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THE ARTS

Survival Artist

Boston Globe Sunday Magazine, January 2005

Maine's rugged and raw beauty has been a lure to many of America's foremost landscape artists. Thomas Cole, founder of the Hudson River School, first visited Mount Desert Island in 1844. When he returned home to New York with a bounty of canvases, Cole's affluent patrons were astounded by the mix of mountains and sea. Man versus the chaotic forces of nature, particularly fishermen struggling against powerful nor'easters, kept Winslow Homer busy on the boulder-strewn shores of Prouts Neck for more than two decades. Ten years after Homer's death, Georgia O' Keeffe, Marsden Hartley, and John Marin all came to the Maine coast for inspiration, changing the landscape to fit their modernist styles.

With the advent of Abstract Expressionism in the 1950s, landscape painting met its demise. The fine arts community snickered as landscapes were relegated to commercial art, to be sold at galleries along the Maine coast that were squeezed in by lobster shacks and T-shirt emporiums. The New York school desperately wanted to put the artist back in the art work, eschewing pretty pictures for a frenzied attack on the canvas, be it Pollack's drip paintings or the "all-over" works of De Kooning that flattened the canvas and emphasized brush strokes, whether sweeping or thickly applied. This decade had a profound effect on Neil Welliver.

The young artist studied under colorist Josef Albers at Yale in the 50s. Instead of diving headfirst into abstraction, Welliver painted nudes, sensuous creatures bathing in shimmering ponds, in poses that would arouse Hugh Hefner.

"Albers would say to me these nudes look awfully naked, don't they?" says Welliver, 75, who sits in a wheelchair in his living room, wearing large-rimmed glasses and an orange baseball cap.

Welliver was undeterred and he brought his figurative works to Lincolnville, Maine, in 1962, at the suggestion of fellow artists Alex Katz and Lois Dodd. He summered at a106-acre farm, moving to the premises permanently eight years later. The nudes and other figures, like one of his boys paddling a canoe, grew less and less important, receding into an overgrowth of forest, thick with pines, and sparkling with water. Then, in 1975, the people in his work disappeared altogether.

Three tragedies in Welliver's life that year may have led him to this decision. His only daughter succumbed to SIDS, the studio in his barn burned down along with many of his works, and then his wife Polly died. Welliver retreated to his woods, now 1600 acres, stretching a mile along the sinuous Duck Trap River and across the pasture called Briggs Meadow. The result was not the sentimentalized seascapes produced by his predecessors, but a dark foray into an abandoned forest where trees are uprooted, the land is scarred from fire, and thick bogs are home to a bed of submerged and steely rock. Little by little, the light started to seep back into his paintings, especially in the winter months when the Maine sky is crystal clear and the falling snow illuminate his canvases. Welliver would snowshoe out to some virgin locale on his land, and paint long hours without gloves, often resulting in frostbitten fingers.

"He hit his stride and developed his mature style in the late 1970s," says Phil Alexandre, owner of the Alexandre Gallery in New York, where Welliver is represented. "Those are the large-scale paintings acquired by the Met and MOMA in Manhattan, the MFA in Boston, the Hirshhorn Museum in DC." Welliver began to reap praise from art critics like Robert Hughes, at Time Magazine, who wrote that his "paintings of the Maine woods are among the strongest images in modern American art."

As if Welliver hasn't faced enough adversity, he would have to deal with the deaths of two more children, and overcome health problems including a heart attack and, of late, hydrocephalus, more commonly referred to water on the brain. This past May, Welliver and his wife, Mimi, a former art student with him at Yale, moved from his farm to a new home perched high above his beloved Duck Trap River. On the mend, he is unable to give elaborate answers to questions, but sharp enough to shoot off one-liners.

"How did you go about choosing the locales in the woods that you painted?"

"Wherever I could park my easel and it wouldn't fall down."

"Were you friends with De Kooning?"

"Sure, but he was still a pain in the ass."

Most impressive, like Monet overcame cataracts in his later years to create his brilliant Grande Decorations, Welliver doesn't let his current malady interfere with his work. He continues to paint every day. In his new studio, hanging from the wall is a large canvas of the Duck Trap River, now viewed from above. The ubiquitous forest stands on either side of the water, loosely painted and more abstract than his earlier offerings. Welliver's woods have been compared to the realist Courbet, but get a little closer to the painting and you'll find thickly painted brush strokes that always look slick and wet, as if they were created yesterday, and a limited palette of green, red, blue, yellow and white.

"You think you're looking at an accurate Maine landscape, but then you realize his colors are quite unnatural," says Chris Crosman, Director of the Farnsworth Museum in nearby Rockland, Maine.

Welliver is clearly a landscape artist in the post-Abstract Expressionist era or as Hughes states in his book American Visions, "he could only have matured in the thirty years after Pollack." His plein-air studies in the woods are merely sketches for large-scale paintings produced in his barn, often as immense as 8 by 10 feet. He outlines the sketch onto the canvas through use of perforated wheel and charcoal, and paints from top to bottom until finished, never returning to touch up the work. It's a Courbet stopped at the door. You're unable to enter the painting, because the artist's hand is far too apparent.

There's only one way to truly immerse yourself into Welliver's woods. Leave the art behind and frolic in the same trees, marsh, bogs, and riverfront that so enraptured the man. Welliver recently donated more than 1500 acres of his farm to Maine's Coastal Mountain Lands Trust, allowing the public to traverse his woods. Many of the white birches seen in paintings like "The Birches" (1977), at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, are lost due to ice storms, but a thick forest and dense underbrush remain, timber crackling under every step. Light splinters through the branches of fallen firs onto their newborn cousins, dwarf pines. A cycle of nature, death and rebirth, that mirrors the ebbs and flows of Welliver's life.

So You Wanna Be in Pictures

Boston Magazine, August 2003

Blinded by waves of snow, I'm skidding my way to Chestnut Hill to meet a man named David Bakalar. Wham! I slam into the car in front of me. What the hell am I doing out here in a blizzard? I look in the mirror. Okay, I'm all right. Let's calm down. Have to keep on going.

"Listen to me!" my brother Jim had shouted into the phone the previous night. "This is real." I'm not easily swayed. As the pessimistic half of this screenwriting duo, I'm inclined to let gravity pull me down. Sure, there's been some measure of success - we'd sold a script and scored meetings with studio execs and independent producers. But up until now our biggest fan has been our Uncle Willie. Now there's a real live film financier waiting a mile down Route 9 from where I live.

I get out of my car and assess the damage. The other driver is all right. There's only a small dent in her bumper. We trade insurance information and I drive onward. I knock three times at the door of a large suburban home, half expecting a butler to answer. Instead, David Bakalar is there with a welcoming smile on his face. This is no Armani-wearing slickster from L.A., but a guy in a comfortable collared shirt and slacks who looks more like Uncle Willie. There's a sentence or two of small talk, then he cuts right to the chase.

"I want to create a film that's the antithesis of American Beauty, not about the disintegration of the family, but how a down-on-her-luck single mother tries to make her family whole again," he says. Bakalar liked the grittiness of Sheffield, England, in The Full Monty and thought New Bedford, with its Portuguese community, would make a comparable American backdrop. His passion is contagious and his mind as sharp as a Ginsu knife. The next day, intrigued, I do some research on him.

David Bakalar not only graduated from Harvard, but also has a Ph.D. in physics from MIT. By 1955, his Wakefield-based company, Transitron, was the world's number-two transistor manufacturer, behind Texas Instruments. At one point, he had more than 10,000 employees. By 1980, however, IBM and Intel had turned up the heat. Bakalar sold Transitron but didn't rest on his laurels. At 62, persuaded by his friend, artist George Segal, he tried his hand at sculpture. His work can be seen on the campuses of Harvard, MIT, and Columbia University. Now, at 75, Bakalar was keen on producing his first film. He told my brother, Jim, that if the script was good, he would invest in the production.

Even the remote chance of seeing characters come magically to life on the big screen after plugging away for years will transform any screenwriter into Pavlov's drooling dog. Our friends in the biz were more realistic. Sign the contract, get your money for the work, and get out, they said. For one guy to invest in a film, especially one who's never done it before - it just ain't gonna happen.

On August 15, the Samuel Goldwyn Company will release our movie, Passionada, in Boston, Providence, New York, and Los Angeles. Two weeks later, the film will open nationwide in more than 200 theaters. There were plenty of times during the process of writing, selecting a director, finding a cast and crew, producing, editing, and showing this movie to distributors that it could have been scrapped and our dreams turned to lint. I feel like I've been holding my breath for four years straight.

The first thing Jim and I did after signing the contract was to drive to New Bedford. We walked over to the fishing trawlers docked two and three abreast at the city's Pier 3. Men with wizened faces were busy mending nets, their catches reeking in the raw, salty air. The story was already doing cartwheels in our minds.

For days we examined every nook and cranny of the city. We explored Johnny Cake Hill and the cobblestone streets Melville made famous in Moby-Dick. We strolled down Acushnet Avenue, the hub of the Portuguese community. We tried Portuguese sweetbread at a bakery and olives at a grocery store straight out of the Algarve, and dined on linguica and bacalhau, or salted cod, at a mom-and-pop restaurant.

On our last night, we checked out a fado club, where a woman was belting out a tune. When she reached the crescendo of this searing song, you felt as if you could touch her soul. Jim and I were mesmerized. We looked at each other and laughed, knowing that our single mother, the main character, now had to be a fado singer.

Our research was finished in New Bedford. At least, that's what I thought. Jim wanted more time there. As we approached Johnny Cake Hill for the third time, the pressure got to us. I screamed at my brother, "I want to see my wife and kids!"

"We're not done yet," he yelled back. "We haven't seen enough."

I walked toward my car. He grabbed my arm and we started throwing fists, missing each other badly due to lack of practice. Two camera-toting tourists broke us up, and we went our separate ways. Things were getting testy, and we hadn't written a word yet.

Writing is an arduous process, and there is no part more agonizing than the beginning. We might fight like brothers, but as screenwriters, my brother and I complement each other perfectly. My years as a journalist have taught me about narrative and exposition. Jim's background in theater and standup comedy helps with characterization and gives him an ear for dialogue.

Jim and I spent hours, days, weeks staring out the windows of a third-floor attic-turned-office in my suburban house, talking about our make-believe world. We argued over minutiae such as whether the mother washes her laundry by hand or machine. Used to hobnobbing with actors and directors in New York and L.A., my brother was stuck in Newton teaching magic tricks to my son and giving voices to my daughter's Barbies. All the while, the deadline loomed, along with the thought that we might blow our only opportunity in life to experience a Hollywood ending. It was slow going, and we needed inspiration.

In June of 1999, my father rented a house on Cape Cod. It was an agonizing time, less than a year since my mother had succumbed to cancer. Yet when Jim and I saw our father on the Cape, he cracked a smile. He was on the phone with a woman he'd met in a bereavement group. He didn't know it at the time, but my father's budding relationship - soon to bloom into a second marriage - would prove to be the muse we needed. We're fed the belief that there's only one soulmate in our lives, but what if that's not true? Without even knowing it, Dad did what dads do: taught us a lesson. And it helped us to cement our story's theme.

We handed the script to Bakalar in August of 1999, anxious to see if we would push onward or collect our fee and part ways. "I like it," he said, "but there's some problems." We spent hours sucking down peanut M&M's from a fancy glass bowl and fighting over words. It's not easy debating with the former owner of a successful business who's used to getting his own way. Bakalar would call us at all hours. "Stephen, David here," he would say. "Can you come over? There's a problem with the second line of dialogue in scene 47."

