The Renaissance Bellhop and The Road to Oxiana

Katherine today.

One of the wonderful things about nice hotels is that there are people hired to lug your stuff around and bring you things simply because you want them. They are called "bellhops," but it's a silly out-dated name. I've discovered that some of my favorite people are or were bellhops and there's some sort of natural art to getting to know your bellhop. I call it curiosity. If you start asking questions about your location, restaurants in the vicinity, or about the hotel itself--well, you discover a lot about your bellhop and sometimes you learn a lot about where you are.

Some bellhops, sadly, are dolts. They have no thoughts about their surroundings and often feel you're wasting their valuable time answering questions that you should have researched online for heaven's sake.

One of my favorite bellhops was Jeremy up at Jenny Lake Lodge. He felt the bellhop/cocktail waiter/fire-starter role was probably among the noblest on the planet. He turned his delivery bicycle into the "bellmobile" and had a handyman's belt with a plunger proudly hanging from some appropriate slot that was the "bell-belt." He rang the bell on his "bellmobile" to announce his arrival and the folks in the Columbine cabin heard him often--plumbing problems there. My favorite memory was when we first did the 21 mile jaunt over Paintbrush Divide and came home so blistered and tired we knew we couldn't trudge over to the lodge to get much needed cokes. Jeremy (alias "The Bell Man") somehow knew our needs and arrived with a pitcher of Coke before we could even call and request it. Jeremy loved his job and was born to serve. He manages a big hotel in the Caribbean now. That always makes me happy.

Sometimes bellhops are bellhops because they love the surroundings and will do anything to be near them. The Lodge at Vail is peopled with snowbums trying to eke out livings between days on the mountains skiing or boarding. Jenny always employs a conglomeration of fishermen, hikers, paddlers, and mountain climbers and between the wait staff and the bellhops you could learn about anything in Grand National Teton Park--Yellowstone too.

This year at Jenny we got to know Ross. I'm not sure Ross was enthralled with his job title, but he was a great bellhop nonetheless. He delivered ice with elan and if we were on the porch when he came by we talked books mostly. He created a cocktail just for me--vodka with huckleberry lemonade. Ross spent last winter in Beaver Creek and was summering in the Tetons. He raced down mountains all winter and came to Wyoming to climb them all summer. There was a certain symmetry in his down and up lifestyle that pleased me.

Ross graduated from GW in DC (I think I've got that right--it's been over a month and my memory isn't what it used to be). His degree was impressive and I think environmental, but I'm really guessing there. Anyway, he became my model for the Renaissance "bellhop." Between his bellhop shift and his cocktail shift he'd either read a book or climb a mountain. Wonderful balance.

One day we went to Jackson to find him a climbing book--we thought he could attack both his loves simultaneously that way. We wanted The Wall by Jeffrey Long (cool book about climbing El Capitan with quite an ending), but couldn't find it and settled on a light book about climbing the fourteeners in Colorado called Halfway to Heaven. It's just fun. Nothing heavy there at all as I recall.

Ross was equally inspired and he brought us The Road to Oxiana by Robert Byron. He indicated it would be the book he wanted with him if he were stranded on a desert island. This book is not a book just for fun and I felt a bit embarrassed at having picked such a light book for him when Jim and I are usually pretty good about matching books and readers.

Anyway, I've just finished The Road to Oxiana and it is not the book I would want with me on a desert island and I keep wondering why it is Ross's choice. I need to email him about that.

It's an interesting book even though I had to slug my way through the first half. It's a travel book detailing the writer's trip through Persia and Afghanistan in the 1930's. Robert, our traveler, is almost creating the genre most recently used in Eat, Pray, Love (I didn't like that one, but I'll spare you my Eat, Pray, Love rant). The first half seemed like constant descriptions of minarets, mosques, and mausoleums. Having never really seen any of that geography other than watching it get blown up during modern press coverage of wars in the area, the architecture and landscape described was hard for me to connect to--all the fault of my lack of Mideastern experience. I finally did better when I stopped trying to read it straight through and began to read Robert's daily entries one at a time. It took me over a month with this approach, but I appreciated the book much more that way.

I really liked the second half. I began to understand Robert's tone of voice--probably because he talked more about people and the frustrations of his journey. Robert was wonderfully sarcastic and he and his fellow drop-out from Oxford, Christopher, began to suggest that the Eat, Pray, Love formula for self-awareness through travel might sometimes be selfless rather than selfish.
At the end of the book, Robert credits his mother for teaching him to see the world the way he did. I loved that.

I think Robert and Christopher logged about 850 miles in ten months and never did reach their precise goal. Terrible roads, cars and lorries in sorry shape, bizarre political decisions, and the whims of local potentates detained them regularly. They were often ill. Christopher was arrested for unexplained reasons. The accommodations were rustic and the local folks often chased them away from the architecture they wished to study. They loved it all and were sad when it ended. Robert's perception of reality as almost always breath-taking and his ability to see the kindnesses of others and realize his own indiscretions were beautiful.

If I'd read the book in 1937 when it was first published, it never would have crossed my mind to wonder if Robert and Christopher were gay. I wondered though. They liked dressing up. Robert packed for them "Martha-like." Robert missed Christopher when he was in jail. Even though I know I need to put things into the context of the times, this exchange made me wonder too:

"Seeing Christopher slopping about the deck in a pair of shorts and that red blouse he bought at Abbasabad, Miss Willis asked: 'Are you an explorer?'
'No,' answered Christopher, 'but I've been in Afghanistan.'"

The book certainly shows how not much has changed culturally in the area as well. The Russians are in and out and skirmishing with the Afghans. Doctors are forbidden to treat women. The various religious sects in both Persia and Afghanistan fuss over everything--down to what is permissible for Robert and Christopher to visit, draw or photograph. The book didn't inspire much hope for peace in the Middle East.

My favorite moment in the whole book is when Robert talks about an earlier traveler in the area--someone named Moorcraft who died in 1825 at Andkhoi. Yet another traveler, Sir Thomas Holdich in The Gates of India, thought Moorcraft an idiot for carting 30 books with him on his journey because sojourners should only take along "light and handy equipment."
Robert's response to all this made my heart sing:

"A light and handy equipment! One knows these modern travelers, these over-grown prefects and pseudo-scientific bores dispatched by congregations of extinguished officials to see if sand-dunes sing and snow is cold. Unlimited money, every kind of official influence support them; they penetrate the furthest recesses of the globe; and beyond ascertaining that sand-dunes do sing and snow is cold, what do they observe to enlarge the human mind?
Nothing...
No one thinks of (the traveler's) mental health, and of its possible importance to a journey of supposed observation. Their light and handy equipment contains food for a skyscraper, instruments for a battleship, and weapons for an army. But it mustn't contain a book. I wish I were rich enough to endow a prize for the sensible traveller: 10,000 pounds for the first man to cover Marco Polo's outward route reading three fresh books a week, and another 10,000 pounds if he drinks a bottle of wine a day as well."

I liked that.

I'm glad I read the book. It's not what I would take to a desert island and again I wonder why it is Ross's choice. Mostly I've begun to think about trying to travel with a keener eye and trying to decide what book I'd like with me on a desert island. I'll let you know.