July 2019
Books read:
- The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
- The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
- Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari
- Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant by Anne Tyler
Trails walked:
- Arizona Trail from Sandy Seep to Horse Camp near Flagstaff (July 5th)
- Sprague and Bear Lakes in Rocky Mountain National Park (July 12th)
- The Inner Basin near Flagstaff (July 17th)
- Grand Canyon South rim trail Bright Angel to Cedar Ridge (July 24th)
Song of the month:
- Rocky Mountain High by John Denver and Mike Taylor https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLWD2WIvRQk
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| Bear Lake in Rocky Mountain National Park |
On July 10th I hauled myself up into the cab of a
16-foot Budget truck rental and pointed it north and east toward Colorado. My main thought was, “Please don’t wreck this
thing and kill somebody.” Our son and
daughter-in-law were moving to Colorado for work, cooler weather, and more
outdoor opportunities. Although it is
sad seeing them move away, it’s exciting knowing they will be in a place well
suited to their lifestyle. Our little
caravan (son, daughter-in-law, sister-in-law) drove north to Flagstaff, then on
to Navajo land at Tuba City and Kayenta, with faraway views of Monument Valley,
then on to spend the night in beautiful Moab, Utah. The next day we headed east on I-70 through
the high mountain passes where the truck I was driving maxed out at about 45 mph sucking air and gas as it struggled up the hills carrying beds and tables and
lamps and books. We all made it safely to
their new rental home which is halfway between Denver and Boulder. On the next day, the difference in
generations was in full view. My generation
would not do ANYTHING fun until ALL the boxes were unloaded, and everything was
done. The younger generation says, “Let’s
go explore Boulder and Rocky Mountain National Park!” So, we did (I think their generation has it
right by the way…the boxes will eventually be unloaded, there’s no law that
says it must be done now). One of this month’s hikes was on this
exploration trip. Hiking in Arizona in
July generally requires a drive of 2 or more hours each way in order to escape
the heat of the desert. My Hiking Buddy
(HB) and I have a general rule of thumb that our hikes need to be at least as
many miles as total hours of driving. So,
if we have a 6-hour round trip drive, the hike must be at least 6 miles. Luckily HB wasn’t with me on the Colorado
hike, otherwise we would have needed to hike 30 miles…. The month in books
included novels from 1890, 1920, and 1982, plus a nonfiction book from this
decade which takes a fascinating look at the history of humankind. Enjoy.
Song of the Month: In the spirit of Colorado I’ve chosen Rocky
Mountain High by John Denver (and Mike Taylor) as song of the month. Denver and Taylor wrote it in 1972 and it’s
one of Colorado’s official state songs. I
went through various phases of loving this song. I was 14 years old when it came out and naturally,
I focused on the “friends around the campfire and everybody’s high” portion of
the song to justify my questionable life choices at the time. When I
was 20 and working in Boulder and hiking and camping in the Colorado Rockies,
my favorite line was “you know he’d be a poorer man if he never saw an eagle
fly.” Now, as I’ve aged and reflected on
life, the line that strikes me most is “he was born in the summer of his 27th year, coming home to a place he’d never been before.” I guess maybe I’m channeling a bit of myself
into my son there. The song was banned
by some radio stations in the mid-70s due to the reference of “everybody’s high”,
until John Denver clarified that he meant a highness on life of being in the
mountains (he even testified before congress in 1985 to this effect during our very
unsuccessful “war on drugs” campaign). One
of my favorite references to this song was in the movie Dumb and Dumber, when Jim
Carrey and Jeff Daniels thought they were driving in Colorado but took a wrong
turn into Iowa and Kansas and looked around and said “Huh, I expected the Rocky
Mountains to be rockier than this…that John Denver is full of sh!t man!” An interesting bit of serendipity here is
that John Denver’s “Annie’s Song” was the song my wife and I chose for our
first dance at our wedding. Last year
our son and daughter-in-law surprised us when they chose the same song (but
sung by Brett Dennen) as the first dance at their wedding (tears were shed…).
