'Tis the Season

I put up my Christmas decorations today. I love Christmas. I always have. Even when I was a broke college student living in a 3 bedroom house with five other students, I had a tiny little plastic Christmas tree in my room decorated with a 99 cent box of tiny plastic ornaments. I still have the tree, though it stays in a box in the basement.

Some complain that Thanksgiving weekend is way too early to start celebrating Christmas. I disagree. Many cultures have celebrations that last days or weeks, and in my mind the Thanksgiving-Christmas bridge is ours. Thanksgiving is a celebration of fall and marks the beginning of Christmas, which in my mind is a celebration of winter, of loved ones, and of all things good. I don't do the religious thing.

One of my trees is decorated with ornaments that have a lot of sentimental value. I've got ornaments Mom gave me that I remember hanging on the tree when I was in kindergarten. I've got ornaments I made with Mom and Memaw. I've got ornaments given to me by friends and at special times in my life. It's tradition for me, going back a long time, to unwrap each ornament one by one and place it on the tree. Until recent years I always decorated Mom's tree with her, but the last few years we haven't gotten together for Thanksgiving so I haven't been able to help her. I told her this weekend that starting next year, we're not skipping Thanksgiving anymore. I don't know how many more we have left together. I have no cause for alarm, but one never knows. There's no good excuse for not spending extra time with the people you love. None.

Anyway, my other tree is a Colorado tree. All the ornaments are hand made of natural materials, and take the form of things that remind me of Colorado: elk, bison, raccoon, otter, bear and other animal figures, a tiny handwoven creel, a little outhouse made of wood, a tiny pair of snowshoes, etc.

After dinner, when the trees are all decorated, the garland and wreaths are up and the fire is crackling, we turn down the lights (except on the trees of course) and sit quietly, looking at it all. Gerard falls asleep, but I just sit thinking.

As a child I really did feel like there was something magical about Christmas. I was always scared of the dark, but I was never scared of anything when the Christmas lights were on. Never. For a few weeks every year in December, I would go to bed seeing the multi-colored glow of the lights outside my window and I knew that no vampires, werewolves or boogie men could enter my domain. I would lay there staring at the window with a smile on my face, dreaming of that sparkling tree and all those shiny gifts, until I fell asleep. Sometimes I'd even sneak out of bed late at night, turn on the tree and sit there for hours just watching it twinkle.

Adulthood has a way of destroying that childhood magic, though I must stay some of it still lingers in me. Every year without fail I decorate my home to Christmas music, ooh and aah over the ornaments, and think happy Christmasy thoughts. Though now it's tinged with sadness because I know too much of the world. Now I know that Christmas can't really keep the vampires away.

Nonetheless, I think celebrations and traditions are very important. They break up the year. They offer something fun and pretty and comforting and purely nonsensical to our otherwise robotic society. They give me a chance to indulge, to love something just for the sake of loving it. I don't get into the mass consumerism thing, but I do love to give gifts. I like to give homemade jams and preserves, hand-poured candles and other things you can't just run down to any Wal-Mart and buy. I like to give things that can be used and enjoyed, things that real people made, things that mean something to me and to the receiver.

I once saw a National Geographic documentary where natives in some tropical rainforest celebrated something or other every year. The climax of the festival occurred when a giant yam was revealed. A yam. Now this really was a tremendous yam. It was so big it required several people to carry it. These people eat yams all year long, but each year the men set out to find the biggest yam in the forest, hide it, and unveil it during this ceremony when everyone goes nuts. To us, it's just a big yam. But to them, it's something else entirely. Is that so different than what we do? In our modern Western society we can have anything we want whenever we want, but candy canes, Christmas lights and red velvet cake are pretty scarce in July. It's a self-imposed deprivation to make an ordinary day feel extraordinary. The villagers create something special by digging up giant yam once a year. Americans create something special by only breaking out our tinsel and lights once a year. The objects in and of themselves are meaningless, but cultures assign great meaning to them and thus reap the benefits of the joyous feelings that follow. Humans are a strange species, but what would we be without our holidays and our culture and all of the other odd things that help define us? I guess we'd be robots: orderly, practical, predictable. Boring. Dead.

No thanks. Merry Christmas!

Thanksgiving 2009

Well another delicious Thanksgiving has come and gone. It started Wednesday when the lab closed early. Yesterday (T-Day) was just gorgeous, as most days are in Boulder. We slept in, didn't do much for most of the morning, then spent the better part of the afternoon biking around town. Yesterday evening we had dinner with our friends Christine and Mark and a few other couples. Let me tell ya, that girl can cook. Christine is a professor at the University and her husband Mark is in high tech. They have no kids, unless you count Monroe their 13 year old lab who they treat like a child. Mark is a vegetarian with a ponytail, and Christine is the very incarnation of Lilith from Cheers, with the exception that she's a less masculine and much sweeter. They both dress in black and live in a beautiful mansion on Mapleton Hill, and they have the most eclectic assortment of interesting friends. They're pretty awesome.

We slept off the turkey and wine, and today Gerard worked on homework and I spent most of the day just roaming around Boulder on my bike. It was another stupendous, sunny, 70 degree day with ten percent humidity. Since Boulder is completely surrounded by Open Space (that's park land in Colorado), you can bike nice, paved trails west all the way up the canyon and into he mountains, or east all the way out onto the grasslands. Or you could just mill around downtown among the coffee shops, bookstores, art/craft stores and high end clothing stores. The thing is you never have to bike on a road. The trail system here is amazing.

