Hike: Mt. Elbert

I hiked to the highest point in Colorado sunday: Mt. Elbert. I went with the singles group. We camped together the night before and had a great time. I wandered off for a few minutes with my camera saturday evening and took a few snapshots of the summit of Mt. Elbert in the distance under some foreboding clouds and Half Moon Creek (where we camped), but I forgot my camera sunday morning. So you'll have to take me at my word that the views were beautiful up top. The hike was, I believe, only class 1, but was strenuous. Out of 11 who attempted, 8 summited, and one of those experienced some altitude sickness as well. The height of the experience, however, seems to be directly proportional to the difficulty of the ascent. (Final photo courtesy John Adams.)

Books: What I'm Reading

I just finished A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving. While talking with a friend of mine about books, he suggested I read this. "It could change your life," he said. Getting to know him better, I have a feeling it changed his. It is a rather long book, but hardly a difficult or laborious read. I had a hard time putting it down. John Irving is a great story teller. That is something that I really admire in a good writer, and I wish I had more of a talent for it. I connected to the book, its characters and themes, and remained so to the end.

I think the book is ultimately about faith and purpose. It is also a commentary on war and social mores, the pollution of the American Dream, the abuse of power by government. You know, nothing at all remotely relevant today (ha!). But all this takes a back seat to an engaging story about unlikely miracles, faith and doubt, perseverance, and friendship, with one of the strangest, most memorable characters in fiction at the fore. Most people have heard the general plot: two young boys growing up together in small-town New England; Owen, the small, physically underdeveloped (and mentally overdeveloped) one with a strange voice; John, the other boy and narrarator; a little league game where Owen (who has never made contact with the ball before) finally hits a fly ball that strikes and kills his best friend's mother; Owen's declaration that he is God's instrument, which later seems by all accounts to be confirmed in a horrifying and miraculous, yet poignant, way. (Yes, it's the watered-down plot of the film Simon Birch, which I didn't care for, but Irving distanced himself from the movie and made the screenplay writers change all the characters' names. The book is really quite different.)

A Prayer for Owen Meany has been called a "brave book" by Stephen King, and rightly so. It asks hard questions and attacks our complacency and apathy. It says doubt is okay, but faith is better. It is also a very moving story with a message that should resonate with all of us. My friend later told me that the book was so powerful for him because it reminded him that our lives have purpose; that nothing happens that is meaningless, even things we could never imagine having any reason to them; that we truly are God's instruments.

Vacation: Ocean Isle Beach, North Carolina

Before last week, I had never been "to the beach". That phrase implies the "experience", which I had never enjoyed until now. My buddy Clay and his family rented a beach house at Ocean Isle Beach and, several months ago, he invited me to join them for a few days. It was a short vacation but sweet. We had a blast.

Of course, I made a few observations about the ocean; some while there, some after I'd returned.

It is unnerving, the ocean. It is teeming with wildlife and I think for one to enjoy it from
anywhere but the shore, one must tuck this fact tidily into a recess of one's mind. Incidentally, Clay was penalized $1 for each use of the word "shark" while we were swimming.

It is also romantic. I don't mean "romantic" in its relational sense, but rather in the purer context of contemplation, sentimentality, nostalgia, or inspiration. Poets have written of it as
long as man has witnessed it, and one does not need to have ever seen the ocean to appreciate the romance of it. It is impossible to resist drawing all manner of metaphors (although trite from overuse) from its curious pulses, its ineffable eternality, its expanses and depths. It is
cleansing, purging, and--oh, all right--baptismal. (It is, undoubtedly, a catalyst for spiritual
meditation.) It inspires contemplation. Even as children we were required to put to memory that famous sonnet of Shakespeare (presumably in an attempt to ease our young minds into the
inevitable thanatopsis):

Like as the waves make toward the pebbled shore,
So our minutes hasten to their end...

Does contemplation get deeper than this? You'll have to forgive my moribund
thoughts. It must be the letdown of returning to the daily grind. I promise: I
really did have fun!

One more important thought about the ocean. Being at the ocean gives one a good tan. Never underestimate the virtue of a good tan.

