Blog of the Rockies

Brain Tanning

2011-11-13T20:22:00.003-07:00

I've fallen in love with brain tanning. What is brain tanning? It's when one turns an animal hide into either a furry pelt or a cloth-like material (buckskin) that can be used for making clothes, bags and other useful things. And one accomplishes this not by using toxic modern chemical concoctions, but the animal's own brain as stone age people have done since long before the advent of agriculture.

It's interesting to see the process of turning a furry little squirrel or rabbit or deer into dinner, tools, and clothing. It's amazing, really. I mean who anymore knows how to prepare their own food? Most modern Westerners can't even grow a garden. Fewer still know how to successfully hunt and butcher a wild animal. And I can probably count on two hands how many people can take the next step of turning the "useless" parts like skin and bones into clothing using nothing but their own two hands and a few simple tools fashioned out of rocks and animal bones.

Everything we need, nature provides.

Flannel is Cool

2011-10-27T21:49:00.002-06:00

Tonight I stopped into Alfalfa's for a couple of items as I often do in the evening. Upon checking out a cute young female cashier who I frequently see said to me, "You always wear the coolest flannels!"

What's awesome about that? First, that sense of community. It's nice to go someplace and be not just recognized but acknowledged. There are a number of places around town where people smile and strike up a conversation with me simply out of familiarity. The second thing that's so awesome about what she said is that I live in a place where flannel is cool. She's not the first to compliment me on my flannel. When I lived in Texas it was a big joke that only lesbians wore flannel, but I always loved it. At one point in years past, friends came over and persuaded me I needed to get rid of all my flannel and plaid and restock my wardrobe with something more fitting the urban gay lifestyle. I took their advice, but over the years my wardrobe turned plaid again. I couldn't be happier.

Squirrel Stew

2011-10-25T20:52:00.003-06:00

Tonight we're getting our first real snow of the season; up to 19 inches are forecast by tomorrow afternoon, along with temperatures hovering around 13 degrees. Tonight we've got the fireplace going and I made a big pot of squirrel stew and cornbread.

Think I'll work from home tomorrow and keep my fingers crossed for a snow day. I love this time of year.

Cabin in the Woods. Again.

2011-10-23T19:43:00.002-06:00

Hate is a strong word. Regarding my last post, I didn't mean to use that word. I just get really frustrated sometimes, and I am grateful to have a great career, especially in this economy. But overall I meant everything else I said.

This weekend I picked a burlap sack full of wild fox grapes and turned them into jelly. I also picked a sack full of chokecherries which I plan to dry this week. I couldn't pick enough chokecherries to make jelly. It's so late in the year now there aren't many left.

Chokecherries were one of the staple foods for the nomadic Native Americans. They grow abundant and wild in the Rockies, though few people today even notice them. The Indians typically dried them into fruit leathers or used them in pemmican, and European pioneers liked to make preserves and jellies out of them. They're tasty, nutritious, abundant, and once prepared will easily last the winter. And chokecherries aren't the only wild foods that nature grows in her Rocky Mountain garden. To name but a few edible fruits, we've got bearberries, raspberries, blueberries, haws, grouseberries, cranberries, strawberries, gooseberries, currants, huckleberries, false wintergreen, saskatoons, plums, grapes, nuts and more. That's to say nothing of edible barks, ferns, bulbs, roots, shoots, mushrooms and greens. And then, of course, there's the wildlife: mule deer, wapiti, buffalo (now extinct in the wilds of Colorado), white tail deer, pronghorn, beaver, bear, chickaree, Abert's squirrel, trout, grouse, ptarmigan, turkey, a host of waterfowl and a number of other lesser known creatures all make great meals, clothing, tools and shelter.

There's something wholly satisfying to me about going out into the forest and bringing a wild animal or a sack full of berries back home and preparing dinner -- and especially if I can prepare it and store it away for dinners yet to come during those wonderful, long winter nights. Conversely, there's something both sad and terrifying about going to the grocery store to buy faceless food -- food whose story I cannot know, from a soulless entity I do not trust. I liken it to the difference between a lion hunting wildebeest on the open Serengeti, and a lion lying in a cage at a zoo being tossed a block of meat at regularly scheduled intervals. It's disgusting. It's disturbing. It's amoral. It is entirely artificial and counter to the way nature operates.

I still get the majority of my food directly from local farmers, which I love, but I'm getting a larger portion of my food from the wild these days.

Tonight I'm dreaming of my cabin, off the grid, out of the system. I can see it as if I were in it right now: the big stone fireplace, the bearskin rug, the hardwood floors. I'm standing at the window in my cotton night pants. I feel the cold on my skin through the glass. The hour is late, but the full moon reflects off the snow and lights up the valley. It is silent and still, like a painting. The dogs are snoozing by dying the fire. The root cellar is full of smoked and dried wild meats, fish, mushrooms and berries, supplemented with a few barrels of potatoes, flour, sugar, onions, squashes, salt and apples that I picked up at the farmers market in town last fall. I've also got dried and fermented vegetables and a couple of wheels of cheese, and shelves stacked deep with jams, jellies, fruit butters, pemmican, maple syrup and pickled peppers. I have no refrigerator; I have no use for one. I have no electricity; I have no need of it. I have no indoor plumbing; it serves no purpose.

But from where I stand at the window, hot cup of tea in hand, I can see my smokehouse and my outhouse and the stream that brings me an endless supply of clean, cold water. I can see the cords of firewood I carefully chopped, stacked and dried all summer long to feed my wood burning stove throughout the winter. I can see my wood shop, and the barn where I keep the horses on the coldest nights. Over the fireplace hangs my rifle. In the dining room sits the table and chairs I crafted of Douglas fir some years ago. On the wall hangs the snowshoes I made, and which I use on winter hunting trips.

And from up in the loft I hear the gentle, rhythmic rumble of a man in a deep sleep, nestled in thick, soft blankets, keeping my spot warm. I sip the last of my tea and set the cup down without a sound. In the ghostly light of dying embers I give the pooches a soft scratch behind the ears, but they hardly move. Up the ladder I slip into the shadows, out of my night pants, and into a cave of blankets. I press against my partner, and his bare skin is so hot I give a quick shutter at realizing how chilly I had gotten down by the window. We curl up like a couple of bears settling in for a long winter's sleep. I am in heaven.

Welcome Back Rant

2011-10-19T09:39:00.003-06:00

As my last post indicated, I tried moving my blog to Wordpress. I got it in my head that I was going to build a more robust site with "how-to" pages and other resources, but it turned out it was just too much work. I have little interest in taking on more commitments, especially ones that are technology-dependent. I also got sidetracked by Facebook for awhile, but I got sick of people posting about the mundane things in their ordinary lives. No offense to them, I'm just not interested. I suppose my life is plenty mundane, or at least odd and incomprehensible, to most of them.

Blogger gives me a release, without the complication of building a resource, and without the distraction and even greater complication of Facebook.

So I guess I'm back, and though I do try to avoid all-out rants, today I think is going to be a rough one.

Why today? I'm at work and wholly depressed, which isn't a big surprise if you've read anything I've written over the years. I have a high-paying job with wonderful benefits that contributes to a cleaner, greener world, my peers respect me, my work environment is low-stress and my employer is generous.

And I hate my job. I hate it in the way that a lover of fine dining might hate giving up juicy steaks, fine wines, crisp fruits, tender vegetables, crusty breads and silken desserts for the futuristic meal-in-a-pill. It isn't that it tastes bad, or that it lacks nutrition (assuming humans could actually achieve this), but rather that it tastes like nothing and leaves the soul malnourished. I feel like a suburban drone, passing the days not by the rhythms of nature but by the wholly artificial ticking of the clock. I feel unstimulated. Unmoved. Unmotivated. Pointless. Wasteful. Sad.

I have to get out.

My coworkers praise my work, my work ethic, and my good-natured personality. But I'm just going through the motions. My body is here earning money to pay everyone else to provide my "living," but my heart roams the forested mountains in search of something real.

I watched a movie called The New World last night. It was a little slow as it was more a love story than anything, but it put me in a mood. It reminded me (as if I needed reminding) just how f*ed up white people and Western society are and always have been. If I came ashore in America in 1607 I would join the Indians and never look back. They had it made. The mere fact that they managed to live on this continent for 14,000 years and not destroy it, and we managed to take it to the brink in just a few centuries speaks volumes.

I despise money and the clock and the calendar. I despise the Western social hierarchy, the greed and the gluttony and the backstabbing. I hate fashion and gadgets and everything that Pottery Barn represents. I hate that we're not only willing, but eager to trade timeless, unspoiled wilderness for a metaphorical minute of suburbia. I hate annual performance reviews and standardized tests. I hate car culture and television and processed industrial calories that pass as food. I hate human stupidity and I hate being part of the whole f*ed up system. I hate religion, especially the "big three."

All I want is to live deliberately. All I want is to hunt and gather and grow my own food, to build my own home, to laugh with friends, to breathe clean air and drink clean water, to walk among ancient forests and to wonder and ponder over the midnight stars. I don't need "stuff" beyond what I can make from what the forest provides. I don't need "culture" or "entertainment." I don't even need to own land. I just need to live with the land, and after I die let someone else walk in my footsteps. That's all. You know, the way most humans have lived for three million years. Is that so much ask? Really? I don't want fame and fortune, I have no interest in keeping up with the Jones', and you can keep your plastic suburban fantasy. I want to extricate myself from it entirely. If I don't do something soon I will go mad.

I've thought about going back to school and becoming a biologist, but even scientists often irk me. As Ian Malcom said in Jurassic Park, "what you call discovery, I call the rape of the natural world." I'm not at all comfortable with poking and prodding nature merely to see "what makes it tick." Some things, I think, are best left to the realm of the mysterious. I don't need to know what's happening on a cellular level inside of Clostridium botulinum, or even that it exists. Is it not enough to know that cooking certain foods keeps one from getting sick? Is it not enough to gain wisdom from observing and interacting with the natural world, rather than gain information by dissecting it under a microscope?

Why must I "get a job?" I'm not lazy, not at all. I love work. A few weeks ago I spent an entire day felling, limbing, bucking and splitting firewood in the forest using nothing but a double ax, an antique bucking saw and a maul. I used no fossil fuels except to drive my truck up in the mountains because I don't have and anyway wouldn't be allowed to use a horse drawn cart on modern roads. And anyway if it weren't for the "advancements" of society I wouldn't even need the cart or to cut down trees. Natives had small fires burning twigs and dung that kept them quite warm with no need even for harvesting firewood as we know it. Talk about efficiency!

That said, I'm not opposed to learning a trade. I need to work with my hands more. I need to walk and interact with things that are real, like wood and wildlife, not plastic and suburban cube-zombies.

When the weekend comes and I'm in the Rockies, I feel alive and happy and deeply interested. When the weekdays come I feel dead and numb, like my spirit is broken. Work is an endless procession of pointless days doing pointless work to live a life I don't want in the first place. How do I get out?

How do I get out?

Relocating

2011-02-03T17:18:00.003-07:00

So this really is my last blog post....on Blogger!

I've just moved to http://blogoftherockies.wordpress.com/ if you're interested. I may be porting over some of my old entries from this blog, but all new blog entries (including the one I just wrote) will be on the Wordpress site from now on. I made the move because Wordpress seems to offer a lot more features for letting me organize my site the way I want, and allows for more interaction with readers. Check it out and let me know what you think.

See you over there.

Tales of the Mountain Men

2011-01-02T10:29:00.002-07:00

I'm reading Tales of the Mountain Men, a collection of excerpts edited by Lamar Underwood.

I've been off work for eleven straight days. I've spent most of that time celebrating with friends and family, cooking, reading and snowshoeing (and shopping with mom, as previously noted.) Tomorrow I have to go back to the office. I'd rather pack up a string of horses and mules and ride for days deep into the mountains. There I would find my cozy little cabin nestled at the foot of the mountains on the edge of a wide meadow. I'd like to wade into an icy creek and set a beaver trap. I'd like to trap a few beaver, skin them out, tan the hides and sew them into a coat. I'd like to chop firewood for the stove. I'd like to eat fried beaver tail and winter pemmican. I'd like to hear the old wood planks creak gently beneath my feet as I gaze out the window across the snow-blanketed valley. I'd like to stretch out on the buffalo robe in front of the fire with my dogs and sleep away the long winter nights.

But that's only a dream. I live in cube land. I am a mountain man spirit trapped in the life of a cube bunny. Nobody ever said life was fair.

The Breed

2010-12-31T08:02:00.004-07:00

The mountain men were a tough race, as many selective breeds of Americans have had to be; their courage, skill and mastery of the conditions of their chosen life were absolute or they would not have been here. Nor would they have been here if they had not responded to the loveliness of the country and found in their way of life something precious beyond safety, gain, comfort and family life.

--Bernard DeVoto
Across the Wide Missouri

Tell of Woe

2010-12-30T11:13:00.006-07:00

Well it seems I'm in full-on blogger mode again, which means I've reverted to my Great Obsession.

It makes me want to laugh. Or cry.

It's finally snowing in Boulder. The wind is howling and we could get as much as a foot by tomorrow morning, along with sub-zero temperatures. Counting today I have four more days before I have to go back into the office. I plan to spend the majority of that time fireside knocking out a few books, doing a little blogging, and working on my novel.

So what brought my obsessive feelings back? Partly I wanted them to come back. I missed them, if that makes sense. I guess it's how I've come to define myself. It makes me wonder how I'd feel if I ever were to achieve my fantasy. I mean imagine you spent your whole life fantasizing of, say, going to Greece. Then you finally get to go. Upon returning home, what then? What comes next? Would you be satisfied thereafter? Or would you find that it was the obsession with Greece, rather than Greece itself, that you actually needed?

Partly my obsession was brought back by just not being at work. I haven't been in the office since last Wednesday. It's now Thursday of the following week. In the past week I've been to the Leanin' Tree Museum of Western Art twice, and that always catapults me back into hardcore Western fantasizing. It's one of the best little museums I've ever been to and the only art museum I've ever loved. It's in Boulder, it's free and open to the public, and it's usually very quiet so it's a good place to meditate on the things near and dear to my heart. And the art collection is amazing. Even my parents loved it. Often I'll go alone during some off-time when I'm sure to be the only one there and I'll spend an hour or two gazing into an intangible world that captivates me. Every sculpture, every painting is a moment frozen in time - yet they all tell a story, however brief, and give one a glimpse of what was and what would be, even if the stories are only based loosely on historical events.

The deep lines painted on an old Cherokee woman's face as she stares off into the desert at something only she can see; the cowboy about to be crushed by his sun fishing horse; the war party in the pale moonlight; the haunting spirit horse mourning the death of his warrior; the epic struggle between hunter and mountain lion; the tenderness of two cowboys at Thanksgiving in a rugged and unforgiving world; the packers after a successful hunt; breathtaking western landscapes with all their minute detail and a thousand things more. These images move me and haunt me; they fill my soul with something I can't get from the daily grind of "normal" life.

And finally, my obsessive feelings were brought back by getting out into the mountains. Rocky Mountain National Park is what keeps me sane, and it's not even the most perfect slice of the American West. That title belongs to Yellowstone, the only in-tact ecosystem in the lower 48 that still looks and functions more or less like it did before the arrival of the white man and all of his destructive ways. I think that when the day comes that I visit Yellowstone I won't want to leave. Wolves, grizzlies, wolverines, bison, untrammeled forests and meadows, snow-capped peaks and untamed rivers - Yellowstone is the last refuge of Wild America outside of Alaska.

For lunch today I sat down with a warm bowl of leftover homemade chicken soup: potatoes, carrots and dried oregano from the garden and chicken from a local farm. I served it with a leftover buttermilk biscuit I made from scratch for breakfast yesterday. In the glow of the Christmas tree I watched the snow falling outside, warmed by my soup and my thoughts. This is heaven for me, this moment.

I'm a philosopher. That's what I really am, no bones about it. I probably wouldn't make for an exceptional cowboy; I'm not reckless enough. I probably wouldn't make for an exceptional mountain man; I may not be tough enough. I don't make an exceptional analyst or businessman; I don't care enough. What drives me is a desire to become enlightened and to be inspired. What thrills me is to enlighten and inspire others. What comforts me is nature. What satisfies me is purpose.

I don't want to be a scientist; they care only for what makes a thing tick. I don't want to be a businessman; they care only for making money. I don't want to be an adventurer; they care only for the thrill of the moment. I don't want to be a politician; they care only for winning the game.

I think my calling in life is to be a teacher, a writer, a naturalist, a philosopher, and a non-academic historian. These things I am now, as much as I can be. I do want to know about science, I do want to have business sense, and I do want to understand the game. We need professionals in all areas I suppose. Thing is, I don't want to specialize in the activities. I want a bird's eye view of all of them, to understand how they form our world. I want to know who we are, where we came from, where we are going, why we do what we do, or don't. I want to inspire people to think beyond what makes a thing tick, to care for more than just money, and to realize that the game has no value but that which we assign to it. I despise the concept of money and accumulating wealth in monetary form. I despise the corporate ladder and the Western concept of "progress." Alas, this is the world in which I live, so I struggle to find a way to "earn a living" from the things I love, rather than from the unsatisfying activities that I know will work but leave me feeling empty. My body is clothed and nourished by my career success, but my soul is left destitute.

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow.

Queen of the Mountain

2010-12-28T21:27:00.002-07:00

Today mom proved what I'd been suspecting for awhile. When she's with my step-dad, she's a dainty, wilting flower who can't do anything but shop. When she's alone with me, she's a strong woman up for a real adventure. It's the weirdest thing.

Step-dad has been sick pretty much since they got here, so today me and mom hit the trail without him. She'd been saying she wanted to see snow before she left so I suggested snowshoeing up at Bear Lake. She always gets giddy in the snow. I figured it would be a stroll around the lake, at most, before scurrying back to the warmth of the truck. But no, we walked across the frozen lake not once but twice just because it thrilled her to walk on a frozen lake. She was throwing snowballs, falling and crawling in the deep snow, and then wanted to go UP the mountain! That blew me away. Of course she got winded not being used to the altitude and not having a lot of cardio conditioning, but I was proud of her. She said she wanted to buy some warmer boots and try real snowshoeing up the mountain next time she was visited. She was like a totally different person. I even pointed that out to her. I asked why, when she's around step-dad, she acts like a silly airhead who can't do a thing for herself and gets a chill with the slightest breeze, but when she's with me she wants to climb a snow-covered mountain in 30 mph winds. The answer was complicated and kinda cute actually, but seeing her out there being active and strong really filled me with joy. I love you mom.

Merry Xmas

2010-12-27T16:54:00.005-07:00

Mom and step-dad have been in town awhile now. I love them both with all my heart.

I think I have what it takes to be a lonely old mountain man. I'm such an introvert. Even the people I love I can't be around too long before I start clambering for solitude.

Don't get me wrong. I love having friends and family. They're very important to me. It's just that people seem to drain my batteries; some more quickly than others. I need down time. Regularly.

When mom and step-dad come to visit, it doesn't take long for us to run out of things to do, mainly because Colorado offers little of the kinds of things they like to do. Or maybe it's just me. They are the poster children for upper middle-class suburbia. Mom's primary interests are shopping, shopping, fantasizing about having a bigger house, and shopping. And mom, bless her, wants to buy me EVERYTHING. I can't glance at something twice - a $1,200 bicycle, $200 designer shirts, a $5,000 bronze sculpture of wild horses - without her insisting I let her buy it for me. And she can't, for the life of her, understand why I don't just buy every little thing that catches my fancy. I try to explain that it's okay to admire something without feeling the need to possess it, but she looks at me like I'm speaking Greek. And doing anything outdoors more grueling than walking the Pearl Street Mall is pretty much out of the question. Try as I might, I can only spend so many hours in a week driving around Mapleton Hill and shopping the various malls and boutiques within 50 miles of home.

And sharing a bathroom. Do you have any idea how much toilet paper women go through? How is this even possible?

I look forward to late afternoon when mom and step-dad are pooped from a long day of shopping and lay down for a nap. I slip off to read Louis L'Amour or to write in my blog or just to lay down myself, close my eyes and imagine I'm in my fantasy cabin all alone deep in the mountains. What I wouldn't give right now to be there.

