer say that "we all have our own ways of dealing with the past [-Keith Fitch, 2009]." Sometimes these dealings are obvious, whether outright rejection of the past, pronounced continuity, or otherwise, and sometimes they require a bit of study to find in a work--but they are present. Concert administrators should take a studious and linear approach to programming, and please, for the love of God, something other than finding pieces that are Old, New, Borrowed, and Blue, etc. [that's a whole other rant for another day]. I'm speaking chronologically here. A good program can explain how Serialism relates to German Romanticism, how Minimalism relates to the classical Ostinato concept, or how Spectralism relates to Klangfarbenmelodie, whether intentionally or not. And I realize that in some cases we limit art by comparing it to everything that happened before. BUT, for the listener who needs a bridge, where else are we to turn?
I'm not writing revolutionary things here. I'm sure they've been expressed before, and more eloquently than I'm expressing them now. And these steps are likely being taken by certain arts organizations and more industrious orchestras. I'd just like to see them taken with more gusto. I'd like to see more steps taken in general, if not in the direction of my suggestions, then toward SOMEthing.
We've made the mess, and now we have to clean it up.
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
Jetting to Jet
[as inscribed on the inside jacket of Ennis Rees’ More of Brer Rabbit’s Tricks]
Hello, my Little Love,
Welcome to the world! I think you’ll find, within a few years of living here, that it’s a pretty nice place. There are a lot of mean Brer Foxes out there; make no mistake about that. But, more importantly, there are also good people—wonderful, kind, loving ones who make this a really beautiful place to be. And you, Sir, are lucky, because a lot of those wonderful people are members of your family who couldn’t be more thrilled to have you here! No matter what, my Dear, you will always be very, very loved. That’s a promise.
Ecstatically Yours,
Aunt Jenna
JETTING TO JET
I am sitting in the Akron-Canton airport, thrilled beyond expression, and rather overwhelmed—It’s an emotional day. Reason #1: Jet
Reason #3: I arrived at
“
In desperation, I dashed off to yet another line to change my ticket, behind a rather irate man with prematurely white hair terrorizing a frazzled airline worker [I get the feeling the white hair was NOT a genetic condition]. I gave her my best comforting smile as I tried in vain to curb a rapidly mounting panic attack and soon found myself outside, counting my breaths, baby gift-filled carry-on luggage in hand, waiting for Sandy’s husband Dave to drive around.
I learned in the car on the way to
*story break for boarding*
I am now on Delta flight 5020 to
WELL WOULDN’T THAT JUST BE THE [*expletive*] CASE? Good grief. Suddenly I feel like [*expletive*]. Not to say that her being a cancer survivor just automatically makes her a saint or something, but I, being of sound health with so much in my favor, manage to be a major [*expletive*] most of the time, rarely stretching beyond my comfort zone or taking chances to help people in need, or even people whom I find moderately annoying. What made her reach out to me, [*expletive*] girl? Today, of all days? I’m amazed at the way life works sometimes, at how well people can care for each other in the midst of difficulty and hopelessness, and at how blindly the caring is offered, fortunately for me.
Tomorrow, I’ll probably go back to being the jaded, insensitive [*expletive*] of a person that I was this morning. But today, right now, I think I might just be sitting next to a fucking angel.
Praise the Lord.
Sunday, August 23, 2009
This one might hurt a little...
