Les Autres Éléments

A Walk Amidst Great Trees.

2011-12-22T12:56:00.000-07:00

In Washington, I met up with Drew, and he and I travelled via ferry to the Olympic Peninsula, where we spent an incredible two days in the Hoh Rainforest, within Olympic National Park. This was possible because of what was not allowed to happen, nearly seventy years before:

"...commercial opportunism, fueled by American involvement in World War II, threatened many national parks. Timber interests tried unsuccessfully to gain access to old growth forests in Olympic National Park. William Greeley, head of the West Coast Lumbermen's Association, made an eloquent and passionate appeal for the industry in 1943 when he wrote: 'The Olympic Peninsula National Park should do its part towards victory by giving certain of its fine grade, old growth timber to the war effort. The principle of the draft should extend from our boys to our resources. Nothing is too sacred to do its share.'"

Read that carefully. "Nothing is too sacred to do its share." Therefore, nothing is sacred.

The book continues, "California stockmen petitioned the National Park Service for grazing rights in Sequoia. However, Newton Drury, its newly appointed director, successfully launched widely publicized campaigns of radio addresses and articles to portray these efforts as shortsighted and opportunistic rather than patriotic."
-America's Spectacular National Parks, Universe Publishing, 2009

Drury, in short, was willing to stand up and call a horse a horse, or in this case, a slow elk just one more of the same.

Howard Zinn argues in A People's History of the United States that although "facism" as a governing strategy did not survive the war, the fetishization of greed and mechanization was in no way diminished by the rise of industrial capitalism instead. These traits are at the core of what Tolkien defines as evil in The Lord of the Rings. With this fixation seems to come a complete innability among its driving players to forsee the consequences of their actions. "Leaders" in the oil industry, the coal industry, etc., see themselves as generating wealth, employment, energy, and the future, often out of "practically nothing," the emptiest and remotest places on the planet. Regardless of how strongly they "believe" this however, THEY ARE WRONG.

When we have built a world with no more sea ice, and no more polar bears, will we have created beauty?

When we live in a density comparable to Mumbai or Beijing, and polution to compare, will we have achieved freedom?

When we allow oil companies that have proved time and again their callousness, their greed, and their fundamental disrespect for life to build mines, wells, pipelines, and pits across our continent, will we have finally proved that nothing really is too sacred to do its share?

If we press outward from earth in our quest for more, will we have simply discovered the next facet of Manifest Destiny?

We have spent $1 Trillion USD on a war in a desert with no victory. We have spent over a decade mired in another amidst mountains which have broken armies for centuries. We do not seem to lack for energy.

What then, is sacred?

Drew and I walked for two days along the Hoh River Trail. There one can see Sitka spruce, broadleaf maples, and tremendous cedars towerings into the mists. In December, there is still the wetness of the rainforest, but the air is ice, and the cold is pentrating. Come morning, all that was dripping green is covered in a deep frost, and fog rises from the river flowing beyond the last trees among grey shoals. Here, there are two worlds: the riverbed, with its signs of tremendous flood and sinuous ebb, and the trees, a deep world, built of rooms characterized by light and beauty, some dark with trunks and ferns, others bright with morning light and glowing red and amber in the endless dawnlight of the north in early winter.

We have come here to share this place, Drew to experience it again as a long-loved and long-known place of returning, and I as a newcomer, to learn from what he already knows is here, and also to discover what is new in December. The maples' leaves, broad and auburn, have long fallen, a thick red carpet traced in ice, but still surrounded by living green, the drips frozen while seeping from the moss. The maples do not last the many centuries, as do the other trees, but still erupt enormous, cloaked from roots to reaching bracnches in heavy sheets of living green, hardly recognizable as trees.

Where the earth is not red with leaves, it is instead green with ferns, or nurse logs like fallen spacecraft, roots towering above our heads, trunks like fallen silos that must be scaled, or gone wide-around to pass. Where some have fallen, the spring snowmelt floods have carved spillways underneath, leaving beams five meters thick suspended overhead. And everywhere of course are mushrooms, lichens, slime molds- many, many species, and a surprising number good to eat.

Farther out from camp, maybe several miles now, the call of the river is strong again, and we downclimb the bank, leaving the green world for the blue and grey, and find a curving shoal that is hemmed by the river, but shows a view of the Olympics high above, white in the sun that has not yet found us. Ahead, as behind, there is grey mist. I expect to see a grizzly wandering the far shore, but there are only logs and boulders, and the sound of flowing water.

We press on, coming finally to the sunlight boundary, a line where liquid gold shimmers from everything, illuminated by bright rays through white mist. It is an endless dawn, and the gold light makes prisms of the ice crystals, huge after only one night's frost because there is so much water in the air here, even in winter. We wind slowly through an open maple gallery, bright green, and shining.

Eventually, we reach a darker room, two tremendous trees, a sitka and a cedar, and another just beyond, this one a fallen giant, a huge spike left standing, and a spill of red heartwood leading in a tumble to the sitka's base. Drew and I talk of ambitions and dreams, and what it would mean to force some of the world's most avid destroyers to see the beauty of this place. As Drew puts it, "To crush their egos completely." The small things of the earth give one such power, and it is only magnified by the presence also of the great. I worry that they would desire only to possess it for themselves, or find some other way to take it all away. But to be here now is heartening, and we spend a long time contemplating the sheer size of these trees, tremendous living things, older than ourselves by many centuries.

We come to a riverbank that must be crossed, and are faced with great majesty. Fallen giants form bridges to a portion of the older forest that has been made nearly an island by a river tributary. The result is that one can see the huge trees exposed, from some way away, without the closeness of the forest. It gives the sensation of a boundary.

Proceeding once again, we discover our destination, though at first it is only an overwhelming sensation of whiteness through the trees, towards the river. I am wearing my glasses, and so my focus at a distance is at best indistinct, but what I see is tremendously compelling. When we finally reach the edge of the trees, we discover what we have seen. It is the frost line, the edge of winter that will not recede until spring, and now advances upon the places hidden by the mountains. We stand awestruck a moment on shoal's edge, staring across the white stones to the grey-blue river and the white-frosted trees beyond, dark stands rising up the shadowy north faces of the mountains.

I only make it a few steps across a little stream before I must crouch in wonder, to confirm what I have seen. Here are crystals I have never dreamed, chased in the form of everything that lies beside the water. Each leaf is its own garden of forms, the high humidity building snowflakes of everything, the rocks, the trees, each leaf, even the footprints. We find the tracks of a black bear again, before printed in mud, here in ice, not as in snow, but perfectly outlined, the crystals having begun to regrow where the print was made over the stones, the print within the crystals themselves, almost half-contained by them as they begin to grow inwards again. Four prints, front feet, back feet. There is a log as well, closer in form now to a fallen saguaro than what it was, line after line of points of ice laced along each risen groove. It cannot be described; you would have to see.

I have spent months of every year of nearly my entire life in places where there is snow and ice- Wisconsin, Alaska, Patagonia. I've never seen anything like this.

Is this, then, also not too sacred to do its share? In beauty we find humilty, and peace. These are things that we cannot create. The National Parks are America's best idea. They were founded for greed, for railroad money, and they have weathered greed, and perhaps, perhaps, we can defend them from greed. Those wars- angry men flew airplanes into buildings, and evil men found the perfect way to hijack these actions to the service of their greed. Outsiders can destroy those buildings, but they cannot destroy these trees, trees that were kept in trust for us even through the Great Wars. WE, however, can allow their loss, through negligence, through false assertions of need, through failing to stand for anything.

Public Log, Niagra Falls, 1848:

“The most stupendous work of Nature! The mountains, oceans, lakes, and cataracts... What mind is not changed, what soul not filled with ennobling emotions, by the contemplation of such wonders? Let man behold with awe and admiration, and learn --- HUMILTY.”

North by Northwest

2011-12-04T21:47:00.002-07:00

Leah told me the other day, "I dunno. You might fall in love with the Northwest."

Hard to say, as this place is rather grey, but I sure did love Bend. There's a basalt canyon, raging rapids, wandering forest trails, and snowcapped peaks lining the horizon. The nights are cold, and the house where we stayed was heated by a wood stove. It's a place at once reminiscent of favorite Philmont memories, and also entirely new.

The night before leaving, Sarah and I went to the Deschutes Brewery, ending up on the day's last tour. If you ever get the chance, drink a small glass of "The Abyss," their Russian Imperial Stout. I got made fun of at the tasting bar for saying that I hated their Obsidian Stout, but knew I'd love Abyss, so they had best give it to me. I was right! It's the most powerful beer I've ever tasted (sorry Stone and Black Boss), with an effect like smoking a cigar while eating dark chocolate. It's dark, incredible dark, so dark it's stupid. And FANTASTIC. If you like dark beer, it's for you. Or, as the brewery blog itself says,

"Notes of smooth chocolate, silky caramel, and a creamy coolness adorn a luxurious body designed for indulgent interruptions to the Everyday. Double “kettle to the metal” mashes included brewer’s licorice and blackstrap molasses. Tempered with vanilla bean and cherry bark and aged in Bourbon, Pinot Noir, and Oregon Oak barrels, the phrase “outrageously coddled” comes to mind. The Abyss personifies Deschutes Brewery’s credo--in a glass: push the envelope, don’t stop ‘til you get it right, then enjoy it!"

Or even more succinctly:

"This is the beer Odysseus would have asked for when he got home."

So the Northwest is getting high marks.

Prior to all this was Thanksgiving, and then I drove half the night the next day to Red Rocks, where Mark, Adam, Eric, and myself finally sent "Black Orpheus", a 1400', 5.9+ that was probably the most interesting thing I've ever climbed. On the 5.9 pitch, while climbing, I'm yelling, "Living the dream, baby!", while cruising parallel knee / finger / fist cracks. Ridiculous. I even ended up leading most of the last five-hundred feet, which was crazy! Eric and I slowed down hard near the end, so the last two pitches were led by headlamp. It was a little embarassing, but pretty good for our second trad lead together, and first big lead ever. We had a blast, and Mark and Adam were nice enough to wait for us at the top, given that we had the other half of the rap.

On the way down, I missed an anchor, and got to sit in a bucket seat some hundred-odd feet above the deck in the darkness, waiting for Eric to pick me off the wall. Once he finally came zipping over the lip above me, he dropped past, traversed, hooked a line I threw him to the rope, and once I was in the system once again, we both went howling out into dark, dark space, to finish by simuling down. It was a crazy night.

From Red Rocks, the road led west, and I spent a night on the west rim of Death Valley, waking to a red sunrise, and a long day. Tioga pass was open, so I finally visited Tuolomne, snowshoeing along rivers and meadows, and then making the long drive into the Valley. I sorely missed my skates, as there was one woman skating alone on the glassiest lake I've ever seen, high above Yosemite, and a man sitting in one of two camp chairs, watching her glide across the mirrored ice. I also saw an amazing ice waterfall, and half considered a free solo, just because I'd never seen anything quite so incredible. Perhaps this winter, in the Rockies, Canadian or American.

The Valley, as always, I found to be an evil place, full of city people and their complaining children. Bridalveil Falls was beautiful, El Cap shining gold as I'd never seen or imagined, and Camp 4 deserted and lonely. I made the poor decision to push on, rather than stay, and was rewarded with a restless night sleeping in the car alongside a high traffic road outside of Oroville, CA. Ah well. Next time, I'll stay in the Valley.

But then, after winding through the forests, Lassen! Snowshoeing up 2,000 feet! Fumaroles, boiling mudpots! Crazy. I played guitar in the oddly acoustically perfect, wood-beamed and expensive visitor's center. Leah tells me that it used to be a shack. Their LE was Dom's old Philmont RT. There's an obnoxious recording of a volcano. As noted, crazy. And quite funny.

Leah and I went and explored Chico the next day, including the Taco Truck and the Sierra Nevada Brewery, home of much greater megalomaniacs than quirky, hilarious Deschutes in Bend. Plus, Sierra Nevada's beer sucks, at least for dark beer fans like me. But, they got us drunk for free at the end, and their restaurant rocks, so it's all swell. Can't argue with a porter bacon cheeseburger, anyways.

And then.....and then there was the next day, December 2nd, when I meant to leave Lassen and be on my way. But instead, first one man, and then another drove up to tell me that a dog had been struck by a car at the highway, and that she didn't have long to live. I felt a wrenching feeling. The first man in a pickup described a "yellow lab," but the second man confirmed that it was Leah's landlord's dog, Cheyenne. It was awful news, as I'd just met the dog the other day, and she had seemed as good of a dog as anybody could ever wish to have. When we got to her, you could see that she was nearly gone, but the girls wanted something to be done, so we loaded her up on a board and pads, and burned rubber down to the vet hospital in Red Bluff, me riding medic in the bed, trying to keep her stable. Her back end seemed done for, and the x-rays confirmed it: her pelvis was cracked in half, her spine separated, and her right side massively herneated. She had a serious internal bleed. But she fought until the end, even standing up in the back of the truck, trying to watch the world fly by as I tried to hold her steady. The vets knew the same thing I did, and so pushed a few drugs and let her slide off easy. We took her back up the mountain in a black bag, hearts heavy.

It's odd, really, as death doesn't usually bother me. I took off right after, heading for Bend, depressed. I hate watching strong life die needlessly. There was no way we could have saved Cheyenne, but it still made me deeply sad to have held this animal while she fought and fought and fought for life, even after I'd found her just barely wheezing on the side of the highway. But I'd known it was false hope, decompensated shock sliding back for a few moments, before rolling on. Such is the way of things, I suppose.

At any rate, Bend was very fun, and now, Washington, after a day of incredible mountain views of the Sisters, Jefferson, Hood, and Rainier at sunset. From here, Drew and I are headed to the Peninsula. The rainforest should be amazing.

At Long Last, Return to the Long Canyon Helipad!

2011-11-10T18:19:00.000-07:00

AKA, Sedona in October

On a whim, we went to Sedona... two weekends ago? I have no idea. It was something like that. And after some shwhacking and some cursing, we finally returned to the Helipad! Where, it seems, the NAU crew had left us some firewood, and some tiki torches and citronela, among other things.

Some cried, "Poor ethic, guys!" But I say, "Ah hell, it's Sedona, anyway!" You can see the damn golf course from the "Wilderness Area." So be it. LTE!

(That's Leave Traces Everywhere, folks, one of three possible wilderness ethics, coined in this very canyon, in fact.)

The others are of course LNT, and the every popular LNA, or:

Leave Nothing Anywhere!
(Courtesy of HCN, and those assholes over in the Powder River Basin, that, uh, probably heat your house.)

On that note, here's a cool shot Adia got from the ruins. Note the massive Red Rocks-esque potential? climbing potential on the left! You can see our little tiny fire in the photo, too.

Earlier (Also Adia' shots)

The plan for the next day was, of course, go climb something! Last time we were here, we tried (see: failed) to climb out of the canyon. This time, we actually found a rather good way out. We didn't top out, due to the prospect of an evil manzy shwhack, but we made a bunch of fun boulder moves to get to a swell beer-drinkin' spot. I think we packed in something like 16 bottles?

Top o' the world to ya, mate!

Ali and Adia survey the domain.

Some more trees dere.

Aaaand one more of Ali being epic.

Or Perhaps It Endures?

2011-11-05T19:18:00.003-07:00

Turns out that our first snowfall wasn't a fluke! Maybe it'll melt eventually, but for now, the trees are still plastered with white, and more snow is evidently forecast for tomorrow night.

Coon? Ringtail?

Ranger Point!

Elk!

First Snowfall!

2011-11-04T21:51:00.001-07:00

It's snowing! Winter has come to Grand Canyon, in huge, wet flakes. It'll all melt in the morning, but for now, it's great to watch the seasons changing.

Churning Forward

2011-11-01T22:16:00.000-07:00

I'm down to one post a month, which is rather uncharacteristic, I suppose, but there it is: things have been busy. I spent today swamping on a chainsaw crew (collecting branches, rigging lines, safety, etc.), and then hauling slash to the dump. When we got there, there was a HUGE mulching machine churning through all the old wood debris. It was a blue monstrosity, fed by a big claw-bucket backhoe, and spewing mulch off the end of a conveyor belt. Suddenly, my F250 seemed rather weak and puny. I was reminded of the spice harvesters from Dune.

Backing Up:

Saturday was Halloween, spent in Flagstaff, mostly at Mia's, and then wandering afterwards. The theme there was "Zombie Prom," and it was adhered to thoroughly by nearly everyone but us, we having had no idea whatsoever, and fresh from the woods. My favorite costume was the zombie cow, although there was also a guy early in the evening dressed rather convincingly as a Tapatio bottle. Unfortunately, I didn't get the memo that the Monte V's theme was "supervillains" until the next morning, else I'd also have checked that out. I copped out on my costume, and went with my black and brown cowboy fallback. I figured I was some sort of old west figure. Anyway, I had twin six shooters and a long black coat, so that was just fine.

Work has been hard to come by, though they keep paying me here no matter what I do, which is fine by me. So far, I've been a Mexican Spotted Owl technician, a computer geek, a cat (read- housecat) trapper, a landscaper, an invasive plant killer, a condor-carcass retriever, and now a chainsaw crew member. Tomorrow I'm looking for work again. We'll see what the trails crew has going. Five days left, and who knows what's next!

Working for the government has been very interesting. Generally, at the Grand Canyon, tremendous amounts of work performed by the resources department is done strictly by interns, and paid and unpaid volunteers. We've barely got enough money to keep the chainsaws working, let alone actually hire people for real paying positions. If they didn't have an army of people willing to work for $75 a week, half the South Rim would just be a mess of construction debris, weeds, and invasive plants. The wildlife department is down to three employees, myself having been laid off, the director having retired, and my supervisor having long quit. One can gather that not much is happening. Add to that the mandatory two-months unpaid furlough of most real employees, and you've got a quiet winter around these parts. Hopefully not too many elk decide to commit suicide on the road. There might not be anybody to scrape them off.

