Stand

So, let's talk about rock and/or roll...

Okay, maybe not. How about instead we talk about a sense of place? About that, which is intangible? About the price of admission? About lines in the sand?

It was not too long ago I spoke down from the mount about being presented with a grand opportunity. One, which would be outright folly to pass by. We opted to make it work. Word has gotten around. Here in the mountains, in these small places, secrets are a very hard thing to keep, and I am adept at keeping secrets. Like being both a masked vigilante and an esoteric porn star.

Oh! Did I just say too much?

The thing is the price of admission. Everything has a price. That is the very nature of the Deal. Only cheap things are purchased with bits of folding paper and jingling coins.

I have found myself afflicted with a crippling sense of grief. Look out my front door, I see a twelve-thousand two-hundred eighty-seven foot peak with no distinct trail that I have summited three times. Go out back, I spy, with my too-big-for-the-rest-of-my-face eyes, a twelve-thousand two-hundred-seventy-five foot peak that catches the first light of day, and, in its bosom, cradles the bones of an aerial tramway that operated in the early years of the twentieth century, which I have yet to get to. I live where others come to vacation.

When I first came here, I felt, head, heart, and gut I had found my place in the world. Though I am not given to the nuance of such things as romance, I find I can only describing it was when one first falls in love; you know what has happened, but trying to make logical sense of it, or, put it into coherent words, is another animal. Sometimes, I wonder if it is a similar sensation my sister-in-law gets when she steps into her megachurch and is delivered scripture.

A few days back, a preservationist of my acquaintance and admiration asked me when I was leaving. This was a practicality, in a sense, given my involvements in my community, one such thing is a land use commission with her. With a bit of flippancy, I told her I was sorry to disappoint, but it may be a bit. Sabina would say it's because we're in the throes of summer, and it's the sweet time when it's almost perfect here, but it's more than that.

As we spoke, the preservationist of my acquaintance and admiration mentioned she can go somewhere for months-of course because of who she is-and immerse herself in a place, but there is an intangible that draws her back and keeps her here. I totally get it. The intangibility has been the source of my bouts of melancholy.

I remember my youthful wish of wanting to live in either a nature reserve or a museum. Making the intangible tangible, I got that. A friend of mine once said Heaven grants all its gifts with a righteous fury. I do not believe in Heaven, unless I say that is what I have. Nor do I believe in righteous fury, because if you are right, there is no need for fury, and, if you are wrong, you cannot afford it. However, brass tacks and bedposts, I got that wish I made so many years and lifetimes ago. I know that down into my marrow.

How can I sacrifice this for that? I have meditated and agonized over it. In the end, I find I am unwilling to contemplate the option of all or nothing.

Will the opportunity be taken? Certainly. However, it will be on my terms and no one else's. Not the whims or pressures of friends, family, acquaintances, or even the Department of Transportation trying to manipulate travel routes to get more tourists to the resorts. Should you try, muster all the armies of the heavens, earth, and the hellscapes, but, make sure to pack your white flag of surrender lest I march through all of you, but not before taking out my ire upon three generations of all of your families, for I am possessed of glacial patience and a fertile imagination.

Be careful...

I figured out living in the middle of a city. I figured out the love and affection of a quirky blond x-goth/metal girl. I have figured out the mountains as they continue to surprise and amaze me. I will figure out this opportunity, but not at the sacrifice of somewhere I intangibly see as my place in the world.

This is my line in the sand. Here is where I will make my stand. 
   

A Case of Mistake-Jem Identity

Sooo, at a meeting regarding county trail maintenance and interpretive signage, the executive assistant to the commissioners called me a jem. Me.

This is a true story as told by a preservationist of my acquaintance and admiration. I inclined my head respectively in thanks, the whole time thinking they've got me mixed up with some other tall lanky bastard who likes to play outside.

There and Back Again

On the morning of the last full day...

Eventually...





Some traveling music. One, because of the mention of tidal pools, the other because it's Faith No More...

Kona;

Somehow, it was fitting we had to wait two hours to check in. The airline sends its employees home between the early and late flights. Sabina's parents dropped us off by four in the afternoon in order to get back to Pahoa before dark. Not a fan of night driving these days, I can empathize. The days on the island, no matter the time of year because of its proximity to the equator, are never much more than twelve hours. Having to wait, I utter a new mantra I learned over a ten day stretch;

Hawaii...

I had more trouble with security this time than coming out, but it actually was my fault. See, I forgot to take my phone out of my pocket, and, the lack-of-a-filter/pathologically caustic honesty, got me to point this out, which led to an extended search. To his credit, the TSA agent offered me privacy for this, but it was my fuck up and I had nothing to hide, so I stood my ground.

 Since we had time to kill, I said to fuckery with it and got us beers. I'd rather not discuss the bar tab for two rounds of not even stout beer. It was sad that there were so few dark beers offered on the island. Another traveler in the bar postulated it was because of the warm environment, to which I called bullshit. My favorite beer on the planet is a stout out of Sri Lanka, which is lovely with spicy curries, and that place is not known for being cool in the sense of temperature.

Part of me hoped the beers would help with sleep. Or, at the very least, I wanted to be a little less high strung for the flight. Hip-hop was the backbeat, which made me contemplate a third round in favor of outright homicide.

It was obvious I was preparing for Colorado. My t-shirt, a Colorado company, read; If you're not already here, you're lost. Perhaps I was making a ham-handed attempt to be provocative. Maybe I was showing some state pride. I found curious symmetry that Colorado and Hawaii are sister states.

On the way to the airport, I zipped the legs onto my hiking pants. After security, I changed from sandals to my hiking boots. The air conditioner in the bar inspired me to put on my flannel, sleeves down. As we head further back, my vest and jacket will appear. The beanie I wore down from home will replace my cap.

The night before and earlier in the morning, Sabina waxed fatalistic about our return; back to obligations and bills and having to pay for laundry and groceries. I have been-baselessly!-accused of being cynical, but I just cannot lament like that. Within the mathematics of my thoughts is a party being tossed for the volunteers at my professional obligations on my first full day back and hopes of snowshoeing. The sun should almost be back on the house after the Long Dark.

Leaving Hawaii is not the end of the journey, just another leg of it. My journey ends when the lights go out, and I have absolutely no time to die. There is the auspice of living a life that does not require a vacation, because your life is a vacation. Some woo-woo love and light Iwanttopunchyouinthefuckingthroattowatchyourexpressionasyouhyperventilate types seem to have been recently trying to push that. I could say with a fair amount of certainty I have been living it for years, if not decades.

Yeh, I'm that kind of punk-rock in the Dali sense of keeping it surreal...

***

Between;

A late-night redeye to the mainland and I can't sleep. I watch The Martian, which was fairly faithful to the book. I flip through other bits of video media for background noise. Everyone else around me is asleep and it would be rude of me to click on the light to read.

This time, I set the timer on my phone. As these words find their way from the maggot's nest I call my mind to the page to dry in black India ink, there is an hour and a half left before we land. The last of the Star Wars prequels is on and I am not very excited about it-Thank you, oh so much for turning Darth Vader, my childhood hero, into a fucking whiny bitch-but it's background noise. I envy my fellow passengers their slumber. Insomnia and travel are twin aggravations.

***

San Fransisco;

Still no gentle people. And no one with flowers in their hair. What's this noise?

