Tag: camping

Nature Is Not A Place To Visit

jono55

Why go camping? Why put this seasoned carcass on a thin pad on the ground in a tent in a remote spot where one’s serenity could be interrupted at any moment by a thunderstorm, a tree falling, or the crack of a dry branch in the night as a large creature travels near the tent. Why go days without a proper bath? Perhaps the following paragraphs will provide some ragged sort of explanation.

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A long time ago I was reading … something … I can’t even recall whether it was non-fiction or a novel, but I came across this phrase which has stuck with me and become part of my DNA.

What the white man calls wilderness, we call home.

Reading it back in that dimly remembered day was one of those scales falling from the eyes moments. For I recognized for the first time that my attraction to the outdoors, the woods and the deserts and remote places, was homesickness. I was living my life in a town, in a house which was centrally heated and air conditioned. I drove a car along marked streets to grocery stores where I traded money for the food I needed, without ever producing a morsel of my own. I followed the rules of social living, became a high school graduate, a college boy, a physician, a husband and father. But I knew that I was living in a foreign country called America, when my true home was somewhere else entirely.

I am sitting by a campfire, lively breeze blowing through  giant pine trees, granite cliffs on one side, distant snow-capped mountains on the other; a stream flowing downhill over pebbles and boulders can be heard in the distance; at night the pitch black sky lights up with seemingly endless stars, somewhere far off an owl hooting….  I make a cup of coffee over the fire and converse with this wilderness…. 

Mostly we don’t think of that starry sky as also a wilderness, but it is that.  It is “wild” in the root meaning of that word, not humanly controlled or manipulated, not running by human wisdom, but by its own inner wisdom which the ancient Chinese called the Tao.  I look at the Milky Way, that fuzzy white spread of millions of stars like our sun, our galaxy, and millions of other galaxies out there whose light takes millions, even billions of years to get here….it is all so incomprehensibly and unimaginably vast, and yet in a very real way it is all our home.  Every atom of every fiber of our being was made in those stars billions of years ago…and so with everything we touch, we breathe, we eat….  In the deepest sense there is nothing “out there” that is alien to us.

The Tao of the Wilderness

The lure of leaving safety, comfort, recognizable landmarks and finding one’s own way is such a strong one. Whenever I would step off the shore into a canoe leaving on a Boundary Waters trip I had that delicious and necessary feeling of disconnection from all of the things that civilization is. Even now, at a time of life when I creak in places I didn’t even know that I had, I am eager for the next trip, the next step away from the shore.

I took many small voyages into those Boundary Waters with an old friend Rich, and for the most part we agreed on things. But there came a day when we argued (both unsuccessfully) with each other over something that we had almost no control over. Some company wanted to build a communication tower on the edge of that wilderness, tall enough that the signal could reach a cell phone anywhere out in the BW. Rich wanted it to happen, to be able to stay in touch with his family at all times. I could understand his position, at least it was the truth for him.

But as for me, I idly thought: “If they build that goddam thing perhaps I will come back and blow it up.”I was pretty sure that Edward Abbey would have my back on that one, even as they dressed me in new orange pajamas and showed me to my exclusive room at the Stillwater State Prison.

So I go camping, backpacking, walking out. These are tiny gestures, really, and if I were to be “out there” totally on my own I suspect that I would not last long at all. Within a month or two the porcupines would be gnawing the leather belt on my pants to extract the salt they crave. But as poet/naturalist Gary Snyder put it:

Nature is not a place to visit. It is home.

Gary Snyder

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Ends of the Earth, by Lord Huron

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From The New Yorker

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The fire in the Black Canyon National Park is not done with us yet, but has slowed and is being contained. No loss of life. No homes burned. The Visitor Center preserved. But the residents of the area are not yet being allowed to return to their homes.

Photographs started to become available once the media was given an official tour, while the general public is still denied access to the area. Something like 14% of the park area has burned. Here are some pix taken from our local newspaper.