Amoeba Records should have its own zip code. After 2 hours of perusing and deliberating, carefully weighing my options and going through an extremely painful process of elimination, I selected 12 cds. Oh hell, I'll just list them. I need a way to affirm myself...and my aching wallet. If that's not what a blog is for I just don't know what is!1. Louis Andriessen: Writing to Vermeer [Nonesuch; De Nederlandse Opera; Schoenberg Ensemble and Asko Ensemble: Susan Narucki, Soprano; Susan Bickley, Mezzo; Barbara Hannigan, Soprano; Reinbert de Leeuw, conductor]
2. Harrison Birtwistle : Secret Theatre [Deutche Grammophon; Ensemble Intercontemporain; Pierre Boulez, conductor]
3. Luigi Dallapiccola: Orchestral Works [Stradivarius; Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale della RAI: Jean Guihen Queyras, Cello; Pascal Rophe, conductor]
4. Helmut Lachenmann : Schwankungen am Rand [ECM: Ensemble Modern; Peter Eotvos, director]
5. Bjork: Selmasongs
6. Bjork: Medulla
7. Frank Black: Teenager of the Year
8. Miriam Makeba: Homeland
9. The Roches: Moonswept
10. Tom Waits: Blood Money
11. Tom Waits: Mule Variations
12. Tom Waits: Real Gone
.:Sometimes I feel very pathetic. Must get a life. Must.
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
Monday, August 10, 2009
Manhattan Sportage: Project Hike, Part II
Yesterday was the second of my hikes at South Chagrin Reservation. Since I just barely made it into the forest trails last week, I decided to hit the woods in a serious way this time around. A couple of friends (the kind and patient duo of Joe Neville and Karl Konz) and I trekked around several trails in the "heart of the forest" (at least that's what the map said), for the most part following the contour of the Chagrin River. Now, the tricky thing about forest trails...they all pretty much look exACTly the same to me. Even while following a trail map (the ones provided by the Cleveland Metroparks have proved to be next to useless) AND using my new fancy shmancy compass/thermometer/whistle/LED light/magnifier/mirror (It called to me from the shelf at Dick's Sporting Goods), we managed to amble around in circles, repeatedly coming back to the same landmarks. That's also the thing about circles. One minute you're going east, the next west, then east again, then west again--so who knows where anybody's headed?
When, eventually, we made a command decision to head across the River (I had to apologize for Joe and Karl's shoes), we found all kinds of new things, including the Sulphur Springs Trailhead and picnic area--kind of a surreal scene, complete with a doppelganger of Cousin Eddie from the National Lampoon movies (we're talking wife beater, cut-off jean shorts, shin-length white tube socks, and white Reeboks--I'm a jerk) and some people walking around in the shallows of the river carrying a cat. Weird.
Past Sulphur Springs, we did a lot of uphilling, meandering around, seeing barely any trail markers, though they weren't exactly necessary because we could actually see SOM Center Road from the trail. Nature is a funny thing. It has no trouble being itself next to its opposite, whereas I had trouble avoiding grumbles about the sound of the cars interrupting my "natural" experience. What did I expect, really? We weren't exactly in uncharted territory--thank goodness, though it kind of felt like we were when we eventually got so turned aro
und that we decided to screw it and do our last mile and a half of hiking along the highway to get back to where we started. Joe's GPS, unlike mine, is actually helpful. Lovely homes along SOM Center and Miles Road. Really, quite lovely. Just go on and call me Nature Girl from here on out. Fiasco? Perhaps. But things could've been worse. For example, I could've gotten us all killed by yellow jackets. That would've definitely been worse. And we could've been so self-involved that we unintentionally ignored all that nature, even in small doses next to major highways, has to show us. She really is beautiful, when I let myself see her, when I get over the fact that I'm not in my realm, but in hers. As Father Gary says, "Don't let your road map keep you from getting lost and collecting seashells." So, in essence, were we lost, or just allowing ourselves to be where we were?
*Insert reflective pause for existential moment*
"Not all those who wander are lost..." J.R.R. Tolkien
We ended our excursion with a little drive into Chagrin Falls for some shakes at the Popcorn Shop. Nice day....Nice day.
Monday, August 3, 2009
Manhattan Sportage: Project Hike, Part I
I've started a ne
w project, where I take a hike a week. Yesterday was the first, through the South Chagrin Reservation, along the Chagrin River. Now I am, by no means, a skilled hiker. I guess I've hiked a lot, and I do hike from time to time, but I can't exactly read a topo map, and I don't know the names of plants or the difference between an escarpment and a hillside. Mostly, it just makes me happy to be outdoors. What exactly the difference is between hiking and walking, I'm not quite sure...Maybe...it's hiking if you're wearing a backpack?
