July 2020
Books read:
- Life After Life by Kate Atkinson
- A Room with a View by E.M. Forster
- Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk by Ben Fountain
- Dept. of Speculation by Jenny Offill
Trails walked:
- Glacier Gorge trail in Rocky Mountain National Park near Estes Park, CO (July 7th)
- Devil’s Thumb trail near Nederland, CO (July 9th)
- Mitchell Lake trail near Ward, CO (July 9th)
- Abineau/Bear Jaw loop near Flagstaff (July 16th)
- Arizona Trail Passage 34c near Flagstaff (July 29th)
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Song of the month:
- Thunder Road by Bruce Springsteen (with Melissa Etheridge) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQpyxh3xpv8
July in Phoenix begins the 10
weeks or so of just miserable weather in the desert. No respite from the heat unless you get
caught in a monsoon rain, which then turns the valley into a sauna that nobody
wants to sit in. Luckily, on July 1st we found ourselves driving to cool Colorado to visit our grandson, our first
visit to see him since the covid lockdown began.
We had to rent a minivan to cart my wife, her mom, our dog, our
daughter’s dog, and myself the 1,000 miles between Phoenix and Denver. We stayed in Colorado for a couple of weeks
and then stopped by in Flagstaff for a week to visit with our daughter who was
coming off a Grand Canyon river trip. Visiting our grandson was
joyful, and it was a healing two weeks for my mother-in-law who had recently
lost her husband of 65 years. We mainly
played with him and fed him and put him to sleep the entire time, but I was
able to get out a few times for beautiful walks with my son and
daughter-in-law.
While in Flagstaff I drove my
mother-in-law to the Grand Canyon for an afternoon. She couldn’t remember if she’d ever been
there and just stared in wonder at the beauty of the place as we gazed into the abyss
while enjoying the California condors gliding down below us. I’ve been to the canyon many times, but this
is the least crowded I’ve ever seen the place.
Middle of the summer and parking was available anywhere you wanted. Hardly anybody wandering around the rim near
the hotels. AND, AND, there was
absolutely no wait for a Grand Canyon Crunch ice cream at the Soda Fountain where
there would normally be a line wrapped around the building. So, this was certainly a bright spot in these
Corona-days (daze). I also managed a
couple of walks around the San Francisco peaks while in Flagstaff with my daughter along with her wonder dog and boyfriend.
Traveling by car in these times was a bit dystopian, especially when driving through the Navajo reservation in NE Arizona. The reservation has been hit hard with covid and that has decimated their already strained economy. Nearly all businesses were closed in Tuba City except for gas stations; and public restrooms were nowhere to be found...so plan accordingly and hold off on that 32 ounce coffee. Kayenta seemed in slightly better shape. But even beyond the serious problems on the reservation, rest areas were filled with travelers eyeing one another with trepidation and some fear as we tried to avoid touching anything or getting close to anyone. The good news is that nearly everyone was wearing masks. Colorado's rest areas were more numerous and better equipped than any we saw in Arizona or Utah which means there were fewer people at each of them. I realize that by driving, we were adding to this problem, but some things (like seeing your grandson before he starts crawling and talking and going to school and graduating...) are important enough to justify risky behavior....in my opinion....ok it's just an excuse...I'm human...we're flawed...we make hypocritical decisions in the name of nothing. So there.
This month I read some great fiction, including a novel about multiple chances to live one's life, a critique of English society in the early 20th century, a social commentary on America and war, and a brilliant portrayal of marriage and family in good times and bad. I also managed 3 nice walks in beautiful Colorado and 2 more hikes in the San Francisco Peaks near Flagstaff.
Song of
the month – Thunder Road by Bruce Springsteen: My wife and I were talking about
how emotionally down we were recently for so many reasons and like so many people are
today. It is just so depressing with the
virus, the economy, the vitriol of our new American politics. We felt that our road trip to Colorado and
Flagstaff this month was like an escape from our everyday lives, and as soon as we
got home we started planning our next escape.