Go there. Totally go there.

2010-12-21T20:05:00.002-07:00

I've always heard that tortured writers write the best stuff. Actually what I've always heard is that tortured artists create the best art, but I've heard it applied to a variety of specific art forms, including writing.

I love to write. My blog, often, is just me ranting or dreaming, but I think there's some good stuff in here. I've got some other writings that contain really good stuff. And I'd have to say all of my best stuff came about when I was either suffering terribly (as from my deep desire to be a cowboy-mountain man instead of a cube bunny) or when I was swept up with passion on a subject near and dear to my heart.

I also have to say I tend to blog most often when I'm feeling either deeply tortured or particularly joyous about something.

Lately I've been thinking a lot about how deeply I sank into my own misery over the last few years in my longing for another life. Not that my life is bad. It's quite good. It's just that often I feel like I'm in the wrong place and time, that's all. Anyway, often during those most intense moments I had (what seemed to me) the most brilliant insights, and created vivid imagery in my own head by blending fantasy with reality. What I'm trying to say is, I wish I'd put these down in writing because they'd make a damn good book. Actually some of them I did put down in writing, and fortunately the others are still burned into my memory so there may be hope yet for recalling the emotion that brought them into the world in the first place.

I've been relatively unmoved for a good many months now. I've managed to keep the cabin fantasy subdued and settle into a routine at work. This is good and bad. Good, obviously, because I'm not constantly fighting an emotional battle between what is and what I wish for. Bad, however, because it feels too routine, and a little bit like I've given up my dreams. Bad also because without the torture I have nothing pushing me to write or have those deep insights which bring me a sort of joy that I just can't put into words. Strange as it may sound, going deep enough into one's own world and having such insights or creative flurries or whatever they are is actually a kind of natural high. And when I have written as a direct result of such a high I've always gotten compliments and been told things like, "wow, you really need to be a writer."

I guess its in these moments that I can truly write from the heart, and maybe people pick up on that.

So I'm starting to actually miss being tortured, not for the tortured feeling itself which is miserable, but from the exhilaration, the creation, the self discovery it brings. Of course this makes me wonder if it's really the cabin I ever wanted in the first place, or if that was just my subconscious choosing something I could be so close to but not actually have in order to induce maximum, prolonged torture for the purest and highest high. :0) Hey, it IS possible, and if nothing else I try to be open minded and consider all angles.

So tonight I sat down and tried to put myself back in that place. I tried to recall some of my best moments and put down into words things that have been haunting me for too long. I closed my eyes and retreated within. In my mind I walked in the sand by the creek. I sat on my horse looking out over the ridge. I stood at the window peering out across the darkening meadow. My senses came alive and I was there. The scent of a moist pine forest after a summer rain. The texture of rough-hewn planks beneath my bare feet. The splash of icy snow melt on my face at the break of dawn. The sight of a moose ambling in the distance. It felt so good. The hard part is coming back.

Eclipse and Stuff

2010-12-20T21:43:00.004-07:00

Tonight is the big eclipse - a very special full lunar eclipse occurring on the winter solstice. I read it'll be about 100 years before this happens again. We were going to go down to the observatory at CU to watch it but the sky is obscured by clouds. It happens.

People. Why do I continue to let them disappoint me? No one's perfect, I get it. I just wish people could a.) have a little more respect for one another, b.) get at least a few facts before jumping to conclusions, and c.) stop being so childish. Is that really too much to ask of a sentient race in a supposedly enlightened age?

I need a wilderness cabin. And some eggnog. Fortunately I do have the latter.

Back from the Dead

2010-12-12T15:39:00.002-07:00

So I guess my blog isn't actually dead, because here I am.

I just sat down and read through some of my old entries. Wow. I can be pretty intense.

So what's new? I got the horse but she turned out to be way more work than I wanted, but as much as I feared. I had my heart set on a Morgan or a Quarter Horse, but this Thoroughbred sorta fell into my lap. She definitely lived up to her breed's description as a hot blood and wasn't suited for the kinds of things I wanted a horse for. I actually wouldn't have minded putting in the time, but I do have a full time career. Weekends weren't enough, especially considering I couldn't even spend every weekend out there with her. So now she's living the life of a cow pony somewhere in cattle country.

We took a trip to Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument, which was really great. We saw and photographed a lynx which was just awesome.

Work has been going well. I've managed to take my obsession for self-sufficiency and a cabin in the woods down a few notches, which I think explains why I haven't been posting anymore diatribes about society and office jobs. It's still something I fantasize about regularly, I just haven't been obsessing over it.

We've decided to start trying to meet new couples in the Boulder/Denver area and that's been fun. Feels good to be social again, especially since I don't have to go to the bars to do it.

And I guess that's all I feel like writing about today.

The End

2010-10-07T22:56:00.001-06:00

It's been real.

Stardust

2010-09-11T23:20:00.005-06:00

There's a horse I've been thinking about buying. I've spent the last few weeks riding some but mostly just hanging out in the pasture with her. I've also been studying natural horsemanship and Equus, the language of horses.

Last night I went out to the ranch and we had a nice chat. I did all the talking. :0) I told her that this morning I'd be back and we'd try a Join-Up. It would be her opportunity to choose me, rather than the other way around, and that would be the final decision.

So this morning I arrived at the ranch bright and early. I went out into the pasture and we said our good mornings. I took her into the round pen, and the ritual began.

I set her to running, which she began with an exuberant kick. Her breathing quickened, her ears perked up, her eyes were wide. I adopted a dominant posture, and kept strict eye contact as she circled me. After a few rounds, I made her change directions. This went on for some time. I was calm and in control, she was excited. And then I saw the first sign: her left ear turned like a radar dish and locked on me. I kept her running, and looked right into her eyes. Then her head turned slightly toward me, and her circle tightened around me - the second sign. Then a slight head bob, and then a deeper one. Still I kept her running, changing directions every 5 or 6 rounds, and kept my eyes locked on hers. Then her lips quivered and she started licking and chewing at the air, and dipped her head all the way to the ground in a sign of submission and acceptance. She was saying, "Okay, I think you might be worthy of being my leader. I'm ready to make my decision."

This was my cue to stop. I immediately dropped my rope, turned my back to her, slumped my shoulders and looked at the ground. I was saying in Equus, "Okay, I'm ready for you to make your decision. Will you choose me as your leader?"

Immediately she stopped dead in her tracks. This was the moment everything was leading up to, the moment that would make or break this budding relationship. There was total silence, except for the wind rustling in the cottonwood trees. I couldn't see her behind me. What was she doing? Was she just standing there? Was she even looking at me? Will she choose me or leave me standing here all alone? It felt like an eternity.

And then I felt it: a puff of warm air on my neck and the little hairs on her nose tickling my ear. My heart skipped a beat. She chose me. She chose me. Her head came over my shoulder and I reached up and rubbed her forehead. I turned toward her and she pressed her face into my chest. I was careful not to look her in the eye, but whispered my thoughts to her as I rubbed her face. After that she followed me around the pen, no leads, no commands. I took her back to the pasture and whispered a few more thoughts to her, smiled, and removed the harness. She ambled over for a drink, turned and gave me a long look, then quick as lightning the dust around her erupted with another exuberant kick and she bolted out across the field kicking and joyous, as playful as a kid on Friday after school.

"Let's do this."

Addendum: Yesterday evening, before this morning's Join-Up, but after I had told her about it, I lay down in the tall grass near this horse and watched her and the rest of the herd graze. The sun had set behind the Rockies and the sky was a dark, liquid blue during those long twilight moments. Cricket chirps replaced those of song birds. Field mice stirred. Toads emerged from their burrows to gulp down grasshoppers, and bats took flight. The prairie dogs had retired to their burrows, and I saw the silhouette of a distant coyote trotted along a ridge on the horizon. The meadow took on a new life, the life of night things. The chill of Autumn was settling on the plains, and the stars were spectacular; just spectacular! They looked like white diamonds tossed across deep blue velvet, and I felt like I was looking into eternity. I thought of the cowboys, the pioneers before them, and the Native Americans before them who must've spent countless nights looking up and dreaming. I thought of all the people who have ever gazed at the heavens and been overtaken with wonderment and awe. Ah, to be so tiny and yet so special as to have a metaphorical milisecond to peer up and into an unfettered sky and gaze deep into the cosmos, and to have the wits to appreciate it is just, well, miraculous. It was a splendid moment, precious and fleeting, and all the world felt right and good.

It was in those moments that I decided, should this horse choose me, I will name her Stardust.

And so it is.

You Can't Hide Your Lyin' Eyes

2010-09-09T08:54:00.008-06:00

So the Fourmile Canyon Fire, which has been burning the mountains west of Boulder since Monday, is now officially the worst wildfire in Colorado history - not for its size but for the nearly 200 homes it has so far burned. They're still fighting it but it looks like Boulder is safe. A rain shower last night even cleared the air of the choking smoke.

I'm suffering from a severe lack of purpose. Big news, I know.

A couple of weeks ago I had another one of those moments where I decided reluctantly that my life is great, my job is great and I just need to settle in and enjoy it. And I did, mostly. For two weeks. Ish. But I knew it was fleeting. One can have everything in the world, but if one doesn't feel fulfilled then it doesn't matter much.

This much I do know: it isn't just the desk job aspect that I don't like. It's also the core of my job function that turns me off. I'm almost as sick of GIS analysis as I am of staff meetings and TPS reports. Surprisingly, however, I have found some spark of interest in web mapping; that is, making interactive , functional mapping applications for use over the internet. That's what's been keeping me moderately entertained at work lately. As long as I'm in the GIS field I definitely want to take my career in that direction for as long as it can hold my attention. Though still I know it's just a smokescreen; a distraction from the things I truly long for.

Anyway I decided to really try and get my mind off cabins and mountains and horses, but I'm like a mountain man junkie: I can stay clean for a little while but inevitably my thoughts start turning back to the things that consume me. It's a constant battle. That's why I'm blogging at 9AM on a Thursday morning instead of working. The blog is my attempt to help me organize my thoughts and get back to work, instead of heading out to the ranch or "running down to Boulder Horse and Rider - just for a few minutes to see what's new." Yeah right.

Gerard spent several weeks in Western Colorado and Montana this summer for an internship. He and some fellow student researchers were camping in remote parts of the Rockies studying pikas. At first, he said, it was beautiful. That gave way to pain and misery after the first day, because he wasn't accustomed to the rigors of "roughing it" and of spending so much time physically working and hiking. But after a couple of days he physically and mentally adapted and sort of fell into it. From that point on, he said, it was just awesome. I know the feeling. Every time I've been on an extended wilderness excursion or even in a physical working environment I've had the exact same experience. Gerard described Montana as the best. "It's very wild," he would say with a dreamy look in his eye. They saw bear, bald eagles, and heard wolves howling at night. The photos are stunning. Gerard lost 15 pounds during his time in the wilderness and didn't even notice. Mind you that was 15 pounds of "cushioning" he'd put on in the last few years since he pretty much gave up the gym. He looks good. He says at home he eats when he's bored. He exercises little and isn't really motivated to hang out at the gym and go mindlessly through some contrived routine. I very much know the feeling. This is a huge problem in modern Western society. Our lives are too soft and entirely too contrived. I despise the clock and the calendar like you can't imagine.

I once had a professor in college who was an archaeologist. He described a project he worked on where he lived in very primitive, stone age conditions for a month, and he described the same kinds of experiences that Gerard had. Even years ago when I was sitting in his class I was dreaming of how awesome that must've been.

I have another friend who was in the Peace Corps in Africa for two years, and he too described these experiences. He rarely got to call home. While talking to his mom on the phone shortly before his return to the US, she asked what he would be most happy to see upon coming back to the US. He said, "I can't wait to have a microwave again so I can easily heat up some water to take a bath." She paused. "Keith, you know we have hot water that comes out of the faucet here." He had to think about it a moment, then realized he had completely forgotten! I desperately need an experience like that.

In a scientific experiment conducted in Australia, a group (all volunteers of course) of older Aboriginal men who had lived the majority of their adult lives in the city, were asked to try living in the wild for six weeks. These men were all overweight, suffered from high cholesterol and high blood pressure and all the usual stuff. For six weeks these men lived in the Outback: no electricity or running water, no grocery stores, nothing. They had to make, catch, cook and gather everything. In six weeks all the men had returned to a normal, healthy weight and their medical problems had vanished.

I'm not saying life in the wild is all roses. It's the fact that it isn't that makes it so appealing and superior. There's a saying that there's no such thing as a free lunch. Modern society certainly offers a lot, but there is a high price to pay for all this luxury and softness, and I think I'm about tapped out.

Love

2010-08-19T23:42:00.003-06:00

I think nothing in the world can make a spirit soar higher, or crush a spirit more thoroughly than love. It's a funny, funny thing.

I watched a movie tonight called Were the World Mine. I haven't smiled that much or felt that light of heart in quite awhile. It seems like these days I'm more serious that ever. Even my mom tells me to lighten up. I feel myself hardening, distancing myself from people ever more with the passage of time. I'm not sure what's going on. I'm not a huge movie buff, but every now and then I'll watch a movie or read a story that just melts my heart. I smile ear to ear and I feel like the world is sunshine and lollipops. It feels good. It reminds me of things, times, that once were. It reminds me that somewhere buried within all of the dark and terrible things that issue forth from humanity, there is also something lovely and precious beyond words.

“One of the hardest things in life is having words in your heart that you can't utter.”

--James Earl Jones

Sleepless in Boulder

2010-08-18T23:14:00.005-06:00

It's shaping up to be one of those sleepless nights. It's a little warm tonight - 72 degrees at the moment - and I think that has something to do with it.

Probably a bigger part is that my brain works hard all day at work and my body gets nothing out of the deal but sitting nearly motionless. I come home mentally exhausted but physically pent-up. I'm working from home the rest of the week. I'll use the two hours a day I'm saving in commute time to get in some morning hikes. I'm also going to do some work in the kitchen "on the side." I have some pork and bison fat that needs rendering into lard and tallow.

Today was my last day in the old office building. Our new building - the LEEDS Platinum certified Research Support Facility - is all ready for us to move in Monday morning. Movers are transferring all of our computers and other stuff over the weekend. It was a tiny bit sad, though the move can be nothing but good. The new building is pretty awesome by any standard, and I'll finally be on the main campus. I also found out today that one of our best GIS programmers, his obnoxious personality not withstanding, is leaving NREL. I was shocked. Can't say I was sad about it. Was an interesting day.

I wish I was fly fishing.

War of the Worlds

2010-08-15T21:02:00.003-06:00

I had the most awesome day fly fishing in Rocky. Between me and my buddy Keith we probably caught two dozen or so cutthroat trout, many of which were a good 14 inches or more. It's about a three mile hike up to the Loch where we fished. It's a place of stunning waterfalls and dramatic cliff faces, thick pine forests and clear icy waters. And of course a lot of trout.

The Glacier Gorge area is arguably one of the most beautiful parts of Rocky, and it's the area I spend most of my time in. The hike up to the Loch isn't what I would consider terribly strenuous, but most tourists (thankfully) disagree. It's three miles in with about 1,500 feet elevation gain. And of course it's at about 10,000 feet so the air is a might thin. While fishing, we had the occasional hiker come by and wave, but mostly it was just us fishermen with only the chipmunks and the gray jays to keep us company. For lunch we stretched out in a wildflower-carpeted meadow next to a stream, surrounded by fortress-like walls of sculpted granite, and watched the trout gulp down midges and the honey bees drink up the last of summer's nectar. It was spectacular.

I hadn't been fishing in a long time, but I can see now that this is a hobby that's way overdue. I can't describe the thrill I get from the game. Fly fishing is especially so, because trout are so finicky. One minute hundreds of fish will be feeding en masse, gulping anything on the surface that moves. The next minute, every one of them will stop, drift to the bottom and disappear. Often they'll only be interested in midges, and ignore anything else, then suddenly switch to grasshoppers or flying ants. With trout it's a constant game of trying to guess what the fish want, and then tricking them into taking a fuzzy bit with a hook that more or less looks like whatever is pleasing their palate at the time. Then of course there's the grand finale, the icing on the cake: the moment when a big one takes the fly, and you the fisherman are fast enough to set the hook in the split second before the trout figures you out. The fight is thrilling, and I can't quite explain why. I imagine it harkens back to those hunter instincts our ancestors depended on for millennia before the industrial revolution. I released all of my fish unharmed today, but the thrill of the chase was extraordinarily satisfying.

I also love the smell of a live, squirmy fish, and the way it feels in my hand. Cutthroats are among the prettiest and most vivid of fresh water fish, and I'm always dazzled by their colors. There's something thrilling and primal about going out into nature and having a close encounter with a wild creature. I think that's especially true today with so many of us living such disconnected, ignorant urban lives. I've blogged before about the simple thrill I often get at touching the bark of a tree or of hearing the sound of a stream after being subjected to cube life for an extended period of time. To go out into nature and see something, some beautiful form of life, that lives all on its own and needs nothing from man to survive but to be left alone still amazes me and fills me with delight. Going into the mountains reminds me that I am alive. It reminds me of the real world - the world beyond the artificial urban world - the world that created us, the world in which we have lived for millions of years, and only very recently have forgotten because of the illusions we've created with our cities and our nifty techno trickery. The cities and all they contain could not exist without the green, living world they, like a tick, have imbedded themselves in. How quickly most of us have forgotten our roots.

On the hike down from the lake this evening, I noticed - I always notice - that the trail gets busier and busier the closer one gets to the trailhead and parking lot. The people get fatter. The kids get more numerous. The attitude (mine) gets worse. Just hundreds of yards from the trailhead one will see fat suburban women wearing flip-flops, smoking, and screaming at unruly children who are literally climbing over the "stay on the trail" signs. One will see teenagers with their headphones on and people of all ages pecking away at their iPhones. One will smell a thousand different perfumes, deodorants, fabric softeners, shampoos, cigarettes and other toxic aromas from "real life" in the city. One will find cigarette butts and trash on the ground, and a hundred other signs that the ignorant, uncaring masses have descended upon the "easy" parts of the park to get their snapshot on the family vacation. I push through, and I keep my mouth shut. What, after all, can be done? Why can't these people switch off the city for a day? Why can't these people come into nature with the reverence these wild places deserve? Nature is not some playground for dumping your kids in. In my mind these are sacred spaces, not just that overgrown area outside of your suburban shithole.

It's always like this. All of the prettiest places I've been are being loved to death, most especially by the people who can't come into the country without bringing the city with them. It's always a nasty shock for me after I spend time in a relatively pristine wilderness and then step back into the urban machine. Most people are like predictable, selfish little drones. If you build it, they will come. Give them their iPhones and their fast food and their artificial lives and they will flock to you by the millions. They are mesmerized by shiny things, things that whirr and beep and give offer instant gratification. They like the illusion of material wealth, and the superficial trappings of a civilization that can never have enough.

As for me, if you build it I will leave. A more perfect system cannot exist than that which nature designed. The Earth in all her complexity is a perfect system that constantly creates, destroys, and recycles so that new things may be born: mountains, oceans, rivers, life. Here in the mountains can be found all of the things I could ever need to be healthy and happy: deer, elk, rabbit, bison, pronghorn, fish and turkey for food, shelter and ornamentations. Meat is for eating. Bone is for making tools and weapons. Hide is for shelters and clothing. There are edible and medicinal plants such as service berries, wild raspberries and strawberries, currants, cottonwood, mariposa lilies, yucca, mushrooms, and hundreds more. There are plants for making string, rope and dyes. If one has good food, clean water, a warm safe place to call home and loved ones to share it all with, what more could one possibly want or need? How could an iPhone or a shopping mall really enhance these most basic of human needs and comforts? Instead of sitting alone typing my thoughts on some lifeless, glowing box, I could be sitting around a cozy fire talking with real people; perhaps telling stories or talking about what a great day I had catching fish, and perhaps sharing a good haul of roasted fish with my loved ones. But that is not our world. In our world, some of us step into reality when the weekend comes and we are granted a reprieve from the Matrix. We are allowed, for a short time, to tiptoe through the unadulterated system that truly sustains us. Then on Monday we must go back into The Machine, back into the artificial world where we are told what to eat and how to live and what's fashionable, where we live by the clock and calendar under artificial light, eat toxic "food" and sit mesmerized by television and all it's mind-numbing power.

