July 2021

Books read:

City of a Thousand Gates by Rebecca Sacks
The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion by Jonathan Haidt
Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe
The Writing Life by Annie Dillard

Trails walked:

Enchanted Mesa/Woods Quarry/Kohler Mesa near Boulder on July 8th
Sourdough/Little Raven/Left Hand reservoir near Ward on July 9th
Downtown Denver All Star Weekend ramble July 13th
Niwot Mountain and Ridge near Ward on July 15th
Chasm Lake in Rocky Mountain National Park on July 29th

Song(s) of the month – Chris Smither

Leave the Light On
No Love Today
What They Say
Love Me Like a Man (Bonnie Raitt cover)

Scientist Spotlight – Dr. Patricia Era Bath (1942–2019)

July Summary: For the first time in 16 months, the climate organization I volunteer for was able to hold in-person tabling events. Tabling is where people from an organization sit at a table with banners and posters, hoping to draw passers-by into engaging in a conversation about their cause. You’ve all seen them at farmer’s markets or festivals or grocery stores. You glance over at the table, hoping to not make eye contact so you don’t get invited into a conversation you’d rather avoid because you have other things to do that day. I used to do this and sometimes still do. But since I’ve been tabling, I try to make a point of at least saying hello to other “tablers” and sometimes engage in a conversation.

Tabling doesn’t come naturally to me. I have to get out of my comfort zone to do it. I don’t like surprises and need to think things through before coming to a conclusion. Some people don’t have a comfort zone and are able to do anything at any time. My wife is like that. I envy her for that trait. She even said she’d sit at the table with me even though she’s not studied climate change like I have. I could never do that.

Our first “customer” on our first day of tabling in 16 months was a fellow wearing a Trump hat and an American flag shirt. So, we hit the ground running! We actually had a productive back and forth dialog about climate change. Of course, he had his views which seemed to refute the science, but we listened respectfully (one of our group’s values). Eventually he brought up the fact that he was born in LA and the air there is cleaner now than it ever had been. I agreed with him and brought up the fact that the Nixon administration in the early 70s passed several laws and established the EPA, which addressed the pollution problem in our country, and those bipartisan efforts made a difference in air quality. I told him we need the same bipartisan effort to address climate change. He didn’t argue the point. I asked him to join our organization as we need more conservatives on board; and I suggested a couple of non-partisan websites where he could get more information on climate change. He said he’d look them up, shook my hand, thanked me for the conversation and moved on.

We need open and honest dialog to resolve today’s problems. I wrote in my May blog about the renewed violence between the Israelis and the Palestinians. I recently was made aware of a hip-hop video produced by an Israeli and a Palestinian artist where they each “rapped” their complaints against the other in vivid and brutally honest terms. When the emotion-filled tirade ended, the last words said are “We both have no other country, and this is where the change begins”; then they sit down together for a meal of hummus and pita bread. It’s brilliant. Check it out (with Arab, Hebrew, and English captions) here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuUxnfL9I_Y

This month I read a novel about the realities of life in Israel/Palestine, a moral psychology book on why good people are divided by politics and religion, an old time classic from the early 1700s, and an interesting book about writing. My rambling took me from the outskirts of Boulder to downtown Denver to the Indian Peaks Wilderness (twice!), and to a spectacular lake in Rocky Mountain National Park. Enjoy the Olympics! Is anybody watching? Probably yes, because football doesn’t start for another month….

Scientist Spotlight – Dr. Patricia Era Bath (1942–2019)

In 2018 I had laser cataract surgery. The procedure is incredible. It has prevented blindness in millions of people around the world. This month I had to have a laser procedure done to repair some residual clouding that sometimes occurs a couple of years post-surgery. So I researched the history of cataract surgery and “discovered” this amazing woman.

Why don’t more people know about Dr. Bath? One look at the photo gives the answer. She was a black woman in a white male dominated profession. Born in Harlem to an immigrant father from Trinidad and a mother descended from African slaves and Cherokee Native Americans, Dr. Bath was the first Black woman in the U.S. to hold a medical device patent; the first woman to chair an ophthalmology residency training program in the U.S.; she co-founded the American Institute for the Prevention of Blindness; and she invented the use of laser surgery for cataract removal. Scientists hail Dr. Bath’s impact on eye surgery as one of her greatest achievements. Her invention of the Laserphaco probe and development of a new technique revolutionized cataract removal surgery.

