:0(

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

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

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

Insert Title Here

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.