For this month’s first hike, HB and I headed up to Flagstaff. We decided to do part of the Arizona Trail between Sandy Seep and Horse Camp which is just north of Mt. Elden. Mt. Elden was named after John Elden who was one of the original settlers of Flagstaff. Unfortunately, his young son was killed by a mule herder who was angry at the family for not letting his mules water at their ranch. The family left Flagstaff shortly after this tragedy. We arrived on the Friday after July 4th so when we passed the Mt. Elden trailhead it was like Grand Central station there with cars overflowing the parking lot. But a mile further north at the Sandy Seep trailhead there were 3 cars total! It was a beautiful day with temps in the upper 70s, clear skies and a nice breeze. We hiked a total of around 4.5 miles on the AZ trail, so there’s another 0.5% done! This was just a nice walk in the woods with some good views east towards the Painted Desert and north towards Grand Canyon. Several pine trees, fir trees and gamble oak can be seen with beautiful meadows which provide good wintering grounds for mule deer. Near Horse Camp we were able to just see a peak of the San Francisco Peaks through all the trees. We only saw 3 other hikers and 4 mountain bikers during the 9 plus mile hike, which was surprising for July 4th weekend. There was a bit of elevation gain, but not so bad at around 1,000 feet in the 9 plus miles. For those that want a more strenuous workout, the Heart trail climbs 1300 feet from the Sandy Seep trail to the saddle between Mt. Elden and Little Mt. Elden. We chose not to do this workout on today’s hike. Maybe next time.
Post hike note: Unfortunately this area is currently closed due to the Museum fire which burned 2,000 acres just south of this trail starting on July 21st. The firefighters did a tremendous job on this fire which could have been a disaster being so close to Flagstaff. It's very sad to lose this beautiful area.
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| This tree rocks |
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| Expansive views to the East |
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| Probably a Boy Scout badge project |
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| Looking south towards Mt. Elden - much of the area to the right of Elden has burned in the Museum Fire |
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| Nice meadows all along the trail |
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| Good trail signage |
The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde was the
Irish author’s only novel. He was best
known as a poet and playwright, although most people today likely know him from
his numerous insightful quotes. The book
was initially published in 1890 as a serial story in a British monthly magazine
and was deemed indecent and immoral by much of British society. The magazine editors removed several of the
author’s words (without his permission) prior to publishing. The novel was published a year later after
Wilde himself did some editing in order to enable its printing. When Wilde was on trial for sodomy in the mid
1890’s there were some references to this novel presented by the
prosecution. He was eventually sentenced
to 2 years in prison. After prison, he
led 3 years of destitute life in France and died in Paris in 1900 of
meningitis. He’s buried in Père
Lachaise Cemetery in Paris. The book
itself was surprising and very entertaining.
In short, it’s about a young man, Dorian Gray whose portrait was being
done by an artist. The portrait turned
out to be the artist’s greatest work so Dorian Gray was his muse in a
sense. The artist introduced Gray to his
friend Lord Henry Wotten who was a brilliant philosophical hedonist and taught
Gray that beauty and sensual fulfillment were the only things in life worth pursuing. In a gothic twist, Gray wished that he would
forever stay young and that the portrait would age as he normally would
have. And so, this happened as a sort of
Faustian bargain with the devil. The
next 18 years portrayed Gray’s decline into self-indulgence, debauchery, drug
use, and eventually murder. His face and
body remained young and the portrait slowly aged into a hideous thing which was
intended to show the decline of his soul.
There were so many great lines in this book. I found myself writing down many of
them. Here are a few:
“Like all people who try to exhaust a subject, he exhausted
his listeners.”
“Nowadays people know the price of everything, and the value
of nothing.”
“He gives me good advice.
People are fond of giving away what they need most themselves. It is what I call the depth of generosity.”
“There are only two kinds of people who are really
fascinating, people who know absolutely everything, and people who know
absolutely nothing.”
“Women are better suited to bear sorrow than men. They live in their emotions.”
“I like men who have a future and women who have a past.”
“Each man lived his
own life and paid his own price for living it.
The only pity was one had to pay so often for a single fault.”
“We women love with our ears, just as you men love with your
eyes, if you ever love at all.”
“In the common world of fact, the wicked were not punished,
nor the good rewarded. Success was given
to the strong, failure thrust upon the weak.
That was all.”
Oscar Wilde was a genius.
