August 2021

 

Books read:

  •         The Man Who Knew Too Much by GK Chesterton
  •         The Living Mountain by Nan Shepherd
  •         A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier by Ishmael Beah
  •         Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev
  •      Goodbye Columbus: And Five Short Stories by Philip Roth

 

Trails walked:

  •         Hallett Peak in Rocky Mountain National Park on August 4th
  •         Boulder Brook trail in Rocky Mountain National Park on August 10th
  •         Pawnee Pass near Ward, CO on August 23rd
  •         Andrews Tarn in Rocky Mountain National Park on August 25th

 

Song(s) of the month – Ten of my favorites by the late, great, Nanci Griffith

 

Scientist Spotlight – Katherine Hayhoe - atmospheric scientist

 


August Summary:  When we lived in Phoenix, the end of August didn't mean the end of summer; it meant you still had another month and half of summer left.  In Colorado, it very much feels like the end of summer.  There have already been a few mornings where I had to put on a sweater, and it recently snowed on Trail Ridge Road in Rocky Mountain National Park.  We're looking forward to our first autumn in Colorado and hopefully there will be some colorful leaves in the photos next month.  Meanwhile, my August hikes have been incredible; I've been three times to Rocky Mountain National Park and once to the Indian Peaks Wilderness.  I've read 5 relatively short books this month, including a hokey book of "detective" stories, a tragic memoir of a boy soldier, an essay on the Cairngorm Mountains in Scotland, a Russian classic, and the debut novel by one of my favorite authors.  

Back in my high school and college days I listened to really loud music (Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd!) and attended really loud concerts.  All that fun has done a number on my hearing evidently.  I decided to get tested and it seems that I'm fine with lower frequency sounds, but I've lost quite a lot of high frequency sounds (like bird chirps) and have difficulty distinguishing certain speaking sounds like s, th, and f.  It may even explain the tinnitus I've had for the past 10 years. So I was fitted with diagnostic hearing aids for a few weeks and it's been fascinating.  The hearing aids pair with my phone so I can adjust volume and turn them on and off, plus listen to phone calls and music streaming (awesome perk).  I've spent a lot of time this month turning them on and off to see the difference. Here's what I've discovered:

When hiking, the crunch of my boot on the dirt used to be muffled and now it's so crisp it doesn't sound real. I'm sure it explains why, when I used to hike with my late great friend and hiking buddy, he used to always hear the rattlesnakes before I would.

I could hear birds before, but now I hear ALL the birds.  It's like it went from one bird chirping to a whole forest chirping (which it is).  Of course this also means I can hear the crickets around the house too. 

I haven't noticed much of a difference in conversations and still have trouble hearing people talk when there is background noise (perhaps that can be adjusted when I get my actual non-diagnostic hearing aids).  As a matter of fact, I hear the background noise so much better now that it seems it's even harder to hear a conversation....the audiologist says this can be adjusted and also takes time to get used to.

Wearing a mask, plus glasses, plus hearing aids makes for some really hilarious situations (everything comes flying off when you take the mask off).

There has historically been a sort of stigma associated with hearing aids (you're getting old and breaking), but the more I read, the more I believe that it not only helps you hear better, but the enhanced hearing helps your brain health.  I'm fortunate enough to have a working wife with insurance that covers hearing aids; currently Medicare does not cover this cost, but hopefully that will change in the near future.  

Enjoy this month's blog, and try not to listen to the music videos too loudly, because, you know, hearing aids...!

  

Scientist Spotlight – Katherine Hayhoe - atmospheric scientist

Regular readers of this blog know that climate change is a topic near and dear to my heart and is, in my opinion, the most important issue of our times; more important than the pandemic, wildfires, floods, poverty, immigration and economic inequality; why?  Because climate change impacts ALL these issues.  When I retired and was searching for how to “get involved” in a cause, I read a lot of science papers on climate change.  After that reading I couldn’t understand why nothing was being done to resolve this existential issue.  The answer is twofold: politics and disinformation.  Politicians and disinformation purveyors have a huge advantage over scientists – they are better communicators.  Scientists are generally terrible communicators; they want to be in the lab or in the field, studying things.  They don’t want to be on TV or in the news (unless it’s for a Nobel Prize…).  That’s why Katherine Hayhoe is such a rare gem.  She’s a scientist who is able to communicate well and more people need to listen to her easily understood messages about climate change.

