Although, I wonder how much there is to say, really, when you are a dutiful cog in this machine. Or that machine, depending on where you are or what shift you are working. It is, of course, the beast. It is the graven image. It is the subterranean dynamo upon which the crust of western hemisphere existence sprawls from sea to shining sea. But duty is noble. Is it not. Is not it. It is not. We turn in shifts, Comrades, we turn in shifts. I am below with the swelter-tongue, oil-tang stench for nine hours and then surface, numb, sticky, and disoriented into the light, while your eyes are just starting to adjust to the world for what it really is. But not for too long! God help us if we see for too long what the world really is. What it really is. How would the machine run then, Comrades? What would become of us then? Rice bowls and distended stomachs, that’s what. And what to do with all those clocks. In every form imaginable. So you take your place behind the levers just as I am squinting, staggering up from the shafts, paying my fees at the door before I lumber off to lick my wounds and spend my earnings on whatever nepenthe will comfort, distract. As I lie whimpering, sniveling over some inconsequential gash that won’t, for God’s sake, won’t stop bleeding. For numbness is life. Numbness is the petrol, the calories, Comrades. It is what the gaping maw of the beast requires. That and our progeny. This is why it is imperative, Comrades, absolutely imperative that you train them up in the doctrine we now profess and hold dear. That doctrine whose icons we salute and on which we dry our tears and in which we wrap our naked bodies. There is nothing else. All is vanity but vanity and vanity of vanities. For you are not here to feel, Comrades. You are not here to touch the void or drink too deeply from what might be beyond the celluloid soporific ric-tic-tic-tic flickering mesmeric projectors you worship. No. There is nothing. Nothing behind the curtain. Defiance is death is fear is paralysis is poverty is unhappiness is sullied white gloves, Comrades. Sullied white gloves. We need not revert to puritanical names like Mammon, of course, for what did that fool know after all? Crazy, dirty, impoverished, desultory—slaughtered, after all. For God’s sake, is that really an example to follow? Come, now, Comrades, let us reason together. What is this? It is, simply put, a fee for what you cannot, must not live without. Incidentally, another one has gone missing this morning and so you, friend, you must take his shift as well as your own today. The congeries awaits you. Oh, the nobility and pride and satisfaction you must now feel! 25 Oct, 2007

Meditation: Poem

Your skin: fiction—
Your words: fustian—
Your soul: insuperable—
You turn away with the ease of
Ice on hot macadam
And I wonder how you keep from feeling as desperate
As I do

Hike: Hesperus Mountain

Rebuffed again.

My annual hajj to the west La Plata Mountains this year was supposed to include a picnic on a blanket by a pond, a walk through golden aspens, a view of the magnificent Hesperus Mountain, and blue October skies. When will I ever learn.

Despite the weather predictions, my aunt Kathy and I decided to attempt a climb of Hesperus Mountain anyway. It was cloudy and cold, the summit of Hesperus alternately clouded and denuded by descending snow-laden clouds. We bundled up and left the Jeep around 10 am. In less than an hour we noticed the first bits of snow/graupel falling. The weather progressively declined from there. We left the trail to begin the ascent up the steep western face toward the western ridge of the mountain. From there, we were to summit from the south. The directions I had were about as clear as the decreasing visibility. The climb was steep and snow was beginning to collect and moisten the talus, making hiking more difficult. From our height, we could see the waves of sleet and snow falling over the valley below like torrents of rain in summer, and spindrift was swirling on nearby Lavender Peak, striking up in monochrome stolidity. At one point the sky opened slightly (and temporarily) over the valley to the south, the sun pouring over a forest of golden aspens.

The going would have been difficult even with dry earth, calm winds, and good visibility, but in light of the absence of all of these, I decided we should descend. It was a good decision, I believe, because the weather only worsened. High winds pelted us with graupel on our descent, the snowfall getting heavier all the time. Entering the forest was a relief from the winds and became quite a wonderland of snow where only a few hours before none had lain.

On our drive out, the snow continued, but the lower we descended, the thicker the fog became, lending great atmospherics for some photo making. Thanks, Kathy, for indulging me!

Here are a few photos from the trip. I played around with some watermarks after post-processing in Photoshop and I hope they aren’t too pretentious or distracting.

The Shark's Tooth slowly succumbing to sheets of snow.

Aspens to the south from high on the trail.

Nearing the top of the west ridge, where we turned around.

Before and After. Kathy (reluctant model, good sport) in the same spot before we left for the hike and after we'd returned.

Waves of pelting graupel from high on the trail.

Deep aspen woods.

Foggy autumn road.

A parting gift for the contestants, just for playing along...

Hike: Water

I went for a hike after church yesterday up Catamount Creek just five minutes from my house. I had been there before, at least on the first half of it, but instead of going all the way to Catamount Reservoir, I turned around near the the top. Just past the Garden of Eden Meadow, I found a "side" trail, unmarked. I took it out of curiousity through the trees and discovered it followed Catamount Creek as it fell steeply through a narrow, deep, dark canyon of pine, towering rock, turning leaves, waterfalls, and half-light. It was as if I'd left a sunny Colorado afternoon and entered a magical autumn evening. I hope you enjoy a few of these glimpses.

Hike: Mt. Yale

I climbed my eleventh fourteener, and first Collegiate Peak, Mt. Yale, this past weekend with Jared who came for a visit over a long weekend.

Meditation: Haiku

Rain on ageless stone
Pools on beds of aspen leaves—
Yellow, silent tears.

*

You, down autumn hills,
Bearing stems of cardamom—
I await you here.

Meditation: Approaching Autumn

There is something about the first chill of autumn air that can turn my mind to the past like nothing else. It has been nippy here the last several days with fog and low-hanging clouds coming in from the west, and there was thick fog on the pass this morning and it was misty, not quite raining, yet requiring the windshield wipers. It has been jacket weather outside, and, inside, the furnace has been on in the mornings when I wake. Granted, I live at 8,200 feet above sea level in Colorado, and it is early September. I remember it snowing rather heavily on Labor Day above Silverton, Colorado when I was there with my family a few years back; it dumped on a friend and I huddled at the top of Handies Peak the same weekend a year later; and my first year living in Colorado, I, a wide-eyed Ohio boy clad all in cotton with no jacket, stood shivering on a switchback of the Ice Lakes trail marveling at the sight of wet, heavy snow in September. So the current weather is not exactly an anomaly.

Several times yesterday I found myself standing over a basket of clean laundry, having just returned, with a start, to the present. I looked out the window to see the clouds gathering and parting, mists passing in front of the piney hills across Crystola Canyon, the ponderosa pines in the backyard sparkling in the sun one moment and blending into blue the next. I pulled a sweater over my head and broke out a New York Times crossword that’s been giving me trouble, partially, I suppose, to keep my mind from wandering. There is a melancholy beauty in memories that come this time of year; they are close and tangible, and they remind of youth and wonder and less cynical times.

I must admit I’m not ready for the snow. There. I’ve said it. In Colorado, you can be exiled for thinking that, let alone saying it. (I have a feeling that “The Natives”, as they like to be called, already have their collective eye on me, and I don’t want to press my luck.) In fact, I’m surprised at myself. My first years in Colorado I prayed for it, reveled in it, measured it. Today, as I drive down the pass, I can almost feel it in the air. The dry, stinging bitterness of it clinging silently to golden aspen leaves and creeping into my bones.