Welcome Back Rant

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?

I can't think of a title.

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.

Faces

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.

Shelter

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.

Like a Moth to a Flame

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.

Log Cabin Home in the Sky

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

Daydreams

AVATAR

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.

The Thought Train Just Keeps Rolling

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.

Heavy Breakfast

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This is much too heavy for a Sunday morning.

A Stroll Down Memory Lane via Streetview

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yes, I'm bitter about it.

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

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

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

Amazing World

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Peace

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ghost Rider

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

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

"Are you a cowboy?" she asked.

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

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

Nobody ever knows.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Kitty in the Hay

There's a kitty at the ranch where I ride who loves people. She's probably the sweetest, most affectionate cat I've ever seen. She was distracted by a horse just long enough for me to get this shot, then she immediately went back to pawing all over me.

I really like being out there on the ranch. It's so quiet, yet there's life everywhere. There are probably two dozen horses, a few cats, a couple of dogs and more barn swallows, barn owls and other birds than you can shake a stick at. The prairie dogs are innumerable and, unless you get within arms length, are completely comfortable sharing their little bit of the prairie with you. Coyotes are a common sight, even in broad daylight. Last week two of them streaked past me just two dozen yards away. There are also a few ranch hands and various other people coming and going all the time, but the place just feels like the clock is ticking a little slower than in the city. It's the kind of place where I can pull up in my truck and instead of a 17 year old lesbian with pink hair, a peace t-shirt and a nose ring hissing with a condescending eco-smirk, "Gawd that's a big truck. What do you need that for?" as happened in the Whole Foods parking lot awhile back, I'm greeted by a 20-something cowboy with a size 30 waist and tight Wranglers who says with an envious grin, "Wow, that's a nice truck. I wish I had a truck like that." (Okay, I'm biased, but fitting in is fitting in!)

It's the kind of place where you can wear a cowboy hat and no one stares at you, and no one asks if they can wear your hat. It's the kind of place where you can just sit in the hay for an hour watching the ranch critters do their thing, and it doesn't matter. There's no place to be. There are no phones ringing. There's no sound of traffic, no electronic calendars, no meetings and nothing plastic or glowing or buzzing or florescent anywhere in sight. Just a cool breeze through the barn rafters, the occasional distant neighing of a horse, and the sound of a tawny kitty purring in the hay next to you.

I've been taking advanced riding lessons out at the ranch, working with different horses, beefing up my riding and handling skills. It may sound cliche, but I think working with animals teaches us a lot about ourselves and the world. One thing about me that quickly comes to the surface is my buried desire for instant results. That surprises me because I thought I had moved beyond that. Probably I have for the most part, but there's definitely some of it still lurking inside my brain. Personally I think that city life does that to a person. Just about everything these days is instantaneous. You want something, you hop in your car and go buy it or go online and have it delivered to you doorstep the next day. You want music or you want to watch a show, you want to talk to someone or meet new people, you want a meal or anything at all, you've got your computer, your iPhone, your restaurants, your car, your internet and a thousand other ways to make your wish come true with virtually no effort and no waiting.

One of the things I like about cooking, eating locally and seasonally, and about not having a microwave in the house is that if I want to eat something I have to prepare it. There is a cost associated with my food beyond the price tag, and that actually makes eating a much more satisfying experience. There are no bags of junk food in my kitchen and no zapping anything so I can't eat within 1 minute 30 seconds of deciding I want to eat something. This also reduces temptation and works as a built-in system for ensuring the quality of my food. It has completely broken me of the habit of snacking.

Working with horses is the same kind of thing in the sense that you don't just go pick out a horse, hop on and expect an experience as predictable and controllable as your car or your microwaved frozen dinner will deliver. Horses are living things. They have brains and therefore have moods, personalities, likes and dislikes. They experience fear and pleasure, and their chemistry doesn't mix the same with everyone. Hop on an exceptionally good horse and you might get what you expect, if he's in the right mood and nothing unexpected comes up. Hop on a horse that doesn't have all these things going for it in that particular moment and you could be in for some frustration, to say the least. From my own experience and from discussions with the instructor, frustration due to unrealistic expectations is a common problem with people who spend more time on a computer or in a coffee shop than on a horse.