In high school she won a National Science Foundation Scholarship, then later received a chemistry degree from Hunter College in New York, studied medicine at Howard University, received a fellowship to do research in Yugoslavia focusing on pediatric surgery, and received her medial degree in 1968, the same year Martin Luther King was assassinated. His death inspired her to use her skills to help empower underserved communities. Her work on technical patents and processes were incredible enough, but perhaps her community activism was even more impactful. She told this story to Medical News Today: “As a young intern shuttling between Harlem Hospital and Columbia University, I was quick to observe the differences in care based on location. It seemed that at the Eye Clinic at Harlem Hospital, half the patients were blind or visually impaired. In contrast, at the Eye Clinic at Columbia, there were very few obviously blind patients.” She wrote a paper about what she called Community Ophthalmology which promoted health education among poor communities and championing the fact that eyesight is a basic human right. Her efforts in providing direct care for communities, as well as implementing technology to increase access in remote areas, “saved the sight of thousands.”

Song(s) of the month – Chris Smither was born in 1944 in Miami, and I imagine most people have never heard of him or his music. His parents raised him in New Orleans where he was exposed to the music of Lightin’ John Hopkins and Mississippi John Hurt. His uncle taught him to play guitar and once told Smithers: “...if you know three chords, you can play a lot of the songs you hear on the radio. And if you know four chords, you can pretty much rule the world.” Smither knows a LOT of cords now and is one of the better acoustic guitar players you will ever hear. At a young age he lived in Paris and Mexico City and so was exposed to a lot of the world. He started studying anthropology in college, but the pull of his art was too strong, and he eventually dropped out and moved to Boston to make a living singing and writing songs. His first album was released in 1970 and eighteen albums later he’s still going strong. His songs have been covered by Diana Krall, Bonnie Raitt, and Emmylou Harris and he still tours the country, mainly in the Northeast.

I’ve included four of his songs here, two of them folk and two more bluesy. I love the songs for the way they just seem to roll along like a slow-moving train and his lyrics are as good as some of the best songwriters around. Here are a couple of lines from them along with links to YouTube videos of the songs:

Leave the Light On: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lAMWqlGwTbE

If I were young again, I'd pay attention
To that little-known dimension
A taste of endless time
It's just like water – it runs right through our fingers
But the flavor of it lingers - Like a rich, red wine

No Love Today: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mm4owjFJi2Y

I could not love to save myself
From lonesome desperation.
Everything I thought was love
Was worthless imitation.

What They Say: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGIcNATa3gw

If words were wisdom, we'd all speak
And smarten up from week to week
Just sayin' "live and learn". There's nothin' to it.
Friends in need are friends indeed
But the friends who think of what we need
They hardly talk at all. They just do it.

Love Me Like a Man (Bonnie Raitt cover): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXVoOgwiYc8

These men that I've been seeing, baby
Got their soul up on a shelf
You know they could never love me
When they can't even love themselves

City of a Thousand Gates by Rebecca Sacks – It took the author 6 years to write her debut novel as she was studying writing at Dartmouth and Cal Irvine and Jewish Studies in Israel. She’s a citizen of Canada, the US, and Israel and has a familiarity with the Hebrew and Arabic languages. She’s chosen to write about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in a fictional account that follows a couple dozen characters as they manage not only the normal difficulties of everyday life, but with the added tension of the conflict always in the air. Some of the characters include a young Jewish soldier, an unmarried 40-year-old Palestinian woman who is a professor at Bethlehem University, a Jewish-American young bride married to an Israeli soccer star, a Palestinian soccer star on the Israeli national team, a German journalist, a young Palestinian man trying to make enough money to fund his schooling by sneaking into Jerusalem from the West Bank to install air conditioners, and on and on.