And I thought the music was bad in the Kona airport bar. In the pre-dawn small hours waiting at the gate, the music permeating the air is some fangless R&B tripe somewhat reminiscent of Sade, and the fact I even recognize the genre makes me want to scrub my scant flesh from my pronounced bones. Needless to say, I find this auditory circumstance disturbing.

The gate is right by a security checkpoint. There is the chitter-chatter of early morning travelers and the beeping and buzzing of scanners. If I close my eyes I can almost think it sounds like a casino. Every so often, a coldly automated female voice comes over unseen speakers to proselytize the paranoia of air travel in the post 9/11 world.

Nothing else is open yet. I'm down to a couple energy bars and a dubious amount of energy to hunt for anything else. Part of me craves coffee, but, after being wide awake nearly twenty-four hours, I figure that might be counterproductive. As it stands, I take a big slug of water from my bottle and try closing my eyes.

Hoping...

***

Portland;

It hardly counts as a layover. Get off one plane and walk to the next door gate to board another. This is only the second smallest plane I have ever been on. Constantly, people make note of our cozy quarters. I find myself intrigued by the craft; it seems more fitting for island-hopping or the greater metroplex to a mountain STOL port than the flight we're about to undertake.

Although, given the journey started in Hawaii and will end at my mountain home, perhaps it all makes sense...

I managed to catnap for an hour. My vest and beanie are now on my person. As we landed I saw my first snow-capped mountains in ten days. It got me to smile.

Just a few hours left to go...

***

DIA to The House of Owls and Bats;

There was catharsis in steeping into an eighteen degree mountain night as the waxing gibbous moon illuminated the snow on the valleys high peaks. I love nearly and full moon nights in winter in my mountains for that very reason. There was the crispness of the air and the silence. It was in that moment of zen I realized I was home.

To backflash, a friend picked us up under a sky of broken clouds with rumors of storms further up. I was told I could never leave again, my place of professional obligations barely managed to function without me. Apparently, at the very least, no one else can reach the antique clock. I guess that's flattering.

The clouds thickened as we drove into the mountains, and there were flurries, but nothing significant. Part of me was sorry I was so busy talking to our friend and trying to stay awake that I didn't take note of my first sight of the Roof of the World. I figure it's okay. The realization I was back in my mountains got me to smile a grin of wicked joy and to whisper made-up mantras of thanksgiving.

The familiars were happy to see us. We unpack and our friend gave us soup so we'd not have to make any efforts for a dinner. We're home, happy, and now it's okay to be throughly exhausted. Soon we will sleep like larva morphing into butterflies.



In getting home, how could this not be my jam?

Headlong Flight

Context...



A tragedy that occurred the day we left. The gypsy called me twisted for telling her I had an airtight alibi. The nerve... 

DIA;

Now, the shit gets real...

I am seventy miles and ten days from home. Within the next day, the miles will increase, but the time will decrease in strange temporal ways before the wake up. Small comfort.

For ten years I lived in a big city. Most of it in the shadow of the monoliths of downtown. As we first entered into those borders of neon, I wondered how all these people do it. How I did it.

I cannot see stars. The air stinks of exhaust and sewage and thousands of millions of bodies both unwashed and overly perfumed. When I was younger and more foolish and wanting to escape the badlands of eastern Colorado, this held promise and adventure and yet unnamed treasure. Having left that all behind so many years ago now, this is a form of perdition that would make Dante and Milton cross their legs and blush.

I do find myself grateful we left when it was dark. The stars shone with dazzling brilliance, but the mountains were shrouded in new moon shadow. I think my ire would be worse having watched familiar peaks recede in the distance. An upside is we will be returning home during the day and that first glance of the Roof of the World coming out of the greater metroplex is is cathartic to someone like me.

So, I am trying to focus on the journey ahead instead of what I feel I've been forced to leave behind. The mantra of ever forward can be difficult when having left a Kashmir. I keep reminding myself I'll be back soon enough, but part of me-a very large part-is aching for the peaks and rocks and the adventures contained therein.

Yet, I am starting upon a grand adventure, so I should just let go and let the good times roll...

***
San Fransisco...

I have spent four hours of layover and didn't meet any gentle people. There was only one cat with flowers in his hair, and I'm guessing he was coming back from where we're going. I'm kind of disappointed. The old song lied-lied!-to me.

A belly full of Japanese and a beer from the same place. A reward for surviving the first leg of the journey. Because of the airline overbooking we lucked into catching a later flight and missing our first layover. However, neither of us are too keen on this flying thing. The air over Colorado is always turbulent apparently, which was less than thrilling. These vehicles do not seem to be made for someone with my measurements. I get cramped and crushed for hours on end.

The next leg is five hours and change, which I think borders upon grotesque. Then a two hour drive to where we're staying. In the last twenty-four hours I've slept somewhere between forty-five minutes and an hour. Here and now, I am too wound up to increase that period of rest.

***

Between;

It was something to see the Pacific rolling and roiling against the California coast from the air. We were already high enough that the city we left had been reduced to toy-scale miniature, and yet the ocean is still massive. The largest body of water on the planet. Somewhere out there is Challenger Deep, the lowest spot in the world.

And we get to fly over this body of water...

For the most part, we've been either over or through clouds, chasing a setting sun. I watched the twilight dapple light and shadow upon the shifting forms of the clouds. Occasionally, I see breaks down into the ocean, It occurs to me this leg of the journey is a study in air and water, both as liquid and vapor. It is a void in which time will fall back three hours from home.

More by exhaustion than relaxation, we manage to catch a couple of catnaps. Mine have been shorter, I notice. I have no idea the distance we've crossed. Time is nigh on impossible to figure in the void. We will be touching down on what is arguably called the most isolated island in the world and I find myself eager to be upon Terra Firma once more.

***

Kona to Pahoa;

I was reminded of North Carolina what for the humidity. It was the first time I'd ever exited a plane in that fashion, going directly onto the tarmac. Sabina remarked it was very Casablanca. Apparently, in Hawaii, you no longer get flowers draped about your neck upon arrival, unless your in-laws decide it would be a cute and otherwise corking idea. I was not terribly excited. We ate pizza in the parking lot, though, I was so hungry I question whether or not I actually tasted anything.

On the way from the airport I tried to make a brave show of it, but being up for a day and a half with a handful of catnaps hit me like a two-ton heavy thing. I guess it speaks to how much I trust the company I have found myself in for the next ten days. One of the last times I saw Sabina's parents, her mother said I was good for their daughter. Given I am usually tolerated, if that, by parents, this a great honor.

There is very little light pollution, making the stars deliciously brilliant. Because there are not eleven and twelve thousand foot peaks hemming us in, there are more of them to see. I wish I had a telescope.

From open windows I can hear the ballads of frogs and a hymnal of surf. Occasionally, a chicken crows in the small hours darkness. I have some vodka to unwind. Sleep is in order. In the daylight I shall walk to the ocean.

The Gem

I have been talking with Miguel Loco about learning how to ice climb for at least two years now. After all, when you live somewhere with long winters you learn to do things in said winter other than hole up inside and drink. That leads to madness, if not liver failure. There's also the fact I like climbing things, despite that I have been prone to moments of vertigo. You push through these things or you die, that is the way of it, and I have no time for dying.

Timing and lack of gear had been the excuses the past two winters. Then, I found that old, old pair of waffle-stompers. Two weeks later, Miguel acquired equally old, and hardly used crampons that fit those old boots like hand in glove. For my first forays, I would borrow things like ropes, axes, and a helmet to see if I even liked what I was looking at doing.