And now I must go to bed. The Machine is expecting me at 8AM.

Whoa

2010-08-08T21:32:00.002-06:00

So my post from last night - too much? I get like that sometimes. Today I went for a nice late afternoon hike in Rocky, through Moraine Park and up to Club Lake. Nothing like a gorgeous hike in the wilderness to clear one's head.

This American Life - not the one by NPR

2010-08-07T19:46:00.006-06:00

Why is it that nearly everyone I work with seems content to work 50 hours a week in a cube, making good money that they're happy to blow on kids, daycare, Walmart, processed "food," and all things suburban? Why is it they seem satisfied, if not happy, to trade most of their waking hours for corporate meetings, and pepper their vocabularies with acronyms and buzz words?

Virtually everyone I work with on a regular basis has kids, and that's all the hell they talk about. Little Johnny's soccer game, or the big mass birthday party that 30 screaming kids and their suburban parents are going to attend at that giant corporate pizza warehouse where they serve toxic junk food and lure kids and parents with video games and some high school kid dressed as a giant mouse. Little Susie's baby photos are plastered all over the cube and the screensaver, and always evokes the the same "awwwww" from anyone who happens by. I don't have a problem with kids. In fact I love kids and I love families. What I don't like is that phony, predictable, wholly artificial suburban routine that kids get plugged into from conception. Everyone I work with are like cookie-cutter people, just like the suburban tract houses they live in. They aren't bad people, not at all. I just feel like such a misfit. In my eyes they look like puppets, just cogs in the artificial urban machine.

Why do most of my co-workers get so freakishly excited about HTML 5? Or Python scripting? Or getting on the cover of Wired Magazine? How can anyone really give a f-? What do any of these things really mean in the grand scheme of things? We're born, we have a short time to do something in this world, and then we die. How does suburbia and obsession with technology enhance this formula? Technology is just fashion; what's hot today is forgotten tomorrow. We're a society that's never happy with what we have, and I have to admit I'm a victim too. We're always in pursuit of bigger, better, more, and of course it's never ever enough.

Today I went to the Boulder County Fair alone. I had the best time just hanging out with the livestock and watching the people. Dairy cattle. Sheep and goats. Pigs. Chickens, geese, turkeys, ducks. I loved the dusty air, the bits of hay that stick to everything, the smell of livestock, the sounds of pigs grunting, goats bleating, cows mooing, and chickens cackling. I loved all the young kids fussing over their show animals, the cowboys on their horses, and the farmers carting around their prize-winning vegetables. I loved the atmosphere of the Fair. It had an air of excitement, but moved at a human pace. It was so earthy, so gritty, so genuine. It was so unlike cubeland with its padded walls, florescent lights, sterile environment and retina-frying computers. I'm not a machine, dammit. I can't function by a clock, by pretend deadlines and by someone else's control issues. At the office, an "emergency" is when the Director decides ten minutes before his flight to DC, which happens to be at 5PM on a Friday, that he wants a dozen maps whipped up and arranged in a nice electronic PowerPoint and delivered to him before he boards so he can review it during the flight. At the Fair, an emergency is when Bessie the prize-winning milk cow casually walks out of her stall and saunters into the craft barn, knocking over a few tables. Maybe that's not a fair comparison. I realize every job has its ups and downs and that no job is all smiles. Farmers and cowboys certainly have their share of hardships. But the point I'm trying to make is that it's hard for me to get real concerned when the Director waits until the last minute to throw his weight around, but when Bessie throws hers around, well, that's another matter entirely.

I petted all of the animals at the Fair. The cows were smooth and gentle and had sweet dispositions. They always wanted a bite of hay. The pigs were coarse and hairy, and even when they were asleep, legs sprawled like they didn't have a care in the world, they grunted and jiggled continually. Sometimes they'd wake up and come over to nuzzle me, and they loved being scratched. The goats wanted to jump up and look at me with their alien eyes. The rabbits were soft and timid. The chickens were curious and endlessly entertaining. I walked through pee and poop and mud and all sorts of things as I made my rounds, and it was all fine. It was better than fine. It was wonderful to feel something under my feet, which are usually numb from the flat, unchanging landscape of office carpeting. I found myself smiling for no reason at all, overjoyed I suppose from the rush to my senses. At the office the temperature is always the same. The smell is always the same. The lighting, the texture of synthetic surfaces, even those horrid, ubiquitous ivy plants in the office environment never seem to change. Even the people are part of the furniture. Morning and night, day after day, year after year, nothing changes. Unless you have a window, there is no sense of time at all in the office, no sense of life actually happening. No sunrise. No seasons. No rising and falling temperatures, no thunder, nothing. There is only the incessant virtual ticking of the clock, counting down the moments until the next presentation, the next mind-numbing meeting, the next artificial deadline, time to eat, time to go home. It's always "time" for something. The whole system chips away at my soul, like some cold, unstoppable mining contraption slowly boring into the heart of a mountain.

Who ever thought it would be a good idea to teach or share information by projecting slides on a board in front of a room full of people? What happened to the days when people learned by doing? By getting their hands dirty? I've yet to go to a single conference or presentation where I actually learned anything. Sure, I can pick up a few facts, buzzwords or tidbits of something else useless, but that's not learning. Imagine trying to learn how to butcher a pig while sitting with 300 people in an air conditioned conference room sipping your Starbucks and watching some dork in a suit flash a PowerPoint presentation in front of you with "key concepts" highlighted in cutesy graphics and using words like "proactive," "commoditize," "bottomline," "deliverables," and "enabling." Think you'd be able to do it yourself after that? Of course not. You learn to butcher a pig by getting your hands dirty, by following the lead of someone who knows what he's doing.

I realize not everyone wants to learn how to butcher a pig. But by the same token, not everyone wants to waste hours of his life in an utterly meaningless conference either. Knowing how to butcher a pig, at least, would be a real skill. How to look good attending a conference is not.

I may have told this story before, but one of my most vivid memories from my youth was sitting at Memaw's house. It was summer. It was hot. I was a kid of maybe 10 or 12 years, and we were in the living room with the television on. The Golden Girls was on, Memaw was crocheting, and the clock above her television was tick-tocking as it always did. Out of nowhere I was struck by a horrible thought that scarred me for life: I'm wasting the precious moments of my life in front of a sit-com, and that vile clock is just rubbing it in my face with every swing of the pendulum! To this day this is why I don't own a clock or wear a watch. But I have to say, office life gives me that same terrified feeling. I don't want to live my life by some artificial timeline in some artificial environment. Dawn and dusk, the cycle of the moon and the changing of the seasons are all I want and need.

It seems such a tragedy to me that all I want is to have a life a little more like people have always had up until a couple of generations ago, but I can't because I'm trapped in the modern urban machine. To own some land, to grow and hunt my own food, to MAKE my own living is what I want. What I want is the classic American dream - a modest but comfortable country home, wholesome food, clean air and water, to laugh with loved ones. I don't want or need anything Made in China, or piles of electronic junk, or stacks and stacks of material things filling my closets and choking the space in my home. I want to get exercise chopping firewood, skinning deer, butchering a hog, tending a garden, mending a fence, building a barn, grooming my horse, and NOT by setting aside one hour a day to "work out" in an expensive gym with bad music and neon lights and a bunch of gym bunnies parading themselves around and wearing their insecurity on their sleeve.

I just think that we were given all we would ever need in life, but that we've somehow set in motion this culture of always trying to one-up the last generation. I know life wasn't a walk in the park 100 years ago or 500 years ago, but it is really that much better today? Maybe 500 years ago you could get trampled by a bison when you were out trying to get dinner. Last year 34,000 Americans were killed when they were "trampled" in their car by someone else's car. Today we live longer but the last few decades are lived with prescription medications and doctor visits. Today old people are no longer revered for their wisdom, but thrown out as obsolete like last year's computer. We're cutting down the world's forests, polluting the oceans, choking rivers, wiping out plant and animal species, filling the skies with smog, filling our food with mercury and a thousand other toxins. Sick or injured people are left to rot on life support for years. Corporations run the world, and nations are still declaring war on each other; only now we have the technology to cause truly global devastation. Have we really advanced that much? When we consider all we're sacrificing for our big screen televisions, or medications and our overabundance of food, are we really coming out ahead? And perhaps the saddest of all is that the vast majority of the world's population still lives in abject poverty. Only the privileged few get the big screen tv's and SUV's, but the whole world is becoming uninhabitable as ecosystems collapse and resources are depleted. We're like a virus consuming our host like there is no tomorrow - and at the rate we're going, there really won't be.

Okay, I'm tired so I'm off my soap box.

I Wanna Be a Cowboy

2010-08-07T19:03:00.004-06:00

The ad read:

"Ranch outside Gardiner, Montana is looking for a full time year-round experienced wrangler/ranch hand. You must have excellent knowledge of horses and tack, have general equine medical knowledge, trail clearing and packing, have the ability to maintain neat horse records and report routinely to ranch manager."

I think I'll cry myself to sleep tonight and try not to think about frying my eyes out in the cube farm on Monday.

Or maybe I'll quit the cube farm and find myself a ranch job. We only live once.

I can't think of a title.

2010-07-17T23:50:00.004-06:00

Over a month since my last blog post? Is my blog dying? Of course not.

I just got back from a week in San Diego. It was nice. I was there for a work conference, but was able to spend a fair amount of time doing other, less horrifically boring things. San Diego is a fun city. I'll never live there.

Aside from being busy, part of the reason I stopped blogging is because I feel like all I really do is whine about the ranch I'll probably never have, or go on and on about food. What can I say? That's what fills my mind. Mostly. There's certainly more, but even on a blog that nobody reads I can't write about it, because some things need to be kept close.

[sigh]

And with that, I'll take my secrets, pound them way down inside, and shuffle off to bed. Tomorrow is another day.

Griswold

2010-06-13T23:20:00.003-06:00

The temperature was in the high 40's this morning and it rained all weekend. It's still raining. This rarely happens (the rain, not the cool weather) in Colorado. I spent much of the weekend reading but today I needed to get out so we went to the dairy for milk and hit the antique shops along the way.

I scored not one, but TWO Griswold cast iron skillets that are probably older than my grandparents and possibly much older. Griswold shut its doors in the 50's but made legendary cast iron cookware for generations. So excited was I to use them that I made breakfast for dinner tonight: scratch buttermilk biscuits, uncured bacon from a local farm and yard eggs over easy with a hint of bacon grease. Also, tall glasses of sweet milk just hours from the cow, and plenty of home-churned butter, crabapple jelly and peach preserves that I canned last fall. No better non-stick surface has yet been devised by the hand of man than a well-seasoned cast iron skillet. Even the best modern cookware can't hold a candle to it, especially Griswold. People collect Griswold, and it isn't uncommon for the rarer pieces to sell for hundreds of dollars. I found one on eBay today going for over $800. I didn't pay that much for mine, which were a couple of the more common skillets. Cast iron, besides being supremely non-stick, also give off no toxins, were made in the USA, and will easily last long enough to pass on to your great grandchildren. Some high-end non-stick Calphalon pieces I bought just three years ago are already useless. Junk! Don't waste your time, your money or your health on fancy pots and pans - no matter who makes them or how impressive their revolutionary infused anodized non-stick technology propaganda sounds. It's all garbage! Go drop a couple hundred bucks (easily half what you'd pay for the Calphalon) on a few Griswold skillets in an antique shop or flea market. Clean them up, re-season if necessary, and relax knowing you've bought the last set of cookware you'll ever need.

Reading

2010-06-13T09:42:00.004-06:00

It's June 13 at about ten in the morning, and the temperature is 48 degrees and raining. Been this way all weekend.

I finished reading A Walk Across America. I enjoyed it, but the last two chapters were just awful. The author is a terrible writer, but I overlooked that because I was really fascinated by his adventure. Then, surprisingly, this church-avoiding, long-haired, earth-loving hippie type "finds God" when he drops into a mega-revival in Alabama. It was all a little too suspicious and weird, as were the events the followed. For the tale of his adventures, I'd give it 4/5 stars. For everything else - his lack of writing skills, his inability to tell a decent story, and his weirdness to name a a few things - a mere 1/5 stars. He's got a second book which he wrote after walking through Louisiana, Texas, New Mexico and ultimately settling for a time in Ouray, Colorado, but it got worse reviews than his first. He's also got a book about Alaska, which more readers seemed to enjoy, and a fourth about some other country which I didn't pay much attention to. I'm not sure I'll be reading anything else by Peter Jenkins.

Seeing as it's cold and rainy - perfect for curling up in my pj's by the fire with a book - I started the next one, The Blind Watchmaker by Richard Dawkins. Dawkins is a very accomplished writer whose books focus on evolution and genetic inheritance. The Blind Watchmaker is one of, if not the, most popular of his books. It's been waiting on my bookshelf for a long time, but I tend to buy books faster than I can consume them. I'm trying to resist the urge to go buy a few new ones today since I've got four or five on backlog at the moment. Sometimes I wish I could lock myself away in a remote and cozy log cabin in the snowy depths of winter and do little more than get lost in my books for a solid week.

FB

2010-06-10T21:45:00.006-06:00

Facebook is dead to me. It was really cool reacquainting with old classmates and others from my distant past, but now that the new has worn off and we've all had our OMG-I-CAN'T-BELIEVE-IT'S-YOU moments with each other, my news feed has mostly been reduced news flashes about baby poop, 3rd grade baseball games, shameless solicitations, and way, WAY too much crap about Jesus. I've learned a valuable lesson in all this: if you aren't still in my life today, there's probably a very good reason.

The past week has been warm - about fifteen degrees above average. We've had temps in the 90's. Boulder Creek normally runs at 100-300 CFS (cubic feet per second), but this week it was overflowing its banks at almost 1,000 CFS! The heat caused rapid snowmelt in the mountains. A bridge collapsed just up the canyon from Boulder, creating an unstable dam which collected water and threatened to send a wall of water rushing toward town. Fortunately it was cleared and all is well. A cool front has since come through and water levels are dropping a little as the melt slows. Saturday the high is only going to be in the low 50's. Nice!

That's all for now. I'm hoping to finish reading A Walk Across America before the weekend comes to a close. I'm halfway through it. It's a story of a guy who, in 1974, decided to walk down the East Coast, through the South, and on to the Gulf of Mexico instead of getting a job after he finished college. Just him and his dog. Pretty amazing, the things he experienced. Makes one think. I'll probably comment more when I finish.

G'night!

Insanity

2010-06-07T20:49:00.003-06:00

Do you ever feel like life, or at least self-awareness, is really just some cruel game dreamed up by a bored god looking for some cheap entertainment?

Today I learned that there is talk - serious talk, mind you - of detonating a nuclear weapon in the Gulf of Mexico to plug the oil leak. For the record the American government is saying no way, but there are plenty of people who seem to think this is a good idea.

Summer is here. We're actually having record heat this spring, and the rivers are overflowing their banks because the snowpack in the mountains is melting so quickly. I've been passing the time with travel. A couple of weeks ago Gerard and I spent five days in southwestern South Dakota, exploring the Black Hills, Mt. Rushmore, the Badlands, Deadwood and other cool places. It's beautiful, South Dakota. The wildlife there is extraordinary - our first morning we weren't a hour out of camp when we saw herds of free roaming bison, pronghorn, mule deer, wild turkey. Later in the day we saw bighorn sheep and a mountain goat. Unfortunately, however, South Dakota doesn't think native predators are as good for tourism as herds of bison, so they've quietly allowed the grizzly bear and the wolf to remain exiled. That means humans have to round up some of the bison every year and ship them off to meat packing plants.

Last weekend we hiked about ten miles through a mountain ghost town called Homestead Meadows. The decaying remains of cabins dot tens of hundreds of acres of open meadow and woodland near Mountain Lion Gulch. It's easy up there to forget about florescent lighting, office cubicles, artificial deadlines, Sara Palin and nuking the seas to plug oil spills.

Tonight when I close my eyes, I will go home.

Happy Birthday

2010-05-19T18:57:00.002-06:00

He turned thirty-six last Sunday
In his hair he found some gray
But he still ain't changed his lifestyle
He likes it better the old way
So he grows a little garden in the back yard by the fence
He's consuming what he's growing nowadays in self defense
He get's out there in the twilight zone
Sometimes when it just don't make no sense

He gets off on country music
Cause disco left him cold
He's got young friends into new wave
But he's just too friggin' old
And he dreams at night of Woodstock and the day John Lennon died
How the music made him happy and the silence made him cry
Yeah he thinks of John sometimes
And he has to wonder why

He's an old hippie and he don't know what to do
Should he hang on to the old
Should he grab on to the new
He's an old hippie...his new life is just a bust
He ain't trying to change nobody
He's just trying real hard to adjust

You're Kidding

2010-05-14T09:09:00.002-06:00

Mom's supposed to be flying up to see me today for my birthday. She gets to the airport this morning in plenty of time, to find no one that can help her do curbside checkin like she always does. She manages to find one rude person to tell her that Continental has moved to a different terminal. There, she finds no one curbside. She tries to check in at a kiosk, but it won't accept her information. Again she flags down someone who clearly can't be bothered, but who puts forth minimal effort to help mom. "You're doing it wrong!" the attendant snaps. The attendant tries, and the kiosk will not accept her information. After some runaround, they figure it out and the attendant tells mom there will be a $25 charge for her single bag. It's a new fee. So she tries to pay in cash and the attendant snaps that she can't give change. After another 15 minute ordeal mom proceeds to security. At security it was another long string of fairly mundane but typical hassles. By the time she gets to the gate the plane is gone.

She explains what happened and the attendant says they'll put her on standby on the next flight, but gave mom the wrong gate number. Eventually she gets to the right gate and verifies she's "on the list." She waits. After everyone is boarded, even the other people who were waiting on standby, she is ignored. She goes to the counter and inquires only to find that the new attendant can't find her name on the list. An argument ensues and mom produces her receipt from the last gate which finally gets her on the plane. The plane is locked and ready to go, when they shut things down, open it up, and call her name. They need to see her ID! After that 15 minute delay, the'yre finally ready to take off. The plane has started to taxi when it dies on the runway. They sit for 20 minutes, announce the plane is dead, haul it back to the terminal, unload everyone, and say it'll be another hour before they have more information.

This morning my water heater died, and it's supposed to be cold and rainy the entire weekend.

Happy birthday to me.

Life Lessons

2010-05-09T19:42:00.004-06:00

I think I'm finally running out of steam when it comes to Facebook. I've reconnected with just about everyone from my past. In general, I find most people aren't as excited about reconnecting as I was. It's disappointing. I'm also starting to remember why I was so eager to get the hell out of Huffman.

Maybe there's a darn good reason why people from my past who are no longer in my life are, well, no longer in my life.

I'm trying to understand why an old friend would claim to be so excited to reconnect, send me all kinds of wonderful emails about how much I am loved, say "call me!" and then not return any of my phone calls going on two weeks now. I know these people are still alive because they've posted on Facebook a few times since. Yeah, it's happened with more than one.

Then there' s slew of people who friend me, but won't respond to any of my messages.

Of my old high school friends, there are several who grew up to be really jaded. I can't imagine going through life with such a bad attitude.

But maybe I'm just the weird one. Or maybe I'm just weird in my own special way. I love the idea of having a community of close friends, but the older I get the more I feel like most friends are really just paying lip service. And maybe they really aren't even doing it on purpose. Maybe they're just too wrapped up in their own issues to pay too much attention to a friendship. I know that's been true of me before.

Tonight Gerard and I went out in Denver for a couple of hours, just to try and meet some people. I get so frustrated and tense in crowds, especially crowds of strangers, that I need to be drinking to enjoy it. Being Sunday night, I only had one beer. I can safely say that the bar scene hasn't changed since I first started going 20 years ago. I, however, have. We left.

