The lightest of snowfalls last night, right around suppertime. If you blinked, you missed it. No need for shovels, brooms, or leaf-blowers. Just enough to remind you to turn up the collar of your coat and to wear a cap. This week I will dig out my backpacking stuff from wherever I put it, and begin spring preparations for overnights in the area.
Robin and I are very aware that being seniors we seem to be more sensitive to dehydration. When we were in our twenties we would take off on hikes without carrying water and seemingly never miss it. Now we never go anywhere outdoors without having a plan for our next drink. Get even a little behind and our energy flags significantly,
I use the Sawyer filters because they are relatively inexpensive, lightweight, durable, easily maintained, and reliable. Sort of a can’t-miss product. Takes care of everything but viruses, which is more than adequate for our surroundings.
Even on the short overnight camping stays that Robin and I will be doing, we check out each item before heading out as if we were embarking on an expedition up the Amazon River. Failure of an essential item can have consequences ranging from highly inconvenient to quite unhealthy. Many of the camping and hiking areas here in Paradise are out of cellular range, and as we’ve not invested in satellite phones, falls, burns, dehydration and the like are ours to deal with as best we can. Ergo – gear reliability is an important quality.
For a hiker, Paradise is … well … Paradise. We have countless mountain trails to explore, ranging from short walks to epic journeys like the Colorado Trail. We also have the opposite situation, where instead of climbing we descend into the canyons especially to the north and west of us.
One of our personal favorites is Dominguez Canyon, with its trailhead about an hour’s drive from Montrose.
Though this is a desert walk, there is water available in a creek, so staying hydrated is not difficult, as long as we remember to take our water filters.
Is wilderness water safe to drink without filtration? Here’s a stat to make one think otherwise. It is estimated that 90% of the surface water in the U.S. is contaminated with giardia. I’ve not had giardiasis myself, but have cared for many patients who did. To a woman (or man) they did not find the experience delightful. There is nothing about taking a long walk in a hot and rocky country that is improved by having sharp cramps and profuse diarrhea.
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From The New Yorker
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You can’t make this stuff up, folks. Our King/Fuehrer/Emperor Cluck decided that the Gulf of Mexico is not a grand enough name for something adjacent to his realm. So he has re-named it the Gulf of America. The rest of the world is scratching their heads and wondering to themselves, is he really that bonkers?*
Google and Apple, on the other hand, revealing to all and sundry that they have the spine of a planaria**, immediately changed their maps to reflect this new unreality.
A day later, the Associated Press, which does business all over the world, had failed to make the change in their maps, and their reporters were banned from presidential events forthwith.
Never mind that it is only Cluck and his sycophants who call it the Gulf of America. Although this is only his latest delusional piece, we’ll be dealing with it for a while until he is out of office, and the name it has had for centuries can be restored. In the meantime I think I won’t be vacationing off the Texas coast any time soon. I’d be worried that if I should need a life guard and holler “I’m drowning in the Gulf of America,” they might not come to my aid quickly enough, not being up with the times and all.
* Answer = yes
**A microscopic flatworm familiar to high school biology students, at least to those who opened their textbooks.
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Dark shadow passes
Raven flying in snowfall
True black in true white
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Last evening we had friends over for dinner and spent a very pleasant couple of hours sharing a meal. Robin and I prefer hosting small dinner get-togethers of six persons or less. We find that conversations run smoother, everyone gets a chance to talk, and the occasional blowhard* is easier to control.
As the evening was winding down, we began sharing our physical complaints, adjustments to aging, and which of our acquaintances was in dire straits at the moment. As the misery toll mounted, I realized that the entire past hour’s discussion would not have happened if we had all perished before the age of forty, as in the good old days, like the year 1000 BC, perhaps. When life was “nasty, brutish, and short” there was no need for or profit in these mutual commiserative sessions.
“Nasty, brutish, and short” is a phrase that appears in Thomas Hobbes’ book Leviathan . It refers to life without government and the state of humanity in its natural, violent, and brutal form.
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Back then we would simply be rubbed out, perhaps by being careless in the vicinity of a leopard and whoop! End of story. But these days, living into our seventies, eighties, or beyond (partly due to a scarcity of leopards), we have the dubious luxury of comparing aches and pains and thinking we’ve had a discussion.
*Often yours truly, I admit
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From The New Yorker
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Little Home In The Valley 