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What a rotten caricature of a human being we have at the helm. Each day we are given a reminder of the values of honesty, uprightness, and mercy as we follow the slime trail of a man who possesses none of those virtues. He has the power to hurt so many people and is using it full-time to do just that, while the country is run as if it were a garage sale rather than a sovereign state.

Ahhhhhhhh … the waiting for the end of this particular time of tribulation is a difficult thing. Hard times … hard times … come again no more.

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Hard Times Come Again No More, by Gangstagrass

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Two Miles Up

jono55

This will be a rather short post due to the fact that Robin and I have been away from home and not in contact with the world and its problems. For two days we camped a few miles south of Aspen CO with daughter Ally and friend Kyle. The internet goes away about three miles before the entrance to the campground, which is mostly a blessing and less a curse.

The place we stayed is called Difficult Campground and is named for the Difficult Creek which flows through it. There is only one hike leading away from it and it is the Difficult Creek Trail. We have no idea why everything is Difficult, we found it quite lovely and not particularly difficult at all.

There are a little over forty sites at the campground which are relatively close together but the trees and underbrush are so dense that you feel quite private even so. I encountered campers from many places in the U.S. and from France and Poland. With mega-rich Aspen so close the clientele is somewhat better mounted than we lowlife cowboys from small-town Colorado. There were some awfully comfortable-looking recreational vehicles sharing the area with us. Big and roomy and expensive.

We encountered a problem that is new to me. These days camping in the U.S. is largely done by reservation, and this campground had been solidly booked for months. But only about two-thirds of the campers actually showed up for to occupy the spot they had reserved. Affluent campers now often reserve spaces at several campgrounds early on in the season at the same dates, to cover the time they had available for recreation. Then at the last minute they could go to whichever spot they preferred. Of course that meant that they were paying $30.00 a night for each campsite they didn’t use, but if you are at a certain place economically this is pretty small potatoes compared to the convenience it affords.

But this means that you are freezing out another camper who would love to have used that site now which was now empty and unavailable. It is a selfish behavior, but I hate to admit it … there are selfish Americans. There, I’ve got it out there. I feel better now.

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The Eagle and the Hawk, by John Denver

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From Aspen to Independence Pass is a distance of 19.7 miles. We spent our second day exploring as much of this area as we could. For me the highlight was the walking about the area surrounding the Pass itself. You are well above treeline and at an altitude of more 12,000 feet. The spot we chose to eat our picnic lunch was at 12,160 feet according to the app on my phone. Turns out that food tastes exactly the same even though the act of chewing can leave you breathless (gross exaggeration here).

This road is classic Colorado mountain driving. Two lanes of steep and tight and twisting curves with no guardrails. There are two short segments where there is no center line because the road is so narrow that you pass an oncoming car v.e.r.y s.l.o.w.l.y with only a foot or two to spare between you. Being an acrophobic, I do not like such passages. Here’s an interesting graphic from a bicycling journal.

And yes, you share this narrow piece of asphalt with bicyclists. Bicyclists with a death wish is what I have come to believe. When you encounter a person on a bike on a curvy stretch you cannot pass due to limited visibility, so you travel at their speed. It is a journey that I simply could not make. The guy on the bike at times is only a couple of feet from the cliff edge and that is about ten feet too little for this timid soul.

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A few miles before the summit is the ghost town of Independence. It once was a gold mining town, established in 1879 and abandoned in 1899. All but one member of the population left at that later date during the worst winter in Colorado’s history, when snow cut them off completely from supplies. At one point many residents took planks from the buildings to fashion skis and in that way traveled back down the mountains to Aspen and safety.

One of the plaques at the townsite discussed a local Elks Lodge having brought new elk in to repopulate the valley, and that herd’s descendants now now still roam the area. Why, you ask, did they do this? Well, because in that isolated and harsh environment the miners and their families had eaten nearly all of the deer, elk, and marmots before they abandoned the town. Yes, even the marmots did not escape those ravenous appetites.

Here’s a few pics I borrowed from the internet. I took none of my own because my phone had run out of gas.

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Rocky Mountain High, by John Denver

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This morning I returned to modern life by reading articles about President Cluck’s continuing war on democracy and decency and wondering to myself … where’s a good heart attack when you really need one?