Bruce Springsteen is the master of writing about the everyday American
and their dreams of escape. The entire classic
Born to Run album was about that. And even his very latest songs capture this feeling. I was hard pressed to find one specific song
from Springsteen that would evoke the feelings of many Americans (and Earthlings)
in these times. So many would be
appropriate: Land of Hope and Dreams,
Promised Land, This American Land, Badlands, Rocky Ground, The River, Darkness
on the Edge of Town….But Thunder Road is what I finally ended up with. First of all, it’s one of the finest songs
ever written (at least according to the Springsteen groupie that I married). Then there are the many different versions of it from rock and
roll to slow acoustic, all of them great. And the lyrics, oh my god, the lyrics (a few of them below). Then there’s what Bruce himself said about it: “The songs were written immediately after the Vietnam War, and you
forget everybody felt like that then,” Springsteen says. “There’s quite a
sense of dread and uncertainty about the future and who you were, where you
were going, where the whole country was going, so that found its way into the
record.” He could have said those same
words today. I
found a version of it sung by him and Melissa Ethridge, who is basically the
female Bruce. It’s a fine rendition. Enjoy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQpyxh3xpv8Selected lyrics from Thunder Road:
The screen door slams/Mary's dress waves
Like a vision she dances across the porch/As the radio plays
So you're scared and you're thinking/That maybe we ain't that young anymore
Show a little faith there's magic in the night/You ain't a beauty but hey you're alright
Oh and that's alright with me
Hey what else can we do now/Except roll down the window/And let the wind blow back your hair?
They scream your name at night in the street/Your graduation gown lies in rags at their feet
So Mary climb in/It's a town full of losers/I'm pulling out of here to win
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| Alberta Falls on the way to Mills Lake |
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| Dad and Son |
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| Daughter in law in her cool new shades |
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| Just like the Coors commercial |
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| Mills Lake; not your run of the mill lake... |
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| Trail art |
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| Son fishing |
Life
After Life by Kate Atkinson: I
really enjoyed reading this creative novel, written in 2013 by Kate
Atkinson. It’s long, at over 500 pages,
but it was so clever and entertaining that it seemed too short in the end. The book was shortlisted for many awards and
was on the New York Times list of top 10 books of 2013. Some might compare it to the movie Groundhog
Day with Bill Murray, but I think it’s more like the entertaining Netflix show
Russian Doll (check it out if you’ve not seen it).
The book is set (and reset) between 1910 (when the main
character, Ursula Todd, was born) and 1967.
The author brilliantly portrays the impact of World War I, the Spanish
Flu, the horrors of World War II, and how life in England evolved from the
early 1900s Imperial Britain, to mid-century England, barely trying to stay
economically feasible.
Like Russian Doll, the main character dies over and over in
many different ways (at least 17 from my count), coming back in a new life with
a sort of “déjà vu” or half memory of what occurred in her previous life. In
this way, she slowly learns how to improve herself and to possibly improve the
world around her with this ethereal knowledge of past times. You get a glimmer of this early on when in
the first or second chapter, a 20-year-old Ursula assassinates Adolf Hitler in
1930.
In one life, Ursula works in London during the 1940s helping
to rescue people whose homes were bombed by the Germans (the bombing and rescue
scenes were so realistic that you felt right in the middle of the blitz). In another life, she leaves England to marry
a German and ends up living in Munich during the war where she meets a young
shop girl by the name of Eva Braun.
The entire Todd family is full of great stories of love,
tragedy, and everyday life. Her aunt
Izzie acts as sort of a transition character between old fashioned stuffy
England and modern England as she was too far ahead of her time to be accepted
in old fashioned England, but was indispensable to Ursula in helping her to become
the best person she could be. One quote
I liked about Izzie: “Izzie was now to be packed off to a finishing school in
Switzerland, even though it seemed she was already finished, in more ways than
one.”
Other lines I enjoyed:
Childbirth was a brutal affair. If she had been in charge of designing the
human race, she would have gone about things quite differently.
“Hindsight’s a wonderful thing,” Klara said. “If we all had
it there would be no history to write about.”
“Yes, that’s it. I
was looking for transcendence.” “I
imagine it finds you, rather than the other way round.”