Hayhoe received her undergraduate degrees in physics and astronomy, Master’s degree in atmospheric science, and wrote her PhD on climate projection modeling.  She moved from Canada to Texas where she has been communicating the topic of climate change to some very conservative organizations. It probably helps that she’s a Christian and married to a pastor. Currently she is the Chief Scientist for The Nature Conservancy, a Paul Whitfield Horn Distinguished Professor and the Political Science Endowed Chair in Public Policy and Public Law in the Department of Political Science at Texas Tech University.  She is also an associate in the Public Health program of the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences and a principal investigator for the Department of Interior’s South-Central Climate Adaptation Science Center and the National Science Foundation’s Global Infrastructure Climate Network.  Whew!  On top of all that she has a TED talk on climate change that has been viewed by nearly 4 million people, she runs a YouTube channel called Global Weirding, was featured in the documentaries Between Earth and Sky and Years of Living Dangerously, and she has a new book coming out in September called Saving Us: A Climate Scientist’s Case for Hope and Healing in a Divided World.  She’s won too many awards to post here, but they include the American Geophysical Union’s Climate Communication Prize, one of TIME’s 100 Most Influential People and the Foreign Policy’s 100 Leading Global Thinkers.

This is a lot for most lifetimes, but it doesn’t even begin to describe many of the other organizations and projects she’s involved in.  I had the honor to see her speak in person in 2019 at a climate conference in Washington DC and she is as dynamic in person as she is in her online videos.  She’s a real person who has a really important message to share with the world.  Are you listening? Check out the links in the previous paragraph to find out more.

 

 

Song(s) of the month – On Friday, August 13th, one of the world’s great singer songwriters passed from this life.  A truly unlucky day.  Nanci Griffith holds a special place in the hearts of my wife and me.  Her music formed much of the soundtrack of our early lives as we were raising our young kids.  On our many road trips we probably drove the kids crazy with her music on the CD (and cassette tape) player (thankfully the brainwashing worked, and they are both fans of hers to this day).  We saw her in concert several times and she never disappointed.  You always left her shows feeling good and with a deep appreciation of life, because that’s what her songs were about.  She was a great storyteller at her live shows, and she gave you every penny’s worth of your entry fee.  She loved the written word and most of her album covers would feature her holding a book by one of her favorite authors (yet another reason to love her).  She was far more popular in Ireland and the UK than she was in the US, and she ended up having a home in Ireland where she lived half the year.  Not only was she a great writer of songs but was also a great interpreter of songs.  She would take obscure songs from underappreciated songwriters and turn them into gems.  She won a Grammy award for her album Other Voices, Other Rooms in which she sang many of these songs along with other artists (the title of the album is from a Truman Capote novel).  She created 18 studio albums and 2 live albums from 1979 through 2012.  The 80s and 90s were her masterpiece years where she created works of genius.  She had a few good songs in the 2000s, but nothing like those two decades of masterpieces.   Interestingly David Letterman was a huge fan and had her on his show many times.  There is a one-and-a-half-hour compilation of her appearances on his show here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7l9jAD9S4Ro The highlight for me comes at the 56:30 mark….

Here is a very “short” list of some of my favorite songs of hers (it was really hard to exclude so many other great songs, and my wife would have included the entire Flyer album on this list):

Written by Nanci:  

Love at the Five and Dime:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2GK462XnRjQ

This is the quintessential Nanci video; it shows her telling stories and then singing this epic love poem that she wrote. The song tells the story of a couple’s lifetime, through the good and the bad.  It’s a perfect song and her introduction of it never gets old.  Just look at the faces of the people in this video smiling when she introduces the song….that’s how she made you feel at her shows.

Last of the True Believers:  https://player.vimeo.com/video/587844106

Maybe my favorite song of hers, with a very young Lyle Lovett singing background vocals...and she made that dress herself for her first Austin City Limits appearance. 

This Heart:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LxZbQCTEcM4

An uplifting song about finding love when it was least expected

Trouble in the Fields: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vvn9GgheqGY

Movies have been made about the depression and dust bowl that couldn’t describe the times as well as this one song. 