The lives of all these characters intersect in interesting ways as the story progresses. The tension in the country is high as a 14-year-old Jewish settler girl was recently murdered by a Palestinian youth, followed by the severe beating and death of a 14-year-old Palestinian youth by young Jewish boys in retaliation. Everybody is on edge, the many checkpoints between the West Bank and the rest of Israel are filled with anxiety and hostility as the soldiers fear an attack while the Palestinians have to spend hours at checkpoints for a drive that should normally take minutes. The novel begins with a young Palestinian man being watched at a bus stop by young Jewish boys which makes him so nervous he gets on the wrong bus and ends up in Tel Aviv where he’s not allowed. The novel is filled with tense moments like this. But there are also moments of family togetherness, romantic love, and dreams of the future. It’s really a terrific read and should be turned into a great Netflix series under the right director.

I think she did a good job of portraying both sides, although I’m sure the extremists on each side would disagree.

Some lines from the book:

The way they said “Arab” made her think, she couldn’t help it, of the way her grandparents might have said “Jew.” Of all the wars waged here, the ones in language were the hardest to detect.

She came to cross checkpoints armed by teenage soldiers, baby-faced and lethal.

Mayan (the baby) is now moaning more than wailing, her useless little hands moving in agitation like a tiny, enraged prophet.

(she) does not turn around and scream at the people waiting behind her, her fellow countrymen tsking with impatience—more annoyed with her for holding up the line than at the Jews for training them to accept this ceaseless humiliation, day after day after day after day. What matters is that Samar holds on to herself, just a little longer.

Reserve units often work the checkpoints, sometimes deeper in. It takes a lot of manpower, “oppressing a civilian population.”

And anyway, there’s nowhere on earth you can’t be killed for being a Jew. Like being a woman, in that way.

Flickers of happiness lit and extinguished, again and again. Is that the story of a marriage?

On Friday, Christ will die. The son of God, a corpse. And it will be this body—the body nailed up and dying in public, the body carried limp and torn down from the cross, bloodied in its burial shroud—this is the body, behold, this is the body that will inflict millennia of believers with a madness to kill and die.

Rachel lives in a world of boundaries, all of them waiting to be crossed.

Jewish settler cars are zooming by on the highway but you are sitting there, you are waiting, and in the waiting you know, you feel that they control not just the roads and not just your body, but time itself.

They will always hate us. Who is “they”? Everyone. Everyone who is not a Jew. The man who did it was white. No matter. The Arabs, the Muslims, the Nazis. The goyim. Now you see why we came to Israel, why we need Israel.

Enchanted Mesa/Woods Quarry/Kohler Mesa – Recently my daughter and wife left for New York City to see Bruce Springsteen on Broadway….and perhaps do a bit of shopping. That left me with dog sitting duties. I am not a “dog person”, but our daughter’s dog is a wonder and is more human than dog. I took him on a walk on some of the Boulder off-leash trails (you need to pay for an annual tag to allow your dog off leash on these trails, but it’s worth it). There are 140 miles of off-leash trails in the area. Today we only walked about 4 or 5 of those miles. I started at the beautiful Chautauqua Park on Baseline Road in Boulder. From the Chautauqua website: “The Chautauqua Movement was America’s first truly national mass educational and cultural movement. It takes its name from the Chautauqua Institution on Lake Chautauqua in western New York, which started in 1874 as a summer school for Sunday school teachers. Within a few years, it had broadened its scope to include adult education of all kinds, as well as a correspondence course – the Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle – designed to bring “a college outlook” to working and middle-class people.”

It was a warm day, but most of these trails were shaded by huge trees. At the Woods Quarry site you get a tremendous view of the Boulder area east towards the plains. Wonder dog and I rested here on a rock chair that didn't rock and ate lunch. There were a few people out and about, some with dogs, some without. All were friendly and welcoming and gave me pointers on where to hike. After our walk, we wandered around Chautauqua Park and were treated to a symphony practicing in the concert hall. It was a beautiful end to a nice morning.

Wonder dog not noticing the view

Rock Chairs!

Views!

Rock chair views

Wonder dog

The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt – The subtitle of this book is compelling; Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion. The book was published in 2012, so well before things got much worse in the country’s political divide. Haidt is a social psychologist at New York University’s Stern School of Business. What I like about him is that he seems open about how experiences he’s had, people he’s met, and books he’s read have changed his views, sometimes 180 degrees from where he was before. He doesn’t get stuck on one theory just because he happened to support it at one time; he is constantly learning and he changes his views when he learns that they are wrong. However, changing one’s views, especially when they are associated with your tribe or ideology is not something many of us are able to do as the book goes on to show.