Naturally during all of my roving I took a few moments to ponder all that I have to be thankful for: Gerard, my mother, my friends, my job, my city, my life. I'm not rich but I want for nothing. I don't have my cabin (yet) but I can't complain. Sometimes it makes me feel guilty. Why should I have a great career and have the privilege of living in a city as beautiful and bike friendly and progressive as Boulder? Why should I have so much when so many suffer? I'm not complaining, mind you. Just thinking.

I read in the news today that Boulder is about to get one of the very first carbon neutral neighborhoods in the US. How cool is that? But at a cost of just under a million bucks per house, I won't be moving in anytime soon.

Tonight I was craving turkey and dressing and all the fixins, so I went down to Whole Foods and bought the whole spread already prepared. Gerard and I had a second, quieter Thanksgiving, and now he's passed out on the sofa. I'm sipping eggnog. And blogging.

Tomorrow we head to Rocky Mountain National Park with a friend for some snowshoeing. Think about that. It's Thanksgiving weekend, and on a whim I can go snowshoeing in Rocky Mountain National Park for the day and be back in time for dinner. I remember a time when mountains and snow were an exotic fantasy, just something on PBS. Now they are my world.

I do have a lot to be thankful for, so thank you. Thank you thank you thank you!

Hope

Hope is the thing with feathers

That perches in the soul,

And sings the tune - without the words,

And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;

And sore must be the storm

That could abash the little bird

That kept so many warm.

I've heard it in the chillest land,

And on the strangest sea;

Yet, never, in extremity,

It asked a crumb of me.

Emily Dickinson

Heavy Breakfast

There is a story in today's paper about a guy who goes by the name Suelo who graduated from the University of Colorado, lived in Boulder awhile, went off to the Peace Corps, and ultimately ended up living in Moab. What's unique about him is that he completely gave up money years ago. He won't even barter because it's a form of currency.

Unlike other "homeless" or "transients," he has a home - a cave in the desert. He bathes daily in a creek, is educated, peaceful, never asks for anything and never takes money from those who offer it. He has fundamental similarities to Christopher McCandless, the kid from the book Into the Wild who ended up dying in Alaska, and also to Everett Ruess, the kid who wandered the deserts of Utah in the 1930's and who disappeared without a trace. I've blogged about them before.

After I read Suelo's story, I found his blog. He keeps a blog right here on blogger, which he maintains through the free computers at the library. As I read more about him and even watched a short video documentary about him, it reminded me of my own fantasies about "living free" and traveling the west like a nomad, free of money and things. I can completely see the appeal. There is something very, very different about people like McCandless, Ruess and Suelo that set them apart from your average bum, but that isn't the topic of today's post.

Today I'm thinking about peoples' motivations. Not long ago I had a very intense discussion with my friend Scott from Austin about "green." I was basically pointing out all of the greenwashing that goes on these days - where companies or individuals like to paint pictures of themselves as being "green" because either it brings in a profit or makes them appear or feel virtuous. This isn't always a malicious thing. Take Scott for example: he drives a gas powered car instead of walking or biking to work which is near his home, he regularly buys produce flown in from all parts of the globe when there is a farmer's market closer to him than Whole Foods, he uses electricity, buys factory made clothes and pretty much lives like 99% of working Americans. But he recycles! And he goes to yoga and has an open mind, so he thinks of himself as being green and virtuous.

Now before I go any further I just want to point out that I'm not ragging on Scott, not in the least. I myself, while going to great lengths to eat local, buy local, support organic and shun mass consumerism on the whole, and frequently rail against the wastes and other flaws of society, drive a gigantic Ford F-350 super crew long bed diesel that gets 18 miles to the gallon despite having a cushy office job and no pressing need for it. I also own several computers, don't always recycle, and do on rare occasions buy shoes made in Chinese sweat shops. I know my flaws, but unlike Scott I'm not really at peace with them. I agonized for months over that pair of Nike running shoes I bought.

Reading through Suelo's writings I started thinking about vegans and lone wanderers, about animal rights activists, about Greenpeace and about the Dick Cheneys of the world. I thought about Scott and about my enormous truck. Everyone seems to want to make a positive impression on the world, but everyone is going about it in their own way. Maybe Dick Cheney's way of trying to improve the world is making things worse, and maybe the Dalai Lama's way is making things better. Or maybe not. Maybe the vegans are reducing animal suffering and cutting carbon and water wastes, but sitting in their coffee shops pecking away on their Macs they're still using thousands of times more resources than someone like Suelo who eats meat in the form of roadkill and lives in a cave. I feel superior to a suburbanite who buys as much toxic crap from China as their credit cards will allow. A bicycle riding vegan feels superior to me with my barbaric flesh-eating habits and my ridiculous truck. Someone like Suelo can snub his nose at the vegan who drinks a $10 cup of coffee flown in from 2,000 miles and uses energy from coal plants to run their computer made with toxic chemicals in Chinese sweat shops.

And you know there are of course people who snub their noses at Suelo. The argument they make is that he's a hypocrite and is also unsustainable because he gets most of his food and entertainment from the very society he abhors. Were it not for the dumpster diving where he gets much of his food, clothing, books and other bare necessities, he wouldn't be able to live as he does. The cave gives him shelter, and he does eat some wild foods growing near the cave, but it isn't enough to sustain him. He has no means of hunting game, has no idea how to make clothing from their hide, or how to make weapons from rocks and other natural materials. He cant' see without his glasses, and he relies on a bike he built from junkyard materials to get around and see his friends and escape the sweltering heat of the desert in the summer.

