Thirty Pounds and a Passport * Part I

A New Millennium

May 28. Charter plane from Victoria Falls to Makalolo Camp, Zimbabwe

Kerplunk! Splash!

Splash!

“Do you hear that?” asks Benson.

Splash, splash, splash, splash! There is something walking in the water—something very large walking in the water. No, it’s more than one thing. There are several very large somethings walking in the water!

“Can you hear them?” Benson insists.

“Yes, I can hear them but I can’t see them.”

It is not just dark; it is black, totally black, thirty feet from my face. The kerosene lamps and candles in the open-sided dining tent have ruined my night vision. Beyond the luminous circle of lamps I cannot see a thing. But I can hear animals in the water. There are visitors tonight and they are very close.

I am in western Zimbabwe, in Hwange National Park, two hours by small plane from the nearest settlement. Here in a camp consisting of several small sleeping tents and a larger open dining tent, we are enjoying a glass of wine and a late dinner after a long and satisfying day in the bush. The total human population here consists of Benson, our guide and camp manager; Johnson, the number two guide; Water, the cook; Shirley, my wife and best friend; and me, Ranger Rick, a retired park ranger. Benson, Johnson and Water are local natives of Zimbabwe whose tribal names are unpronounceable by tourists, so they all have English names that they picked up somewhere. Shirley and I are from—well, that’s a long story. Currently we are homeless, or more accurately, our home is wherever we are.

Splash, splash, splash, splash! A whole herd of something large is very close. It is late May and near the end of the long dry season and there is no open water left anywhere except in a few waterholes. One pond, the only one for five miles around, is just 200 yards from camp. So no farther away than a corner mailbox, in the blackness beyond my vision, there are animals about. I smell another adventure about to begin!

“Let’s go,” says Benson.

We head out to our Land Rover parked nearby and pile in by flashlight. The waterhole is only 200 yards away but we’re going to drive. To walk in the bush at night is to risk becoming some animal’s dinner.

Our Land Rover is adapted for safari use. It has no top. It looks like an open World War II jeep with the windshield laying flat on the hood. There are no doors. If I stick my foot out the side, there is nothing between me and the animals but the sole of my boot.

Benson drives slowly without headlights. Obviously the animals can hear us coming but they are less likely to spook if we avoid lights.

Away from the lamps and candles of the camp, my eyes adjust to the dark. In this semi-desert there is no humidity to dull the light of the hundreds of bright stars. In a short time we are at the waterhole and almost on top of our nighttime visitors. They’re elephants! From the sounds of the splashing I had imagined five or six animals but now I can see that there are more than fifty, all in the water or close to it. And Benson drives right into the middle of the herd!

Our presence instantly causes unrest in the herd. Mothers bring their young in close and shelter them with their bodies. The big females with the big tusks snort and shift uneasily from one foot to another. A young male trumpets and charges towards us with ears flapping! Luckily this charge is just for show to bluff us away but what about the next one? If anything, I am more nervous than the elephants. They can easily kill a person if they catch him out in the open.

Benson shuts off the engine and in just a minute or two the animals begin to relax. The small ones come out from under their mother’s legs. The elephants in the water start to drink again. Very quickly, as far as the elephants are concerned, we are no longer there or at least no longer a threat.

I am surrounded by elephants. I don’t just see them; I hear them. I hear them drink. I hear them breathe. And I can smell their breath. These animals are huge! I always knew elephants were big but when I am sitting down in a Land Rover and looking up—way up—into the faces of elephants now just thirty feet away, the word “big” just isn’t big enough.

As the elephants relax, so do I—a little. Now I can concentrate on individuals in the herd. Largest are the matriarchs, the leaders of this clan. They are so large they look like houses on legs—and they have tusks six feet long. Off to my left are mothers with small babies. One curious youngster comes to sniff the air near us to figure out who we are. And then comes closer yet, until a snort from mother sends him jogging away from the vehicle.

Closest to the Land Rover are the young males, the teenagers of the group. They have the most energy and are always moving around. Apparently they decided we are no longer a threat for they just ignore us and walk right on by like we weren’t there. That’s fine with me except that now they are walking right beside the Land Rover. I could stretch out and bump one with a broom handle. But why would I want to reach out and touch something that weighs more than a dump truck and can outrun me? Sure, the Land Rover could outrun them—if the engine were turned on. But the ignition is off and we sit quietly. There are elephants here of every size except the truly huge old males. They are off somewhere being bachelors. For the safety of the babies, the bulls are not allowed near the herd except to breed. It is the females who rule here.