I've also taken up guitar recently and have found the same challenge there. Learning to play music can be incredibly frustrating and takes practice, practice, practice, day in and day out, for years. I grew up playing the piano and I remember how difficult it was in the beginning. Actually I suppose it never really got all that much easier, because as my skills improved my instructor bumped up the challenge. But with time and patience I progressed. Everybody wants to play the guitar or learn a foreign language or possess some other skill, but a lot fewer people are willing to put in the work to get it. I'm not ragging on anyone. I face the same challenges and I haven't always been as persistent as I should have been. If something's hard, it's hard not to quit.

It's been said that anything worth having is worth working for and I do believe that's true. People who are given things are rarely as appreciative of those things as they are of things they fought long and hard to get. I think part of my motivation to take up guitar or become a better horseman comes from my desire to have more meaningful things in my life. I mean, don't you ever get bored and think:

"Is this all there is? I've got a good job, I make enough money. I could just eat out all the time and sit at the coffee shop for an hour each morning and never really have to fuss over anything, learn anything new or do anything that doesn't directly contribute to my immediate comfort. So why do I want to spend so much time and money on things that require so much work and that in the end won't even increase my salary?"

Maybe it has something to do with that old saying about idle hands or maybe there's just something restless in me. I don't know. I can enjoy a coffee shop or a nice dinner out as much as anyone, but I'm just not satisfied making my life super cushy. It's like I want to introduce a little pain, a little hard work, a little something so I can feel like I'm alive and not just curled up on the sofa watching life go by. And it needs to feel real, genuine, not manufactured. For example, I'll never get into cycling. It's a great hobby and I think Lance Armstrong is cool. But for me, I'm thinking: "Where the hell am I going?" There's got to be a destination, a greater purpose. Cycling or mountain climbing, while in moderate amounts can be fun, feels like busy work to me. What's the point? But things like growing my own food, harvesting it and then preparing it actually has a very important purpose in and of itself. Playing the guitar and riding horses are similarly justifiable in my mind, as they fit into my grand scheme of self reliance.

Picture this: my cabin in the woods (as I've described many times). I saddle up and take a string of horses into the wilderness for a week-long hunting trip. When I return I've got hides to tan, a new bearskin rug and a supply of elk/deer/moose meat that will last until next season. I've got a garden to tend, a cow or goat to milk. I've got canning to do, meat and trout to smoke, butter to churn, a root cellar to stock, beer to brew, wood to chop. I've got horses and dogs that need tending, a hog that needs butchering, a cabin that needs repairs before winter. And when I'm resting I can fill the air with the lovely sounds of the harmonica or sing lonely tunes to the mountains as I strum my guitar on the back porch on a cool summer's evening. That's what I want. Those are "hobbies" that mean something to me. I get tingly all over when I think about it.

So in the mean time I spend my free time trying to wring the vestiges of the city from my life and my body, ever trying to push my life down that dirt road that leads home, my cabin in the woods.

Place

Last week we had a record low for that date: 47 degrees, I don't remember the specific date. Today we had a record high for this day, 98 degrees. It's 72 degrees right now and I'm having trouble sleeping because it's too warm. Guess I've adapted.

We had a good weekend. I managed to can a half dozen jars each of peach salsa and crabapple jelly, and a dozen jars of tomato salsa. That's twenty pounds of tomatoes. Can you believe it takes that many pounds of tomatoes to make 12 jars of salsa? Each tomato had to be skinned, cored and seeded. And that's not all, of course. Being salsa, there was a mountain of jalapenos, half a dozen onions, a bunch of cilantro and a few other things in there too. We also made two crabapple pies which, I must say, came out absolutely perfect. We gave one to some friends.

That was Saturday.

This morning, after a sunrise hike, we cleaned the kitchen. Despite our best efforts, there was jelly on the walls, juices, seeds and bits of vegetable matter on the floor and on nearly every surface of the kitchen. There were dishes to be washed, counter tops to be wiped, dish towels to be washed. After that we pretty much took the rest of the day off.

We made an afternoon trip into Denver, just because we rarely go and I think it's good to have a reminder every now and then why we don't live there ("there" meaning "the big city," not Denver specifically which, by big city standards, is actually quite nice.)