Where does it end? Who is right? Who is more right? Does any of it really matter?

Another common thread is religion, or the underlying belief that we're motivated by moral duty or a higher power to do what we're doing. McCandless talked endlessly about his moral objections to society and how by going against it he was living a "real" or more honest life. Ruess said the same things. Suelo talks a lot about the Bible and quotes from other religious texts as justification for his actions. Dick Cheney, the Muslim terrorists, the abortion doctor killers, the anti-gay coalitions, the vegans, the Al Gore enthusiasts, the Boulder City Council, Buddhists, Scott and myself all use some kind of moral argument to justify our actions. Yet many of the above are figuratively or literally at war with each other, spreading more destructive energy.

While chatting with Scott, he kept trying to make the point that we all do what we can in the ways that work for us. But as I pointed out, if a stone has to be moved from point a to point b, and we're all pulling or pushing on the stone in different directions with different tools with different amounts of effort at different times and for different reasons, that stone isn't going anywhere - at least not anywhere useful.

If we're all using too many of the planets resources and we're all putting out too much pollution, what does it really matter if Scott recycles? He's taking 99% and giving back 1%, when in order to be sustainable we're all going to have to give 99% and take 1%. Doing what you can, when you can, is a cop-out. What you're really saying is, "it's almost effortless for me to recycle and buy organic produce from Whole Foods and go to Yoga and call myself green and enlightened. It's an easy way to feel good about myself. Giving up my car, which would make a much bigger impact, would be far too inconvenient or unpleasant." In the end, Scott agreed and said he's lazy and he likes reaping the benefits of a wasteful and opulent society and he eases his conscience by recycling a few bottles. Welcome to the so-called "green revolution." It isn't the regeneration of that which was destroyed, or people coming together in harmony with our environment. It's us absolving ourselves of guilt and only slightly postponing the inevitable.

Maybe that's just a really negative outlook. Maybe I'm wrong. What do any of us know? It's possible that the half-ass efforts by the vegans and the recyclers and the renewable energy developers truly will buy us enough time or teach us enough to allow our enlightenment and/or our technology to catch up and deliver us to that utopian green world we all wish for.

Or maybe we're really just in denial as this bird spirals into oblivion.

I suppose the one comfort I have is a belief that was summed up beautifully by Max Ehrmann:

"You are a child of the Universe, no less than the moon and the stars; you have a right to be here. And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the Universe is unfolding as it should."

And that is where I stand these days. I do believe we're destroying not the earth, but the short term relationship he have with the earth that will allow us to live here and have good, meaningful lives. I do have my beliefs that some methods are much more effective than others at achieving utopia, if such a thing is even possible. I do believe that extending a hand to those in need, that honoring the sanctity of life and nature, that peace, understanding, knowledge, concern, self-control and self sacrifice are much better alternatives to their antitheses. But what I don't know is why there is so much suffering and destruction in the first place. I don't know why we can't come together as one species. I don't know if all of this means something or not. I don't know if my efforts will be in vain or if I spend a lot of time despairing over that which is, in the larger picture, actually perfect. I can't see the Universe from a god-like perspective. I cannot see the end of the story.

And thus I go about my life floating in limbo, doing the best I can to find balance as a sentient being trapped in a biological body, living in a Universe I can't fully comprehend and asking questions that have no answers. But this is what the Universe, which I see as perfect, beautiful and mysterious beyond comprehension, has created. The same forces that created the stars and the atoms and all of the wonders between and beyond, also created me. Whether one believes it was the will of God or the random shuffling of an indifferent Universe, it's still awfully presumptuous of us to assume we know how the story should go.

But does that mean we shouldn't still try? Will I start shopping at Wal-Mart and eating factory farmed meat, believing that some ultimate truth (if any exists) is unknowable and therefore there's no point in trying to make the world a better place? Of course not. Maybe we really are in a spiral toward oblivion. But it's also possible that this is not inevitable, that our story has a happy ending. Life has shown me that even the most improbable and wonderful things can happen exactly when they need to. If I can't see how the story ends, then I can't know what role my actions will have in the future. I may not be able to understand the whole story, but that doesn't mean I don't have some essential part to play in its unfolding.

Considering all of the above, I think that all I can do, all any of us can do, is what feels right. I must do what my heart tells me. I must make an effort to listen to what I believe are the whispers of the Universe, but remember that I'm not the author of the story. The vegan has her role to play. Dick Cheney has his. I may find myself opposed to them for various reasons and to varying degrees, and that's fine. That's my role. But I think, for my part anyway, I need to remember that, for whatever reason, this is how the world was made. Allowing myself to despair over these things probably makes as much sense as despair because the sky is blue instead of green, that everyone I love must die instead of living forever, or that I don't have all of the answers instead of being an all-knowing god.

This is much too heavy for a Sunday morning.

Eggnog

It just occurred to me that I haven't really been anywhere in awhile. A quick daytime jaunt into Rocky Mountain National Park in September was the only thing I've done this fall besides my day shoeing horses.

This weekend is filling up with local stuff. The farmer's market ended a couple of weeks ago, but there's a special Thanksgiving market this Saturday. There will be one more before Christmas, but these are just shadows of the market during its peak in summer. There will be winter squash, maybe some apples, lots of crafts and jellies. Definitely worth going, but we've had several feet of snow already this fall so one can't really expect to see the produce section of Whole Foods at this thing.