For an hour I sit in the middle of elephants and endless stars. I feel that I am so far removed from anything I have previously known, that I must be on a different planet. After a while the elephants get their fill of water and slowly disappear into the night.

Once back in my tent, I try to fall asleep to get ready for more adventures tomorrow but I am too excited to sleep. At about 1:00 in the morning I begin to think back on how I got here in the first place.

In 1999 the stock market roared. Mere civil servants, like Ranger Rick, suddenly had more money than they ever dreamed of—at least on paper. In 1999 the real estate market roared in suburban Washington where the ranger and Ms. Shirley had a home in Fairfax County, Virginia. In one year prices jumped 25% or even a third. Home equities that were formerly paltry suddenly looked royal.

Also in 1999 the ranger remembered that he was eligible to retire in February of the next year. As an employee of the Federal Government, he could retire at age 56 with thirty years of service and receive a pension of 55% of his former salary. In 1999 the ranger felt rich enough—at least on paper—to think about what had formerly been unthinkable, retiring before age sixty. The ranger thought long and loudly about this prospect.

In response Ms. Shirley said not so loudly, “I’m younger than you and I’m not sure that I am ready to retire yet but I’m willing to take a year off and see how I like it.”

Encouraged, the ranger replied, “Then we’ll have to find some way to make the year exciting. I’m too young to retire and just sit around. Besides, if you rest, you rust!”

The ranger was a born traveler. He had been in all fifty states and a dozen foreign countries. He was born in Pennsylvania, was a pre-schooler in Maryland, grew up in Kansas and graduated from college in Arkansas. After working on construction projects in three states he joined the National Park Service. Thirty years as a ranger and park superintendent took him to eleven different national parks and offices in Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, South Dakota, Missouri, Virginia and the District of Columbia.

Along the way the ranger picked up the hobby of bird watching. Vacations were soon spent finding new places and new birds. Now with early retirement a real possibility, travel and birding would have to fit into the plans somehow.

A look at the calendar brought retirement planning into focus with the realization, “Retiring early next year means retiring in the year 2000. That’s the beginning of the new millennium. We should have a millennial goal!”

A millennial goal is much more important than a mere New Year’s resolution. A resolution is like when one vows to lose ten pounds in the next year. But if he only loses five pounds (and then gains even that back), he need not worry. Soon he can resolve all over again because a new year comes every 365 days. But a new millennium? There is a limit of only one per person and then only to those who happen to be born in the right century. So a millennial goal must be something special and something that lasts a lifetime!

What to do in the year 2000? Obviously a goal with the number 2,000 in it would be special. What could we do that would be fun, would last a lifetime, and would honor the year 2000? The idea came one night at 2:00 a.m.—the best time of day for truly new ideas to appear. For the new millennium the ranger would try to see 2,000 kinds of birds in the year 2000. From that goal sprang eight months of travel and a lifetime of stories.

Two thousand species of birds is no trifling sum. There are about 10,000 species in the wild, so the goal is finding 20% of all the birds in the world. But not all the world’s birds are accessible to a wandering ranger and his bride. Some are very rare. Some are on the verge of extinction. Some are only found in places like Afghanistan, Somalia or other places of civil unrest like the Congo or the back islands of Indonesia. The country with the largest birdlist in the world, Colombia, has not one civil war but two going on at the same time. Some parts of the world lack basic transportation or safe places to stay. For certain areas there are no bird books, so a person cannot know what all the birds even look like unless he has access to museum study skins.

Staying close to home will not accomplish the goal. The continental United States and Canada together have only about 650 kinds of nesting birds. These nations are too far from the equator to have a large bird count. The greatest number of species, indeed the greatest diversity of all plant and animal life, is found in the tropics. Mexico, which is only one-fifth the size of the U.S., has over 1,000 bird species. Peru, much closer to the equator and little more than half the size of Mexico, has over 1,700. The diversity of life in the tropics is so great that five square miles of Amazon Basin rainforest contain more kinds of trees than all of the United States and Canada combined. Obviously a ranger in search of a millennial goal is headed for the tropics.