We rounded out the evening reading at home. Right now I'm reading A Place of my Own by Michael Pollan. He's the author of some of my favorite food-centric books: The Omnivore's Dilemma, In Defense of Food, The Botany of Desire. A Place of My Own was his first, and deals with a very different topic. It was his quest to build a small, private room in the wooded area behind his house where he could read, write and work. The picture on the cover is what first grabbed my attention. It's a cold blue photo of a tiny warm house in the snow right around sunset, his completed masterpiece. You can see a wall of books through the warm glow of the window. The photo drew me in immediately because it reminded me of my fantasy cabin in the woods: a dark, snowy landscape, cold, beautiful, forbidding, with a cozy, inviting home nestled in the middle of it radiating light and life. See the book here.

The guy is a writer/editor, not a carpenter. In fact he's really not handy at all, as he admits many times. Yet it was his quest not just to have a place of his own, but to build it himself. It's comforting for me to know that I'm not the first or the only person to have the thoughts and desires I do. I'm not the only person who wants - needs - to have a safe, comfortable place of my own removed if only temporarily from the things of everyday life, or who worries about the environmental impact of my actions or who finds joy in discovering new things about myself and the world in my journey to satiate my sometimes inexplicable desires.

Pollan quotes Thoreau a lot. I know Thoreau is not universally loved, and Pollan even made a few remarks about Thoreau's sometimes self-serving or Earth-mother type views of nature. But, as is nearly always the case, one's point of view changes dramatically when one actually walks just a little in someone else's shoes. Pollan was reminded of this on more than one occasion. It was really interesting to see how Pollan moved from dismissing some of Thoreau's words as self-serving to understanding what the man actually meant. Trying something new has a wonderful way of giving one new perspective. I find I've done some of this in recent years myself. Isn't it amazing what age and experience can teach you? The older I get the more I realize how little I know. People are so quick to dismiss or judge the actions or thoughts of others, but who are you to do that? Who am I to do that? How many times in my life have I been so sure I was right only to find out (or worse, to come to the conclusion sometime later) that I was completely wrong - or at the very least, that I was basing my opinion on a woefully incomplete picture? It's a good idea to step inside other people's homes and see the world through their windows now and then.

I also read through another book this weekend. It's a book by the US Forest Service about camp cooking. It's first a foremost a recipe book for cooking in a dutch oven over a campfire, created from 100 years of journals, articles, papers and interviews with Forest Service employees. Secondarily it's a brief glimpse into the life of a Forest Service employee, particularly between 1900 and about 1970. There are samples of letters, statements and interviews as well as a few stories, photographs and some cowboy poetry interspersed among the recipes. Was life really simpler in 1950 or 1900? Probably not. Maybe. I don't know, I wasn't around. I guess it depends on your criteria for what constitutes a simple life. And at any rate, a "simple" life and a "hard" life are not the same things, and needn't have anything to do with one another. But for whatever reason, reading the stories of those old timers just takes me away to fantasy land. Maybe their lives were simpler, in my mind, because they lived and worked in the great outdoors. Sure, they only earned $7/day, but they lived at a time when they didn't have to consider life without medical insurance, cell phones, computers or a car payment. By and large these things either didn't exist in the first place or weren't options for the vast majority of the population anyway. A lot of the Forest Service men had a saddle horse, a pack horse, a dutch oven, a gun, a tent or a teepee and not much else. But they liked it. Actually, they loved it from the accounts I read. They ate the non-perishables the Forest Service provided and supplemented that with wild game and plants. There was no social networking, no daily commute, no techno-gadgets, no reality TV, no TPS reports, no management meetings under the searing hum of florescent lights in a sea of cubes. There were no arbitrary work deadlines, no false sense of urgency, no hordes of strangers living all around you, no college students wearing their pants around their ankles and sunglasses so big they cover half the face, no people standing around ignoring each other because they've all got their faces buried in their iPhones. Sounds pretty simple to me. The work was hard, often dangerous. But the thing is these guys loved it. And they weren't all the grizzly mountain man type either. They just had a passion for a simple life, living close to nature, being under the stars and in the wide open spaces, and for doing work they honestly believed in that had physical, visible, tangible results.

Maybe I romanticize that life too much. But how will I know unless I walk a mile in their shoes?

Dalhart

I just finished reading The Worst Hard Time. I'll never look at Dalhart, Texas the same way again.