At last, he was satisfied and ready to move on. He would put up the money. It wasn't much in Hollywood terms, but, hell, My Big Fat Greek Wedding made $350 million on a $5 million budget. He gave Jim executive producer stripes and sent him off to find a director, cast, and crew. The next year proved to be a trying lesson in patience as L.A.-based agents put up impenetrable walls, moats, and drawbridges around their clients, not wanting to deal with a risky first-time producer. Tired of the runaround, Jim made the bold move of calling a director at home. His name was Dan Ireland. We'd admired his work ever since seeing The Whole Wide World, a movie he directed that was based on the life of the pulp writer who created Conan the Barbarian. Ireland worked wonders with an unknown actress at the time, Renee Zellweger. We hoped he could bring out the same compelling performances in our film.

"Why don't you send the script to my agent?" Ireland asked my brother over the phone.

"Because your agent is just going to hand it to you anyway," said Jim. "We don't have time for that detour. We're ready to move."

"Is the money there?" asked Ireland.

"Absolutely," my brother answered.

The next thing I knew we were dining with this tall, dapper man at a restaurant in Brookline. He was intently focused on our characters, the script, how he was going to film it, and, by the way, when would we leave for New Bedford? Ireland not only understood every vital element of our script, but also how it fit into the genre of romantic comedy. Bakalar leaned over to Jim and whispered, "I'm ready to go with this guy. Any objections?"

The next day we took him to New Bedford. Ireland was smitten. He packed his bags and his cat, Shelley Winters, and moved east, bringing with him a Mexican cinematographer who worked on Like Water for Chocolate. Many of the rest of the crew - grips, lights, sound - would come from Boston.

Within the blink of an eye, most of the cast was assembled. There was a familiar face from more than 125 films, Seymour Cassel ("Dusty" in The Royal Tenenbaums); the lovely vixen Theresa Russell, star of Black Widow; the mother in the recent Real Women Have Curves, Lupe Ontiveros; and the talented, young Emmy Rossum, soon to play the lead in the movie version of The Phantom of the Opera. With a week before we were scheduled to shoot, all we needed were (deep breath) the female and male leads. After a brief audition, Ireland chose Sofia Milos, best known for her recurring role in The Sopranos (and now on CSI: Miami). "God, I hope she can act," he told us. Jason Isaacs, the villain in the latest Harry Potter movie, also signed on, but we had to wait several weeks until he finished filming Black Hawk Down.

As executive producer, Jim was putting in long hours. My job was basically over. There were close to 100 people on the set every day in a frenzy of activity. I had my first reality check when the cinematographer came up and said, "Can you get your head out of the doorway? You're in the shot." I seemed to have misplaced my tongue when meeting the beautiful Sofia Milos.

"It's a wonderful role you created," she said in her Italian accent.

"Duh . . . duh . . . ," I responded.

Three television crews interviewed Jim and me that first day. I was amazed they were interested in us. "They want to meet the actors and director, you idiot, but they're all working," Jim said.

Then, as quickly as everyone had come, they all left. Dan Ireland went back to L.A. to edit while Jim and I moved on to the next script. Eight more months would pass before I saw the finished product.

Along with a random collection of people - a focus group - I sit down on a Wednesday night at a theater in the Fenway to watch my film. Darkness descends on the theater and within moments, tears are streaming down my face. I feel like Gene Wilder staring wild-eyed at his Young Frankenstein. Ireland had lessened the comedy and left some secondary characters on the cutting-room floor, but that helped tighten the relationship between our leads. He also added a powerful score by composer Harry Gregson-Williams (Shrek), along with that exquisite fado music sung by Misia. Man, I think to myself halfway through the film, this is damn good. Of course, I'm biased. It's not until the audience starts applauding at the end that I figure this movie might have a shot.

The credits roll. I hug Jim. I hug my wife for putting up with Jim. I hug Bakalar for making my dreams come true. I hug the stranger who's standing in front of me. And I hug Ireland, thanking him for not screwing it up. "That Sofia Milos really can act," I say. This will surely be her breakout role.

Jim is on the phone with a British producer who likes another of our scripts. "She wants to make our directing debut happen," he says. "Aren't you excited?" he yells. "Of course," I say, though at the moment there's finally blue sky outside and I want to go on a bike ride through Dover. Truth is, I am excited for the next project. But there's nothing quite like giving birth to the first one.

ADVENTURE

Come Sail Away

Forbes FYI, Summer 2005

Life is sublime. The sea is calm, the sky is slightly overcast with a steady breeze of say 12 to 15 knots. You're cruising along at a good clip, a smile plastered on your face, your only worry when to tack. Then, out of nowhere, a whitecap slams against the bow and soaks you. That's what calamity is like for a sailor. An unexpected wake-up call that boldly and most definitively lets you know that this age-old sport is often a struggle.

Sailing Lake George the past four decades, my father has certainly tasted his slice of adversity. And we're not talking about minor miscues like putting the jib on incorrectly or failing to sail into the wind when pulling up the main. That simply puts you in the doghouse waiting to face the wrath of a former Navy officer who has no patience for ineptitude. Even at 74, after a bout of double pneumonia two winters ago, dad can still belt out orders like Captain Ahab as he does so well this August morning.

"Who twisted the halyard?" he yells, fighting to get the main up.

"There must be a kink in the sail," says Ginny, her usual calm demeanor fringed with anxiety. The wives have changed, but the banter remains the same.

In the annals of freshwater sailing, we've had some serious mishaps, like the time I was a teenager sailing into a dock on Log Bay and the tiller broke off in my hand. With no way to steer, we smashed into a tree. Or that blissful afternoon my mom and dad went for a sail in the Narrows, the middle part of this 31-mile long Adirondack lake, where the numerous islands make for quick turns. My father, a weather report junkie, knew nothing about the inclement weather that would soon bear down on him. As it started to pour, the wind shifted abruptly and the boon whipped across the boat, breaking his arm in two places.

Losing your centerboard is not nearly as traumatic, but it certainly renders your boat useless. After straightening the lines and managing to get both sails up, my father was in the process of putting down the centerboard when we heard a loud thud. One of the chain links holding the board in place had finally succumbed to years of wear and tear and the board dangled somewhere in the depths below. It would be days before a boatyard could fix the problem and there was no way I was going to spend my 40th birthday playing air hockey in one of the Lake George Village arcades. We decided to call the Sagamore.

A mile down the road from where my father docks his boat in Bolton Landing, this large wedding cake of a hotel has been the lake's premier address for over a century. Dilapidated in the early 80s, when it was commonly referred to as "Sag Some More," the resort was purchased in 1985 by real estate developer Norman Wolgin of Philadelphia and rightfully restored to its Georgian-style grandeur. Perched on a small hill, you walk into the glass-enclosed patio and peer down at one of the most striking sights in American landscape, inspiring Hudson River School painters to grab their canvases and head north. Georgia O'Keeffe and her camera-toting husband Alfred Stieglitz would soon follow, summering at a home in the southern part of the lake throughout the 1920s.

Steps from the patio lead past the manicured lawn to the Sagamore's shores, offering views of Dome Island, a large round uninhabited forest of firs that looks almost tropical, a place that King Kong would find homey. On the opposite shores of this long rambling lake that often resembles a river, never more than three miles wide, is an uninterrupted carpet of trees that soon rise to 2,000-foot mountains. The waves of rolling summits form a silhouette against the sky that, due to the lake's narrow width, hems you in snugly between the peaks.

A motorboat rambles by, but even now, in the heart of summer, the lake never feels crowded. Most visitors are simply content to visit the tourist hub of Lake George Village at the southern end of the lake. A place where the South Beach diet has yet to rear its healthy head, Main Street hasn't changed one iota since my youth, with its collection of taffy and T-shirt shops, haunted houses, and arcades. If people do venture on the water, it's usually via one of the steamboat replicas, Ticonderoga or Mohican, for a morning or afternoon jaunt.

The serenity of the lake stems from a decision by civil engineers not to extend the road more than eight miles on the eastern shores. So you when you reach the Sagamore, a little less than halfway up the lake, there are no signs of civilization on the other side. Last summer, the Sagamore took advantage of this beauty strip by placing a new a restaurant, the Pavilion, at water's edge. A lobsterbake features all the chowder, steamers, and blueberry pie you can down, in addition to the three-pound crustacean.

Also noteworthy in 2004 was the launch of the Sagamore's sailing program. Those who know the resume of General Manager Lee Bowden know that he's not content to stay the status quo. At the historic Equinox Hotel in Manchester, Vermont, his former employer, the resort unveiled such amenities as hawk hunts and off-road driving in Land Rovers on his watch. So when he came to the Sagamore, Bowden wanted to offer his guests more than just a round of gold on those serpentine fairways designed by Donald Ross in 1928.

"I've been boating here for years, even when I was at the Equinox, and I wanted to share that with others," says Bowden.

He has teamed up with Steve and Doris Colgate, owners of the Offshore Sailing School, who already have a good reputation teaching the sport in Captiva Island, Florida and Tortola, BVI, among other locales. At the Sagamore, Colgate again uses his signature Colgate 26, a faster rig than a J 24, with a cockpit so spacious an instructor has room to maneuver around his students. Best of all, these boats do not have a retractable hull, so we don't have to worry about losing a centerboard.

My father has no problem giving up the reins to Adam De Santis, 24, especially when he realizes the kid could sail this thing with his feet. Once the boat is trimmed and we're out of the harbor, the Colgate is ours to play with and what a toy it is. Exchanging a 14 year-old Catalina for this newly minted vessel is like trading in your dependable Camry for the smooth flow of an Audi Quattro. The whitecaps were frothy and the wind whipping up, when we left Northwest Bay into the open water of the lake. Dad took the tiller as we zipped across the water, high up on our side. A powerful puff of air edged us even higher, but these babies with their oversized hull could never keel over. They right themselves easily, as if they were on cruise control.

We sailed for 2 ½ hours, close to the Sagamore, and across to Dome Island. Colgate also offers full day rentals if you want to venture up into the Narrows, where carved inlets form sheltered anchorages. There's Paradise Bay, once a haven for party boats before the park rangers booted them all out, Commission Point, where I've consumed thousands of salami on rye sandwiches at my family's favorite picnic table overlooking the water, and, of course Black Mountain Point, set at the base of Lake George's tallest mountain and the start of a trail, dusted with pine needles that hugs the shores.

The memories of my time on this lake are as vivid as the crystal clear water. The one constant is the steady breeze, blowing against the New York Post my brother tries to read as we sail, oblivious to our surroundings. Or gusting furiously around us as my college buddy's hand is attached his head, holding down his toupee. Then there's the sudden change of weather that can crush a man's arm or send a boy like me into the berth for safe keeping. Older recollections from a lifetime ago are as hazy as an Adirondack sky, like the sailboat my father made from fiberglass that somehow made me want to scratch my ass all day.

But mostly I remember my dad and mom and their repartee back and forth. "Watch where you're sailing!" he would yell. "Don't worry. Who taught you how to drive?" she reminded him, responding in a Bronx accent so thick you couldn't cut it with a knife. She's gone now, having sailed to another realm, and dad, for the time being, his bark still bites. Inevitably, the day will come when we'll have to retire his Catalina and God knows I don't have the patience to deal with the maintenance and upkeep of a sailboat. But I'll happily pay the Sagamore and Colgate whatever they want to take me on a journey back to my youth.

The Dreamer

Boston Globe Sunday Magazine, September 2004

Mid-October, 2001, I, like most Americans, was caught in that post-September 11 stupor where naïve optimism about the world suddenly laid fragmented in shards on my office floor. I tried like hell to piece together my rose-colored life mosaic, but the glass cut too easily and I bled. I was supposed to be in Morocco, biking the outskirts of Marrakech, but that was the first of many writing assignments overseas that was cancelled. So instead, I tidied up around the house, tossed out all the old toys, clothes, baby products, had a yard sale, and donated the money to the American Red Cross.