Serious planning is called for. As a young child, one of my favorite stories was The Little Engine that Could, which had the wonderful optimism, “I think I can! I think I can!” Now I’ve found a new little engine that can: the search engine. The internet provides almost instant information on, and almost instant access to, most parts of the world. But “instant access” still adds up to several hundred hours of computer time over three months. Through web sites that seemed to pop up serendipitously, new countries and locations take their turn as flavor-of-the-day.

“Shirley, what do you think about Fiji? How about the Marquesas or the Seychelles Islands? Should we go to the Comoro Islands in the Indian Ocean for birds or to Komodo Island in the Lesser Sundas for dragons (giant lizards)?”

“Hey Ranger. How about if we go for hot showers?”

Obviously there is a need for compromise here. “How about if we go for hot showers half of the time?”

Through internet bulletin boards and contacts with friends, the names of people around the world begin to surface along with exciting locations. Claire in South Africa, says, “If you’re ever in Durban, be sure to look up Jonathan. He’s a great guide.” Reg, a new cyber-friend writes, “If you get to Sydney, I can show you a Superb Lyrebird.” That’s a bird I have always wanted to see and Australia is high on Shirley’s list of most-wanted-to-see places. “Let’s pencil Reg in!” Raj, in Singapore, writes that he will be out of town in June but he has a friend, K.C. who is an excellent birder and a good guide.

Using the resources in my birding magazines, I come across birding tours that we can join in the middle of our independent travels. Ben King, a birding expert in Southeast Asia, is leading a tour to Sumatra in August. Dennis Yong in Malaysia is leading a bird trip in his home country. A chance to see an orangutan in Borneo means I have to pencil this one in too. George Swann offers a ten-day, four-wheel drive trip in the Kimberley of far northwestern Australia for six people. Shirley says let’s do that one.

After three months a general plan is in place and now it’s time to nail it down. Airline tickets are the next challenge. Again through the internet, the schedules and prices of almost any airline in the world are available through a few hundred keystrokes. There are ticket prices, discount ticket prices and hidden discount ticket prices. Any birder who has a hope of finding a skulking antbird in the Amazon jungle has to know how to find a hidden discount ticket in the jungle of airline ticket prices. A ticket to Quito, Ecuador, is $710 when I telephone Continental Airlines. The same seat on the same airplane is $620 on an internet discount ticket site. And that same seat is only $550 from a consolidator in Newark, New Jersey, who places a one-inch advertisement in the Sunday Washington Post. But who discounts tickets on Air Botswana???

Finally it’s all booked: 59 flights with 69 take-offs and landings. Shirley, the practical one, remarks, “I don’t care about the number of take-offs. It’s the number of landings that concerns me. I want the number of landings to exactly equal the number of take-offs.”

Soon all the tickets arrive in the mail and the whole world is open to us. Our magic carpets will have names like: Aero Gal, Air Botswana, Air New Zealand, Air Zimbabwe, Aerolinea Ecuadoriana, American Airlines, Ansett Australia, Cape York Air, Continental Airlines, Delta Airlines, Garuda Indonesia, Malaysia Airlines, Merpati Nusantra, Qantas Airways, Singapore Airlines, South African Airways, Stewart Island Flights and Trans World Airlines.

New Year’s Day 2000! A new year! A new millennium! On your mark! Get set! Go! We watch the new year start (on December 31 by our calendar) as the television shows the new year moving around the globe, time zone by time zone. There go the fireworks on the Sydney Harbor Bridge in Australia! That’s a great sign. We’ll be on that bridge in July. Here comes the new year in Asia and Africa. We’ll be there in a few months too. Now, Big Ben tolls the new century in London. The century line passes Iceland, Greenland and now Nova Scotia and into the new world of the American continent. One more hour and the line will be in the Eastern Standard Time Zone.

Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one! HAPPY NEW YEAR! It’s here and IT’S OUR YEAR! Kiss Shirley and give her a big hug. “How about another kiss?” Run outside! Fireworks everywhere! “Listen! Can you hear an owl?” The year’s birdlist could start right now.

“Hey you silly ranger. Get in out of the cold. You don’t even have a jacket on. Besides, no self-respecting owl is going to give a hoot with all these fireworks going on.” Shirley is not only practical, she’s also good with a pun. “You have all year to find 2,000 in 2000. Come on in and let’s go to bed.” Shirley is full of good ideas. I love this woman.

Five hours later it’s 5:00 a.m. and it’s still New Year’s Day. No slug-a-beds allowed here. There are 2,000 birds out there somewhere. “Let’s go out and find them.”