The book starts out with this quote from Spinoza: “I have striven not to laugh at human actions, not to weep at them, not to hate them, but to understand them.” And then the author adds his own quote: “This book is about why it’s so hard for us to get along. We are indeed all stuck here for a while, so let’s at least do what we can to understand why we are so easily divided into hostile groups, each one certain of its righteousness.” Haidt’s research has shown him that there are six basic moral foundations upon which we live our lives. They are listed here, along with a brief description from his website, moralfoundations.org:

1) Care/harm: This foundation is related to our long evolution as mammals with attachment systems and an ability to feel (and dislike) the pain of others. It underlies virtues of kindness, gentleness, and nurturance.

2) Fairness/cheating: This foundation is related to the evolutionary process of reciprocal altruism. It generates ideas of justice, rights, and autonomy. [Note: In our original conception, Fairness included concerns about equality, which are more strongly endorsed by political liberals. However, as we reformulated the theory in 2011 based on new data, we emphasize proportionality, which is endorsed by everyone, but is more strongly endorsed by conservatives]

3) Loyalty/betrayal: This foundation is related to our long history as tribal creatures able to form shifting coalitions. It underlies virtues of patriotism and self-sacrifice for the group. It is active anytime people feel that it’s “one for all, and all for one.”

4) Authority/subversion: This foundation was shaped by our long primate history of hierarchical social interactions. It underlies virtues of leadership and followership, including deference to legitimate authority and respect for traditions.

5) Sanctity/degradation: This foundation was shaped by the psychology of disgust and contamination. It underlies religious notions of striving to live in an elevated, less carnal, more noble way. It underlies the widespread idea that the body is a temple which can be desecrated by immoral activities and contaminants (an idea not unique to religious traditions).

6) Liberty/oppression: This foundation is about the feelings of reactance and resentment people feel toward those who dominate them and restrict their liberty. Its intuitions are often in tension with those of the authority foundation. The hatred of bullies and dominators motivates people to come together, in solidarity, to oppose or take down the oppressor.

His studies have found that progressives live their lives based mostly on the first two moral foundations above, whereas conservatives seem to give equal importance to all 6 foundations which actually gives conservatives more tools in their toolbelt than progressives when it comes to things like TV campaign ads. If we can better understand this idea of where each side’s convictions come from then perhaps it will lead us to more productive conversations. This is all well and good, however I don’t think that “everyone getting along” is in the best interests of today’s media and social media. Overall the book did a good job in explaining why we’re divided, but unfortunately there weren’t many answers on how to resolve this growing problem.

Here are some other interesting ideas in the book:

Morality binds and blinds. It binds us into ideological teams that fight each other as though the fate of the world depended on our side winning each battle. It blinds us to the fact that each team is composed of good people who have something important to say.

Enlightenment requires us all to take the logs out of our own eyes and then escape from our ceaseless, petty, and divisive moralism.

We make our first judgments rapidly, and we are dreadful at seeking out evidence that might disconfirm those initial judgments.

Empathy is an antidote to righteousness, although it’s very difficult to empathize across a moral divide.

We are terrible at seeking evidence that challenges our own beliefs, but other people do us this favor, just as we are quite good at finding errors in other people’s beliefs.

Our moral thinking is much more like a politician searching for votes than a scientist searching for truth.

…decades of research on public opinion have led to the conclusion that self-interest is a weak predictor of policy preferences. Rather, people care about their groups, whether those be racial, regional, religious, or political.

Like rats that cannot stop pressing a button, partisans may be simply unable to stop believing weird things. The partisan brain has been reinforced so many times for performing mental contortions that free it from unwanted beliefs. Extreme partisanship may be literally addictive.

…skilled arguers are not after the truth but after arguments supporting their views.

How hard could it be to teach students to look on the other side, to look for evidence against their favored view? Yet, in fact, it’s very hard, and nobody has yet found a way to do it.

Conscious reasoning functions like a press secretary who automatically justifies any position taken by the president.