I know, I know. An unworthy thought. I will give myself a time out.

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Comic Relief: sign found in the bathroom at the top of Independence Pass.

It Is Written

jono55

One morning this week I was looking to find something cheerful in the newspapers at around 6 o’clock A.M.. The first thing I learned is that the rice that I love to eat is loaded with cadmium and arsenic at “dangerous“ levels. So, to be an informed rice-eater, I researched and made a short list of what cadmium could do to me:

  • Pulmonary edema
  • Chemical pneumonia
  • Nausea
  • Vomiting
  • Diarrhea
  • Kidney disease
  • Osteoporosis
  • COPD
  • Lung cancer
  • Dysfunction of my liver, pancreas, and testes
  • Death

I was going to check on arsenic’s toxicity as well, but by the time I finished with cadmium I was already bummed. Hmmmmm … let’s see … a choice between shrimp fried rice and a trip straight to metabolic hell …

This information comes on the heels of my learning a couple of days ago that eating bagged lettuce is also more dangerous now because the Cluck administration has so reduced the number of food inspectors who protect us as our veggies make the long trip from farm to table that the hazards are increased. So I guess it’s back to good ol’ Soylent Green for me …. wait, what’s that … a little louder, please …

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Grift, graft, corruption, schmorruption … who is surprised by any of Cluck’s vigorous attempts to stuff money into his pockets in these days of dishonor and disrepute? He is a crook, a draft-dodger, a convicted felon, an adjudicated rapist, and one of the champion liars of any generation. He is a caricature of a man. An empty suit.

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From The New Yorker

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Omigosh, our secrets are out! Here is Springsteen opening at a concert in Manchester, England. Damn. Now everyone will know what a bunch of twits are running our show here at home.

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Springsteen is catching four kinds of hell from MAGAland for his speech at the concert. (Because he called American out in a foreign land, he is even called a traitor, as if every word of every celebrity isn’t available instantly worldwide wherever it is uttered.) Over decades, maybe centuries, each time any singer brings up an issue that is in the forefront at the time this sort of reaction happens. And the criticisms are always the same: “He should just sing and leave the politics outside!” They try to ignore one important point, which is that music and politics have a long history together.

Pete Seeger made an entire career out of reminding us of the place that songs had in our own history, especially in labor and antiwar movements. Bob Dylan picked up that torch and carried it for years. Crosby Stills Nash and Young sung beautiful harmonies over sharp words dealing with the Vietnam War and social unrest. Sooo many others.

Music is powerful, and we all know it. It can change minds, sooth or inflame, elevate or depress moods. I don’t pretend to know why, but the far right has much more difficulty coming up with something a guy can hum than the other side does. Seems they are a hort on creativity, as it were. Perhaps that’s one reason they resent it when a Bruce or a Bob or a CSNY belts out yet another moving anthem. They know they have lost another round.

Chimes of Freedom, by The Byrds

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Every year it is the same. In the spring we sort out the camping gear, toss out the broken items, and replace those as well as the ones we just lost somewhere. We arrange the stuff perfectly logically and neatly until it is a joy to behold. By mid-summer chaos has sneaked in and taken over everywhere. As we set up our tent it becomes obvious that neither of us knows where the rubber hammer the we use to pound tent stakes into hard ground has got itself.

We find that if we are to eat anything which requires a tool we must make do, because all we have are spoons. The rest went into the house after the last camping trip and never made it back into the storage boxes. There are now six bottles of insect repellent and no sunscreen at all in the bag of necessaries. A cut finger provokes a search for a Band-Aid and we can only come up with two of them. Where is the First Aid Kit? Abducted by aliens is what we deduce. The first night of any trip when we can’t find the small flashlights that we need to find a bathroom during those early morning hours … it’s not the predators we worry about as much as rocks, cacti, thistles, and tripping over those accursed tree roots.

In short, we go from perfection to woefully unprepared without even noticing, and we do it every blessed year. As of this writing, I have all our stuff laid out in front of me on the garage floor and am preparing to put it back just the way that the universe knows that it should be done … all the while aware that ultimately I will find myself this autumn with only two Band-Aids and no sunscreen once again.