So I begin my hike, sporting a pair of red Nikes and a Manhattan Portage backpack (VERY hardcore-hiker-looking, I know). I had planned to follow the Great Blue Heron Trail along the Chagrin River, up to the Swallow Loop Trail and back--all in all, 8ish or so miles.
The Great Blue Heron trail head was easy enough to find, right next to the Polo Fields, as it said on the map. Once I figured out which way was North, which took about 20 minutes and left me feeling quite pathetic (note to self--procure a compass--My Blackberry's GPS gets confused), I was on my way!
So there I am, marching along, smelling the sweet, grassy forest air, feeling pretty great about life and my new vow to be adventuresome... Ahh.. beautiful day, ge
ntle breeze, enjoying th--KERSPLUNK! I find myself ankle-deep in a gucky mixture of mud and water with a little algae growing on top of it. Awesome. Nature! I can do this. What kind of novice hiker would I be if I let a little greenish-brown guck get in the way of my divine communion with Mother Earth? [Answer: a novice--exactly what I am--which should've given me a clue, but didn't]. I press onward, following what KIND of looks like a trail, but is mostly obscured by the 6-foot tall grass-plant-reed thingies that surround it for what seem like swimming pools of distance on either side (I'm exaggerating, of course, but at the time, I didn't think I was). The tall plant things become denser and denser, covering more and more of the "trail" until I can barely see my feet, and KERSPLUNK! Yet again. The guck returns. [I keep having flashbacks to that scene in Troop Beverly Hills where Shelley Long and her troop are wading through a swamp with a tennis racket because the Red Feathers (those bitches) turned the trail flags around.--It would've been nice to have a tennis racket right then.] The mosquitoes are now basically congregating in a cloud around my face. I can't see more than a foot in front of or behind me for all the damn foliage. I didn't realize I'd be taking a hike through the frickin' Vietnam jungle! I seem to recall having seen a marker for a bridle trail when I first entered the Great Blue Demon--We have a choice here: Would I rather continue to bat my way through the bush or dodge horse poop for three miles? Well Fuck this shit. Completely disoriented, I turn around and attempt to make my way back the way I came, back through the guck, back through the swimming pools of tall plants, now holding my arms in front of me after being repeatedly smacked in the face. By some kind of miracle from Jesus, I come to a clearing, though it isn't the one I started at, and there she is: SC1--Scenic Bridle Trail. ROUND 2.
The Bridle trail is wide, open, and goes through fields of wildflowers, often meandering along a roadside or two. And as it turns out, SC1 runs parallel to the Great Blue He
ron. I do the bridle thing for a while, passing families with small children, geriatric walkers, runners, horse-back riders--of course, dog-walkers...I take a few close-up photos of flowers. It's beautiful. I'm bored.
Back to the bush!
Knowing exactly what I'm getting myself into this time, I plunge through the tall plants with a vengeance! Occasionally, the Blue Heron will dump me out at the river's edge, where the world opens up. I snap a few photos, have a transcendentalist moment, and eat some trailmix before sloshing my way across to the rest of the trail. At one point, four feet in front of me, a doe leaps across the trail, disappearing into the tall grasses. Eventually, I end up at the Squaw Rock Loop, which takes me up a hill and along a ridge overlooking the river. It's cooler in the heights, with a lovely canopy and a little more terrain, kind of perfect, actually. Reminds me the hike my family used to take every year in Helen, Georgia on our camping trip. How very pleasant! I pass a few little waterfalls and decide to take the bridle trail back, coming across a wetland and an abundance of wildflowers--well worth the gucky start!
Definitely--Not Walking.
