Tesla

Heard of Tesla Motors? They are the first and only serial manufacturer of electric vehicles (EVs) in the world. The Tesla Roadster, pictured above, is also the only production EV that gets better than 200 miles per charge. This week, it was announced that Tesla broke the world record - over 300 miles on a single charge. The Roadster is clearly a high performance sports car. It can accelerate from 0-60 in under 4 seconds, yet is twice as energy efficient as a Prius.

I took this picture this morning. Tesla just opened a showroom in Boulder a short walk from my house. It makes perfect sense. It's the greenest car on the planet, and with a price tag of $100k Tesla's clientele is going to be both green minded and affluent. What better place than Boulder? The one big question I have is that the car is extremely flashy (kinda looks like a Ferrari) and Boulder is definitely not about being flashy. I wonder how it'll be received.

Peace in the Valle

This painting is of a real place in the southern Rockies.

Today, another snow day - our first full snow day of the season. We don't get as many scheduled holidays as I did at my old job in Texas, but I think we make up for it in snow days. In a way they're better than scheduled holidays because they pop up randomly throughout the cool months like little treats.

I haven't seen an official total, but there's over two feet on the ground outside and it's supposed to continue snowing all day. I've got plenty of chai.

Snow Day

We had our first snow day today. The lab closed at noon. I didn't get out until after 1PM because I had to conduct an interview with a candidate who'd already flown in. Tempted as I was to tell him to come back next week, I did the right thing.

On the way home I stopped off at one of my favorite hiking trails and did some snowshoeing (without snowshoes) in thigh deep snow for about an hour. There's nothing quite like Colorado snow. It's like walking through fairy dust.

Now I'm settled in with my favorite flannel PJ bottoms, a hot cup of chai, a crackling fire and no reason to leave the house for at least the next two days. Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow.

Blast from the Past

Yep. That feels real good.

Everything's Amazing and Nobody's Happy

I could be this guy.

Texans

There's something different about Texans, especially Austinites. I don't know what, I don't know why, but there is.

This week I was talking to someone about the differences between my current job in Colorado and my last job in Texas. Despite the fact that my old job was mind-numbingly boring, dead-end and thankless, I had an awesome group of friends there. Aside from the actual work aspect of the job, it was a really fun place to be. In fact, at every job I ever had in Texas, I now realize, there was a certain level of fitting in that just came naturally. I never realized it (and how could I?) until I worked in a place that made me feel alien.

From the beginning I noticed that I'm different from my current set of co-workers. People where I work rarely take breaks or lunches, and when they do, it's an honest to goodness fifteen minute (or less) break. They may or may not seek the company of others, and if they do, they just make small talk and then it's right back to the grindstone. It's a good work ethic I suppose, but unless you've been in Texas long enough, you probably have no idea what I'm getting at. If you're from Texas, especially Austin, you know exactly what I'm getting at. I think Texas (at least Austin) has a work ethic more in common with Europe than that of America. We're not workaholics, and we see more value in having plenty of social time during the day than slaving away, always trying to maximize production. This has been true of every place I've ever worked, except for my current job. Before now I've only ever worked in Texas, and all of my professional jobs have been in Austin. The kicker is that my co-workers mention from time to time how they love the slow paced, relaxed work environment as compared to the world of private industry. Ah. I've never worked for private industry in my professional life. Only government agencies. Only Texas state agencies, for that matter. Maybe that explains things. If my current job is "easy" compared to the corporate world, then I can assure you that is a place I shall never, ever work. I will never be a corporate puppet, a production machine grinding away to make some fat cat richer.

But I do think that the kinds of people I work with today - extremely educated, career driven individuals who love number crunching - also has something to do with their weirdness (relative to my weirdness.) A lot of my Colorado (ie Boulder) friends fit that same category. With one exception, everyone I've befriended here is a scientist, professor, engineer or works in high-tech. Frankly, I don't like it. They're different. Nice, yes. They're very pleasant, intelligent, progressive. But you have to plan dinner, even a beer, three weeks in advance. You don't just pick up the phone and say, "Hey buddy, meet me down at the Mountain Sun for a beer in ten minutes." Then of course the evening is usually over by 8PM, and the conversation never gets to the point where you're laughing so hard you can't breathe. And God forbid you ever talk about anything crude or pointless. It's all very controlled, very pleasant, very politically correct, very benign, very predictable. Remember that episode of Seinfeld where Elaine met the "other" Jerry, George and Kramer? They were all like perfect versions of her actual friends. That's what it's like. That's not to say my Austin friends aren't intelligent or educated or pleasant. They are. They just don't take themselves too seriously, and they're not above any topic of conversation, no matter how crude or pointless. And they aren't all goddam vegans. I like my original friends better, if for no other reason than I feel like I'm one of them.

Yesterday two friends from Texas came to town. They were just casual acquaintances of mine back in Austin, but they were friends of Gerard which is why they came to visit. I didn't want them to leave. We hung out, showed them around Boulder, took in some brews at the Mountain Sun. Gerard and I discussed afterward how familiar it felt hanging out and laughing with them, and we both agreed that Austinites are just different people - people we love. We've not found any friendships here like we had in Texas. There's just something different about the culture or the kinds of people who live in Austin that suits us. There are days when I think I wouldn't mind trading my job for my old one, just to be with the old Three Martini Break Group again. Of course I wouldn't. I really hated that job. But I think it says a lot for my old friends that their pull is such that I at least entertain the thought sometimes.