Anyway, this week is First Bite Boulder. Lots of cities do something similar under different names, but the idea is the same: restaurants participate in offering multi-course meals for a set price that all participating restaurants honor. In Boulder, it's a three course meal for $26 per person. Most of Boulder's top restaurants are participating and we've got reservations with some friends this weekend after the big lighting ceremony downtown.

Wow, the eggnog is starting to kick in. I put in a bit more rum than I intended. G'night!

Holiday Ramp Up

I've got four Christmas trees. They're plastic, but they are incredibly realistic. They stay out year round, which in the mountains of Colorado isn't weird since most of the trees outside my window look just like them. Only bigger. They aren't lit up year 'round. I wait for the snowy season to kick in, and then I light them every night until spring with white lights. They just remind me of winter and how much I love the snow. I will decorate them, but not until after Thanksgiving.

They're on now, and I'm sipping the first eggnog of the season. There's this local dairy that makes the best eggnog in the world, and I'm not just being biased here because they're local. Whole Foods can't keep it stocked and everyone raves about it. It comes in real glass bottles that you have to leave a deposit on and everything. I usually add a little spiced rum which makes it the pinnacle of perfection as far as eggnog goes.

I submitted my final projects tonight and all I have to do now is wait for the final grades to roll in. I'm also registered for spring quarter and I got the classes I needed.

Work has been a little slow lately. It always gets this way around the holidays. People start traveling and no one's really interested in starting big new projects until after the new year.

Most of the weekend snow has melted, though there's still quite a lot on the north faces and other areas that don't get sun all day long. It has really been a gorgeous week.

Next week is Thanksgiving. We're going to have dinner with our friends Christine and Mark (the pickle party hosts) and a lot of other people. It's becoming our annual tradition and we both look forward to it. I'm especially looking forward to four days off - no school, no work, just good 'ol down time.

This Saturday is Boulder's Switch on the Holidays, where Santa throws the switch and Pearl Street and the courthouse light up, as well as the giant star on Flagstaff Mountain overlooking the city. Apparently the city has put up more lights this year than ever before, and they're all the super efficient LED lights. We'll have to check that out.

We still don't have a cat.

That's all I got tonight.

Just Stuff

As you may have seen from my blog post earlier in the day, we got snow this weekend. Today I officially broke out the snow gear: snow pants, gaiters, long underwear, etc. I even dusted off my snowshoes, though they didn't see any action today. I went out for a walk, and it was one of only two times I left the house this weekend. My final class projects are due this week so I spent the majority of my time wrapping them up. I could have submitted them today, but I wanted to sit on them for a few more days and give them one more review with a fresh mind. It'll be nice to finish my first quarter. It'll be doubly nice because I'll have put behind me the one class I most dreaded taking - the one that kicked off my diatribe at the beginning of the quarter. I'm happy to say I've got solid A's in both classes and have no concerns whatever about my final grades. It wasn't even as painful as I thought it would be, and I attribute that to the mental shift that occurred a short time after my rant.

I can't stop thinking about my promotion. I can't believe I can actually afford one of these overpriced Boulder houses now. So I've been looking at houses again. Only now it's more fun because I can seriously consider houses that I'd actually like to live in.

I can't sleep. I can't turn my mind off. I really just want to write but I have nothing to say that I haven't said a million times already. I can say that I'm really looking forward to the holidays this year. I always do anyway, but this year some exciting things are coming up: a positive and significant shift in my financial base and all that that entails, holiday travels, and starting my next quarter which I'm excited about. Oh, and I might be getting a cat.

I'm really a dog person, but I have nothing against cats except litter boxes. The real problem is that I can't have a dog where I'm renting. Gerard recently adopted a fish from the biology department at the University. He set it up in a little bowl on his desk with some gravel, a live plant and a heater. The fish seems to be just as happy as a fish can be I suppose. Gerard even gave it a name, but it's some hybrid Spanish word with a twist of silliness and I can barely say it, let alone spell it. Though I admit it is cute and somehow fits. Anyway it's the first pet I've had in the house in probably seven years. It got me missing the whole pet thing, and I think we could both benefit from something cuddly and furry in the house. I'll need to think on it some more. There's still that damned litter box to contend with.

So now I'm sitting here, sipping on Bailey's as the thermometer plunges toward 13 degrees, and wondering what 2011 has in store for me. It might be just a touch early to be thinking about the New Year but what the hell else am I going to do on a cold Sunday evening? If only I had a cat.

Happy November

We got a foot of snow last night.

Fortunate One

I just got home from a pickle party. Our friends Christine and Mark made twelve kinds of pickles this year and had a blind pickle tasting. All of the cucumbers were from their garden or from the farmer's market. The table was set with numbered dishes piled high with pickle slices, and in between was an assortment of hard and soft cheeses, crackers, pita, artichoke dip, breads and roasted red pepper dip. On tap was locally brewed beer from the Mountain Sun. We each had a rating sheet, and over the course of the evening we sampled and rated pickles. The evening culminated with a summary rating and a revelation of the winning and losing pickles. It turned out that one of the pickle varieties was actually from Whole Foods. It ranked near the bottom. The homemade jalapeno bread and butter pickles were the all-around favorite. We wrapped up the evening by the fireplace with coffee and dessert and lots of laughter.

One by one the guests departed, each carrying a few jars of their favorite pickles.