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| Estes Park is the main eastern gateway to Rocky Mountain National Park |
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| Sprague Lake with glaciers above |
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| Bear Lake in a drizzle |
I read The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton this
month. It won the Pulitzer Prize for
literature in 1921, making Wharton the first female winner of that illustrious
prize. Wharton was born into wealth in
1862 to George Frederic Jones and Lucretia Stevens Rhinelander. It has been said that the phrase “keeping up
with the Joneses” referred to her father’s family. She was also related to one of the original
Dutch families which were awarded land grants in New York and New Jersey. By the age of nine she was fluent in French,
German, and Italian from the family’s many trips to Europe. She was a bit of a rebel in that she
disagreed with the “old society” norms of behavior for women, carving a path of
her own. She and her husband, Teddy
Wharton, bought the famous Land’s End home in Newport, Rhode Island which I was
lucky enough to see on a visit there last August. She
divorced her husband in 1913 after 28 years of an evidently rocky marriage due
to his (and her) bouts of severe depression; then moved to Paris where she
became a strong supporter of the French war effort, opening up workshops for
unemployed women, helping Belgian refugees, and then traveling to the front
lines to report on the status of the war.
She was eventually awarded the highest medal of honor for French
citizens, the Legion of Honor. So, she
lived quite the life and it’s all reflected in this book which I thoroughly
enjoyed reading and found difficult to put down. The story revolves mainly around Newland
Archer, a young New York society man, May Wellend, his innocent bride to be,
and Countess Ellen Olenska, May’s scandalized cousin with whom Archer eventually
falls in love. Much of the story surrounds
the struggle between the old buttoned up New York society and the new ideas of
free expression and openness. And of
course, on the surface of this struggle is also the struggle of whether to seek
true love or to stay in a sanctioned loveless marriage for the sake of society
and the family. The tension in the story
telling is great and the last chapter, which is set 30 years later may be one
of the most perfect endings in literature.
I’ve not seen the 1993 Scorsese movie adaptation with Daniel Day Lewis,
but I’d like to now.
It was 115 degrees on July 16th, so the next day
HB and I decided to escape the heat and hike the beautiful Inner Basin north of Flagstaff. It’s one of the most
beautiful places in Arizona. A large,
grassy meadow inside an ancient volcano with the 4 highest peaks in Arizona
looming above and around you. Even in
mid-July there were patches of snow still on the peaks. The hike starts at 8,500 feet in Lockett
Meadow which is at the end of a drive on Forest roads 545 and 552 for around 5 miles. The road is mostly pretty good, with a couple
of places you need to slow down due to ruts or rocks. Follow the signs to the Inner Basin
trailhead and park. The first ¾ mile is
through a nice forest of tall pine trees, but the next mile is like walking
through a medieval forest with one of the most spectacular groves of White
Aspen trees you will ever see. This hike
is beautiful in the fall when the leaves are changing. Next you hit a maintenance road reserved for
vehicles that service the waterline from the Inner Basin which provides water
to the city of Flagstaff. You walk this
road for another mile up to the Inner Basin which, at 9,800 feet is certainly a
top 10 spot in Arizona for natural beauty.
We’re lucky to be able to visit in the middle of the week because this
place is a bit of a zoo on weekends, so get here early if you can only come on
a Saturday or Sunday. We stopped at the
“bus stop” for lunch, which is a tiny shelter from the elements that can hold 2
or 3 people at most, next to the water pumping station built in the 60s (by the
way, don’t believe the trailhead signs that say Inner Basin 2 miles…. it’s
closer to 3 miles to the middle of the Inner Basin from the trailhead). Next we headed up another mile and another
thousand feet to a secluded spot on the scrambly side of an unnamed hill where
HB used to bring his dogs hiking years ago. Great views to the east from up
here. The walk back down 2,200 feet of
elevation was much easier than the hike up.
We got back in time to meet my daughter in Flagstaff for a 2nd and well-deserved lunch at Wildflower Bread, a more civilized spot than the
tiny “bus stop” in the beautiful Inner Basin.