I never did find the Swallow Loop Trail. Maybe next tim
e.
w project, where I take a hike a week. Yesterday was the first, through the South Chagrin Reservation, along the Chagrin River. Now I am, by no means, a skilled hiker. I guess I've hiked a lot, and I do hike from time to time, but I can't exactly read a topo map, and I don't know the names of plants or the difference between an escarpment and a hillside. Mostly, it just makes me happy to be outdoors. What exactly the difference is between hiking and walking, I'm not quite sure...Maybe...it's hiking if you're wearing a backpack? So I begin my hike, sporting a pair of red Nikes and a Manhattan Portage backpack (VERY hardcore-hiker-looking, I know). I had planned to follow the Great Blue Heron Trail along the Chagrin River, up to the Swallow Loop Trail and back--all in all, 8ish or so miles.
The Great Blue Heron trail head was easy enough to find, right next to the Polo Fields, as it said on the map. Once I figured out which way was North, which took about 20 minutes and left me feeling quite pathetic (note to self--procure a compass--My Blackberry's GPS gets confused), I was on my way!
So there I am, marching along, smelling the sweet, grassy forest air, feeling pretty great about life and my new vow to be adventuresome... Ahh.. beautiful day, ge
ntle breeze, enjoying th--KERSPLUNK! I find myself ankle-deep in a gucky mixture of mud and water with a little algae growing on top of it. Awesome. Nature! I can do this. What kind of novice hiker would I be if I let a little greenish-brown guck get in the way of my divine communion with Mother Earth? [Answer: a novice--exactly what I am--which should've given me a clue, but didn't]. I press onward, following what KIND of looks like a trail, but is mostly obscured by the 6-foot tall grass-plant-reed thingies that surround it for what seem like swimming pools of distance on either side (I'm exaggerating, of course, but at the time, I didn't think I was). The tall plant things become denser and denser, covering more and more of the "trail" until I can barely see my feet, and KERSPLUNK! Yet again. The guck returns. [I keep having flashbacks to that scene in Troop Beverly Hills where Shelley Long and her troop are wading through a swamp with a tennis racket because the Red Feathers (those bitches) turned the trail flags around.--It would've been nice to have a tennis racket right then.] The mosquitoes are now basically congregating in a cloud around my face. I can't see more than a foot in front of or behind me for all the damn foliage. I didn't realize I'd be taking a hike through the frickin' Vietnam jungle! I seem to recall having seen a marker for a bridle trail when I first entered the Great Blue Demon--We have a choice here: Would I rather continue to bat my way through the bush or dodge horse poop for three miles? Well Fuck this shit. Completely disoriented, I turn around and attempt to make my way back the way I came, back through the guck, back through the swimming pools of tall plants, now holding my arms in front of me after being repeatedly smacked in the face. By some kind of miracle from Jesus, I come to a clearing, though it isn't the one I started at, and there she is: SC1--Scenic Bridle Trail. ROUND 2. The Bridle trail is wide, open, and goes through fields of wildflowers, often meandering along a roadside or two. And as it turns out, SC1 runs parallel to the Great Blue He
ron. I do the bridle thing for a while, passing families with small children, geriatric walkers, runners, horse-back riders--of course, dog-walkers...I take a few close-up photos of flowers. It's beautiful. I'm bored. Back to the bush!
Knowing exactly what I'm getting myself into this time, I plunge through the tall plants with a vengeance! Occasionally, the Blue Heron will dump me out at the river's edge, where the world opens up. I snap a few photos, have a transcendentalist moment, and eat some trailmix before sloshing my way across to the rest of the trail. At one point, four feet in front of me, a doe leaps across the trail, disappearing into the tall grasses. Eventually, I end up at the Squaw Rock Loop, which takes me up a hill and along a ridge overlooking the river. It's cooler in the heights, with a lovely canopy and a little more terrain, kind of perfect, actually. Reminds me the hike my family used to take every year in Helen, Georgia on our camping trip. How very pleasant! I pass a few little waterfalls and decide to take the bridle trail back, coming across a wetland and an abundance of wildflowers--well worth the gucky start!
Definitely--Not Walking.
I never did find the Swallow Loop Trail. Maybe next tim
e.
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