Devil’s
Thumb trail near Nederland, CO: Another fun
day with my son and daughter-in-law
(along with our daughter’s wonder dog). We first headed toward the
Brainard Lake recreation area to hike to Mitchell Lake, but there was a
looonnnng line of cars to get in (on a Thursday!), so we headed down the 72
highway to Nederland to hike Devil’s Thumb trail and then possibly head back
later in the day to hike Mitchell Lake.
Devil’s Thumb is also very popular, and we had to park in one of the few
parallel parking spots remaining about a half mile from the trailhead. The trail is rocky and steadily uphill, but
the scenery is beautiful with meadows, wildflowers, creeks and waterfalls. We wanted to hike to Lost Lake, but we
couldn’t find it……not really; it was closed due to bear activity. If I come back to this area, I would try to
make it to Woodland Lake which sounds amazing according to a backpacker we
talked to who had spent 4 days up there fishing. We only hiked around 4 total miles here and
could have made it to either Jacob Lake or Woodland Lake but decided to see if
the line at Brainard Lakes had died down, so we headed back up the 72 towards
Ward…. |
| Middle Boulder Creek |
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| Site of an old abandoned mining town |
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| Wonder Dog enjoying the flowers |
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| Lots of trail options here |
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| Another Coors commercial |
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| Waterfalls here and there |
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| Wildflowers and clouds |
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| Four-wheeler saving a couple miles of walking - because he can |
Mitchell
Lake trail near Ward, CO: There were plenty of
parking spots now that it was 4pm. We
grabbed our fishing gear and walked the mile to Mitchell Lake. It’s a beautiful sub-alpine lake. We didn’t have as much luck fishing here but
were rewarded with the sight of a big bull moose around 15 yards from us on the
hike out. We took some photos and just
stared at this magnificent animal for a while.
I took advantage of the terrible fishing to hike another mile or so up
the trail towards Blue Lake which I hiked with my daughter last summer (see my August 2019 post); I
didn’t make it all the way due to time constraints but it’s a great hike. Another fantastic day in the Rocky Mountains. But one thing I’ve learned about this area
compared to Arizona is that many many more people venture into the outdoors
which creates full parking lots at popular trailheads even on weekdays (I
imagine weekends are a zoo). If you want
to get away from it all on weekdays, then you’ll either need to drive much
further or get a jeep and find a long bumpy dirt road.  |
| Wonder Dog playing in the snow |
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| Mitchell Creek? |
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| Fishing Mitchell Lake |
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| Big Bull Moose right off the trail |
A Room with a View by EM Forster: I reviewed Forster’s great novel A Passage to India in my October 2019 blog so wanted to read another of his. A Room with a View was adapted into a 1985 Merchant Ivory movie that was highly regarded and received an Academy Award nomination for best picture. Modern Library had this book on their top 100 English language books of the 20th century (that list also included Forster’s A Passage to India and Howard’s End).
Written in 1908 the novel explores the class rigidity of Edwardian English society compared to what modern society was becoming. At the time, in England, if someone were considered to be of a lower-class distinction, then it was scandalous to be seen associating with them. However, several artists and intellectuals of the day (including Forster) where trying to change this. The main character, Lucy Honeychurch, was caught between these factions as a young woman traveling in Italy with her older aunt/chaperone. The title of the book comes from a scene near the beginning where Lucy and her aunt were complaining that their room at their Florence pension had no view of the River Arno. A father and son (the Emersons) overheard their complaints and offered their rooms to swap. The Emersons were of a lower class in society (yet somehow managed the rooms with a view…) and it would be improper to be under an “unseemly obligation” to accept. However, a parish priest who was visiting from England vouched for the Emersons and the rooms were swapped. Scandal erupts between the younger Emerson and Lucy (tame for our modern times, but a big deal back then) which provokes the aunt to cart Lucy off to Rome and then back to England to avoid further scandal.
The second part of the novel is set back in England where Lucy is engaged to be married to an “acceptable” man of class, but she then encounters the Emersons again. Lots of entertaining family drama ensues. You can see Forster’s writing improve between this novel, written in 1908, and A Passage to India, written in 1924. I looked forward each day to reading the latter novel, and although A Room with a View was pretty good, it wasn’t nearly as satisfying to read.