A three-hour drive brings us to Ocean City, Maryland, where it’s frigid outside. For several years now, our tradition has been to go birding on the Eastern Shore on New Year’s Day. On the rock jetty the ocean spray turns to ice. Just beyond the surf line dark shapes bounce in the waves. Common Loons, Red-throated Loons, Black Scoters and Harlequin Ducks have come south as far as Maryland for the winter. They are here for the same reason I would go to Florida. They’re here for a warmer climate. It doesn’t matter to them that there is ice on the jetty and ice on the road. At least there is no ice in the harbor as there would now be in their summer home in Labrador.

There’s a Surf Scoter, a Purple Sandpiper, two Red Knots and a flock of ducks with the politically incorrect name of Oldsquaw. The ever-practical Shirley is already in the warm car and I soon beat a retreat in the face of the icy ocean wind. After thawing, I find a more sheltered spot by a pond out of the wind. Here, where the water is not totally frozen, are a group of water birds seeking shelter just as I am: Great Blue Herons, Snow Geese, White Pelicans and Tundra Swans. The ducks, however, ignore the wind and bob freely on the ice-free portion of the lake. Here in one place are almost all of the ducks I would expect to find in a Maryland winter: American Wigeon, Gadwall, Green-winged Teal, Mallard, American Black Duck, Northern Pintail, Northern Shoveler, Canvasback, Redhead, Ring-necked Duck, Lesser Scaup, Bufflehead, Hooded Merganser and Ruddy Duck. They can brave this weather in their duck down coats but chills drive me from my sheltered hiding place and back again into the icy wind where I flee to Shirley and the warm car. The Red-tailed Hawk is made of sterner stuff. He faces the wind head-on, flying heavily to the north.

The day begins with a House Finch at a bird feeder. He has a bright red breast a spot of color on a drab winter day. The last bird of the day is a Great Horned Owl calling from trees at the edge of a marsh. In between are ducks, hawks, quail, gulls, woodpeckers, chickadees, nuthatches, sparrows, cardinals and a Red-winged Blackbird. By the end of the day I count 68 birds. There are only 1,932 left to reach the goal. It’s been a good day.

“Come on in and let’s go to bed.”

February 11 American Airlines #275 Washington/Dulles to Miami
February 11 American Airlines #1029 Miami to Grand Cayman Island

Immediately out of the plane it is warm. It is humid! And the breeze feels good. Goodbye to frigid Washington, hello to paradise. No, we are not retired yet but for four days we are going to pretend to be. I can’t wait to get sand in my shoes or better yet get my feet in the sand. Airport formalities take but a moment and then we are off across the street to get a rental car. There’s a Caribbean Dove right on the grass. We are on to a good start.

Sub-compact car, manual transmission. “I’ll drive. You navigate with the map.” It’s that old male/female division of labor: brawn versus brains. Besides Ms. Shirley is good at telling the ranger where to go. “Uh, oh, somebody put the steering wheel in the wrong place.” This is going to be fun with the driver’s side on the right hand side of the car. Grand Cayman is a British protectorate; everyone drives on the left just like the Brits do. At least everyone is supposed to drive on the left. Watch out for the American tourists who can’t remember!

Actually, driving on the left is not hard on the streets. It is pretty obvious from the traffic pattern. The hard part is driving in a parking lot and that is where I am. I am just driving through the lot when I spot a Magnificent Frigatebird out of the corner of my eye. That is number two for the Cayman Islands list.

A car with a local driver comes into the lot towards me. Naturally and politely, I pull over to my right to give the other driver more room. Naturally and politely, she pulls over to her left to give me more room. Now we’re on a collision course. The navigator barks a sharp order and the captain moves left and corrects the course of his ship. It’s a wise man that listens to a wise woman.

Driving on the left isn’t hard but the turns are confusing. A left turn is the easy one. One just turns left into the nearest travel lane. But in a right turn, one has to cross over to the other side of the road to still be in the proper lane. It’s like a left turn in reverse for me and it’s hard to make the brain work backwards. After a while it all seems to work out but there are two things about that car that I never can do right.

In America the turn signals are on the right hand side of the steering wheel and the lever for the windshield wiper is usually on the left. On British cars these two are reversed. For the whole four days, every time I try to signal a turn the windshield wipers come on. It never rains once but the wipers get a big workout.