"He really wants to get out there, and I have a feeling once he gets going, he won't want to stop," Miguel told Sabina recently.

A few days ago, we were at his shoppe. The weather has been cold and he spoke of scouting ice. A few places he wanted to take me are starting to freeze up nicely.

"Oh, that reminds me, I never showed you this from last spring," I said, pulling out my phone and scrolling to the image of the waterfall up Mosquito Gulch.

And you would have thought I was showing him pictures of naked girls in provocative poses what for his reaction. I was tempted to tell him to put it back in his pants, for there was a lady present, as well as Sabina. He demanded I text him the image.

"Where is this?" He asked excitedly.

"Between the 730 and the Bull's Head," I said.

"I've never heard of it. Is it right off the trail?"

"Sorta," I replied and then added in a somewhat sing-songie voice; "I can take you there."

"We're so going!"

There is something kind of cool about knowing of a place one of your gurus does not. Playing guide for a guide. I would remark on that, as well as his reaction to the image of the falls. Miguel would tell me it was porn.

Ice porn...

At the falls, using a certain tall, lanky aberration for scale...

By Miguel Loco's reckoning, it's maybe fifteen feet of straight vertical. A good inaugural climb and a way to learn some technique. He told me to watch the ice and keep him posted, and used terms like farming for sculpting the ice for a better climb.

"This is great," he said. "A real gem. Sheltered and in a place you'd never find unless you do some bushwhacking. I really doubt anyone has ever climbed it." He smiled and patted me on the shoulder. "You found this, you get first ascent, and then, you get to name it."

That's the rule, apparently. Back in summer, I'd called it Mosquito Falls for the gulch it was in, but apparently, that will not do. Sabina suggested Robbie Grey's Grab. I thought of Robbie Grey's Roost, The Gem, or even Lankin's Lookout, should I want to name it for a fictional character. Or maybe I won't name it at all. Edward Abbey once bemoaned the human propensity for naming nonhuman things like mountains and canyons.

Maybe I'll tell you my decision after I bang some ice...

After our scouting, we went and had brunch. It was grand to discover we shared similar scientific interests. We parted ways on a cold and blustery afternoon and I went to scout the ice of Brown's Gulch, another place we mean to climb. It might be the only way to reach some of the ruins that can be seen along the sheer rock faces.

Yes, I am going to learn the discipline of ice climbing. I have the blood, the blade, the courage, and the gear, whether my own or what will be lent. I get a first ascent for my first time, which I wonder how many other first-timers get. I may have a new way to pass our long, dark winters. Even if it plays out I'm not into it-of which I seriously, even comically, doubt-I'll get a story out of it. Sometimes that's the greatest gem of all.    

The Number of Seasons

A recent acquisition; a moose skull. It hangs upon the back door now...

Rain has been falling, but that is nothing new. Thus far, it's been a wet summer. Although, the last three days have been cooler and not as humid, getting Sabina to fatalistically ask who stole her summer. She can be the type to see the grey cloud behind the silver lining, whereas I tend to be a little more positive. It balances us out.

Here it is, just a few days into July, and I've yet to get up on the tundra or poke about in gulches I wish to explore. We've yet to go camping. I know there's still time, but that time is but a few short weeks and there's all the demonic details in between, which also must be dealt with. Blink and you'll miss it and the snow will be flying.

Sabina's parents have a place in Hawaii-times is hard-of which they want us, her sister and bother-in-law, nephew and new wife to visit in January. Around the time of their fifty-sixth anniversary. Everything paid. You'd be excused for thinking I'd already have my frame pack stuffed to the gills for tropical adventure.

I didn't lose anything in Hawaii. The islands I want to see are Madagascar, Borneo, and/or the Galapagos. The idea of being stuffed into an airplane, thirty-thousand feet above the surface of the world's oceans for almost ten hours holds little appeal. Flying machines are not made for people with my measurements.

Endeavoring to be positive, I try to look at the adventure aspect, because adventures can suck when you're having them. I know this firsthand. Sabina's parents seem to like me well enough, and the only thing I'm spending is time. From the naturalistic standpoint, I've never been to the tropics and only seen the ocean two to three times in the nearly forty-three years I've been alive. Even then, I've only seen the Atlantic. This could be an opportunity to see whales. There's an observatory at fourteen-thousand that could be neat to check out. I could get a story out of it.

Sabina has similar thoughts to mine. So we try to look at from angle of what appeals to us. Her parents speak of not knowing how much longer they'll be in Hawaii. Her father is nearly eighty, and, whilst active, not as active as some of the seniors of my acquaintance I've summited thirteen-thousand peaks with just for want of something to do.

This got Sabina to ask me how many more summers we have. How long before our idea of summer fun is a walk around town and stopping to watch the river amble by, for our trekking days are behind us. Personally, I'll want to be shot in the face-twice-if that day ever comes, for I have no time to belly-up and quit. Remember, I am the one who aches for the lifespan of a star.

There's several billion seasons left. Well, at least until the sun goes red giant and consumes the planet. There'll be no more seasons. Period. Hopefully, by then, our species, or whatever its evolved into, if its not wiped itself out-see? I can be negative too-will have expanded out into the cosmos.

Perhaps I think on too grand a scale, which is why the demonic details sometimes get missed. Here and now, time may be short, but there's enough of it for those gulch treks and at least one camping trip. We're scheduled to go up to Santiago-alpine!-in five days. Suddenly, it looks like I may have an opportunity for something tropical in the cold of deep winter. Part of me is not thrilled by the location or how I have to get there, but I know better than to totally poo-poo it. After all, it's an adventure, and how can I really say no to that?

Twisted Arrow

"You've been reading
some old letters,
You smile and think
how much you've changed,
All the money in the world
couldn't buy back those days..."-The The

Long ago now, when my siblings and I helped my father put his mother in the ground, we ended up at the wake. It was a grand southern affair with casseroles and libations. Having lived at higher elevations for so long, we felt we were drinking alcohol-flavored water whilst the southern relatives got hammered and mourned. One remarked out of all of my part of the family, I was the one who'd changed the most.

To be fair, some of these cats hadn't seen me since I was fourteen or fifteen. I'd not started growing my hair long, and certainly was unable to sprout facial hair yet. It was before the braces fixed that overbite I had through childhood and the idea of a tattoo had not entered into the mathematics of my thoughts.

That summer was when Sabina and I decided we must move to the mountains. I have mentioned more than once how that shocked my city friends. Even Jezebel was a little gobsmacked. Recently, as I mentioned hating crowds and flat places, she reminded me of how I once wanted to be so urban. I thanked her for the call-out, but reminded her of where we were living when we first became pals; the badlands of eastern Colorado. Flat and khaki with fuck all to do.

See, I knew I'd one day leave the greater metroplex. It just seemed to be the way of it. However, as I told another acquaintance who, when I first spoke of Kashmir, I had no intention of going back to the badlands, or even North Carolina. Fuck that noise.

Never back. Forward. Ever forward.

In a sense, I've only gone back twice in my life. The first was when my family moved back to Colorado. My seventeen year old delusion was it'd be back to the very first farmstead on the very western edge of the metroplex, just a few miles east of the hogbacks and Front Range foothills-I like to call them wuss hills these days-by Morrison, when that was still the countryside. My friends, some of whom were my friends only when in that one neighborhood, would pick up where we left off three and a half years before.