Abineau/Bear
Jaw loop near Flagstaff: After our Colorado trip we
transitioned back to Arizona by stopping in Flagstaff to avoid facing triple
digit temperatures for another week.
Also, our daughter was coming off a Grand Canyon river trip and we got
to spend a whole week with her and her new boyfriend. I hiked with them and their dogs along the
northern slope of the San Francisco peaks on a beautiful Thursday morning. We saw very few hikers on this trail. The Abineau trail starts out with a moderate
climb and then gets really steep for the last mile. I was huffing and puffing trying to keep up
with the youngsters and their dogs. We
ran into a couple of hikers that were summiting Humphrey’s peak from the back
side. I hadn’t realized there was an
approach from here and will have to explore that possibility for a possible later
hike. After three miles of climbing we
reached the Waterline road with great views north, including the Grand Canyon
way off in the distance. Then it was
down the Waterline road for a couple of miles to the Bear Jaw trail and down three more miles back to the car. This would be a
beautiful fall hike with all the aspens.
We saw LOTS of downed trees on this hike indicating strong winds in the
winter and spring. Nearly 2,000 feet of
elevation gain makes this a good workout hike. |
| Into the aspens |
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| Nearing the Peaks |
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| Great views toward Grand Canyon |
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| Daughter and boyfriend |
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| Right is the Inner Basin, left is Bear Jaw and our car |
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| Heading down Bear Jaw |
Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk by Ben Fountain: I have read over and over again that this was a great book. First from Nick Hornby in his great Ten Years in the Tub. His comment was that he had just read a modern classic and nobody even knew about it. Well, that was an exaggeration, because it received highly positive reviews from critics and won several awards, including the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction and the Flaherty-Dunnan First Novel Prize. It was also a finalist for the 2012 National Book Award. But I kept thinking about the movie which I didn’t see but I remember had terrible reviews. Now I know why. It would be impossible to make this book into a movie; 90% of the dialogue is in the main character’s head, so how do you put that on video? Well I guess Ang Lee tried but failed spectacularly. But I loved this book and the brilliant way the author writes. It’s a satire on war and the way many Americans glorify it while they are far from the danger, watching football games in expensive stadiums. It’s told from the perspective of 19-year-old Billy Lynn who is on a two-week publicity tour of the states after his Bravo company won a key firefight in the Iraq war that happened to be televised by news cameramen. Most of the story takes place on Thanksgiving Day where he and his fellow soldiers are guests of the Dallas Cowboys during a game where they are to participate in the halftime show (along with Beyonce and Destiny’s Child). You can’t get more Americana than a Thanksgiving Day football game at the Dallas Cowboy’s stadium. Some have compared this book to Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 and it’s a decent comparison, but I think this book has more soul and more social commentary relevant to today’s world.
Billy is from a small town 90 minutes outside of Dallas, so he is even more celebrated than the others since he’s a Texan (like Audie Murphy!). But he’s from a poor family, like 99% of troops we send into battle these days and he doesn’t feel at home being wined and dined by rich NFL executives. He and his fellow soldiers have this unbreakable bond that is fascinating to watch as they go through the motions of all the “hail-America’s-heroes” schtick going on all around them.
There are other interesting story lines going on in parallel that are equally fascinating; one about a Hollywood producer trying to get a movie of their firefight produced, one about a Dallas cheerleader that Billy forms a connection with, and one about Billy’s past drama with his family and how he ended up in Iraq in the first place. Billy is an old soul with a philosopher’s set of questions, but without the education or knowledge to fully understand the questions, let along their answers.
I enjoyed everything about this book. Give it a read, it won’t disappoint. Here are some great lines from the book:
Somewhere along the way America became a giant mall with a country attached.
Intense women, these two, competitive, willful, dressed all in black, their faces set with the pinched look of angry vegans.
About Billy’s troop: Okay, so maybe they aren’t the greatest generation by anyone’s standard, but they are surely the best of the bottom third percentile of their own somewhat muddled and suspect generation.
About Dallas society ladies: It’s a major tragedy in their lives if their Asian manicurist takes the day off.