To wit: I biked into a herd of 30-35 cows and calves on the way home, and shooed them off the road by bicycle, all the cars having decided there was nothing for it but to wait. My commute: An eighty-second ride, characterized by elk jams.

One more good reason to love the place.

Also also, finally returned to the Helipad! Months too late. NAU Hiking Club, you left citronella and tiki torches out there, but thanks for the firewood! We added some manzy. Also discovered a way out of Long Canyon, finally. It looks like Red Rocks back there. I sense potential. Any takers?

Mission Dead Baby Condor

2011-10-24T17:05:00.037-07:00

Recently returned from the depths of Grand Canyon on a body recovery mission. It was an unlikely SAR, but in the end, we found him.

This is Mort.

Mort, unfortunately for him, is dead. We're not sure exactly how it happened, but he fell out of his nest and died, or something. Adia and I were sent to go find him.

Oddly, we did! He was at the base of this:

Which was a formation behind this castle-thingy that you see behind Adia here:

Which we somehow made ourselves not climb, once we realized that we actually had found the dead baby condor that could-not-be-found, Mort, short for Voldemort, which as Kyle notes, is "Vol de mort," or "Flight of Death." Cool, eh?

Adia certainly thinks so.

As do I.

Of course, the question is, now what?

Here's what!

Carcass Bag!

So we packed him out. In the end, we were able to shove him into Adia's backpack. Sadly, there is no photo of me holding his carcass by his giant condor feet. He wasn't very photogenic, however.

Of the smells there are to smell in the world, three-week-old condor jerky is one of the smellier. The office dogs loved it, however, especially Gus. I gotta get a photo of Gus.

Bonus Stuff

This guy was awesome.

"Hm...I find your planet....fit for my consumption!"

Infinite climbing potential, or certain death? Lots of cleaning on TR, for sure.

Between the Corridor and the Kaibab, things are actually quite peaceful. We saw no people at all.

Trilobite Tracks!

Catapult the Dreadnaught

2011-09-10T17:48:00.001-07:00

Walk into a simulator, or a holodeck, whatever you want to call it. (Perhaps one merely sits down.) Put on a headset and the world flashes out, replaced by an infinite sandbox, a rigidly constructed world, a sexual fantasy, or anything. You have infinite possibility. You are flying an F-14 while blasting the Tron soundtrack. You have constructed your own planet. You are making love with three women on top of the Eiffel Tower. You just killed your boss. BASE jumping is out of vogue. You're flying. (You could really go flying too, if you wanted, but the simulation is less expensive.) How far in the future are we? Ten years? Twenty years? Thirty?

The future is here. The future was yesterday. I know, because I've been swimming against it, because I consider it self-destructive and delusional. Smart phones do nothing but distance me from the true world. Headsets do the same, or any communications device. I cease to exist where I am, to interact fully with that space. And not only that, but I have a socially acceptable right to ignore everyone and everything wherever I actually am. Physical space is gradually becoming irrelevant.

Or is it?

The delusion of the future is that everything real will cease to matter. And it may. If robots grow our food in gargantuan hydroponics networks, will farms be anything other than hobbies? It can be argued that nearly anyone reasonably established and even moderately successful in the developed world already has absolutely everything that they absolutely need, and many, many additional things that they do not, such as an automobile, a cell phone, or a washing machine. It is possible, though difficult, to live in a handbuilt cabin in the woods. Easier now, in fact, than it has ever been before. But much beyond a roof, a community, food and water: much beyond these things are difficult to qualify as “needs.”

The robotic revolution will change many things. The establishment of aging as a voluntary process will change everything. We will have the ability to control any thing that we choose with our minds. We will be able to experience anything we or anyone else can even dream, and believe that it is real. We have already learned that we live the movies. Our brains cannot distinguish between something viewed that is not “real,” and something viewed which is. A movie is not “real.” It is not a series of events that we truly experience. But our brain does not know this; our subconscious assuredly does not know this. With each new fantasy that we download, we leap farther and farther from the realm of the real. Sometimes, we stray closer. A particularly intense documentary, or even a moving work of pure fiction (as far as such a category exists), may inspire us, or many, to real action.

So what will your choice be? What will be mine? Will we each embrace the future in our own way? A tiny minority of the world's movements and religions have shown themselves truly willing to fundamentally and absolutely choose to live in defiance of the world that is here, and the world that is coming. That defiance is characterized by a refusal to live within the “new norms.” When your simulation is better than your world, what will make you exit your fantasy? What incentive will you have whatsoever to return to reality? You will not be asleep, and if you sleep, then you may sleep within your well. There will be no need to surface. So what, if anything, will call you back?

Some arguments exist, but they will be made irrelevant. The simulation will be no obstacle to interaction with real people, if they choose to join you. If they do not, your facsimile projections will do, or perhaps even a reasonable computer extrapolation from their fully-downloaded thoughts. The dead need not cease to exist. A robot may also just as easily prove to be an acceptable re-creation, or perhaps something even more advanced. A flesh and blood creature with a computer mind does not currently possess a truly convincing name. Android? Cyborg? These things are already defined “other categories.” Will a husband or wife whose partner dies tragically be willing to continue to live without them if this is in no way a necessity? (The potential removal of aging is not immortality, merely an eventual mode of existence.) What technology will offer is an unparalleled illusion of the absolute irrelevance of death. Perhaps I upload myself from a pain-wracked and frail body into a powerful android? Perhaps I choose to live for decades in a simulated world of infinite mountains where I can rejoin my dead wife?

Science fiction authors have anticipated these events for a century. Equally, they have anticipated the potential for resistance, for a full and organized opposition to such disturbing change, change so fundamental that it disrupts and rewrites utterly our perspective of reality. My perspective has already shifted. Movies and books I download as memories. I write on a laptop while bread bakes, listening to electronic music, violins and cellos with a tempo faster than my heartrate. Cell phone. Sink. Stove. Electricity. We are still only the first. One can choose to accomplish much, or accomplish little. Our new tools provide both opportunities.

It is up to us to choose.

Some notes:

The dreadnaught is the momentum of the possible, weighed against our will to resist the inevitable. Put another way, we have never asked ourselves what should be made possible, but only what may. What may prove possible is infinite. This universe, our canvass, is without bound. We have established that there are rules. But ultimately, the minerals and liquids that we pull out of the Earth seem capable of an infinite multitude of things. If we need further evidence of this, we need only look to life itself.

The literal translation of dread-nought is “fearing nothing.”

And therefore, perhaps, capable of anything?

Finally, the catapult is the tremendous stratification of wealth that has occurred. The ultimate profit motive will drive the creation of whatever can be dreamed. Because, of course, the most valuable product will fetch the highest price. We will start with private spaceflight.

For further ideas, see: http://nextbigfuture.com/

The future is now.

Lessons from Januu

2011-09-08T22:22:00.001-07:00

The last few weeks have brought a profound sense of both possibility and melancholy. I missed out on something that I had desperately wanted to participate in, but was given the opportunity to knock out a longstanding goal on the life list, rafting the Colorado River, or at least, being chauffeured down it. As a bonus, I found a reason to return to climbing.

Life is short- it behooves one to start knocking out objectives. I suspect that when I am done, I will not be done, and life will have been long and full indeed, or at the worst, short and sweet. Life feels pretty extensive already. I'll be curious to see what possibilities are still waiting.

Consider:

I once read an article in Alpinist that advocated regaining, cherishing, and cultivating one's child-sense of wonder at the world. The author was Russian, and wrote about how nine days spent dodging death on the side of a Himalayan mountain contained the experience of as many years. His writing made me think of Zion, or being reduced to a tiny element navigating a majestic whole. I realized tonight that there is a word for the sensation I feel when absolutely enveloped by these places, wild, whole, and dominating: It's not simply awe-

It's joy.

We may supply our own light, but the deep sandstone glow also shines well.

Fools on Fools' Errands Found

2011-09-08T06:57:00.002-07:00

Who dares draw the true vagrant breath of the west?

Accept the whisky murmurs of the drunken Indian,

truly red by the gas station side of the road,

the lonely hitch hiker, ticketed, truant and temporary?

A fixture of impermanence.

Who deems and deigns himself worthy to tell the coyote

where to drink? Elects to elaborate the ideology
of the vulture, or the religion of his roadkill roast?

Where meth and peyote bake lost souls as surely
as the asphalt fries the carcass elk?

Who are the guests of honor at this semi-

sponsored banquet? The meal provided by
the eighteen-wheelers squealed wheels, the
engine brake too late, too deep, too faint?
No condors soar. Grounded, sick. Lead-bellied.

Forever airplanes blink, mimics of wandering stars.
We tourists, businessmen, travelers, students, and lovers
all attendant fools on fools' errands found

cross the country falsely, the crossing without

the earth, bypassing and then returning. The ultimate
screaming American Dream. Speed, speed, nothing

in between! No unfortunate reminders of the corn
wastes or the residential deserts.

Granite gods leer amongst slagged domes,

gasping to the sky the message of one-hundred-
twenty degree heat. The boomstick candelabra
firework tarantula Joshua Trees. Dreamers on their knees,
supplicating their specter dreams.

Plastic elected electric men weave a rug of scorn,
the casting aside of the fourthborn, last witnesses
to the First Crusade, the empires' glory a childhood memory
raised on the legends of the noble war and faced
with the inconveniently sticky blood of the killing fields.

Masonry remains; sandstone memories of wetter
centuries, eye-thoughts of the forgotten people graven
in white tracings. Broken stone. All impermanence,
forever. The desert sheep remain, and return to

the caves their ancestors paced.

Surely some thought must be given to the future

of the rest? Or are we all already forgotten here,
the conquest finally lost? We will blast the liveable spaces
from the earth, and the deserts' twisted raven
standard will be raised once again.

“And they will drink the blood and tears that echo
from the fallow clouds, and cease to remember the
last vestiges of August rain.”

Philmont, Here's to Thee

2011-09-06T10:58:00.003-07:00

She walked in from the dust of the Colorado road
New Mexico sky open for us to read
It left me to wonder, where had she been?
What had she seen that had brought her to me?

I left a wondering horse for a wandering hoof
a writhing and imaginary girl among woodsmoke and elk bones
Young men playing at age, old men living youth
and ever the breath of ghosts and the sound of lightning
the smell of Arizona smoke, smothering the thunder.

A gunflint summer, coal dust and embers of gold
black powder sunsets, yarrow breeze and
beardtongue penstemon dawn.

Dirtbag vagabonds, convinced of their fierce righteousness
hating and loving the hippies, unsold on a world of greed
without a place for beer or horses, claim laid by abstaining
Mormon piety, striving to smother the evident vibrancy.

A clucking cuckolding of the rightful stewards and
sowers of the earth, the men and women who love the land,
the blood, the mud, the rut and the flies. Cows dead of teatrot,
the milk soured in the bag. Two lone sheep, surrounded by a flock of lions.

Five strings undone in sorrow, the planking
notes of the banjos summoning the sight of
the impersonated dead, coal-men and woodsmen,
stonemen and loggers, railroad boys dead by
hammerdown dawn, and wrapped in wolfpelts.

Cemeteries of nameless graves, photos of faceless
men, lost as we are, they attendant on death,
the moderns attendant on the death of their history.
The land is forever lost. Thirty-two miles of tunnels
to a leadbelly treasure no man can grasp.

A cabin collapsed amidst a blowdown
an iron stove left to rust and die
cats amidst iron meadows, detritous of
the west. She stalks mule deer, twenty times
her size, but her ambition knows no bounds.

It is, after all, a mining town.

Drawing Arcs, and The Controversy Wall

2011-09-04T23:04:00.004-07:00

"Joe, you talk when you're nervous. You've gotta just...focus on the rock. Pay attention to the wall."

Mike's advice after I came swinging off a 5.10 that Eric had just posted. Eric had an incredible two days at Controversy, onsighting nearly everything, eighty to ninety-five foot climbs, and leading every one, topping out at 5.11b. I opted out from doubling leads after the first day, having not climbed in nearly five months! Eric was fresh from the Winds, and two weeks of rest and bouldering along the Colorado River, so he was cruising. Mike was putting away overhanging .12s when the mood struck him. Yellow streaks over white, khaki, and black ryholite, huge sweeps, flakes, knobs, scoops out of the wall. Perfect hand cracks open between bolts, and then close into blank faces three feet further up. Pockets lead to sidepulls and gastons, leaving one reaching at full-extension for crushing crimps, and hauling for summit jugs blossoming from the wall.

This place is a dream come true of hard sport routes, and some tough trad. I got shut down twice on a short, overhanging crack. I'll have to train up and come back.

Either I've quit climbing, or I'm more addicted to it than ever. The pain refuses to fade, and seems to be building, even as my technique improves, and the fear continues to also fade. It's an unfortunate combination of things. Eric and I are talking goals. 5.8 trad? 5.9 trad? 5.10? What's the ceiling? We want big, tall, awesome towers, multi-pitch monstrosities, maybe finally break through to the real thing. We always talk about backing down from hard sport and hanging bouldering, but we come back to it anyway.

We spent today monkeying around at the Draw, feet chasing rails, fingers sussing for pockets and wild swings. I had to fight my urge to swing free and instead find static solutions to everything. It was quite the challenge.

Life without climbing is boring, and climbing makes it incredibly interesting. Therefore, climbing.

That's what I decided this weekend.

Passed Montezuma's Well on the way down to Phoenix, after four months away. Eric says he's never been to the Monument. I'm describing arsenic blue-green travertine wells. Arizona is a place full of memories, which is funny, since he and I are both always planning to leave.

Eight days off of work, three days of climbing, and an impromptu trip to Wisconsin. We'll see what shakes out!

Early Return, Second Sojourn

2011-09-02T00:47:00.000-07:00

We made it! Eric and I are back topside after a grand total of eleven days on the Colorado at high water. In the end, the trip was not what we'd expected, both in the best and the oddest senses.

Our craft was a big motor rig, but thankfully a smaller one than many of the monstrosities that bob down the river like lost whale carcasses.

This gave us the ability to bring:

Way Too Much Stuff (Not our idea!)

Y Las Ganas Para Hacer Boulder

We had a weird trip for a lot of reasons, but it was a lot of fun nonetheless. On our first day on the river, we got a shot at the Redwall Cavern, a huge scoop into the wall along the river where the limestone is still at water level, just below Lee's Ferry. Not sure what it went at. V-Hard. I was able to slap at a vicious round and knobly band around 12-15 feet up, but that was as near as we got to the eighty-foot or so high ceiling. The other shot is Eric working one of the many awesome problems that he came up with in camp. We found tons of stuff, mostly V0 to V3, but maybe harder? Lots of crimps and upside-down jugs.

As for the actual job, catching owls didn't go so well, as Tim left partway down the river at New Hance, hiking up Red Canyon. However, Eric and I were successful in calling in some baby owls to hang out with us at Red the night before. We figured from the way that they acted that they must have taken us to be giant baby owls. It was pretty funny.

After Tim left, we got a new teammate, an awesome guy named Brent, who had spent fifteen years wandering the canyons of Zion, looking for owls and adventures. Brent proved to be a great travel and canyoneering companion, and we spent the rest of the trip scrambling up side-canyon after side-canyon with him, chasing after decent habitat. Among these were Forster, Specter, and Matcat. We found a few owls, lots of bighorn, and pour-offs, swimming holes, and incredible formations around every turn.

Just past the Redwall Cavern. River mile 35 or so.

The wall at the back of Unkar. We figure it would be a simple rap with a few 600' fixed lines. This was after the night spent sleeping in 100+ degree night with a bunch of scorpions and black widows, and then another night face-down in some rocks. Not exactly restful. Nice sunrise, though.

Wiggling our way up Matcat.

The funnel in Forster.

The canyon, being the Grand Canyon and all, has a tendency to remain almost exhaustingly impressive. Here's a few final shots. After we were stymied in 150-Mile-Canyon by an overhanging 30-foot waterfall in slick stone (capped with a giant ceiling chockstone, welded to the walls with travertine!) we headed on out.

The Corridor

Most days were AT LEAST 100 degrees, maybe 110.

Eric at Elves' Chasm

Nate our boatman surveys Lava Falls from downstream, having survived the passage once more. The water was running around 20,000 cfs, between GCD outflow and tributary input.

Shelter from the blaze.

(Most photos taken by Eric.)

Eyes Closed, and Mind Awake.

2011-09-01T18:46:00.000-07:00

Spin, spin possibilities. Elucidate a second reality. Dreams crash to waking, the violence and shaking, turned to daylight, purple fountains and fiery forests fading to white meteorites, the premonitions to salient birthright. And turn and consider: "Without action, wherefore decision, and whereof volition?"

I watched the movie "Inception," and my subconscious seems to have learned something. Most dreams are lucid, after a fashion. All leave lasting impressions. Old friends pass before me, new possibilities dawn with waking. I watched a tremendous explosion of purple plasma as a transformer station was consumed by a forest fire, and was nearly crushed by a power line set falling by the explosion. I felt my feet pounding as I ran, the smoke in my nose, the fear and the heat.

I flew above the world's chaos, and crashed to earth as the ships prow plunged into the rolling Pacific sea.

I killed unknown enemies, struck down those before me, but never felt power. Only wondered at the consequences, the reasons and the coming change.

I traveled between five locations in my last year's travels, never once stopping to consider the impossibility of their proximity, but instead matching wits with each new guardian.

