In memoriam

Paula L. Ryan, 86, devoted and loving mother and grandmother, died in Hinsdale, NH on Tuesday, August 14, 2018. Paula had deep roots in New England; she was born in New Bedford, Massachusetts on December 14, 1931 and had the lovely, lilting accent–particular vowels and dropped “r”s–to prove it. It was there, in third grade, where she met her life-long, best friend Norma Judson, whom she will join, along with her son, Paul, and her third, “best-for-last” husband, James “Jim” Francis Ryan, in the next life, beyond all suffering.

Paula was an intrepid and adventurous traveler throughout her life. When her children were young she frequenty packed them into her yellow VW bug for cross-country skiing adventures at Trapp Family Lodge in Stowe, VT and spent summer weeks on a Mennonite dairy farm in Lancaster, PA. She loved the outdoors. She had an uncanny sense of direction, whether in towns or in the woods. She loved folk music and bluegrass festivals, craft fairs and outdoor art shows. In later life she took solo bus trips, traveling as far north as Cochrane, Ontario to see polar bears and as far south as Knoxville, TN to visit Dollywood. She loved it all. She particularly enjoyed, and made frequent trips to, the quaint streets of the Old City in Quebec, where her forebears, master carpenters, were among the first wave of French colonists in the mid- seventeenth century.

Paula and Jim settled in Brookline, VT in 1981 when Jim retired from Shell Oil. Jim built the house and Paula built the magnificent garden of perennials and cultivated wild flowers. They kept bees, geese and an assortment of beloved dogs and cats. As Jim’s Parkinson’s and dementia made it more challenging to live far up a long dirt road on the side of a hill, Jim settled into a care facility in Brattleboro and Paula moved to the city to be closer to him. Then, at 85 years old, the intrepid traveler crossed the Connecticut River for sunny, “single-floor living” in Hinsdale, NH and, with remarkable resolve, established a new home for herself where she lived independently with her dog, Pumpkin, and cat, Cinders.

She died at home, comfortable and content, under the watchful care of her devoted daughter, Sarah, surrounded by her pets, art, travel momentos, local crafts, plants and the found objects from the natural world that fllled her spirit. She will be sorely missed as the keeper of family history, memory and lore, and for her unshakeable, unconditional love of her daugther and grandchildren. She loved deeply. Paula’s passion for travelling, her love of New England’s woods and coast, and her delight in plants and animals live on in her children and grandchildren.

She is survived by her daughter, Sarah Gant of Chestnut Hill, MA;, and her grandchildren, Sam Gant and Sophia Gant, both of Philadelphia, PA. She is pre-deceased by three husbands; her son, Paul Brickman; and best friend Norma Judson.

http://phaneuf.tributes.com/obituary/read/Paula-L.-Ryan-106345440

Out and About

Boston, where I grew up, is a very compact city.  The whole metropolis, from the spire of the Prudential Center to the dense neighborhoods of triple-decker houses, is tightly knit by a maze of streets, bridges, and tunnels that eke the maximum viable transport space out of every level of the earth.  When I fly into Logan airport I love seeing the dense heart of the city, and only a few miles from downtown you can see the thick trees and rolling hills of New England begin.   Boston is tidy and constrained by the natural boundaries of the Charles River and the Atlantic Ocean: Boston knows its limit and stays within it.

Philadelphia, on the other hand, is vast.   It has the sixth largest population of all American cities, and is built like a powerhouse that is now a downsized version of its past self.  There are shells of old factories everywhere–I lived behind a chocolate factory that looked like it was maintained by oompa loompas–but the city also encompasses a lot of natural and agricultural space.  In the spring I did a day hike along the shores of the Wissahickon creek, and I reached the trailhead by riding a bus for over an hour past ranks of identical rowhouses.   I didn’t encounter another person for at least the first mile I was on the path, although I did see a herd of deer and hordes of bunnies.  It was only later when I looked at the map that I realized that for the whole 7-mile walk I had been within the city limits of Philadelphia.   Philadelphia is a hard city for me to characterize, in part because I’m still surprised by how large the boundaries are.

My friend D and I took a bike ride up the Schuylkill River yesterday, to see if the sights along its banks were as varied and exciting as its orthography.  Rain in the hills had now tumbled down the river, and the water was silty, turbulent, and high.   The river overflowed its banks at several points, and looked ready to claim its due from the gentrifying condo complexes that had replaced the rail yards on its banks.  We churned north along the trail, passing courageous joggers who ran through the fierce humidity.  The trail is only a foot or two above the waterline, and as we wound north we began passing under gorgeous masonry or steel suspension bridges spanning the river.

The river runneth over

A large bird bath

Miles north of my house we veered away from the riverbank into the Strawberry Mansion neighborhood which, despite its name, is one of the poorest and most dangerous of Philly.  It’s named after the eponymous mansion, which was built as a retreat from urban life in the 1780s by a Quaker lawyer.  I hadn’t realized the neighborhood was considered dangerous until I looked it up the next day, because the house itself still looks so peaceful surrounded by its swathes of green land.   On the hill behind the house bees buzzed industriously out of a multicolored hive, and a gardener trimmed the rosebushes.

Buzz buzz

Behind Strawberry Mansion we slipped into the warren of gravelly paths that transect the slope that runs to the Schulykill’s east bank.  I had biked along the river many times, but could never have guessed that these trails surveilled the path so closely.   Invisible in the trees, I swooped up and down narrow paths as the sunlight flashed between the trunks on my right.

Apparently I’m not the first person to find this tree

Our excursion ended at Bartram’s Garden, a 45-acre plot of land where the Quaker John Bartram established the oldest surviving botanical garden in the United States.  The garden splays outward from his eccentric and cozy house, the oldest section of which was built three hundred years ago.   Most of the garden is a showcase of American flora, although it also contains a healthy gingko tree planted with the first seeds imported to this continent from China in 1785.   There are trees growing there that Bartram planted when the US was still a British colony.   The garden is unruly and unfussy, and pollinated by swarms of bees.   If John Bartram were to walk out his back door this morning with a cup of coffee in hand, and if he forgot his glasses so as not to see the pylons of the electric plant across the Schuylkill, I think he’d be delighted that his trees were just where he left them.

Bartram’s house and garden

Most of Philadelphia’s illustrious families from the Revolutionary War era built stately mansions just a few miles from their townhouses to retreat from the city.   The houses were a place to cultivate elaborate gardens and escape from the miasma of heat that stifles the city in the summer.   The city has expanded in the last few centuries to envelop the breezy bluffs and rolling hills they retreated to, leaving oases of calm and preservation in this otherwise dense and industrial area.  I gain so much from stepping outdoors and biking through the trees, and I’m glad I can enjoy the same tranquility and fascination with nature that Bartram did.

Writing on the roof at day’s end