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| Aspen grove - even more spectacular in the fall |
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| Trail through the aspen grove |
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| Info on the water line |
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| San Francisco Peaks from the Inner Basin |
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| View from another 1,000 feet up from the Inner Basin |
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| Pumphouse at the Inner Basin |
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| View towards the peaks from the pumphouse |
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| This is the view towards the peaks from Lockett Meadow |
In Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari the author asks, “So,
why study history? Unlike physics or
economics, history is not a means for making accurate predictions. We study history not to know the future, but
to widen our horizons, to understand that our present situation is neither
natural, nor inevitable, and that we consequently have many more possibilities
before us that we imagine.” This book has been getting some very positive high-profile
reviews (Bill Gates, Barack Obama, Sebastian Junger, Jared Diamond…) and for
good reason. Also, both my kids have read
it and said that I should, so that was the tipping point. I normally will write down a few small notes about
books I read, but I ended up writing 9 pages of notes while I read this 400-page
book. I could spend this entire blog
providing great statistics and quotes from the book, like this one:
“The single most remarkable and defining moment of the past
500 years…. the first atomic bomb near Alamogordo, NM. From that point onward, humankind had the
capability not only to change the course of history, but to end it.”
… or this one:
“Most nations agree that they are a natural and eternal
entity, created in some primordial epoch by mixing the soil of the motherland
with the blood of the people…. but…most existing nations evolved only after the
Industrial Revolution.”
The book studies Homo Sapiens in 4 distinct sections. It begins with our first emergence 200,000
years ago where we coexisted with several other Homo species for 130,000
years. Then 70,000 years ago, what he
calls the Cognitive Revolution occurred.
Something happened in the brains of Homo Sapiens (a genetic mutation
perhaps? Nobody is sure) that suddenly allowed them (us) to develop language of
imagination and organize socially in groups of more than 50-100 people. This doomed the other Homo species and a very
large percentage of large mammals within the next 50,000 years. The next big event occurred around 12,000
years ago with the advent of the Agricultural Revolution which he details in
the 2nd section of the book.
Sapiens evolved from foragers to farmers. This was good and bad: Good in that it allowed more assurance of
food and eventually greater populations; bad in that the individual person
ended up working longer hours for a more limited variety of food (wheat, rice,
or corn). The 3rd section
discusses the unification of humankind via Empires, Religions, and Money. These 3 human inventions allowed several
thousand to millions of people to be unified under one idea or goal. And the 4th section details the
Scientific Revolution which began in the 16th century and was
sparked by humans admitting that we were ignorant about the world around us and
we should know more about it. So,
Galileo, Copernicus, Darwin, Newton, etc. sought to gain more knowledge by trying
to address our collective ignorance of the world around us. And of course, the
Scientific Revolution led to the Industrial Revolution which the author states was
a revolution in energy conversion (converting steam to the energy of electricity
and locomotion for example). He ends the
book with philosophical discussions about happiness, the meaning of life, and
humans’ new ability to change our DNA and invent artificial intelligence (a new
post Homo Sapiens species?). This was a
wonderful book about history, science, and philosophy. It gives you tools to think about the world
around you in ways that may be different from what you grew up reading
about. The author is an Israeli history
professor with a PhD in History from Oxford.
Look him up, he’s got some interesting ideas and he’s really smart and
thoughtful. He spends up to 60 days each
year completely disconnected from cell phones, computers, televisions etc. and takes
the time to “know thyself” as Socrates and Plato would encourage us all to
do.
2019 is the 100th anniversary of Grand Canyon
National Park. Since it’s one of my
favorite places on earth I wanted to visit this year and perhaps score some
sweet centennial swag at the gift shop.
Last year, HB and I hiked the South Rim trail from Hermit’s Rest to
Bright Angel trailhead. It was a surprisingly
great walk, mostly devoid of tourists who tend to congregate at viewpoints very
close to shuttle stops. This year we
decided to continue the Grand Canyon’s South Rim trail from Bright Angel trailhead
to the South Kaibab trailhead and then down into the canyon to Cedar Ridge. The busy Bright Angel lodge area was bustling
with tourists from around the world as we hit the gift shop. I found a nice long-sleeved centennial shirt
and water bottle (I’ve been gathering long sleeve shirts in anticipation of
spending more time in Colorado for some reason…). We stashed our centennial swag in the car and
headed east on the Rim trail for 5 beautiful miles to the South Kaibab trailhead. This entire portion of the trail is paved and
easy to follow. There are several opportunities
to detour to other interesting sites, but we stuck to the awesome views of the
Canyon, including Yavapai Point where you get a great view of the Black Suspension
Bridge at the bottom of the South Kaibab trail which was built in the 1920s
(the 550 foot, one ton cables were carried by Havasupai men walking single file
down the 7 mile trail). You can tell
when you’re nearing a shuttle stop as there are dozens of tourists on their own
personal 150-foot hike for an Instagram pose.