When asked to write twenty statements beginning with the words “I am…,” Americans are likely to list their own internal psychological characteristics (happy, outgoing, interested in jazz), whereas East Asians are more likely to list their roles and relationships (a son, a husband, an employee of Fujitsu).

Everyone cares about fairness, but there are two major kinds. On the left, fairness often implies equality, but on the right, it means proportionality—people should be rewarded in proportion to what they contribute, even if that guarantees unequal outcomes.

Liberals score higher on measures of neophilia (also known as “openness to experience”), not just for new foods but also for new people, music, and ideas. Conservatives are higher on neophobia; they prefer to stick with what’s tried and true, and they care a lot more about guarding borders, boundaries, and traditions.

Liberal professors give out a narrower range of grades than do conservative professors.

…nature can trigger (awe) and shut down the self, making you feel that you are simply a part of a whole.

As one elder congressman recently put it, “This is not a collegial body anymore. It is more like gang behavior. Members walk into the chamber full of hatred.”

Here’s the most basic of all ideological questions: Preserve the present order, or change it? At the French Assembly of 1789, the delegates who favored preservations sat on the right side of the chamber, while those who favored change sat on the left. The terms right and left have stood for conservatism and liberalism ever since.

John Stuart Mill said that liberals and conservatives are like this: “A party of order or stability , and a party of progress or reform, are both necessary elements of a healthy state of political life.”

Before 1995 (and Newt Gingrich’s new rules for congress), members of congress from both parties attended many of the same social events on weekends; their spouses became friends; their children played on the same sports teams. But nowadays most congressional members fly to Washington on Monday night, huddle with their teammates and do battle for three days, and then fly home on Thursday night. Cross-party friendships are disappearing; …and scorched Earth politics are increasing.

Sourdough/Little Raven/Left Hand Reservoir – I took wonder dog out for a big hike on this Friday while my wife and daughter were still in New York. I had hiked the Sourdough trail last year from Rainbow Lake Road north up to Four Mile creek. This time I hiked from the Brainard Lake winter parking area south to Four Mile creek. This trail reminds me a lot of the Kachina trail near Flagstaff, Arizona, a nice walk in the woods. Before we returned to the trailhead, I decided to explore the Little Raven connector trail which takes you from Sourdough to the dirt road up to Left Hand reservoir. This portion of Little Raven is very steep and rocky, so when I reached the dirt road, I was glad to walk up the relatively smooth path the road provided. In less than a mile we reached Left Hand Reservoir which is beautiful, with panoramic views of the Indian Peaks. Plus, wonder dog got to swim! We charted 10.6 miles on this hike and my feet were pretty sore from the rocky trails. Back in the parking lot I talked with a guy from Spain who was living in Mexico City. We talked about Mexico City, and he was about to embark on a 3-day, 27-mile loop in the area. He asked if I thought lightening might be a problem. I answered, “Hey, it’s the mountains in the summer, so be prepared for anything.” He smiled and I wished him a great trip.

Four Mile Creek

Bridge at Four Mile Creek

Left Hand Reservoir Road

Left Hand Reservoir with views

Left Hand Reservoir

Nice mountain views

Taking a swim

Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe – I had never read this timeless classic and finally got around to it. Published in 1719 when Defoe was 59, it is seen by some as the first English novel, although Pilgrim’s Progress pre-dated it by several years. Per Wikipedia: ” By the end of the nineteenth century, no book in the history of Western literature had more editions, spin-offs, and translations (even into languages such as Inuktitut, Coptic, and Maltese) than Robinson Crusoe, with more than 700 such alternative versions, including children's versions with pictures and no text.”

There are many true tales of castaways and shipwrecks from the 14^th-19^th centuries and possibly one or some of them inspired Defoe to write his novel (there’s an island off the coast of Chile named Robinson Crusoe Island where Scotsman Alexander Selkirk was stranded for 4 years in the late 1600s). The castaway genre became popular quickly with several authors trying to get in on the action. Some became classics in themselves, like Swiss Family Robinson and Gulliver’s Travels. Even today, people are fascinated with the idea of someone being stranded on a desert island (Tom Hanks’ Castaway, Gilligan’s Island, Lost, Survivor, Alone, etc.). The best true adventure survivor story I’ve read is about castaways: Alfred Lansing’s Endurance: Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage (and it really is incredible).