What a fool I used to be...

The new farmstead was seven miles east of Parker, on the county line. The very edge of the badlands. Over the years my parents would move even further into those flat wastes. It was a new landscape, new people, new rules. Three and a half years is forever and a day when you're in junior high and high school. Those friends had moved on, despite efforts I made to stay in touch. Their memory effigies have since faded into obscure places within the walls of my skull I only inspect on the rarest of occasions.

The old cliché holds true; you can never go home again...

The second time was moving back in with my parents, to that first new Colorado farmstead, right after my divorce. That was a tense and depressive eighteen months. My father and I were ready to go after one another with knives. My adolescent urge to escape the badlands was trumped my adult one. When Jezebel said she needed a roommate, I was gone so quick, my pants had to catch the next bus out.

Once upon a time, my way of thinking and being was built upon the foundations of The Art of War, The Book of Five Rings, The Analects of Confucius, The Tao te Ching, and pretty well any Buddhist sutra. A friend once remarked I was the smartest cat he'd ever met, because anyone can read Sun Tzu and Confucius and regurgitate quotes to sound cool in conversation, but it takes real intellect to apply that knowledge and live it. I have not spoken to him in years. Sometimes, it makes me sad.

These days the foundations have a another layer of which is more of a go-to; Desert Solitaire, A Sand County Almanac, The Omnivore's Dilemma, Lonely Planets; The Natural Philosophy of Alien Life, and pretty well anything from John Muir. Instead of mala beads and Thai prayer stones to occupy my hands, I carry fossils and smoothed river stones. No one I hang around these days would be surprised by this, given I speak of being outside as holy sacrament.

Five years back, Lee came to stay with us to pull his head together whilst he contemplated leaving the Sons of Silence. I chided him on being a joiner, a fucking lemming. Back then, I had a subscription to National Geographic, making me a society member by default, and that was almost too much fucking effort.

A year later, I found myself on the board of our historical society. To this day, I say I did it to shut a couple of people up. From there, I've found myself getting involved with a few other things within my community. Senpai will remark how established I am. How I have become the Man, to which I mention, like Old Blue Eyes, I did it my way.

The occasions I have had to speak from someone from the distant past of high school, or, nowadays, even the city, they seem blown away by who I am now versus their rose-tinted recollections. I am saddened by their apparent stagnation and descent into a reality, which is a blur of Republicans and meat. We are far-flung aliens to one another and that probably explains why bonds are never reestablished.

Never back. Forward. Ever forward.

I too get amazed and twists and turns my life has gone along. The adventures, the mentalities, the landscapes. Even some of the things I've done for money, though, I think it is banal to measure the sum and substance of your existence against what you do to pay the bills. Cats like that should be peeled, salted, driven around on spiked planks by near-catatonic mental patients, used as a jizz-catcher for rabid baboons in heat, and left to hang in the town square for necrophile boys to play with. At best.

Although, any time I get too impressed with my own intelligence and how much personal evolution I've accomplished, I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror. Inevitably, I am wearing a t-shirt and an unbuttoned, untucked flannel. An image of me through the ages. It's then I catch myself wondering what really has changed, if anything at all.     

Early On

After a murky and very moist month, there have been a couple of somewhat nicer days. Efforts at early summer. It seemed in some ways that April and May swapped in terms of both temperatures and precipitation.

Also, the societal attitude was more that of April than May. Tempers on edge with seasonal burnout and prayers to see the sun again. I too have felt a bit of burnout at the murk, but it's more musculoskeletal than social. The continuous roller coaster of the barometer has pushed and pulled at my twisted skeleton in ways I imagine the tidal forces of Jupiter affect Europa. My exhaustion toward the weather was one of pain.

Yet everything is lush and green. The early stages of runoff sing in esoteric tongues. The high peaks hold fresh snow from a month of storms. I can remember a May four years back like this one, except the snow-line was much lower, and when the sun came out for Memorial Day weekend there was dancing in the streets. Last night, we had a chiminea and watched the stars.

There has been an ugly conspiracy abroad to get me on HDPLC-Historic District Public Lands Commission-because of my liking to be outside, spearheaded by Sempai and a retired forester of my acquaintance of whom I'm on the historical board with and has been an election judge with me. What a way to start the summer.

Mei fei tsu. The way I see it, it'll keep me from getting tapped for anything political, like mayor or county commissioner. Long hair, piercings, trinkets, tattoos, and I-don't-fucking-do-dress-up aside, I'm on a historical board, a museum committee, a stewardship group, and now, apparently, a commission. That's a lot of irons in the fire. Politics would complicate things, and, if I wanted complication, I'd watch a French film.

So, yes, it is early summer, or at least trying to be. Trying to be a little warmer and drier. I wear sandals, but no shorts just yet. Apparently, I have something else to do to occupy my time that at least two, and maybe more, cats think I might have the qualifications for. I'm not sure how to approach the subject. It's that same sense of queerness as when one of my best friends told me how much he always admired me. Sometimes, I think I am given far too much credit. Still, it's early yet, on several levels. Looks like we'll all see, and, I, for one, like to watch.

Basecamp

Just as I spent a portion of my life wishing I could be someone else, there was a large part of my life spent wanting to be elsewhere. Perhaps it started innocently enough; the coffee table books about Africa in my great-grandmother's house that sits on one of my shelves to this very day, or her artifacts from China. I've always been a sucker for documentaries, even and especially about nature, so the far-flung locals that were featured captivated me. There was also the steady diet of sci-fi, fantasy, and comic books growing up, feeding an active-overactive?-imagination.

The bullying made somewhere, anywhere, a better option. Of course, one cannot outrun their monsters, and anyone who would try to tell you different is either daft or trying to sell something. Still, being an aberration, I've often felt like a bit of an outsider, which can be more bothersome than you might imagine. So, the idea of finding an elsewhere that it didn't matter how curious I was held its sway.

Whilst never possessed of the gypsy mojo of some of the cats I've known, that subconscious search was constant. It's perhaps the reason some teenage boy's ranting to a Led Zeppelin song when I was seventeen made such a lasting impression. The myth and magic of Kashmir. I had something to find.

You would think, having that feeling of outsiderishness, it would have been grand that I fell in with vampires for a bit. Not so much. As with any social caste, there is the strata, and with castes like the vampires or punks or artist-types or pagans or metalheads, there are the degrees of how alienated you've been to close ranks with whatever group. Whether you're just a tourist carousing in someone else's skin for a weekend and a thrill or the one who is so strange that you're alienated amongst the alienated. And, of course, there is the subtext of who keeps it the most real, those who try to give lessons on being the most outsiderie.

Fuck that noise...

***

I wasn't actively looking for Kashmir when we stumbled upon it. Ain't that always the way? Of course, I was thinking of elsewhere at the time. Sabina and I had extricated ourselves from the vampire caste and were exploring new avenues of things to do and reconnecting with either accidental or intentionally buried aspects of ourselves. The recent life changes made me restless.

To be trite, it was like falling in love; something I knew head, heart, and gut, and no one could tell me otherwise. Suddenly the somewhere else to be had a tangible location. Myth and magic made manifest. We had a goal, and we achieved it.

***

It's coming up on the anniversary of our taking possession of the House of Owls and Bats. Of coming home. I'd be stating the obvious to say this place still sings to me in esoteric tongues. A human lifetime is not enough to throughly explore the totality of it, which is part of the magic.