My faith in civilization was waning. So when a man called on October 17, 2001, claiming he could walk on water, I thought my prayers had been answered and it was Jesus on line one. He even had an Israeli accent.

"Let me guess, you're from Bethlehem?"

"No, Jerusalem."

Great, another lunatic who thinks he's Jesus. Yet he sounded intelligent so I stayed put. He told me his name was Yoav Rosen. He had moved to Boston with his family eight months ago so his wife, a cell biologist, could do her post-doctorate work at Dana Farber Cancer Institute. In Israel, Rosen was the former director of marketing for an American-based software company, making a salary in the low six-digit range. He had hopes of remaining in the high tech world along the Route 128 corridor, but then the economy faltered. For each job Rosen applied, all less prestigious than the title he held in Israel, there were 800 to 1000 other people yearning for that one position. It was time for a career change.

Perhaps it was the lack of water surrounding Jerusalem that led Rosen to take notice of the rivers and ponds near his new abode in Newton. He quickly became obsessed with a childhood dream, a desire to walk on water. Not for spiritual reasons, but purely recreational. We use our legs to hike, to bike, even to ski down mountains, he noted, so why, after several millennia have we not conquered the sea?

Rosen delved deeper into the matter, scouring through some 100 patents on file with United States Patent and Trademark Office, including the first water-walking apparatus, patent number 22457 designed by Bostonian Henry R. Rowlands in 1858. In his brief and images, Rowlands describes how he designed two small pontoons or boats, one for each foot. You could now walk on water, ever so slowly. One had to step, wait, step, wait, and so on, without fluid movement. As he read over these patents, Rosen was astonished to realize that no American inventor had ever solved the problem of propulsion, moving from one foot to the other without a loss of energy or time.

Until now. Rosen assured me that his design was foolproof, having developed a flap that opens and allows water through as your foot propels forward, closes and thus resists water as you push back. This allows for a steady motion of his two pontoons, or floaters as he called them.

Rosen had discovered my book, Outside Magazine's Adventure Guide to New England, at the local library. The manuscript delves into every sport imaginable in the region, from the more prosaic hiking and biking to the outlandish, hang gliding and dogsledding. He figured that if anyone was crazy enough to try his new toy, it would be me. And, heck, we both live in Newton, right? Wrong. I wished him well with his endeavor and returned to cleaning out the attic.

In the Book of Matthew, chapter 14, we read of Jesus' friends, the disciples, caught in rough seas. "But the ship was now in the midst of the sea, tossed with waves…And in the fourth watch of the night Jesus went unto them, walking on the sea. And when the disciples saw him, they were troubled, saying, It is a spirit; and they cried out for fear. But Jesus spoke Be of good cheer; it is I; be not afraid." Christianity is not the only religion to embrace the act of walking on water. In Buddhism, we learn that Sariputta crossed the tumultuous river Savatthi to hear the great Buddha preach: "This stream shall not prevent me. I shall go and see the Blessed One, and he stepped upon the water which was as firm under his feet as a slab of granite." Hinduism also touches on this spectacle, while in Judaism, Moses felt no need to stroll atop the surface. He simply parted the Red Sea.

Then there was that mere mortal, Leonardo Da Vinci, who once contended that "the knowledge of all things is possible." Before Copernicus, he stated that the earth is "a star, like the moon." Before Galileo, he suggested that "a large magnifying lens" should be used to study the surface of the moon. Almost four centuries before Darwin, he noted that "man does not vary from the animals except in what is accidental." And, yes, some 525 years before Rosen, Da Vinci created a drawing in his Codex Atlanticus that shows a man atop two floats, poles in hand, attempting to walk on water.

It wasn't until February 2002 that I received another call from Yoav. "I have perfected the problem of stability," he says. While he boasted that it took him a mere two weeks to solve the centuries-old dilemma of propulsion, it would be another year before he could figure out how to properly stand atop the water and float. Unlike surfing, where you're in constant movement, to simply stand on water requires a balance between weight and buoyancy. His solution was to shift the weight of the floaters to the bottom and to connect the pair together with a plastic-coated steel cable. This prevented the floaters from venturing off in every direction.

"Please," he insisted, "come over to my house and see the latest prototype, and then I'll take you over to the Charles for a try."

Rosen's obsession succeeds in piquing my interest. Within an hour, we're at a bend in the partially iced-over river, dragging the fruit of his labor to the shores. It is my first chance to finally see this water-walking device; more or less, two Styrofoam pontoons with holes for your feet, a cross between skies and small canoes. It looks bulky, awkward, but that doesn't stop the impassioned dreamer from planting his feet into position.

Rosen, now 43, is neither fit nor fat, with certainly more business than athletic acumen. His first several steps remind me of Frankenstein's initial attempt at walking. Then he's out on the river, gliding on the water like a cross-country skier on snow. He looks steady, at ease, but once or twice he collides with ice that throws him off-balance, like a skier hitting a patch of grass. He manages to stay upright, asks if I'd like to give it a shot. I look down at the frozen Charles and pass, not wanting to do the backstroke in the middle of winter.

The following months, Yoav fills me in on his progress via email. He establishes a business plan and is awarded a semifinalist at the MIT $50K Entrepreneurship Competition. This proves to be more of a disappointment than a blessing. Rosen has high hopes of attracting venture capital money to his fledgling business, but only two firms seem interested. After sending lower level employees over to Yoav's house to view his invention up close, they decline. To forge ahead, Rosen creates 200,000 shares of his company, WaveWalk, and sells them to family and friends at $15 a pop. The money is essential not only for the continuous research and development of his product, but for the costly United States patent.

According to Rosen's intellectual property lawyer, Cambridge-based Inna Landsman, the average cost to file an application with the US Patent and Trademark Office is $10,000 to $20,000, less with smaller firms like hers. With other expenditures like writing a provisional application, filing a Patent Cooperation Treaty to preserve IP rights overseas, and hiring a technical writer to help with the wording so it won't be rejected, costs can easily surpass $30,000 if you want to properly protect your interest. That's solely for a patent in America. When Rosen inquired about obtaining a German patent, Landsman received a quote from a German law firm for $45,000.

The USPTO does not have specific data on how many of the more than 6.5 million patents filed since 1790 have actually made it to commercial use. In a paper written in 2000 by former University of California at Berkeley law professor Mark Lemley, he "suspected the total number of patents licensed for a royalty is on the order of 5% of issued patents." Most inventor websites also come up with the same minimal rate of success. Even this number does not take into account that profits may never exceed initial investment.

Sunday, August 3, 2003, was another muggy summer day, one where my family chose to escape the heat and celebrate my niece's 8th birthday under the shady trees of Auburndale Park in Newton. It's a local favorite, known for its playground and the opportunity to feed the swans that swim up to the children on the banks of the Charles. I was pushing my 4-year-old in a swing, when I glanced out upon the river and noticed a man standing, paddling a bright yellow contraption that looked like a large rocking chair. As he came closer to the shores, it was none other than Yoav.

I had not seen him since that chilly morning a year and a half prior, and since his emails became less and less frequent, I assumed he went bankrupt or his wife finally slammed some sense into him, demanding that he become a responsible check-cashing father of two once again. But, no, the wife and his boys seemed just as gleeful as Yoav to be inside this ten-foot long double-hulled boat.

"What is this?" I exclaimed.

"The latest and greatest. The W Boat," said Yoav, grinning ear to ear.

Gone was the ugly inventor's Styrofoam, replaced by a slick polyethylene. Rosen made an entrepreneurial decision in the latter part of 2002 to abandon walking on water because he had little hope of ever convincing distributors to market something so outrageous to retail boating and outdoor stores. So he entered the arena of paddlesports and used more of his savings (closing in on $100,000) to create a plastic mold of the product. His original two floaters had evolved into a double hull boat, not unlike a catamaran sailboat. In the open center was a vertical ribbed seat, smack dab between the hulls. Using his expertise on stability, Rosen left space on either side of the seat so one could stand to paddle or fish.

This time, I didn't dilly-dally. I hopped in and began to stroke, startled by both the ease of navigating and the quickness of the boat. Then I bolted upright, hesitantly, remembering the last time I stood inside a paddleboat, my canoe capsized with a week's worth of clothes and food. I'm jumping, trying my best to topple this durable yet light entry into the world of river and lake recreation. No such luck. My 4-year-old soon joins me and she's aiming for the opposite shores with the grace of a registered Maine guide.

"But what about walking on water?" I ask Yoav when I return to terra firma. "And the ability to use your legs to travel?"

"You still use your legs, to stand," says Rosen. "It's a hybrid," he laughs.

Rosen has since made the molding even stronger and, starting this summer, 17 boat stores in Eastern Massachusetts are selling the W Boat at a suggested retail price of $840. Yoav has become one of the lucky few making money off his invention. He enters the world of paddlesports at a time when sales of canoes have been down for decades and the ever-popular kayak seems to have peaked. His desire is to license his design to manufacturers so that high-end kayak companies can create an upscale version of the W Boat while an affordable alternative is available to recreational paddlers.

In both Christianity and Buddhism, walking on water revolves around faith. Later, in chapter 14 of the Book of Matthew, we learn that Peter attempts to join Jesus atop the water, but begins to sink. "O thou of little faith, wherefore didst thou doubt?" says Jesus as he stretches forth his hand to catch him. Not in the least bit religious, Yoav Rosen had faith in himself to walk on water. He did find one follower. His human folly restored my optimism in the fate of mankind.

52 Weekend Getaways (Guest Editor)

Boston Globe Sunday Magazine Annual Travel Issue, September 2005

Hoodoo You Love?

"I'm king of the world," shouts my proud son Jake, climbing higher and higher up the jagged ridge walls. We were supposed to do the easy Emerald Pools walk to a series of small ponds carved out of the rock they call Zion National Park. But, no, my 8 year-old boy insisted on the more strenuous Hidden Canyon hike, even after the Park Ranger noted that "we lost a couple of 'em (children) up there, so be careful." Next thing you know we're on a rock face and clutching the chain that marks the route, where one misstep would send us plummeting 600 feet below to the valley floor.

"This is fun," says 6 year-old Melanie, though my wife is not necessarily in agreement at the moment. She's fully committed to loosening the parental stronghold and letting the kids become more independent. But she doesn't want our children flying off a cliff. Eventually we reach a degree of safety in the narrow slot canyon that slices between the precipitous walls. Sunlight seeps in, illuminating the red Navajo sandstone. Another hiker lends our children his binoculars and they stare at the morning moon peeking out above the serrated rim. We're in the middle of one of those western National Parks scenes that only Ansel Adams could have shot.

A mere ninety minute drive from the neon lights of the Las Vegas strip, and you're in the arid desert of southwestern Utah, as far from verdant New England as one can imagine. It's a geologist's dream of twisting red rock walls, craggy peaks, monoliths, buttes, and further east, when you reach Bryce National Park, the colorful standing pinnacles geologists call hoodoos.

Our first stop across the Utah state line was Snow Canyon State Park, just outside the growing spa and retirement hub of St. George. The canyon walls there look clumped together from a playdough kit. It's a perfect place for a hideout - at least, that's what the producers of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid thought when they filmed part of the movie here. We took a nature walk, a worthy introduction to such desert flora as the white cliff rose flower, the ancient creosote bush, juniper trees, prickly pear cacti, and silvery old-man sagebrush.

Less than an hour east are the towering cliff walls of Zion, and another ninety minute drive north, the spires of Bryce. While we spend most of our time in Zion looking up in awe at the canyon walls, visitors to Bryce peer down from the rim trail at the hundreds of hoodoos that line the amphitheater. Inspiration Point is an apt name for the peach, apricot, tan, white, red, and orange rocks that stand at attention like congregants in a church. On the Queen's Garden Trail, we strolled down a dusty stone path for a closer look at the Point. Behind every hoodoo is another fantastic wall, arch, grotto or cliff. "It would be a helluva place to lose a cow," Ebenezer Bryce supposedly said. My daughter, Melanie, is not so impressed. "How many of these hoodoo dudes do we need to see?" she says. That's our cue to head back to the hotel pool.