I met a man who spoke perfect French, a kind gentleman, and yet I struggled on in my own poor approximation of the language within the dream. Some space in my brain speaks fluenty, but I am not privy to this knowledge regularly.

The lasting impression- Eric woke me from sleep on a beach below overhanging corners of stone, and I struggled for half an hour to match my thoughts to reality. I can't remember what I surfaced from, but it was somewhere far below.

The realization: There are levels beneath and above these. Perhaps this is one of many reasons that the Hopi, the Navajo, and the others were so sure of at least four worlds of perception.

Do we begin to understand ourselves through control, or through finally, truly, letting go?

Alice in Llamaland

2011-08-09T14:51:00.000-07:00

"Mountaineering, ice-picking, whatever you want to call it."

"I have lovely German homework, and you...you have to go and see your birds." -Jess

I had a fantastic conversation catching up with an old friend today, about traveling in Patagonia and some other stuff.

But since there have been several requests for more information:

We had a llama party on Sunday afternoon, in a big aspen meadow below the west side of Mt. Humphreys. The weather was beautiful, Arizona sunny and breezy, with white smoke billowing into the sky in the distance from some small fires behind some rolling green hills. The meadow had a big knoll in the middle, with a few trees and a lot of flowering plants. I would describe it as "disturbingly idyllic," though a friend put it more succinctly as, "It looked like the Telletubby World."

When we got to the place where our friend lives on Saturday night, we had been planning on camping out in the woods, but we hadn't accounted for the Wonderland factor. To get to the beach, which was after the big grassy lawn, we had to walk through a white cross-hatch wall with a big circle in the middle for a door. On the other side was a kitchen in the sand, colored lights, a lagoon with boats, and an island with a drawbridge in the center. There was also a giant treehouse way the hell off the ground, a cabana, a fire pole to a rather nautical bathroom, and some other curious things, like a stuffed Toucan. I can't say that it made a terribly great amount of sense, but it was quite fantastic nevertheless.

I suppose, then, that having been warned by this initial setup, that I should not have been as surprised as I was to find myself attending a tea party the next day, complete with women in dresses and funny hats, a man with rabbit ears, and pack llamas loaded with panyards, top hats, and feather boas. There was also, of course, a croquet set, and lots of cake. There were even strawberry cupcakes with entire strawberries baked inside of them.

The funniest item of the day, however, would have to go to the Center for Biological Diversity party favors. Everybody got a box of condoms labeled, "Extinction is Forever. Wear a Condom." The idea is a decrease in the massively overgrown human population.

My box said, "Save the Spotted Owl," which of course was the joke. And now we're off to do so! Or at least find some babies to harass. Headed down to Indian Gardens for the night, then the North Rim for a week, and then on down the river after that. Should be fantastic!

Smoke Rises Like Memories Over August

2011-08-08T12:04:00.001-07:00

Well, the summer ended, though it mostly just blended into more summer. We spent yesterday in a mountain meadow with a bunch of cake, tea, guitars, and llamas. Llamas in top hats and feather boas, to be precise, with white smoke rising in the distance. Our friend Amanda's birthday party was a continuation of an Alice in Wonderland theme that refuses to fade.

By the end of Philmont, there had been nine fires started by lightning, all of them extinguished by purpose or weather, though some got rather interesting. The biggest was the fire above Pueblano on Wilson Mesa, which burned a few acres. They bulldozed a ring around it to keep the place from burning down. Nonetheless, we spent a night evacuating crews to Head of Dean, once the flames started leaping on the ridge.

The bears also kept things interesting. I ended up seeing twelve, though I ran into bears over fifty times. One trashed our tents at Baldy Town rather thoroughly- I had claw marks in my ceiling for the rest of the season. We caught three adults, including the mother bear that went through the kitchen window at Pueblano a few days after the fire. She had three cubs, so the next task after she trapped herself in a drum was getting the cubs out of a nearby ponderosa tree. The bawled their heads off like baby zombies, and fought every inch of their way to the ground. The game warden pulled them all out with a snare pole, eventually, and we drove on down the road with three baby bears in the bed of the truck. Once they realized that we weren't going to hurt them, they were mostly just curious little babies, where before they'd been toaster-sized balls of fury.

Our Phil-Fiesta involved a bunch of homemade buffalo and asparagus ravioli. It was nice cooking all summer, once we replaced our sawdust flour with some real wheat!

One note from the burro pen shack, the other from a photo of a poster on a wall in South Africa:

"The duty of any patriot is to protect his country from its government."

And

"Government

without justice

is little more than

a group of

BANDITS."

10-8, Clarks Fork to Base

2011-06-27T21:59:00.000-07:00

On June 29th, at midnight, the Valle Vidal will be closed by the National Forest Service until further notice. This is, I am presuming, to prevent it from burning, and to prevent people from being there when, or if, it burns. This decision will cause the closing of the Valle Vidal Philmont camps, so from here on out in 2011, Seally Canyon, Ring Place, and Whiteman Vega will revert to open tracts of ponderosa prairie. Their staffs will be redistributed south.

Among the Philmont staff, there is a growing trepidation about what we view as the coming fire. Philmont this year is impossibly dry, the forests crazily dense. The animals have been behaving strangely all summer. So far, I've seen six different bears, and had over thirty bear encounters in all. Today, I watched a little black guy gleefully lick ants from a log alongside the Middle Cito Creek on my way down from Cyphers. He looked fantastically happy, and he never saw me.

Over a week ago, I scared up a herd of 25 or so cow elk, and about 20 babies while crossing Wilson Mesa, headed from Pueblano to Rich. I had never seen a baby elk- it was amazing to see 20. The Wilson Mesa lake is gone, a battered and ashen gray trampling.

This morning, we saw a newborn deer take its first steps and begin to nurse, as its mother licked it clean.

Tonight, I sang along to some music with Tim Collver and the Clark's Fork gang. Finally reunited with Rosie and Paul. Nick gave me a lift to Base.

It was funny coming in, a little sad that the medics are gone, Nick, Alex, Khanh, and Whittney. We'll see you guys down the trail someday!

Tim was headed up the Tooth Ridge for bear patrol tomorrow. They're highly active, and readily rewarded for foraging. That bear will probably be the summer's first bear casualty, sadly. Evidently, it got food three times yesterday.

I suppose that we're all waiting. I believe that it will burn, and that we ought to clear everyone out now, before it's too late. We don't have the evacuation capacity to flee a real wildfire.

A frantic piano is playing behind me.

The reverse of that argument is that wildfires rarely start by lightning, and when they do, they usually take a little while to get going. But in a dry enough year, that ceases to be a reassuring mentality.

Most fires are started by people. So far, so good, but this forest will have to burn someday.

Tomorrow, it's back to Baldy. The summer so far has been amazing. I don't want to leave, and I certainly want to come back, as a bear researcher, as a CD, as something. I guess we'll see.

I felt like I was a year late, but there's always a new trail family.

Sin Dinero, Casi Sin Trabajo, Pero Todavia Con Algo

2011-06-05T20:54:00.000-07:00

It seems I have about $16 to my name. When did that happen? It's fantastic!

The funny thing about being out here at Philmont is that although I haven't really done anything for the past few weeks, other than WFR (Wilderness First Responder), random stuff around base, the beginning of ranger training, then Cons training, then a moment of work crew training, and now Conservationist training, I probably have hundreds of dollars on backorder. Which is pretty cool, considering that the hardest things I've done today were sledgehammering some rocks and playing a really intense game of volleyball for a few hours, with some great new friends. Ever since the WFR group coalesced early on, volleyball has been our thing. Tonight, we finally say goodbye. The real Philmont season starts June 8th, and the backcountry staff begins to Scatter (go to their camps) tomorow.

"What's this about 'Conservationist?' Didn't you say that you were going to be a Mountain Trek Ranger?"

I did! I got fired, more or less. Involuntarily reassigned. Backstabbed, blindsided, whatever you want to call it. I was called up on insubordination, accused of being the Philmont equivalent of, "Mickey Mouse, standing at the gates of the Magic Kingdom, with his hat off, smoking, and muttering about 'that loose bitch sleeping beauty.'" I was, "acting as though I were an RT (Ranger Trainer) or other member of "upper leadership," even though I was not. I was "poorly representing the ranger department in every way." This all comes from a little private meeting I had recently with some higher-ups around here.

It's funny how I don't remember doing anything of the sort. Though I can understand my presence being interpreted as a threat to authority. I let them believe what they wanted to believe, that I didn't really want to be a ranger, that the switch was a good thing, that I knew I was a lousy ranger, etc.

What I've learned from this is that politics can strike you anywhere, as you move on and up in the world, or maybe backwards and sideways. The Mountain Trek Coordinators, having a problem with me, decided to refer me for another assignment. They felt that I was unfit to be a ranger. They never really asked how I felt about it, but there you have it. I'd known them for a few days.

The other night, May 28th, we were having our initial ranger reunion. We were eating ice cream after the opening campfire. I was ecstatic to see my old friends, to be back out here to do a great job that we love. I guess I swore once or twice. Heck, maybe ten times. Then we played a bunch of music and had a merry old time. The big boss evidently overheard me say, "Heck, the language doesn't matter, the scouts aren't here yet. I'll reign in the language when they get here."

This is common sense to anybody. But not to the boss. To the boss, this was evidence of my failure to represent what is evidently "scouting." Scouting, it seems, doesn't allow for profanity, even among adults surrounded by other adults. I wasn't the only one swearing- I was the only one overheard to say honestly that I wasn't ashamed of it.

I wrote a more eloquent and retaliatory treatment of the issue, but I won't publish that until after the summer.

So, I got re-assigned to the Conservation Department. People in the Conservation Department swear a lot. Far more than I've ever considered normal. It's refreshing, actually. It's also true that I've heard just about everybody in the Ranger Department swear just as strongly as I. But my crime was somehow the most notable. For now, I'm going to refrain from saying what I really want to say. That will all come later. But I have realized, that whatever it meant to me in the past, something like working for Philmont is no longer something I ought to be proud to put on my resume. The Boy Scouts of America are an openly discriminatory organization, and I no longer feel proud to work for them. I have learned that a job well done does not mean anything much here. I raised the American and Philmont flags over base right before I got ambushed with this news.

A few days into Cons training, I made it clear that if I was going to be kept on Work Crew, I would be quitting upon our return to base. My shoulder won't tolerate use for manual labor 8-10 hours a day. Nor, it seems now, will my knee. I have nothing to prove to myself concerning strength, endurance, or hole digging ability. I came here to teach.

Luckily, something else was found for me. I'm happy to say that I will now be a Conservationist at Baldy Town for the summer, living above 10,000', with a fantastic view of the place! I'm a little unsure of the whole thing, but it's a decent way to make a little money, and I'm looking forward to the acclimatization. I'm sad that I will be in much less contact with my friends in the Ranger Department, but I've got the North Country Rendezvous to look forward to on the 8th, and all the backcountry music, bread baking, trail building, medical emergencies, search and rescues, and everything else that is sure to follow this summer. I'm straddling three departments- Ranger, Cons, and Backcountry! So maybe in the end, I got what I wanted anyways. Though I've only had two beers since getting to New Mexico...

I guess a little indiscretion goes a long way.

Also, it seems that I don't get phone calls out here, even though the phone might be on. Regardless, I will be far away from phones for maybe a month, starting tomorrow.

New Address:

Me
Philmont Scout Ranch
Cons Dept., Baldy Town
47 Caballo Rd.
Cimarron, NM 87714

Hope you're all having a great summer! Maybe I'll see a few of you along the way.

My Once Wild Country

2011-06-05T12:46:00.009-07:00

A second chorus rises after the dawn
as the day birds go about their filial business
the hummingbird fetching the equinoxial wind
the magpie fillowing each furrowed breeze
astute vultures plumbing the azure radiance for its risings.

The deer will stir amongst the summer trees
as will the bears, and the masticated shade of the green-fingered oak leaves
rustling after sustenance in this dry place.
The death-fetching is quick here, much as the days are long.
A feline swish precedes an oseal crunch, and copper blood flows between yellow teeth.

Howls have long ceased; now only the yips of coyotes rise to the cold blue moon,
the auburn horizontal disk, or the hanging crescent.
The old rhythms are ignored in their purported obsolescence.
Dark nights are devoid of their righteous terror, and not even the grizzlies’ ghosts rouse dreams,
now driven far beyond the northern borders.

Time has wrought a loss of majesty, a lessening of essence.
The land has been laid tame, the august peaks laid bare,
the useful timber harvested or burned,
aquifers disrupted in the probing, raping, plunging quest for gas,
and all left open naked by well-packed trails and roads.

Where is my once wild country?
Surely the chipped and whittled hills have not forgotten?
Who took the hidden west?
The semen and the sputum of the true buffalo?
Was it the hunted Indian?
The bright-eyed trappers or the ragged miners? The drunken loggers?
Was it the 50,000 dead Chinese and Irish, or the porcelain railroad men?
How brief was the opening glory; how long the closing and the cleansing?
Have we spent a score of decades seeking to recover those windswept sagebrush dreams
of one forgotten week in 1843?

What of the Spaniards? The 100,000 naked beavers, stripped of their skins?
The tongueless buffaloes, the ashen heaps of bones?
The 300,000 red men, repainted and replaced?
The dispossessed and slaughtered Mexicans?

What of the skin walkers, the coyote men,
the haunted canyons of Utah that the Mormons never tamed?
What of the drowned cañons, the mad boatmen and the scalers of the desert spires?
What of dry-mounthed turquoise arroyo peyote salvia datura dreams,
of spider grandmothers and ancient ocean stones the color of blood?
Whole landscapes the shades of lesser sunsets!
Juniper knuckling from the dry bones, and skies bluer than the drowned and hidden waters?

Where is my once wild country?
We are Italians, Irish, Chinese, and Poles,
Catholics, Buddhists, Protestants, Atheists,
wide-eyed Mormon children, Navajos begging change off
white kids with backpacks and vagabond shoes in Amtrak bathrooms.
The rails are a novelty, the rape of the land a forgone necessity,
and the men and the women are left sexless and homeless and loveless and landless
and silently raving
against their well-informed and powerless
isolation.

East Wind, Bring Me Word of the West

2011-06-04T22:35:00.005-07:00

East Wind, Bring Me Word of the West

A red handprint glows below an arching sandstone roof
and in a spreading circle without form, one-hundredfold, a multitude
a mural of one symbol, preserved amongst the ruins
printed on a sheltered wall,
above a broken row of what were once adobe homes.

The straw still shows from the mud bricks
marks where dark desert fingers pressed
vieja madera, broken timbers, charcoal lines
impressions of a Spanish coin, and other foreign themes.
Recently abandoned, these.

And in the soft sands that lie below
waits a pottery of zigzag lines
and corncobs and their grinding stones
a mezcla left untouched
maiz, mano and matate stones,
bastard names for older things.

Petroglyph men continue their dream-journeys,
untroubled by the footsteps of a few wandering whites.
The signs for friend, river, man with duck for head with duck for head
rainbow, bighorn sheep, leaping deer, a canyon map
a warding circle high above, one, wide and white, then three.

Their secrets are their own.
We cast guesses at the mute lines graven in the black varnish
the kivas do not speak, and the ladders have long fallen.

The silent windows are empty, the sand houses roofless
and at night, when all is quiet
except the blue wind in the canyon, I imagine
I wait for a kindled ghostfire to cast from the black and staring rectangles
a quivering, spectral light
but no blaze awakes the dead village,
and the cold blue moonlight shines without respite, terribly bright.

Crickets on the Breeze

2011-05-26T21:58:00.002-07:00

We're counting down the days to the start of things out here. Tomorrow is the 27th, which makes Arrival Day the 28th! I'm definitely excited to see everybody. I spent the morning sorting papers, the afternoon scrubbing tarified cow out of big barbeque grills. Yesterday, I took some pictures of horses.

Evenings are mostly dedicated to ultimate frisbee, volleyball, or playing guitar. And of course, the weather's perfect, like it always is out here, when lightning bolts aren't striking everything in sight. Breezy, a little warm, no bugs, and the best temperature ever for just being and living outside. I like living in a wall tent. Crickets in the evenings, and the breeze blowing through. Two months is going to go by fast!

The Tentocalypse

2011-05-24T21:57:00.001-07:00

Well, today Ranger Tent City decided to blow away. I must say, it was quite unfortunate. I called fire with a cell phone, and Jared and Swede came running with a hammer, but we could barely hold one tent down, so I had to go for reinforcements. I ended up running in to the SSSSSSSAC yelling like a lunatic, which got enough people up and running out the door that I had time to run to Logistics. I think they were in a meeting, but once they heard, "tents getting torn apart," they went running out the door. We lost 24 or so in all, and would've lost a lot more, if everybody hadn't come running to help. Most tents just weren't nailed into their bases very well, ridgepoles snapped, huge rips opened, just about everything went wrong.

Thanks for the help, guys!

Also, as it turns out, uploading DSLR photos at full format causes one to run out of free Google storage space quickly! So no more blog photos for now... Stalkerbook will have to be the go-to for the time being.

Horseradish Bear!

2011-05-24T21:01:00.002-07:00

Horseradish was our safety word for all these crazy blood-and-guts WFR scenarios. The idea was that if anything was really wrong, one would yell "Horseradish!" to demonstrate that whatever was happening was occurring outside of scenario. An example would be when Brian tackled an overly-frantic Austin to the ground in the middle of this last one, and when we determined that the reported "bear" on scene was in fact a combination of a burn victim's oddly slash-like injuries, a hand removed by a chainsaw, and creatively planted misinformation.

Outbound in Dom's jeep.

We have absolutely no idea what's coming. But Cy knows. It turns out that none of us are patients.

Instead, we're all rescuers!