A human lifetime...too short. It is why I ache for the lifespan of a star; all the things I want to do might only be accomplished on a cosmic timespan. This is why I have decided not to die. I'm busy.

I no longer desire to be somewhere, anywhere else. Whilst being an aberration, I can still feel like a bit of an outsider, but I'm somewhere populated by other exiles and drop-outs. If there are those who would preen and posture over being more outsiderie than anyone else, and there probably are, I've either not met them, or dismissed them out of hand.

There is still the desire to travel. I still want to see Africa and Tibet. Alaska and Patagonia. Spain and Greece and Australia. Cambodia and Peru. To see whales and perhaps go into orbit, if not step off world to somewhere really alien. The thing is, now I have a basecamp to come back to and be contented to be back home.

Scenes From a Tuesday Morning

Shot of the altar. Much more reflective of our views these days...

I pad about the house with an infusion of jasmine tea. Mozart is my jam. Outside is overcast with light flurries. Meteorological prophecy portents of snow later in the day and into this evening, but I remain hopefully cynical about the amounts, seeing as it hasn't dumped much more than six inches on us over the last few storms. However, the statewide snow pack is closer to ninety percent of average than it had been, and, our particular river drainage is over one-hundred percent, thus, the reason behind me being hopeful.

Incense perfumes the house, as always. The levels of profundity of my burning incense has waxed and waned throughout the years. I can admit, in some contexts, it can be as automatic as turning a light switch. Other times, I watch the mysteries of the cosmos unfurl within the tendrils of scented smoke. Sabina once told me one of her favorite mental images of me is lighting a stick, watching the smoke, and placing it in the burner upon the altar. Some such silliness about the look of contemplation and reverence.

Both of us get complimented on the way we smell. Being glib, I mention the marvel of bathing. It elicits a chuckle, and then incense is brought up. We burn it constantly, to the point that unless a stick is burning, like a smoker with a lit cigarette, we hardly notice the underlying scent that hangs about us like an aura. I have had someone reach over and breathe deep. I've had someone reach out and touch my hair because there is so much of it. Depending on how misanthropic I feel dictates how deeply I growl or don't.

You'd think someone who is nearly six and a half feet tall, lithe-a nice way of say emaciated-pierced, tattooed, and bedecked in one or two trinkets would be used to such things. It'd probably elicit a chuckle or an of course with some baseless reference to paradoxical nature I've supposedly nurtured if I said I don't like to draw a lot of attention to myself. Oh sure, I don't really want to be another brick in the metaphoric wall, but I've met those cats who go out of their way to make sure they're noticed, and, observed insecurities aside, it seems like a lot of fucking effort. Even and especially when you're just going to a corner store for a soda and a candy bar.

Such are some of my muses and meditations on a Tuesday morning with Mozart as my jam...

I try to decide how to spend my day. There are no professional obligations. I have books to return to the library and the trash should be dealt with. A new coffeehouse is opening in space of the one that shut down back in late January, and a cha'i could potentially be in order. After all, it is across the street from the library. If Miguel Loco's about I could pick his brain from information about a trek I'd like to do through Herman's Gulch, up around to Dry Gulch come summer. The world is my metaphoric oyster, or some other savory mollusk.

Tomorrow, I convinced Sabina to snowshoe Dry Gulch with me. During the winter, part of the trailhead is snowed in, and one must walk from the foot of Loveland Pass; dirty, crusty snow and scent of diesel fumes for about a quarter mile. Understandably not enjoyable, but once you round that curve and pass the Boneyard to first look into the gulch itself, it's like a kiss from the Divine. With tongue.

This is the time of year when the snow starts to shift its countenance. There's still a bit of shoeing to be had, some even in just a t-shirt. I am looking forward to our trek, partially because I've not been up Dry Gulch since early autumn. We'll be roasting a chicken for supper, and, when we return home from walkabout, there'll be relaxing with a cocktail or three, because that's how we roll.

A scene from a recent cocktail hour at the House of Owls and Bats. My glass had lemonade in it. Seriously. You believe me riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight?

The Student, The Master, The Changes of Roles, and The Degrees of Cool

Thanksgiving, 1994; I had been twenty-two for two months and change. My daughter had been alive for a week. I only had one piercing, no tattoos, and had yet to sprout a gray hair...

For those just tuning in, I was not always the hoopy frood you know now. Very far from it. I was a rather awkward youth. Part of it was being an aberration; being too tall, too skinny, with eyes too big for the rest of my face. Another aspect was the bullying, which nurtured my solitary nature.

There were times I wanted to be someone-anyone-else so badly it physically hurt. Perhaps that is why I despise the concept of a persona so much now is during those ugly, painful, awkward years, I more than once tried to be something I wasn't. More than once, the results were disastrous. I have the metaphysical scars to prove it.

Once, when speaking of someone I admired to the point of idolization with my x-wife, I mentioned hoping to one day achieve their level of cool. My x-wife, the rebelling good Catholic girl who ended up with me to piss off her parents-to this day, I'd speculate-suggested instead of trying to aspire to someone else's level of coolness, perhaps I should aspire to my own. It was a backfist of perspective, which helped me ditch the idea of trying to be something I wasn't. Years later, I knew a cat who would speak of the importance of living one's own myth. Sometimes I wonder if his advice and my x-wife's are interconnected in queer way I've yet to fully understand.

When I first met Job, I thought he was so cool you could store cuts of meat inside him for a month. He was the master, and I, the eager student. We'd hang out at coffee and I'd devour his insights. His advice when I had a problem was invaluable. He was my guru. Me saying I was going to talk to Job was like the monks of old going to speak to the head of the order.

I think it was perhaps six months back I first noticed my conversations with Job had changed, and that was beyond the fact of his becoming born again. Certainly, we had, and still do, stimulating dialogues, but suddenly, I wasn't the one seeking advice. I was not the one thanking my friend for the insights.

We've known each other for twenty-one years and change now. He might be eleven years my senior, but I am no longer so wet behind the ears. Even back in the day, he appreciated what I had to say. Nowadays, it seems he treasures it even more.

I find myself queerly shocked...

During one of our conversations, he told me how he always looked forward to hanging out for my perspectives, because apparently not everyone sees things as I do. This is a good thing in my mind, because the world would be a really fucking boring place if that were the case. From his perspective, my passion was something he saw as a fire that burned hotter than a star, and like Hendrix, he wanted to stand next to it. He told me some of his acquaintances now think I'm his imaginary friend, because a cat like me shouldn't/couldn't exist. That many of those times I was going to his for insight and advice, he was taking from my perspective ways to, as he likes to put it, build a better mousetrap.

"I've always wanted to be Robbie Grey when I grew up," Job told me recently. I told him he gives me far too much credit.

I find myself wrestling with this. When did the student become the master? How did I ever get so cool as to win the borderline idolization of one of the coolest cats I've ever known? To me, this is shocking.

The man doesn't even drink, for fuck's sake, so I can't dismiss it so easily...

At one point, in recent years, I realized I truly do have back in the day stories. I know I've gotten where I have along this Tao of Chaos through a sense tenacity and perhaps a little-a lot?-of strange luck. Yet, when I talk to Job, I go into the conversation feeling like that wide-eyed whelp from years back. Nowadays, he talks to me as his guru and I don't know how to approach the subject.

Perhaps someone might say I've come into my own. It seems, were you to ask Job, I did that a very long time ago. Me, trying to work out this change in our metaphoric roles, thinks it's just a step along the way. Which one of us is right is purely conjecture.