Riding the Rails

Canadian Geographic, September/October 2005

Biking slightly uphill outside of Hunter's River, horse farms replace dairy farms and the pasture flourishes, as green and velvety as billiard felt. Purple lupines line this trail like spectators at a marathon run. I was on my final ride of a three-day bike tour of Prince Edward Island last September, a quiet time of year when the summer crowds subside and the maples turn crimson. Hunter's River is less than a 15-minute drive from the fabled dunes and red cliffs of Cavendish, the PEI tourist hub made famous by that young girl in braids, Anne of Green Gables. Close to civilization yet far enough removed to relish the solitude (I've only greeted one other biker this day), I'm lost in a bucolic setting that has changed little since Lucy Maud Montgomery penned her timeless novel in 1908.

Oh yes, there is one difference. The Canadian Pacific railroad that once connected the island's small villages last roared through the interior in 1989, leaving in its wake hundreds of kilometres of track. By 2000, the tracks were pulled and the line replaced with a surface of finely crushed gravel, creating a biking and walking thoroughfare called the Confederation Trail. It starts in Tignish on the island's western tip and rolls 279 kilometres to the eastern terminus in Elmira.

The main reason Prince Edward Island joined the Confederation in 1873 was to offset the massive debt caused by creating this railroad line that, at its peak, had 121 stations. Just as Dickens was paid by the word, the original contractor was paid by the amount of track he set down. So the trail meanders, curving around hills to create a relatively easy ride with little variance in grade through the heart of PEI. There's no better way to appreciate the island's multi-colored palette than to slow down and travel through it. I pedalled alongside rivers and bays leading to the royal blue Gulf of St. Lawrence, and fertile green farmland, with tinges of red from the iron-rich soil. In the distance, fields thrived with purple and yellow wildflowers and tall grasses. It's as if the farmer forgot he had so much land.

"We can thank the potato for this," says Doug Deacon inside his homey restaurant and four-room inn in Mount Stewart. "Those farmers are on a three-year crop-rotation cycle, so it gives the countryside that undeveloped feel."

In 1998, Doug opened his Trailside Inn on a spur of the Confederation Trail that borders the oyster-laden Hillsborough River. Deacon is no stranger to the rail-to-trail movement. His father, the late Donald Deacon, was founding president of the Confederation Trail in PEI. While Donald was busy helping the province purchase the entire railroad corridor, Doug was converting the old co-op store into a mecca for bikers. He rents bikes (only hybrids, a cross between a mountain and road bike and more suitable for the unpaved trail), feeds the hungry rider some of those succulent and small oysters in a seafood stew and hires some of the finest Celtic bands in the region to perform at dusk.

To earn my dinner, I take one of Doug's bikes on a 74-kilometre ride that eventually leads to Greenwich Dunes National Park. The trail weaves along the Hillsborough River, lined by spindly birches and blueberry patches out yonder. I follow the flight of yellow warblers into the town of Morrel. From here, the trail hugs the U-shaped shoreline of St. Peter's Bay, crossing over salt marsh on three wooden bridges. Those prehistoric looking birds, great blue herons, stand in the water, waiting patiently for another tasty morsel of fish. In the center of the bay is a mesh of mussels buoys, looming large and black atop the sea. The 10 mussel farmers of St. Peter's Bay boat out to their bounty at least twice a week, even in winter, to clean their lines of the crabs and starfish that savour the taste of baby mussels.

In the village of St. Peter's, I veer off the Confederation Trail for a short ride on Route 313 that takes me to the Greenwich Dunes. I exchange two wheels for two legs and explore Prince Edward Island National Park. Arja Page, client service coordinator at the interpretation centre, tells me I'm in luck. "The beach at Greenwich is off-limits in the summer due to nesting piping plovers," she notes. In early fall, the plovers are gone, so I'm free to walk the shoreline.

I'm left alone to stroll on a long floating bridge beside the rare parabolic dunes, which, close up, look like bowls of sand that only a giant could drink from. A brisk wind comes up from the Gulf of St. Lawrence, but when I dip my toe in the water I'm surprised at its warmth. Ahh, yes, the luxury of being on the Gulf Stream. Except for a flock of cormorants, the beach is deserted. Startled to see a human, the birds take flight. The sand is strewn with the shells of crabs and starfish, the work of those mussel fishermen. I return to my bike through a forest of firs, joined by one rather plump bunny, then venture back to the Trailside Café for much needed sustenance.

The next day, I design a loop offering a mix of both road riding and the Confederation Trail. This way, I don't bike on the same section of trail twice and I can get a taste of the real PEI terrain and its steep short climbs up into higher farmland and along the shores. If there's one disadvantage to biking the Confederation Trail, it's the lack of elevation changes. The flat terrain you initially covet can get tedious day after day. I was in dire need of uphill challenges and sweeping downhill runs.

Lightly travelled Route 16, heading north from Souris on the eastern shores, satisfied any craving I had for hills. The rollicking ride had me on an up-and-down run as I took in the pastoral views to my left, the vast ocean to my right. At Basin Head, I made a detour to the beach to see the rust-colored cliffs that jut out into the ocean. Then it was on to the easternmost township of Elmira, where I stopped for an ice cream cone at the Elmira Railway Museum. Inside the original station, built in 1912, it's easy to relive the past. You can picture the men playing cards in one of the two waiting rooms, the women sharing recipes for blueberry jam or potato pancakes in the other. The station master's office still stands, as does the telegraph and ticket puncher.

The hum of trains long gone, I hopped on my bike and pedalled on the Confederation Trail through a tunnel of dense pines that effectively blocked out the world. There was not a soul around and the chaos of modernity was replaced with the melody of birds chirping. I was biking into a bygone era, a serene spot where a girl named Anne could have easily grown up without too much duress.

TRAVEL

Whale of a Good Time

Endless Vacation, September/October 2005

"I just saw a whale breach for the first time since 1993," says an excited Sue Daniel, a volunteer with a group called Whale Watching Spoken Here, referring to the action the animal makes when they propel their massive bodies out of the water and slam down on one side. "Holy mackerel," I say to Sue, knowing that this might be the chance encounter I've been waiting for. The opportunity to finally see a whale other than Shamu greet me in his distinctive fashion, be it a breach, a fluke where the barnacle loving fool takes his large tail out of the water and practically waves, or a spout. I pin the binoculars to my eyes and peer out over the Pacific, scanning the water for any movement. I find the Tillamook Lighthouse on a rock some two miles out to sea, looking like a one-room schoolhouse, and the immense boulders in the water called sea stacks that stand close to shore. But the only sign of life I spot is a puffy black-and-white bird known as the common mure.

I'm not the first seeker of the whale to come up empty-handed. It was almost 200 years ago to the day, in January 1806, when Captain William Clark, Sacagawea, and a small party from the Lewis & Clark expedition came to this exact spot on the Oregon coast to search for a whale that had supposedly washed ashore. Clark thought the whale blubber would come in handy to feed his people, but all he found was a skeleton on the beach. He would name the spot, "Ecola," the native term for whale. As he stood on a sliver of beach caught between the rugged shoreline, Clark wrote in his journal, "from this point I beheld the grandest and most pleasing prospects which my eyes ever surveyed."

Not known for hyperbole, Clark's words ring true today. Drive into Ecola State Park and sunlight splinters onto a tangled web of gnarly forest, coated green with a slick layer of moss from the state's notable rainfall. Even more impressive is the wide girth of the Sitka spruce tree, its trunk often as wide as a redwood and its age regularly exceeding that of Lewis and Clark by another hundred years. Then the woods recede, replaced by sandstone bluffs, rust colored beaches and the great expanse of the Pacific. It is here on the Oregon coast that the mighty timber of the Pacific Northwest meets the long stretch of beach from California, offering the best of both worlds.

On a weeklong jaunt along the Oregon coast last spring, my brother, Jim, and I would take advantage of the perched bluffs, jutting out into the surging waves, and the absurd wealth of vacated sand to view the gray whale on his migration north from the breeding grounds of Baja California to the summer playground of the Bering Sea. The roundtrip is a staggering 10,000 miles, the longest known migration of any mammal. Traveling about 5 miles per hour, it takes the whale some three weeks to make the journey, passing the Oregon coast in late March and April as they head north and December and January as they make their way back down to Mexico. The whales swim in a straight line along the shallow waters, leading to speculation that the animal navigates by hearing the surf. This made it easy for whalers to harpoon them. By the early 1900s the gray whale was close to extinction. Protection came from the League of Nations in 1937 and now the population hovers around 25,000.

"We would frequently see whales spouting from our dining room window," says John Markham, who grew up in nearby Cannon Beach and is now the Director of the Arch Cape Marine Laboratory. Once a row of fishing shacks, Cannon Beach became a popular retreat for Portlanders, a mere 90-minute drive away, starting in the mid-80s. Now it is commonly referred to as the Carmel of Oregon, with the highest real estate prices per square foot in Oregon. The lure is magnificent Haystack Rock, a towering monolith that stands tall along the beach, inspiring awe from all who stroll by on the flat sand.

While we had yet to find our Moby Dick, we did lavish ourselves with an embarrassment of riches from the sea as we dined at Stephanie Inn. San Francisco-trained chef John Newman first came to the Oregon coast to surf, but stayed when he realized that he could never find a fresher bounty of fish, crabs and oysters, in addition to the coast's wet fecund soil that yields every kind of organic produce imaginable.

"My menu changes daily depending on what the local farmer or fishermen bring in," says Newman, adding that he always has to offer the mushroom lady a glass of sparkling wine upon her arrival. We were served a robust wild mushroom soup, rich with the taste of shitake, followed by sweet Dungeness crabcakes and a poached halibut. Wash it all down with an Oregon pinot noir and finish with a toasted hazelnut profiterole and you have a Northwestern feast that could rival any big name restaurant in LA or New York.

The gluttony of good food continued as we made our way south, stopping in the fishing community of Bay City for small, tender Kumamoto oysters on the half shell at the Pacific Oyster, and the creamy blackberry ice cream found at Tillamook Cheese Factory.

"If Vermont had an ocean, this is what it would be like," noted Jim as walked to the small lighthouse of Cape Meares, set above another stretch of stunning coastline. Not only is the indigenous product created with the utmost quality, but like Vermont, the coast of Oregon has an isolated feel that comes with having more than 300 miles of coastline and no big city except Portland close by to overpopulate the shores. Instead, you're left with long strips of beach inhabited by few if any people, especially in winter and spring months. At small towns like Manzanita, Oceanside, or farther south, Yachats, you can grab a kite at the requisite kite shop and run with abandonment in the shallow surf.

Route 101 becomes a commercial strip between Lincoln City and Newport, a depressing eyesore especially considering the magnificent beauty of the coast we just witnessed. However, it does have its highlights. At Depoe Bay, I stood outside my hotel room at dusk eyeing the battering surf as it thrust against the jagged, cavernous rock of the shore, spewing foam high in the air in this Pacific rendition of a Winslow Homer canvas. Out to sea, the ocean was much calmer, like a thin layer of glass with a Windex shine. I pasted the binoculars on my face and looked for that elusive gray whale for a good quarter-hour, panning the waters. A splash here and there caused by an errant rock. Other than that, nothing.

In Newport the next morning, we ventured out from the largest fishing port on the Oregon coast, cruising past a long rock jetty on the 2-hour long Marine Discovery Tour. Soon we were on the open water, bouncing atop five-foot swells, observing the tall Yaquina Head Lighthouse in the distance. Naturalist Kevin Almas threw circular crab cages off the backside of the boat, only to pick them up later on our return trip full of Dungeness crab and one large pink starfish. We spotted the tan-colored stellar sea lions lounging on buoys, and Kevin teased us with the information that they had just seen a whale on their last trip out.