I was first introduced to Dalhart years ago when I was working for Texas Parks & Wildlife. We were studying the black-tailed prairie dog and I got to spend a few weeks roaming the dry plains around Dalhart looking for dogs. Dalhart isn't much to look at. It's small, run-down, and in the middle of the great nowhere that is the Texas Panhandle. There's not an organic or locally grown anything to be found in town and it's about as redneck and unlovable as a remote Texas town in a sea of flat can get. But for some reason, on some level, I bonded with the place. I've eaten at the handful of restaurants, slept in the fanciest hotel (Holliday Inn), talked to locals, shopped the grocery store, driven all the roads in and around it, shopped one of the two antique shops (it's closed now) and even hiked Lake Rita Blanca State Park, the only thing to do in town besides eat and gas up. In fact my fondest memory of Dalhart was hiking Rita Blanca. It was me and three others from TPWD: a gal named Rain who was up from Austin with me, and two cowboys who lived in the Dalhart area (towns within 100 miles.) I will never forget them. The cowboys were youngish: one in his late 20's, the other in his 30's. They were never without their boots and hats or that good 'ol Texas drawl. They were lean and lanky and mustached. They were on permanent dog huntin' duty while Rain and I were just up for a few weeks to help out with the field work, since we had already done all the preliminary analysis and mapping back at the lab in Austin. After a long, hot day of driving the dusty back roads counting dogs, noting ground cover conditions and the presence of interdependent species such as burrowing owls and ferruginous hawks, we met back up in Dalhart for a steak dinner. Over dinner the subject of food came up (hard to believe, I know.) Rain and I were talking about the virtues of various newfangled urban hippie foods we liked. The cowboys listened intently but quietly. When the subject of turkey bacon came up, one of them very politely broke in with, "What about reg'lar 'ol pork bacon? Don't anyone eat that no more?"

Funny the things we remember, but I'll never forget the inquisitive, slightly pained look on his face when he asked that. Turkey bacon? What's the point? Why replace bacon when the original is so good? And turkey ain't bacon nohow. I think he'd be happy to know that my bacon these days is 100% pork. Locally raised on a small farm, of course. I bet he'd like that too.

We finished off the evening with a hike through the state park just as the sun was setting. The cowboys actually suggested it, and they more or less lead the trip. Turned out they were both avid bird watchers, something I didn't expect. It also turned out that the lake, actually just a small reservoir, has become a major rest stop for migrating water fowl in that arid landscape. As we walked around, the cowboys would raise their binoculars, study a distant point for a moment, and then announce the name of the creature they were viewing. Then they'd pass the binoculars to me or Rain and lean over our shoulders trying to help us locate the bird.

You can see two short blog entries from 1995 (before I actually had a blog - I retyped them from my handwritten field diary) by clicking here and here and there are a few photos here.

I've been back through Dalhart each time I've driven home to Texas, and I always stop for fuel, stretch my legs a bit and visit a few old haunts.

So my point - the book I just finished is about the Dust Bowl, the epicenter of which was Dalhart. The book traces the life and times of numerous families and individuals, the evolution of the Dust Bowl, and how they all came together. It's really cool - and a little frightening - to read such a tragic book that focuses on places you actually know pretty well. Amazing to realize how much has happened in a place most people dismiss as nothing more than a fuel stop on a road trip. It has been easy to poke fun at Dalhart over the years - the rednecks, the feedlots, the hilarity of finding oneself in such a backward place. But I can't do that anymore. I know the history. And one of the main characters in the book still lives in that town. He was a boy, the son of a real-life cowboy who grew up during that nightmarish decade in that hellish prairie town and lived to tell the tale. I know where he was born. I know what he and his family went through. I know how his father died. I know how his father felt about the land that was destroyed and how the son, now and old man, still feels about what the whites did to that prairie and the devastating consequences to the environment, the economy, and the country.

Again I find myself desperately wanting a release - to express emotions that I just can't put into words, and in so trying just sound like a rambling fool.

"The most important things are the hardest to say. They are the things you get ashamed of, because words diminish them - words shrink things that seemed limitless when they were in your head to no more than living size when they're brought out. But it's more than that isn't it? The most important things lie too close to wherever your secret heart is buried, like landmarks to a treasure your enemies would love to steal away. And you may make revelations that cost you dearly only to have people look at you in a funny way, not understanding what you've said at all, or why you thought it was so important that you almost cried while you were saying it. That's the worst, I think. When the secret stays locked within not for want of a teller but for want of an understanding ear."

