Agile Aging readers may remember my new Walkabout series of posts, designed to meet and celebrate interesting neighbors near our Northern California retirement community. (See the March 31, 2024 post for the most recent example.)

Last month I reported on the first half of our transcontinental railways loop, across the United States from California to Connecticut. This month I’ll complete the journal notes by tracing our return journey across Canada. You’ll find impressions of Canadian trains, French Canada, Jasper in the Rockies and Vancouver on the Pacific Coast.

It all started with the Reunion. My Yale Class of 1964 was convening in New Haven in late May. This 60th anniversary felt like a last roundup; a good one not to miss. But how to get there from California? Nancy and I shun air travel’s increasing stress. And an Interstate marathon would hold no appeal for a one-driver couple in our eighties.

This month’s post explores an Agile Aging challenge: How can we preserve a tranquil private life while keeping informed about turbulent public affairs?

My blog’s Walkabout series takes me out and about our retirement community’s Portola Valley neighborhood. Visual impairment has terminated my driving but spurred me to explore on foot. Although our small town is more rural than suburban, within a mile of our campus can be found a grocery store and a farmers’ market, a public middle school and a Benedictine prep school, two restaurants, town-government offices, a public library, an auto mechanic and a fire station. A bounty of opportunities for getting better acquainted.

What images come to mind when you conjure up Robert Louis Stevenson and Jack London? For me, scheming pirates and straining sled dogs. Treasure Island and The Call of the Wild were among my most alluring childhood fantasies, first encountered in Classics Illustrated comic books, soon graduating to hard-cover editions.

What a treat in old age to explore both these bards’ Northern California connections. It turns out our region was crucially formative in their lives and in their work. Here are some notes from a recent expedition.

Friend and blog subscriber Bob Collins got me started with an emailed challenge. After conveying appreciation for my recent Walkabouts post, he asked if I couldn’t lower my sights from migratory wildfowl to skirmishing humans. Bob’s specific interest was in toxic disinformation, but his broader context was America’s electoral turmoil. He encouraged me to draw upon my international policy-advising experience to offer any national insights.

Now that visual impairment is prohibiting my driving, I’m deliberately transitioning to pedestrian explorations. Moving slower, covering less ground, but looking more, noticing more and garnering small enjoyments. I’ve already identified a dozen intriguing destinations to visit, a short hike from our retirement community’s front gate. Others will require Nancy’s transport and companionship to reach more remote, walkable sites. Apart from the pleasures of discovery, the physical-exercise benefits should be immediate.

September took Nancy and me on a 2,500-mile road trip around the Four Corners region of the American Southwest. It was a delight to explore this area’s diverse histories and cultures, archaeology and architecture, landscapes and literature.

Our 2+ weeks away also gave us the time and distance we needed to begin adjusting to our old age’s new phase.

I find myself increasingly preoccupied by compounding transitions. Closest to home, it seems as if all the residents in our retirement community are dealing with ailments, injuries or loved-ones’ demise.  TV news bombards us with images of “once-in-a-century” extreme-weather events that are becoming continuous. The COVID virus is stubbornly resurging. Ukraine-war fortunes tilt back-and-forth. Putin threatens NATO, Xi, Pacific harmony, and Trump, American democracy. Inflation drops while gasoline prices bounce. Weekly AI innovations offer promise and peril. Nothing stands still.

Some of these changes seem destructive and disheartening. Others, encouragingly transformative. Here are three examples that captured my attention as Summer yields to Fall.