About the Dallas Cowboy fans: …well-fed Anglo is the dominant demographic.
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| Great views through the aspens |
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| Curving trail and hills |
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| Nice views of the Peaks |
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| ...and of the valley to the north and west |
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| Which dandelion seed shot is better, this one? or... |
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| ...this one? |
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| entering another aspen grove |
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| Lots of mountain wildflowers blooming |
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| Wildflowers, ferns, aspens |
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| Fern gully.... |
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| I took a detour to Bismark "Lake" - There is no lake, just an indent |
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| Purple mountains, waves of grain??? |
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| This monster's legs are all that's left |
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| Utah is much closer than Mexico from here.... |
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| That dark blob is a bear...I wasn't getting any closer... |
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| Beautiful valley below |
Dept. of
Speculation by Jenny Offill: Dept.
of Speculation, was published in January 2014 and was named one of the 10 Best
Books of 2014 by the New York Times Book Review. It was shortlisted for the
Folio Prize in the UK, the Pen/Faulkner Award and the L.A. Times Fiction Award. I didn’t abbreviate the title (Dept.), that’s
the way it is written; I suppose as a reflection of the abbreviated way in
which this story is told. I’ve never
read a book like this before and I found it to be a creative way to write a
novel and a mind-bending way to read one.
It’s the story of love, marriage, parenthood, and family which starts
out happily, but then, like many, deteriorate for so many reasons. The story is told, not in the normal way,
with a plot and characters and dialogue and flashbacks. Instead it’s told in a series of seemingly
disparate sentences, paragraphs, and famous (and not so famous) quotes. At first you wonder what the heck is going
on, but the writing, and the quotes are so memorable that you keep reading
anyway. And before you know it, all
these various sections of prose end up telling a story; a very heartbreaking
and familiar one. A New York Times
review stated, “Speculation moves quickly, but it is also joyously demanding
because you will want to keep trying to understand the why of each fragment and
how it fits with the others.” Afterwards I read that the author wrote her thoughts
on index cards and eventually organized the cards in such a way that they would
tell a story. There are no names in this
story; there is the wife, the husband, the child, the philosopher friend, the
ex-boyfriend, the girl, etc. And
interestingly, the wife (from whose point of view the story is told) refers to
herself in the first person during the beginning (when she’s happy) and the end of
the book (when she finally understands and is reconciling), but refers to
herself in the third person during the middle sections when her life was hardest
and most confusing and she was most disconnected with herself.
The descriptions of motherhood are profound, as stated by
the same NYT reviewer: “Dept. of
Speculation is especially engaging when it describes new motherhood — the
stunned joy and loneliness and fatigue of it, the new orientation of the
narrator’s world around an impossibly small but demanding creature.”
Here are some of the MANY great lines and quotes:
That night on TV, I saw the tattoo I wished my life had
warranted: “If you have not known suffering, love me.” A Russian murderer beat me to it.
Our ears evolved to be our warning systems. We are on high alert in places where no birds
sing. To live in a city is to be forever
flinching.
The Buddhists say there are 121 states of
consciousness. Of these, only three
involve misery or suffering. Most of us
spend our time moving back and forth between these three.
I never liked to hear the doorbell ring. None of the people I liked turned up that way.
Three
questions from my daughter:
Why is there
salt in the sea?
Will you die
before me?
How many
dogs did George Washington have?
Don’t know
Yes, please
36
There are 60 seconds in a minute, 60 minutes in an hour, 24
hours in a day, 7 days in a week, 52 weeks in a year, and X years in a
life. Solve for X.
Some women make it look so easy, the way they cast ambition
off like an expensive coat that no longer fits.
Sometimes she just stands and looks out the window where the
people whose lives are intact enough not to have to take yoga live.
The husband doesn’t volunteer this. Like every detail it is eked out of him in
the Little Theater of Hurt Feelings.
She has wanted to sleep with other people, of course. One or two in particular. But the truth is she has good impulse
control. That is why she isn’t
dead. Also why she became a writer
instead of a heroin addict. She thinks before
she acts. Or more properly, she thinks instead
of acts. A character flaw, not a virtue.
Until next month, happy reading and rambling!