As for me, I had a nice fifteen minute walk home in the snow. I absolutely love walking in falling snow, especially at night. The snow reflects the light from the street lamps and buildings and even the darkest city parks and trails are bright enough to navigate with ease. The world is so quiet, and the snow just envelopes you. And this is the prettiest time of year for snow because downtown is all lit up for the holidays. Christmas trees are twinkling, and people are drinking hot cocoa behind frosted window panes. It's another one of those perfect Normal Rockwell moments that I live for.

Life is really good in Boulder. Really good. I may long for my cabin in the woods, but I have no cause to complain. I know how fortunate I am.

Perfect Day

Today was one of those "perfect storm" days where everything sorta comes together in just the right way at just the right time. But in a good way. Actually, that may not be entirely accurate. It was more like one of those days where, if I think about it, it happens, combined with some perfect storm stuff. Whatever. It was an awesome day. Here's how it happened, and I swear this is all true:

Last night I was pondering home buying. I hadn't thought about it in awhile because house prices are so astronomical in Boulder. Guess I sorta gave up hope. Sure, I could buy a really sweet pad in Denver, even a nice cabin in the mountains. But I really don't want to live in a big city, and I'm not quite ready for a remote cabin because I need to finish grad school. And honestly I like being able to walk from home to the coffee shops, bars, restaurants and farmer's market and still be within walking distance of 100 miles of pristine mountain trails. Boulder really is an amazing place, so as long as I'm going to be tied to civilization for work and school I may as well enjoy it. Anyway, last night I seriously started thinking about my finances and organizing a long term strategy for acquiring something a bit more permanent in Boulder. Then I went to bed.

On the bus to work this morning I was thinking about a friend I hadn't seen in awhile. I was hungry and decided to stop at Whole Foods for a breakfast burrito. Guess who I bumped into at Whole Foods?

Half an hour later I get to my desk. My boss comes to me straight away and says, "We need to talk." We go to coffee and he tells me that I've been promoted to Scientist II and that, effective three days ago, I've been given a whopping 20% pay increase - the largest he'd ever seen in his 10 years at the lab. "Well this'll make home buying in Boulder a lot easier," I smiled.

Later I was attempting to focus on work (still buzzing about the promotion) when it occurred to me that I had applied last summer for a program we have at work whereby employees can get reimbursed for the previous year's health club dues. I hadn't heard anything since August. I contacted HR, and was told that, by odd coincidence, it was being direct deposited tomorrow with my paycheck. Strange that after three months I'd happen to think of it just hours before it was being deposited.

Shortly after that I struck up a conversation with a co-worker. He'd mentioned in the past that he needs a new home computer for his wife, an aspiring photographer. It came up again, and I started pushing hard for him to buy one of those hot new 27" iMacs. We talked about it a good 20 minutes, and despite his cheapness, I convinced him his wife was worth it. We went back to our desks. Five minutes later he comes over to me and says half jokingly, "Did you call my wife? She just this moment emailed me demanding to know when I was going to buy her a new computer!" I had not in fact called his wife.

After that, I texted my friend Elizabeth. Months ago she had mentioned wanting to buy an iPhone. For whatever reason it popped into my head so I texted her to ask if she'd ever gotten one. "Should be in the mail today!" she texted back. Seriously? This day was just getting too weird.

Then Mr. Masterson the farrier called just to see what was up, to invite me back for some more horseshoeing, and to see if I wanted to join him for various other activities in the coming weeks. Sure! Nothing odd about this, it was just a nice addition to the day.

At the bus stop this evening I was really hoping a particular friend and co-worker of mine would be there. She was. While we were talking, I kept looking over my shoulder to see if the bus was coming. I don't know why. I never do that. She even commented on it. Well suddenly the bus comes flying by. The driver hadn't noticed us. Fortunately I noticed him in time, and we all started jumping and waving our hands. He stopped, but we all had to run to catch him. I don't take credit for stopping him, but I swear it's like subconsciously I knew he was going to miss us. Only one other time in 3 years has that happened to me.

So I've got a debt for $3,000 that I soon need to pay. I get home and check the mail, and there's a letter. I've got an old retirement account from a past job, and last summer I contacted them to cash it out. I had no idea how much money was in it or when the check would arrive. It arrived today. Guess how much it was? Yep. Exactly. I had another letter too. My bank doubled my credit limit and cut my interest rate in half on my credit card.

So now I'm sitting here pondering the perfection of this day and the odd string of occurrences it contained. I've had equally odd bad days before, so maybe it doesn't mean anything. Maybe it is just coincidence. But divinely ordained or not, it's good to know that the bad days are balanced out by the wonderful ones.

A Stroll Down Memory Lane via Streetview

This evening I Google Street Viewed some of my childhood haunts. It's just plain weird.

I virtually "stood" in front of the house I grew up in. My entire world revolved around those woods, those narrow streets. I "toured" the neighborhood and emotions, memories came flooding back. I'd been back numerous times in my adult life. My parents moved out of the house probably ten years ago now, but Memaw and Pawpaw lived just one street over. Pawpaw died a few years after my parents moved away and Memaw died about 2 years ago, which was the last time I was in the neighborhood. It wasn't freaky to see my old neighborhood so much as it was freaky to see it on Google. I mean when I grew up, rotary phones and a microwave were the most technologically advanced things we owned. I didn't know the first thing about computers, and a thing such as the internet was completely unfathomable. I'm having trouble connecting Google and Huffman, Texas in my mind.