I never do learn where to get into the car. Every time I come out of the hotel or a restaurant, I head straight for the left hand side of the car only to discover that there is no steering wheel there. But being quick thinking, I just open the left door for my wife like she is a princess and I am her servant. Then I walk around to the other side of the car and get in. Quick thinking saves many a face.

Grand Cayman is only thirty miles long and fifteen miles wide, so thankfully, there is not that much driving to be done. Instead, walking is the big thing: walking on the beach at sunrise and walking on the beach at sunset, the ranger in flowered shirt and shorts, Ms. Shirley in something briefer. Life is good.

We go walking in rich neighborhoods and count the Rolls Royces. Grand Cayman is the home of offshore banking after all. And we go walking to see all the yachts. Grand Cayman has quite a navy; it just isn’t military. And of course there is walking to duty free shops. It wouldn’t be the Caymans without it. The ranger looks for colorful birds. Ms. Shirley looks for other colorful things as well.

In time there is birding to be done. In addition to looking for birds to add to his millennial list the ranger is also looking for life birds. “Life bird” denotes a bird that a person sees for the very first time in his entire life.

The Queen Elizabeth II Botanical Garden has wonderful native and exotic vegetation and lots of trails for exploring. Here I find four new life birds: Cuban Parrot, Vitelline Warbler, Western Spindalis and Cuban Bullfinch. From exhibits throughout the park I read about the native plants and about the local African-Caribbean culture. I learn how the now-natives of the Caymans brought their African culture with them when they were brought here as slaves.

I never did find Willie’s Pig Farm. An internet message said to look for West Indian Whistling-Ducks at Willie’s Pig Farm. As a former Razorback from the University of Arkansas, I did my best “Whooo Pig Soooee!” all over the east end of Grand Cayman. I never did find Willie’s Pig Farm but I did find a lot of puzzled dogs.

In four days 49 species of birds are added to the list. More importantly, Ms. Shirley and the ranger have four days alone away from the stress of trying to wind down two jobs and two careers and close out a house of twelve years and finalize an eight-month trip. Here there are no computers, no internet, no deadlines. Grand Cayman is a most pleasant place. Its warm sunny beaches bring back wonderful memories of another time in the Caribbean together.

Fifteen years ago we were married on a warm island just like Grand Cayman. We had decided not to have a large wedding with the ninety-nine million people in Shirley’s family and the four people in mine, plus all of our friends. Instead we decided to go somewhere to have a private ceremony for just the two of us. And then we’d come back and have a big reception and celebrate with everyone.

As may be evident by now, the term “somewhere” could literally mean anywhere in the world. But the large range of possibilities narrowed down when Shirley declared, “I will not go someplace where I have to get shots for my own wedding.”

“How about the Caribbean in November? asked the ranger. “That has a romantic ring to it. Think about it.”

The possibilities were broad. From the Bahamas in the north to Granada in the south, the West Indies contained hundreds of islands in over a dozen independent countries and at least that many territories owned by France, Great Britain, the United States and the Netherlands. Each had its own marriage laws.

"Some have a thirty-day waiting period. Cross those off. U.S. Virgin Islands or Puerto Rico? No, let’s pick a more foreign locale. Cuba or Haiti? Nope, bad political climate. Jamaica? Nah, too many tourists. Martinique or Guadeloupe? How do you say “I do” in French? Dominican Republic? Habla espanol? No, let’s look a little further. So what’s left?”

Antigua is a small island in the Lesser Antilles. Only fifteen miles long and ten miles wide it has 365 beaches, one for every day of the year, and the sun always shines. I booked us into the Hawksbill Beach Resort—in the great house, a little bit removed from the rest of the resort. We had our own private beach off the patio. Uncrowded, distinctly exotic, Antigua was to be our romantic hideaway—if I could negotiate the paperwork for getting married in a foreign country.

And foreign country it is. The island of Antigua and a much smaller neighboring island constitute the proud nation of Antigua and Barbuda. It has its own seat in the United Nations and everything. And it has its own laws. As foreigners, we could get a marriage license for $100 with a seven-day waiting period. If we were citizens of Antigua, the license would be only $10 but then we would have to post banns each week at the local Anglican Church for four straight weeks.