Keeping the Peace

It's hard. It's so f-ing hard.

I guess he'd rather be in Colorado
He'd rather spend his time out where the sky looks like a pearl after a rain
Once again I see him walkin'

Once again I hear him talkin'

To the stars he makes and asking them for bus fare

I guess he'd rather be in Colorado
He'd rather play his banjo in the morning when the moon is scarcely gone
In the dawn the subways comin'

In the dawn I hear him hummin'
Some old song he wrote of love in Boulder Canyon

I guess he'd rather be in Colorado
I guess he'd rather work out where the only thing you earn is what you spend
In the end up in his office
In the end a quiet cough

Is all he has to show he lives in New York City

Another Week

One morning this week I was standing at the bus stop when a lady walked up to me and said, "That hat looks great on you!"

I smiled and said thanks, and that seemed to be it. To my amazement she actually turned and walked on. But then she stopped, turned around, and asked...wait for it...waaaaaaaaaaait for it....

Are you a cowboy?

Well hell, you really can't blame people for asking I suppose.

It snowed most of the day today, there was a troublesome bear near my home that the Colorado Division of Wildlife spent most of the day yesterday trying to persuade to leave town, and Apple unveiled a new super cool mouse to replace that P.O.S. they've been making for the last couple of years. That's all I know today.

I'm going to have some apple pie and hit the sack.

Peace

I've finally made peace with myself about some things.

Between the revelations I had working with the farrier (much of which I haven't blogged about), and a subsequent heart to heart with an old friend, I seem to have quieted my mind about a great many issues. So much so that I really don't even feel the need to expound upon the subject. I just want to tie up a few loose ends.

First, grad school. A far cry from my first day of class, I've actually come to enjoy my classes. I've got A's in both. Some things have occurred recently, or perhaps they've just been visible to me now that my eyes aren't clouded by a single-minded obsession, that have softened me - even drawn me back in - to the good things in life that aren't necessarily only to be found high in the mountains or on a remote ranch.

No, nothing has been resolved. No mysteries of the Universe have been revealed. My desires, hopes and dreams, concerns and wishes haven't changed. I've just decided to take off the war paint for the time being and drift with the current. Maybe I'm just a sell-out. Maybe I'm just tired. But I know that there is little if anything in this world that doesn't have an up side and a down side, a light side and a dark side. My problem is that I'm always trying to figure out the one "right" answer (though it's highly unlikely that even exists), and sometimes I can't see the yang for the yin.

Last weekend's trip to the museum left me feeling good - excited even - and a bit sad, longing for the hopeful dreams and abundant optimism I had in my younger days. Last night I went to the Fisk Planetarium in Boulder, and then today I went to the Earth Sciences Library for the first time to check out some books I needed for one of my classes. These places just compounded the effect of the museum experience last weekend. The Earth Sciences Library was the most amazing and beautiful library I've ever been in. It was almost as much museum as library, and you should see their collection of geography materials and maps. By the checkout desk, there is a full size replica of a massive adult Stegosaurus skeleton that was found recently in Colorado - the most complete Stegosaur skeleton ever found. The college I got my undergrad from had nothing - nothing at all - that remotely compared to this.

I also did some cool stuff at work this week. I finished a new geothermal resource map of the US. I didn't just map it. I did all of the analysis behind it, and after months of work this has become our lab's newest official geothermal resource map of the US. It'll be on Obama's desk soon. I also created a volumetric rendering of the temperatures below the surface of the lower 48 states that the boss and our geothermal team was quite impressed with. It felt good.

Life is full of good things. Maybe I'm not a rancher or a mountain man or a farrier, and maybe I will or won't be any of those things in the due course of time. But today, right now, I'm a GIS analyst and a cartographer, and I'm flirting with an old love of mine - earth science. So as I figure it, until the time comes that I'm a farrier or a mountain man or something else entirely, I might as well be the best damned analyst, map maker and scientist I can possibly be. There's plenty of joy to be found in it, just so long as I don't let the yin block my view of the yang.

Ghost Rider

This is my 100th blog post. On blogger, anyway.

I went out for lunch today. There was a woman who kept staring at me. When I was paying at the register, she came up beside me.

"Are you a cowboy?" she asked.

I pulled out my wallet and flipped through some bills. Without looking up I calmly asked, "What's a cowboy?"

"Well it's...do you...um...are you...well I don't know!" she gasped.

Nobody ever knows.

There was an awkward silence. Then the lady at the register pointed to my belt buckle and said, "He's from Texas!"

The woman, apparently satisfied with that definition, said, "Oh!" and smiled. She stood there looking at me a bit longer, apparently just completely amused. I paid, smiled and then bid them both good day.

I didn't have my hat with me. I wasn't wearing anything by Rockmount. Hell I even managed to get all the way through lunch without letting out a rip-roarin' YEEEEEHAWWWW!!!!! I thought I was pretty inconspicuous. Must've been the boots and the belt.