The real trouble came when I took a virtual tour of Memaw and Pawpaw's old lake house. That's what we called it, "the lake house." It was basically a barn nestled among thick forest on the shore of a small slough of Lake Livingston. ("Slough" is pronounced like "cow," but my family to this day pronounces it like "slew." At any rate, a slough is a swampy area with a lot of trees.) The lake house was accessible only by a really fun (to a kid) single lane dirt road full of pot holes that meandered through some pretty impressive hills. When Memaw and Pawpaw bought the place, they were among the very first. Except for an occasional cabin or travel trailer, it was all woods. Miles and miles of thick woods. They didn't live there, it was just a getaway place for the family. It was a three room barn: downstairs was just a big room with Memaw and Pawpaw's bed, an expandable table with chairs, a stove, refrigerator and some kitchen cabinets, and the bathroom (the second of the three rooms.) The upstairs was just a wide open space with storage nooks around the perimeter for fishing tackle, tools, the hammock, marshmallow roasting implements, boat anchors, life jackets and other wonderful things. There were also three beds up there.

The lake house, painted barn red, had power and running water, but no air conditioning, no heat, no phone and no television. It was bare bones - literally a glorified barn, minimally intrusive to the land, and surrounded by woods. It was heaven. Seriously, when I was a kid there was no happier place on earth than Memaw and Pawpaw's lake house. We normally went for a week at a time, and rarely did we go when Memaw and Pawpaw weren't also up. And the absolute best time was when my dad's sister and her family joined us as well. Actually, that's not true. The absolute best times were when my dad's sister's family and Memaw's brother's large family, who owned a lot with no permanent buildings on the other side of the slough, were also up. In the very best of times, it would be Mom and dad and my brother Daniel, Aunt Kiku (that's Karen Sue to those of you who don't speak five year old), Uncle Kenneth, baby cousin Holly, Uncle Jimmy and Aunt Men (don't know where that nickname came from), Gary and Corinne, little cousin Ricky, Jan and Steve Earl, Grandaddy, Memaw and Pawpaw, and a lot of other kids that would be born into the family (I'm the eldest of all the kids and grandkids.) Man those were the good old days. What I wouldn't give for the chance to have just one day to go back and see everyone again.

I remember it was so hot up there in the summer, but when the sun went down it felt perfect to me. I remember many a hot afternoon sitting on a rotten old pier under some massive shade trees, watching my cork sit there in that murky water. I remember the ducks and the alligators that would swim by, and the thousands of turtles and dragonflies, frogs, crawfish, snakes, raccoons and birds. I remember multitudes of those iridescent little sunfishes - the Bluegill, the Longear, the Readear, the Warmouth - fishes whose names I didn't know but whose patterns and striking colors never ceased to amaze me. I'd catch them on meal worms and grasshoppers, always careful to remove the hook and quickly, gently put them back into their watery home.

I remember the bats that came out at dusk, and how I used to throw rocks not at them but in front of them to watch them dive and swoop at what they clearly thought were tasty insects in a nose dive. I remember how excited mom would get when she caught a crappie while fishing off the pier with minnows. I remember my dad cleaning dozens and dozens of fish from a successful day out in the boat. I remember the smell of the fish and the smell of the water and the smell of the dirt and the forest. I remember hunting for turtle shells among the tall weeds in the marshy recesses - and finding them. I've still got three perfect specimens in my home office. I remember how those wriggling worms and minnows felt in my hands. I remember the cool splash of the water on a scorching hot day.

I remember the day a kid drown just a few hundred yards away from where I was fishing.

I remember a man who used to play guitar somewhere on the other side of the slough. I could never see him, but I remember his music. I remember waking at 5AM to the smell of Memaw's biscuits, coffee and bacon. I remember the time I was walking alone in the woods and saw a pure white squirrel. I remember when that rickety old pier finally gave way, and mom fell through it. I remember the huge bruises it left on her legs. I remember how I protested fiercely when the adults decided it was time to replace that old pier with a new one. I remember digging up enormous freshwater mussels from the shore. I remember the wonderful, incessant buzzing of cicadas in the hot still air. I remember Memaw's old cane pole - the perfect size for a grandmother or a grandson, and that little red cork. I remember the two of us sitting by the water watching a dragonfly balance on the tip of the pole while she sang "Over in the Meadow" to me.

I remember eating cornmeal-battered fried fish we had caught that same day. I remember how Memaw loved eating fried fish eggs. I remember the biggest fish I ever caught. It was a largemouth bass. It was so big, mom and dad had it stuffed and it hung on my bedroom wall for years. I remember Pawpaw's big old red canoe - hand made of solid wood, and how I loved paddling around the swampiest, quietest parts of the slough. I was always amazed at how many mysterious and beautiful creatures lived there among the mosses and the lily pads.

I remember this and a thousand more things, all of which overwhelmed me as Google Street View took me back. Even the old lake house has been found by Google. I just can't believe it. Of course it bears little resemblance to the heavenly playground I knew as a child. Most of the roads are paved and most of the trees are gone. The few old cabins have been replaced by the many brick houses packed wall to wall. Woods have been replaced with St. Augustine grass and chain link fences. The natural shorelines have all been bulkheaded. There are no more swampy recesses for giant old red ear sliders to haul out and die in peace.

And as for the old lake house itself? It's now painted white, has a concrete driveway, and is almost completely obscured by an enormous metal carport. There's a pre-fab house behind it, right where we used to roast marshmallows over the campfire. There's a storage shed where the hammock used to hang between two oak trees, now long gone. The leaf litter where, as a child I invariably got thorns, burrs, gumballs and every other sharp local plant material stuck in my bare feet at least once every visit, is now a uniform carpet of green grass in the open sunlight.