Certainly, Robinson Crusoe would not be seen as politically correct in today’s world, because, well anything written before 1990 is probably no longer politically correct in today’s world. The title character’s attitude towards the native population of the surrounding areas was probably typically racist for nearly all white people of that time. But there are moments of awareness such as when he convinces himself that killing cannibals because they eat people probably isn’t justified just because they are culturally different from his beliefs (he kills some of them anyway…). And when he saves one of the natives (Friday), his assumption is that he would become his servant.

The writing is dated, but even so, I enjoyed the story. Even before Crusoe was cast away on the Island of Despair, he was already involved in another shipwreck, a kidnapping by pirates and subsequent escape. The story of his final shipwreck is action filled and I liked reading about how he managed to survive and eventually thrive on that island for 28 years (!) through a series of trial and error (harvesting crops, taming goats for husbandry, building shelters, and rationing what he was able to scrounge from his and other shipwrecked boats). Even in the short passages after his rescue, there are more adventures (wolves and bears in the Pyrenees!). The story is also a religious growth experience for Crusoe who reads the bible each day and thanks God for his survival. It’s understandable that this book had an impact on people during the early 1700s. It’s a story that is fascinating and something that could actually happen to many sea-faring passengers of that time.

Downtown Denver All-Star Weekend ramble – The Major League Baseball All-Star Game was in Denver this year, mainly because the original location, Atlanta, happens to be situated in Georgia which seems to want to limit who can vote in elections. Long, sad story that I won’t get into here. My daughter and I didn’t have tickets for the All-Star game but knew that the city was putting on several events associated with the game. We decided to take advantage of this and explore some of downtown Denver while we were at it. We walked somewhere between 6 and 8 miles on this beautiful, cloud covered summer day, parking the car for free in the area near Broadway and Walnut which is sort of halfway between the convention center and the RiNo arts district. We headed towards Coors Field which is where the game was to be played that evening. Along Larimer Street near Coors Field there were several food trucks, fashion trucks, and vendors setting up for the big crowds expected later in the day. We walked around the outside of the stadium and there were a few folks milling around and people were lining up to watch the All-Star red-carpet event (whatever that was). Next, we headed to Larimer Square which is where Denver was founded (ironically by gold miners from Georgia in 1858). There are several very cool looking shops and restaurants with outdoor dining. It looks like this square turns into a pedestrian only area on weekends. From Larimer Square we headed over to the convention center where all the non-game All-Star events were taking place. It was geared towards kids, and I would love to have taken my grandson here, but he was having fun in New Hampshire, visiting his back east grandparents. But there were also some items from the Baseball Hall of Fame that were interesting to see, like the bat Hank Aaron used for his record setting 715th home run to pass Babe Ruth (Aaron’s eventual record of 755 was surpassed by a steroid-filled Barry Bonds in 2007 but everyone puts an asterisk on that 762 number and Aaron is still the home run king in most people’s minds). I took some photos of the giant blue bear peaking into the convention center window and we headed for the 16th street mall which is an outdoor pedestrian mall that goes on for several blocks of shops, restaurants, hotels, and entertainers. By this time, we were getting hungry, so we headed towards the Dairy Block in LoDo (Lower Downtown). As the name suggests this used to be home to Windsor Dairy starting in 1920 and it’s been converted to a shopping, dining, and entertainment district. We walked along the very cool and artsy Alley (a revitalized alley that was turned into a pedestrian walkway in 2018 with access to all the shops and restaurants backing up to this alley) where we got free whiskey samples as part of the All-Star events. Inside the Milk Market you sit at a table and order from a selection of different restaurants within the market and the food is brought to your table. I had a delicious blackened-fish sandwich from Aline’s and daughter had a yummy chicken sandwich from Lou’s Hot & Naked Chicken. All the bars and restaurants in this Milk Market are owned and run by chef Lou Bonanno. To work off our lunch we headed back up to Coors Field and Larimer Street where it was packed now with baseball fans. We said bye to the crowds and headed towards the RiNo (River North) Arts District which is famous for its murals scattered throughout the area. On the way we stopped for ice cream at the Denver City Market (another enclosed space with restaurants and shops). At the RiNo district we saw several beautiful murals and we enjoyed meandering around with only a few locals out and about. I imagine there are more tourists in this area on weekends, but it was nice to have it mostly to ourselves. We made the mistake of crossing the railroad tracks and heading back to our car via Brighton and Broadway; there's not much to see on this stretch and we should have headed down Blake or Walnut Street instead. Oh well, exploring gets you both the good and the bad! We made it back to our car after a nice day exploring downtown Denver and enjoying the All-Star game festivities.