"Heck, I've swam with whales, even petted one," he adds, sprinkling salt in the wound.

I glance around, but it's hard to see anything when the boat's rocking like a see-saw. I did manage to find numerous common mures flying around, noting that, yes, they are quite common. Then I gaze downward and become aware of my bulging belly, getting bigger every day on this trip. If I didn't see a whale, I would have the consolation of going back home looking like an Orca.

South of Newport, the coastline is its wild self once again. In the small arts community of Yachats, houses precariously cling to the high cliffs, nestled in a forest of spruce and leafless alder trees. As a winter storm blackens the sky and litters the surf with a deluge of rain, locals pull up to the small parking lot of Yachats State Park and watch the spectacle. The hills reach their highest point, 900 feet above the beach, at Cape Perpetua. We drive to the top and jump out of the car to take in the exquisite vistas. At the start of the Giant Spruce Trail, a man yells joyously, "A whale. I just saw a whale." My brother and I run over, bur can't find diddlysquat.

"Are you sure?" I questioned the man.

"Well, at least I wanted it to be a whale," he said with a chuckle.

Our final night is spent at arguably the most perfect spot on the entire Oregon coast, a former assistant lightkeeper's quarters, set on a grassy patch below the Heceta Head Lighthouse. Above, the tall white lighthouse stands atop a spit of land. Below, breakers explode against the burgundy red cliffs that hem in a narrow beach filled with driftwood. In the darkness, I grab a flashlight from the inn and hike up to the lighthouse to watch it flash beacon after beacon across the rugged land and then out to sea.

Come morning, my brother and I dine on a seven-course breakfast with the other guests. Afterwards, a stretch on the wraparound verandah is in order. I stare at a crab boat coming into the harbor from its night catch. Then I take out my binoculars and fix my eyes on the horizon one last time. And that's when I caught sight of a small geyser of water, shot straight up into the sky. From a gray whale's blowhole, of course.

When a Friendship Becomes a Hardship

Boston Globe, January 2005

The rap on the door was followed by a woman's voice: "Are you awake? We're leaving shortly." I snapped out of my heavy dream and rolled over to find the clock reading 5:38 a.m. It took me a moment to realize where I was, inside a thatched hut on Taveuni, the third largest island in that South Pacific paradise, Fiji. Taveuni is a coveted secret among scuba divers, known for its rainbow-colored reefs and abundant sealife. The lady calling from behind the door, however, was more impressed with the island's landscape and indigenous flora.

Her name was Cathy, in her late 40s, a genuinely good-natured person I had met the day before when I was downing a Fiji Bitter on the front porch of my hut, sheltering myself from one of those tropical rainstorms that just wouldn't let up. She was sitting outside an adjacent hut, and after exchanging greetings, I realized she was American.

In fact, she was from the same upstate New York city I spent the first eighteen years of my existence. Based on this coincidence, our rapport was instantaneous.

She came to this diving destination, not to swim with the fish, but to find the Tangimauthia, a rare type of climbing vine adorned with a vibrant array of flowers. The Tangimauthia can only be found at Lake Tangimauthia, a volcanic lake hidden inside the island's mountainous interior. Cathy proposed we hire a guide and hike up to see the intriguing flower. The offer was enticing and I agreed to go, when and if the rain subsided.

"One second," I said as I threw on a T-shirt and pair of shorts, and opened the door.

"It's starting to clear up. You still want to do this, right?" Cathy asked. Standing next to her was a Fijian man who was holding a four-foot long walking stick. He had a gentle smile and Cathy introduced him as our guide, Semi Waqa.

To be honest, I was feeling a little apprehensive. I just arose out of a deep slumber, had nothing in my stomach and lacked my usual hiking gear. Standing in front of me, though, was a confident, petite woman and our pot-bellied guide. "What am I worrying about?" I thought to myself. I'm a fit guy in my thirties who has certainly done his fair share of hiking. After a day of watching the rain drip off banana ferns, it would be fun to leave my claustrophobic cottage behind and venture into the bush.

"I'll be right out," I responded as I tossed a tin can of tuna, a Swiss army knife and a jug of water into my daypack and joined them.

"How long does this hike take?" I asked the guide as we started our ascent. Semi replied that he could climb to the lake and back in three and a half hours. Since he was wearing flip-flops at the time, I knew we could easily match that.

As we strolled upon a winding dusty road, discussing with Semi the tribal rituals of modern-day Fijians, I began to feel comfortable with my decision. Thirty minutes later, we approached a creek, a foot deep but far too wide to jump over. Cathy and I removed our sneakers and rolled up our pants to get across, though Semi informed us we would probably get wet further up. I quickly understood what he meant when our dusty road faded and we encountered the same stream again, now a raging river.

"What happened to the trail?" Cathy asked.

"The river is the trail," Semi stated. Unfortunately, the river was dense with boulders, all covered with a thin layer of slick green moss, thereby thwarting any possibility of jumping from one stone to the next. We waded through knee-deep water, clumsily grabbing at these large rocks to propel ourselves forward against the downward flow of the current.

Two hours later, we crawled out of the water only to find ourselves looking up at an incredibly steep and narrow incline. The muddy path was only several feet wide, yet contained numerous tree roots jutting out of its soft terrain. This was where we had the unique opportunity of stretching toward the sky and grasping onto these roots in order to pull our bodies upward. It was not unlike clambering up the side of a ten story building, looking for small indentations to clutch onto as your legs dangle aimlessly.

I was thoroughly exhausted and slightly delirious when we finally reached the top of the crater, but to my dismay, Semi told us we still had to climb down another hour to reach Lake Tangimauthia. As I started to plod through a swamp with sludge up to my thighs, I realized that Cathy and Semi were walking with graceful agility. It was four hours into our trip by now, so I decided to remind Semi that he previously stated the round-trip would take just three and half hours.

"Yes," he agreed, "I have done this trek in that time, but I was born at the bottom of the hill and I have done this climb almost every day for thirty years. It might take a bit longer for you." Fair enough, I thought, but what's Cathy's excuse? How was she moving so rapidly and breathing so effortlessly at this point?

Somehow, I suffered through this last leg of the climb as a torrential downpour began to pelt against my tired body. At last, I reached the final destination, wet, shivering and famished. It was by far the most torturous hike of my life. I sat down on an uprooted tree, took out my can of tuna and viewed this remote volcanic lake. It was nothing more than a grayish colored pond inundated with weeds.

"Where are all the Tangimauthia?" I asked.

"They don't bloom until December," Semi told me. It was July.

I wanted to cry, but I didn't have the energy. No, I wanted to strangle Cathy for persuading me into accompanying her on this death march. She was prancing around taking pictures of the pond as if it was a majestic lake in the Swiss Alps. When she finally sat down and began talking to me, I discovered that Cathy was a triathlete who had recently reached the 19,340-foot summit of Africa's highest peak, Mt. Kilamanjaro.

I had no one to blame but myself. Less than twenty-four hours ago, she was a complete stranger, yet I had the audacity to think that after one brief chat with her about Schenectady, I could partake in any recreational activity she could. I vowed to get an individual's daily workout routine the next time I undertook such a foolish endeavor. And I would never underestimate an overweight local guide dressed for a Sunday afternoon by the pool.

By now, I was freezing from the constant rainfall, the tuna was dry and unappetizing and we still had the return trip ahead. A wave of nausea passed through me. We made it back to town four hours later, avoiding the river yet still having to slide down a slippery hillside, hobbling through a maze of extended roots. I had leg cramps at the bottom of the hill, but managed to crawl to my bed covered with mud, sweat and rain.

The guide, Semi, cost only ten Fijian or six US dollars. What a bargain.

Live off the Land

Chicago Tribune, January 2005

"Follow me closely," says our guide Kent Augiste as we make our final steps down the steep flanks of Morne Watt into the so-called Valley of Desolation. The landscape is a study of contrasts, from the rock slides that create the barren brown slopes to our right to the green mountain ridges straight ahead that rise dramatically from almost every viewpoint in Dominica. At the moment, however, it is the white smoke billowing up from the scorching stream at our feet that holds my interest. The smell of sulfur is overwhelming and the sounds of foamy, gurgling water doesn't exactly instill confidence in my footing. I'm on Kent like an avocado clings to its branch on this nature isle.

People flock to the Caribbean to sift their toes in the pearly white sands. But in Dominica, the attraction is not the relatively few beaches, but a lush mountainous interior ripe with every tropical fruit and vegetable imaginable, and inundated with so much water that around every bend is another raging waterfall, a serene swimming hole nestled in the thick bush, or a hidden hot spring to rest your weary body after a day in the outdoors. Indeed, this island closest to Martinique, has become an affordable haven for the active traveler who yearns to hike through a jungle-like forest, scuba dive and snorkel on living reefs, and sea kayak in sheltered coves with little if any boat traffic. Sure, you can still lounge with a good book, but it won't be on an overdeveloped strip of sand. You'll be high up in the hills on some small eco-resort balcony sipping fresh passionfruit juice and listening to the waves of the Atlantic crash onto the rocky shores below.

Dominica's volcanoes might be dormant yet there's still fire in the belly of this island. The Valley of Desolation was just one of the highlights on a 7-hour round-trip hike inside Morne Trois Pitons National Park. Kent led my climbing partner and me over muddy trails through a dense forest of tall gommier trees, used to make dugout canoes for 20 to 30 paddlers, and past the massive trunks and aerial roots of the banyan-like chatagnier trees, some more than 300 years old. As we made our ascent out of the darkness of the rainforest canopy, iridescent purple-throated hummingbirds kept us company as they stuck their heads into the tubular orange and red heliconia flowers.

At the far end of the Valley of Desolation, we climbed through chest-high vegetation along a river, then up and down a series of hills to finally arrive at the rim of the crater known as Boiling Lake. The second largest lake of its kind in the world, steam emanates from this cauldron of bubbling water where temperatures top out at 198 degrees Fahrenheit. "Don't get too close to the edge," said Kent as I peered down, wondering how many people met their demise in this unforgiving witch's brew.

Back down at the trail head, we earned the right to swim in the dark cool waters of the mysterious Titou Gorge. Inside a narrow chasm that filters out sunlight, I felt like Jonah swimming through the ribs of the great whale. Words echoed off the cavernous walls. More muscle therapy awaited us that evening in the natural hot spring of Papillote Wilderness Retreat, where water temps are an ideal 98 degrees less than Boiling Lake.

Owner Anne Jno Baptiste first came to the island from the States in 1961. Eight years later, she bought a 7-acre chunk of land enveloped by the rainforest that she would cultivate into a flower-rich botanical garden and one of the Caribbean's first eco-resorts. I walked the trails, a luxuriant and tangled growth overflowing with indigenous orchids, begonias, and bromeliads, on one of the rare moments it did not rain here. There's no secret why Dominica remains so velvety green while other Caribbean locales like Aruba and the Turks & Caicos look so arid and brown: the heavy downpours, with some parts of the island like Papillote receiving more than 300 inches of rainfall annually.

"The umbrella is part of the wardrobe here," says Anne with a laugh.

Like the flowers she's nurtured, almost everything inside Anne's property comes from Dominica. In the dining room the red cedar chairs, stone walls, and wrought iron wainscoting are all native. The menu includes fresh tuna and blue marlin, caught and sold that morning in the capital city of Roseau, a 20-minute drive away. On early Saturday mornings, Anne scours the food market in town to bring back a bevy of local produce like green bananas and breadfruit, used as a starch, pumpkins and papayas found in her soups, soft buttery avocadoes, and fruits like pineapple, passionfruit, mangoes, starfruit, tangerines, guava, and grapefruit. On this island of 70,000 people, no one goes hungry.