I still don't get it. Not once in 33 years of living in Texas was I ever asked if I was a cowboy, "real" or otherwise. Once there was a guy I came across at a parade in downtown Austin who wanted to fight me just because he thought that that's what men with cowboy hats did, but that was something else altogether.

Of course there were stretches, sometimes several years, when I'd retire the hat and boots to the closet and dress like I'm supposed to - you know, wear the current fashion that everyone else is wearing. One such time was during my last year of college and a couple of years right after. I was sitting in class one day and a professor (who was not a Texan) started raging against cowboys, and especially cowboy hats.

"I don't understand why people still wear those things. It's stupid! Nobody needs to wear a cowboy hat. The Old West is dead and gone!"

Needless to say it pissed me off royally. But it also drove home a thought I'd already been kicking around: that I was about to graduate and become a "professional" and should probably start dressing like a cubicle bunny.

I remember the day I moved to Austin. I was renting a room in College Station and I was so ready to get out of that one horse town. I came home and announced I was leaving. I loaded up my belongings, all of which I fit in my pickup in one trip, and headed for the Big A. I was cruising down that Texas highway wearing a cheap black cowboy hat that never quite fit right (it was all I could afford at the time) with the windows down and Redneck Girl blasting on the stereo. I had stickers of the American flag and the Rebel flag on my bumper, and I was as happy as I could be. I had no job, no home and only one friend in the whole city, but I knew there was opportunity. Life was going to start anew. I ended up crashing on my friend's couch until I got things figured out, and the first thing I did when I got my first paycheck was buy that salad plate-sized belt buckle with the Texas seal on it, the same one the cashier pointed at today. That was over ten years ago.

But I digress. After graduation from college I went to the Men's Wearhouse and bought one pair of slacks, one nice button up, one nice black belt with a very fashionable, ultra-modern tiny silver buckle that didn't actually fasten but instead used friction to keep itself closed (some of the time), and a pair of polished black leather dress shoes with a square toe - apparently a statement that said, "I'm professional, but still laid back." It was just enough to outfit me for job interviews. When I landed my first job I bought a few more pieces, but eventually the slacks gave way to Levis, though I still wore the button ups most of the time.

Side note: I was not wearing my hat the day Professor Anderson went on her anti-cowboy tirade. If fact she'd never even seen me in my hat. It felt like being secretly gay and having to endure some small minded anti-gay ranting. The fool never realized who she was unloading on. And frankly I'm surprised she could get away with that in Texas. It may be true that the "old west" is gone. Even most modern ranchers use pickup trucks, four-wheelers and even helicopters to round up cattle and wild horses because they're just a lot faster, stronger, more dependable and less dangerous than horses. But cowboy hats, aside from being particularly useful and comfortable in snow, rain and harsh sun, are part of the cultural heritage of the United States, particularly the Western states, and most especially Texas where virtually all cattle drives originated and where that greatest of all American icons, the cowboy, was born. Texas, more than any other state, has clung to this cultural heritage and embraced it. It has always had a presence in my life and I have always cherished it. I may not be roaming the plains and roping cattle, but I'm fascinated by the fact and the fantasy of the old west. I have a special place in my heart for Texas and all that she is, good and bad. And I have an obsession with the lands west of the Mississippi and all of the truth and myth contained by this mysterious, rugged and insanely beautiful place.

Soon after college I found myself dissatisfied with the professional life of a cube dweller and started dreaming hardcore about heading west. WAY out west, which is what ultimately brought me to Colorado. And here, surrounded by a serious western wilderness and living so close to my fantasies of a rustic mountain life, it was only a matter of time before the hat and boots made their comeback in my life. I tried dressing like a professional cube bunny at my current job, but most people I work with don't bother with anything other than typical street wear. So I resurrected my Wranglers, my Texas belt buckle and treated myself to a closet full of new Rockmount shirts which I wear pressed and starched. And to top it off, last summer I bought my dream cowboy hat from Texas Hatters, the official hatter for the state of Texas: 100% top-quality beaver felt, hand crafted by a master hatter, perfectly tailored to my head. I toured his shop and he showed me all of his equipment, much of it over 100 years old. He helped me select just the right felt blank that would become my hat. It took him a week to make it, and then it had to be adjusted and readjusted until the fit and shape were exceptional. Then he sewed a natural leather band in it, hand tooled with my name, and fitted it with a custom leather hat band which I designed. I left that shop just as proud as you please. I don't give a rat's ass what anyone else thinks about it. I love it. And now when I go to work I may not look like a cubicle bunny but I'm damn sure dressed better than anyone else. (There is one other guy who wears a cowboy hat - he's a retired rodeo cowboy who, after a series of debilitating injuries, decided that an office job would be better for his health. He also dresses pretty sharp.)