- Stephen King (Different Seasons)

Maybe I'll just sleep on it.

Moab: Part I

I have been to Moab. It is good.

I came home early last Thursday undecided about going to Moab for a four day weekend because the forecast called for rain. Every single day. In the desert. But Gerard insisted we go anyway, and I'm glad he did. I'm going to break the trip up into multiple blog posts, partly because I have a lot to say, partly because each leg of the trip had its own feel, and partly because I just now have enough time to start writing about the trip.

So Thursday night we packed up and Friday morning we set out early. We had four full days ahead of us and no real agenda aside from making it to Moab at some point. One of the great things about road trips, especially unhurried ones, are the things you stumble across along the way. Around lunchtime on Thursday we found ourselves in the city of Glenwood Springs, Colorado. It was a cool, drippy day and we were in search of a bathroom, lunch and some hot coffee. The Summit Coffee Shop served us very well. It was as funky a coffee shop as you might find in Austin, but with that particularly mountain feel that only coffee shops above 5,000 feet seem to have. Maybe it was the wall of books and maps on whitewater rafting, hiking and Rocky Mountain field guides and everyone dressed in flannel, I don't know. I do know the coffee and muffins were fantastic, the service was friendly, and the atmosphere cozy enough to entice us to stay awhile. A few blocks away were the famous hot springs, believed by both Native Americans and present day citizens to be a source of healing. Of course these days it looks pretty much like a swimming pool you'd find in any suburban community center, only much bigger. We walked around town a bit and stayed just long enough to get a sense of the place, but it wasn't until we started to leave that I found a real treat. I saw a small sign that said, "Doc Holliday's Grave" and an arrow pointing into a quaint neighborhood.

"THE Doc Holliday!?" I gasped aloud.

"What's that?" Gerard asked. I explained as I made a hasty u-turn. A few minutes later we were at an unassuming and completely unremarkable trailhead at the back of the neighborhood at the base of a mountain. We climbed.

The trail was rocky and not maintained and it wound its way around the mountain, up and up, until we reached a small cemetery overgrown with weeds and juniper. We wandered through reading badly weathered tombstones dated as far back as the 1880's. Some were completely illegible and others had been toppled, but by weather or vandals I couldn't discern. And there, way in the back nestled between a large juniper and the edge of a precipice, stood a tall marble column bearing that old gunslinging dentist's name.

"Well I'll be damned," I said. A small plaque next to the marker explained that this was, in fact, not Holliday's exact resting place. Rather it was a memorial, since his exact resting place isn't known. It turns out he is indeed buried in the cemetery but in the early 20th century the cemetery records were lost and anyone buried prior to that time whose grave marker hadn't adequately withstood the test of time was now lost somewhere six feet beneath the juniper.

You may remember from high school history, or perhaps from the movie Tombstone, that Doc was involved in the legendary "Gunfight at the O.K. Corral," arguably the most famous gunfight of the American West. It all went down in Tombstone, Arizona where Doc, Wyatt Earp and others had their famous shootout with some of "The Cowboys," a band of outlaws. In fact, Earp later said of Holliday, "he was the most skillful gambler, and the nerviest, speediest, deadliest man with a gun I ever knew."

Doc suffered from tuberculosis, and five years later ended up in Glenwood Springs hoping the waters would ease his suffering. He died quietly in a hotel near there in 1887 at the age of 35. The hotel is now gone.

I stood up there on that mountain a long while, listening to the wind blow and looking out over that sleepy town. Somewhere just below my feet lay a true Legend of the American West. Doc Holliday. Wow. He was my age when he died. How times have changed.

It seemed so strange to me that such a legendary figure would not only be buried in an all but forgotten, neglected cemetery, but that even his grave site would be lost. In fact the only reason the memorial is there, as the plaque pointed out, was that the city thought they could make some tourism dollars by promoting his final resting place. But after thinking on it, I suppose it's a fitting end. He was a loner in life. He lived fast and hard and died a young legend. And now he's finally getting his long rest up there on that lonely mountain.