Except for those sneaky folks like Tim, who are secretly patients waiting to happen. Also, this is all the equipment we got. And some stethoscopes.

Don't endo into posts!

She'll be alright. That is until she collapses with TBI and ICP.

This is serious.

And Nick is all over it.

Whittney comes in to report.

We're all wondering what is going on, by this point. We still haven't been released from the command post!

Is this guy a zombie?

We're thinking "definitely."

And we found a vampire!

"Vampires, Bears, and Zombies? What the hell else is out there?!"

Dom stakes the vampire.

Mission Accomplished!

An improvised carry.

Back to work.

And another. Didn't get a shot of Jacob hauling somebody out solo, unfortunately.

Our collection of saboteurs.

"We did it, boss. The monsters are dead."
"Good work, son."

Bringing the last one home.

That's it! You all failed! The Zombie Outbreak has not been contained! Proceed to the Stockade!

Oh no!

Turns out he's a friendly zombie. Even though we poured cold water all over him and left him to die. (Sorry!)

Headed back to Base.

Hello, Mr. Burro! Hablas espanol?

Last-minute CPR review.

Jane is sad the class is over.

But Dom is excited to graduate!

Khanh's not really sure.

And Patrick is simply stoic, the Iceman, as always.

We all made it!

Now on to the summer!

Meat is Murder. Tasty, Tasty Murder.

2011-05-24T20:43:00.002-07:00

Building towards the end of the WFR course, some people's preparations got serious. Late night study sessions were common. As for me, I just kept drawing comics.

Marching to the dining hall.

Pressure Dressing

What do you mean, there's no boats?

Improvisation

Patrick's not going anywhere.

Hands-on stable.

Spider-strapped to the backboard- not comfortable!

Le Patient Use- It actually said "Single Patient Use."

Tom's Magical Moulage Kit

Catherine getting tied in.

Setting up a static line basket.

It's a nice cozy litter...

..for a mummy. Or Zach.

Cy explaining why it sucks to get ICP.

Dom in his element.

So many TLAs!

Attentive students.

Meat, there's an M in front of the E.

My rendition of a hungry black widow.

How do you tell the difference between on oral and a rectal thermometer?

Alice is a sneaky girl...

We discussed how a "tick spoon" was good for getting ticks off of dogs. I later gave him a bowl of cereal.

The Bloody Gums of Time

2011-05-21T13:26:00.000-07:00

A few days in to the WFR course, we decided we were going to have a nighttime simulation. We didn't know what it would be, but since we had some time, we took off for the Tooth (seen below).

We being myself and the KU med students who will be patching us up out here for the first half of the summer. It took us a bit under four hours from Base, up the Pasture Trail to the summit, and then all the way back down. Not attrocious for the first hike of the season. And I got to carry a radio!

Back at 9,000 feet!

We were a bit late returning (at least by scout time), so we launched straight into the simulation.
Here's the call!

Compression to Decompression

During emergencies, time gets all whomped around. The key to an effective response to an emergency situation is to slow the hell down. Haste makes waste, and the only way to keep a level head is to walk, not worry too much about any one thing, and for me, carry a camera. I'd never been able to break out of a scenario and simply assess it before, but carrying the camera allowed me to do that. Instead of working a single patient, I gravitated around, getting summaries, relaying information to the team commander, and moving supplies.

I think we had somewhere between seven to nine patients on this one, with the most critical getting missed in the hubbub! Minus the two obviously dead ones. It took us something like an hour and fifteen minutes to clean this mess up.

Moment of the night, as relayed by Tom: "When the dog started chewing on the femur."

There were two of them, sticking out from the legs of patient #6.

Punctured Pigs Feet

2011-05-21T11:15:00.002-07:00

That's an attempt at a photo essay, folks. We pulled sticks out of pigs' feet, practiced splints, and played some ultimate frisbee til we nearly dropped. The moon has been rising big and golden over the plains for the last few days.

"A Little Island of Ribs"

2011-05-15T18:41:00.001-07:00

Today was day three of WFR, which also happens to be the best class I have taken, ever. That is to say, the single best-taught instruction I have ever received. The amount of learning-per-minute is massive. And we're three days in! I literally can't wait for class tomorrow. It's pretty cool when my instructors hate powerpoints as much as I do.

These illustrations depict the concepts of "Spine Protection," and me demonstrating a skiing accident.

Sadly, my drawings of ribs roasting on a desert island ("A little island of ribs" is how a flail chest was described the other day), The Big Three systems (Tin Man, Cowardly Lion, and the Scarecrow), and "The Risk / Benefit Ratio," were erased before I got to class today. I'll redraw them tonight, hopefully, and post them here.

One of the big lessons from the class is that "Tourniquets are tools." This was pointed out when it was noted that a blood pressure cuff is a highly effective tourniquet. The question was posed: "Would you try and fix your plumbing without turning off the water?" One of our instructors demonstrated by doing an entire lecture with a full tourniquet on his right arm. It turned dead, blue, and limp, and then a bright red when re-perfused, but it looked to be working fine today!

Before and After

Hypo-Wrap, or The Amazing Human Burrito

Improvised Transport

And a pelvic girdle with a rainfly!

After the lecture, we moved outside for a lightning strike, etc. scenario. I was hypothermic, so I got my clothes stripped off. It was pretty funny.

What the hell, guys?

Tomorrow, who knows! The gang is starting to filter in, and soon enough there should be a full complement of red shirts running alliteratively around the range once again. It's sort of a strange jump. With the WFR course again, it feels like the last three years just sort of exist someplace else, between summers out here.

Will Kill Weeds for Food

2011-05-15T17:53:00.008-07:00

I just spent five days in the Grand Canyon killing invasive plants, in exchange for awesome food and luxury accomodations at the Indian Gardens bunkhouse! You can too! Check out volunteer.gov and the Grand Canyon Trust's website.

Cinco de Mayo feast in preparation. Note the marshmallows- the girls made a GIANT s'more.

No Camping!

Velociraptor Storage

The drive to and from Grand Canyon is an interesting time for thinking. I always share it with different people. Today, it was Emily, who told me a cool story about her time teaching English way off the beaten path in rural India. She made her own sort of Peace Corps experience, via a friend of the family who started a women's college in his village.

Returning to Flag with the New Mexico clouds over the peaks made sense. Humphreys looked as though it had just erupted. The deep canyon is everything one thinks of as being Arizona. But topside, the rolling plains, junipers, and epic cumulonimbus speak more of good ol' NM (pronounced "nim") to me. Whenever I really want to be somewhere, there is also always at least one other place that I also want to be.

It was awesome to see Laura, Matt, and Katie again, and to meet the new gang. With any luck, I'll be back come August, or else I'll have to find something else to do with myself along the way. For now, it's T-Minus eight until my train leaves, visions of rock strata dancing in my brain. The colors of the canyon after a May rain are something to see.

Thinking of everybody! WFR again in two days? Seems like I'm rewinding to 2008... If only!

Grand Ambition

2011-05-03T02:24:00.002-07:00

Tomorrow, it's back to the Grand Canyon! Out of nowhere, Laura dropped me a line on a volunteer gig down at the Indian Gardens campground. For the next week, I'll be tammywhacking to earn my dinner. Gotta kill those rascally invasives, after all! Heck, I'm glad of any chance to go live in the Grand Canyon.

It turns out, this is what happens when you quit a job that isn't what you want to be doing. Long term, you're rewarded with great new friends, and opportunities to hang out in National Parks for free. Better than minimum-plus-tips, I'd say! (Admittedly, the tips were good. But what's money, really?)

The past year....three years....five? have been some sort of failed success, or successful failure. We learn most about ourselves by failing, or at least striving. I want to be a musician, but I don't own a decent guitar, I can't sight-read very well, and I can't even decide if the instrument I want to learn to play most is played with a bow or a pick! The smallness of the mando and the violin make each attractive. The most important thing is that I love music, I love the feel of it, the hum of strings, the energy of building something in strokes over the base quiet of an empty room.

I want to be a writer, but I keep a sporadic, utterly unpublishable journal, glossing over points of subtle beauty, writing in self-specific notation, and rambling for pages chasing ink dragons. I always write in pen. The day I stopped writing in pencil changed something. WFR notes became a journal, reticence overpowered by the sheer need to scrawl my lonely observations on the blueness of the cobalt moon and the howls of the coyotes over Tooth Ridge on something more permanent than a fading line of color on the khaki wall of a canvas tent.

I wanted to be a NOLS guide. I nearly got myself killed listening to their lousy staff, dropping down a deadly ice gully without even my own ice tool, unroped, positioning myself at the top of the group to try and block the boulders that would come once the sun touched the slope above. They gave me a "D-" for leadership. Someone could have easily been sent flailing into a crevasse at the base of the wall, just a basketball barrage of slate, moving, bouncing, cartwheeling at 9.8 m / s2. A glancing touch. A minor detail.

I endured the worst three months of my life to learn that the last thing I ever ought to do is babysit never-been-campers out in the real open spaces. I'm also disgustingly lucky to still be able to say that the "worst" months of my life were spent doing nothing worse than doing nothing in the middle of Somewhere, Alaska. Warm and fuzzy Alaska. Rescue a phone call away. Be careful if you're thinking of selling yourself short. There might be consequences.

You've all heard me complain endlessly about NOLS. There is risk and reward. There is also sheer, deadly folly. Watch for it. It appears suddenly in the mountains, and sometimes one wonders if the sudden horrible recognition of its presence doesn't mean that it is already entirely too late.

I want to be.... a lover, gardener, painter, poet, carpenter, electrician, horserider, climber, plumber, breadbaker, hunter, homebuilder, woodsplitter, reader, cook, brother, adventurer, medic, teacher, photographer, musician, half-decent son, 25% decent wanderer, 10% faithful hitchhiker. I want to never let wealth make me afraid to ask, "Why not?", to hide behind excuses like golden handcuffs or a -10 degree windchill as a reason "good enough" to defer an objective, to not rappel down a cliff over the only black and flowing section of an otherwise ice-jammed river, and climb back up the ice for no other reason than to revel in the simple pleasure of that frozen-nostril pump and frosty shortness of an icy breath, the delicious shatter of the dinnerplating ice, the weird plasticky THOCK of the tool into the white goo where the water flows near the surface and the ice is soft at the top. Red webbing lines running from young basswood trees are the tethers, lifelines of our lunatic toprope.

Therefore, I value trees. Trees have kept me alive many times. Repurposed to span many rivers, tied around to let me skim a cliff face, burned for warmth on many a cold, wet night.

I am hoping, therefore, that the Southcountry does not burn this season. But it will have to burn someday.

I may have to add "firefighter" to the list.

Trains and Planes

2011-04-30T14:46:00.000-07:00

Still playing catch-up...

Phoenix

If there's any place that has most contributed to my love of airplanes, it is easily this city. I will always think of it as a space station, for many reasons, but not least of these is that I have always teleported in or out. I've never arrived here any other way than by plane or by bus from another state, and bus only once, and that recently. And lacking a car means that I've always been dependent on other people to go places, with this fact's associated ups and downs (and mostly ups).

It was cool to watch airliners roar over the stage while watching the Old Crow / Edward Sharpe / Mumford and Sons show last Saturday night. The evening sky is always lit with weird lights, planes on approach. In some cities, you can't escape things like resource use, or community. Most of that stuff seems imaginary in Phoenix, but airplanes are a reality.

The show was fantastic, with my favorite sound coming from Old Crow, but my favorite lighting coming from the Mumford Crew, though Old Crow had no need for lights, being a daytime gig. In a word, the show was cool. I'd never been to a big production like that before, so it was a ton of fun to be down in front with the gang and just soaking it all in. Finally getting to hear Wagon Wheel played live was awesome. Brought back memories of crashing back down the road from Ponil in Fang, and the day that I decided that I really needed to learn how to sing!

Last night being Eric's birthday, Jen and I found a good excuse to make a huge mess of another kitchen, in our quest to create the perfect carrot cake. It turned out pretty durned fantastic, and Jen made some amazing cinnamon custard to boot. We ate as much as we could, and there's still half of the damn thing left.

If all goes to plan, I'll spend the next week and a half at and/or in the Grand Canyon, and then it's off to Raton by rail, one more time. Everybody's crossing the country, different directions, different destinations. Some meetings will be in New Mexico, many unexpected. Others are still waiting. Looking forward to the freedom of motion that the end of the summer will bring.

Just finished Stranger in a Strange Land. Heinlein takes a rather Buddhist slant on waiting in that one. According to him, "Waiting is." Maybe a little fatalistic for me, but his characters also talk about the idea that "Waiting will be filled," which I kinda like.

Old Homeplace

2011-04-30T14:05:00.000-07:00

Racine

I tried making sourdough. Didn't work.

But honey-wheat bagels were a smashing success! Broil em', boil em', bake em'. In that order. Can also make some awesome rolls with the same method, minus the boiling.

Back at the ol' homeplace, it snowed, sleeted, hailed, rained, and sunshined. Mostly, it was partly cloudy with a chance of construction.

I spent time reading, painting in the old high school theater, looking at Meagan's pictures of oceans and boats, and getting scanned, jabbed, and poked by doctors. They concluded that I'm totally fine. Minus the screaming pain in my knee when I got off the plane in Phoenix. For whatever reason, it just doesn't like rapid elevation change.

Which, I suppose, is a green light for the ridiculous, once again. So Galen and I spent some time planning this PCT idea, and I'm wondering over other things. Just sent the contract back to Philmont today. WFR and then Mountain Trek, unless they decide they've got something else I ought to be doing. Otherwise, I failed miserably to encounter normal employment, any sort of internship, or any other variant, so its back to the New Mexico plains! I trust we'll find something to do with ourselves. Learning to play a mandolin is high on my list.

Ah, also, back in Racine, spent some time tearing out an old scrub tree, and splitting a sectioned apple tree at my Grandma's. Took a few swings before I remembered how to hit small metal targets like wedges with sledgehammers. The trick is, you want the wedge to be the maximum distance away from you that you can swing. Makes the most fantastic whanging noise when you connect.

Busting logs with a sledge and double-bit is a life-affirming feeling. Well, it's fun, anyways.

Still Time-Warping

2011-04-29T10:27:00.001-07:00

People ask me what the hell I spend my time doing. My answer is usually, "Nothing."

That is not strictly true. In the past three weeks, I've read three books, spent time in three different cities, (and the airports of a lot more! Lima, San Francisco, Minneapolis, Milwaukee...), been re-certified as "likely to keep living a fairly long time," and otherwise engaged in a fair bit of talk about future objectives, such as hiking the PCT, out of a lack of a particularly good reason for why not to do so.

I've been back in the United States for three weeks. Hard to write when stuff is happening. The journal is a big blank space. So is the notebook. I lost enthusiasm for photo editing about six hours in. So:

Madison-

Greenhouse planting, smells like fish. They use lake water to irrigate. The Leahs (Matt's teammates) teach elementary soil building, but I just want to eat everything. Dirt included. The trouble is the names of the seeds. Eggplants are "Orient Express," and peppers are "Diamond Something" and "Hot Wax." Also some chocolate? I emphasize repeatedly that summer in Wisconsin will commence in June, and not sooner. Lake Michigan likes her winters, and to my knowledge, that water never steams. I have no idea what Gordon Lightfoot was talking about.

Matt and I followed planting with some Spaten Optimator, which was followed by some Edmund Fitzgerald (these are dark, and somewhere between seven and eight percent), which was merficully (this typo, while added now, highlights the dire situation I was in after two seemingly harmless beers), succeeded by some mellower Spotted Cow (still double the strength and triple the flavor of all that garbage that comes out of Milwaukee), which was succeeded by me wondering how I had been so successful in eliminating my alcohol tolerance, and why exactly had I made such a decision immediately before returning to the Dairy State? This had been the goal of the previous few weeks- it certainly worked!

Mostly, I wanted more ice cream. But yes, when in Wisconsin, drink beer, eat food, plant tomatoes, repeat as necessary.

Supposedly good ol' Sarah Palin was in town. We showed her how much we cared by having a huge chili-eating, key-lime-pie mowing (pronounced Mao-ing, as in Chairman, though no relation. It means "eating a lot of, fast"), nut-brown-swigging hoedown in a cold shed by a windy lake. I guess some people went to protest with signs, though I'm not sure what exactly they were protesting. Free speech? If the option to drink Madison Ale Asylum's Nut Brown, eat venison chile, and ignore politics presents itself, you ought to take it.

Annie made two stunning appearances! Tiana I saw for a fleeting instant over toasted cheddar-bacon-egg sandwiches one morning, after Josh somehow stole them from God (though I did add hot sauce). From what I can tell, Josh's lab builds highly bendable warships which have a very precise sense of temperature. Which is to say that they somehow own a friction-stir welder, and Josh is working on temperature sensors. I geeked out maybe just a little bit.

Alison's "office" is just a giant clubhouse run by crazy hippies.

That's enough. Other stuff gets a separate post. Just learned to make carrot cake tonight.

Murmurs of Another Delisting

2011-04-13T13:14:00.000-07:00

Wolves in the news in two places today- the budget measures just passed include a provision that may de-list the Rocky Mountain Population, according to the Wall Street Jounral! And Wisconsin and Minnesota are pushing to get their wolves off the list once again!

This is good news for wolves, and for the states trying to manage them. Wisconsin now has over 700 animals. Twenty years ago, it was officially stated that the population could never rise above 100!

This is making me wish I'd published my thesis.....

http://host.madison.com/wsj/news/local/environment/article_7a065a22-6525-11e0-ae50-001cc4c002e0.html

"The Wisconsin Wildlife Federation has submitted petitions to the federal government signed by 36,739 Wisconsin residents seeking to remove the gray wolf from the federal Endangered Species List, a move supporters say makes it easier to deal with problem wolves while protecting the animals in the long run.