I can't explain it, though I've tried many times. It just feels right. I'm happy when I'm walking in the rain or the snow, wearing that hat and my boots and my coat and looking out across a gorgeous mountain landscape - no one to keep me company but the lonesome howl of a chilly wind. I'm happy when I'm cruising the back roads in my pickup on a gorgeous summer day - windows down, music up and jaw-dropping scenery all around; with nobody to bug me or ask if I'm a cowboy. I'm happy sitting in the tall grass of a Rocky Mountain meadow in Autumn, watching herds of elk bugling among golden aspen groves, with no human close enough to be more than a speck in the distance.

The sad thing is I really don't want to be alone, at least not all the time. I just want to be with people who understand me. But I guess that's asking too much, considering I don't even understand myself half the time.

A Day in Denver

When I was a kid I was obsessed with dinosaurs. One of my favorite things to do was visit the Houston Museum of Natural Science, or "dinosaur museum" as I called it. After I started driving, I'd frequently go by myself if I couldn't find anyone to go with me.

Today Gerard and I braved the snow and spent the entire day at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. This is our second attempt, but even when we're there open to close we can't take the whole thing in. It's really top-notch and they've got some of the best displays and collections I've seen.

Afterward we stopped by the well-to-do Cherry Creek area and walked around a bit. And just because they're something of a novelty to us anymore, we stopped in the Cherry Creek Mall. And can you believe that Gerard got me 1. into a mall and 2. into an Abercrombie and Fitch and I didn't have one negative thing to say? I just decided what the hell. The world is what it is, and me being mister uptight and negative about all the millions of things I have no control over just doesn't put good energy into the world. Gerard sampled cologne, I got a kick out of the moose head, the canoe and the rumpled plaid shirts while the store blasted gay fabulous dance music, and we both oogled over the young suburban eye-candy.

I Have No Idea

My mom called me this evening. After a brief exchange, she said, "You didn't go to work today."

"How did you know?" I asked.

"Because you sound happy."

It was true. I'd spent the entire day shoeing horses. I have to say I was incredibly moved by the experience. That may sound like an odd thing to say, but it has affected me in some expected ways and quite a lot of unexpected ways as well. On the snowy hour and a half drive home tonight I felt like I wanted to cry. I didn't, just for the record. But I felt an upwelling of emotion and I don't know why. I didn't feel particularly happy or sad. I just felt like I needed a release. It was such an intense day, physically and mentally.

Shoeing horses is seriously hard work. It was a lot harder and infinitely more frustrating than, say, bucking hay. I didn't actually put any shoes on, but I pulled a lot of shoes off and clinched or finished just as many. I don't have the skill to do the shaping or the shoeing, so I'd clean out the hooves and pull all the shoes on the first horse, then move to the second. The farrier would then shoe the first horse. He'd move to the second by the time I was done, then I'd move back to the first and finish each foot by clinching the nails, filing them off, then shaping the hoof with a rasp to ensure a perfect match with the shoe. And so this was our routine. We did eight horses in 9 hours with no actual stopping for lunch (we grazed on our sandwiches between horses.) The only reason it took us that long was because it was a busy day at the barn. I must've met a dozen cowboys who all had business there, and every one of them wanted to shoot the breeze. One was the manager of the entire equine facility. He was a huge, older man with giant hands. He was a close talker and one of those who likes to grab your shoulder and lean into you every time he says something or makes a joke. I welcomed the breaks, but the farrier didn't welcome the delays.

He's an interesting guy, that Masterson. When I arrived he was all smiles and hearty handshakes, and he immediately set about showing me how to pull shoes. "Now this isn't a contest to see which cowboy has the biggest wiener," he sad. I wish I'd had a way to inconspicuously write down all the phrases he said that made me cock my head. I don't know about wiener size, but I do know it takes some serious strength and technique to wrench a shoe from a hoof. And you have to do it while holding the hoof between your legs and bent over parallel to the floor. And of course the horse will generally humor you for about 30 seconds before it decides it's done. Horses are immensely powerful. I cannot overstate that. It is our good fortune that horses are so amenable to our controlling them. Human history would have been very different if horses had the attitude of, say, bison. Anyhow, my legs muscles were on fire before I even managed to finish pulling my first shoe, but that was nothing compared to how my lower back felt by the time I left.

I didn't talk much today. I was focusing heavily on what I was doing, and any intermittent down time was spent on deep inner reflection. So much was racing through my mind. I was thrilled to be there, soaking up the experience. But I have to admit one low point. I was standing with the back leg of a particularly grumpy old horse wrapped around my waist, his foot squeeze tightly but precariously between my two legs, and my face in his foot. I was trying desperately to get a shoe off. The horse kept wiggling and fidgeting and I kept having to drop the foot, or else he'd just yank it away from me. If he'd decided to kick, I'd have flown across the barn. There's no telling what kind of condition I'd be in upon landing; anything from seriously injured to dead, I suppose. My legs were like jelly. My lower back was screaming. Steaming horse shit was falling past my ear for the fifth time, and the one next to me wouldn't stop farting for more than five minutes (and let me tell you, a horse fart could fill a hot air ballon.) At this moment I was seriously asking myself what on God's green earth was I doing here? I could be sitting in a warm office behind my perfectly safe Macintosh sipping a latte, pecking leisurely at sterile keys and earning a lot of money. And that's when I started pondering perspective and its incredible power. Depending on your perspective, you can justify (to yourself anyway) anything from exterminating millions of Jews to leaving a posh office job to stand in horse shit wondering if the day would end before you were kicked to death or threw your back out. Perspective. It's important.