Gulf Coast Highway: https://youtu.be/okUYwIdxRWs

A love song set in rural Texas that will make you want to go see the bluebonnets in the spring.

Listen to the Radio: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=reZpbkE8o_M&t=806s

A really upbeat song about how the radio (back in the day before Spotify) could make you feel good while driving, especially listening to Loretta Lynn! 

Ford Econoline:  https://youtu.be/0OBSo3G8LCg

A woman’s empowerment song about a talented Mormon woman who breaks away from her no-good husband to start her life anew with her 5 kids.  It’s loosely based on the life of folk singer Rosalie Sorrels.

Written by others and sung by Nanci:

Tecumseh Valley (Townes van Zandt):  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nOnJtlyNk7Q

Townes Van Zandt once said that this is the best rendition of one of his songs that anyone has done, and lots of people have sung Townes’ songs.  She made the song her own and credited the song with saving her from bad decisions in her teen years.  It’s one of the saddest songs ever written. 

Once in a Very Blue Moon (Pat Alger & Eugene Levine):  https://player.vimeo.com/video/587845932

Alger wrote the song for Nanci and she named her band after the song: Nanci Griffith and the Blue Moon Orchestra…

Across the Great Divide (Kate Wolf):  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jst8OR1Jd74

I think of this song every time I cross the Continental Divide (which is a lot now that I live in Colorado).  It’s a beautiful song by the great Kate Wolf, and Nanci does it justice.  "I find myself on the mountainside, where the rivers change direction, across the great divide."

Rest in peace Nanci, you left a legacy that will be enjoyed by others forever.

 

The Man Who Knew Too Much by GK Chesterton – Interesting bit of trivia; the two Alfred Hitchcock films by this same name had nothing to do with the book other than the fact that Hitchcock owned the film rights to some of the stories in the book.  The book’s somewhat interconnected stories were published in Harper’s Monthly magazine between 1920 and 1922 and the compilation book published in 1922. 

I did not enjoy the stories in this book.  It was the longest 70-page book I’ve ever read. You have to suspend belief to have any chance at enjoying them.  Horne Fisher is the man in the title and presumably he knows too much because of his family’s political connections.  But I found his dialog annoyingly convoluted and condescending.  And of course, he manages to not only be personally involved in all these murders (even though he’s not a detective) but he solves them all quickly in matter of a few pages.  Chesterton wrote around 80 books, several hundred poems, some 200 short stories, 4,000 essays (mostly newspaper columns), and several plays in his lifetime which to me explains a lack of quality.  Last month I read The Writing Life by Annie Dillard who proclaimed that it takes 2-10 years to write a quality novel or short story series, so by this standard none of Chesterton’s books should be any good.  I’ve heard that his Father Brown detective series are/were popular, but I doubt I’ll spend any more time reading his material.

 

Hallett Peak – Quite a day in the tundra of the Rockies!  The only bad part of this hike is that you have to start at the very crowded Bear Lake Trailhead in Rocky Mountain National Park.  I arrived at 6:15am on a weekday and the huge parking lot was 75% full (when I returned, there were cars waiting in line for open spots).  Luckily 95% of the crowds are hiking either Bear or Emerald Lakes so once you put on a few miles and feet of elevation, the crowds disappear.  Past Bear Lake, the Flattop Mountain Trail steadily climbs its namesake mountain as the trees and people disappear and all that remains are the views and a bit of solitude (there were other hikers up here, but not many).  At 4.5 miles the junction for the North Inlet and Tonahutu trails appears and here is where I turned left and followed an unmaintained but cairned path, skirting the top of Tyndall Glacier, to the top of Hallett Peak. 

There were so many things to love about this hike.  First of all, it is physically challenging as you rise from 9,400 feet in elevation to 12,700 feet in about 5 miles.  It feels good to challenge your body like that and your body sleeps well at night.  Then there are the sweeping views of nearly all of Rocky Mountain National Park; from Estes Park in the northeast to Grand Lake in the southwest to Trail Ridge Road in the northwest to Longs Peak in the southeast.  It’s like you’re on top of the world, yet “only” at 12,700 feet in elevation.  Plus, I had some very different animal sightings on this day: several pika (small tundra animal that looks like a mini-rabbit), lots of marmots, a scraggly fox at the summit, a mamma dusky grouse and her chicks, and a majestic bull elk with huge antlers.  And Glaciers!  And alpine lakes!  And waterfalls!  This hike has it all. 

