What I did on my Summer Vacation
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In the mid-winter months of 2006,  I was contacted by a television producer, now a friend, regarding an upcoming program to be filmed, in part, in Western China.  ‘The First Flower’ was being proposed to NOVA ( Public Broadcasting Corporation), and, well, how would I like to come along?  Trying to insert a two week block of time into an already bloated schedule was akin to stuffing a wide-screen tv into a Birkin bag.  But Western Sichuan Province at the height of flower season, following the same trail of E.H. Wilson over a hundred years prior?  How could I resist?  I would make it work.

That is, if I could squeeze in a talk in Ireland on the way.  How could I possibly cancel?  Bleddyn and Sue Wynn-Jones, from Wales, were to meet me in Dublin for the weekend while I spoke to the Ranunculaceae Society. We would certainly taste a bit of  Jameson on the 4th of July and further laminate with tall tales and laughter our co-joined lives of nearly two decades.    (It was in March of this year that we had last been together.  While staying at Crug near Carnarvon, I had wanted to go for a long run in theirjjj mountains at the base of Snowden.  A mutual friend offered his guiding services and off we ran, and climbed, for over three hours.  Fancying myself fit, I concealed the fact that I was completely foundered for the next week.) Yes, I would make it work. Certainly.

As long as I could get to San Jose, Costa Rica no later than July 20th for two weeks of intensive Spanish.  You see, no hablo espanol. To the degree of traveling I had thus far experienced within the domain of the euphonious Spanish tongue, it was not as disappointing as much as an utter embarrassment that I had not yet respected their cultures enough to learn their language.  I was sure this could come together.  Si.  

Depending, of course, on whether I could leave San Jose in time to reconnoiter with Robert in Boston on August 9th, to spend a long weekend at Skylands in Bar Harbor, celebrating the birthday of our gracious host.  And we would fly together to see Les  Quartre Vent in Quebec.   I could not possibly miss that.  Righty, then, he says, as he takes a deep breath. 
 
A word to those wishing to fly to China from Seattle via Ireland; actually it is several words, only a fraction fit to print.  Unless you really like propelling yourself contorted through space and time in a fragile tin canister of  dry air super-infected with the nasal fauna of 400 complete strangers, don’t try it.   Even with the rather heady pharmacy of legitimately acquired antihistamines, pain killers, sleeping pills and horse tranquilizers, all of which consort particularly well with French Chardonnay, I do not like it. 

As they might say in Dublin, my time there is a blear, but I remember intricate cuisine and excellent wine with my good friends—actually more like family—and taking a long run through the campus of Trinity College where I saw two beautiful, well balanced specimens of Acer macrophyllum ( native to the Pacific Northwest )and reunions with acquaintances from Ireland, England and Sweden.  Yet I was caught within that horrid vice grip, crushed between recollecting a wretched 15 hour flight and anticipating the wretchedness of a 15 hour flight to come.  I considered momentarily applying for political asylum and staying put.  Instead I went online to see if there existed any contraindications between percodan, temazapam, diazapam and, “thank you ma’am, yes, I’ll have another”.

I am now waiting in a bread oven of a jet-way at the Dublin airport in a heat wave, having bid my friends farewell, if I was ever there at all.  Large drops of sweat fly from my brow like a cartoon character. Is it the heat or the realization that our moping slog onto the aircraft has stalled for a suspiciously long time.  My generous layover at Schiphol in Amsterdam is vaporizing, commingling with the atomized esters of body crevices and jet fuel exhaust.

I recall Schiphol, sprinting from Gate #1 in Terminal A to Gate #72,444 in Terminal Z.  Undoubtedly, before the creation of the EU, I think to myself, one could not have possibly traveled such a distance in Europe without entering at least two other countries, perhaps three.

My jet to Chengdu was pulling away from the gate as I stood in a wading pool of my own sweat, smelling the odors of fear and frustration and the sickening realization that the clammy clothes plastered to my skin were to be my only companions for another 36 hours.  The pretty Dutch woman with blonde hair and a blue KLM cap told me I first must go to the service counter.  She pointed, and with a smile and charming accent, said,  “von hundred kilometers to za north in Terminal A on za border wit Switzerland ”. 

For a city of nearly 15 million people, Chengdu seemed remarkably small and intimate 36 hours later, as, well, I was 35,000 feet above her, heading east to Beijing four hours ahead. There, satisfied at landing on Chinese turf, I could take another flight back to, well, Chengdu, 3.5 hours to the west.  Head winds, tail winds and airline rationality are squandered on my meager understanding of how the world operates.

Chartreuse from inhaling my own contaminated air for 40 hours, I arrived in Chengdu, greeted by a smile and placard in the reception hall.  Deducing through the fog I indeed was the Don Henkeley associated with NAVA Television, I followed two men to a van in which I can only imagine I slept for a considerable time, as the driving time was seven hours through staggeringly remote, steep terrain and I do not recall even once screaming.   Anticipating our arrival by the miracles of cellular technology, and wishing to record my actual introduction to the venerated Chinese botanist whom would be featured in the program, cameras were affixed to a vehicle as it sallied into a hotel parking lot, door flying open and a balding man staggering to the nearest shrub for a discreet vomit.

The days following were chiseled in convoluted detail, though carved in a block of rare jade clouded by sleep deprivation and fast forwarding of the biological clock. There is not an instance—of the meadows on fire with Primula and Iris, a mammoth virgin tree, or the Gingko that Chinese Wilson had photographed south of Kanding in 1903—that could now be recalled with considerable detail.  It is if my nerve endings, perceiving such wonders and intrinsically understanding their import, secreted the moments and sensations for later download by my mainframe when it was fully powered.  Even on low battery, I was aware of being in the company of a most splendid and unique assemblage of talent; our days were work indeed, however at night, Snow Beer uncapped a foaming and collective cascade of personal escapades from across the planet that would have had the most venerate of explorers and travelers spellbound.  

I left these comrades, on the end of my summer vacations, wondering if we should ever again see one another, hoping we might someday.  I carried on to Beijing en route, that night,  with a crimson moon, its silvered surfaces tarnished by Mongolian dust, rising over the Forbidden City, couples cheek-to-cheek fancy steps in the cooling air of a blistering hot city, crackling tango notes from rusting loudspeakers, tinny chords fettling with the ancient stone, skipping across moats like thrown pebbles, blending with car horns and sirens and the background murmur of, if carefully deciphered, the rasping legs of randy crickets. In this moonlight, on my summer vacation,  they were the loudest voices of all.