On the drive back to our quiet place in Boulder I reflected silently to myself on the past week. Side note: I don't think I've mentioned it at all on my blog, but my old classmate Kelly Danaher was killed one week ago today. I've spent the better part of the week mourning with my classmates via Facebook. I was terribly, terribly bummed out by it and only now am I starting to somewhat get out of the funk I was in. I wrote an open letter which was probably entirely too mushy and posted it on Facebook, but it helped me get my head clear. I actually got a lot of positive responses, which made me feel good. I'll probably post it here. I've been neglecting my blog lately because I've been so wrapped up rediscovering people on Facebook.

Anyway, the drive home. I thought about the ups and downs on Facebook: happily rediscovering people only to have them not be interested in actually making a human connection. I thought about the overcrowded bar full of people who by all appearances were frankly a little pathetic. Like I said, the scene never changes. I sometimes get these nostalgic fantasies in my head: If only I could go back to high school knowing what I know now, it would be so much more fun! If only I were free to party again like I did in college, it would be so much fun! If only....

But it isn't true. I still clam up in bars (unless I'm drunk) just like I did in college. My old classmates are proving they are still very much the same people they were back in high school. Sure some have mellowed. Others have gotten more intense. But my subconscious fantasy that we're all going sit around reminiscing about the old days and forging some kind of new improved friendship is bullshit, I'm sorry to say.

It's also very clear to me that the life I have today is the life I built for myself. I built it because it's what I want. I guess sometimes I start wondering about what else might be, or what might have been. But those are silly things to seriously consider. As I drove back to my quiet home in Boulder, I thought, yeah, this is what I want. This makes me happy.

Ramblin' Fever

2010-04-26T23:13:00.002-06:00

My hat don't hang on the same nail too long
My ears can't stand to hear the same old song
An' I don't leave the highway long enough,
To bog down in the mud
'Cos I've got ramblin' fever in my blood

And I don't let nobody tie me down,
And I'll never get too old to get around
I wanna die along the highway and rot away,
Like some old high-line pole,
And rest this ramblin' fever in my soul

-Merle Haggard

I drove my truck to work today. Sometimes I do that just to get a little thrill at both ends of the day. There's a nice 20 mile stretch of open road I take to work, and for a few minutes I can pretend like I'm out roaming some remote corner of the west. I'm planning a road trip to Texas this summer. I'm planning to take a week and see some old friends. Some I haven't seen since high school. I'm planning to hit my favorite swimming holes, watering holes and hole-in-the-walls along the way.

Sometimes there just aren't enough miles of pavement.

Baby Daddy

2010-04-24T00:35:00.002-06:00

Of the people I went to high school with, all but about three of us, insofar as I can tell, have babies. Families. Husbands and wives. It's just weird. It's weird because I can't accept the fact that they've all grown up in the 18 years since I've seen them.

I must admit though a part of me wants to that too. I don't know if its that I want kids or if I just want to fit in. I suppose it's a little of both.

I suppose I'll get over it. I really like my freedom and my money. I should have a t-shirt made.

School Rant

2010-04-23T18:37:00.002-06:00

I have ONE class to finish in order to get my master's certificate in GIS, and it's pissing me the hell off. It's a geographic statistics class, online, in which we're getting virtually no instruction, guidance or feedback from our non-responsive, uninterested instructor.

Our first problem set is a TWENTY PAGE DOCUMENT full of typos and vague instructions. Problem number 11: Write an essay on Exponential Distribution and make some graphs. Use a software called JMP that makes no sense unless you're already fairly versed in stats.

Okay.

Since there's no lecture or anything to guide us, I start with Wikipedia:

In probability theory and statistics, the exponential distributions (a.k.a. negative exponential distributions) are a class of continuous probability distributions. They describe the times between events in a Poisson process...

Okay, what's a Poisson process?

A Poisson process, named after the French mathematician Siméon-Denis Poisson (1781–1840), is a stochastic process...

Okay, what's a stochastic process?

In probability theory, a stochastic process, or sometimes random process, is the counterpart to a deterministic process or deterministic system...

Okay, what's a deterministic system?

In mathematics, a deterministic system is a system in which no randomness is involved in the development of future states of the system.

By this point I've forgotten what I was even looking for in the first place, and all the crap I read in between.

Good Day at Work

2010-04-19T19:38:00.002-06:00

I had an unusually good Monday, considering I was working at a computer instead of fly fishing, hiking, camping, gardening or hunting.

More amazing still, it was a good day despite conducting interviews for a new hire.

Why was it such a good day? I solved a problem that on Friday I had no idea how I was going to solve. I've got temperature at depth data for the US - that is the temperature below the ground in 1 kilometer intervals all the way down to 10 km. I had a list of several thousand oil wells and the depth to the bottom of the wells. I needed to figure out the temperature at the bottom of the wells. With a little linear interpolation and some Python scripting, I made it happen. I was quite proud of myself and my client was ecstatic. Not that I'd put this on my top ten list of favorite things to do on a gorgeous spring day, but it pays the bills and it always feels good to accomplish a complex task.

:0(

2010-04-18T21:12:00.002-06:00

It's really not a good idea for me to sit around on a Sunday evening browsing the web for dream ranches and farms for sale. It only depresses me.

Beauty in Diversity

2010-04-17T18:36:00.004-06:00

Late this afternoon I was cruising in my truck down a country road out on the eastern plains. The weather had been cloudy for days, and this morning rain finally started to fall. It was a cold, wet spring day and I was taking the long way home from the dairy.

All at once the rain stopped. As if the breath of God were blowing down on a frothy cup of chai, the clouds ahead of me broke apart and the sunlight poured through. In an instant I was under a blue sky. The rolling green countryside, dotted with big red barns and sprinkled with horses, stretched in all directions. The Rocky Mountains stood hazy and dark in the distance, and the world felt so alive. So perfect. Some lonely old country song came on the radio. I smiled. I cruised.

My day started early with the farmer's market, as every Saturday during the growing season does. Today we had the first of the asparagus! Unless you've eaten thick, tender stalks from an old plant cut early in the season, and just hours after harvesting, you've never had asparagus. That crap in the grocery store, even the stuff from Whole Foods, is only asparagus in appearance. I also picked up fresh mushrooms, a few pounds of crisp baby spinach, two dozen eggs from chickens that eat grass and bugs, ten pounds of anasazi and black beans, cider from last fall's apples (spent the winter in the deep freeze), purple potatoes, white and purple onions, green garlic, fresh goat cheese and a few other things. This afternoon, on the way out to the dairy for raw milk, I stopped by Rocky Plains to buy local, grass-fed bison, pork and chicken - steaks, pork chops, sausages, ground round, roast, marrow bones, Rocky Mountain oysters, bacon, etc.

I can honestly say the highlight of my week, and one of the highlights of my life, is the farmer's market. I can't tell you how happy - how downright giddy - I get over local, farm-fresh produce and the people who produce it. It isn't just the superior flavor and freshness or the nutritional value. It's more than the community aspect too. It's more even than the "green" aspect and the self-sufficiency factor. A big part of it is just the simplicity of the system. It appeals to me on such a deep level. There are no factories, no complex and convoluted chains of corporate fat cats, no elaborate distribution networks, no chemicals, toxics or synthetic additives, no vile marketers trying to invent new "products" with flashy branded labels, no wasteful packaging, no nutrition labels, no fads, no gimmicks. It's just sunshine, some nice farmers, some beautiful produce, and some very happy customers and neighbors. I dig that in a big way.

This year I'm planning to supplement my diet with some wild game. My ultimate fantasy is providing all of my own food, and having no use for the industrial food system. I shopped for hunting rifles after lunch. It's been a few years since I shot a gun and I haven't owned a gun since I left Texas. I haven't been hunting since my early college days. I took a few shots on the rifle range. There are a lot of options, but I think I've settled on a sweet Remington 700, vintage 1979. It's got a gorgeous woodgrain stock and all metal sights - today they're mostly plastic. This one has been well cared for and lightly used. It's a very good find. It's a perfect all-around hunting rifle, from coyote to elk. I'm prone to impulse buying, so I decided to think on it a few days. If it's still at the shop next week, then it was meant to be mine.

I have to say it has been a long time since I set foot in a gun shop. It was worth it for the culture shock alone. This shop is in Weld County, which is about as close in culture to rural Texas as Colorado gets. In fact, while I was there Texas came up in conversation. Some of the patrons were swooning over Texas' legendarily pro-gun politics. The employees' uniforms had the following quote printed on the back: "I'll keep my money, my guns and my freedom. You can keep the 'change'" with a badly drawn illustration of an American flag and a gun. A poster on the wall showed pictures of Obama and McCain on dollar bills, with the text, "Don't blame me, I voted for the American."

I had to laugh. My only other option was to blow a gasket. Not to get off topic, but I've recently reconnected with a whole lot of my old high school friends and acquaintances through the magic of Facebook. Probably ninety percent of them would think those shirts and posters were right-on. Even a half-way educated person would see the utter ridiculousness of them, but we're not talking about educated people here. Not even close to half-way. But does that make them bad people? I went to school with those kids, some of them for twelve years. I know they're not bad people. I knew them before we were old enough for politics and religion to come between us. The guys at the gun shop were just as nice as they could be. They were so willing to help and talk about this and that, share hunting stories, give tips on scoping out used guns, etc. They weren't pushy salesmen. I distinctly felt like they wanted to help. But the tiny world they live in doesn't allow them to see very far beyond their own noses. You know, I can remember a time when I supported George Bush. Yes, I mean DUBYA. I can even remember a time in high school when I thought segregation was a good thing, that blacks and Mexicans were all dirty freeloaders that couldn't be trusted. I went to church and Sunday school - I even voluntarily got Baptized because I thought it was the only way for me to go to Heaven. It makes me chuckle now. I remember the first time I saw a man with long hair. I was a child. I cried. My Aunt Kiku (Karen Sue - but as a baby I said, "Kiku!" and it stuck), among the most tolerant of the family (and that's not saying a lot), tried to explain that he wasn't a bad person just because he had long hair. It kills me to admit this, but I can remember a time long ago - long before I'd even heard of Hitler or the Holocaust - that I though genocide wouldn't be such a bad idea. Of course I didn't know the term. Hell I didn't know much of anything. I wasn't stupid, just incredibly naive, sheltered, brainwashed. I had no real concept of many of the ideas I was taught. Black people were just the scary homeless figures that lived in downtown Houston, a place our family very rarely ventured. They weren't real to me. They were like boogiemen - a scary thing I'd heard about but never really seen. It was easy to imagine wiping them out. Just like vampires and werewolves. All I knew was my tiny little world in Huffman and what the adults told me. Small Texas towns don't allow a lot of room for thinking, questioning, learning anything at all about the world beyond. I knew all non-white races only by their horribly racist names. But it was normal. We weren't angry or spewing bile when we said those words. It's just what they were, in our tiny little world views.

Moving off to college was rough for me. It was shocking. It was eye-opening. But I, unlike many of my old high school friends and acquaintances, DID go to college. I asked questions. I traveled. I experienced just a little more of the world. But I think the greatest driving force in my life was my sexuality. That, more than anything else, forced me out of the tiny world of Huffman. It was the hardest thing I've ever gone through. And I suppose that even today, as "extreme" as I would be considered by my hometown, I'm still tied to those roots. I still love the simplicity of country life. I love trucks and rifles and cowboy hats. I have no desire to be some kind of backwoods dumbass and get into bar fights (like plenty of people I've known in my life). I guess I just like the simplicity and the honest ruggedness that these things symbolize. Yet I've noticed that when I go home to Texas, especially when I visit my family or very old friends, I feel compelled to put away the cowboy hat. I want to wear fashionable city clothes and put on airs and talk about my job and politics and religion. I want to conduct myself in a way that separates me from them and puts me above them. I guess I want to say, "I am NOT like you!" But when I come back home - the home I've made for myself - I relax back into a way of life that, in many ways, fits well with my Texas roots. Isn't that curious?

My life is a dichotomy. I've said this before. There are two people living in my head: a Texas good 'ol boy and an educated liberal activist. Now if that ain't a fine how-do-you-do! I don't claim to know everything. In fact, the older I get the more I realize I know nothing. I don't want to fight with the conservatives because I believe in Obama. I don't want to fight with the liberals because I drive a Super Duty. At best I just want to be friendly with everyone. If not that, then at least just let me live and do my thing.

I do find a degree of entertainment value in being a Super Duty-driving, gun-owning, cowboy hat-wearing Obama supporter who gives money to Greenpeace. I guess it takes all kinds.

TGIF

2010-04-16T14:05:00.000-06:00

Fridays are especially good when you're working from home and don't have a heavy workload. Naps are wonderful.

Insert Title Here

2010-04-15T22:53:00.004-06:00

I spent the better part of last week in DC. It was mom's 55th birthday and she's always wanted to go. There's no time like the present, as they say.

We had a really great time. I'd been to DC a few times but there's so much to see and do I still haven't seen and done it all. One particularly notable new DC experience for me was the holocaust museum. It was probably the best museum I've ever been to. It also ruined the rest of my day, and kept me pretty bummed until I hit the gym tonight and got some endorphins flowing. I don't want to lose my high so I'm going to leave this subject at that.

So Facebook. It's kinda lame. After the initial shock of being slammed with reintroductions to so many old acquaintances, it kinda loses its power. I've also found that some people seem to be friend collectors. They want to "friend" me (and hundreds of others) but never want to actually communicate. People are strange.

Seems like I had a lot of things I wanted to blog about when I signed on, and now I can't really come up with anything more than some random thoughts - none of which I feel like expounding upon.

I think it's bed time.

Faces

2010-04-01T14:23:00.006-06:00

I've been Facebooking. I'll reluctantly admit it's not all that bad. I can't speak to the long term viability, but in the short term Facebook is having a big impact on me, and here's why. I've spent the last 18 years largely avoiding my hometown of Huffman and steering clear of old acquaintances. But when I have gone back I always find myself getting really sentimental. In the last few days, through the magic of Facebook, I'm seeing pictures of 35 year olds with families who, in my mind, should still be 18 year old kids with their whole lives ahead of them.

I'll cut to the chase. I'm crying inside and I'm trying to figure out why.

Maybe it's just the result of my mind trying to process so much information at once. Maybe it's a lot more than that.

I've been friended in recent days by people with whom I had complicated emotional ties as a kid. I've talked to a few people who just revealed to me that they had huge crushes on me. I had no idea. I've talked to others that I had such feelings for. Strangely, after 18 years those feelings seem to have resurfaced - although they are tempered considerably by age and wisdom. How strange that even after 18 years old joys and pains can bubble up as if they were there waiting just below the surface all this time. Makes me wonder if time really can heal all wounds, or if it simply distracts us from them.

I've learned of a number of former classmates who have died - cancer, car accidents and suicide started taking their toll immediately after graduation. It's weighing heavily on me.

I think part of the problem is that it has brought to the forefront of my mind my own mortality. In the aging faces of kids I once knew, I see myself. In their deaths, I see my own. But it's more even than that. I want to run home to Huffman and grab these people and hug them, and it's baffling me. It's like I want to go back in time, back when we were young and had the whole world at our feet - back before our futures were written, or at least before they were revealed. I want to push aside petty things. I want to push aside fear and insecurity and do it all over, but better. Better in that I want to talk to people I was afraid to talk to. I want to be nice to kids I was mean to. I want to forgive kids who were mean to me. I want to hug those that would soon die, and laugh with them one more time.

I realize I cannot go back in time. I realize that what's done is done. But I also realize that, if I live long enough, there will come a time 20 or 30 years from now when I'll look back on my 30's with a similar nostalgic, sentimental view. What will I regret at that time? What will I wish I could do if I had a single day to go back to being 35 and do it over again? Today is that day. I am 35 and my future is not yet written. What I will remember tomorrow will be determined by what I do today. I find some comfort in that.

Still, I wish I could understand where this pain in my heart is coming from. I'm even getting sad thinking that all of those innocent, silly kids, myself included, are now gone. They're adults now, doing adult things. The memories I have of those people are just that: memories.

I was thinking today that I've known these people longer - much longer - than anyone else in my life except for my immediate family. Some of these kids I remember from elementary school. For twelve years we climbed that ladder of public school together. Even those I wasn't close to, we still essentially grew up together. I think I need to see at least some of them. I need to see them face to face and talk to them. I think it's time for me to bridge who I was with who I am. I've been hiding from my other life for a long time, and I don't even remember why anymore.

It's Wolf Month, but Not For Me

2010-03-31T19:29:00.004-06:00

I'm so in the wrong career field.

April is Wolf Month, at least at the University of Colorado. It's a full month of lectures and exhibits about the biology, ecology, history and politics of the gray wolf in the United States, which is a really hot topic here in the West. Tonight was the kickoff. It was good.

I didn't actually learn anything though. I've read so much about the subject I could have given the lecture. In fact, questions were asked that the presenter didn't know the answers to. I knew the answers. It's funny, because after three years at the lab I still wouldn't be able to give a decent lecture on renewable energy. It's just not my thing. It's a paycheck. The natural sciences are definitely my thing. I know (and care) way more about my hobbies and personal interests than I do about my own career field. It's sad.

After the lecture I walked around the exhibits. I felt a stirring of emotion for my long-ago dream of being a biologist, which I sacrificed for the "easy money." I've blogged about this before.

Stuffed, dried and preserved specimens of wolves and their bones were on display. There were stuffed birds common to the Rocky Mountains, and you could push a button to hear sketchy recordings of their songs. There were panels of pinned insects and butterflies, boxes of "touch and feel" bones, dioramas, murals, fossil casts, informational plaques and all the other stuff you'd expect to find in a museum. I was in my element.

When the kids and housewives and other curious non-scientists were asking their questions: How many wolves are in Yellowstone? How many wolves does it take to kill a buffalo? Why aren't there wolves in Rocky Mountain National Park? I wanted to tell them. I didn't want to just answer the questions, I wanted to engage them. I wanted to paint the answers in their imaginations, and stir something within their hearts. I wanted to tell them a really good story.

I was in San Diego last week for work. I was part of a team from the lab who met with the Navy. They're interested and highly motivated in getting renewable energy on their bases. (It's an energy security thing, not a "green" thing for them.) All told it was me and seven really smart engineers. I have great respect for them and for their brainpower and dedication. But they're engineers. I'm not. I don't want to be. We met at their engineering headquarters, where all the "brains" of the Navy work. These people are mostly civilians who are employed by the Navy. It looked like a warehouse outside, and the inside was much worse. It was a maze of cubes with pictureless, windowless gray walls and dark, navy blue carpeting. The walls were gray. The ceiling was gray. It was dark. It was oppressive. It was very, very quiet and still - not in a peaceful way, but a sort of dead, joyless, soulless way. It was a prison. What furniture there was was all particle board and old. It smelled like a cube farm. It was your typical suburban office space, but with every trace of life and color drained from it. The only evidence of "fun" in the whole place was a sad little half eaten tray of mini cupcakes - chocolate, hastily frosted, plain, ignored - that looked like they'd been there a week. As I walked between the cubes I saw the cube farmers. Everyone looked the same: middle aged, a slight paunch, glasses. No decor to speak of. No color. No lively office clowns or brash secretaries. Everyone was quietly pecking away at their standard black PC's. It gave me the creeps just being there. There's no telling how much money these guys make, but personally I couldn't be paid enough to work in that mausoleum.

This, too, got me thinking about my own cube farm. While I have windows and sunshine, and there are some colorful people in my office, I'm still in a cube. Still attending regular staff meetings and filling out TPS reports. Still chained to a computer. Still manipulating numbers and shapes that I have a hard time associating with the real and tangible things they sort of represent. And while I quietly peck away at my plastic keyboard, frying my retinas on a hot computer screen, there are wolves roaming the wilds of Yellowstone. There are researchers following them, tagging them, writing papers about them and giving lectures on them. Their office carpet is yellow monkeyflower and Wyoming paintbrush. The walls are lodgepole pine, Engleman spruce and 1,000 foot slabs of limestone. Their ceiling is an endless blue sky, and their office mates are the wolf, the grizzly, the elk and the deer, the fox and the beaver and the coyote. As I peck away, there are kids wondering how many wolves are in Yellowstone, and why they can't see them in Rocky Mountain National Park.