Adrian Wydeven, a wolf ecologist with the state Department of Natural Resources, said such support is likely to pay off in coming months as the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has indicated that it plans to once again propose that the wolf be removed from endangered status. The states of Wisconsin and Minnesota have also petitioned for delisting.

More than 700 wolves now make Wisconsin their home, hundreds more than the 350-animal population goal set in the state's wolf recovery plan. Wildlife officials with the state Department of Natural Resources say that keeping the wolf on the endangered list hinders the agency's ability to control wolf populations in Wisconsin, where predation on livestock, hunting dogs and pets is on the increase."

- Ron Seely, Wisconsin State Journal, Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Blood of Heartwood

2011-04-12T23:46:00.004-07:00

“This is a very important question for me.”

He paused and watched the steam whirl from the tea kettle, remembering the clouds churning in the sky above Cerro Torre, the last moments of clear weather before the final advance of the Wall of Hate.

They would see the tower no longer that day.

“It’s an important question because it determines how I must think about the past.”

He rose from the wooden table and turned to the stove. The firedoor creaked as he fed in more heartwood. The entire iron body of the stove had to be hot if the bread was to cook evenly.

He split the heartwood out earlier today, and many other days. Once, it was raining quite hard. The memory flowed from the ax itself, from the action of swinging.

There was lightning above the valley, and the wind drove the washes of rain through the trees, turning the spruces blue, and the ponderosas deep shades of red and green. He breathed spice of spruce and cinnamon.

The notes of a violin, Bach by memory, drifted out into the storm from the kitchen. The women were already working on the evening meal, but E___was playing.

He smiled as a few notes came his way with the wind, grinning hungrily along with the thrumming fiddle. A few drops of blood leaked onto the ax haft. They struck him in their deep redness against the auburn tawn of the wet oak. The rain touched the drops, and they spilled down towards the head.

“My hands are soft,” he thought. Usually, this meant that he was not doing what he loved. Today, it meant many more days spent on the trail than at the ax of late.

What he loved was the work he was doing now. Splitting out heartwood in the rain.

Occasionally, the ax became stuck, and he used the new trick he had learned of heaving up the whole log spitted on the stuck ax, and then letting all of this weight fall on the backside of the head, driving the steel through like a wedge, and letting the log split itself.

He had switched to the single ax, because the wet wood was not permitting the double-bit. Before, he had worked with a hammer and wedge, producing satisfying clinks and cracks and whumps, as the full rounds and halves became quarter logs. The ponderosa was easy to split, though the knots could be gigantic.

Sometimes, he would spend five minutes, puzzling out a whole round that would not split, only to find that hidden inside was a giant knot. Those would never be suited for the stove, so he set them aside for other things.

Although he had read many books and ostensibly already knew many complex things, he liked simple work. Splitting logs was something that he could do very well. There was a difference, he thought, between a man who could split many logs well, and a man who could not swing an ax. But his hands were soft. The swings were beginning to cause more pain, as the wood worked at the soft wet flesh. A few more drops of blood leaked onto the haft from the torn skin of his hands. A few more swings, he thought. We already have enough.

Besides the woodchips and various blocks was a handcut table under a tin roof. On the table were various tools that he had never seen, but he could guess at their use. Many were long pieces of iron, with funny tips, or augers, or tools for carving. Some looked like modern versions, those made with cheap steel and not good iron, too light, and prone to breaking. He knew that these tools had belonged to J__’s grandfather’s good friend, and though many had now weathered more than eighty years of both frequent use and decades of neglect, they still seemed very new, and certainly the best tools for the work. In the house stood two new rope-frame beds of fresh-cut pine, newly cored for the ropes with the auger bit, filling the house with the ponderosa scent. A pile of tawny shavings lay nearby, soaking up the rain.

“That’s enough,” he decided, and gathered the last pieces under the bench. He filled his arms with the driest wood from the farther side of the table, where it had been waiting longest, and carried his bundle into the cabin. There was not only bread to bake tonight, but also cake and pastry. It was going to be a large party.

Booked Passage, But Am I Welcome In My Country?

2011-04-12T21:17:00.001-07:00

This, it is going to be a rivulet of consciousness.

Ready? Ok, here we go!

I'm awakened by the announcement in the cabin, always too loud, that WEWILLBELANDING SHORTLY PLEASESECUREYOURSEATBELTSTRAYTABLES....SQUAK

Whatever. I was sleeping, microsleeping, I blinked in Minneapolis and woke up .... on a glacier? What?

But those aren't crevasses, they're clouds! Beautiful fissured white clouds, spreading to the horizon under the blazing sun under a searingly blue sky. We're flying! It fills me with a simple sense of joy; I am watching the clouds glide by from above. A place I was never supposed to be, a beauty I perhaps might never have seen, save from a few mountaintops on a few choice days.

The plane hums above the low ceiling. I have the distinct sensation that the earth is actually very close, perhaps just under the white cotton plumes with their grey canyons that must surely plummet to the ground somewhere below. I imagine skydiving towards the roof, rocketing towards that white, ripping my chute in the mist. The plane banks in wide turns for ten minutes, over a world in which I am navigationless, referenceless. There is the sun, and the clouds, the uniform and beautiful clouds. A distant hill is the only topographical feature, a slightly large cumulous plume. I trust the pilots absolutely.

Suddenly, the wisps are coming closer, flash, flash, and the wonderland is gone, everything white, and then below us races out a view from Kenosha to Milwaukee. Lake Michigan fills the horizon. The cornfields are mottled golden leopard patches in April, after the melted snows. We are falling from the ceiling, sailing on down to the concrete, zooming in quite directly. Soon, I cannot see anything but the runway.

I've returned home to see a doctor whom I trust, share stories with family and friends, and plan future adventures. Five days ago, I stood in Santiago. Today, I am frantically reading The Economist, The Atlantic, Harpers, The New York Times, USA Today, Popular Mechanics, The Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition, WIRED, everything really, trying to re-establish my understanding of the world to which I am returning. The most powerful claim that I read was that what our Second Gilded Age lacks most is its proper Twain. Or perhaps now there is need for satire and insight from the pens of many, since all is local, and although the population was sixty millions in his day, 1867, today it numbers over three-hundred and fifteen millions. Everything is local, still, but where do we make our voices heard?

There are many friendly people on planes, regardless of the TSA's relentless efforts to erode our trust of our fellows. Stick your blue gloved hands in my underwear if you must, YOU FASCIST BASTARDS, but I refuse to accept your scanners and your personnel and your invasion of my privacy and your expense to me and my family as necessary to my "security." I opt for liberty, thank ye kindly. So yes, I "OPT OUT!" I can get a lighter, razor blade, detonateable battery, knife, and any number of things onto a plane in my carry-on bag easily (and accidentally!), without needing to resort to my boxers. This is all quite silly.

It seemed like common sense to me to refuse to be scanned by the TSA. They seemed to think it was funny.

I found the clouds beautiful anyways.

Back in the Motherland

2011-04-11T21:51:00.002-07:00

Corporate "Personhood"

2011-03-29T15:37:00.000-07:00

This article was shared with me by a friend, and deals directly with a reality that I have been discussing with people from around the world nearly every day since El Chaltén. That reality is the absolutely massive influence of corporations over the actions of the American government, most other governments, and the absolute lack of power of the citizen living under a Democracy in the modern world.
Niose writes, "Participatory democracy is not alive and well in America, because pathological corporate interests have complete control of the system. This is why Sanders's declaration, that the future of American democracy may rely on the outcome of this issue, is not an overstatement. What kind of "persons" will control democracy - corporate or human?"

Sanders is "Senator Bernie Sanders, calling for a constitutional ammendment to repeal the notion of ´corporate personhood´ in the United States."

The question being posed is one of whether or not we, We the People of These United States, will allow corporate "personhood" to persist. This status of corporations is at the heart of the recent legislation that has essentially allowed a very literal "no-holds-barred" approach by corporations to campaign, or, in the case of the so-called "Tea Party," ideological finance. Read the article through, if you have the chance.

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/our-humanity-naturally/201103/why-corporations-are-psychotic

The core argument of the article is that if a corporation is a person, then it is a psychotic person, someone not governed by the concepts of morality, responsibility, love, or remorse. This "person" often feels nothing, and often acts accordingly, without accountability. And these "people" weild an incredible, incredible amount of power.

For me, this thought process, of beginning to try and view America from the outside, began with reading Wendell Berry´s "What Matters," a book passed on to me by a fellow traveller in Frey. Berry, as I´ve mentioned, defines a corporation as, "A pile of money to which a group of persons has sold their moral allegiance." This pile of money then becomes a legal person, with all the rights of priveleges thereof, and may, and therefore does, act accordingly.

With the distinct difference that it weilds a massive influence, and inversely to those actual people who occasionally rise to command such strength (such as Martin Luther King), their influence is often greatest over those with the least ideological interest in what is being determined. That is to say, the most passive participants are those most governed by it.

***
Over the course of today, I have been sitting in front of a computer, attempting to recover a sense of what is happening in the world. I was appauled by the homepage of the New York Times today. I even took the effort to screenshot all of it, in a comedic effort to preserve it for the future. My immediate sentiment was that the world has not improved during my news-reading hiatous.

One could fairly, "assess American democracy as being ineffective and Americans themselves as being largely uninformed, passive, distracted by petty consumption, and incapable of critical thinking. They would see American politics and society as overtaken by corporate interests that dictate public and social policy to the private citizenry."

I have been struggling for weeks now to attempt to explain the actions of the United States internationally to my fellow travelers. That is to say, I have struggled to answer their questions about my country honestly. It has been difficult. I have had to admit many times that I myself have no idea of why there seems to be unflagging support within the United States for the sweeping actions that my country enancts within the world at large.

Other than to say, repeatedly, that at this point, nearly every aspect of everything is simply controlled by the corporations. Why bomb Libya? Perhaps to sell more bombs? I don´t recall casting my vote to support the process, nor a vote for anyone who evidently has. Except of course, quite notably, for the O-Man In Charge. When do we cease to be citizens, and instead become simply consumers? Or did that happen already?

It certainly feels that way.

Red Barba Silver Tape Shoes Boy

2011-03-29T14:35:00.002-07:00

Red Barba Silver Tape Shoes Boy

This was the most recent official description of me that I have seen, penned by some rather creative French friends recently on the Navimag. (I currently have duct tape holding my boots together. This would be a good place to insert a photo, eh?) Upon arriving in Valparaiso, I also discovered that Chuck Norris was alive and well.

The journey north from Puerto Natales has been an interesting one! When Anne and I got to the boat office, they informed us that we were late, and that we had to hurry to catch the boat! So we ran down the to dock. It wasn´t really true, and we knew it, but it was a fun addition of panic to an otherwise lazy morning hanging out over breakfast with Bridget. As it turns out, we beat the last loads of sheep onto the boat, and were not in fact left behind to wait until next week.

The decision to take the Navimag would best be called a… whim? $430 US to ride on a cargo ship with cattle, sheep, and crazy Europeans for four days? But of course, the journey was fantastic. Though the rather unconscious and unintentional decision to drink half a bottle of tequila on the first night aboard did have consequences (I have since committed myself to sobriety in the interest of my equilibrium). Somehow, I went from one beer, to two beers, to nothing, to beer and a bottle of red wine, and then to half a bottle of tequila in the evening over the course of five days. I would call this more of an accident than the sign of an alcoholic, but I was a little embarassed nonetheless! At any rate, I learned that tequila sabotages my otherwise complete resistance to motion sickness, so I paid for my hubris, if not my perpetually high alcohol tolerance.

We didn´t exactly see the quantity of whales that I had hoped to from the boat (that is to say, we saw none), but it was still a great trip. Lots of cards (mostly Shithead), LOTS of chess, and some intense super-size deck-checkers. (The afterdeck had a checkerboard on it.) Made lots of new friends from Canada, France, England, Australia, the Netherlands, all over, really, except the United States! It was quite the international boat.

The UN all split ways in Puerto Montt, and in now-customary style, I decided to tag along with Amy and Quentin to Santiago on a few minute´s notice, since they somehow found a bus for nueve-mil. We arrived in Santiago upon waking up in the morning, utterly disoriented, so we hopped the next bus to Valparaiso (literally, we waited fifteen minutes), and now here we are!

Valparaiso is a lot more fun staying at a hostel up on Cerro Concepcion! I step out my door and into the chaos. Really makes me wish I´d have done what I thought about and just rented an apartment while I studied abroad. Ah well. Learned that lesson twice so far. Hopefully from now on I´ll know better!

More soon!

Puerto Natales

2011-03-21T10:34:00.000-07:00

Rain.

Siempre hay lluvia aqui.

The Pacific coast is a wet place.

I´m waiting on a boat, all my possessions packed into a backpack, my remaining worldly assets in the form of cash in three currencies in my pocket, zippered rather than sewn into my pants. I have long felt like this is something that I ought to experience someday, given how my ancestors came to the United States. But this is a little bit less hardcore than leaving the old country on a dream, permanently. Nonetheless, I feel like I owe my great-great-grandparents a fair bit of thanks.

In two days, I´m headed north on the Navimag, the comedically expensive tourist ferry that travels weekly between Puerto Natales and Puerto Montt, Chile. A woman waiting for a bus in the park headquarters at Torres del Paine told me, in an impeccably bourgeois British accent, that several of her friends had taken it the year before, first class, and found it, "quite awful." She also mentioned that she was shortly, "meeting her yacht" in Punta Arenas, and that was certain to be a much better voyage.

I am amazed that she even tolerated being near me as long as she did!

I´m betting that we´ll love the Navimag, my new friends and I who are going together. Looking forward to seeing the creatures of the Pacific coast again, the orcas and the porpoises. And Pio XI (Pee-Oh Own-Say), one of the few remaining advancing glaciers on the planet!

I told somebody recently that, no matter where or how big, "all cities are dangerous." I was told, "Nah, this is Patagonia."

Some new friends had a bunch of their gear stolen from their tent here at the campsite last night, or afternoon. Just makes you feel lousy. Living out of a tent is a very vulnerable position, really, especially in an urban environment. We´re camping in a hostel´s backyard. It reminds me of how it felt to live in Viña del Mar, looking over my shoulder and carrying my knife loose every night, feeling that bulls-eye of being an obvious and maybe easy target. A few near-encounters. Weird that I might be back there shortly!

Oh, and Torres del Paine was OK. Patagonia in a can, that´ll be $52 US, please. The scenery is still fantastic, of course, even with the presence of "the official experiene." I went around the backside. 84 miles over six days, with a stupìdly heavy pack (training and injury-testing, things look good, ranger-speed intact!). Beautiful golden valley full of dead guanacos and puma poo. Those cats are out there somewhere.

We should install a giant icefield and some gnarly towers north of Little Costilla. THAT would be cool.

Three Months in Patagonia

2011-03-21T10:10:00.000-07:00

You will fall in the mud.

You will fall in the river.

You will fall in more mud, and remember why the first time you came to Patagonia, the first word that you learned was lodo.

You will put holes in your socks, boots, pants, shirts, jackets, tent, rainfly, backpack, groundpad, gaiters, tires, climbing rope, body, etc.

Your tent poles on your $525 tent will break for no reason. You will only buy REI or Marmot tents from now on.

Because of all this, everything will be covered in heaps of tape.

You will become a wind snob.

Your stove will break. You will fix it. It will break again, differently. You will fix that, too.

Passers-by on the trail will ask, “What happened?!”, much to your confusion, until you realize that they mean, “Why all the tape?”

You´ll forget what month it is.

People who don´t understand you when you speak to them in Spanish will confuse you.

Native English speakers who don´t understand you when you then speak to them in English will confuse you more, until you realize that it´s because you´re forgetting to modulate your accent, and you will switch to your new imitation London / Syndey / Auckland / Eastern European imitation accent accordingly.

You will fall in another river.

On any given day, you will be consulted at random in German, French, Spanish, English, and Hebrew (LOTS of Israelis). You will be expected to know / potentially translate between any of these. At least, this is what happens to me.

The prospect of paying to sleep in a bed in a building will come to seem hilarious, and confusing.

The prospect of paying to stay anywhere at all will seem weird, and very unecessary.

The internet will be a limited and valued resource that you will have to wait for, and not an ubiquitous thing.

The same will be true of gasoline. Waiting in line for an hour for gas will become normal. Use the time to buy some fresh empañadas and plan the next leg of the journey, or to debrief the last.

Buses will seem like a terrible means of transportation, because you can´t stop them to take pictures easily.

Everyone you meet will expect that you are an expert on anything and everything that they may ask you. (Again, I´m pretty sure this is either the beard, the hat, or my speaking multiple languages in public.)

Even small towns will seem like terrible, evil places full of bad things and noisy machines. Every time you spend any time in one, you will make new friends who were either just robbed, or will be shortly. You will get used to filing police reports and helping people try to make the most of things.

You will hike 130 kilometers over six days, but be the only person you meet out of hundreds who is travelling clockwise, because, “the guidebook says to go the other way.” The wind is always at your back, the grade pleasant, and everyone else is getting rain blasted in their faces.

You will start distinguishing between tourists, backpackers, and travellers.

You will regularly throw kittens and puppies out of your tent / dinner / jacket. They will come bounding right back.

You will have a BLAST, and make lots of awesome new friends. And maybe reconsider that plane ticket back home, if you hadn´t already run out of money!

And you will hope that somehow you end up with a summer job! But you will have multiple standing offers to come back down to be somebody´s trip cook / mechanic / tour guide. And plenty of places to crash in Germany and New Zealand.

See y´all soon!