The peak is named after William Hallett, a cattle rancher, mining engineer, and climber in the late 1800s who established the first mountaineering organization in Colorado.  Well before William Hallett arrived, the Arapaho and Ute Indians traveled across the park using several east-west routes such as Trail Ridge, Forest Canyon, Fall River and this one - Flattop Mountain, to reach traditional hunting grounds on the Great Plains. According to Rocky Mountain National Park: A History, The Arapaho Indians called the Flattop Mountain corridor "The Big Trail". At one time the Flattop Mountain Trail was also known as the Grand Trail. A pathway was formally constructed in 1925, was rehabilitated by the Civilian Conservation Corps in 1940, and is now currently listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Big Bull Elk on the way to the trailhead

Reflections off Bear Lake (my destination is the peak upper left)

Sunrise backing birds in flight

Trail above Bear Lake reflecting the sun's rays

Trail art

Great views east to Bierstadt and Sprague lakes way below

Steeply carved valley with Hallett Peak in full sunlight above

Emerald Lake down below; Longs Peak upper left

Cute little Pika

Hallett Peak and Tyndall Glacier

Precarious cairn pointing to Hallett Peak

Clouds rising from the valley to the southwest across the tundra

Ridge extending east past the summit

The summit of Hallett

Looking northwest from the summit

A scraggly fox joined me on the summit, looking for that cute pika

Views to the south from the summit (Longs Peak upper left)

Panorama from the summit 

Grand Lake can be seen to the west from the tundra on Flattop Mountain

Marmot with a view of Longs Peak

Dusky Grouse on the way back to the trailhead


The Living Mountain by Nan Shepherd – Nan Shepherd (1893-1981) is not well known outside of Scotland which is unfortunate, because she is a fascinating woman who was way ahead of her time.  She was born, lived, and died in the Aberdeen area in the northeast of Scotland.  Her image is on the 5-pound Scottish bank note.  She never married, and although some of her sonnets were possibly written about/for an unknown male companion, I believe that her only true loves were the Cairngorm Mountains near her home and her writing.  After graduating from Aberdeen University with an MA degree she taught English literature at Aberdeen College of Education for the remainder of her working life. 

I compare The Living Mountain to the nature writing of Henry David Thoreau and John Muir; and in fact it may be better!  Shepherd wrote it during the latter half of World War II, but it wasn’t published until 1977.  I was enthralled by her writing and her descriptions of being on the mountain.  The Cairngorms for her are what the Superstition Mountains were for me when I lived in Arizona. She is able to express in writing the way that I feel when I’m out walking in nature.  You can feel the love she has for this mountain, and for nature.  Her writing is beautifully descriptive and a bit poetic.  Plus, I learned some cool new Scottish terms, like burn (large stream or small river), tarn (small mountain lake), lairig (pass), linn (pool or pond), scaur (cliff), and spate (spring runoff).

British writer Robert Macfarlane had this to say about the book: “So I knew the Cairngorms long before I knew The Living Mountain, which I first read only in 2003, when it was recommended to me by a former friend.  He spoke of it as a book that had almost slipped through the cracks of the canon; a lost classic.  I read it and was changed.”

Here are some lines I enjoyed from the book:

One cannot know the rivers till one has seen them at their sources.

The short-sighted cannot love mountains as the long-sighted do.

The inaccessibility of this loch is part of its power. Silence belongs to it.  If jeeps find it out, or a funicular railway disfigures it, part of its meaning will be gone.

Yet often the mountain gives itself most completely when I have no destination, when I reach nowhere in particular, but have gone out merely to be with the mountain as one visits a friend with no intention but to be with him.

For the most appalling quality of water is its strength.  I love its flash and gleam, its music, its pliancy and grace, its slap against my body; but I fear its strength.  I fear it as my ancestors must have feared the natural forces that they worshipped.  All the mysteries are in its movement.