Something has to be done.

Home Again

2010-03-27T21:46:00.004-06:00

I just got home from San Diego. It was a business/pleasure trip. It was so nice to feel 80 degrees again and to see the ocean and tropical plants. I had a great time.

But Californians can keep their bums, their gridlocked traffic, their smog and their overdeveloped urban world of orchestrated chaos. God I'm glad to be back in Colorado. Boulder is very good, but always when I come back from a trip to Urbania I feel the need to disappear deep into the wilderness and find my quiet cabin.

In other news, Boulder is going to have its first day in the 70's this week! And the farmer's market opens exactly one week from today! Woohoo!

Advice to the Young

2010-03-22T21:19:00.002-06:00

If you're under 30 and you have a craving for adventure, just go do it. You'll probably never have such a great opportunity again.

Go backpacking across Europe or Asia. Walk across America. Go work a summer job as a wrangler at a dude ranch. Do it before you have kids or a job that you'd be a fool to leave. Do it while you've still got time, before life ties you down, before sensibility destroys your ability to throw caution to the wind. There will always be time for college and a "serious" career, but the window to really taste life is very small indeed.

If Life were Like a Musical

2010-03-20T22:57:00.004-06:00

Ever had one of those awesome moments where you're just doing your thing, a song starts playing, and you just get overcome with the joy of that moment? For a moment it's like living in a musical.

Acceptance

2010-03-19T20:56:00.006-06:00

Did you know that, in terms of environmental impact, owning a dog is equivalent to owning and driving TWO gas guzzling SUV's simultaneously? It's mostly because of all the factory farmed meat and fillers in commercial dog food. In addition to that, dog waste spreads disease and pollutes millions of miles of waterways. Dogs are also a major killer of wildlife. Cats don't score much better and are a major cause of decline among songbirds and small mammals and reptiles. If you flush your kitty litter down the toilet, you're spreading Toxoplasma gondii, a parasite that infects and kills aquatic wildlife such as otters.

Wind turbines kill migrating birds, and new evidence suggests that the vibrations they produce may cause nervous system disorders in humans. To install wind turbines and solar panels, forests must be cleared. Deserts must be covered. Habitat must be destroyed. Solar panels also contain highly toxic materials that are difficult or impossible to recycle. Electric cars use a lot of highly toxic batteries. Hydrogen is commonly made from coal, which produces carbon dioxide.

Studies have shown that "local" food isn't always the "greener" food. In the UK for example, it would take far more energy to grow strawberries and tomatoes in greenhouses than it would to grow them in Africa and ship them to the UK as is currently done.

The list is long and disturbing, and I'm learning that we modern people have two choices: party like there's no tomorrow, or try to conserve so the party is less wild but lasts a little longer. Either way, the party will end. There are just too damned many of us. And that, my friends, is a fact.

Biologists are quite familiar with a scientific concept called carrying capacity. Carrying capacity is simply the number of organisms an environment can sustain indefinitely. The concept is simple: a population grows slowly at first, then more and more rapidly. There are two possible outcomes: 1. the population levels off and reaches equilibrium with the resources the environment can provide. 2. a major spike in population shoots up beyond the carrying capacity, which is then followed by total collapse of the population. Basically, nature hits the reset button. It's nothing magical or mystical. It's just math. I've read nothing to indicate that any credible scientist or study suggests that anything but number 2 is the path we're on.

I believe I've reached a new phase in my life: acceptance. It's good in that I'm a whole lot less stressed (and thus happier) these days because I just don't worry about stuff very much - especially the things I have little or no control over. It's kinda sad though because the passion I had, that foolish hopefulness that the world could be saved and we could all live in some kind of harmonious Eden, is fading. My passion for things has always been one of my key personality traits. I'm known for it. Who am I without it?

To be clear, it isn't that I don't care about saving the whales or local agriculture anymore. I do. Outwardly I haven't really changed my habits in any obvious ways. I still think saving the whales is the "right" thing to do, though I must admit I don't know what "right" means anymore. The big change for me is internal. I can eat my local, seasonal produce and not get stressed or angry or exasperated if my neighbor doesn't, because I now think that ultimately it won't matter anyway. He's not destroying our society. I'm just delaying the inevitable.

I just don't believe our technology can save us. I believe, and this is just me, that we'll never be able to invent a clever enough machine or system to replace the natural system that nature put into place. No matter how "green" our cars or our cities become, they won't be sustainable, nor will be our population. Only small, dispersed groups of stone age humans can achieve true sustainability, as the North American native tribes had done for 10,000 years. The only way we can last is to live by nature's rules, but ironically by our own nature our culture can't seem to do that. We like to write and re-write, and re-write again our own rules, and pretend that we can overrule the natural world that created us - a world we're still very much a part of no matter if we choose to pretend otherwise.

I'm going to drive my truck and I'm going to love it for the simple joy it brings me, pink haired lesbians, pretentious cyclists and other ignorant Boulder do-gooders be damned. I'm going to relish the return of the farmer's market simply because it brings me joy, regardless of what affect it may or may not have beyond my tastebuds and my health. I'm still going to buy mostly American because it's something I like to do. I'll continue to hope my choices are having a positive effect on the world, but the Cult of Green is no longer my religion.

I'd like to talk a little bit about my last comment. Are you familiar with the concept of original sin? Many Christians believe we're all born sinners, and that our purpose is to spend our lives sacrificing pleasure to try and achieve a level of perfection that, by definition, we can never actually achieve. Seems a little strange, doesn't it? Why would God do that? It's as if you took a little kid, told him he's an awful, lowly, disgusting form of life, then put him in a magical candy store and said, "You have to spend your whole childhood in this store, and the only way I'll forgive you for being the disgusting, imperfect creature that I made you to be, is if you never touch any of the treats with which you must live. Every candy you could ever want is in this store, and I gave you a taste for them all, but you have to eat boiled spinach every day and never touch the candy, and only then can I forgive you for being the person I made you to be."

What?

Well whatever biological issue that made humans invent religion and believe stupid stories like the one above is alive and well even in the non-Christians. Baptists, the Taliban and Greenpeace all have one thing in common: a fanatic devotion to a fanciful, intangible notion that gives them hope but, sadly, isn't real. I think it had me too, because that's how I was living my life. Only I wasn't trying to get into a heaven in the clouds, I was trying to bring heaven to earth. A vegan friend of mine in Boulder is another great example. He's a vehement follower of the Cult of Green, as if he's morally superior to the infidels who eat meat and drive cars. The thing is, even if everyone on the planet lived like him - ate fresh produce throughout the snowy winter, had a posh office job, had plenty of clean water and nice clothes, had a pet cat, had a cute little suburban house, etc., we'd still be unsustainable. We'd still have to wipe out species to put up wind farms and ship our produce from some exploited African farmers. Sorry, but there aren't enough resources for 7 billion of us to be suburbanites with cats. Not even vegan suburbanites. Owning a car, in his mind, is the Green equivalent of "evil," yet he has no problem hopping on the bus for work, or even hopping in the truck with me when I offer to take him snowshoeing. Seems hypocritical to me.

So if an atheist is someone who turns away from a religion that worships God, what do you call someone who turns away from a religion that worships Green?

It's funny. When I finally stopped believing in the Christian God after high school, it was both liberating and sad for me. I'm experiencing that all over again. You can stop believing in the Christian God without turning into a bad person bent on wreaking havoc on the world. It doesn't make you any less kind or compassionate. Likewise, you can stop believing in the Cult of Green without becoming bent on cutting down all the trees and laughing at the loss of the whales. The difference, I suppose, is that you no longer justify your actions as a moral obligation to some fantasy cause, however much false hope it may give you.

Actually, that's not entirely fair. I can't of course say that there is no God with anymore certainty than I can say that there is. Nor can I say with certainty that the recyclers and the wind farms of the world won't save us. Maybe they will. I can't know. There's nothing at all wrong with having hope for a brighter future and working to make it a reality. I do have hope and I'd be lying if I said it played no role in my decision making process. I'm just no longer carrying the guilt and self-righteousness as commanded by a fictitious deity who makes empty promises.

Daddy's Back!

2010-03-18T20:16:00.003-06:00

Turns out it wasn't such a long 20 days after all. I bought a Super Duty today.

Now hear me out. I did NOT buy the $60k dream Super Duty. Another dealership down the road just happened to have a used one that caught my eye in a big way. I was just innocently driving by when I saw it and cut across three lanes to fly into the dealership parking lot. Clearly the Universe wanted me to have a truck. Now. This particular rig was my dream Super Duty back in 2007. It's got all the bells and whistles that they had in '07, it's the exact color I wanted, AND it has the bonus of being outfitted with some seriously aggressive wheels and tires. HOT!

The great thing is I picked it up (after a lot of haggling) for a mere $28k (which I verified IS the KBB value) so I kept the Yaris! This truck will definitely get me by until the 2012 Super Duty comes out. It's so sweet! I'd post a pic but it's dark now, and the truck'll be covered in a foot of snow by morning. I'll post a pic next week when it feels like (and actually is) spring again.

Why did I bother to keep the Yaris? I like it. It's my Bouldermobile. And I like Gerard having something to get around in (he won't drive anything bigger than a Jeep). Also I like to be able to park on the front row at Whole Foods and take just one parking space. The Yaris is for in-town errands and occasional jaunts to work, while the Super Duty is for out-of-town, the horse ranch, moving crap, hiking and snowshoeing expeditions, road trips and just plain cruising on beautiful summer afternoons.

And while I'm on the topic of the Super Duty, I've done a lot of reading up on this forthcoming redesign. One thing I thought was particularly intriguing was that its max towing capacity will actually be such that if you were to load that beast up to the max, you'd legally be required to get a commercial trucker's license to tow the load. Wow! I had to pause and asked myself, "Why on earth would you ever need that?" Well I wouldn't. But it would sure be cool (in my world) to have. In addition, this'll be Ford's first 100% American made diesel engine, and it'll also be the cleanest one yet produced. In talking with a co-worker who specializes in hydrogen fuel technology, I learned that diesel engines in the US are actually 10% more efficient than gas engines, and the technology is in place to boost that to 20%.

I'll be following the buzz on Ford's new engine closely over the next 20 months. I bet you can't wait to read all about that.

I'm so ready to hit the open road again.

Tuesday Night on the Town

2010-03-16T22:13:00.004-06:00

I don't think I've had this much to drink on a Tuesday night since college.

Patrick, a 28 year old brilliant scientist and co-worker who just returned from his latest stint in Vienna presenting on his integrated assessment model, invited me to The Kitchen for their monthly community beer and wine tasting. It's by reservation only, and everyone gets seated at a big community table. Over 4 hours, we're served multiple courses, each with a beer and wine, that fits whatever theme they're featuring that month. Tonight it was something about the Ides of March, St. Patrick's Day and some other nonsense, so the food/beer/wine was Roman and Irish. Strange, but it worked. The food at The Kitchen is really good. It's one of my favorite Boulder restaurants. It was also the first time I'd ever been served wine by a sommelier. It was pretty cool. I actually learned just a little bit about pairing wine and food, though I have to say I still think it's mostly bullshit.

Boulder is such a weird and fun place. At our table, there was a 25 year old girl who was, by her own admission, a gold digger. She likes to date rich older men. She's also smart. She has a degree in biology and works in biotech, and she's missed only one of these events in the past two years. There was a nice woman who has her own PR company, and her likable but incredibly crass husband who kept insisting in a good natured way throughout the evening that Patrick and I were going to fuck before the night was over. (We didn't of course. It was never a question.) There was the German woman who apparently ranks third in the US among women runners, and who talked incessantly about running. There was the 55 year old fat married man wearing high heels and a blouse who, apparently, just likes to "shake things up" and kept hitting on the 25 year old biotech girl, which she clearly found exasperating. There were two strapping young men, dressed almost the same, who I couldn't figure out if they were gay or straight, and a few other couples at the other end of the table I didn't really get a chance to talk to very much. Then of course there was me and Patrick, and our really fun beer and wine experts who just circulated telling us all about our many beverages and being good natured despite the table they were serving. We were also visited in regular intervals by the chef, who explained where all of the food items came from, how he prepared them, and how he came up with the combination of flavors.

It was quite an awesome night. The conversation ranged from integrated assessment of renewable energy, to running, to sex. I thoroughly enjoyed myself. At one point I found myself separating from the moment, just sort of stepping back and looking at the big picture of my life. On the one hand I want nothing more than to have my ranch, my monster F350 and to spend a whole lot of time running the roads and traveling. But on the other, here I am, a "scientist" by title, with an awesome (albeit desk) job having a $75 per head meal at a table full of the most eclectic mix of strangers in this freaky fun town. Life can be so weird, and despite my complaints I recognize how lucky I am. I'm lucky to be able to experience just a little more of the weird, wild world than most of the rest of my family. I'm lucky to have choices in life.

Most of the people I've met in Boulder have been to far flung places. They've traveled the world, they speak multiple languages, they've got multiple degrees and have so many crazy stories to tell. Compared to them, I'm plain as vanilla. But compared to my roots, I'm the one with a the wild adventurous life. I guess, again, it's all about perspective. Relativity. I sat at the table tonight drinking my beer and smiling, and thinking how very lucky I am just to be out in the world.

It just sucks that I have to go to work tomorrow.

It's My Obsession

2010-03-16T17:01:00.004-06:00

612 days.

I called the Ford dealer - the one holding my dream Super Duty. I told him that after a long, careful, painful consideration, I would have to decline their best offer. It is the financially responsible thing to do. The Yaris has 3,212 miles on it. I haven't even taken it for its first oil change yet.

My stomach is in knots over this. I am almost completely blinded by my desire to possess this thing. Almost. I have just enough self control to say no, but just barely.

Why bother? Can I afford it? Yes. But even at 0% interest, a $60,000 truck financed for 60 months equals a payment that even I haven't been able to justify. But I have calculated that, if I stick to a strict budget, then on November 18, 2011 I'll have enough cash to buy the truck outright. No financing, no payments, no worries. Hella bargaining power.

612 days.

Of course there are still 20 days left for 0% financing. It's going to be a long 20 days.

Broomfield

2010-03-14T17:45:00.003-06:00

Every now and then I start to feel trapped, or maybe it's just that I'm needing a change, but I start thinking about moving out of Boulder or, at the very least, to a different part of Boulder. Maybe some place a bit cheaper where I won't be wasting so much money on rent while trying to save for a house in the country. For example, if I moved 15 miles away to Broomfield, I could get an apartment that's twice as nice for half the price.

This weekend I did some apartment shopping. One of my stops was in Broomfield. I spent a lot of time trying to get a feel for the place, to see if I could live there for a year or so. It's total suburbia, the kind of place I've long shunned. But it's 15 minutes closer to work, and the apartment I looked at is very nice. It's brand new, has a big, modern floor plan, massive closets, enormous kitchen, brand new appliances, garage, big windows, year-round heated pool, allows dogs, etc. It's half the price of my current apartment, which has a single closet-sized bathroom, a couple of pantry-sized closets, no pantry at all, and a galley kitchen with appliances manufactured around the time I was born. But I do have the mountains and Boulder Creek, which is something Broomfield can never hope to offer.

The complex is completely surrounded by Big Box stores. You name it, it's there. Broomfield is suburbia at its finest. I was also scoping a gym, so I checked out 24 Hour Fitness which is right across the street. The young sales dude gave me the tour and asked if I was ready to join. I explained that I was actually living in Boulder but was considering moving to Broomfield in the summer, and was just scouting potential neighborhoods at this time.

"Oh man I love Boulder!" he said. "It's so quiet out there, plus you have the mountains! The people are so friendly. Wow, I'd love to live out there! But I can't afford the high rent, so I live here in this hell hole."

I decided I should give Boulder a harder look.

Learnin'

2010-03-12T22:15:00.002-07:00

They say you learn something new every day. That must be an average because I swear there are some days I don't think I learned a damn thing. Today was not one of those.

Today I learned:

1. That I'll be driving the Yaris for at least another year, probably two. I went to the Ford dealership earlier in the day. They had my dream truck on the lot. I mean, down to the last bolt, this truck was exactly what I would end up with if I could sit down and draw up the plans from scratch. It was $59,000. I drove it. I salivated over it. I caressed it. I sat in every seat. I looked at it from every angle. I tested every feature. I even applied for credit and worked the numbers. All I had to do was sign on the dotted line. But I drove off in the Yaris. This wasn't the agreement I made with myself when I bought the Yaris. Stick to the plan, man.

2. Biker bars aren't nearly as much fun as gay bars. Yes, I picked the place and organized an after-work happy hour. We did have a good time, and people at work seem to like this bar (which is why I picked it.) But I couldn't help but take note of the stark differences between the two kinds of establishments. When you go into a gay bar most of the patrons have gone to great lengths, or at the very least some lengths, to take care of themselves and make themselves attractive: nice clothes, fit bodies, fashionable hairstyles. And it's so easy to meet and talk to new people. But in a biker bar, it's all about how much fat you can squeeze into denim and black leather, and how much greasy gray hair you can stuff under a bandana. Have these people no pride at all?

3. Life can play very cruel jokes on you at times. Or so it seems.

4. My gaydar is seriously out of whack. Apparently I wouldn't know a homosexual if he smiled, winked and flirted with me week after week for over a year every time I went into Whole Foods. Or if he stared at me every time he passed my desk at work for months on end. Or if he was the slightly effeminate new guy who showered me with compliments and kept asking me what I was doing this weekend.

Gays are weird, straights are weirder, and people in general leave me exhausted.

Shelter

2010-03-07T21:55:00.003-07:00

There are a lot of terrible things in the world. It's easy to lose oneself in chaos and despair.

But now and then I'm reminded that, for all of the pain and darkness, there are beautiful things too. Not things. People. Moments. Blips in time that are so exquisite that they can make one forget, for a time, about everything else. So powerful are they that they can melt the heart and bring light into the deepest, loneliest places of one's soul - places we dare not venture within ourselves until the path is illuminated from without. For just a little while the world could not be any more perfect.

But always it fades. Always that thing that brought us so much joy grows dark and cold and disappears into the nothingness from which it seemed to come. We are left again in a cold, uncaring world. Only the memory of that blissful moment remains to keep us warm as the long night sets in. And I am left to wonder why. Why should it be that such a beautiful thing cannot last - if not eternal, at least then a single lifetime? Is that so much to ask from a Universe so large and mysterious?

Perhaps these moments are like a spring flowers, sure to fade but always sure to return again and offer a respite from the long bleak winter. Perhaps there is a very, very rare flower - a rose that blooms eternal. A flower so fragrant and stunning and full of magic that even the coldest winter wind cannot steal its warmth.

Perhaps I'll always be a hopeless romantic.

Procrastinating

2010-03-06T11:17:00.005-07:00

Lordy what a gorgeous sunny day. I've got the windows open. It's almost enough to make me forget that tomorrow is supposed to wet and cold.

I saw the first honeybees of the season and the crocus are now fully open. I also saw a couple of gardeners cracking open their sleepy garden soils. It does my heart good.

In totally unrelated news, here is one example of the many reasons I hate the world's ridiculous obsession with utterly useless technology: MeBot Seriously?

Looks like I'm going to be traveling to San Diego for work in a couple of weeks. I'm meeting with some Navy officials about renewable energy optimization on their bases. I may extend my stay and soak up some beach while I'm there.

In April I'm off to DC for mom's birthday, and in May mom is coming to Boulder for my birthday. I'm surprising her with a room at the Hotel Boulderado, one of her favorite spots in town.

June, July and August I plan to burn all of my vacation time: New York, Chicago, Portland, Yellowstone National Park, Sequoia National Park and the Grand Canyon are my top considerations.

But at the moment, I have 7.5 days until the quarter ends and all of my assignments must be submitted for final grades. With diligence and a dash of luck, I'll get it all done this weekend and I can breathe easy for a couple of weeks until the spring quarter starts. I'm so looking forward to summer.

Spring!