Dusty tree covered roads that at one time were visited only by the occasional beat up old pickup are now lined with mailboxes and sporty, shiny little SUV's. Memaw's lake house now has a bricked three car garage with a concrete driveway sitting next to it. I can't help but wonder at the process of it all. I imagine it goes something like this:

A suburban couple drives out looking for a place to "get away from it all." How perfect honey! Look at all the trees and wildlife. And there's the lake! Won't this make the perfect hideaway? So they buy a lot, cut down the trees and pour a slab. They immediately set out to build a bulkhead to keep their new property from washing away, and of course they'll need a dock and a boat lift for the new boat. The house will, of course, need air conditioning, telephone, television, washer and dryer, dishwasher and all those other things that make life grand. The lot will, of course, need to be planted in carpet grass and fertilized and watered. They'll need a paved driveway, a garage for the SUV, a storage shed for the lawnmower and all of the things they can't stuff into their storage shed back home in the 'burbs. The whole thing will need a fence to keep other people out and Mitzie and Fritzie the Pomeranians in, and darn it let's complain until these roads get paved. Oh and then let's tell our best friends about this wonderful place so they too can come up and buy property and build houses because won't it be just so much fun to have our neighbors up for a good 'ol time out "away from it all?" Ah yes. And then a few years go by and they look around and think darnit, they really need a place away from all these houses and people - you know, some place with woods and wildlife where they can truly get away from it all.

And that, I think, is how Memaw's extremely modest little lake house, my childhood paradise which they sold after I moved off to college, came to look like any other suburban shit hole.

Yes, I'm bitter about it.

For the life of me I can't understand why people always need to "improve" everything. Is no one ever satisfied? Is nothing sacred? Do so few of us really understand that it isn't air conditioning and television and excess that bring fulfillment and joy into our lives? What exactly is appealing about a wooded lake retreat out in nature if the first thing you feel compelled to do is cut down the woods, pave the roads, wall off the shore, drive off the wildlife and build a replica of your Wal-Mart house back home? You're going drive to the lake house to watch TV and eat microwave dinners in the air conditioning? What am I missing here?

I toured the rest of the streets in the area and, I'm happy to report, there are still a fair number of streets that are virtually unchanged. There are still large tracts of woods and rustic old cabins and houses that look the same today as I remember them 30 years ago. There are even some streets that still can't honestly be called "paved." Even the dead end road where a six year old Bubba (me), mom and Aunt Kiku, while out for a walk one summer afternoon, encountered that "giant" garter snake which forced them to turn around as I fought tooth and nail to get a closer look, is still there, is still dirt, and is still surrounded by trees. And knowing that, I think I might be able to sleep peacefully tonight after all.

Goodnight Memaw, wherever you are. Thank you for everything.

Amazing World

I always like to know as much as I can about the places I live. I like to know who and what came before me. It feels wrong to saunter into a new landscape or community and take up residence without paying homage to that place's history.

I learned a lot about the geology, ecology, archaeology, paleontology and recorded history of Texas - particularly Central Texas - growing up and living my life there. I wanted to know how the Hill Country formed, who lived there before me, who lived there before them, and what fantastic creatures roamed the landscape in eons so distant that they may just as well be fantasy. Though they didn't have the grandeur of Rocky Mountain National Park, the little jewels of Central Texas - McKinney Falls State Park, Enchanted Rock, Hamilton Pool - all have amazing stories to tell anyone willing to listen.

For example, consider the obscure little Blunn Creek Preserve hidden right in the middle of Austin. To anyone driving along Oltorf, it probably wouldn't even be noticed. To the casual recreational hiker, it may not be much more than 40 acres of trees and a few trails. But if you look more closely, you'll find Blunn Creek trickling through a cut in the limestone shaded by oak trees. In those white walls you can read just a few sentences of an ancient story. Gerard and I have found large ammonites - prehistoric seagoing creatures that lived in a world inhabited by dinosaurs and in which most of Texas was a warm shallow sea - eroding from the rocks. A little further along you can find compacted ash, a glimpse of a time when volcanoes blackened the sky and scorched the earth in a place now famous for cowboys and cattle.

So what secrets must Colorado hold? What might now be read in the rocks and the soils beneath my feet? I sometimes hike South Table Mountain in Golden. It's an easy escape from work, and being up there makes it easy to imagine I'm the only human on the planet, wandering a windy, grassy landscape free of roads and tract houses and deadlines and center meetings. The trail going up the mountain is crumbly and soft, and the top is flat and solid. I could see that the top was volcanic in nature, but I didn't know much beyond that.

The Denver Museum of Nature and Science has a new exhibit called "Ancient Denvers." It piqued my curiosity. I already knew that just 10,000 years ago this area was cooler and wetter, with massive glaciers looming on the horizon and millions of bison, mammoth, camels, lions, saber toothed cats, giant ground sloths and other creatures roaming the plains. I also knew that Colorado was once under the same warm sea that covered Texas. But there was clearly a lot I was missing, so I set out to learn more.

Without going into too much detail, over the last 300 million years Colorado was mountainous, then flat, then mountainous, then under the sea, the dry, then under the sea again, then mountainous, then flat, then tropical rainforest, then desert, then frozen, and is now a semi-arid former grassland bordered by high mountains and covered in hundreds of thousands of tract houses. It boggles my mind to know that where I now sit typing on my Macintosh and sipping my chai, with snowy peaks just outside my window, there was once a thick forest of tall trees steaming in tropical heat and soaked by over 100 inches of rain each year. Or that, 70 million years ago, I'd be 600 feet below the sea among 40 foot long marine reptiles.