Coors Field All Star banner

Larimer Square all decked out

Sculpture outside the Opera

Big blue bear at the convention center

Blue bear with all star banners

He wants inside!

Flower mural with baseball theme in The Alley

I loved this baseball bug

Following are murals in the RiNo district

What really happened to the dinosaurs

Alleyway filled with murals

The Writing Life by Annie Dillard – Pulitzer Prize winning author Annie Dillard was awarded the National Humanities Medal in 2015. I haven’t read any of her work yet, but I had read that this short book of hers was a great description of what it means to be a writer. I have no aspirations of ever writing a book, or even a short story, but since I love to read and have a deep respect for authors who are able to change and improve the way I see the world, I wanted to know what it takes. The short answer is that it takes A LOT! In seven short chapters she gives you a glimpse into what it takes to write by describing her experiences around the world and the places in which she would write, from college libraries to remote and nearly inaccessible islands. I can’t say that I really enjoyed the book that much; the last chapter about a stunt pilot she knew really dragged on for me and wasn’t all that helpful in understanding the writing life, but the first six chapters were more interesting. Her descriptions were vivid, and I have added her most famous book (The Pilgrim at Tinker Creek) to my reading list. Here are some nice lines from the book:

It takes years to write a book—between two and ten years. Less is so rare as to be statistically insignificant. One American writer (William Faulkner) has written a dozen major books over six decades. He wrote one of those books, a perfect novel (As I Lay Dying), in three months. He speaks of it, still, with awe, almost whispering. Who wants to offend the spirit that hands out such books?

The years that biographers and other nonfiction writers spend amassing and mastering materials match the years novelists and short story writers spend fabricating solid worlds that answer to immaterial truths.

Appealing workplaces are to be avoided. One wants a room with no view, so imagination can meet memory in the dark.

There is no shortage of good days. It is good lives that are hard to come by.

Writers read literary biography, and surround themselves with other writers, deliberately to enforce in themselves the ludicrous notion that a reasonable option for occupying yourself on the planet until your life span plays itself out is sitting in a small room for the duration, in the company of pieces of paper.

I do not so much write a book as sit up with it, as with a dying friend. During visiting hours, I enter its room with dread and sympathy for its many disorders. I hold its hand and hope it will get better.

Nothing on earth is more gladdening than knowing we must roll up our sleeves and move back the boundaries of the humanly possible once more.

Niwot Mountain and Niwot Ridge – A big hike with my daughter and wonder dog. We got an early start on this Thursday to make sure we were off the ridge when the afternoon thunderstorms blew in. That was a good call. We parked about a mile or so up Left Hand Reservoir Road which begins just before the Brainard Lake entry station (so permits weren’t required). Next, we headed up to Niwot Mountain. There is somewhat of a trail here that starts on the southeast side of the road (opposite the Little Raven trail that takes you to Brainard Lake). It’s around a mile and 1,000 feet elevation gain to reach Niwot Mountain where the views are great and there is a nice rock shelter from the wind which was whipping today. From here, our plan was to hike off trail to reach the Niwot Ridge trail and then head back to our car via Long Lake and the Little Raven trail, but once we reached the junction with the Niwot Ridge trail, the ridge rising up to the west looked so enticing that we decided to stay off trail and head to the top of this ridge. This added around 4 miles to our day (from the planned 9 to the now 13 miles), but it was worth it! All along this ridge there were various containers and markers which seemed like science experiments (On the way back we ran into one of the students at Mountain Research Station who verified that yes, these were mostly climate studies. Her experiment was working with black sand to see how the local flora would hold up to the increasing temperatures that are upon us due to climate change). Near the end of the ridge there was a weather station and a few yards from here we sat and gazed at the beautiful Lake Isabelle and Long Lake about 1,500 feet below us. We were surrounded by the 13,000-foot peaks of Kiowa, Arikaree, Navajo, Apache, and Shoshoni while we sat at 12,300 feet with the wind howling. It was epically beautiful. After a brief rest we found a trail from the weather station to a 4wd road that brought us to the Niwot Ridge Trail making for easier walking. The Niwot Ridge trail ended at Long Lake (just as the thunder started roaring – glad we were off the ridge) and from there we used the Niwot Cutoff and then along Brainard road for a bit before picking up the Little Raven trail that took us back to our car on Left Hand Reservoir Road. We got sprinkled on, but it felt soothing after this mostly sunny hike. I was pretty tired by the time we reached the car but smiling after this great walk with my daughter and her wonder dog.