Thoughts on Returning

2011-03-13T16:40:00.001-07:00

Hey all,

Thanks to everybody who has been following along and weighing in lately! It’s been an interesting ride, and it’s been hard to write about much other than exactly what has been happening.

Dennis, as noted, came down the mountain safe, maybe a few pounds lighter, but otherwise in good shape. He stayed in the research Refugio on the edge of the icefield. Honestly, I’m a little jealous! It looks like a really cool place, and he saw the backside of Cerro Torre! I stayed down in El Chaltén to try and give my leg a rest, but honestly, it still just hurts all the same.

When I first got back to town on Monday, after strolling the circuit with Julia and Anne, I was surprised that he wasn’t back yet. When he still wasn’t in Tuesday night, and the storm was really building, people started to worry. I had a hard time being very concerned, and though several guides urged me to go file a report, I did nothing. Since he still wasn’t in town, I was positive that he was just waiting things out in the Refugio, and would come back in when the weather broke. But the wind was vicious Tuesday night, and I kept thinking that maybe he was in a dire place up there. It was hard to sleep. The wind kept the bed of the truck rocking. I kept imagining freezing to death in that wind, or something.

By Wednesday, the weather was vicious. I spent a few hours sitting in the hostel denying that anything was wrong, but I knew that this really wasn’t the way to go. I had almost left for El Calafate with the girls on Tuesday, but something had kept me in El Chaltén.

I was almost positive that Dennis had had time to find the Refugio, had enough food, was uninjured, etc. But as the day wore on, my confidence started to wane, as people started to talk more and more speculatively. Finally, I went and filed the initial report. A basic missing person / late climber thing. Who, where, when, with what. Dennis was late, and maybe out of food already. The storm would last until it ended. When this would be was still hard to say. I spent the rest of the day in a foul mood in the Choclateria loft with the Kiwis, listening to the wind hammering against the floor and windows. The loft is on stilts above the door, protruding from the second story.

Thursday, the weather was still lousy. The Gendarmeria team had talked of starting as early as that afternoon, but in the end, there was no way. The weather was terrible. But the forecast said the storm would finally fade by evening. Around 5, a very rugged local guy showed up to tell me that he and his buddy would be going up early, as the advance team, leaving at 3AM. He offered me the chance to go, but I declined, feeling like shit about it. “My knee really hurts,” I said, “and I would only slow you down. Plus, I don’t know the terrain.” He nodded his head, turned, and went on his way. All of this was true, but I still felt like a coward for saying it. But I knew it was right. I was the only person communicating with Dennis’ family, and I wanted them to have the best information possible. To do that effectively, and to coordinate what I could, I needed to stay in El Chaltén.

Friday dawned clear, the wind speaking quietly, nearly silent for El Chaltén. 20 knots is a whisper here, and things seemed quiet comparatively. By this point, the negative words of everybody had infected my thinking. I was no longer convinced that they would find Dennis descending in the morning sun, or reading happily in the Refugio. Instead, I was waiting, waiting, writing, noting coordinates, wondering about helicopter possibilities. My confidence had been trashed. Not many people had thought what I had, that things were probably just fine. I don’t think that I believe it anymore. I stared forlornly at the newly-white lightning-bolt spike of Cerro Torre.

So when all of a sudden, it was noted curtly at 11AM from the APN radio room, “They found him coming down. He’s fine,” maybe I was a little surprised. And mad. Mad that I had let my intuition be undermined, by other's talking doom. Mad that I had doubted what I knew.

The trouble with El Chaltén is that people are often late. The weather changes rapidly. The way can be hard to find. Accidents happen. Many times, when people are late, they are late because they are dead, or because they are on their way to being so. It had already happened once this year, and no one wanted it to happen again.

When someone is late returning from the mountains, especially solo, and without previous plan or contact, everyone worries. You can’t afford to just think that “things must be fine.” You’ve got to start thinking that it’s 50/50. Maybe he was in the Refugio, but weak, or injured, or something else. Maybe he had successfully bivied. Maybe he was fine.

El Refugio, es la unica chance.

Si el no es en el Refugio, seguro que el es muerte.

And other things were said. Five and a half days without contact. One wonders. Everyone wonders.

Dennis wasn’t “lost in the mountains.” The newspaper stories in Argentina are bullshit. Dennis was simply making the right call, and waiting. Not risking anything unnecessarily. He went on a solo trip, not in the best way possible, but perhaps also not in the worst. We’ve all done it, going up without telling anybody. Not always to the Southern Ice Field, but he had a good map, and good weather for two days to reach shelter. People were mad and emotional because they cared about him, even though nothing said that they had to. Some people were expecting something. Maybe this also infected me. I said some things I shouldn’t have.

But the important thing is the brotherhood of the mountains. That people give a shit about people that make them angry, that by rights, they shouldn’t even know or care about. That people are willing to risk everything to save a stranger, because that’s the right thing. It’s not about, it’s NEVER about the why. It’s about the simple fact that there might be someone in need, and that the mountains are a greater thing than the humans who go to them to seek something, whether adventure, inspiration, or beauty.

We all know the risks. We are all willing to go when the call comes, if it is within our abilities.

So if somebody says that those who go into the mountains have a “death wish,” they are wrong. That is not why we go. We go because we are interested in living. In living to the maximum of our ability. In walking an ice field alone with our thoughts. In reading in a Refugio amidst a howling Antarctic storm, and wondering. In watching the sun shine out bright in a white dawn blaze, and seeing beauty, and feeling happy.

In the coming back.

The morning that we were going to find out if Dennis was still alive, we all watched a tsunami destroy the east coast of Japan, a black wave of boats and cars and death destroying everything. Huge plumes of fire erupting from petroleum and natural gas tanks. People running. Our emergency suddenly seemed small by comparison. Many had gone out that morning ahead of the news, so throughout the day, we retold the story, as the guides filtered back in and new guests arrived.

Dennis is safe. Japan is being destroyed.

Dennis and I have passed on our thanks and some money to the folks in El Chaltén, to the best of our ability, with the aid of some new friends. We hope that it makes it their way. And we’d like to thank again, everybody, sincerely, for everything.

Que te vayan bien, todos. Hasta la próxima vida, maybe, o solamente el próximo ano. Vamos a ver.

Buenas Noticias

2011-03-11T07:40:00.001-07:00

Dennis is safe. The guide team ran into him near the top of Paso Marconi. Evidently, he waited out the storms in the Refugio as we thought.

I expect he has some half-decent pictures.

They should be back in town this afternoon.

Buenas Dias

2011-03-11T05:41:00.000-07:00

Good morning, all. Currently 9.39 AM here.

The teams went up on schedule, the guides at 3 and the military guys at 6. They've got a way to go to their destinations.

The weather is perfect here today, a different world from the last three. There are cold clouds hugging the towers, and Cerro Torre and Fitz Roy were shining through in the sunrise this morning.

More as I know it.

SAR Schedule

2011-03-10T16:26:00.000-07:00

There will be a team of two guides leaving at 3AM this morning to go light and fast for the Refugio, to see if Dennis is there. They are locals who are volunteering to be the advance team. I was offered the opportunity to go with, but I think that I will only slow them down, on account of my still-painful leg, and so I am not going to go.

Kind of feel like shit about that, but 100% of the people I have talked to have told me that this is the correct decision. Not to mention any and all SAR training ever given. I'd be a liability to the team. That's it.

The second team is a larger group from the military, and will reach the Refugio in one or two days. They will be in radio contact with the advance team. The military group will then proceed south to check the Circo de los Altares, and return via Paso Marconi. A helicopter may be able to do a circuit of the search area tomorrow.

Finally, a group of guides and clients will go to La Playita tomorrow, try for Cerro Gorra Blanca (the mountain above the pass) using the Refugio as a base camp, and finally exit the ice field via the southern pass, Paso del Viento, and in so doing will also pass the Circo de los Altares.

So in total, three teams will go up, all with radios. The weather window should last for three to four days.

Translation of Gendarmeria Report

2011-03-10T11:01:00.001-07:00

REPUBLICA ARGENTINA
GENDARMERIA NACIONAL 2011

REPORT

In the city of EL CHALTEN, Santa Cruz Province, Republic of Argentina, on March 9, 2011, J. M., 22 years old, Biologist, United States, reported the disappearance of a climbing partner in the region of El Chalten.

ASKED, of J.- What would you like to report?

STATED- That J. had travelled with D. S., German, 29-years-old, since the 14^th of January, 2011, starting in the city of Pucon, Chile, with the destination of El Chalten, arriving the 24^th of February, 2011, and staying at the Hostel “Del Lago,” located on Avenida Lago del Desierto #135, El Chaltén. Phone number 493245.

On March 3, S. and three French citizens, Julián R., Romaní G., and Vacile R., started a hike to Paso Marconi. Although J. did not accompany the group, on account of an injured knee, he stated that upon returning, the French hikers reported that S. had left the group, in order to travel solo to the “Circo de los Altares” on the Campo de Hielo Sur, planning to reach this location that same day, Saturday, the 5^th of March. From the Circo, S. planned to attempt to reach the Refugio “Eduardo GARCIA SOTO,” March 6^thabove Paso Marconi, and finally return to El Chaltén on the 7^th or 8^th. Without having any further information as to his whereabouts on March 9^th, J. decided to contact the authorities.

ASKED- Describe the physical characteristics of S.?

STATED- S. was described as athletic, about 190 cm in height, 95 kilograms in weight, and having blond hair, blue eyes, and a few days’ beard.

ASKED- Does he have sufficient equipment and food to realize the itinerary described?

STATED- That in J.’s opinion, if S. had encountered adequate shelter, then his equipment and food should have been sufficient until March 9^th.

ASKED- Can you describe his equipment?

STATED- He is carrying a red North Face mountaineering jacket, black and red overboots with the word “Everest” above the gaiter, black North Face moutnaineering pants, a grey hat, black gloves, a green and gray backpack, a Mountain Hardwear bivy sac, a -23 C sleeping bag, a red helmet, an ice axe, a Nikon D-90 camera in a blue and black case, and a canister stove, but no radio, rope, shovel, or GPS.

ASKED- Can you describe the mountain experience of S.?

STATED- J. stated that S. had talked of a successful climb of Aguja Guillamet in 2010, located in the same region. S. also spoke of an expedition to Alpamayo in the Cordillera Blanca of Peru.

ASKED- Does S. have any physical or medical concerns?

STATED- That to his knowledge, his health is quite good, he has strong vision, and does not take any medications.

Signed by J. M. and Asdrubal Aquiles Goulú

SAR Team Update- Earliest Departure Possibilities

2011-03-10T09:19:00.001-07:00

A group from the Gendarmeria (military) will start up the valley of the Rio Electrico the morning of March 11th, making for Campamiento Serac, a camp below Paso Marconi. They will not be able to reach the Eduardo Garcia Soto Refugio until at least tomorrow night. This is weather dependent, as the storm is still strong above. The winds are predicted to start falling overnight, and be stable by morning.

A second group of guides will leave tomorrow morning at 6 or 7 in the morning (again, if possible) equipped to travel light and fast with skis, and may be able to reach the Refugio as early as tomorrow evening, if the weather permits. It may require significantly longer.

Helicopter support will be dependent on wind conditions. There is a high-pressure system on the way, and the next weather window should last from tomorrow morning until the coming Monday.

First potential contact, if Dennis is at the Refugio, therefore, is late evening, Friday, March 11, 2011. If he is in the valley, contact might be as early as tomorrow midday.

I will not be accompanying either team, both because A) I am a member of neither source group, and B) Because my knee is still giving me some pain. So I'll post news as I get it.

D.S. Late in Returning From Solo Trip to Southern Ice Field

2011-03-10T06:54:00.002-07:00

To All Concerned-

D. S. is currently late in returning from the Campo de Hielo Sur, the Southern Ice Field, above El Chalten, Argentina. He entered the ice field from Paso Marconi, one of the two possible entry points from El Chalten, on Saturday, March 5th. He is not carrying a good map, compass, radio, GPS, or satellite phone, and he is alone, after leaving the party with which he was travelling in good weather, despite their protestations. He left the group at one or two in the afternoon on Saturday, March 5th.

According to what D. told the group that he left, he planned to return by Tuesday night, March 8th. This was an alteration of our original plan to meet in El Chalten on the 6th or 7th . I was surprised to find him still out when I returned on midday, Monday.

Today is Wednesday, March 9th, and there has been an enormous storm raging all day. We currently do not know where he is. He could turn up in town tomorrow morning or afternoon, he could be in a snow cave in the Circo de los Altares, or he could be waiting out the storms in the Refugio above Paso Marconi.

He left the group that he was travelling with in good weather to travel to the Circo alone, without rope, tent, or shovel. He has a sleeping bag, bivy sack, mountaineering clothes, and food for at least four days, according to those that spoke with him last, on Saturday, March 5th. The weather was still good until midday, Monday, on this side of the wall, though Cerro Torre was no longer visible by Monday morning. The weather has since become progressively worse, and full storm conditions have existed on the icefield for the last two days.

Currently, it is being determined whether or not a helicopter will be available or capable of going up tomorrow. Those determining this would like me to ask whether or not D. has any type of insurance, and for any other potentially useful information. There is no official Search and Rescue team for El Chalten, so if we go up on foot, the group will be volunteers. The helicopter would probably be military, or medical.

I will provide more information as it becomes available. CHQ is currently Camping Hostel del Lago, El Chalten, Argentina. The Argentian National Parks and local Gendarmeria have been informed, as well as the local climber and guide community. The weather is better today, though still very strong above. The snow line has moved down quite far over the last two nights.

Hostel Del Lago

Telephone (+54-2962) 493245

For the Stories

2011-03-03T08:23:00.000-07:00

Multi-pitch climbing may at the very least be necessary for purposes of story-telling. And

since we do everything for the stories

It follows

That we should probably go climbing.

Deliberating

2011-03-02T19:51:00.001-07:00

We're in El Chaiten!

The real article is waiting in the wings, floating on my editors’ desks. Here’s a preview- After committing to coming down to Patagonia, I got scared. Really scared. I debated cancelling my plane ticket for days, aghast at what I had just said I would do. Alpine climbing? Poincenot? Fitz Roy? What was I thinking?

I even had nightmares about this place. Stuck ropes, dead batteries, high winds whistling through the dark.

So, I resolved, both leading up to the decision, and following, that I would commence living as deliberately as I could possibly conceive, presuming to have no regrets in the event that I did not come back. Ideally, one would do this on leaving the house every day. Trucks and bikes greet each other less than cordially sometimes, after all, as Eric reminded me today. Just because you free-soloed over the weekend doesn’t mean that it was the most dangerous thing you’ll be exposed to before Tuesday, and at least on the rock (compared to the highway) one has some control over the unpredictability.

The result of this decision was one of the richest months of my life so far, comparable to only a few others. Rayado, of course, ranks highly.

I’m not sure what exactly had me spooked about the Patagonia. But regardless, with my recent re-injury of my knee and ankle, or maybe simply me beginning to finally take these injuries seriously, I’ve decided to let our perfect weather window pass, sell my gear, and let Poincenot and all the rest wait til another day. I’ll content myself with some fantastic photos of Cerro Torre.

This of course is lousy for two reasons. I feel worst about the fact that I’ve let Dennis down. I am, after all, the other half of the rope team. The other is of course that this was the point! The goal! Para subir estos torres!

But, if I can somehow repair things bodily, Cerro Torre is likely to still be here in two years time. This trip is just a research mission, after all. And so far, I know two things- One is that we have to come back.

The other is that we need a boat!

And of course, having the truck again wouldn't hurt.

Windstorm Dreams

2011-03-02T14:58:00.001-07:00

This is all flowing from having read a few pages of Book 7 in Spanish the other day. Sleeping next to the most windblown alpine lake I’ve ever seen, I fall asleep thinking about the lake of dead people in Book 6, and the goblet Senor Dumbledor is drinking. Anyways, here are the consequences. It’s interesting to spend the few minutes for which one still possesses a dream after waking to write it down, and piecing together the moments of the recent and distant past that the brain appropriates to construct such things.

I’m Harry Potter, standing in Dumbledore’s study. He is recapping the last five years or so, in the vivid detail and name-construction of my dreams. Assuredly, it is in full color. I even adjust my glasses. I don’t recall the details, but my brain reconstructs the story. It seems like it lasts for hours, rebuilding the entire narrative, whole characters, events, places, histories.

Dumbledore speaks of how he, and a man whose name I do not now recall, once “battled back a sea,” successfully. The next day, he was sure it had happened because there was a frog and a log in the airport.

From here, there is something, and a Pokemon-ish turtle. And then, then the sea. I am somehow swimming with a blue whale, and take hold of his body, but he dives, rapidly, and it is too far for me (there is also a pod of whale sharks in addition to the blues), and I rocket for the surface, racing at a crazy speed, until I burst out on the black and heaving twilight waves, and make for shore.

The strand is both rocky and sand, and among the driftwood, I find two whitish rags shining in the moonlight. One is a shredded AOC t-shirt! And the other some short khakis. Naked, I wear both as best I can in their ragged state, and stagger up the windswept beach. There are palm trees. This is Cuba, undoubtedly, due to recent conversations.

I find my way into a cabana and stumble into the bathroom, which evidently has electricity. A single incandescent light, shining like a memory. I’m staring at myself in the mirror, though I cannot now answer whether or not my face has a beard. This is a very important question for me, but it's a detail that I cannot recall.

There is a knock at the door.