The air is part of the mountain, which does not come to an end with its rock and its soil.  It has its own air…

For not getting lost is a matter of the mind—of keeping one’s head, of having map and compass to hand and knowing how to use them, of staying steady, even when one of the party panics and wants to go in the wrong direction.  Walking in mist tests not only individual self-discipline, but the best sort of interplay between persons.

The plants of the plateau are low in stature, sitting tight to the ground with no loose ends for the wind to catch.

I have stared a long time into birches where I knew a doe was standing and saw her only when at last she flicked an ear.

For the ear, the most vital thing that can be listened to here is silence.  To bend the ear to silence is to discover how seldom it is there.

There on the tent pole a tawny owl stared down at me.  I could just discern his shape against the sky.  I stared back.  He turned his head about, now one eye upon me, now the other, then melted down into the air so silently that had I not been watching him I would not have known he was gone. 

I believe that I now understand in some small measure why the Buddhist goes on pilgrimage to a mountain.  …for as I penetrate more deeply into the mountain’s life, I penetrate also into my own.

 

Boulder Brook Trail - I had a 7am permit for the park on this day, but I also had an eye procedure scheduled for the afternoon, so I picked a short hike.  The smoke from the Dixie fire in California was engulfing Colorado today so I opted for a hike without many views, since you couldn’t see much anyway.  Boulder Brook was the perfect option.  I was able to find a parking spot at the 4-car Storm Pass trailhead since all the cars were headed to Glacier Gorge and Bear Lake.  At just over a quarter mile, you reach “confusion junction” where there are trail signs everywhere.  I headed south, up the Boulder Brook Trail which steeply follows its namesake brook for most of the 2.5 miles to its junction with the North Longs Peak trail. Mushrooms and waterfalls were the theme of the day.    It was a very peaceful walk as I only encountered 2 trail runners.  The trail is steep, but that also means lots of waterfalls along the way, and they were beautiful and roaring.  All the moisture here creates the perfect environment for mushrooms, and I saw several different shapes and sizes.  Lots of wildflowers along the path and a few berries that I didn’t recognize (the possibly poisonous twin berry honeysuckle was one of them according to PlantNet after the hike…so good that I didn’t try any).  I heard animals rustling in the woods, but never saw any other than a few birds.  Once I reached the junction with the North Longs Peak trail, I headed north on it for a bit, but ran out of time before I reached the tree line….next time.  

 

Nice, but smoky, views near the the Storm Pass trailhead

Waterfalls everywhere along Boulder Brook

Looking downstream, very steep

Trail art

I swear, I found it like this....

Some views pop up every now and then

Sun rising through the tree's first branch

So many mushrooms on this hike

...and waterfalls

One of several bridge crossings

Wildflowers were out too

Long steep waterfall

A prototypical cartoon mushroom

Pretty waterfall

A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah – This incredible memoir was a New York Times best seller and was on Amazon’s list of 100 Books to Read in a Lifetime.  It’s incredible.  Before going into more detail, I want to address some controversy surrounding the story.  One reporter from an Australian newspaper has refuted some of the dates in Beah’s memoir.  However, after some online research I found no other refutations and Beah’s official response to this (along with key witnesses) seems to put the controversy to rest.  Others have said it seems improbable that one boy experienced all of this, however none of them brought out any proof of their assumptions.  I’ve seen videos of Beah, and my daughter-in-law actually met him in person at an event and he appears to be an honest and intelligent person and I believe him.  Any memoir is subject to accusations of enhancement of the truth and the Australian newspaper’s account came at a time when several other memoirs were being exposed as false.  I choose to believe most of the accounts written in this memoir, but I also believe that one’s memory is always subject to memory bias and I’m sure some of the stories have been impacted by this memory bias.

Here’s how the memoir begins:

New York City, 1998

My high school friends have begun to suspect I haven’t told them the full story of my life.

 “Why did you leave Sierra Leone?”

 “Because there is a war.”

 “Did you witness some of the fighting?”

 “Everyone in the country did.”

 “You mean you saw people running around with guns and shooting each other?”

 “Yes, all the time.”

 “Cool.”

 I smile a little.