All that rain also produces a bounty of waterfalls. A fifteen-minute walk from Papillote, the Breakfast River careens down the hillside to form Trafalgar Falls, one of 14 major waterfalls in the country. Trafalgar is actually two waterfalls in one, with the higher Papa and lower Mama plunging over boulders, like blonde ponytails dangling from one big mountainous head.

On our final day, we visited the small fishing village of Soufriere and had our first taste of saltwater. Standing on the shores of a quiet cove that appeals to divers and sea kayakers, our guide Oscar Etienne had us thrust our hands into the black sand to show that even at the outer edges of the island, the ground is still steamy.

"Can't keep it there too long before it's barbecued" he says with a smile.

We follow his lead and start paddling along the rugged coastline, accompanied by dozens of thin needle-nose fish that fly in and out of the waves. An hour later, we exchange kayaks for snorkels and hover above little tiny bubbles the locals call the Champagne Pools. Geothermal vents in the ocean floor allow the hot air to rise. Close by, Oscar pointed to a small octopus and sponges hidden within the nooks of the reef. Schools of black-striped sergeant majors were seen floating above the brain and elkhorn coral.

Back on dry land, Oscar handed us a cool glass of fruit juice. No protein shakes or Gatorade necessary. In Dominica, they do everything the natural way.

So You Wanna Own a B&B?

Boston Globe Sunday Magazine, June 2004

The grass is always greener on the other side, especially in Vermont where the farmland is so fecund you want to jump out of the car just to plunge your hands into the soil. At least that's what Walt Forrester thought when he left his job selling X-ray equipment in Chicago and bought an 1857 Victorian home on the shores of the Ottauquechee River. Walt and his wife, Barbara, a pastry chef, had their sights set on a restaurant. But when they saw the former home of Senator Joseph Parker, a National Historic Site, no less, overlooking Quechee's postcard-perfect covered bridge and waterfalls, the Forresters convinced friends and family to invest in their next business venture, a seven-bedroom, full-dining bed and breakfast called the Parker House Inn.

Eleven years later, Walt's ready to sell. "It's a burnout," he says. "Up and down four flights of stairs all the time. It gets hard on the knees," notes the 69 year-old. Then there's the long hours with Walt up to cook breakfast no later than 7:30 am, catering to the latest diet craze and food allergies, and often drinking with guests at his pub until 11 pm. And that one patron you won't soon forget.

"There was this man last summer who called four times. He was a college professor who insisted I call him Doctor. 'Do you give AAA discounts or AARP? What's for breakfast?' Each one of these are separate phone calls. I said to Barbara this guy is going to be a pain in the ass," says Walt. "He was. He came here and wanted a different room even though I had told him numerous times we were completely sold out. So then he wanted to change the light in his room, which he said wasn't good for reading. Finally I told him, Doctor, I don't think this is the right place for you. If you don't leave, I'm going to lose my temper. He left."

Perhaps it's the daily commute, a stop-and-go grind that's a constant every single day of your working life, or the ever swelling humidity of summer in a fortress of concrete and brick, where the only respite is an air conditioned restaurant or shop. Tense from fighting traffic, suit soaked in perspiration, you imagine a better life. One where exhaust is replaced by the sweet fragrance of balsams and firs, a towering skyscraper becomes a mountain summit, and the murky water of the Boston Harbor is traded for the cool runnings of a serpentine stream the color of gin. Ahhh…fresh air, lazy days and amorous nights. But lets get serious, you can't afford to simply eject and do nothing in this bucolic setting. So, like a sprinkling of other urbanites gone awry, you cash in your corporate chips and buy a country inn.

"In today's frazzled world, there are plenty of people who are saying let's get out of this rat race," says Dave Kaufman, Professor of Hospitality Marketing at the University of Vermont. "Real estate inquiries in Vermont and across Lake Champlain in the Adirondacks are at an all time high," he adds.

On the surface, owning one of the approximate 800 B&Bs and larger inns in Vermont looks like a perfect antidote to a life of stress. Come to the country, talk to all those people who grant you a visit, make new friends and take their money. It seems like the easy life, especially with those of us who already associate inns with vacation. For years, the job of an innkeeper was popular with folks in their 50s, who viewed the profession as a retirement job. But innkeepers often put in longer hours than even first year lawyers at downtown firms like Ropes & Gray.

"If you want to see the glory and ease of running a country inn in Vermont, watch reruns of Newhart," says Kaufman, referring to Bob Newhart's second stint on episodic television. No longer a psychologist, Newhart plays Dick Loudon, a happily married New Yorker who indulges his interest in American history by purchasing the Stratford Inn in River City, Vermont, originally built in 1774. Dick and his wife Joanna refurbish and open the inn which had been shuttered for years. The humor comes from the eclectic group of locals they meet and Newhart's bewilderment at their small town ways. Newhart was immensely popular, especially by today's standards, running from October 1982 to May 1990. It left many city folk enamored with the occupation, creating in its wake a huge influx of new innkeepers. They even have a name in Vermont for this phenomenon, the "Newhart Syndrome."

Most of these innkeepers are long gone, back to metropolis. Jim and Mary O'Reilly, owners of the Wildflower Inn in the rolling hills and farmland of the state's Northeast Kingdom are the rare exception. For the past 19 years they have transformed a four bedroom, shared bath B&B into a 24-room multi-structure country inn, raising eight children in the process. In a state where the annual occupancy rate hovers in the high thirties, the Wildflower Inn has a whopping ninety-nine percent occupancy in the summer months. Many of these guests are families, coming from suburban Boston and New York to frolic for a week in the countryside. Children can go to the petting zoo with camp counselors and get friendly with sheep, goats, calf, and a shaggy donkey named Scooter, while mom and dad check out more than 15 miles of mountain biking and hiking routes on the grounds.

In 1984, Jim was working as a civil engineer in Alberta, Canada, far from his family and friends in Massachusetts, when he caught a glimpse of Newhart.

"It kind of glamorized the whole thought of getting involved in innkeeping," says O'Reilly. Jim and Mary decided to give it a shot, purchasing a farm close to an area they knew from their years of skiing Burke Mountain. Jim's affable manner is inviting to guests who enjoy talking about their lives with him over a cup of coffee at breakfast. Says O'Reilly: "My favorite part of the job is finding some sort of connection between us."

"What if a gay couple comes in? Or a mixed-race couple? Teenagers wanting a room? You have to face your prejudices and have an open heart," says Heide Bredfeldt. "Is that you?" It's Saturday morning in late March and Bredfeldt is speaking to a group of 14 prospective innkeepers at a seminar entitled "How to Purchase & Operate a Bed and Breakfast or Country Inn." While her husband Bill Oates discusses more pragmatic issues like finding a proper sized property and location that suits your needs, Bredfeldt, a former psychologist, gets down and dirty with the minutia of owning an inn. Those little nuggets that never seem to pop up when fantasizing about the profession.

"What if the toilet overflows? It's not a very pleasant problem," adds Bredfeldt in her German accent. As partners in the Brattleboro, Vermont, firm Oates & Bredfeldt, they have been conducting seminars for 24 years, in addition to selling, managing, and consulting with innkeepers. When he first started these seminars, Oates had never even owned a B&B, but he learned a lot about the business from innkeepers he met doing sales. He certainly knows his subject intimately now, having purchased the Three Mountain Inn in Jamaica, Vermont, with his wife and son in 1999. Lecturing from within this circa 1790 Colonial, Oates offers such insider knowledge as utilizing the dining room as an upscale restaurant for the more affluent guests, rather than locals who will rarely if ever come over for a meal.

Together, Oates & Bredfeldt have conducted more than 200 seminars over the years to some 3,000 to 4,000 potential buyers. After spending a weekend with the couple delving into some of the less than enviable aspects of the job, it's no wonder only twenty percent of the clientele go on to open inns. Lack of finances is never an issue for the people who sign up for their weekend course. Many are lawyers, doctors, or corporate salesmen who yearn for something different. Others are entering second marriages and want to clean the slate by opening a business together. The desire not to push forward and buy an inn often stems from something far more personal than money.

Unlike a typical couple, separated during the course of their work day, only to come together to talk about daily highs and lows at dinnertime, innkeepers are usually married couples who own their business together. There is little escape, especially on weekends, when inns are at full capacity and in need of every working hand.

"The business is hard on relationships," says Tony Clark, owner of the Blueberry Hill in Goshen, Vermont. Nestled deep within the Green Mountain National Forest, four miles of dirt roads from the nearest thoroughfare, Clark purchased his land in 1966 for $30,000. He has since built it into one of the most beloved inns in New England, known for its acres of cross-country and hiking trails, dinners around long tables, and an always ample supply of sublime chocolate chip cookies. Yet, his success has come with a price. In the early 80s, Clark's wife left with one of the guests.

"You spend so much time pampering people, putting the bon bon on the pillow, turning down the bed, cooking and cleaning, that a year goes by and you realize you haven't paid any attention to your spouse," says Clark.

Clark knew that his wife hated the long hours of innkeeping, but was still startled to see her leave for Indiana. His two older children chose to stay in Vermont and helped him get through these difficult times. Ironically, the hard work of the profession that crushed the marriage is exactly what Clark needed to take his mind off the latest woes. He expanded the lodge and added new rooms.

Walt Forrester and his wife Barbara also had marital strife, seeking the help of a couple's counselor. "You have different duties, but often one oversteps their bounds, usually me," he says with a chuckle. "I'd go into the kitchen when Barbara's at work at dinner and make menu suggestions. She'd scream back 'Why don't you cook it then?'"

"It's a struggle," Heide Bredfeldt concurs, "but if you can confront behaviors and learn to work through it, then I believe innkeeping strengthens the relationship." Countless couples never even make it out of the seminar intact. Heide remembers the time when one husband and wife kept arguing over the roles each would perform. "On Sunday, she came up to me and said I can't work with him. Thank you for the course."

When the prior owners of Three Mountain Inn contacted Bill Oates about the possible sale of their property, Oates thought it was the perfect opportunity to put all his expertise to use. He liked the location of the inn, seven miles down the road from the Stratton Ski Resort in one of those blink-and-you-miss-it Vermont villages with requisite church, coffee shop, restaurant, and fine arts gallery. He also thought it was the right size, at 15 rooms, with full service restaurant. So he bought it and then did what any sensible parent would do, gave it to his son to run.

The day after the purchase closed, son David and his wife Stacey were the proud parents of their first born child. That didn't stop David from gutting the property, renovating all 15 rooms, redoing the floors, building an upscale cottage, putting in a new septic tank, and enhancing the landscape. His wife wanted no part of running the inn so she stuck to mothering their son. "At the end of six months, we were so stressed that I told her this is going to be the hardest part of our lives," says David. "Then we got in a huge fight and decided to add another six months to that equation."

David has valued the time with his children, watching them grow up less than fifty feet from where he works. He notes, however, that they are old enough now to deserve their own space. A lack of privacy comes with the territory as an innkeeper and it can hinder both guest and owner.

"When you're out in the backyard with your girlfriend on bended knee, a glass of chardonnay in hand ready to pop the question, the last thing you want to see is a half-naked 4 year-old careening across the lawn with a construction hat on. It sort of ruins the ambience," says David.

Although they share a common yard, David and Stacey have the good fortune of living in separate innkeepers' quarters. Jim O'Reilly, at the Wildflower Inn, didn't have that luxury when he started out. Guests and family lived in the same building. "The kids would be running back and forth in a hallway above a guest room and I'd be whispering, 'No, no, no, don't do that.' My number one recommendation for parents getting into this business is to protect the privacy of their family," says O'Reilly.