Niwot Ridge with views everywhere

Wind shelter on Niwot Mountain

Wildflowers, wind shelters, and mountains

West end of Left Hand Reservoir

We decided to climb the ridge rising to the upper right in this photo

So off we went

Don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows

One of many science experiments on the ridge

Daughter climbing a rocky expanse (I was much slower on this part)

Getting closer to the end of the ridge

Weather station near the end of the ridge

Lake Isabelle far below

Surrounded by 13,000 foot mountains on this 12,000 foot ridge

Pawnee Pass west of Lake Isabelle

Relaxing with epic views

Long Lake on the left...Left Hand Reservoir on the, er, right

Lakes south of the ridge; part of the Boulder city watershed

Lots of cool experiments being done up here

Great views on the way down

Trail art

Boardwalk meadow

Chasm Lake in Rocky Mountain National Park – Another epic hike, although there wasn’t much solitude. There’s a reason this is called a quintessential Colorado hike. And because of this reason it is extremely popular. On a Thursday at 8:30am I ended up parking half a mile down Long’s Peak Road from the trailhead (when the trailhead is full, people park along the road). I imagine on weekends you could end up at least a mile down the road. To be fair, most of these cars are probably due to the popular Long’s Peak Summit trail which uses the same trail as Chasm Lake for the first 3 or 4 miles. Long’s Peak is a “14er”, which means it’s over 14,000 feet high. Outdoor Colorado estimates that between 15,000-20,000 people hike Long’s Peak each month during the summer (Mount Bierstadt is the busiest at 35,000-40,000 each month).

The first couple of miles are a nice walk in the woods, although maybe not real nice because it starts gaining elevation right away and doesn’t let up. In about 4.5 miles (counting the extra half mile from the trailhead where I parked the car) you go from around 9,000 feet to around 12,000 feet. After a couple of miles, you start getting above the tree line and the views just explode! Mountains everywhere, beautiful meadows, waterfalls. At 4 miles you reach the Chasm Lake junction, and the views get even better. The trail skirts the base of Mt. Lady Washington and a small pond called Peacock Pool comes into view with a beautiful waterfall pouring into it (the waterfall’s source is Chasm Lake). The views east past Peacock Pool include many small pools and meadows along Roaring Fork Creek (different Roaring Fork from the river in Aspen). This Roaring Fork empties into the North St. Vrain Creek which eventually finds its way to Longmont. In all other directions you see giant mountains surrounding you. The last bit up to Chasm Lake is a bit of a scramble, but if you follow social trails and cairns, it’s not too bad. Then you see this beautiful lake below this immense amphitheater of rock, including Long’s Peak, rising high above you. There is a sheer rock wall here called The Diamond, and it’s a world-famous alpine climb. It rises 1,000 feet at over 13,000 feet elevation. With my binoculars I was able to see six climbers on two different ropes ascending this sheer rock face. I had a snack and wandered around a bit for an hour, then headed back. As I was about to scramble down the dicey section, a group of boy scouts was coming up. They were probably 12-year-olds, and they were getting pretty tired by this point. I hope they got a good badge for this hike! The hike down was just as beautiful, and I was more able to enjoy all the wildflowers that were blooming around me. I passed several hikers and trail runners on this day. I talked to some of the runners and evidently most try to make it to The Keyhole, which is a notch in the rocks just below Longs Peak (around 6.5 miles from the trailhead). Evidently beyond The Keyhole it's impossible to run as it's all rock scrambling to the peak from there. Another great day in the spectacular mountains of Colorado!