 “You should tell us about it sometime.”

 “Yes, sometime.”

 

Well, he certainly proceeds to tell his story and it’s riveting.  He’s leading an ordinary life for a 12-year-old in rural Sierra Leone in the 1990s when he and his friends walk to a town to put on a talent show.  When they reach the town, rebels in the civil war attack and Beah escapes with his friends.  When they make their way back to their home, they find the village in ruins and everyone dead or gone. He and his friends manage to evade the rebels and the national soldiers (all bad guys by this point) for close to a year, foraging for food, stealing food, and relying on help from some other villages.  But eventually the national soldiers find him and force him to join the army.  His time in the “army” is filled with drug-fueled raids in revenge of what the rebels had done to their families. The bloodshed is wanton, and the drug use is rampant.  I can’t even put some of the details in this blog because they are too violent for me to write.  After almost 3 years of this, he is rescued by UNICEF and placed in a rehab center in Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone.  With help from some incredibly patient and wonderful people he manages to come to terms with all that he had seen and done and ends up being adopted by a long-lost uncle.  His story becomes known by UN volunteers, and he ends up in New York City along with children of war from several other countries where he makes a speech about his experiences.  Here he meets a woman who would eventually adopt him and bring him to the US, but not before he returns to Freetown just in time for more violence as the city is being destroyed.  His uncle dies and he decides he needs to leave his country.  A tense journey to the capital of Guinnea finally gets him on a plane to the US.  If you want to learn more about the story without reading the book, click here: http://alongwaygone.com/index.html


Pawnee Pass via Brainard Lake - Across the Great Divide!  A permit system is in place for the Brainard Lake area in the Indian Peaks Wilderness.  The permits allow for an overall better experience since the lakes in this area have been over-loved in the past few years.  My permit allowed me to park at Brainard Lake, which is around a mile from the Long Lake trailhead (Getting a permit for the Long Lake trailhead would have been best but they were gone when I looked).  Brainard Lake is near a large campsite so there were several people kayaking and paddle boarding when I arrived at around 9am.  Great views of the Indian Peaks from here.  I walked along the southern shore of the lake and then picked up the Niwot Cutoff trail to Long Lake. I then took the Jean Lunning trail along the southern shore of Long Lake until it intersected with the Pawnee Pass trail towards Lake Isabelle.  Lots of folks hiking to the beautiful Lake Isabelle, however I only saw 5 other people in the 2.5 miles from the lake to Pawnee Pass.  Rising above Lake Isabelle, the views get better with every step.  I was able to clearly see Niwot Ridge and the weather station where my daughter and I hiked in July.  There were plenty of marmots and pikas scurrying about the rocks on the tundra today as the switchbacks carried me to the pass.  Once on top there is a sign welcoming you to the Continental Divide (all water west of here ends up in the Pacific and all water east of here ends up in the Atlantic).  My initial plan was to hike off trail another half mile to Pawnee Peak, but dark clouds were moving in quickly, so I put on my rain gear and headed back down.  Around a half mile down, the rain and hail and wind started so it was definitely a good call not to summit.  I was well prepared on my upper body with a mid-layer and rain shell, but the shorts I wore meant my legs were cold for the half hour of rain and hail.  Luckily the sun came out and I warmed up quickly.  Once the sun came out, the views on the way down were spectacular.  By the time I reached Long Lake I truly appreciated its name because I was tired and it seemed like I was hiking along the lake forever!  I was back at the trailhead near Brainard Lake around 3:30 after 11 plus miles of walking.  Another great day in the mountains. 

Brainard Lake near the trailhead

The closest thing I saw to a moose today

Entering the Indian Peaks Wilderness

I turned right here to climb up to the pass

Lake Isabelle from the trail heading up to the pass

Rugged peaks to the north

Views of Long Lake, Brainard Lake, and Left Hand Reservoir

Views west towards Lake Granby from the pass


Pawnee Peak was tempting but the clouds behind me said no

Clouds moving in prevented me from climbing Pawnee Peak
The ridge in the center right is Niwot Ridge which I hiked last month with my daughter

Slipping and sliding on the talus slope below the pass (or is it scree slope?)