Upon arriving in the capital, Georgetown, our first order of business was applying for a marriage license and starting the seven-day waiting period. We were off to Government House and once again the navigator reminded me to drive on the left. The application for a license was two pages long. On the first page I had to check one of two boxes: single or divorced. Shirley had a choice of three: single, divorced or spinster. With the application completed and our passports checked it was time to pay the $100. But the clerk’s office couldn’t accept money. We had to go to the Post Office and buy postage stamps and then bring those back to the clerk’s office to be affixed to the back of the application like a tax stamp.

So the next stop was the Post Office—remember to drive on the left! Like many small countries, Antigua issued a surprising array of exotic stamps, more than it could ever use. These colorful stamps were then sold to stamp collectors around the world and the country received extra revenue. That month Antigua was selling a colorful series of stamps depicting Grimm’s fairy tales but all the characters on the stamps were Walt Disney figures. I picked out one with Mickey Mouse and Goofy and a donkey and took them back to the clerk’s office. To this day I maintain that I bought my wife with a $100 worth of Mickey Mouse stamps.

The marriage license application was done and now it was time for task number two. We were getting married in a private ceremony so there were no invitations to be mailed. However, we did want to issue wedding announcements, especially since we slipped off to the Caribbean without telling our friends what we were up to. Proper etiquette and common sense say that one does not mail wedding announcements until the event actually takes place. But along with the wedding announcement, we wanted to mail an invitation to the wedding reception that would be held in St. Louis ten days after the wedding and only three days after we returned from our honeymoon. Knowing how slow foreign mail can be, we didn’t want to take a chance on the reception invitations not arriving in time if we waited to mail after the wedding.

Throwing caution to the winds and in full faith that the wedding would take place as planned, we decided to mail off our wedding announcement a full week before the wedding. Little did I realize that this very logical decision would turn out to be momentous. This time, however, Shirley chose the stamps—stamps with exotic flowers. There would be no Mickey Mouse stamps on her wedding announcements!

The paperwork was done; the announcements and invitations were mailed. All of our immediate tasks were completed. We now had a seven-day waiting period before the wedding. What would you do if you were on an exotic island for seven days with your best girl? You bet! Off to the beaches and the duty free shops and a little birding and… Seven wonderful days followed.

There is a tradition that the groom should never see the bride on her wedding day until the ceremony. I never knew why but I found out. The morning of our wedding, after breakfast, we had a fight. A BIG fight! Our first fight! Now years later, who knows what it was about—probably wedding jitters more than anything. But at that moment it was real and it was serious.
“Go take a walk by yourself. Cool off. Let’s figure out what to do now.” Did we really want to go through with this marriage after years of living alone—and doing very well, thank you! “But we’ve already announced to the world that we’re married. We mailed out the announcements a week ago.”

Was it a case of true love prevailing? Or was it a case of fear of having to tell Shirley’s mother that we didn’t get married after all? In any case we decided to go forward. It is a decision I never regretted. If Shirley ever had any regrets, she's been smart enough to keep quiet about it.

Now we needed flowers. A bride this lovely ought to have flowers. Down the road was a floral shop. This local florist did not have refrigerated cases or cut flowers in vases waiting for customers. The florist had a garden.

“What would you like to have? I’ll go out in the garden and cut it.” Some pink flowers for a corsage would be just about right. “Here let me pin them on.”

“For me, I think that I would like to have a boutonniere of the same pink flower.”

“Oh, no sir. I think that a red one would look good on you.”

“But I’d really like to have the same flower as my new bride.”

“Oh, no sir. Maybe this blue one.” I soon got the idea that no male on this island was going to wear a pink flower. Not as long as this florist held the scissors. I selected a bright red boutonniere for my wedding day.

Now it was noon and time to go to Government House to be married. The clerk had the license all ready—but it was unsigned. We could not be married until it was signed. “Since you are foreigners, the license has to be signed by the Minister of Justice.” That was the equivalent of the Attorney General of the entire country. “And the Minister has been called into a special session of Parliament. I’m sorry but you have to wait a little while.”

After thirty minutes, “Sir, I think that I shall just slip into Parliament and see if the Minister can sign it now.” Soon the whole session of Parliament came to a halt while the Minister of Justice of the sovereign nation of Antigua and Barbuda signed the marriage license for Ms. Shirley and the ranger.

The marriage was solemnized at Government House and now the ranger was committed—in every sense of the word. A honeymoon on the island of St. Lucia followed, with another wonderful week of walks on the beach, hikes in the island jungle, some duty free shopping, a little birding and…. Isn’t love wonderful?