January twenty-seventh, 2015. I've been forty-two for almost five months and my daughter is twenty. I have more piercings and tattoos. My hair's as thick and wavy as ever, although, there's a rather interesting blaze of gray along the right side. Just a few of the things that have changed...

A Balmy Day in Deep Winter

That was a pretty impressive windstorm the day before. One meteorological oracle mentioned gusts being recorded between thirty-five and eighty miles per hour. Despite their viciousness, there was a taste of chinook to their countenance. I would record the day's high at fifty degrees. By night, the winds had abated.

With the morning came the assessment and clean up of damage; some property funk-because you gotta have the funk!-had been knocked about. It wasn't much effort to fix this. Surprising, given how the house groaned and shook in those gales, but I don't complain. If re-hanging a couple strings of Tibetan prayer flags is the worst thing that happens to me in a day, then I am doing all right.

It was with excitement as I did these quick chores I realized the next two days would be spent in adventure clothes; this time of year meaning shell-pants-not as heavy as snowpants-and my snow boots. Whilst I am generally not the type to divide my wardrobe into work/play/party/walkabout clothes-that's entirely too much time and effort-I also can clean up nice enough for the magistrate and matron's holiday party that does not include me looking like I just came down off of Bierstadt in a blizzard.

There are girls and some-for the most part gay-men I know who have shoes for every occasion. Most of my shoes have to do with walking, from the snow boots to the as-long-as-it's-a-dry-trail-but-better-for-town-shoes. One girl had a pair she called her-and I am not making this up-walk-like-a-slut-shoes. I tried to emulate her gait in those things once and got laughed at. Uproariously. I took this in stride, for I am awkwardly and otherwise aberrantly put together, and if you don't believe me, come with me some time to Miguel Loco's when I try on a jacket or a long-sleeve mid-layer. It is both high comedy and utter frustration.

For the last two Tuesdays I'd promised Milarepa a walkabout, but other obligations got in the way. Time came to make good on a marker. It was one of those clear deep winter days I do enjoy; light breeze and warm sun. The type where a thermal and t-shirt almost seems excessive and your mid layer and shell stay inside your pack the whole time. I wore a cap instead of a beanie for the first time about a month.

The Maine Mine. Ours were the only tracks...

Although, I strap them to my pack-better to be over-prepared than under-I have never used my snowshoes on the 730. We encountered one person using a set on the way up, and he told me it was an exercise in futility. When we arrived at the ruins of the Maine, halfway to the mine for which the trail is named, the snow, whilst deep in places, wouldn't have warranted shoes. Even if we did both post-hole a few times wandering about the ruins.

I might be anthropomorphizing, but that looks like one happy hound...

Lately, when Milarepa and I have done the 730, we don't go much further than the Maine. I joked the ruins are our little clubhouse. Soon enough, we'll do that push all the way up the monument to see Clifford. This summer, I want to do some off-trail exploring of Brown's Gulch. Tales of other ruins, some not so picked over, ring in my ears.

Brown's Gulch, like Kearny, is pretty steep. Sabina once trekked some of Brown's with me and did not enjoy it. Milarepa is pretty intrepid, and, like Whistler would do, cries if I climb up something she cannot. It really doesn't bother me to have some trails I explore be ones I only take a hound. Sometimes, four-legged companionship is better than two.

The Fast

"Rather three days without food, than a day without tea..."-Chinese proverb

Jazz plays on the morning radio and there's a fire. Otherwise there's a curious silence about the house. I sip water, the only thing I am allowed to have for the next three and a half hours.

For the first time in five years I am going to see a doctor. Just an annual checkup, Sabina's idea. That whole thing of we've been paying for insurance and should reap the benefit of a free checkup. Nevermind the rare as hen's teeth occurrence of me taking ill.

Practically speaking, it can't hurt. My father would growl that my mother did not get herself checked out regularly. When she finally did go to the doctor after noticing something was amiss, the cancer that would eventually eat her alive was in its second stage. Granted, it was cervical, and, unless we are speaking in vertebral tongues, it is anatomically unlikely I could get the same strain.

So, I would say this is no biggie, but it is. See, we must fast for up to twelve hours. Nothing but water. I don't mind water at all. However, I cannot have tea.

I tried to lament this circumstance to Sabina. Don't eat? Okay, I probably need to watch my slim and girlish figure, after all, at nearly six foot six I have gotten up to one-hundred and sixty pounds. I might get a gut. No coffee? I can take it or leave it. No wine or beer? An indulgence.

But no tea? Madness! This is catastrophic.

"Oh, just pretend your the Dalai Lama and drink hot water instead of tea," Sabina said when I tried to explain my devastation.

"And shall I shave my head and wear yellow and saffron robes as well?" I asked, and she had the outright audacity to shoot me a look as though I was being melodramatic.

"It's just blood work," she said.

No sympathy at all. Clearly, she doesn't understand. Fucking woman.

Winter's Calling

A little rivulet along the Argentine Railroad Grade, two days back...

Despite the bluster to wind, it was a mild day. I would eventually record the high as fifty on the Fahrenheit scale, eighteen degrees above that of frozen water. Although I had a soft shell in my pack, the fleece vest I wore was suffice for bushwhacking through a heavily treed slope, which spends much of its day these days in shadow.

We climbed a couple hundred feet up the mountain, to an old wagon road my daughter and I found a few years ago. Other than a few cut trees at the avalanche chute, we were hard-pressed to find any notations of the passings of Man since out last expedition this way. Down on the main trail, we saw deer, prancing and cavorting in the woods. A day later, the magistrate would tell me hunting season was over. Perhaps the deer were aware of that somehow and frolicking in thanksgiving.

Later that night, sore and exhausted from scrabbling up mountainsides, I wondered if I was getting old[er] that such a walkabout would kick my ass. Then a gust of wind rattled the house. I knew what was coming, the meteorological prophecy had been doomsaying it for days. Now, my twisted skeleton was confirming it as more than just hype and other forms of hearsay.

***

I made note of the first flakes starting to fall shortly after ten in the morning. Sempai and I still tried to accomplish an outdoor project of covering some of his plants. No bad weather, just the wrong clothes. We didn't have everything needed to complete the project and I went to have my Brazilian-style shrimp-take that, weather! Ha-ha!-for lunch. It was shortly after two in the afternoon a traveler asked me about the Road.

"It's a long strip of asphalt which runs east-west through the state," I said honestly.

"I hear it's closed," the traveler said, somewhat confused by my very to-the-point answer.

"I've been detained as to not be able to check, but let's have a look-see," I said.

First accumulating snow, first closers along the corridor. It is the way of things. Even if Sempai, the bookkeeper, and I all agreed the amount of snow that had fallen, that continued to fall, hardly warranted it.

"Everybody's getting their snowlegs on," I told another traveler when they asked me how and why this sort of thing happened.

For the next three hours, I would be repeating words to that effect like a mantra. Or a broken record. Take your pick.

"Can't you just call the highway patrol and get an estimate of when it's going to open again?" A traveler asked me as he drummed his impatient fingers on the counter. He did not appreciate my reaction.

"They don't give us that!" I said only after my uproarious laugher subsided. "Sort of a covering of backsides on their part. See, if they said it'd be open in two hours, there'd be some people who'd be upset it took two hours and five minutes."

Some people translating into impatient, entitled pigfuckers, that is...