The space in between shuttle stops were nice and peaceful with a few European
tourists walking and one or two American families riding bikes. At the South Kaibab trailhead we sat on the
edge of the canyon and ate our lunch with a view. At this point it was in the low 80s with full
sun and fairly high humidity. Hikers were
miserable climbing up out of the canyon in that heat. But this is not our first rodeo and we
checked the skies and knew that by the time we hiked down to Cedar Ridge (1.5
miles below the rim), the clouds and rain would appear for a nice, cool walk
back out. And our forecast was spot on. On the hike down we watched the poor
roasting hikers struggle with the heat – they only had to look up to know that
if they’d waited an hour, their hike would have been much more pleasant. We hung around Cedar Ridge for a bit, taking
photos and protecting our daypacks from marauding bands of determined squirrels. The clouds came, then the rain, thunder and lightning. We walked back up the 1.5 miles and 1,000
feet in cool weather and got some nice canyon rain shots on the way out. Hopped on the shuttle back to Bright Angel
lodge and our car and changed out of our wet clothes. We then headed to Mama Burger
in Flagstaff where we checked on the status of the Museum Fire which threatened
the city. We saw truckloads of firefighters
from Payson, Fort Apache, Silver City, Black Mesa, and Flagstaff. It appeared at this time that the fire was well
under control and the city was safe.
Thankfully. They did a great job
getting resources to this one quickly. Headed back down the hill to the desert after
a long and very satisfying day in one of the great wonders of the world which
is right in our backyard!
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| Views from the South Rim trail |
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| South Kaibab trail views |
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| Cedar Ridge has plenty of dead tree shots with a spectacular background |
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| ...well some half dead trees too |
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| Trail art, dead tree, and the canyon...perfect |
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| Canyon Rain |
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| This feels like home |
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| Artsy black and white canyon rain shot |
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| Back up on the South Rim trail |
In previous blogs I’ve written about two other terrific novels
by Anne Tyler; The Accidental Tourist and Breathing Lessons. This month I read Dinner at the Homesick
Restaurant by Anne Tyler. It was a
finalist for several awards in 1983, including the Pulitzer, National Book award,
and the PEN/Faulkner award. The author
considers this to be her finest work even if it was not her most popular. Anne Tyler somehow can write about family life in a way like no other author I’ve
read. Her characters are revealed in the
most creative ways and by the end of the book it’s as though you’ve known these
people all your life. This book follows
Pearl Tull and her 3 children as they try to live the best lives they can after abandonment by their husband/father.
The story spans 50 years or more and eventually seems to reveal that this
family (like all families) is not just one family; it is a strange mix of each
members’ memory of what the family was and what it’s become. Pearl
was far from a perfect mother, but for every horrific thing she says or does to
her kids to place them in utter despair, there is a spectacular moment of grace
and tenderness that can pull them out. Describing
to people the plot of an Anne Tyler book is fruitless and likely comes off
sounding boring or one dimensional. It’s
her writing that distinguishes her. And
her incredible feeling for the harrowing inner lives of normal families. I wrote down some of her most devastating lines
which capture her brilliance:
“She remembered from when her husband left – a wound, she’d
been, a deep, hollow hole, surrounded by shreds of her former self.”
“You’re old for so much longer than you’re young, she
thinks.”
“He was ruled by a dreamy mood of acceptance that was partly
the source of all his happiness and partly his undoing.”
“She may have shrunk and aged but her true, interior self
was still enormous, larger than life, powerful.
Overwhelming.”
“He paid her complements that made her uncomfortable till
she could get off alone in her room and savor them.”
..and one that I’ve seen quoted in other articles:
“She remembered the feel of wind on summer nights – how it
billows through the house and wafts the curtains and smells of tar and
roses. How a sleeping baby weighs you
down so heavily on your shoulder, like ripe fruit. What privacy it is to walk in the rain
beneath the drip and crackle of your own umbrella.”
Do your reading self a favor and pick up an Anne Tyler book. You won't be disappointed.
That's it for this month. Happy reading and rambling.