Now, on Valentine’s weekend in the year 2000 at the beginning of the new millennium, I am lying on the beach at Grand Cayman Island with my favorite girl. Just as in our first time in the Caribbean, love is wonderful. All is right with the world.

February 14 American Airlines #2028 Grand Cayman to Miami
February 14 American Airlines #974 Miami to Washington/Dulles

Back to reality, back to our jobs. There are only six weeks left to wrap everything up. I have locked in a retirement date—the first day of April. Somehow April Fools’ Day seems appropriate.
Much of the work for our upcoming retirement is already done. In November we purchased the last of the airline tickets and signed up for the several tours that will constitute part of our trip. The first day of December we put our house up for sale.

The real estate market was really hot. Within 36 hours we had a full price offer. The next day brought another full price offer. Both offers carried the clause that we could lease back the house through the end of March. The couple, that ultimately bought our house, tried to buy the house across the street the previous month but they lost out when they dared to offer $2,000 less than the asking price. This time they took no chances.

Someday, when our traveling is done, we will live in Arizona. Last year we purchased a model home in a community south of Tucson but we immediately leased the house back to the developer. He will continue to use the house as a model home for a while. So the new house is not available to us and the old house will belong to someone else. Come April 1st we will be homeless as well as unemployed.

But before we can move out of Virginia, we have much to do. The Arizona home will come to us completely furnished and decorated in the southwestern style. Almost all of our old furniture, except for the grandfather clock, will have to go. In addition we are moving from a four bedroom house with a full basement to a two bedroom home with no basement, no attic and limited garage storage. Twelve years of living in one house, fifteen years of marriage, fifty-some years of living on the planet must be narrowed down to a reasonable amount of boxes. The rest has to go. Goodwill and The Salvation Army will love us.

The last six weeks is a winnowing process with everything in two groups. The first group is to keep and the second one is to give away. With determination and a little angst the first group is whittled down a little more and the second one grows. The number of full moving boxes stacked in the garage also continues to increase.

March 29, the last day of work, has arrived. I drive to work full of anticipation of my new life and a little shaken at leaving my old one. I’ve had a full and satisfying career as a park ranger and park superintendent.

I have deliberately not cleaned out my office until the last day because I am determined to put in a full day’s work as I have always done. However, by 3:00 all the work is done, all the papers are signed, and all the goodbyes have been said to staff and coworkers. I slip out the side door. Real rangers are not allowed to show emotion, certainly not tears.

On the way home I stop and pick up the U-Haul truck I’ve reserved. The plan is to rest up tonight, have a nice restaurant dinner and load the truck in the morning. After all we’re retired now and don’t have to hurry. Right?

But after arriving home, I think to myself, “I might as well start loading a few things in the truck now. It’s early and Shirley’s not home yet. If I do a little now, I won’t have so much to do tomorrow." It’s a truck with a 24-foot bed and an awful lot of boxes. If I do a little now, I’ll have a better idea if it’s all going to fit. What am I going to do if it doesn’t all fit? Better not to think about that now.

The big wardrobe boxes all fit in the truck pretty well. Maybe I’ll load the book boxes too. If I get some of the heavy stuff out of the way now, maybe I won’t be so tired tomorrow. How about these bicycles? Will they fit in now? Oh, these boxes with Shirley’s basket collection. I’d better load them on top so they don’t get damaged. If I do it now, I won’t forget. Maybe I’ll load these boxes of dishes. I’ve got a good spot for them right now. It looks like I’m beginning to make a dent in the stack of boxes. Not a big dent but at least a noticeable dent. I wonder what else I should load now.

“Hey Ranger. What’re you doing?”

The love of my life has returned home. Shirley had different plans for her last day of work than I did. She had already cleaned out her desk and today was “sign the last of the papers and party” day. Her coworkers took her out for a farewell lunch and everyone was sad to see her go. Of course they think she is NUTS going off around the world homeless and unemployed with some silly ranger but they love her anyway.