I also had a lot of incredible flashbacks to my past while I was in the barn and on my contemplative drive home. Masterson is 25 years old, has a master's degree, and has a 3.8 GPA. He just applied to vet school. Another gal in the barn had also just applied to vet school, and the two of them had a conversation which I paid close attention to. For whatever reason I started thinking about my early college years and how excited I was by all of it. I had such big plans to become a scientist and go change the world. Even my original plan to go to vet school was so that I could specialize in marine vertebrates, move to a tropical paradise and do research in a lab. I thought heavily about those days and the excitement and emotion that carried me along. But somewhere along the way I opted for an easier, more certain career path and forgot all of my plans. I suppose today I was ripe for this foray into long forgotten dreams in no small part because of Gerard. Gerard is studying ecology and evolutionary biology, which was my major when I first started college and was aiming for vet school. His excitement about all the things he learns has been stirring up old feelings lately. A few weeks ago he actually got to hold in his hands the fossilized bones of Australopithecus. How freakin' cool is that? He just happened to peak into a lab at the university and saw someone in a white lab coat poring over something in a box. He stepped in and the scientist excitedly let him hold some of the bones (with gloves on, of course.) It reminded me of my days taking science classes and all my big dreams.

It all got me thinking that, despite the specifics of how things turned out for me, I'm still saving the world inasmuch as any average Joe can. The secret to success, to mastering anything, is to focus on that thing. Bodybuilders get those grotesque bodies by obsessing over it. Scientists get prestige by obsessing over their field of research. Greenpeace saves the whales by literally throwing themselves in front of the harpoons. But what do you accomplish if one day you want to be a vet, then you want to be a cartographer, then you want to be a cowboy, then you want to be... Get the point? I sure did.

Maybe subconsciously I'm just trying to ensure I always have an antelope to chase. Maybe subconsciously I want the world to be like a Disney musical. Maybe I just have a hard time focusing. Maybe I'm trying to define myself. Maybe I'm just never satisfied. More questions that have no answers. I'm good at coming up with them.

What I do know is that I had a fantastic experience today and I wouldn't trade it for anything. I needed it. I'm planning to go back for more. I also know that, despite the host of new questions, I actually feel a whole lot better about my current career. In fact, today anyway, I'm not even dreading finishing my coursework this semester. Isn't that funny. I guess more than anything, today was a big satisfying bite that helped satiate my ravenous appetite to answer, "what if?" It's too early to tell, but maybe farriery will indeed help me with a career change: maybe it'll help me realize that what I've got is really what I need after all - just as long as I continue to let myself explore new things.

Maybe I should either delete this blog or start writing all of my mental crap on an anonymous blog. Maybe I should save this one for short, fun writing and pictures about mountains and the farmer's market, which was what I originally intended.

Ever wish you could just go to sleep for a few weeks and wake up with a clear head and a fresh outlook? Yeah. Goodnight.

A Moment of Clarity?

Today was the last day of the Wednesday farmer's market. The Saturday market, which is the main event, continues through the end of October. I got off the bus just after dark and walked through for the last time until next summer. The air was crisp and the market stands were lit with white Christmas lights. A cold front is bringing snow tonight, and the air always has a certain feel right before a storm pushes through. It's surreal to see the market under the glow of lights. Only the last couple of Wednesdays of the season is it dark before the market shuts down. There wasn't much of a crowd, just a few people milling around. It was quiet and sleepy, and the farmers were just starting to pack up. It kinda felt like the very end of a really big party. I talked to a few friends, and wished my beekeeping, honey bottling, candle making friends goodbye until next year. They were down to their last case of honey and wouldn't be back until next year's honey crop comes in late summer.

I don't know what doctors call it when a normally crazy person has a good day and isn't crazy for a short period of time. I'm in the midst of one now I think. I have them from time to time. I'll wake up in the morning, have breakfast and a shower just like any other day. I'll put on my boots and hat and listen to Michael Martin Murphy on my iPod on the bus to work. But what's different is that I won't be longing to be elsewhere. I won't be thinking of all the reasons why I think I'd be happier doing something else. I'll just think about how good I have it and how grateful I am for it. I might actually spend some time thinking about work stuff in a positive, constructive way. I'll think, "This isn't so bad, really. In fact it's kinda fun. Why would you even entertain the thought of giving up safe, clean, high-paying work, a flexible work schedule and awesome benefits to go pound iron onto horse feet? Are you mad?"

Quite possibly, yes.

Yesterday at my actual job I made a volumetric rendering of the temperature below the surface of the conterminous United States. It's basically a detailed 3D model showing how temperature changes as you go deeper below the crust. You can see very clearly the vast stretches in the east where the crust is deep and cool, and the big bubbles of heat lying just below the surface in the west. I also included existing hydrothermal wells to see how they line up with the modeled temperature data. It's sort of like having x-ray vision and getting to see the temperature inside the earth and the geothermal wells that have been dug to tap that heat. It's really cool and co-workers are impressed. How can you not feel good about that?