Navajo Peak with its namesake glacier below

Isabelle Lake after the storm passed

South St Vrain Creek below Long Lake


Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev – This great novel by Ivan Turgenev was the first Russian novel to be widely accepted by the western world, likely paving the way for future great Russian novels by Dostoyevsky (Crime and Punishment) and Tolstoy (War and Peace and Anna Karenina).  It is on Great Books’ 100 greatest novels list (http://www.greatbooksguide.com/OneHundredGreatestNovels.html).  Micah Mattix, writing for the National Endowment for the Humanities had this to say recently about Turgenev: “Turgenev has probably never been more out of style than he is now. He is a stoic at a time of activism, a realist at a time of fanaticism, and a moderate at a time of extremism.”  At the time of its publication in 1862, Russians on the left and right hated it.  The left thought it was too critical of the young revolutionaries (the sons) and the right thought it wasn’t critical enough.  Turgenev was against all forms of radicalism, believing that it turns people against each other and leads to all kinds of problems. 

I enjoyed reading this classic novel (I read the translation by Constance Garnett). Its focus was on the relationship and generational differences of fathers and sons.  The dialog and emotions wouldn’t be out of place in a novel set in modern times.  The two fathers in the book were liberal minded men that did what they could to help reform the Russian serfdom system in place at the time.  One of the two sons (Bazarov) was a nihilist who believed in nothing except science while the other son (Arkady) was more in the mold of the fathers even though he was devoted to his eccentric nihilistic friend.  The sons are returning to their homes after completing university studies, so of course they believe that they now know much more than their fathers.  The fathers see this and are sort of stuck between believing that they are now outdated and believing that maybe they still have more to offer than their sons think.  It’s a Russian novel, so of course there must be some love interests interspersed in all this Oedipal Complex.  There are some strong women characters in the novel including the widowed Ánna Sergéyevna Odíntsova whom Bazarov half-heartedly pursues (since, of course he’s a nihilist and can’t believe in love).  In the end, one of the father/son duos sees happiness, while other duo encounters only sadness.  Give it a read to find out, it’s less than 200 pages! 

Here are some (translated) lines that I enjoyed:

Arkady…was conscious of a little awkwardness, that awkwardness, which usually overtakes a youth when he has just ceased to be a child and has come back to a place where they are accustomed to regard him and treat him as a child.

Pavel, on the contrary,..was entering upon that indefinite twilight period of regrets that are akin to hopes, and hopes that are akin to regrets, when youth is over, while old age has not yet come.

“There’s no hope for it Vasya! A son is a separate piece cut off.  He’s like the falcon that flies home and flies away at his pleasure; while you and I are like funguses in the hollow of a tree, we sit side by side, and don’t move from our place.”

So it turns out that it was useless to think of the future.  Death’s an old joke, but it comes fresh to everyone.

 

Andrews Tarn and Four Lakes Loop – While reading The Living Mountain this month I came across several Scottish terms for outdoor features that I hadn’t heard of.  One of them was “tarn” which means small mountain lake.  Lo and behold, Rocky Mountain National Park has a small mountain lake called Andrews Tarn!  So, of course I had to go there.  Not only tarn, but on the way there you pass The Loch (or Loch Vale) which is the Scottish term for lake.  There was no Loch Ness Monster in the lake, but I did see a mamma elk and her babies crossing the lake and also saw some cutthroat trout swimming around along the water’s edge. 

For this day I combined two hikes into one.  The Four Lakes Loop is a 6-mile loop that takes you to Nymph Lake, Dream Lake, Lake Haiyaha, and The Loch.  Then I added on the Andrews Tarn hike making this a 10-mile walk with over 3,000 feet of elevation gain.  Although there was a lot of uphill (and downhill), the hike was fairly moderate until the last half mile to Andrews Tarn.  On the trail just before the difficult boulder field I spotted my first pine marten in the wild.  It was really cute.  It looks like a weasel and had these huge eyes.  As soon as it spotted me, it dashed into the woods, preventing me from getting a photo.   That last half mile through the boulder field was a doozy!  Boulder scrambling, route finding, and slipping and sliding on the extremely steep grade.  I took my time here (both up and down) and it was fine.  While stopping to catch my breath (and figure out where the path of least resistance was) I enjoyed the view of the prominent Sharkstooth which is a nice goal for rock climbers (and it really does look like a giant shark’s tooth); the view below me of the small valley known as “The Gash” was great also.  The reward at the top was worth all the effort as the emerald-colored tarn was backdropped by Andrews Glacier, which is one of 8 named glaciers in Rocky Mountain National Park.  The emerald tarn with the white glacier behind it and the blue skies above it made for a perfect lunch spot.  I had the place to myself while I ate lunch huddled behind a large rock to protect from the wind whipping down the glacier. 