2010-03-05T21:40:00.006-07:00

Nearly every day this week was in the 50's, the first "warm" streak since last fall. Over the next five days it may not even dip below freezing at night. Woohoo! This morning while walking to the gym I noticed spring flowers in someone's garden! Yes, the good 'ol crocus, always first to push through the frozen soil in early spring, has graced us once again with its lovely yellow, white and purple flowers here in Boulder. More trees are starting to bud. Soon daffodils and tulips and green leaves will be everywhere, and I'm going to cry like a baby if a late winter storm throws a wrench in the works again this year.

I was just reading about the kickoff to the Star of Texas Fair and Rodeo in Austin. It's going to be eighty degrees in Austin next week. EIGHTY! That's like summer here! I'm really getting homesick thinking about all those Texans in their cowboy hats and trucks and short sleeves enjoying the rodeo while we're just barely starting to thaw out up here. There's still piles of snow taller than me outside.

But then again, we do have mountains. And wilderness unlike anything in Texas. When it's mid-August and Austinites are oppressed by scorching sun and 110 degree heat mixed with 90% humidity and smog, I'll be under a crisp blue sky enjoying 87 degrees and almost no humidity.

Who am I kidding. I love that Texas heat! I guess I just love it all: Colorado or Texas. Frigid snowstorms or scorching heat waves. Icy whitewater streams or tepid lazy rivers. Stuck-up vegan do-gooders or ass-backward conservative ignoramuses.

Wait, scratch that last set.

UPDATE: I just checked the weather. It's going to freeze every night and another snow is expected this weekend. Dammit!

Would it be extravagant if I flew to Austin next weekend, bought an F350 and drove it out to the rodeo?

Happy Texas Independence Day!

2010-03-02T20:43:00.003-07:00

Y'all!

Daily Affirmation

2010-03-01T19:19:00.002-07:00

I do NOT need a Ford F350 Super Duty even though they're 0% financing until April.

Lord help me.

Like a Moth to a Flame

2010-02-28T13:53:00.003-07:00

Last night I watched a movie called District 9. It was surprisingly good. In fact I'd rate it as one of the best sci-fi movies I've ever seen. But this isn't about the movie, but rather the effect of the movie and the larger picture beyond.

District 9 was both disturbing and touching, and after I finished watching it I felt stirs of emotion. I felt sadness for all the bad things people do to each other, and I started feeling guilty about all the bad things I'd ever done or even thought about doing to other people.

But I didn't get carried away. I'm a philosopher, remember? I just think about crap. It doesn't mean anything. Normally when a movie stirs something in me I dwell on the emotion. This time I extracted myself from the emotion and tried to examine why this movie made me feel this way.

In the movie there was lots of betrayal, misunderstanding and resulting violence. The story played my emotions in such a way that it caused me to start feeling guilt, to start comparing myself to the "bad guys" or at least the people with the really screwed up priorities. Why? How? What is it about that series of images on the screen that stimulated the flow of some chemicals in my brain and completely altered my mental state? It's just a movie. It's just a story. Yes, there are strong parallels between the movie and reality, but it isn't my reality, it isn't reality for anyone I know, and there's nothing I can do about it anyway. So why should it bother me? And why should it make me start comparing myself and my own deeds to fictional characters who've done far worse than I ever have?

I suppose the spiritual side of me would say something about my repulsion for things that are "wrong" or "evil" or my "connectedness" to doing "good" and "right." I'm full of love. I have a heart. That sort of thing.

But perhaps the scientific side of me would say it's nothing more than chemical reactions. Like all primates and most animals, we're visual beings. We see something, and we've got a biologically programmed response hard coded within. An elk sees a wolf, or anything that looks like a wolf, and it instantly goes on the alert. It'll probably run. Like other primates, we're social creatures. We "care" about each other because it's beneficial for the survival of the group. Even in modern society where much of the reason for our actions has been obscured, the programming is still there. For example, humans are so easily seduced by junk food because, in nature, foods that contain fat, salt and sweet, and that's easy to obtain, are highly desirable because they occur so infrequently. Extra calories are good when starvation looms around every corner. But our programming didn't account for being surrounded by sweet, salty and fatty foods at all times, and as a result we're fat. Very fat. Unlike every other living thing, we have to go against our programming and choose fresh vegetables over McBurgers, and make ourselves run and lift heavy things in order to stay healthy and lean. Every other species does exactly the opposite, just as they are programmed to, and it works well in the wild. When we do as we're programmed, we become this guy.

It's known that in many animal species, the presence of babies produces a chemical change in adult males to make them more docile, even protective, of the offspring. Do they "love" the babies or is it merely beneficial for the species if dad doesn't eat them?

This interests me because of my tendency to internalize things. I'll visit a historic site where some great tragedy occurred, and then for days I'll be seriously bummed about it. "How can I go about living a happy-go-lucky life when so much tragedy lives in the world?" That's the summary of my thoughts almost every time. But why? There has always been tragedy in the world and there always will be. My being down about it isn't going to change any of that. This isn't a great revelation, but there's a difference between knowing something and knowing something. It's the difference between knowledge and wisdom. A brain full of facts doesn't make one wise. It's knowing how to use what's in the bucket that makes one wise.

I've been applying all of this to different aspects of my life with interesting and so far pleasing results. Is it wrong to say "I don't care" and then act like you really mean it? Where does one draw the line? Does there even need to be a line and why? According to who? In the end, how much of this matters?

I had brunch this morning with an extremely liberal friend of mine. We had some lively debate at the table. I find myself more and more disagreeing - quite strongly, at times - with the ultra-left. It's not that I'm agreeing more with the ultra-right; they're nutcases too. I suppose I find myself drifting somewhere near the middle, though arguably my "middle" is still very much hugging the left. I'm just not subscribing much to extreme views these days, no matter how happy or optimistic they may sound, partly because I'm less certain of them, and partly because I don't think it really matters. I guess if I were to summarize my attitude lately, I'd put it like this: "I'm going to do what makes me happy, and do what I know I must in order to increase my happiness. The rest of you can go to hell." Though of course that's not entirely true. I may be eating some bananas now, but I still believe in the myriad benefits of eating local and haven't abandoned doing what I think is "the right thing" for my body, my community and my taste buds. I guess the real change has come from me pretty much losing hope in "saving the world" and asking myself why I ever cared at all about the perpetuation of the human race. Do I really care if people are still walking the earth in 500 years? Nope. The Universe brought us here, and it will do with us as it sees fit. All of the craziness, all of the good, the bad and the ugly are not of my design and not within my control. Oh sure I don't want to bring unnecessary suffering to my fellow human, but it is a dog-eat-dog world. Nature set it up that way, not me, and I've found some level of comfort or acceptance with that which works for me.

And I'm not done with trying to give something back to the Earth. Some people think they're giving back by not eating animals. Others like to recycle or drive hybrids or write books about global warming. Yet others just like to make the rest of us feel guilty for being alive. As for me, I give back in my own way too. The greatest way I know to give back is to never have kids. No disrespect at all to people who have kids or plan on having kids. Thank God my mom had kids. But for me, I just want to have some fun and extract more joy out of life, even if it isn't maximally green. I mean, why not? Being "green" only delays the inevitable. Even if we all became model "green" citizens, the earth simply cannot support ten or fifteen billion people. I can't see the future, but maybe it's our lot in life. Viruses don't worry that they're going to kill their host. They just have a field day until the lights go out. Introduce rats to Hawaii and they go nuts, with no regard for how many species they wipe out or what'll happen when they eat themselves out of house and home. Maybe it's right, maybe it's wrong, but that seems to be how nature designed things. I suppose our real curse, unlike the rat and the virus, isn't our eventual demise, but our ability to see the consequences of our actions without actually being able to stop ourselves from acting.

So if you're one of the 2% of all humans alive at this moment who has a safe, comfortable place to sleep, fresh water to drink, enough food to eat, a government that can't totally oppress you and enough of your faculties to realize it, then let's toast. Drink to the good times and celebrate your incredible good fortune, because as far as we can tell you are indeed a rarity in the Universe.

Cheers.

Homesick Blues

2010-02-26T15:43:00.004-07:00

Today is Go Texan day. I never appreciated it until I moved from Texas.

Sometimes I get a little homesick and today is one of those days. It's gorgeous and sunny, and I wore short sleeves for the first time since last summer, though it's still only in the 40's outside and there's plenty of snow on the ground. Maybe I'm just missing the Texas heat.

I'd like to just hop in my F350 right now and drive to Austin. Take a walk around Town Lake. Have a beer at The Ginger Man. Get nekkid at Hippie Hollow. See McKinney Falls. Hug a few friends.

Then you know what I'd do? I'd hop in my truck and head west again. I'd like to lose myself at Big Bend for a week. I'd like to sleep under the stars next to a giant saguaro in Arizona. I want to wake up with the sun on the edge of the Canyonlands in Utah, with no sign of another human being. I just want to wander and roam. That sounds good. That sounds real good.

The Mailbox

2010-02-25T16:15:00.002-07:00

It's always a tense situation, checking the mailbox. Sometimes I'm excited, expecting a package. But always I have this little fear that something's going to show up and just piss me off. It happens every now and then. Years ago I got a letter from an insane ex's lawyer, threatening to sue me for breaking up and, apparently, stealing his socks. You'd think that after being in a relationship with me for five years he'd know I don't wear Wal-Mart socks.

Right before Christmas, of all times, I got not one, but TWO letters from the IRS within a month of each other. One said I hadn't reported some income from the previous year. The other said I hadn't reported some income from THREE years ago. They were right, and both were honest mistakes on my part, but it still sucked.

Today I had another double whammy. Apparently I was caught by one of Boulder's mobile cop-in-a-box cameras driving 30 something in a 25 through a neighborhood. Forty bucks. I also had a letter from the City of Milford Texas, telling me there was a warrant out for my arrest because I owed them $139.50 for a speeding ticket I got in February, exactly TEN YEARS AGO almost to the day. I clearly remember that incident. I was driving to Dallas on a rainy night. I was 25 years old and speeding and probably deserved the ticket, but that was the most Godawful little hell hole of a one-horse town to get a speeding ticket in. I had to drive all the way back out there to see the judge. I waited for about 3 hours in a dirt parking lot with about thirty other people, wondering if he was even going to show. None of wanted to leave because no one could have possibly lived within 100 miles. The judge finally showed up in his jeans and hat, driving a beat up old pickup. The "court" was a little shanty, the shell of a house probably 100 years old. After an absurdly long, rude ordeal that ended up consuming an entire day of my life, the judge wouldn't let me off. He didn't let anyone off that day, and something told me he never did. Speeders were undoubtedly their only source of revenue. Whatever happened after that, I apparently never finished paying off the ticket, or if I did the memory and records of it are lost to time. I guess they decided that after ten years they might aught to try and collect their money. I paid it. I got a confirmation number this time.

Other than this, I got a few of my regular bills and the usual junk mail. See, I really have no choice but to shop online at Williams Sonoma so that going to the mailbox won't always be such a drag.

To Everything There Is a Season

2010-02-24T22:51:00.004-07:00

A few tidbits of news, for what they're worth:

1. I'm lovin' the gym again. Since I've officially become a philosopher, I've also rediscovered my burning desire to have my arms rip the seams of my shirtsleeves.

2. I buy bananas and I don't care. Yeah I'm still mostly local, but you know, whatever. It's just a banana.

3. I'm taking Mom on her once-in-a-lifetime dream vacation for her birthday in April: Washington, DC. I know it's not all that exotic but she has dreamed of this her whole life (she hasn't gotten out of Texas much.) I've got the tickets, the hotel downtown, and a rough agenda scratched out. I told her tonight and she screamed on the phone. It took her an hour to calm down enough that I felt comfortable letter her hang up. I'm really looking forward to it.

4. I've stopped competing at work. I'm still going to learn some programming because continuing ed is a good thing, but I'm an analyst, not a programmer. I'm not the top analyst, but I get my work done and they're paying me well so I've got nothing to bitch about.

5. I'm buying a new truck. But not yet. The car is great and all, but I'm a truck man. I've already set up a financial plan for getting the ultimate truck, the wet dream of every cowboy or Texan who needs to feel like he's got a ten inch dick. Picture it: 2012 F-350 Super Crew long bed 4x4 Lariat in sterling grey metallic. The new super-clean burning 6.4 liter V8 Turbo Diesel engine (to be introduced next year.) Power everything. Heated leather seats. Navigation system. Towing package. Telescoping mirrors. Cab lights. Heavy duty bumpers, brush guard, fog lights, toolbox, and a whole lotta hell yeah! It's like my last truck, but with no expense spared. Why? Because I can, and because I want it, and that's all the reason I need. Watch out, because when I come home to Texas for Christmas in 2011, daddy's comin' Texas style!

6. Vegans annoy the caca out of me, God bless 'em.

Hints of Spring

2010-02-20T12:28:00.003-07:00

There are no tulips yet (outside of the Whole Foods floral department) but signs of spring are in the air. The early bird trees such as the cottonwoods have already put buds on, and the snow levels and temperature are both on the rise. It's been snowing lightly for days, and we're supposed to get up to 8 more inches by Monday night. I shoveled the sidewalk this morning and the snow was heavy and wet, a sure sign that spring is coming.

But the most exciting signs are the return of the northern flicker, which sings every morning and has already started hammering on the chimney, and tonight's annual Red Party, the first social gathering I ever attended in Boulder, and where I met my first Boulder friends.

Yeehaw! I'm ready.

Eureka!

2010-02-12T22:02:00.003-07:00

The other morning I woke up, sat straight up in bed, and said, "Holy crap, I'm a philosopher!"

Just to make sure, I did a little research on exactly what a philosopher is, and I'm pretty satisfied that I fit the description. I don't know why this never seems to have occurred to me before. I also don't know why the label helps, but it does. My favorite thing to do, it seems, is think. My blog clearly demonstrates how tortured I often am by my thoughts - not that they're so terrible, but rather that they're so voluminous. It doesn't have to be anything that means anything, though a lot of my time is consumed by thinking about things that I believe are important. "You think too much!" I've always been told. I guess having a label for it helps me shrink it down, put controls on it, manage it. It's not so mysterious when it has a name.

I've found that I've been lighter of spirit since that little "aha" moment. I went to the gym and worked out. I completed 10 more chapters in my ActionScript book and didn't even complain about it - and as a result I was able to talk some ActionScript with my co-workers which felt kinda cool. I ate at a restaurant and didn't worry that it wasn't local or organic. I watched some PETA demonstrators downtown and didn't even get angry. I had a few beers and didn't go to that dark place. I've even laughed a few times. I've kinda felt like my old self, like the person I was before I despised society so much.

I've just kinda felt like, what's the point of being so dark and brooding all of the time? The world is what it is, no matter how happy or grumpy I may be. Just roll with it.

Of course I'm not just going to dump all of my beliefs. But maybe I can quit internalizing so much, and just let the world be.

The Rat Race

2010-01-29T17:38:00.004-07:00

I'm two days into my coding bonanza and I feel like I'm dying. Seriously.

There's a guy at work I've mentioned before. He really truly seems to get off on this stuff. I mean he goes home from work and continues to work. It's as if he wouldn't know what to do with himself without programming. He's hyper active, always loud and running that mouth a mile a minute, and completely consumed with his little web apps.

So he spends days - weeks - working on something, typing strings of incomprehensible letters and symbols. When he's done, he clicks a button and neat things happen on a computer screen. Whoopty-freakin-do. That's how I feel about it. It's like watching a magician. He does a card trick, everyone oohs and aahs, and then everyone goes home. At the end of the day it means nothing to me. There's no miracle in code. You can't eat code or clothe yourself in code. It's nothing more than fancy card tricks. I can't make myself love this. I can make myself learn it, but I can't make myself enjoy it or care about it. It's like being trapped in a loveless relationship. It sucks.

How long can I keep this up? My life is slipping by one dull throbbing day at a time. I don't want a new job. I don't want a new life. I just want to take a different path. There must be one that doesn't cut through a cube farm, that won't leave me a homeless drifter, or won't work me like a slave. No, that's not asking too much. There are people in this world who do what they love. Maybe our programmers really are fulfilled, though I have my doubts. I think his overzealousness comes from a need to be the best at something, but this isn't about him. I need to be one of those people whose life revolves around his passions. I don't mind hard work. In fact I like it. It just needs to be something I believe in, something real, tangible, meaningful. Something, perhaps, a little more natural like building a home or carving up an elk carcass as opposed to frying my eyes and working up a nasty case of carpal tunnel behind a godforsaken computer.

I shouldn't be quite so hard on computers. I like mine pretty well when I'm recording my thoughts. Maybe writing for me is like programming for others. And composing an essay or writing a book is a hell of a lot nicer to do on a computer than with pencil and paper. I really shouldn't be hard on programmers either. I need to figure this out and get a grip. I need to make something happen.

I need to write my book, buy my ranch and live happily ever after.

Technobabble

2010-01-29T00:47:00.004-07:00

Did you know you can geocode on a Mac with just a few lines of Python script? It's true. I just did it. No ESRI and no Windoze necessary.

I'm not a programmer but I'm being forced by peer pressure to learn it. The lab has been on a balls-to-the-wall hiring bonanza and everyone we hire is young, idealistic, brilliant and loves coding. Damn it all to hell.

It's actually not all that bad. The thought of programming on a Windoze machine makes me want to jump off a cliff, but somehow doing it on my Mac is almost appealing. Almost.

I just spent the last 24 hours, minus a few hours for sleeping and eating, working through an entire 400+ page "classroom in a book" on Flash. I've also been learning Python, and soon will dive headlong into Flex, and I'm going to have no choice but to pick up some Javascript along the way as well. Oh, and all of this is besides my full time graduate work doing Google mashups and studying environmental applications for GIS. I'm literally chained to my computers. Just plug me into the Matrix and be done with it.

Cartography these days is a whole new game. Everyone wants pretty, functional, interactive web maps, and if I can't deliver then I get left behind. It is kinda fun, I admit. I never would have dreamed I could make the kind of money I make these days and get to do it playing with Flash and Illustrator on a Mac. And you should see the way peoples' faces light up when you show them their data in a gorgeous web map that they can pan, zoom and turn things on and off. They think it's magic.

I'm trying to tell myself that I might as well give in and try to cultivate some real passion for this because it pays the bills and lets me live quite well. Being a mountain-man-cowboy won't pay the bills, although being a published author certainly could, and writing is the only thing I love as much as my mountain-man-cowboy fantasy. But I have no time for writing much of anything these days. Even this blog is cutting into my sleep time tonight.

Born in the Wrong Century

2010-01-24T21:55:00.004-07:00

We've been doing a lot of snowshoeing lately. This is Emerald Lake in Rocky Mountain National Park.

A couple of years ago I bought an old straight razor for shaving, but I never could get a nice edge on it. I came across it today and did a little research. It's a Joseph Elliot, and this particular model, with a wooden handle, was manufactured between 1820 and 1850! How many faces this little instrument must have shaved in the last 160-190 years!

I found a service that can restore old razors like this one. I'm going to mail it off tomorrow and hopefully in the next 4-6 weeks it'll be good as new! I'm pretty excited about it.

I also took the liberty to hand write the letter I enclosed with the razor. It's so rare that I hand write anything these days, and when I do it's never more than a word or two. It felt good to write sentences and see what it looked like. I even wrote it with a pencil - not a plastic, disposable mechanical pencil, but a real wooden pencil by Forest Choice. Supposedly these pencils are manufactured from trees in "well-managed forests" and don't contain paints or other toxic materials. It's not as green perhaps as a quill pen and homemade ink (which I know how to make and am waiting for this autumn's walnut harvest for the raw materials for my ink) but it'll do for now.

I actually spent the entire weekend chained to my computer. My classes this quarter are particularly time consuming, and work is kicking my butt too. There's just a lot going on. I've noticed that the more the modern world tries to tighten it's grasp on me, the more I resist it and long to escape it. Maybe my 190 year old straight razor or homemade pen and ink aren't going to save the planet or mean anything at all in the grand scheme, but they bring me comfort I can't quite explain.