Sometimes I see the youthful faces of college students and it's like a slap in the face. Dang, I thought I looked like that, but the mirror doesn't reflect that smooth tight complexion I always took for granted. As mom would say, I'm not a spring chicken anymore. Of course I'm not old either. I'm just a thirty-something, that awkward middle ground between youthfulness and old age. In a sense it's like a less intense but more drawn-out version of the teenage years: not quite young, but not quite not. Is trying to change careers - especially to a physically demanding, unstable one - really what you aught to be doing right now? Do you really want to grow old living far away from town, and therefore out of reach of easy food and medical care? Or are you just taking the easy way out here? Are you one of those people who, in the end, would rather just shop at Whole Foods and be fashionably green living in your perfect little city? That is, after all, exactly what I have right now. I could "throw in the towel" as they say and live it up - just forget about the cabin fantasy and farriery and enjoy the life I have. Why start trying to learn a new career when I could focus on honing the one I have? So it's not perfect. Do you think any other career would be without its drawbacks? There is always a price. Or maybe I'm one of those Americans I always complain about - those who are never satisfied and always looking for the bigger better deal. Maybe my bigger better deal just takes the form of something other than money or house size. Maybe what I have isn't good enough for me. I'm not happy enough having a comfortable, stable life that is far better than any other time of my life. Maybe I'm being a crybaby, a spoiled brat - like a millionaire who throws tantrums because he's not a billionaire, when most people are just trying to make ends meet. I suppose these are normal things to consider.

I just don't know the answers.

I took the day off tomorrow. I'm going to spend it shoeing horses.

"Regret for the things we did can be tempered by time; it is regret for the things we did not do is inconsolable."

--Sydney Harris

We'll see.

Life 2.0

Last night over a few microbrews at the Mountain Sun, I had an interesting conversation with Jason, my friend and co-worker. Naturally the topic of modern life vs. a simpler, low-tech life came up. Jason is about my age and he's a brilliant engineer who models electrical systems with computers and does extensive testing on prototype batteries produced by major auto manufacturers. He was the perfect person to bounce ideas off of.

It doesn't take much, so I soon jumped up on my soapbox and let 'er rip. My beer fueled outpouring revealed a new aspect of my deep thoughts on the subject. It seems that one of my major frustrations with modern techno life is how rapidly everything changes. As I explained to Jason, one of the things I hate about technology is that by the time I start getting proficient with the current standard, it's outdated. Enough is never enough. We always have to have more, bigger, better. I once taught myself HTML and was decent at creating web pages from scratch. But then I didn't touch it for a while. When I looked into it again, everything had changed so much that I scarcely recognized it. It was like starting from scratch. In my daily working life, I don't have time to keep up with the latest buzz on this or that because I'm too busy trying to get my pile of work done. There's little time for innovation. You might think these innovations would be a natural part of doing the work on a daily basis, and to a degree that is true. But there's still just too much. I don't know, maybe I'm an anomaly. Maybe I just can't hack it. Or more likely it has something to do with my aversion to it.

The thing is, all this is just to keep pace with a "virtual" world, a state of existence that isn't even real. That is, it's all conceptual in my opinion. None of it means anything in the wider world. It only means something because we say it does. You can't eat a computer program. I suppose you could choke down the disk it comes on, but the program itself is just photons. It's all just so silly and artificial. I realize that computer programs can be used to directly affect the real world, such as with computer guided missiles. Even my own work influences decisions by those who make them. But my point is that in the end none of this feels like genuine, honest living to me. I'm just sick of the middle man.

None of this is so with traditional skills. Let's take hunting for example. Ten thousand years ago, if you wanted to eat you walked into the woods, killed something, and ate it. That process involves tracking, stalking, waiting for the right moment, making the kill itself, then transporting and processing the kill before it finally becomes food. Today, if I go hunting, the basic process is exactly the same. Some of the tools have changed, but even a modern gun is the same basic concept as the ancient atl atl - a human launches a projectile which strikes and kills the target. If a father were to take his son into the forest today to teach him how to hunt, it wouldn't be very different from what a father would have taught his son before the advent of agriculture. There is no Hunting 2.0, no expensive upgrades to buy, no starting over with a new flowchart to redesign the whole process. That's not to say hunting or any other ancient skills are brainless or easy. With hunting or hide tanning or building a log cabin or farming, one can spend a lifetime learning and honing skills. There's always something new to learn, some technique to perfect, but the thing is that the major rules of the game never change. Information and skills can be passed down from one generation to the next. No grandfather today is ever going to teach his grandson how he programmed a computer back in his day. The very notion is laughable.

There have been frightening attempts to rewrite the rules of ancient skills. Farming 2.0 is here in the form of the modern factory farm. We've taken the humans and much of nature out of farming, and now grow millions of acres of monocrops with machines and toxic synthetic chemicals. We're growing animals by the millions in deplorable conditions. The price we're paying is a highly polluted environment, tainted food, obesity and a ticking time bomb in the form of a greatly reduced agricultural gene pool - one serious wheat virus and the world's major calorie source could go extinct overnight.