Tears well up in Heide's eyes as she stokes the flames in the large fireplace early Saturday morning. After the weekend seminar is over, Heide, Bill, and David are transferring ownership of the inn to a young couple from Annapolis, Maryland. Heide's input has been the décor of the inn, the little touches like the local artwork on the walls or the comfy quilts on each bed that lend the inn that personal touch visitors so adore.

"The pleasure of innkeeping is that you create a design that people respond to," she says. "They tell you, validating it, and that's a real high…It's very hard this weekend, selling this. I'm losing part of me."

The new owners of the Three Mountain Inn, Ed and Jennifer Dorta-Duque, already have the experience of working together at a software firm in Baltimore. They have been searching for an inn for over 1 ½ years, looking at more than 50 properties in Annapolis, Pennsylvania, Cape Cod, Nantucket, and New York's Finger Lakes region. This is the first inn they visited in Vermont and knew instantly it was the one. "I liked the size," says Jennifer, "and I felt a deep sense of comfort in the rooms with the rainfall showers and Jacuzzi tubs."

All of the fourteen potential innkeepers taking the course insist they like being around people, but only Jennifer seems to feel comfortable in that role. Even she, however, doesn't have that polished charm that a consummate host like David delivers. He has a genuine ease about being the center of attention, always quick with a quip, and his self-deprecating humor is a comfort to strangers. Perhaps this confidence comes with time.

"You want to be attentive to people's needs, listen to their stories like a good therapist, but not be in their face the whole time. You also can't disappear over the weekend," says Tony Clark. He has no qualms about dealing with a tough guest, the one who just drove five hours from New York and spent the last 45 minutes lost on backcountry roads. "It's our job to de-stress him as soon as he walks in," says Clark, noting that "we're here to serve him, yet not be his servants. We control the house."

Busy with his firm, Bill Oates never really had the chance to test his mettle at the Three Mountain Inn. He has sold more than 100 country inns and only two of those does he consider utter failures. One owner was an alcoholic who spent most of the day drinking with the guests, the other a married couple who simply stopped communicating with one another. The wife had a wish list of things to do around the inn, but her husband ignored her and kept silent. Oates calls a few of his sales "nonsuccesses, owners who realize they really don't give a damn whether people are happy or not," and, if the market is right, they sell in a year or two and get their money out. Oates feels that David and Heide have been successful fulfilling their goals and getting their vision across at the Three Mountain Inn and that five years is a good amount of time for operating an inn.

"There's a life cycle," Oates says. "You get in, do your thing, and about five to seven years later, you painted the building and it needs to be painted again. You replaced all the double beds with queen beds and now everybody wants king beds. You put private baths in and they want whirlpools. So after seven years, you're behind the curve and that might be the right time to get out."

North of Killington, Vermont, Route 100 is one of the finest stretches of country road in America, a mix of rolling farmland, covered bridges, and white steeples, all nestled in a valley crowned by small peaks. Veer left at the sign for Liberty Hill Farm and you'll spot the large red barns, the tire swing dangling from a maple, hear the cows mooing, and smell the manure wafting in the crisp air. This dairy farm of 75 extra-large cows that help supply milk to Cabot and Grafton for their cheeses is the last of 11 farms still in operation in the Rochester area. For 25 years now, Beth Kennett, her husband Bob, and their two sons have been waking up with the roosters and milking the cows. But in 1984, when milk prices were at a record low, Beth got the crazy idea of opening up her 10-bedroom country house to guests.

Sit with Beth for a few minutes at the big block table in her kitchen, drinking a cup of coffee from a mug that reads "Got Milk?" and you'll find her rosy demeanor to be contagious. She's the hospitable link to yesteryear in a place many consider foreign in the 21st century. Having lived through 3 or 4 of Oates' life cycles, she's also quite adept at leaving a guest with the best souvenir Vermont offers, a fond memory. After all, unlike a nurse, the innkeeper doesn't satisfy needs, but indulgences. For the family coming to her house to celebrate the latest birthday or anniversary, Beth serves up dreams.

"Folks call up all the time and ask what can we do here?" Beth laughs. "Lots, I say. Milk the cows, nurse the calves, play in the hayloft, swim in the river, roast marshmallows, catch fire flies, and just look at the stars."

In her first year of operation, Beth learned quickly that her house was more than merely a bed and a meal. The working farm was a major attraction. She had taken a course led by Tony Clark at the Blueberry Hill, who emphasized that you need some sort of carrot to entice guests. Pointing to Beth, he said that she already had one-the farm. Cathy Sweeten, President of the Vermont Lodging and Restaurant Association, states that while a farm or a cross-country ski center on the grounds might be an added bonus, it's not necessary to be successful. "It's equally important for an inn to hook up with local attractions, like the Three Mountain Inn managed to do with Stratton to become a skiing destination."

No longer relying on guidebook writers to get the word out, most inns get fifty percent or more of their business from the internet. Yet, even when all rooms are filled, don't expect the inn to be a big moneymaking venture. For the first 20 years of business, Clark didn't take a salary, putting all his income back into the inn. Just turned 60, Clark says he could sell the property and make a small fortune. His desire, however, is that this thicket of forest is forever a wilderness preserve and he is looking into turning over the inn to a non-profit venture like Vermont's Green Mountain Club. He has overcome his fair share of adversity, yet remains devoted to the hospitality business. "One certainly doesn't become rich in this profession, but I love the life style. I'd do it over again in a second," says Clark.

"The beauty of this business is that it's not terribly profitable, but it pays for all your living expenses," says Walt Forrester of the Parker House Inn. "Your car, insurance, food, alcohol, heat, electricity, everything is paid for," he says, adding that he often barters for other wares like massages, jewelry, and golf shoes with other small business owners in exchange for dinners at the inn.

Now Walt has had his full of Vermont's local customs. "We've decided that we're not rural people and we plan to move to Philadelphia," he says.

Asking price for the Parker House Inn: $915,000.

FOOD & WINE

The Burgundy of the Northwest

Boston Globe, June 2005

One of the best lines of dialogue in 2004 appeared in the movie, Sideways, when wine-obsessed Miles Raymond has a tizzy with his laid-back friend Jack before a double-date dinner. "If anyone orders Merlot, I'm leaving. I am not drinking any f- Merlot," screams Miles. Miles' wine of choice in the film, now on DVD, is pinot noir, a grape that is not dissimilar to his character-thin-skinned, temperamental, handled with care, and complex. The grape can only be grown in climates with sunny but cool autumn days, regions like Burgundy, Santa Barbara Wine Country, where Sideways was shot, and the emerging Willamette Valley in Oregon.

Starting in 1998, Oregon has now had six great vintages of pinot noir in a row, remarkable considering that one torrential downpour at the wrong time can wash out the taste. Sure, Miles and Jack would have never made it this far north on a road trip, but oenophiles in Oregon note that if Miles really is a wine snob, he would have taken the flight to Portland and drove the forty-five minutes south to Willamette (rhymes with "slam it").

"In California, you're allowed to blend in twenty-five percent of another grape, like syrah and zinfandel, and still call it pinot noir. Here in Oregon, we're one-hundred percent pure pinot," says Jay McDonald, owner of The Tasting Room in Carlton, Oregon.

McDonald opened his business in a former bank on Main Street in 1995 as a way for smaller wineries to showcase their wine. There are more than 250 winemakers in the state and many of those producers lack the space necessary for folks to stop in and sample the goods. They include Ken Wright Cellars and Beaux Freres, the darlings of Wine Spectator, who consistently score high ratings. Though they don't come cheap, with bottles in the $40 to $50 range. A good bargain is McDonald's own blend of pinot noir grapes he calls EIEIO, that starts at $20 a bottle. As a thank you to McDonald for displaying their wares, sellers inquired if he wanted to buy any of their barrels. He agreed and thus began the age-old Burgundian practice of being a negociant, a merchant who buys wines from several vineyards to create his own blend.

Unlike the bigger reds, pinot noir lacks the heartier tannins of cabernets and is thus far more subtle. They start with the scent of raspberries, cherries, or tangy blackberries, spiced with the aroma of cardamom, rose, or cinnamon, and can finish with a hint of smoke or earth. The bouquet alone on a good bottle of pinot can liven the senses and stir the mouth to salivate like Pavlov's dog.

"A glass of pinot can be a sensual, even spiritual experience when all the elements fall into place…and a heartbreaker when the universe doesn't cooperate," says Heidi Yorkshire, a Portland-based wine writer and former wine columnist for The Oregonian.

The stars were certainly aligned when winemaker Steve Doerner created his 2001 Cristom "Jessie Vineyard" pinot. At least, that's what the lot of us thought over dinner at that den of northwestern cuisine and wine, Wildwood, in Portland. The ruby color hid a mix of black cherries and cinnamon, and, when tasted, the long silky finish left us clamoring for more.

The sole reason why I needed to barge into Cristom's home site on the outskirts of Salem to talk to Doerner. Vines cling to the slopes of the 60-acre lot and are named after the owner's four daughters. Doerner, whose rugged exterior gives him the look of a Montana cowboy (perhaps that's the toughness and inherent masochism necessary to spend your life dealing with the ups and downs of pinot), made his reputation as a master craftsman in California before heading north. But he prefers the hassle-free nature of Oregon.

"My philosophy is simple. To cultivate the vine when necessary, but try not to handle the grapes too much," says Doerner. His hands-off approach works wonders, producing wines with an intriguing array of flavors. The 2002 Marjorie Vineyard smelled of black raspberry and the sweetness of vanilla. It's bigger and bolder than Jessie, but has the same soft finish.

Forgetting to spit, I was in dire need of sustenance to soak up all this alcohol. Nick's Italian Café, on Third Street in McMinnville, has been a wine country institution since it opened in 1977. They serve a five-course prix-fixe Northern Italian dinner, but all I craved was a bowl of minestrone soup and a good chunk of freshly made bread. I sat at the long counter and peered down at the extensive wine list, which dates back to Nick's early years.

"Winemakers often stop at Nick's to savor a long lost bottle they can no longer find in their own cellar," says Kirby Neumann-Rea, a former waiter at Nick's and now Editor-in-Chief of Hood River News.

Indeed, the list includes the legendary 1975 Eyrie Vineyards South Block, the wine that put Oregon pinot noir on the international map. In 1980, a young David Lett brought this same vintage to a premier French wine-tasting competition and shocked the old world vintners by coming in second place. The man who organized the event, Robert Drouhin, a third-generation Burgundy winemaker, was so impressed with the wine that Drouhin followed Lett, now called "Papa Pinot" back to Oregon and, in 1987, purchased a 225-acre estate that was formerly a Christmas tree farm. He would create the first building in Oregon designed solely for fermenting wine and hired his daughter Veronique, as the winemaker. In typical Burgundy fashion, they both look at Oregon as a long-term investment, where their grandchildren will be creating some incredibly mature wine sixty years down the road.

In the meantime, Bill Hatcher, owner of A to Z winery in Oregon has trademarked Sideways and plans to use it as a name for an upcoming pinot noir. We hope it's good. Otherwise, Miles might stop by and deliver this biting critique from the film: "Quaffable, but, uh, far from transcendent."

Roving Gourmet/Old Square, New Scene

United Airlines' Hemispheres, November 2005

Anyone who had the misfortune of driving in Boston this past decade, around that tangled web of roadways known as The Big Dig, can breathe a sigh of relief now that America's largest construction site is nearing completion. The highway that split the city has moved underground, making room for museums, parks, and a surrounding residential area. Yet, even this new development seems to going at a snail's pace, forcing businesses and restaurant owners to be innovative and open their doors in older areas of the city.