South Table Mountain, I learned, is indeed capped with a layer of volcanic rock from a massive volcanic explosion that occurred 37 million years ago and buried the area in TWENTY FEET of volcanic material. The soft crumbly layer of rock beneath it is the remnants of the deep rainforest soils. Beneath the Denver airport ancient swamps have been found, with layers of ash revealing that at least 42 separate volcanic eruptions occurred in the relatively recent geologic past. Boulder's iconic Flatirons are 300 million year old sandstone, the dusty remains of a mountain range that existed and was completely eroded away hundreds of millions of years before the present day Rocky Mountains were formed.

Before I came along, mountains grew and were erased, grew again and were buried and then unburied. Entire species - no, entire genera - of animals and plants evolved and went extinct many times over. The entirety of human history is merely a blip on the screen, literally a fraction of a second in a geologic day, and it fills me with awe and humility. What an incredible thing Earth is, and what an honor to have even a metaphorical milisecond in which not only to be a part of it, but to have a brain capable of comprehending a sliver of its magnificence and magnitude.

It makes me sad to think how many people in this world go about their daily lives never understanding even the slightest hint of the richness of this world. It's so easy for us to feel superior, or entitled, or believe that the world as it is always has been and always will be, but just scraping the surface of any earth science will quickly make you realize just how tiny we are, how new we are to the scene, and how fleeting our "civilized" little world truly is.

Scientists have calculated that, according to the average rate and circumstances of fossilization, if our entire civilization were to be wiped out tomorrow, less than one human skeleton would actually make it into the fossil record. Think about that. Out of 300,000,000 Americans, just a handful of bone fragments would likely be all that would be carried on through the ages. In fact, within just a few hundred years of our disappearance every single human structure, with the exception of those made from stone (such as the ancient pyramids of the world), would be completely erased by the forces of erosion and time. Where Denver now sits will once again be the bottom of the sea, will bask in tropical heat, and will again become a mighty mountain range. Humans and all of our petty problems and quarrels, all of our love and hate, all of our comings and goings, our history, our achievements and atrocities, will be lost in the shifting sands and the ambivalent winds of time. All that we are, all that we ever were, is to be nothing more than an odd blemish tossed between an ordinary ice age and whatever comes next.

But I don't weep for the human race because there will be no one to remember us after we're gone. I don't weep for the supposed "destruction" of the earth that environmentalists say we are causing. Instead I weep for all of the people in this world who will never know what it feels like to be deeply moved by the sight of elk grazing on an ancient landscape. I weep for the people who pave over the grasslands in arrogant disregard for the sanctity of the place. I weep for the people who don't consider the souls of the those who came before them. I weep for the people who know so little about and have so little respect for our air and our oceans that they fill them with trash and toxins. I weep for the people who are so concerned with their petty wants that there is no room in their hearts for the contemplation of the world. I weep for them because, I believe, our one true gift is the ability to see and to comprehend. We can gaze at the stars in wonder. We can stand rapt in awe of the marvelous variety of life and the complexity of earth's natural cycles. We can see and we can comprehend. We can appreciate. We can love. We can gaze upon the miracle of the Universe and we can say to it, "You are a thing of beauty and endless inspiration." Of all the billions of amazing creatures ever to walk upon the face of this planet, how many could tell the world how beautiful she is? I think that is our gift, and to squander it is the most tragic of all things.

I despise religion because it is the spiritual equivalent of factory farming and mass consumption. It is an attempt to control and compartmentalize, to label and to sell, to control and to dominate. But unlike cows, God cannot be stuffed into a box, labeled and sold with a set of rules and regulations. People who buy such a product are buying an empty box. They've been had. Yet they cling to the box until it becomes the thing they truly value. They will defend the empty box even if it means flying in the face of the very God they believe resides inside it. The fundamentalist Muslims do it every time they blow up a building or rail against the "infidels." The fundamentalist Christians do it every time they kill an abortion doctor or disown their children for being gay. They cling so tightly to the box they've forgotten the reason they bought the box in the first place.

I see God in the world, not in the church, certainly not in the cultural trappings of religion, and least of all in the fundamentalists of the world who've appointed themselves as the right hand of God. I see God in the timeless mountains, in the delicate flight of a spring butterfly, in the layers of coal and ash hinting at ancient swamps and rainforests where deserts and snowy mountains now exist. I see God in the movements of the stars and in the genetic code of an insect. I see God in the cycles of the planet, in the forces of creation and in the endless transformation of matter into energy and back again. But most of all I see God in someone who can look at it all and say, "You are a thing of beauty, and I am grateful to have the privilege of looking upon you and knowing it is so."

Kabocha

Get yourself a nice locally grown organic kabocha squash. It's a Japanese variety of winter squash with a knobby green skin and a deep orange flesh. Cut it in half top to bottom and remove the seeds and fibers. Put each half cut-side-down in a glass pie dish with a quarter inch of water. Bake at 325 for about 45 minutes or until a fork easily pierces the flesh.

Turn the halves over, drop in a pat of fresh butter, a generous sprinkle of Ceylon cinnamon, and a tablespoon of raw local honey or organic brown sugar. Use a fork to mix it all together, then spoon the contents onto a plate. Drizzle with fresh cream. Don't be stingy with the cream.

Packed with nutrition and fiber, yet creamy and scintillating on the palate, this autumn treat makes a hearty meal unto itself.