As Sharif Ali says to Major Lawrence in the movie Lawrence of Arabia:

It Is Written.

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Chimes of Freedom, by the Lynne Arriale Trio

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Lei Lady Lei

jono55

I’ve never been to the Hawaiian Islands. People tell me that it is lovely there, and I believe them. I might visit the islands if they were the Hawaii of 1941, when the novel and film “From Here To Eternity” took place.

At the time that I read the book I was young and very impressionable, and it “imprinted” with me. Later I saw the movie and I became permanently bonded to a time and place. In fact, that film had more than a little influence on my enlisting in the Air Force as a teen. The military life seemed the life for me.

Especially since there was always the off chance that I might meet the real life incarnation of Deborah Kerr’s character in the movie … ay ay ay … that scene … still … after all these years …

Well, that adventure didn’t last very long. I never got to be a pilot and I never got to Hawaii. But I did get to spend several weeks sweating profusely at Lackland AFB in south Texas in August, and came back home resolved to pick up my college career and get serious about it.

So if you look at it in in a certain cockeyed way, “From Here To Eternity” may be the reason that I finished college and med school.

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There is a certain genre of Hawaiian music that I have come to love, called slack-key guitar. And one of the most beautiful musical pieces of any genre I have ever heard comes from this tradition.

Here is the King’s Serenade (‘Imi Au Iā ʻOe), by Keola Beamer.

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While it is true that celebrities are no smarter than anyone else when it comes to politics, and there is no reason to give their opinions any more weight than let’s say, any old un-famous person, there is no reason to give them less, either.

George Clooney is a favorite of mine in the actor department. If he had only done O Brother Where Art Thou, and nothing else, it would have been enough to win me over.

So I gave his op/ed in the Times the same level of scrutiny that I would give yours. The only difference between he and we being that he is closer to the center of the action than most of us. And when he says we’re in a tight spot, I am prone to believe him.

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From The New Yorker

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How often does something turn out exactly the way you’d hoped? Robin and I had planned a several-day getaway to a small campground at Woods Lake, about 1 1/2 hours from home. The heat was rising here in Paradise, and at 9,600 feet, the temperatures promised were 20 degrees cooler, and off we went.

To get there you go through the marijuana capitol of our area, Ridgway CO, continue on for about twenty miles, then turn left to go past Placerville (home of the Yo Mama moving company), until you are almost to the megalopolis of Sawpit CO. You then turn right to drive up the Fall River road, which is 2.5 miles of pleasant blacktop followed by 6.5 miles of equal parts good gravel road, tooth-loosening washboards, bomb craters, and boulder fields.

Where that road finally ends is at Woods Lake. An alpine gem.

We launched our now almost-new kayaks onto the water and the wind did not blow. The sun did not scorch. The insects did not bite. The least movement of the paddle was enough to move the boats on a near-mirror surface. The lake is not a large one, and we were able to circumnavigate it a couple of times before supper on the first afternoon. Sometimes we just floated out there, admiring the mountains around us.

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A handful of photos from Woods Lake.

We paddled through forests of neon-blue damselflies, watched clouds of tiny anonymous summer insects whirling over the water in the golden light of early evening, spent several minutes observing a beaver the size of a panel truck gnaw on an inch-thick branch, saw shorebirds of several different species running back and forth on narrow mudflats.

After all those hours of paddling and hiking we returned home wishing we had servants to fan us and brighten up our lemonades. That’s one of the two things life requires to be perfect and is almost always missing. People whose only aim in life is to make you comfortable and keep you fed.

The other missing part is having a background score for your life. Music that swells when feelings are building. Becomes expansive when you are confronted by beauty. Chills when your ex comes for a weekend with the kids. Weeps at times of misfortune.

No doubt about it. I need someone to write my soundtrack. Maybe this guy, Richard Thompson would do it for me. This dramatic melody from the movie Grizzly Man could just as easily be playing in the background as I spoon yogurt onto my granola in the morning.

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From The New Yorker

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