I kinda lost it today in one of my online classes. There's an ongoing discussion forum on the topic of fire modeling. We're discussing the technology behind predicting the spread of wildfires using GIS. Some goofy girl said something innocent but stupid about how she hopes GIS can help stop all forest fires and we can all live happily ever after. I launched into a multi-paragraph diatribe about the incredible ecological benefits of natural fires, and how today's wildfires are the disastrous result of white man's superiority complex, brought about by his technology and misguided belief that preventing forest fires will somehow be better for the environment and our pocketbook. By stopping the small, natural fires, we've created millions of acres of land with decades of unspent fuel. Now when fires do ignite by lightning or a careless camper, they turn into massive blazes that create their own weather systems and send roiling clouds of ash and cinders a thousand miles into the sky. Rather than grooming forests and rejuvenating the landscape, the obliterate everything in their path. As I pointed out to her, it's our over-reliance, our unquestioning faith in our own technology and presumed brilliance that created the environmental problems we so desperately seek to "manage" today.

Sometimes I really wish I could go back to the year 1750, wander off into the western wilderness, befriend some natives and just do my thing like the early mountain men did. Maybe it would suck, I don't know. But the fantasy sure sounds nice. Insofar as I can guess, the only thing I'd miss is books. I like learning about food and nature, and what's going on in the natural sciences. But I suspect that life might make up for that because if I were friends with the natives I could learn a lot of cool things about the natural world that you just can't get in books. I wouldn't need to read about balance in the natural world because I'd be living it.

Log Cabin Home in the Sky

2010-01-18T21:04:00.003-07:00

All around this wide country the winter has now begun
Now is the time to slip away from the hot and blazing sun
To a place where a man is free as the wind
As wild as the huskies' cry

Winter is nigh let us fly to my log cabin home in the sky

With snow piled all around my door
And many a log on the stove
With the chickadee's singin' a comforting song
I'll show you it's you that I love
O let the wolves howl, they won't find us there
By a soft oil lamp we will lie

Winter is nigh let us fly to my log cabin home in the sky

Now there comes a time in every man's life
When he must turn his back on the crowd
When the glare of the lights gets much too bright
And the music plays too loud
To a place where a man is free as the wind

As wild as the huskies' cry

Winter is nigh let us fly to my log cabin home in the sky

Message

2010-01-17T07:08:00.007-07:00

In the wee hours this morning I found myself fighting to stay asleep, to continue a dream I didn't want to wake from. But as it is with these things, my body would have none of it, and I was extracted from my fantasy despite my best efforts.

I dream a lot, and my dreams speak to me. But it isn't often I get a message like this.

I dreamt I was a character who was a hybrid between myself and Jack from the story Brokeback Mountain. I was taller, lankier than my actual self, with blended features both physically and emotionally. I was dressed in a dark brown, comfortably weathered cowboy hat, boots, a blue and white plaid shirt with the sleeves rolled up, faded wranglers and a worn leather belt with a big buckle.

I was floating in a river on a black inner tube, fully dressed. This river was lazy and murky and looked much like the Guadalupe. It flowed through forest and town, through places unknown to me. I remember the sky was dark and gloomy, but I could see. The time was neither night nor day, neither dawn nor dusk, but rather some perpetual, oppressive twilight.

I drifted silently down the river through dark forest, past farms and ranches, past suburban tract-house developments and back through the dark forest. I could see but drifted unseen. I passed one ranch where a fit, strong young cowboy was roping horses. He was completely naked but for his hat and roping gear. He roped a horse by the tail and dragged it to the ground. It lay panting and sweating in the dust, and the cowboy jumped off his horse and strode proudly around it, the glow of his lilly-white skin cutting through the dust that hung in the air.

"You're not a real cowboy!," I scoffed. "A real cowboy would never rope a horse by the tail!"

Other cowboys, fully dressed, gathered around to congratulate him on his accomplishment, seemingly unaware of his state of undress. My protests went unheard, and I was envious of his beauty and success. I drifted on past other homes and ranches and cowboys, past people walking dogs and having backyard barbecues, and no one took any notice of me at all.

Eventually I emerged from a section of dark forest and I drifted by a small house siting near the bank of the river. A familiar looking woman with a ghostly white face and thin red lips was standing in the back yard. As I passed she looked at me and asked with a soft country drawl, "Where ya goin', cowboy?"

"I don't know. I'm just waiting."

"Waiting for what?"

"I don't know."

"Well why don't you come on 'round the house while you're waitin'. I've got some wild stallions need ridin.' They're mostly gentle now. Mostly," she winked and turned away.

I hauled myself out of the river and walked around the front of the small ranch house. There was a dirt drive with a gate across it, which I passed through to get into the back yard. Lights were on inside the house, so I peeked in. To my shock, Memaw was standing in the window looking out at me. She was dressed very smart in a suit and looked healthy and strong. Behind her I could see happy people eating at a long table, but I couldn't see their faces. It looked so comfortable and inviting, but I didn't want to join them.

Memaw looked at me with a stern but concerned look, then walked away from the window.

The pale faced woman pulled an old van into the driveway and up to the gate. I ran to open it, and she drove in. Always she had this seductive smile on her face when she looked at me. It kinda weirded me out.

A moment later Memaw was standing next to me. "She's a washed up old celebrity," Memaw said to me of the pale faced woman. "She's got her eye on you, but you just mind your business and let me deal with her."

"Yes ma'am," I said, and she vanished again.

I spent hours riding the pale faced woman's wild stallions. I rode those broncs like nobody's business. They were beautiful and wild indeed - mostly shades of black and dark brown, with shiny coats, flowing manes and muscled bodies. They were full of the Sprit of the West - wild, magical, untamable. One could put their bodies in a corral, but one could never cage their spirit.

At first I was afraid, but in those moments when I sat atop the first wild horse, the cycle of life and death became clear to me in a way it had never before been. Death was as beautiful and precious as life, for they were two sides of the same coin. The Creator who had given the gift of life had also given the gift of death. They were not the beginning and the end, but rather doorways to different states of being. To waste a moment fearing death was to squander a moment of life. And so, fearlessly, I gave myself completely to the moment and for the first time lived my life to the fullest. I truly felt what it meant to be alive.

When all the horses had been tired out and had no fight left in them, I dropped to my feet and I leaned against the rail, dusty and exhausted, bruised and happy. The pale faced woman approached me. "I noticed you had a particular interest in that wild one there," she said, pointing to a yellow dun with an exceptionally free spirit.

"Yes ma'am," I said, looking into that horses eyes. I'd indeed made a connection with that one. We'd found something, some common ground, something in our souls I can't put to words. He was mine and I was his, and that's all I could articulate.

"Well," said the pale faced woman, "you'd better get him ready. I suspect it's a long journey home."

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"He's yours. You gotta take him with you. When soulmates meet nothing can part them. That's how God made it, see."

"But have no place to ride or keep him! I don't even own a..."

A voice from behind interrupted, "What he meant was that he'd be delighted to take that horse." I turned and Memaw was standing there. "Now you go get that horse ready to take home with you," she said to me.

"But Memaw I don't have..."

"Do it now and don't back talk me," she said. "Go on."

"Yes ma'am," I said and walked to get the horse. Later Memaw was next to me again. "Memaw, you know I don't own anything but the shirt on my back. You know I'd love nothing more than to have a ranch and take this horse, but..."

"But nothing," she interrupted. "You've got a ranch. All of the arrangements have been made."

Her face softened. She leaned in, kissed me on the cheek, and whispered, "That's why Memaw is here. I'm always here looking out for you. Now you saddle up that horse and ride home to that beautiful ranch in the mountains just like you always dreamed. Don't ever look back, don't have any regrets. I love you." And with that, she disappeared.

I started to wake up then, but as the dream faded I could see from the back of my yellow dun a vast ranch in a green valley ringed by forested, snow-capped mountains. There was an elk herd grazing by a clear, cold stream. A small cabin sat off in the distance, with warm yellow windows and a thin stream of smoke coming from the chimney. There was no human development for as far as I could see in any direction. There was no traffic, no strip malls, no pollution, no greedy corporations and no office cubicles. There were no clocks. It was just me and my horse, clear blue skies and a wild, unspoiled wilderness. The whole thing hummed to the timeless cycles of the seasons, was beautiful for its own sake, and answered to no one but God. It was heaven, and I was home.

Hunger

2010-01-14T10:01:00.005-07:00

Ever feel like a fish out of water?

I was sitting in one of our many office lounges at work the other day waiting for a meeting to start. I was a little early. I sat there looking around the room at all of the cheap suburban-style particle board furnishings and kitschy decor and wondered how I ever ended up here. This was not part of the plan.

Since my horseshoeing experience a few months back, I chilled out quite a lot in terms of my incessant obsessing about getting away from it all. I had a terrible hunger - indeed I was starving - for a taste of a more rugged, more deliberate life, and I was satiated by the experience. But lately I've started to feel those pangs of hunger again. My stomach is growling, and I'm starting to search for my next meal.

I hate this, actually. I feel like I'm on a rollercoaster. I go back and forth between intense desire to be packing in the mountains, and a sort of reluctant acceptance, tinged with guilt, for the cushy life I have now. I like the money. Sometimes I like that my job is cushy. But in the back of my mind, and often in the forefront of my mind, is a little voice saying, "Yeah, but you'd really rather be on a horse somewhere in the wilderness, where things like IKEA are just a bad dream."

One of these days I'm going to up and quit, ride off to Montana and never look back.

Daydreams

2010-01-12T16:35:00.004-07:00

AVATAR

2010-01-07T22:06:00.002-07:00

I watched it tonight. I cried through the whole thing. I mean I started like 20 minutes into it and didn't stop until the lights went up.

I could write a thousand pages and still not make you feel what it stirred in me.

I just want to sleep.

Rocky Mountain Home

2010-01-03T00:35:00.004-07:00

After two weeks in my old Texas stomping grounds, I'm back in Boulder. A two and a half hour plane ride and an hour and a half bus ride and I'm the happiest person in the world.

I stepped off the bus tonight and took a long, deep breath of that sweet Boulder air. A bright moon shone in a cold clear sky, making the snow covered ground glow a silvery blue. Boulder creek was tumbling and icy. And mountains. Those beautiful, beautiful mountains.

I soaked up every glorious moment of the stroll home. There I found Gerard with a smile and a warm hug. I ate a hot homemade meal of spicy pinto beans and fresh baked cornbread, took a hot shower and slipped into my favorite flannel pj's.

There is no screaming television. There are no strings of traffic backed up for miles. There are no interstates or tollways, no skyscrapers, no chemical-laced prepackaged factory "foods" and no rednecks. There's just me and the mountains, the snow, the creek, and my lovely, sleepy little town.

I don't mean to imply that my trip to Texas was miserable. It was not. I had a great time and I loved seeing my best friends and my family and visiting my favorite Texas hangouts. Some of the highlights of the East Texas portion of my trip were hiking with the family in the Big Thicket National Preserve, long wonderful talks with mom, getting a tour of the "new" Houston from Michelle and Gina, and hanging out by mom's pool. In Austin, it was chatting late into the night with Scott, sharing a beer at the Ginger Man with Elizabeth, dinner with Ragen at Truluck's, dinner at Eastside cafe, barbecue at Rudy's and Artz Rib House, breakfast at Kerby Lane with Keith, a long walk around Town Lake (I have a brick dedicated to me in the overlook at Town Lake and Barton Creek), shopping for boots at Allen's Boots, visiting Bookpeople, Tesoro's and the Whole Foods flagship store, strolling the capitol grounds and hiking at McKinney Falls State Park, and spending New Year's Eve celebrating with lots of friends, food and karaoke. No, I had a wonderful time in Texas just as I always do.

But the wide open spaces of the west call to me. The mountains and the snow and the solitude of places west of Austin - whether they be in Texas or Colorado - call to me. My home calls to me. I guess I'm an introvert, because people - however much I love them - drain my batteries. Quiet time restores my energy. Nature rejuvenates me. Privacy keeps me sane.

How I love my Rocky Mountain home.

Home

2010-01-01T21:13:00.002-07:00

It has been really great seeing friends and family, but I've had enough of traffic, strip malls, hydrogenated oils and that godforsaken television.

Boulder, take me away!

Austin Christmas 2009

2009-12-29T21:58:00.005-07:00

I finally made it to Austin yesterday. I loved spending time with my family and friends in Houston, I really did. But I shed no tears for leaving Houston itself. Though, I must say that Houston has really come a long way in the last ten years or so. Many of the ghettos have been redeveloped and are now quite nice. I'm just not a city guy. During the three hour drive from Houston to Austin, I felt my stress melting away as the urbanization dwindled and the rolling hills appeared.

Last night I had a fantastic dinner at East Side Cafe and walked around our beautiful capitol. This morning I immersed myself in Texas culture. Among other things, I bought a proper pair of boots, handmade in Texas of course, and ate barbecue at Rudy's. Then I spent an hour looking at and test driving the new Super Duties. I know, I know. I didn't buy one. I wasn't even tempted. But it doesn't feel right to come to Texas and not spend at least a little time behind the wheel of a truck. I actually found my dream truck - the one I'll be driving when/if the day comes that I get my ranch. But the $60k price tag, the 12 mpg fuel economy and the fact that I live in Boulder rather than on a Texas or Colorado ranch, ensured that, for now, the environmentalist in my head got his way and the cowboy had to keep his mouth shut. The cowboy has at least found some consolation in those new boots.

How Quickly We Forget

2009-12-23T07:28:00.003-07:00

Yesterday I saw my Aunt Snoopy, mom's sister, for the first time in nearly a decade. (Nearly our entire family has odd nicknames, and some of us have multiple nicknames that are used interchangeably. I need to sit my mom down and find out where these names came from.) I walked inside of Aunt Snoopy's "new" (to me) house and it was like a blast from the past. My family never seems to evolve. People get older, even get new houses, but it's like they're stuck in a time warp in terms of what's going on in the mind.

I love my Aunt Snoopy. She's as sweet as can be. But she, along with everyone else down in this part of Texas, have reminded me how different my life is today. They've also reminded me why I am the way I am. My Boulder friends wonder why I bought a Ford F350 Super Crew long bed 4x4, love my cowboy hat and dream of a ranch? They need only visit my family in Texas for a day and all of their questions would be answered. It even slapped me in the face.

Snoopy's house is pretty typical of what you'll see if you visit any household belonging to a member of my family: American and Texas flags flying on the flagpole out front, huge framed emblems of the Seal of Texas on the walls, mounted deer heads and other assorted animals placed around the house, paintings of cowboys, sculptures of cowboys, references to cowboys, trinkets and fridge magnets and t-shirts and coasters and dishes with Texas symbols on them, signs out front that say things like "We don't dial 9-1-1" next to an image of a pistol, sprawling property with several big trucks in the driveway, etc. And then there's that thick Texas accent. I swear I don't know how I ever lost mine. Maybe it was the same force that took me to college and out of Texas. I'm one of only two of all the family with a four year college education, and both of us left Texas. In fact, after we left Snoopy's house, mom and I drove around the country a little bit just looking. I commented how beautiful it was and how I still can't believe you can buy a huge house on 20 acres of land for $150,000 out here. I could have a garden that goes forever and all the horses I could stand! And every house has a Super Duty, standard. But mom said she didn't want me to move back. "I would love nothing more than to have you close to me, but you'd be miserable here. You're better than this. You would never be happy living around all of these backward rednecks. You'd miss the mountains. You'd miss Boulder. You'd miss being around all of those smart, educated people and doing good things for the world." And she's right of course. I'd have no friends here, not now. I've evolved too much. Kinda made me sad, actually.

Then this morning I awoke to rain - hot, steamy rain. It's the day before Christmas eve and it feels like a tropical rainforest outside. I read in the news this morning that Boulder is going to have 10 inches of snow on the ground by Christmas Day. I have friends there who are going skiing. There's a live webcam of Pearl and 11th on the front page of www.dailycamera.com. I've been watching it for the past hour. You can just see the restaurant Salt on the left side, and to the right is the Boulder Bookstore. People are walking on white sidewalks and I miss Boulder deeply.

It's funny. I really do love Colorado and Texas in equal but different ways. They are both home to me. I'm reminded of my road trip to Austin last summer and that moment when I realized there are two loves in my life.

Feels like Christmas in July

2009-12-21T09:17:00.005-07:00

It's not exactly tropical but it's close enough for me.

I'm at mom's house outside of Houston. This morning I awoke to a beautiful sunny day and sat out by the pool in the sunshine, barefoot and in shorts. It's the first day of winter. It's supposed to be near 70 today. Except for the higher humidity, it feels very much like early summer in Boulder.

The Christmas lights are up and everything in the house looks very festive, but I can't shake the feeling that it's summer. I grew up literally five miles from here and yet I find this surprising and disorienting. But I also find it comfortable and familiar. The big trees are just now dropping their brown leaves, a process we went through in Boulder months ago. I left Boulder with snow on the ground, and here I'm walking around like I'm at the beach.

I actually find it liberating. Sometimes in the cold of Colorado I start to feel trapped, though much less so now that I've had a few years to adjust. Often in the dead of a Colorado winter you can't leave the house without being bundled up in five layers from head to toe, yet here I am in Texas lounging poolside and contemplating a swim. But as I sat there wiggling my toes in the December sunshine I remembered the days when I fantasized about mountains and what it must be like to actually have snow at Christmas. It always bugged me that the Christmas cards and decorations depicted snowmen and wintry scenes, when outside the grass was green and short sleeves were in order.

I think I'm pretty lucky to have the opportunity to live in both worlds.

Bouldery Thoughts

2009-12-17T00:10:00.005-07:00

Why can't I sleep anymore? I'm normally zonked by 9:30 or 10, and lately I'm doing good if I'm asleep by 2AM.

I'm not worried about anything. To the contrary, life is better than it ever has been. I think that's actually the cause of the insomnia. I lay down in bed and my mind is just racing. I keep thinking of how incredibly transformative the last 3-4 years have been and how bright the future appears. Sometimes I can hardly believe my good fortune.

Maybe I need to take up triathlon training. That should wear me out sufficiently.

I'm thinking about building a website. It'd help me build my web skills for work, but would also let me host my own blog and build an online resource for all the things I'm interested in. For example, I'd have a whole section on food (surprise, surprise.) It might be fun to show how to milk a cow and then how to use raw milk and fresh cream to churn butter and make yogurt. I'd like to include facts and comparisons of raw, grass fed, local milk to that filthy white sugar water most people buy at chain supermarkets, and dispel myths about peoples' fear of raw milk. I'd like to list resources for American made clothing and reasons to buy American. I'd like to post maps and photos and even have a discussion board where people could (if anyone were so inclined) have a dialogue with me or with each other about things they find interesting. I'd also love to showcase all the things I love about Boulder, including my favorite local businesses.

For example, if you're ever in Boulder you need to check out Clutter. It's an upscale second hand/consignment shop downtown. It can be hit or miss, which is expected considering the nature of the business, but they frequently have pretty unique, quality things. Check out this video and pictures. I'm not a big consumer of stuff, but when I do want a new serving bowl or picture frame it's cool to get one that was made with pride and quality in the days before everything rolled off an assembly line in China. I love supporting local businesses. The owner is really great and so are her employees. We walk by there all the time and sometimes we just drop in to say hi.

Then there's Spruce Confections, the bakery on Pearl St. They make one of the tastiest cookies ever: the Old B. And you have to have dinner and drinks at The Kitchen which serves a lot of local foods, converts their cooking oil to biodiesel and powers their restaurant with wind. Then there's the Hotel Boulderado, the oldest and most posh hotel in town which also has incredible food. If you're in the market to buy or just rent a bike for a day, hands down it's University Cycles. Need something to wear? Check out Weekends. The owner is a super awesome guy. For the best cup of coffee anywhere, go to The Cup. Wanna know where the locals go for an awesome local brew and a good burger? Try Mountain Sun. They even brew their own fantastic root beer. Need hardware or appliances or anything you might generally find at Wal-Mart? Sorry, but we're fortunate enough not to have a Wal-Mart in this town. But we do have a healthy alternative: McGuckin Hardware! And unlike Wal-Mart's false advertisements, McGuckin really does carry American made goods as often as possible, and you'll NEVER find better or more attentive service. NEVER.