When everything opened up again, I pulled the trash and took my leave. Sabina was making pizza, Monday being one of the few nights of the week I let her into my kitchen to cook. I had a calming tumbler of whiskey when I got home. We pulled out our heavy down parkas for a walk after supper.

***

What a difference two days makes; looking at the Bull's Head from out front of the house this morning...

I awoke to single digits. The daytime high temperature would I would record would be twenty-two, twenty-nine degrees below two days before, and ten degrees below that of frozen water. Slush-bergs ambled down the river's current. In another month, there'll be places it'll be frozen over completely. The cats looked at the hounds and I like we were insane for stepping outside and I realized I'd need to start checking the indoor litterbox more often.

Despite the cold, there were still things that needed to be done. A few errands down-valley, a walkabout to a ruin at the edge of town. There's no bad weather, just the wrong clothes.

"Welcome to winter," I'd said to Sabina when I told her of the closer the day before.

Looking at meteorological prophecy, I'd wager I'm not far off, despite the fact it's six to ten days before my usual marker of when we lose direct sunlight on the house. It would seem winter decided to come a little early. Time is an abstract, after all.

I have the gear and it's been entirely too long since I snowshoed. We've only got six weeks to get conditioned for our hut trip. The only thing winter means up here is type of layering you do when playing outside. So it goes.

The Days of Gold and Rust

A lovely windbreak along the north ridge of west Loveland Pass. I named thee The God's Throne. Class, any guesses as to whose heretical backside may have sat there to take in the view whilst munching a trail snack?

Looking at Eagle Rock again. Obviously, autumn has up and popped here in our Sahel...

Up top of Mount McCellan at over thirteen-thousand feet. Torrey's Peak, in the distance, certainly is striking, and could lead to deep contemplation. However, I edged to that point at a crawl. Beyond that ledge was the naked space leading downward to the Steven's Gulch Trail some couple thousand feet below. I wanted the view, but not the vertigo...

Another from west Loveland Pass, this time around the krummholz. This may very well be one of the headwaters of the very river that runs across the street from my house...

It is a safe assumption that the aspens are peaking throughout our Sahel. There is a certain mysticism of walking through a wooded area with the golden leaves floating down like snow. The tundra is a riot of various shades of rust. Raptors soar upon the descending jetstream, hunting marmots and pikas as they scurry about in preparation for the coming winter.

I've been craving the alpine more than below timber as autumn advances. Soon enough, the snow will fly and it will stick. Up high, this means some places will present higher avi danger, therefore, keeping me away until summer comes once more. Somewhere like Loveland Pass, it means the Backcountry skiers and boarders will be out, and they are not always courteous to those who recreate in the snow upon snowshoes.

It's also hunting season. I am mindful of which wooded areas I go to as to avoid a case of mistaken identity. Certainly, I've established I'm tall. Freakishly so-superfreak, thank you-some have said. It would certainly to be awkward for someone with a rifle to take my walkabout rhythms as the movements of a lithe moose.

 Like the alpine inhabitants, I find myself hurrying before the snow really starts to fly. All those places I want to walk and explore before they're sealed off and I frequent my winter grounds. As I wandered Loveland Pass today, a red-tail hawk few past me at eye-level as it gained loft to hunt. It was fantastic. There were no greetings or goodbyes as our gazes met for that brief moment. We were just two creatures wandering the alpine, in search of our own goals.

Water Hymn

It was a hot one; low eighties in the shade along the south face. My Thai-print t-shirt became clammy with sweat. After crossing the one gulch, where the chances of encountering another biped lessen exponentially, the modesty of covering the aberrant way my body's put together-twisted spine and famine-victim build-melt away. Function over form.

Take your socially constructed idea of attractive and stick it right up your...

I was grateful for the breezes on the overlook. The waterfall played cacophonic hymns in tongues older than oldest languages of Man. Milarepa and I greedily rehydrated. It was the sweetest of ambrosia.

One of my adventuring buddies-the one whom could tell me he'd been to the moon once and my only question would be; once?-has spoken of the sheer joy of sticking one's feet in a waterway during walkabout. Having done it, I know he's not lying. However, let me tell you, brother, when your house is across the street from the river, there's something to be said for waiting.

And I am possessed of the formidable patience monks and saints prey for, and upon...

I get home, drop the pack, step back out with a mug of tea, some water, or even a beer, and dangle my legs in the water, its origin melting snowfields just a few miles and a couple thousand vertical feet away. The mosquitoes swarm about-I genocidally swat as many as I can between applications of repellant, knowing there's still plenty for the bats and swallows to eat, as I've seen them prey-and relax. The current provides its own backbeat. Slow songs of the eldest of gods. A perfect way to cool down on a hot day.

It's like a kiss from the Divine..with tongue...

A moment of contentment...
 

Waterline

It was with a sense of morbid joy I noticed the standing water in the freshly turned earth of Whistler's grave has all but gone away. By the willow, where the water is at its deepest, the yard Buddha we have resting in its hollow sits upon a patch of moist ground and saturated grass. Omens of runoff truly being done and over. Just in time for the monsoons, which is curiously funny if you think about it. A week ago, a neighbor referred to the standing water table as melted permafrost. I bit my tongue from asking how in the name of almighty fuck could it be permafrost if it melts every spring.

Grizzly Gulch is a trail sculpted by water, the level of which determines how one dresses when walking it. In autumn, boots and gaiters. Winter is when snow pants, taller boots, and either skis or snowshoes are in order. Come summer, even and especially as runoff abates, I walk the trail in sandals. At two of the water crossings it was knee-deep on me-some of ya'll may have needed full-on scuba suits-and that's the point where gaiters are useless and I'd rather have wet feet in my sandals than squishing in socks and boots.

I once read how you can have the latest and greatest gear as advertised in tabloids like Outside or Backpacker, but if you don't know what you're doing, at least the corpse you leave behind will be fashionable. Personally, I've never been good at, nor have I ever cared to be, fashionable. Despite the fact I was walking a High Country/Backcountry trail in sandals and cutoff BDUs, I had my layers and other necessities in my pack. I had no intention of walking all the way to the basin of Grizzly Peak. Even just past the first water crossing there was still snow, and the peak itself had some decent looking fields upon it. I deduced it'd be a given the trail would be covered by snow before treeline, and I'd be post-holing.

That snow I figured on was about a half mile from the third major water crossing. Between the second and third crossing is an avalanche chute. The bones of trees from a long ago slide still litter the drainage of the gulch and the sides of the trail. During the winter, this is pretty well the place you want to turn around.

If not...well, hope all's well between you and whatever it is you prey to and upon or try to ignore...

I could barely make out the still-deep snow where I got stopped. What got my attention more were the twisted and snapped and ruined remains of so many trees. This had happened recently.

"Oh, fuck me..." I whispered in a combination of shock and awe.

  
That's Grizzly Peak in the distance...

Colorado does not get tsunamis, what with being a land-locked state. Well, if one went back a couple hundred-million years ago when this was an inland sea, then maybe, but now we're just splitting hairs. An avalanche strikes me as the closest thing a tsunami in these parts these days.

A walked over snow and downed trees to about the center of the slide area, mesmerized by the sheer scale of the destruction. The dark clouds building over nearby Gray's and Torrey's Peaks and the chill on the wind of an embryonic thunderstorm gave a certain sense of macabre to the scene. It was more from some strange sense of respect for the dead than the snow under the broken trees that got me to turn back.