The last part of Shirley’s plan for her final workday was to get away early and just once beat the traffic on the Beltway. For more than ten years Shirley commuted halfway around the infamous Washington Beltway, seventy miles round trip. Accidents, rain, road construction, snow and just too many vehicles frequently conspired to make her trip home an hour or more. Her favorite dream of retirement was seeing the Washington Beltway in her rearview mirror for the last time. Today on the last trip she planned to beat rush hour traffic and have an easy commute.
But it was not to be. She did beat rush hour but she couldn’t beat a truck that dumped a whole trailer load of steel right in the middle of the Woodrow Wilson Bridge. On her last day of work Shirley had a 2½-hour commute. She is NOW ready to retire.

“Hey Ranger. What’re you doing? It’s 5:00. If you’re going to load boxes for a while, I’ll get started on cleaning up the house so I won’t have so much to do tomorrow before we leave.”

“Hey Ranger. What’re you doing? It’s 7:00. Are you at least going to feed me?” It’s Domino’s Pizza to the rescue. Thank goodness they deliver.

“Hey Ranger. What’re you doing? It’s 10:00. Are you going to work all night?” Bill has come over to help load boxes and the stack in the garage is shrinking down to a manageable number. Maybe the size of the load and the size of the truck will come out even after all. “Since I am this close, maybe I’ll take another hour and finish up so I won’t have to do it tomorrow.”

“Hey Ranger. What’re you doing? It’s midnight.” The truck is all loaded. The rear door is closed and locked and there is only one box left over. Bill and I hook up the trailer behind the U-Haul and load my pickup truck onto the trailer. We lock up the last box in the cab of the pickup. Shirley has also worked all evening. The new owners will find a clean and spotless house. Wearily, I take out the last of the trash and Shirley finishes cleaning one last floor.

“Hey tired Ranger. It’s 12:30 in the morning. How about taking a girl to bed?” Obviously our bed is now buried deep in the U-Haul somewhere. It’s a motel for tonight or what’s left of the night.

“You know, if we take the motel down the street, we’ll have to get up and drive that U-Haul in rush hour traffic on the Beltway in the morning. Let’s get clear out of town now.”

March 29 U-Haul truck from Annandale, Virginia to Frederick, Maryland

In the middle of the night a tired caravan flees suburban Washington D.C. and the dreaded Beltway. I haven’t driven a truck like this in twenty years, especially with a twenty-foot trailer behind.

The U-Haul heads west in the dark with a red pickup bouncing along behind on the trailer. Shirley follows in the Pontiac, following her “silly ranger” as she has for fifteen years. Twenty-five miles later is Frederick, Maryland, and the first good motel removed from the Beltway. Two tired people can now go to sleep at 2:00 in the morning. “We can sleep in as long as we like. We’re retired now.”

In the first evening of retirement the Type A ranger and his bride succeeded in loading all their worldly possessions into a rental truck, cleaned an entire house from stem to stern and knocked a whole day off their planned schedule—but they utterly failed in their first test at taking retirement at a more relaxed pace.

March 30 U-Haul truck from Frederick to Indianapolis, Indiana
March 31 U-Haul truck from Indianapolis to St. Louis, Missouri

“We can sleep in as long as we like. We’re retired now.” I remember those words. I uttered them only three hours ago when we checked into this motel. But now it’s 5:00 a.m. and we are wide-awake. For the last twelve years we’ve awakened at 5:00 a.m. to go to work. Why should that change now just because a piece of paper says we’re retired?

Westward the U-Haul travels across Pennsylvania and Ohio and into Indiana. We circle the wagons for the night in Indianapolis and then head westward again. Mid-afternoon on the second day finds us in St. Louis where we can turn this wagon train into the corral.

Even the homeless need a mailing address. Harry and Marie in St. Louis loan us their mailbox and a bed to sleep in “whenever you’re passing through town.” Having a home base, even when we don’t have a home, will be a big help for the coming year. And since they are family, they are not allowed to tell Shirley that they think she is NUTS. Coworkers can be direct; family members have to be more discreet.

In five days in St. Louis we unload the U-Haul into a U-Store-It, repack our bags for South America and pig out on ice cream at Ted Drewes Custard Stand. My favorite is the cherry concrete. A concrete is soft ice cream in a milk shake cup, served upside down to prove that the custard is too thick to fall out of the cup. Of course, with two or three concretes under your belt, you’ll look like you’re full of concrete too.

On the eve of departing for South America the ranger adds up his birdlist to see the progress towards the millennial goal:

Tally for 2000

Delaware 49
Virginia 48
Maryland 37
New Jersey 1
Dist. of Columbia 1
Cayman Islands 49

Total 185