In the shadow of Fenway Park and under the large red, orange, and blue Citgo sign, Kenmore Square has always had the foot traffic-folks going to and from Red Sox games, and students heading to classes at nearby Boston University. It also had a mix of cheap ethnic restaurants that never could lure the well-heeled locals of bordering Back Bay. That all changed in May 2003 when the 150-room Hotel Commonwealth made the bold move to open in the heart of the neighborhood, right next to the used book stores and pizza joints. Its anchor restaurant, Great Bay, was unveiled to little fanfare, but slowly caught on with foodies around town. In 2005, three more established Boston chefs and restaurant owners opened their latest eateries on Commonwealth Street and now Kenmore Square is all the rage.

Chef Michael Schlow and his partner Christopher Myers had a proven track record with the award-winning Radius and Via Matta restaurants when they first launched Great Bay (500 Commonwealth Avenue, 617-532-5300) on a large corner lot on the ground floor of the hotel. Schlow hired eight employees of the Lark Creek Inn, north of San Francisco, to run the room and kitchen, including current chef Lee Chizmar. Together, they created a menu that utilizes the freshest seafood on both East and West coasts.

While the vast interior resembles the hull of a large ship and can lack intimacy when the tables aren't full, Chizmar's food is the finest in the Square. Start the evening off with an appetizer from the less formal Island Menu. Scallops and lobster ceviche is served atop a clam shell with a tangy lime juice, champagne grapes, and, instead of the usual cilantro, refreshing mint. The albacore tuna used in the tartare is shipped from Hawaii daily, topped with small yellow and red tomatoes, and doused in a zesty tomato and basil oil broth. It goes down perfectly with a sauvignon blanc, like the 2004 Mulderbosch from South Africa ($45).

For the main course, it's hard to top the Idaho golden trout, pan seared and crisp on the outside, moist on the inside. A quail's egg sits sunny-side up atop the fish, but the real flavor of the dish comes from the shitake mushrooms and bits of salty bacon that complement the sweet meat. Finish the night with butterscotch pudding, a creamy candy-like concoction that brings back memories of childhood.

At the other end of Hotel Commonwealth, also on street level, is the new Eastern Standard (528 Commonwealth, 617-532-9100), which is quickly setting the standard for interior design. With its long marble bar, vaulted ceiling, and arched storefront windows, this room seems to celebrate the long awaited championship of the Boston Red Sox in 2004. The large turn-of-the-century photographs of flapper girls and steam engine trains add to the brasserie style.

"We wanted to create a big space that you would have found on the large avenues of Boston in the first half of the 20th century," says designer Peter Niemitz, best known for his interiors of the Capital Grille restaurants around the country and Carmine's in Manhattan. Eastern Standard is the latest offering from proprietor Garrett Harker, known around town for opening the esteemed No. 9 Park and B&G Oysters.

"I wanted this place to appeal to a wide range of clientele, from Fenway fans in shorts to businessmen coming in suits and rolling up their sleeves," says Harker in the midst of working the room.

Indeed, the menu speaks to all. If you're alone, you'll be comfortable sitting at the bar, ordering a burger and fries or macaroni and cheese, washed down by a Jever pilsner from Germany. For more upscale fare, try the plate of mussels with a touch of fennel in the broth, or a frisee of greens with hazelnuts in a light cream sauce.

Entrees like the large slab of rib eye could satiate an offensive lineman on the New England Patriots. The wiener schnitzel is much more manageable, lightly breaded with the slight taste of lemon and reasonably priced at $19. Both dishes go well with an affordable and fruity Burgundy, the 2003 Mugneret Haute-Cotes de Nuits ($40).

Chef Jacky Robert's new enterprise, Petit Robert Bistro (468 Commonwealth, 617-375-0699), sits bravely outside the hotel complex, down the next block. It's hard to miss, with the small Eiffel Tower outside the two-story abode, lit up with Christmas lights. Every neighborhood deserves an affordable neighborhood bistro like this. Especially with a chef like Robert, whose resume includes stints at one of Boston's best loved French restaurants, Maison Robert, and the newly refurbished Locke-Ober.

Downstairs, there's a dessert bar where you can watch pastry chef Kristen Lawson create a chocolate Eiffel Tower. Upstairs in the brick-exposed façade, specials are written on a large blackboard and the energetic co-owner Loic Le Garrec is making sure everything is running smoothly.

"It was a roll of the dice to come to this section of town, and I feel we got lucky," says Le Garrec, "adding that there's an exciting energy in the area since the hotel was built."

Begin with a hunk of French bread shipped daily from Montreal, them move on to a trio of creamy pates, smooth with the taste of liver, but not in the least bit dense. Endive salad with radicchio is heightened with juicy slices of mango. The greens are best accompanied by the restaurant's signature drink, Dirty French Chef, that's an unusual mix of rum, rhubarb, balsamic vinegar, and sugar. An exotic, yet sweet libation to warm up a cool winter night.

Remarkably, all entrees are priced under $20. There's standard Parisian bistro fare like tripe and calf's liver, or the more prosaic half-chicken with crispy skin and succulent meat. The broiled cod is slightly breaded and perfectly cooked with tender flakes falling off the fork. Save room for the sublime desserts, like a tangy lemon curd tart, served with sorbet and fresh fruit.

The last joint to open on the strip, Foundation Lounge (500 Commonwealth, 617-859-9900), is a great place to start or end the evening. More than just your average bar, the interior is a blend of zebra wood, polished marble, and rough concrete. Sit yourself down on one of the oversized leather sofas and relax with the sounds of early Stevie Wonder playing overhead. The drink offerings include mojitos and tropical martinis, like coconut coffee or wild mango. There's also an excellent sake list. A small bottle of Hakushika Junmai Ginjyo, with hints of apple and pear, will have you loosening the tie in no time.

The Japanese theme continues in the selection of appetizers called Zensai. The menu was created by Boston sushi chef, Kenichi Iwaoka, owner of the always crowded Osushi restaurants. Expect double spicy tuna maki, with a Korean chili sauce for dipping. The mini spring rolls are stuffed with shrimp and crunchy to the bite. Shrimp dumplings also burst with flavor. Even the edamame, those lightly salted and boiled green soybeans, puts the basic nuts-on-the-bar fixture to shame. Skewers of kobe beef is another staple on the menu, and granted, you could easily make a meal of all the Zensai. But it won't come cheap, with prices of the tantalizing snacks ranging from $7-$23. The latter cost is comparable in price to a three-course meal at Petit Robert.

In its heyday in the Roaring Twenties, close to a dozen hotels lined the western end of Commonwealth Avenue. Hotel Commonwealth might be the lone wolf in Kenmore Square these days, but it's certainly made both locals and out-of-towners realize that this section of the city is more than a walk-through to Fenway Park.

Dining at the Source

Boston Globe, May 2005

When I first visited the Inn at Bay Fortune on Prince Edward Island's western shores, I arrived via kayak, courtesy of a four-day inn-to-inn sea kayaking jaunt. I paddled onto the grassy shores and walked across the sloping manicured lawn, getting a glimpse of this gray-shingled estate and its Repunzel-like towers. After washing the salt and rust colored sand from my body, I arrived for dinner expecting the usual PEI meal of lobster and mussels. Little did I realize that I was in for a culinary epiphany.

The first course, pan roasted oysters in a soothing soup, was creamy but not nearly as rich as a New England chowder. Then came a splendid salad of mixed greens where the waiter announced matter-of-factly that "everything on the plate is grown on the property, including the edible pansy." A seared rainbow trout topped with tomato risotto and black olives was picked to the bone, only to be followed by a zesty roasted leg of lamb, butchered by the farmer down the road. For dessert, a peach, strawberry, and mint compote, made on premises, of course. Before calling for a wheelbarrow to be escorted out of the restaurant-after all, I spent the day paddling eight miles along the island's fabled red clay cliffs and the night feasting-I had to first meet this talented chef who shrewdly took advantage of all his homegrown goodies.

Standing tall in the kitchen was Michael Smith, a transplant from Manhattan who formerly worked as sous chef at Bouley, one of the few restaurants in the city awarded four stars (extraordinary) by the New York Times. When he left, his colleagues thought he lost his marbles, but Smith knew quite well he was headed to a farming and seafaring mecca. The gregarious chef pointed to a large map of Prince Edward Island, dotted with more than 60 yellow tacks. "These are all the fishermen and farmers around the island that we use to get our supplies," he notes, adding "when we don't grow it ourselves." Bouley schmouley, I remember thinking to myself. This guy Smith just struck the mother lode.

When I returned to the Inn at Bay Fortune this past Autumn after a six-year hiatus, I was happy to find the treasured gardens much more expansive. After the success of his television show "The Inn Chef," appearing on the Canadian Food Network, and the release of his best-selling cookbook, "Open Kitchen-A Chef's Day at The Inn at Bay Fortune," Smith relinquished his cooking duties at the inn but still holds the title of Chef Emeritus. And according to new chef, Renée Lavallée, Smith, who lives nearby, can often be found bending his lanky frame over the herb garden as he plucks, say, one of the twelve varieties of thyme.

Like her predecessor, Lavallée has an impressive resume that includes stints at Les Fougeres, outside of Ottawa, in Chelsea, Quebec, where she was voted Best New Chef in the province, and the popular French bistro, Biff's, in Toronto. Between restaurant stops, she could be found cooking for the rock bands Oasis and the Black Crowes. Her love of music is obvious once you enter the kitchen and hear White Stripes blaring over the radio. Yet, Lavallée is just as comfortable picking wild watercress by a nearby stream or finding an even larger circle of purveyors at the Farmer's Market in Charlottetown. It's hard to imagine her needing anything else for her menu.

"I put in a wish list by Christmas so the gardeners can have everything ready by summer," says the fortuitous chef. The two-acre vegetable garden is currently home to lettuces, carrots, peas, tomatoes, zucchinis, cucumbers, asparagus, swiss chard, and beets. There's also a small fruit garden that contains raspberries, currents, gooseberries, and rhubarb.

Spend three days biking around PEI as I did on this last trip and you'll quickly see how fertile the land is. Dairy farms and pasture flourish, as green and velvety as Vermont's bucolic countryside. Then there are fields filled with wildflowers and tall grasses, as if the farmer forgot he had so much land.

"We can thank the potato for this," says Doug Deacon, owner of the Trailside Café, a favorite stopover at lunch and dinner for bikers. "Those farmers are on a 3-year cycle to rotate crops, so it gives the countryside that undeveloped feel."

More than sixty percent of the potatoes consumed in Canada are farmed on the island. Then there's the great bounty from the sea. Biking on the island-long rail-trail, the Confederation Trail, I pedaled along the shoreline of St. Peter's Bay, gazing at a patchwork of mussels buoys that form black rectangles atop the water. The mussel farmers of St. Peter's Bay boat out to their nets at least twice a week, even in the cold, damp winter, to clear their lines of crabs and starfish.

Back at the Inn at Bay Fortune, an 18-room lodging that was once the home of actress Colleen Dewhurst and her husband George C. Scott, I eagerly await the bevy of fresh food. Lavallée's menu changes daily, depending on what the farmer or fisherman has brought to her doorstep. Tonight, it's asparagus from her own garden, grilled with prosciutto, followed by a succulent salad of candy cane, golden, and white beets topped with local chevre cheese. Sweet pan-seared scallops mix with the salt of pork bellies in the seafood course. Meat this evening is in the form of a striploin, compliments of a farmer in nearby Montague, on a bed of potatoes and swiss chard. Next to the beef sits a poached Colville Bay oyster, from the an inlet to the north. The meat is tender, the oyster awash in tasty brine.

Lavallée, like Michael Smith before her, could easily be working at Biff's or Bouley in the big city, garnering far more attention from the media. Instead, she cooks in relative anonymity on the shores of a quiet Atlantic Maritime province, happily creating dishes with her wealth of indigenous fare. Those of us with discriminating tastebuds will want to follow her cue.