But the rapping is of course the rainfly battering violently, and the pots rattling, and the ocean the racing waves of wind above, the nearby lake, and the now-tangible smell of the sea. The Patagonian wind is scouring high Poincenot, leaning Guillamet, stout Marmoz, intangible Fitz Roy, searching. Occassionally it finds us, a whisp of fury flicked against our orange fortress. Carpa naranja, nuestra alta casa. I keep waking at the strongest gusts, reliving bad memories of a rainy Alaskan ridge, black slate, poles snapping under duress, perched on the edge of a cloudborne glacial gully as the rain pours down, and the wind crashes through the feeble protection of our carefully-constructed rock heaps, a hurricane swell against a failing levy.

My hands are soggy and white, and many layers of skin are missing. My glasses break in the night as we brace against the wind with all our force, literally throwing all the strength we’ve got in our bodies against the nylon to keep the tent from caving under the wind, pushing back against Marcus Baker’s hammering fist.

Videos!

2011-02-23T20:48:00.007-07:00

Snapshot Rocketship

2011-02-23T00:21:00.000-07:00

Pinchado!

2011-02-22T23:23:00.003-07:00

Shipwreck! Je m'en fout, and you should too!

A flat tire is like a big round rubber metaphor. Doubly so when it comes amid the pouring rain, rocketing down the highway, finally, towards Fitz Roy. We are now, officially, delayed. Which is a really hard thing to achieve, when you don't even have a schedule. The current itinerary was to get to El Chaiten sometime between now and death. We are...yes, we are on schedule. I'm going to lay in the wet gravel now. Bring the rain, bring the broken auto parts, I've got duct tape, gumption, and a license to actualize my reality called a Ford Ranger, 1500 Argentinian pesos, Old Smuggler Whisky, and some Sabertooths, screws, and Quarks.

It's a sign that you're truly self-determinate when the only signifcance of a flat is that you're now stalled between vacation and paradise. That's the favorite climber word for El Chaiten, anyways.

PHAWWWWWW PSHOOOOO PHWAH PHWAH PHWAH

"What is that?"
"Stop! Stop the car!
Ah, fuck. Yup, we finally lost the back right."

This is just silly. 1500km of dirt, some solid off-roading, and four tires full of patches, and never a flat. And now? One of the 215s just blew its guts out. On the paved highway.

Jack goes under the axle, not the leaf spring.

Locking lug nut, dammit.

"What the fuck? Dude, the wheel is rusted to the brake disk. This is what I mean, this is why we need to clean this car."

I'm whanging away with the tire iron. Chunks of dirt and rust are spitting off the disk.

I realize I'm being a pussy. Baseball bat this, visualize something ugly. I'm laughing like a maniac into the drizzle. I have nowhere other than here to be.

Still can't top splitting with the double bit under the lightning sky at Crater Lake, standing in the same spot where three men were killed doing the same thing forty years before. Ride the lightning. Beam me up, otherwise, let me be, living free.

The thunder booms. Man, where am I?

The wheel finally peels off. Slam the new one into place, freshly filled to 35 psi a few hours before. Crank that sucker down and drop it. Total pit time- A lot, but a damn sight less than if I didn't know how to do this. The flat didn't shred, but it looks like we ran over a knife. Might be tough to patch.

I'm on my back under the truck in the wet gravel, wrapping duct tape around the loose sleeve on the shock. After a month, I've found the rattling thing. Dirt in the eyes, need sunglasses. Whatever.

"Alright, we got it!"

Dennis shoots his hand under the truck, I slide out, and he launches me up. High five, U-turn, stop to check, we're good, pedal to the floor. "Motherfucker..." We're firing right back into town. Looks like the internets til the sun comes up yet again. Sleep when I'm dead. Beds make you lazy, girls drive you crazy.

El Chaiten waits, but Cerro Torre will be there in the morning. I want to see the sun shining on that mushroom anyways. "Glimmering like a spike of pearl and silver in the morning breeze." Blue distance. No desert. And no fucking orchids.

We're on a mission. Guster- Satellite. Sail the airways. Goddamnm, the ENERGY is just FEEDING.

Llanteria, Gomeria. Camiones, no way Jose, demasiado grande. Ee-pay-efay's almost got it, 195 nuevo, but at least it's a catorce. The shmucks up the street want to sell us some basura for 150. Here, it's a pnuematico, and not a llanta. llanta is the metal part. Damn confusing.

The moral is, nobody stocks R14 tires in Patagonia. Whatever. We are travelling on gasoline and blessed wings. I'll spring for a new one. Ever drive a truck with four different sized tires on it?

Sebastian and Claire are just indescribably badass. They left France Sept. 1. Quit the jobs, sold the goddamn coche, and went Vancouver to El Calafate, pinballing the whole way. West coast, best coast. They were at Hardly Strictly AND Yosemite with me, but this is our first meeting. New Zealand is on their list, Rugby world cup, September October. I might go meet them. If you're reading this, you should consider coming with. I hear they've got hobbits. Good with potatoes. They're on the road for "at least another eight months, or until the money runs out." Riding down 15,000 Euros. Glaciar Perito Mereno for them today, step in the right direction.

Dinner is beans, cheese, eggs, onions, beer, I'm just dumping things in this pot and boiling and boiling and boiling and singing. Tomatoes! If you didn't enjoy your dinner, the thing that is KEEPING YOU ALIVE UNTIL MORNING, you are not, you are just NOT LIVING.

Living is giving, persisiting is just existing. Less commas. Jackie's got it. Vegas in small doses, make the most of it. Stream the consciousness, feel the rythym burn. blast the keys and actualize, can't you kids even TRY? She's grading English. Can you grade writing? What did Hemmingway get on Nick Adam's onion sandwich, exactly? A B+? "Je-sus Christ" Humming flyrod, big two hearted river, and a frying kidney (what the fuck, Joyce?)

Can you measure a poem?

How much is a book worth, exactly?

Cronica de una Muerte Anunciada 30 pesos

El Viejo y El Mar 25 pesos

Las Dos Torres 65 pesos

Pesos, besos, BOOKS LIBROS LIBRES. Rectangulos de la felicidad.

All night I'm talking English, French, Spanish. The lines are poorly dibujado, the only limits the versatility of the speakers. Speaking in just one language is like telling Monet he gets to use a pencil and a Q-tip today. "Sorry, we're fresh out of red and metaphors. Maybe it's lillies."

"I'm gonna try, try, try til the mor-nin comes!" Guster, driving it home, boom boom bangarang.

Una Pausa, Para Vivir, Respirar, Cocinar, Y Descansar

2011-02-22T00:03:00.002-07:00

Wanted to just share one more little journal entry. Sorry it all comes at once! This is a month-long backlog, plus the sudden flood of inspiration that comes from finally buying books and getting to talk to all of you.

What are our truths?

That the only certainty is that everything will change?

That life is what happens when you're busy making other plans?

Last night, I spent hours happily making guacamole (palta, cibolla, pimiento rojo, ajo, aji, limon), fried potatoes, frybread, and tomato beef stew. Just me, a notebook, and a bottle of red wine. Lots of Malbec and Cabernet lately. $4 bottles of the best. Sometimes, Argentina is my kind of place.

Tonight, potatoes y frijoles, porrotos aqui. (Would you rather eat frijoles, or porrotos? I want frijoles.) Last night, Dennis said, "I am sure that we have the best food of anybody here, even in the restaurant."

I smiled. "Espero que si!"

That was one of the simple factors at the heart of my unhappiness in Alaska and Chile- rarely was I cooking. I feel as though if one is cooking, and somehow still unhappy, the only possible solution is to cook something slightly different? I end up eating some pretty complicated meals for just one or two guys this way, but I have yet to unsatisfied that I've baked or fried fresh bread to go with dinner. Here, and in all places, though it takes more effort with the Whisperlite.

If you're microwaving your food exclusively, you may be selling yourself short on possibility.

And if you've never done it, baking bread it incredibly easy. A few more hours here in town, (it's 6AM) and then we're off for El Chaiten.

A White Prow Rising Above the Plain

2011-02-21T23:16:00.004-07:00

21-02-2011

It's hard to avoid thinking about the Lord of the Rings when moving across a sparse and mountainous landscape. For me, the books primarily, the original story. I've been pondering lately, "What put the original idea in my head to seek mountains someday?" I think the culprit was Tolkien, so I've got Brian Hrpcek to thank. (Thanks!) Tolkien's words opened my mind to a wider realm of possibilities, and forced me to dream. How could I continue to the next page of Bilbo and Frodo's journeys without constructing something, some facsimile of the Misty Mountains? Karadthras? Fangorn? Rohan?

In Alaska, I again reread all three, and in that new place (and in a very dark place, mentally), the real landscape that I was seeing, literally, was trapped within daily, opened my eyes to how Tolkien had turned his experiences from moving across the landscape with an army (I am presuming) into the backbone of these stories. It struck me today in Spanish that the Two Towers commences with Aragorn climbing a hill, una colina, to try and see what he can see. I was once chastised on NOLS for doing such a thing, instead of "trusting the map," and simply dropping blindly down an unknown valley. As though the map could show the new bends of the river since 1950, or the paths through the alders. The books speak of high passes, wide rivers, the heads of valleys. Hidden game trails through the trees. When one walks the empty reaches of the earth, these are the things one sees. To move across these landscapes successfully, one must become attuned to the paths which exist already, to the fact that we ourselves are mammals, and may move by the same paths as those other mammals which live already in these places. When at a loss, the flow of water or a small separation in the trees may point the way. The moose, caribou, and grizzlies all get there somehow, and curiosity is not a strictly human trait. I have found plenty of bear scat stranded on distant peaks.

Two things are different here in Patagonia. First, we are carrying no maps, because nearly, there aren't any. No hay. We did have one road map for Argentina, but we drove off the bottom of it halfway through yesterday. Every day is a new discovery, a day of exploration. Second, there are no large mammals here to make the way. In many places, there are no game trails, for lack of game. This can make things quite interesting. Moving across Alaskan nowhere is quite easy, sometimes, in comparison to Chile.

The other thing that the Lord of the Rings did to me was to inject an intense sense of possibility into my imagination. Today, kids have the movies (which I love) to do the heavy lifting of first imagination for them, maybe, but the real mountains are out there as well, waiting.

The story is- a reticent nobody who would rather be left in peace confronts a powerful and dominating thing, out of a deep sense of duty to all those oblivious others to whom the threat cannot even be explained, because they would not believe, and against all odds, succeeds. Famously, in his last version of the introduction, Tolkien laughs at the suggestion that his story is simply a WWII allegory, explaining that, if so, the "good" powers that be would simply take the ring from Frodo, and in so doing, replace the evil (here defined as the destruction of nature, the domination and subjugation of the will of others, and the unrelenting weaponization, or even merely propagation, of pure industry) they had sought to arrest with another type of hegemony. The lust for power would not fade, Aragorn would be no king, and Sauruman's industry would eventually dominate everything.

Tolkien, I believe, provided a story for modernity more powerfully applicable and more directly inspiring than any relgious text that I have ever read. Jesus talks of the possession of things, Buddha the overcoming of desire. Tolkien faces raw, corrupting power, the power to destroy utterly, something which we have only truly invented (perfected?) recently. And he sends his heroes into nature, to travel by forgotten ways, to protect them from the pure malice of this thing they carry, raw corruption embodied in a golden ring.

I don't care much for "literary criticism." Pablo Neruda famously commented about his poetry that it wasn't always so much about the sense of the words that mattered for his poems, so much as the sounds of the words and the added potency of the images he could cause them to create. A stone could be redondo o afilado, but for Neruda, it could also be lagrimoso, afiligido, o una memoria de la tierra. I don't think, therefore, that I know exactly what Tolkien "means." This is simply the power of his story for me. Many could probably write off Tom Bombadil, Treebeard, the Shire, all of it as something quaint, outdated, silly. What does it mean when Gandalf explains why the ring has no power over Bombadil, that to him it would ultimately become merely a trifling thing, (and therefore is not safely left in his care, as he might well lose it), because he is older than most other things? Each of these moments had profound lessons for me, and in the mountains, I think about them every day. The question for me, for all of us, is how to be this change we want to see, away from these places of not-yet-forgotten beauty?

Not all of us get a Gandalf to point and prod the way.

Intentado

2011-02-21T15:13:00.005-07:00

Some noted that the last update could be characterized as “long.” Personally, I thought four pages for four week in Patagonia was pretty good for me! Here’s something shorter-

Alpine start. Magic words, always. All the better if they can be whooped in success to the glacial night, after rising without an alarm clock. Overhydrating, wind, and a restless partner are a good recipe for success.

As we stand below La Brecha de la Cornisa, routefinding in the windy dark because we did not scout as we should have ten hours before in the blazing afternoon sun, the white glacier world flashes a sudden green. The angle of the earth tilts violently, the brightness flares, and a hundred black alpine daggers above me go skittering in all directions, their shadows racing and flickering on the night wind.

The light goes out.

It takes me a moment to register exactly what has happened. A brilliant meteor has passed.

For me, there are no omens. A wise desert rat once said, “In my experience, there’s no such thing as luck.” But there is planning, preparation, and the confidence and competence to act on the best opportunity presented by the ever-changing moment. “Luck” is a feeble explanation for the intersection of deliberate action with a dynamic universe.

Perhaps there’s some negative entropy at work today. We’re not going to make the summit. We’re too slow, it’s too late, we don’t know the way, and we didn’t camp high enough. When I finally see what might be the summit ridge rising towards the horizon six hours later, I’m amazed at how distant it still is. In eight hours, we get nowhere. We could perhaps epic, bivy high, but we’ve brought nothing, to prevent ourselves from taking the risk. We’re complicit in our own failure. It’s noon- we’ve crossed all of one technical crevasse (there may be fifty more above) and are creeping up a serac wall that is increasingly in the midday sun. I’m cursing like a sailor. It’s NOON. GOD-DAMNIT!

I reverse the pitch on top belay, and then run my prussik out to the end of my coil. If you’re going to try for real alpinism, you’ve got to be better than this. But you can’t fail unless you try, and you can’t get better unless you practice. This is what I’m telling myself as I’m yelling profanities into the wind. IT’S ALREADY NOON. WHAT THE F___? Irrationality gets the better of me.

Up to this point, the only mountain I’ve ever really failed to climb was Touch-Me-Not, and that was a weather call made while running from lightning off the top of Baldy. It’s the same elevation as San Lorenzo, but lacks the 1800 vertical meters of glaciations on top. The summit plateau of San Lorenzo is just a giant glacier. Touch Me Not, once I finally got it amidst a wheezing battle with bacterial bronchitis that put me on my knees every six steps, was just rocks. (The Black Plaque indeed. So much for that project.) Now, in two weeks, we’ve missed two summits. Neither one stings that badly- both were entirely exploratory endeavours. Just getting to the ridge that starts to go to San Valentin was an epic success. I’d never before free-soloed living moss, or needed an ice tool to move through a forest. And for San Lorenzo, our hubris and our lack of patience was our undoing- we’d intended to spend a few days on the mountain, but had already waited on weather for two.

Most importantly, I made the ultimate mistake- I read the map backwards.

To be fair, as printed, the map is backwards, relative to the route. It’s also of a photo of a photo of a computer screen on Dennis’ SLR, and it’s hard to see. But the cardinal sin is that it’s also a satellite photo, and the sun is in the north. The shadow of the peak, I suddenly realize to my horror, is therefore pointing south. I vowed before coming down here never to do this, but here we are, traversing down an unstable and collapsing knife ridge to which we had no business ever going. Our route is to the right.

A summit lost to poor execution and a lack of planning in an embarrassing thing. Why put the effort into doing something 75% well? But we’re camped in an old NOLS fort amidst yet another jagged alpine cirque, and that condor is still soaring and diving on that glacier wind, forever in my mind among those dagger peaks, wings peaking and folding, pounding the air, and rocketing aloft. Vultures wheel, perhaps, but condors truly soar. The animal is so big, its flight speaks to me of utter, absolute confidence. Seeing a 747 take off, vomiting pollution, is an impressive thing. But a condor leaves one awestruck.

The last time I was in Chile, I finally saw the movie American Beauty, on the bus back from La Serena. Watching the condor, I was reminded of the guy filming his plastic bag. I laughed. A plastic bag- something almost no one ever really needed, a marionette animated by the wind. The illusion of convenience. Fleeting, transitory. But Andean Condors- those, I think we need. I think we need the untold kilometers of deep mountain wilderness stretching west to the barrier islands and the sea from San Lorenzo, the kind of view that makes you forget to breathe. I think we need air as clean as the mountain air of Patagonia in our cities, and if not, then what the hell is the point of all of this technology? Secondhand smoke and secondhand exhaust are, to my mind, similar things. I think, to be truly worthy of our hubris, Homo sapiens needs to confront what it is doing, what our “leaders” have done on our behalf. Every day, the bulldozers, bottom trawlers, and the bankers are destroying beauty, and leaving slag. Can we really improve on condors rising on the cordillera breeze?

A plastic bag?

Really?

Is that what America has come to call Beauty?

I imagine cities were we all can breathe.

Borderlands

2011-02-20T19:57:00.002-07:00

A desert sun rises silent
In the night, a roaring wind
But now, the full moon hangs in the west
above an Arizona valley, displaced
Borrowed Superstition peaks, the walls of a smaller grand canyon
Odious Comparison
But I do not yet know the name of this place
so I grope within my memory
to attempt a greater understanding.

Listless yellow tufts of grass,
the skull and bones of a guanaco
llama-camel, our talisman for a full moon desert night
Sandstone walls, monoclines, unclimbed lines
huecos, tufas, warped by time
It is familiar, this place
and at once, strange
The sun hangs in the northern sky
and one hundred kilometers to the southeast
are glacier peaks
A world of ice, a serengeti plain
a valley joining countries
at once alike, but opposed to the other's face
We are the only car today
to pass the frontiera gate.

Go West! And South.

Go southwest.