This was as far I was going, conditions not withstanding, it wasn't the time to go further...

I figure later in the summer, when the waterline is even lower, I'll make my bid for the basin of Grizzly Peak. One of my favorite spots in our Sahel. The snow will most likely be gone from this newest avalanche chute, leaving only the twisted and snapped and ruined remains of so many trees. As I walked by down, part of me morbidly wondered what else I might find twisted and snapped and ruined there, having been drowned by that tsunami of frozen water.

Vertigo

I suppose some might find it a right rib-tickler that despite being very nearly six and a half feet tall and living in an area with a lot of vertical geography of which I like to get up on top of as to see my tiny world from on high, I kind of have a problem with heights. There are probably those, critics, who would say-baselessly!-that this makes sense, for I am full of contradiction. I take it as something of an annoyance, like seasonal allergies.

After all, I have deeper, darker, fears. Late at night, when the demons come for tea, we sometimes discuss them. At length.

Curiously, my worst times of vertigo occurred down below, in the greater metroplex, not the mountains. Once was a soccer game I attended with Jezebel and Belushi. The second was when I saw the Dalai Lama. Both instances involved nose-bleed seats and narrow walkways. Throngs of humanity pulsed around me like some mega-organism. Sometimes, when I think about those two incidents, I wonder if my subtle terror came from the great crowds of eking and scratching half-bald primates surrounding me and not the idea of what would happen if I lost my footing and fell.

I firmly believe my Kashmir is place where playing outside is a holy sacrament. Coming from someone who describes themselves as heretic, that might not mean much, but maybe it means everything. Perhaps it doesn't matter.

The rock walls around the ruins of the Mendota Mine, at the far west edge of town had been calling my name with a siren's sing-song voice. So, I clipped on my chalk bag and away I went. I never climb much higher than twenty feet off the ground. Miguel Loco once warned me to never climb up something I cannot climb back down. Sound advice.

Although, at one point or another, I inevitability look down and everything drops away. I freeze. Only for a heartbeat, but, time being the abstract that it is, that is a very long heartbeat. It is said fear profits no man, and panic, even at ten or twenty feet off the ground could be disastrous. With a deep breath, I look up once more.

Before I learned any of the Buddhist mantras, this was my jam;

"I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past, I will turn my inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain..."

Hearken, and be made glad, congregation, at the good news; the gospel of Frank Herbert...

Of course I made it to the top. I made it back down too, obviously, having had a grand time playing about on the rocks. This little muse-brought to you by the First Syllable, Om-would not have happened otherwise.

Around my neck, one of my fetishes is a fossilized shark's tooth. It was found in the deserts of Morocco, and is said to be around twenty million years old. I imagine critics snickering at that one.

Of course you do. It's ancient and from Morocco. Ain't that just your funny little way?

Funny or not, I've mentioned being frightened of sharks, but I also respect them. My shark's tooth is a talisman and a reminder. It tells me there are things in this world, which scare me, but that it would be folly to allow myself to be in the thrall of my fears. After all, I bear my jugular to no one; god, man, or mental state.

Spring Fever

It's the first time I've worn shorts since early October. Sandals for the first time was a week back. Hummingbirds trill through the valley and we rush to get out the feeders. The narrow-gage whistles, heralding the start of a new season in our Sahel.

I opted to ride my bicycle over to get a shot and beer. The melodrama's on its second weekend, giving our fair 'berg its slice of class by virtue of theater. Snowbums spoke in tongues of lamination at the upcoming closing of Loveland for the season, although, A-Basin could be open until July, what with the snowpack along the pass, and the hardcore types will find those snowfields that don't melt out of spite and the junky's need to ride.

So it goes...

The sunset is striking when I ride home and the air was brisk against my bare legs. Fantastic. The bartender mentioned it was difficult to hug me. So I swept her off her feet so we could see eye to eye and she'd be able reach. It was easy.

A romantic might swoon at such a thing, but I ain't romantic. I can sweep a girl off her feet in the same way a lot of people look up to me; I'm really fucking tall. Freakishly so, Jezebel used to say, but I would correct my best friend; superfreak, for I am superfreaky.  

Winds of Change

It could best be described as spring fever, or perhaps seasonal burnout, my mental state as of late. I've been loath to don a jacket of any kind, and even a vest has been an imposition. There has been a deep-seated desire, bordering on a junkie's need, to go to the Alpine Garden Center. Never mind starts won't be available until early May and we've yet to renew our community garden plot, I want to go poking around. My rationalization to Sabina is perhaps we can at least acquire further ornamentation for the flower beds and around the property, to help with its sense of funk, because you gotta have the funk.

It's boggy mud and crusty dirty snow around town. More and more yard becomes visible. Daily, I find myself excavating evidence of the hounds from bygone blizzards. Something I dislike about this time of year, I admit, but waiting everything is fully thawed and melted is a sense of macabre I dare not even contemplate, and I'm a contemplative kind of guy, if you've not noticed.

The trails are studies in mud, ice, crusted snow, and bare rock. This is the time of year, when going on walkabout, sometimes you carry the snowshoes with you and perhaps end up not using them. Depending upon the face, skiers and boarders bitch about how the occasional fresh powder we get does little to cover the freeze-thaw crusts. The cast of light has shifted from winter's harsh and distant glare. It's so blissfully warm one day and snowing the next. The face of springtime in the Rockies.

The winds have howled through our Sahel, sculpting the snow in interesting ways. When going up the 730 the other day, I paused more than once to watch the snow devils dance across the high peaks. Phantasmal colossi, stretching into the jetstream, leaving their fragmented remains across the mountainsides. It is something I find fascinating.

Sabina mentioned a jones for sandals, and I do empathize. I'd like to wear shorts and ride my bicycle again. Of course, my bicycle is in our back folly and the door is behind what is easily a five foot drift of snow. So it goes. This gives me perspective; in order to get to my bicycle, or to gain access to the folly, I must be patient. The same can be said for wearing shorts and sandals.

My patience is formidable, not infinite, but formidable...

At the Cabin Fever Dance we spoke with some fellow drop-outs from down below. Cats we were acquainted with back in the greater metroplex, although, Sabina moreso than I, but she is more outgoing. We spoke of the differences between that urban existence and the pace of life up here.

I mentioned how I am not nearly as nocturnal as I once was. These days, midnight is late enough for me. Of course, I grew up in rural environments on a farm, my happy-waking-up-of-my-own-power time of nineish would be considered sleeping in, and, depending on what I'm doing with my day, I see it as such too. How things change.

Of course, any time I get too suckered into how much things have changed in the course of my forty-one and change years, I take a good long look in the mirror at the aberration staring back. Too tall, too skinny, with eyes too big for the rest of my face. Long, thick, wavy, bordering upon curly hair, tattoos and piercings. It's then I ask myself what really has changed.

Lots of things. A fair amount have stayed the same. Mei fei tsu. It's a matter of balance; light and shadow, fire and water, chocolate and peanut butter. One cannot exist without the other.

A warm breeze blows and our tiny world thaws every so slowly, changing from deep winter to early spring. Mud. Meteorological prophecy foretells snow, but that's the way of it. The cyclic wheel turns and I sit back, sipping my tea, listening to the rhythms and rhymes of the cosmos, content with my part in it. Soon enough, there will be shorts and sandals, I just need to be patient, but that's not a problem. After all, my patience is formidable.