I've said it before, I hate the departmentalization of human beings. I hate being treated like a machine which must perform one task flawlessly while not knowing jack about anything else. Not so long ago, it was common for one person to know how to hunt, farm, build a house, churn butter, butcher a hog, ride a horse, darn socks, hitch a team, dig a well, etc. People had lots of skills that directly contributed not only to their survival, but to making life pleasant. What do people know how to do today? Everyone knows how to use a computer, drive a car and watch tv. We all know how to use money to get food, clothing and a house. But what do we know how to do. What can we make. How can we literally make a living, not just earn money and then buy a living. All we know to do is give money to the middleman who makes them appear as if by magic. These days horse skills or gardening or making clothing is considered a hobby. A hobby? Something we do for fun to distract us from the monotony of our "real" jobs? I fail to see how our modern lives are so much better if the necessary survival skills of our ancestors are considered to be fun distractions. Why not make practical use of these fun distractions? You know, like people have for thousands of years? Instead of knitting stacks of useless doilies, why not expand your skill set and make clothes for your family? There will still be time for doilies. There are people at the Boulder community garden who grow big gardens full of tomatoes and other vegetables and then - and this still makes me seethe with angry disbelief - compost them or let them rot in the garden at the end of the season! They garden for the pleasure of it, but in the end they just buy processed food from the grocery store! I know this because I've had conversations with these people. Where's the disconnect here? People still have this desire to do something constructive, but have a hard time making a practical application of it.

Maybe I'm seeing something that most people can't or won't. Or maybe my brain is just wired differently and I have an unusual aversion to the so-called "natural progression" of our species. (I tend to believe it's the former, but that too could just be a symptom of the latter.)

All I know is that at this moment, it's a gorgeous autumn day. I've got a big pot of apple butter simmering in the kitchen. The whole place is decked out with autumn leaves, all kinds of pumpkins, squashes and Indian corn, and big crates of fresh apples. In this moment I can almost imagine being in my own little mountain homestead, a world away from the technological slavery of the city. Here I am not a robot. I may work hard, but I am not a slave because I serve myself. I choose a deliberate life.

Home is Where the Community Is

I can't get to the farmer's market and back in less than three hours these days. Most of the farmers know me well enough that each booth consists of 5 minutes of buying and 20 minutes of catching up on the last week. And that's just the farmers. That doesn't count other friends I'm always bumping into at the market.

I also have to be careful with my stock of canned goods. Everyone wants to trade. Without prudence I'd end up trading all of my peach butter and crabapple jelly for hand-pulled mozzarella, cakes, tomatoes, breads, apples, any virtually anything else for sale at the market. They're all worthy trades, but I like crabapple jelly too.

Next week Nathan is bringing me a 50 pound bag of Colorado grown beet sugar (he gets wholesale prices through his pickling business). Laura and her husband are bringing me hand-poured beeswax candles from their own honeybee hives - the wax is a rich, dark, aged wax and is poured into 100 year old pinecone molds from Germany. Lou is bringing some pictures of a brook trout he carved out of poplar for another client so I can decide if I want him to make one for me. Christian wants to talk about supplying me with winter squash until spring, even if it means cutting into what he sells to local restaurants. "I think you'd make better use of it," he told me with a smile. Jeni owes me a box of apples and I owe Kate and Marcy some crabapple jelly for trades I made with them today. Keri keeps insisting I come out and ride her horses and help her butcher goats on the farm. I spent half an hour talking to Brian (he's my age) about how he wants to expand his beekeeping operation and do that full time, but can't afford a farm anywhere near Boulder because of all the lawyers and Californians who've bought up the land for their mansions. We also talked about our disdain for Facebook and peoples' over-dependance on cell phones and technology, and the shame of today's throw-away society. I can't walk five feet without someone calling out my name and waving from a booth, asking how my week was, or telling me about the frost that put an end to their peppers this season, or inviting me to dinner at their home or out for a locally brewed beer at the Mountain Sun. Strangers stop me and comment on how much they love my wagon, and marvel when they find out that someone of my relatively young age makes apple butter and pumpkin pies from scratch. Last weekend a woman asked where I had gotten my bag of cilantro. I told her it was the very last in the whole market, because I had already scoured every booth looking for whatever I could find. I happily gave her half of what I had. She offered to pay me but I refused and she left just beaming. I was beaming too, because these are my people and it makes me happy to share this whole wonderful thing with them.

It's clear that the market is a lot more to me than just food. It's my community. For me it offers hope that people can be brought together under the common banner of food and simple living, that the greatest joys are to be found not in material possessions or the number of Facebook connections you have or the prestige of your career, but in the everyday acts of living, loving and eating well. Sometimes I carry a heavy heart, feeling trapped by a materialistic, corporatized world of excess and perceived luxury. But the market reminds me that there are yet places that exist on the margins of that world, that real community and self-sufficiency is possible, and proof that such places can offer more joy and honest living than any amount of plastic technocrap from China. To all the farmers of this great land who spend your days planting and harvesting, who make it your life's work to sustain the integrity of our environment and our food, and who honor the age-old human institution of agriculture by participating in it and not mechanizing it - to all of you who deliver to us each week by the sweat of your brow the bounty and the beauty of cultivation, I say thank you. From the depths of my heart, thank you. You are backbone of this country. You keep the breath of life in the American ideals of pride, craftsmanship, hard work, beauty, freedom, independence and most of all the neighborly love that comes with a real community. I cherish these things deeply, and thus I cherish you because you embody them. A million times thank you.