Then of course there are the events and entertainment such as the farmer's market, the Boulder Creek Festival, the Hometown Fair, the coolness that is Chautauqua, the Boulder Theater, E-Town, Banjo Billy's Bus Tours, the annual naked pumpkin run, the Happy Thursday Cruiser Ride, First Bite Boulder and much more.

Don't forget about the outdoor recreation for which Boulder is famous. This includes the Flatirons, Mt. Sanitas, and the other 43,000 (yes, forty three thousand) acres of Boulder city parks and open space land on which you can hike, bike, swim, rock climb, snowshoe, sled, kayak, fly fish or pet prairie dogs. (By the way, this doesn't even include the additional 100,000 acres of open space that Boulder County maintains just outside of the city!) Boulder also has a whopping 350 miles of bicycle lanes and paths and is one of the most bike friendly communities in the US. We're a platinum level bike community and have 74 underpasses for bikes and pedestrians to cross roadways without dealing with cars.

Boulder was the second US city ever to issue same-sex marriage licenses, and the first US city where voters approved a ban on discrimination based on sexual orientation. We were also the first Colorado city to enact a smoking ban which included bars.

Not surprisingly Boulder is also one of the greenest cities, with one of the first "eco communities," an extensive recycling program, a budding smart grid, and a whole lot of scientists, educators and other educated liberal types.

We're home to Celestial Seasonings, the University of Colorado, the Leanin' Tree Museum, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, National Institute of Standards in Technology, National Center for Atmospheric Research, and much more.

We've got trout living in our whitewater creek that runs through town, and black bear, red fox, mountain lion, moose, mule deer, coyote, bald eagles, prairie dogs and elk are common sights.

We have no ghettos or "bad" parts of town, unless you count the area where the frats are concentrated, and it's one of the cleanest, safest cities I've ever even heard of.

I ask you, what's not to love?

So what should I call my website?

Have a Nice Day

2009-12-16T21:14:00.003-07:00

I rescinded my offer on the house. I hated to do it, but it was for the best. The search continues.

I had my annual review today at work. It went really well. We do this thing we call the 360 review, where current and former clients are asked to confidentially report on the employee's work quality. Their reports are submitted to the boss who reviews them and uses it in his assessment of the employees work performance. Apparently my reviews were stellar, and he read a few quotes to me. They almost made me teary eyed they were so nice. Then the boss lavished me with praise. It really makes you feel good when you realize that people really appreciate your hard work, admire your professionalism, and compliment you on your patience and dedication. It's a fantastic way to end a day, especially when it ends with your second raise in as many months.

This week was particularly good at work for other reasons as well. My first publication finally came out, and I snagged a really interesting project analyzing potential sites for hydrogen production and carbon dioxide sequestration. It's always cool to take raw data and produce something entirely new that no one has seen before. It's also fun to see how excited engineers and scientists get when you do a little GIS magic for them.

Reason to Love Boulder #69

2009-12-14T21:58:00.002-07:00

One of the cool things about Boulder is that nobody closes their blinds. Houses don't have burglar bars, people sit on their front porches, and it's normal to go for a walk after sunset and see every other house with the lights on and a perfect view of what's going on in nearly every front room of the house. Normally the husband is on his laptop in the study or at the dining room table, and the wife is in the kitchen preparing dinner. Sometimes people are watching tv or just sitting in a comfy chair reading a book. There's one house that's almost all glass. The bedroom is on the top floor, and you can walk by almost any evening and see the owner laying in bed reading. You can see the entire bed, the walls, the closet, everything. He's literally in a glass box. It's the freakiest thing.

Last night I looked out the window at the apartments across the street, many units of which are frequently lit up with no curtains or blinds. I hit the jackpot. A very fortunate looking pair of young college students were humping like rabbits for all the world to see. I'll spare you the details, but trust me, there were a lot of details. It was the first time I'd ever seen live porn that I wasn't involved in. I couldn't stop smiling, and I sat there and watched the whole thing, beginning to end, from the comfort of my third floor loft.

I love Boulder.

House

2009-12-12T11:45:00.002-07:00

I made an offer on a house yesterday. In Boulder. I love it.

The seller countered. I accepted.

I still have to get the loan approved, have inspections done, etc. There are many hurdles, not least of which is a deadline to close by December 31 due to constraints on the seller.

I don't know if it will all happen. I should know more by Monday. I'm so blown away by the suddenness and the implications of finally being that mythical creature, the Boulder homeowner, that I feel like a disconnected consciousness.

I'm going to be useless at work on Monday. I may call in sick.

The Thought Train Just Keeps Rolling

2009-12-08T22:42:00.001-07:00

I can't tell you how much I hate office meetings, work retreats and strategic planning. Corporate tripe. Maybe it has its place but I have no place among it.

I just got a really big raise and a promotion, which is nice. And for the most part I like my work, and of course the benefits are really good and the people I work with are pleasant. It isn't really a high pressure job. But I have a problem fitting in sometimes.

Sometimes I wonder if I'm just becoming and old stick in the mud. I don't really have a desire to chase technology or get swept up in some kind of corporate-esque "team player" mentality. I want a simple life. I want a genuine, deliberate life built in things that are real, with real friends (as opposed to virtual ones). This Facebook thing is just the latest way, in my opinion, for people to become further disconnected from reality and from each other. It isn't meaningful to know that a person I knew fifteen years ago just got finished cleaning the litter box. It is meaningful to sit down with my neighbor and have a beer and talk about the week. It isn't meaningful to spend a day "strategizing" about being "thought leaders on the global stage." It is meaningful to chop a chord of fire wood to keep me warm through the winter.

Facebook: The Final Chapter

2009-12-08T22:13:00.001-07:00

Have you ever deactivated a Facebook account? It doesn't go down without a fight. It shows a smattering of your "friends" and tells you that you'll never ever be able to contact any of your good friends ever again, and that they're all going to miss you terribly.

Good riddance.

The Facebook Fallacy

2009-12-08T21:31:00.003-07:00

So I joined Facebook. What a joke.

Yeah a few people from high school found me. So did a lot of other people, many of whom I haven't seen in a long time. Some for good reasons.

I don't get "the wall." Is it a chat forum? Is it an inconvenient spin-off of the email concept? Who reads it? Why am I supposed to care that someone I haven't seen in 15 years is grocery shopping at this very moment?

How is this thing supposed to be helpful?

I'm fighting the urge to cancel it, but I'm going to try and last at least a week. I do want to give it a fair shake, if for no other reason than to have even more firepower when someone tries to argue how awesome it is.

And since I'm on a techno roll, I decided to check out Twitter and Kindle, two other techno fads that I commonly rail against. So far Twitter looks to be even more absurd than Facebook, and Kindle, while intriguing and possibly more environmentally friendly than books, is something I remain suspicious of.

Isn't technology supposed to make life simpler? My life isn't simpler when I have several computers, an iPhone, two social networking services, chat, email, fifty different passwords for all my various devices and online accounts, and I'm trying to do my work and keep up with the mundane details of dozens of people I may or may not know and may or may not care about. What's the point? I'd rather have one good friend to have a beer with once a week and have a real conversation with than a hundred "friends" on Facebook who want to send virtual pokes and newsflashes about what their cat left in the litter box.

[sigh]

I wanna be a cowboy.

Oh, give me land, lots of land under starry skies above,
Don't fence me in.
Let me ride through the wide open country that I love,
Don't fence me in.
Let me be by myself in the evenin' breeze,
And listen to the murmur of the cottonwood trees,
Send me off forever but I ask you please,
Don't fence me in.

Techno Blues

2009-12-07T21:05:00.005-07:00

Today at work we had a mandatory all day long "retreat," which was really just a strategic planning meeting in a flimsy disguise. The lab isn't bad as far as that sort of thing goes, but I really hate that kind of stuff. I'll never be a manger, at least not where I work now, because I can't say "strategize" with a straight face.

There's one guy on my team who's a brilliant programmer. He's in his late 20's, extremely energetic and loud, and a complete and total techno geek. Several of us were sitting around a table waiting for the festivities to begin and he starts showing us a game called Four Square on his iPhone that, apparently, takes either Facebook or Twitter (I can't remember which) to a new level. You "sign in" on your iPhone at various places you visit. The more you visit, the more you "own" that place. Eventually, and I can't believe I'm even wasting blog space on this, you become - and I'm not kidding - the "mayor" of the place you visit frequently. For example, say you go to your favorite Starbucks location five days a week and you "sign in" every time you go. The game logs your location and your friends see how often you visit this place. Eventually you become, in Four Square world, the "mayor" of that Starbucks. You build this entirely fictional world online based loosely on things in real life. And you share it with your 2,384 "friends" on Facebook.

Then he turned to me and he said, "Oh and there's this one that you'll like totally love..." He went on to describe how you can be a virtual farmer, raising virtual sheep which you virtually slaughter and virtually sell to all of your virtual friends.

I replied, "Why the hell would I love that? I like real farms. I don't need an iPhone and Facebook to fantasize about having a ranch."

Somewhat dejected, he immediately dove back into his virtual world via the iPhone. Later he was giving a presentation, and had an app for his iPhone that lets him control his Keynote presentation (Apple's answer to Power Point) remotely. The boss' boss happened to catch on to what he was doing and I heard him mutter, "I need more techie geeks like him."

[Sigh.]

Sad as it is, being completely absorbed by computers and all things virtual seems to be not just fashionable, but desirable. In fact, it was suggested more than once in our meetings today that we use our Facebook and Twitter accounts to help us network with each other. For those of us that don't partake in that, well, I guess it's adapt or perish.

So am I just old before my time? Am I just being a rebel? Am I just a stick in the mud? Have I become my father? I don't have a Facebook account and I'm only slightly aware of this thing called Twitter. But for everyone at work under 40, except for me as far as I can tell, Facebook and Twitter are an integral part of their lives - not just socially but for doing actual work. Sometimes I feel that gap widening between me and them. The older people react to Facebook pretty much like I do, with an eye roll and an upturned nose.

Considering the above, I'm thinking about trying out Facebook and Twitter, though I feel dirty for even typing that. I may be forced to soon anyway. We've already started our own Wiki. It's just like Wikipedia, but for our center to share projects, data and information. From what I know about them, I can see there could be a benefit to using them. I mean if I were introduced to email today would I treat it the same way? Would I dismiss it as a wasteful, new-fangled techno-fad? Sure it can be abused, but that doesn't mean it isn't a useful tool. I think about the crotchety old men I used to work with at my last job in Texas. They barely knew how to use the internet, and that's no joke. They refused to keep up with the technology, and as a result they all became obsolete office accessories.

God help me if I ever get excited about being a virtual farmer.

The Greenie's Dilemma: Game Over

2009-12-05T23:57:00.003-07:00

It has been right at one year since I bought my truck; my big, beautiful, carbon-spewing tank of a truck.

She was good to me. I'll not soon forget her.

Today the greenie in me won the war. It's finally over.

For years I fantasized about having a Jeep Wrangler. For years I fantasized about a Ford Super Duty. These fantasies go way back to a time long before I could afford either - to a time long before I cared about gas mileage or had the slightest inkling that cars might be bad for the environment. As I greened over the years, my one big sticking point was the automobile. Americans love their cars, and I grew up in a family where your vehicle was most definitely a status symbol as well as a tool for getting things done. I grew up in a state where it was an unwritten - if not unspoken - law that men drive trucks, and the bigger the better. When I reached a point in my life that it was feasible, I bought a Wrangler. I loved it. But after two years the honeymoon was over and I started salivating for the big one, the ultimate prize: The Ford Super Duty. And so it came to be.

But neither the Jeep nor the Super Duty (most especially the Super Duty) came without a high mental price. I agonized over the Jeep purchase a little, but I really agonized over the Super Duty. See, there are two people in my head: a Texan who loves cowboy hats, big ass trucks and country music, and a super green tree-hugging liberal willing to go to pretty extreme lengths to reduce his negative impact on the world. They don't always see eye to eye, and that's when I'm in agony as those two jerks tear me apart.

I had to taste what it felt like to have a Super Duty, the ultimate automotive wet dream for any cowboy, redneck or proud Texas dude. That guy in my head loved seeing his Super Duty in the distance, parked in the dirt, as he rode horses or bucked hay. He loved the roar of the engine. He loved the respect he got on the road. He loved that fleeting feeling, that silly fantasy of what it might feel like to be a "real" modern day cowboy, whatever that is. And all the while, the tree-hugger's irate rantings and irrefutable logic were pounding in my head.

But then I spent a day shoeing horses, something that both the cowboy and the tree-hugger could agree on, and everything changed. Somehow I saw my life in a new light. I still don't know what happened but there was a major shift of perspective and change in priorities. Maybe I got kicked in the head and can't remember. Maybe the cowboy and the tree-hugger got in bed together. Whatever it was I'm glad it happened. I feel a huge sense of relief and fulfillment and peace with things that, for a long time, felt as if they were tearing me apart. It's a good thing to get out into the world and chase your dreams, however big or small or selfish. Sometimes you catch them and sometimes you don't, but it's really all about the chase anyway. The journey can be transformative.

After a lot of thoughtful consideration, I decided to trade the Super Duty. Her last service under my watch was to deliver a Christmas tree across town. I hear that now she's on her way to a man in Texas who, I can only hope, is some cowboy who'll user her to haul an eight horse trailer and pull heavy farm equipment like she was meant to do. Her talents were wasted in Boulder. She's going home.

So what did I get? The cowboy has his say, and now it's the tree hugger's turn. I bought nothing less than one of the greenest cars in America: the Toyota Yaris sedan. On most lists it ranks in the top five, right up there with the Prius and a few other hybrids. It's the first and only car I've owned since I was 16 years old. It's also the first foreign car, the first compact car, and the first "green" vehicle I've ever owned. I call it the Bouldermobile because it's cute, compact, zippy, fashionable and very green. I doubt even a Boulder cyclist could flip me off for driving it. It gets over 40 mpg and the vehicle cost only 1/3 of what my Super Duty cost. It could probably fit in the bed of the Super Duty. And incidentally, the Super Duty ranks not on the "greenest" list, but on the "meanest" list. Yes, there is a "meanest" list. The Super Duty ranks among the Hummer and the Lamborghini as the least green commuter vehicles on the planet.

I promised myself that if I ever get my ranch and some horses, then I'll buy myself another Super Duty. But as long as I'm making a nice living in such a green and pleasant little city as Boulder, there's no need to spend the money and the carbon. That truck stuck out like a sore thumb in Boulder, but now I'm one of the cool kids again. And parking is a hell of a lot easier.

Who knows, I may even give up the Yaris in favor of my bike at some point in the future. I already bike, bus or walk around town more often than I drive. Gerard has been without a car for two years now (he refused to drive my truck) and feels no desire for one anymore. Indeed it's easy in Boulder. But I will say that Gerard loves this car. "It's so sexy!" he says with a smile. It really is fun to drive, and despite it's compact size it's really quite spacious inside. It's also 5 star crash rated, and has been given high marks by companies that do such things in the categories of safety, reliability, fuel efficiency, customer satisfaction and the like. It's also got some cool features like built in hands-free calling and traction control which I've already been impressed by in the snow. I have no plans to unload this one for a long, long time. It's the perfect Bouldermobile, second only to the bicycle.

But other than being a cornucopia of environmental Karma points, this car also cut my monthly payment by more than half, reduced the loan term by years, dropped my total debt by tens (yes tens) of thousands of dollars, cut my insurance rate in half, gave me back $1,000 in taxes which I'd paid on the Super Duty, and will probably average twenty bucks a month, tops, in gas. Oh, and I also got it financed at 0% interest AND got five years of maintenance and a 7 year bumper to bumper warranty thrown in for almost nothing (yes, I had to spend half a day haggling at the Toyota dealership, but I got it!)

Do I miss my truck? Of course, but not as much as I thought I would. And I'll also say this: I have ZERO buyer's remorse about this purchase. But trucks are not out of my life forever. I've always wanted an old pre-1980 pickup. I've always wanted to buy a junker and fix it up. It would basically be a toy, a pleasure vehicle. But I can't do this until I have a sizable garage workshop so it isn't on my immediate wishlist. My single minded goal from this point forward is to buy a home in Boulder, and considering recent events I couldn't be in a better position to do so. Unless I won the lottery, but I won't go there.

I feel like I've come home to Boulder for the second time.

Minus One

2009-12-03T21:34:00.003-07:00

Looks like we're going to have our first night below zero. It's damned cold out there.

Earlier this week I made out my Christmas cards and threw the whole stack in a public mail box. As they left my hand I realized I hadn't stamped them. Too late.

Today they appeared in my mailbox bundled neatly with a rubber band. Maybe that was to make up for the fact that they looked like they'd been to hell and back. All of them were scuffed, scratched, covered in black, blue and red smears. Some had tattered or shredded corners, all were filthy, and two of them had actually been ripped completely open. One was hastily taped up with FOUR large strips (and believe me, it needed every one of them), the other was just left flapping in the breeze. And of course every one of them had "RETURN FOR POSTAGE" stamped in bold red letters across the front. All this happened in a period of 48 hours in getting them to my home from the mailbox two blocks away.

So now when you get your Christmas card you'll know why it looks so sad.

Merry Christmas!

Two

2009-12-02T22:32:00.005-07:00

The temperature is supposed to dip to 5 degrees F tonight. Possibly 3F tomorrow night.

What's the point? It's like saying something costs $10,000.03

Of course that's an absurd analogy. I guess temperatures near zero are still a novelty for me. In related news, Austin may very well get snow this week. I think this'll be the third time in the last three years that they've had snow. I bet Austin didn't get snow that many times in the entire 30 years I lived in Texas. What gives? Not that I can complain. I mean we got about six inches last night here in Boulder. I doubt Austin has ever had that. Ever. But Austin does have Barton Springs.

Austin, Texas and Boulder, Colorado. The two loves of my life.

I Love a Snowy Night

2009-12-02T01:49:00.002-07:00

It's 2AM and I'm wide awake. I'm not prone to insomnia, but I do have a bout of it a few times a year. Maybe it's the snow. For nearly the last month the weather has been clear, sunny and mild, but this afternoon snow clouds rolled in. Flakes started falling around 9PM and there's now several inches on the ground. I always get excited when it snows, especially if it's been awhile.

Maybe it's the holidays. I keep thinking about my upcoming road trip to Texas and how nice it'll be to see family and friends. I love a good road trip, and I'm excited to give my mom her gifts this year. I'm also excited to see Austin again and revisit some of my favorite haunts.

Maybe it's my new toys. I ordered a new photo printer and scanner to do some photo restoration which I've been putting off for a long time. My old printer doesn't print photo quality, and my old scanner is so hopelessly ancient it won't even work with my new OS. Fortunately tomorrow is electronics recycling day at the lab. My packages should also arrive tomorrow and I can't wait to get at them.

Maybe it's my career. Grades were posted yesterday and I got A's in both of my classes. I also got registered for the classes I need for next quarter. I'm kind of excited about it. Work is going well and I sometimes can't help imagining where I'll be in my career next year or five years or ten years from now. Will it involve horses or computers? Don't know, but I suppose I can't really go wrong either way. It's really nice to feel that way.

Maybe it's summer fun. I've been mulling my options for a serious vacation. I'm thinking Spain, summer of 2010. I've got a friend that lives there. Two weeks in Spain with my own personal native tour guide? Sounds fun. Australia? Hawaii? All options are on the table.

Tomorrow is going to suck if I can't get some sleep.

'Tis the Season

2009-11-29T21:42:00.003-07:00

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

2009-11-27T20:27:00.003-07:00

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

2009-11-24T20:59:00.002-07:00

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

2009-11-22T09:41:00.003-07:00

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

2009-11-19T22:20:00.002-07:00

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

2009-11-18T21:52:00.003-07:00

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

2009-11-15T21:37:00.003-07:00

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

2009-11-15T12:46:00.003-07:00

We got a foot of snow last night.

Fortunate One

2009-11-14T21:56:00.002-07:00

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

2009-11-12T22:53:00.003-07:00

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

2009-11-10T21:13:00.006-07:00

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

2009-11-07T20:43:00.002-07:00

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

2009-11-06T22:25:00.004-07:00

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.

Tesla

2009-10-30T14:46:00.004-06:00

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.