Tierra Incognita

2011-02-18T10:08:00.001-07:00

13-2-2011

That´s not all, folks! Sorry I´ve been remiss in my updates. The internet is a scarce and expensive resource in these parts, perhaps as it should be. Cell phones are equally useless, much to my delight. To be honest, I don´t really miss either one, though I do miss being able to talk to y´all! If you think you´re in control of your world, stop and ponder how much time you spend deleting emails every day, or reading random articles. Close the damn NY Times and write a letter to a friend! The world will still be there tomorrow, and if it´s not, maybe you´ll be happy you wrote the letter.

That being said, there are some jarring transitions to be had. I spent yesterday afternoon transcribing letters onto the computer. The international mail is really expensive from here! It´s not that you guys aren´t worth it, exactly… just print them out. It´s what I do with yours, so I can read them up in the mountains. Which is of course where we are again now. In one hour, I went from frantically Stalkerbooking to baking bread on the coals of our dinner fire. We´re 20 minutes down the road to nowhere outside of Cochrane, and haven´t seen anybody else for a day.

Since Frey, we´re spent most days travelling. The Carretera is slow going, partly by necessity, but mostly because we stop to look at everything. We´re the slowest car on the road, and we like it that way. Ther are no speed limits (the highway enforces its own), no police, and absolutely nothing to fear. Drivers passing in the night honk hello to our campfire, and we have yet to fail to fin dan inviting meadow ora n empty cyclist camp just off the road to spend the night. Yesterday, we stayed the evening in Cochrane to spend some time with Dennis´ cycling buddy Simon, who is riding the Carretera from Puerto Montt to El Chaiten on a lousy Chinese mountain bike with his girlfriend. We spent the day replacing the shifters and the chain, and fighting with the deraileurs. Most of the cyclists are Americans or French on really fancy hybrid bikes, so it was really cool to meet some Chileans travelling on gumption with less than the best.

More on the Carretera- Southern Chile is still very much “under construction,” and very, very empty. It was jarring to reach the only major city in the Region, Coyhaique, after three quiet days in the woods, hiking beautifully-constructed trails to hanging glaciers through the vivid greens of old-growth coastal rainforest. Bosque Nativo. 1,000-year-old tres. Once felling, they do not grow back. One sees it in the wide clearings, tremendous gray log piles like islands in the midst of green and yellow pastures. The cattle plants of Europe take their place. Cheat, brome, yarrow, clover, bull thistle, wooly mullen- all are here. With the volcanic rock and these familiar plants, it is New Mexico. With the black alpine dagger towers and mottled summer snowfields, it is Alaska. But with the Cordillera, turquoise rivers, live volcanoes, vivid air, and single road, it is PATAGONIA. For now, mostly Sin Represas- Without Dams. There is a war of billboards and documentaries being fought here.

NOLS is also everywhere down here. The North Face might be the most ubiquitous brand in Chile, but NOLS seems to be the most regularly encountered thing in central Patagonia. It´s funny to me, since I could have come to all of these places instead of Alaska. Better, I think, to see thme this way. I don´t think that any worse thing can happen in the mountains than to be a client!

Recently, we attempted San Valentin, the tallest mountain in Patagonia, at over 4,000m. We started with three men and eight days of rations, and came back after five days as two guys with five days of food left. (our buddy bailed early). We gave up on the mountain due to too-good of weather, a giant bergschrund that wasn´t even freezing at night, and the realization that as just two guys, we were very, very far out. Not to mention that our climb was an attempt to repeat a route that has only been successfully completed once, by Jim Donnini. We followed his machete “trail” through the forest between the first glacier and the head of the first ridge, as best we could, getting lost both on the ascent and descent in a truly feo bosque.

Day 1, we crossed a glacier. Day 2, we battled a forest. Day 3, we ice-climbed a 110m wall of shrubs, tussocks, and moss. And Day 4, we stood atop a white prow in the blazing morning sun with Patagonian peaks (heretofore unseen due to clouds) on all sides, and concluded that, “this isn´t going to work.” A Himalyan icefall towered to the southeast, ice avalanches regularly roaring down through 500m of seracs to feed the glacier below. Our solitary ridge rose to a gaping maw of a bergschrund to our right, passable perhaps by a single, steep ramp on the left, which appeared to be floating in space. The snow was mush. At Dennis´ urging, we went up to have a look, sending down some slush slides. We could do it. But if we screw up here, at all, we´re dead, probably the slow way (crevasse camping). We still have yet to even see the mountain. And El Chaiten and Torres del Paine still wait, far to the south. So we turn back.

The next day, in one epic push, we rappel the moss wall, downclimb / shwhack the forest, I get us lost and become dehydrated, there are horseflies and punishing sun everywhere, we finally reach the glacier, and then push all the way back in to the El Puesto guides Refugio, covering moremountain terrain in one day than I did with NOLS in a given week. On the way in, we see the towering collossus known locally as “El Capitan.” It looks similar, and about as big, with a nose, central prow, and sweeping wings. There are racing stripes of snow across the top. It´s never been climbed. Before departing initially, Don Francisco (who runs El Puesto, owns the glacier Access trail, and coordinates sea kayaks for NOLS), tells us, “Once you see it, you´ll come back in and head right back out with your climbing gear.” But we´ve had enough. We lack the gear for a granite first ascent, and have just suffered two days of perfect rock climbing weather amidst a slushfield. The packs are heavy and we´re dragging in, racing the sunset, alpenglow already fading and we´re still only halfway through the last morraine. “Someday,” I mutter. “Maybe.”

Hours later, the oranges are gone, as is half the whisky, and we´re slurping into the soup. Chileans speaking Ingles, gringos hablando español. Backcountry hospitality, the nights spent around the Wood-burning stove by candlelight. Our new buddies offer us a place to sleep, fresh bread, homemade marmelada, and hot showers. Ther mountains are foremost in my mind a place of deep camraderie. We share stories long into the night.

Viento. Frio. Agua en el aire.
Torres subiendo, los dientes de la tierra.
I expect always that something must happen.
The silence must be broken.
The windy silence of the lost corners of the earth.
And finally
The bleat of sheep, fellow wanderers in a forgotten land.
There are places here where many people come
And others, where few are ever seen
If not afoot, ahorse. Of this place.
We visit- they remain.
In one season, the newcut timbers turn
from auburn tawn to grey.
Dried by the wind
turned by the rain
and forever passing.

I do not begin to understand this place
The earth here is Young
in all way alive.
Volcanoes breathe
glaciers speak
the thunder is in the rivers
shades of blue a mockery of the sky
the stars a mystery again
and forever the whisper of the wind.
The green and dripping forests
spice the air, erupting life.
And condors soar and dive among the roaring heights.

Ultimately, I could argue that Dennis and I aren´t exactly sure why we´re driving around Patagonia climbing mountains, but it is undeniably beautiful, invigorating, and inspiring. Empty words- concrete details: We both stay up late every night journaling and writing letters and songs and poems and stories. Every day we see things that we can´t help but gawk at and photograph, whether it´s horses standing below jagged black and toothy mountains, impossibly iridescent blue rivers, or just the shapes of trees. Tonight is our second night sleeping under a roof not made of stars or nylon, and it´s an accident. Outside, the rain pours down, and the low rumble of the river and the raging wind off the glacier above is never-ending. Refugio Toni Rohrer. Cerro San Lorenzo.

Dennis has been better at getting photos up than I – check his Facebook, Mugdigman D. Thinking of you all way down here. Dare to do what you really want to, even if it´s “crazy.” It won´t necessarily be easy or without pain (leaving all your friends behind and mountaineering with an injured knee sucks!) but it´ll probaby be worth your time. Opportunities are always gliding by- you´ve just got to have the courage to take hold.

Buy the ticket, take the ride! You have ONE LIFE!

RM6, take that to heart. Hope I´ll see you gentlemen again someday soon. Martin tried to teach us all some things, but maybe I wasn´t really listening until recently.

Watching condors fly among fistfuls of alpine dagger spires from our glacier high camp in the racing sunbeams after mountain rain is beyond amazing. Their incredible size is always hard to believe. If you stapled two eagles together at the wingtips, you´d have one runty Andean condor.

Maybe that was the moment that I came here to see. The rising bent of giant wings before the swooping dive, rocketing aloft again on unseen winds. Fear a distant memory.

Spread your wings, folks. You´re all incredible.

Anybody want to open a bakery / restaurant, maybe? It would connect to a rock gym. And maybe Narnia. Who knows. A real “mixed-use space.” First I need a loan and/or some seed money.

And finally, for some of you: You´re only “old” if you´re A) Not learning anything and B) Not doing anything. And don´t give me any crap about pain. I know what pain feels like. Push through. And iIf it´s really too much, find something new to learn that doesn´t hurt. I´m planning on doing a lot of painting once my body stops working. For now, I guess I´m collecting memories.

Love and friendship and fond thoughts and such,

Joe

Placeholder

2011-02-02T07:07:00.003-07:00

Coyhaique, glacier-bound. NOLSies in the grocery stores, perro-vagos in the streets. 3L bottles of Coca Cola.

Yup, we're back in Chile.

Las Salamandras

Outside of Coyhaique

Cumbres

2011-01-28T08:39:00.000-07:00

Volcan Lanin, 3700m, Border of Chile and Argentina

Top of El Principal, as pointed to below.

Headed up Lanin.

Top of Villarica. Just a cloud of sulfuric acid, actually.

"Vaya con Dios"

2011-01-27T15:53:00.004-07:00

Writing by candlelight.

Climbed that. Actually, we climbed three things in this shot, including the big one.

Climbed that too. Aguja Frey.

Orion Upsidedown.

My mother's words. One of the funny things about travel is the incidental communication in other languages with one's own family.

A lot of people have said / thought / contended and/or otherwise opined that you have to lose something in order to find it / fully appreciate it / know it's worth.

It is true that being far away from the familiar world / some of the people you love / the microwave changes how you see some things. Brings them into sharper focus. (Sharp = afilado). Insert your metaphor here. More Spanish every day. 5% immersion, Nick.

I spent the last week at a place known simply as "Frey". The name is sort of odd. It's hard to say just what it conveys, exactly. A few details:

Camping is totally free. So is using the latrine, and sitting inside the candle / LED-lit Refugio at night. The porch and the sink and the clean water are also gratis. There's a wind turbine, a cat named Jazz, and a lot more women, music, noise, and wine than Camp 4. This place makes Yosemite look like Walmart.

The catch is that Frey is inside of an Argentinian National Park. Despite this, it is something organic, genuine, and fantastic: A spontaneous community of people brought together by their love of climbing, trekking, exploring, and this place.

Above Frey rises an incredible cirque of gnarly alpine towers, with whimsical names to suit their forms, such as "La Banana," "Abuelo," La Vieja," and "Principal." Condors circle the distant spires, and to see them misleads one of the size of the climb one is about to undertake. The trouble with condors is that their wingspan is thirteen feet. So when extrapolating from them to the size of the rocks on the basis of turkey vultures, one tends to make mistakes.

Ultimately, we climbed Aguja Frey, La Vieja, El Principal, y Abuelo. I led one summit, Abuelo, and it was a crazy narrowing chimney that started about 8 feet wide and ended by pinching me out onto the face. Black Diamond, I am glad that you make a very big hex and a 3.5 cam.

From here, we're off to Coyhaique, El Chaiten, and the Caratera Austral, via the circuitous way.

Hombres de Grandes Cajones

2011-01-19T13:16:00.008-07:00

That was the name we were given by some Valparaiso climbers descending from Volcan Lanin, once they heard our plan to climb and descend the whole thing in one day.

Mala suerte with photo uploads, but at any rate, we´re now in Bariloche, after driving the Siete Lagos corridor from San Martin de los Andes. Corridor = fantastically awful gravel muck road that is ostensibly WAY better than some of the terrain we have not encountered yet. There were, as advertised, Siete Lagos, looking like a sort of odd combination between the Boundary Waters and the Prince William Sound. There´s a lot of weird Midwest / Alaska parallels going on here, since while we´re technically still in the high 30s as far as southerly latitude, things are rather alpine. But this is Dennis´ second time around the horn, as it were, so he knows the way.

As such, most of the climbing objectives are his. I´m sort of along for the ride, which is fine by me. I tried travelling to South America once already on my own itinerary, and that didn´t go so well! So we´ve been climbing volancoes.

Already got a few pictures up of Villarica, our baby starter volcano (though it was, uh, rather active), but the real challenge was three days ago when we climbed Lanin, a much, much bigger (3700m, 12,200 feet or so) volcano along the border of Argentina and Chile. Following our trip tradition, we entirely failed at a real alpine start, so we didn´t ship out until 9AM. Which was sort of terrifying, except for the incredibly perfect weather after the rain and clouds of 6AM when we decided the hell with it, and the high wispy clouds indicating good weather for the day. Still, we had to climb over 7,000 vertical feet at around a 50 degree angle, so in our not-ultra-acclimated state, it sort of took all day. We finally made the real summit ridge at 17:30 or so, and only at my insistence that we just climb over one more goddamn ice wall.

The trouble with volcanoes is the false summits, because the damn things are ALWAYS GETTING TALLER. The nice thing was the giant snowslopes / pebble scree chutes all the way to the bottom. We cruised down.
So all told, we spent two nights at the volcano´s base (epic night photos soon) and then crossed the border the next morning, amidst a bunch of crazy trees calles Aurancaunias, or something, which are sort of like pine trees but Joshua-tree like in their weirdness. And then some ski towns and some fantastic chocolate ice cream on a rainy day, and now we´re here.

I meant to write something more inspired. Still sort of wondering what I´m doing down here, exactly, but mostly just sort of enjoying the ride. Hope y´all are well!

Oh, and I watched an episode of Deadliest Catch in HD in an Argentinian Heladeria (ice cream place / coffee shop). Looked like they caught a hell of a lot of giant crabs. And they got way more soaked than we´ve been, though we´ve been getting pretty wet, so that made me feel better, too.

Dennis is highly in favor of tomatoes.

The view above the river across from Pucon, our rainiest camp yet.

Expensively homeless.

La Vista. Watching the Half Ironman in Pucon.

Looks like me after mountain biking.

Dennis goes for a swim.

Hobos.

Araucania

Volcan Lanin. I couldn't believe that we were just going to go walk up this.
Never been more intimidated by a mountain in my life.

Real summit? False summit? Who knows. We're only 1/3 of the way there.

Villarica! Just climbed it!

Turns out this is hard.

Officially above the clouds.

Look at that positive curve!

Summit!
(Means we're halfway there, still got to get down!)

Argentina.

The summit is made out of a few million ice leaves.

Here's one.

Long way back down to Chile!

Camp is down there somewhere.

Buenas Noches.

Pequeñas Descubiertas

2011-01-15T13:21:00.003-07:00

Bencina Blanco works in the Whisperlite. Weird detail- It is lighter than American white gas, and doesn´t have to be primed. It can simply be lit. So it combines all of the awesomeness of a liquid stove with all of the awesomeness of a canister one. And here at first I thought it wouldn´t work! (It basically exploded fire everywhere when I made the mistake of trying to prime it.) So I bought 15L.

Jamás comprendió que la gente siempre está en condiciones de hacer lo que sueña.
We never understand that people always have the ability to do what they dream of.

Los vendedores de palomitas de maiz son más importantes que los pastores. Tienen una casa, mientras que los pastores duermena en la intemperie. Las personas prefieren casar a sus hijas con ellos antes que casarlas con pastores.The popcorn sellers are more important than shepherds. They have houses, while the shepherds sleep outdoors. People prefer to marry their daughters to the popcorn sellers before they would have them marry shepherds.

These are from Paul Coehlo´s El Alquimista. The shepherd being advised of this is ostensibly chasing his dream to travel, having quit the seminary at 16 and acquired a flock of sheep.

Pucon y Volcan Villarica

2011-01-15T12:21:00.002-07:00

Pucon! Finalmente. Already in two days here the trip has basically been worth it, and we´re just getting started. Pucon is a fantastic little tourist town at the base of the Villarica volcano, surrounded by short and incredibly steep jungle-y mountains. One excepts John Williams music and velociraptors getting out of the tent at five in the morning for a lazy man´s alpine start. Instead, we´re greeted by a horde of puppies.

Yesterday, we bought a bunch of food (over 100 pounds for less than $60), and then went sport climbing at a local crag, which completely handed me my ass. True to form, I tried to start off on a 5.12-something. Proceeded to send two less-insane but still sustained and awesome routes, and then get completely shut down by a 5.11d with a last-two-moves crux. Not that the route was easy, but the top was a big overhanging triangular slab. So we´ve got some work to do.

For the night, we slept in the front yard of a guy who has a fantastic handbuilt wood beams and windows house that looks out on the whole valley. Dennis had met him once before, and we spent the late evening after dinner on his red couches talking and listening to classical music. Backcountry hospitality at its finest. Safe place to camp and park, nice trees, and good people. We also met a bunch of local Chilean climbers at the crag who were all awesome. Turns out that I might just be able to sell all of my gear before I head north again, as I had hoped. Climbing gear is stupidly expensive here in Chile (most stuff is double the US price), but not for lack of demand.

And finally: Climbed my first volcano today! Pictures soon. Weather today was much lousier than yesterday, but it was also nice to hike up under clouds and not blazing summer sun. Full sun on snowfields kind of sucks. The climb wasn´t super technical, but picture a pointy, snow capped volcano and that´s what we got. I glissaded (rocketed) down some chutes from all the guided groups that do it on plastic butt sleds on the way down, and then pulled off the crampons and skiied down on my enormous feet the rest of the way. Raining now.

Awesome day. Headed towards Argentina mañana! Photos soon! Or later. But eventually.