Meditation: Poem

Indelible

You called me a Sunset once
Miles from town
On the banks of the reservoir
Full of last year’s water and
Simmering with twilight
You looked at me expectantly
Or so it seemed
Waiting for words that never came
Drawing word pictures in your gorgeous mind
To keep you company
As the night settled in
Hard and cold

Hike: Mushrooms!

During my backpack this past weekend, I couldn't help noticing the plethora of mushrooms and fungi in the forest. I know it sounds crazy or bizarre, but I love the stuff. Ever since I was a kid, I was always rooting around in the forest for some fungus or lichen I read about in a book, hoping I'd find one. I've only been hunting for morels in Ohio once, and it was so much fun. There seems to be something mythic about mushrooms. What is it? One reads a chapter devoted to them in Lord of the Rings; Lewis Carol makes frequent references to them in Alice in Wonderland and gives them a role in the plot; they appear frequently in nursery rhymes; they are woven through the fabric of fairy tales, mythologies, and religions. They are hallucinogenic, delicious, sacred, deadly.

As I walked through the forest saturday, I saw a squirrel race up a tree and glare down at me, twitching its tail, the entire cap of a mushroom--about a third the length of its body--in its mouth. After the deluge of rain saturday night, my walk back through the same forest trail the next morning revealed new, pithy buttons that had since broken through the forest floor. I imagined the earth of an otherwise silent forest bulging and popping all night long.

I made some (ok, a lot of) photos of different mushrooms and toadstools along the trail and thought I'd share some of the more interesting ones.

Hike: Bushnell Lakes, Sangre de Cristo Wilderness

This weekend I backpacked solo to the Bushnell Lakes in the Sangre de Cristo Wilderness. The hike was difficult, making me earn it, traversing through miles of the San Isabel National Forest
on a steep, rocky trail, until finally reaching the first of the series of three lakes, each higher than the last, situated in a narrow basin and walled in on three sides by lofty, seemingly impenetrable walls. Waterfalls abounded, each falling from the next highest lake as over stair steps. The diagonal fractures and strata of the southern wall rose starkly at least a thousand feet from the basin floor. One could only imagine the force required to lift it so long ago. At the western headwall of the cwm lay the highest, largest, and deepest lake, all of which I did not get a chance to see. Upon arrival at the second tarn, I was under the illusion for most of the afternoon that I was actually camping at the last lake, only discovering later that it was the smallest and shallowest of the three. I came to know this when I met the only other campers
in the basin, a man and his two sons, walking back from the upper lake carrying fishing poles and a string of beautiful cutthroat trout. I met no one else the rest of the weekend except for a few dayhikers in the forest on my way out sunday morning.



After a bit of exploring in the early evening, I settled down to cook dinner, but was interrupted
midway by the beginnings of what would turn out to be a very rainy evening. I ate in the tent,
listening to the thunderless rain and howling, gale-force winds outside. Several times I had to
go out in the rain to tie down the rainfly, which was set flapping by the wind due to a broken
plastic snap. I also rediscovered a small hole in the fly when I was awakened to drops of water
hitting my forehead.


The next morning was cool and breezy and clear, the sun glinting orange off the water of the tarn
below and selectively warming the surrounding walls of rock. The open east end of the basin
revealed layers of mountains in the distance, featureless in the morning mist. After breakfast
and a bit of journaling, I broke camp around 7:30, descending past my tarn and waterfall to the
first lake and waterfall below, then back into the forest. The woods were wet and aromatic and
rife with new mushrooms (post on this forthcoming), which distracted me from the pain of the pack
and my stumbling feet.

Evening at Hayden Creek

Entering the Wilderness

A valley along the way





The lower of the Bushnell Lakes





Lake and flowers





The second falls, just below my campsite





A view of the lakes from the talus field to the south





Waterfall at the first lake





Morning to the east
(No attempt to eliminate lens flare. ha ha)

Meditation: Poem

Signs

And so, here I stand, startled by clouds and mists,
Bound by cords of light
Strings of effulgence
Tethers of dawn—
To the god of this lake,
Gathering his robes about boles of trees,
Dissolving in brumes and vapors,
I pray for one skyflash,
One peep from the ether,
Bread upon the water,
Amen and
Amen