Cowboy Up

Today I went to the Boulder Horse & Rider to buy a pair of jeans. It's Boulder's version of a feed store. In Texas, feed stores are generally huge and carry all sorts of farm and ranch supplies, clothing, animal feed, hay and some sell tractors and other machinery. Boulder's version isn't quite that. It's a very small shop with bagged "specialty" horse feed, a small selection of grooming supplies and clothes, some books, saddles and a few other odds and ends for the discriminating Boulder horseperson. It's locally owned, and they're one of only two clothing retailers I know of in the entire city that don't sell $200 designer jeans - and they're the only retailer that sells Wrangler (which are made in the USA.)

The owner is usually there when I drop in. She's nice, at least from what I gather in our short chats during my irregular, infrequent visits. She's the outdoorsy type, though I get the impression she's a bit pretentious and probably a gossip. She was there today. I walked in and she immediately started chatting me up. "So are you enjoying this gorgeous fall weather!?" she said with a big grin. I smiled and nodded. She kept talking but I wasn't really listening. I'm normally more chatty but I wasn't in the mood today. Eventually the chatter faded and I found my jeans.

I browsed some art she sells by a local farrier named Andrew. He's a young guy with a gift for painting. When he's not shoeing horses, he paints himself, his wife, horses and his cowboy friends in watercolor. I've been collecting his art, but there was nothing new today.

I browsed some saddles. I know of one saddle maker on the entire Front Range who still makes saddles the old fashioned way by hand. I haven't met him yet, but I'm keen to interview him and get a tour of his shop. These were not those kinds of saddles. They were all shiny, mostly made of synthetic materials, amply stuffed with synthetic padding so that they ride more like a pillow than a proper saddle. They were machine stitched and I could picture them rolling off an assembly line in China. They looked like something you might find in a furniture mega-store; lots of black pleather and chrome-esque bobbles. They were godawful ugly and modern looking and had no personality. They don't even look like they belong on a horse.

I was about to checkout when a book caught my eye. It was a book about packing, and there were several photos on the front of cowboys packing up horses and mules in some dreamy mountain wilderness. I perused the pages for a long while, looking through black and white photos of cowboys, probably in the 1970's, demonstrating the various stages of packing, leading, trail clearing, tracking, camping, cooking. I didn't see anything terribly modern in the photos. From the canvas bags on the mules to the hats on the cowboys, these guys and their equipment looked "all natural." To my great pleasure, I noticed they specifically mentioned what we today refer to as the "leave no trace" philosophy. They may have been just a bunch of horse-packin cowboys, but they had respect for nature and keeping the land clean and minimally impacted. I had to buy it.

At the register the owner asked, "Are you a packer?"

I didn't look up. "Just dreaming," I mumbled.

"Oh you need to go! I just came back from a packing trip up in Montana! It's so gorgeous! You need to take your horses up there! This is the prettiest time of year!"

Her words grated on me, probably because I don't have any horses to take anywhere. She was a publisher in her previous life. She made a lot of money then decided she wasn't happy, so she sold everything and moved to Boulder and bought herself a million dollar ranch, a herd of horses, and opened this little store for something to do when she wasn't riding. It's people like her that keep people like me out of the running for land around here. She doesn't have to work. I do. But instead of buying her dream ranch out in the wide open spaces of West Texas or Montana or Wyoming or less populated parts of Colorado, she's right here playing in my back yard keeping property prices higher than working people can afford. Consciously I can't blame her, but subconsciously I'm ripping her a new one. I'm just being a crybaby.

Just then a BMW pulled up and a short thin 40-ish woman dressed in expensive synthetic riding clothes came in.

"Babs!*" the owner cried.

"Sweetie! It's been too long!" Babs replied, opening her arms wide. Kissy-kisssy, huggy-huggy.

"Oh Babs, how's the new darling treating you?"

"Oh," Babs exclaimed with a comically dramatic exasperation, "I've been riding Sasha now for what, two weeks? Well, you'll just never believe blah blah blah..."

I walked out the door. These people have every bit as much right to own land and horses as I do, and it isn't their fault or their problem that they ended up with the riches to do so and I haven't (yet, anyway.) I still can't help that it pisses me off, and I can't help feel that I'd make better use of the land and appreciate it more than these spoiled Californians who just come out here to play. That doesn't justify anything and nobody ever said life was fair. I realize it's irrational and wasteful to let it piss me off. These people don't deserve my scorn, so I just brood quietly to myself or let it leak out in this blog. This weekend when Babs is out being frustrated with the nuances of her new $100,000 polo pony, I'll be reading my little book and dreaming that I'm one of those cowboys in those old black and white photos, packing up a $300 mule and a $1,000 horse for a long trek into the serenity of some distant mountain wilderness.

*Babs wasn't her actual name, though it was something equally cutesy and pretentious. I just can't recall it.