The rest of the hike was beautiful but didn’t compare to that darn tarn.  Lake Haiyaha is nice, but the shore is surrounded by huge boulders, making it difficult to find a flat spot to rest (the name is a Native American term that loosely translates to "lake of many rocks" - a pretty accurate name, as are most of the Native terms).  Of course Dream Lake is beautiful also but is so crowded that it’s not much of a peaceful place (it’s only a mile from the busy Bear Lake Trailhead). The Loch is a beautiful sub alpine lake with tall peaks making for a great background. 

Both Andrews Glacier and Tarn are named after Edwin B. Andrews, a relative of Abner Sprague.  Sprague was one of the first settlers in the area now known as Rocky Mountain National Park (Alberta Falls was named after Sprague’s wife, Alberta). 

Another strenuous and rewarding day in the Rockies!

 

Nymph Lake lilies and reflections

Bending bridge over Chaos Creek on the way to Lake Haiyaha

Ancient Limber Pine guarding the entry to Lake Haiyaha

Lake Haiyaha with a very bouldery shoreline

Lake Haiyaha looking up Chaos Canyon

 I appreciate the effort that went in to creating these walking stones

Unnamed pond on the trail between Haiyaha and The Loch

A rooted stone

Headed towards Andrews Glacier from here

Icy Brook tumbling down

Mamma and baby elk chilling below The Loch

Loch Ness Monster

Nice background for The Loch

Tough boulder scramble to get to Andrews Tarn

The goal is that edge with the water seeping over it

The Sharkstooth on the way to the tarn

Looking back from where I came

Emerald green Andrews Tarn with its namesake glacier behind



Here's that edge I was aiming for, but from the other side

Ahhh

The Flintstones' sofa got thrown out

Back at The Loch

Crystal clear water with some big cutthroat trout

Trail art

Nice aspen tunnel near the trailhead


 

Goodbye Columbus: And Five Short Stories by Philip Roth -  I had never read this first work by one of my favorite authors.  The creator of such great novels such as American Pastoral, The Plot Against America, and The Great American Novel published his first work in 1959 at the age of 26.  It's understandably not as polished as his greater works, but his ability to describe working class 2nd generation Jewish people and their inner lives is already incredible; as is his blunt humor.  This first work of his won the 1960 US National Book Award for Fiction.  Not a bad start.  Roth's work has always been controversial and he has his critics, but his writing transcends any critique of his work.  In 2003 Harold Bloom named him one of the four major American novelists still at work, along with Thomas Pynchon, Don DeLillo, and Cormac McCarthy. The May 21, 2006 issue of  The New York Times Book Review announced the results of a letter that was sent to what the publication described as "a couple hundred prominent writers, critics, editors and other literary sages, asking them to please identify 'the single best work of American fiction published in the last 25 years.' Six of Roth's novels were among the 22 selected:  American Pastoral, The Counterlife, Operation Shylock, Sabbath's Theater, The Human Stain, and The Plot Against America."  The accompanying essay, written by critic A.O. Scott, stated, "If we had asked for the single best writer of fiction of the past 25 years, Roth would have won."  Roth was awarded the 2010 National Humanities Medal by Barack Obama and in May 2011 he was awarded the Man Booker International Prize for lifetime achievement in fiction and one of the judges (Rick Gekoski) remarked: "In 1959 he writes Goodbye, Columbus and it's a masterpiece, magnificent.  Fifty-one years later he's 78 years old and he writes Nemesis and it is so wonderful, such a terrific novel...Tell me one other writer who 50 years apart writes masterpieces...If you look at the trajectory of the average novel writer, there is a learning period, then a period of high achievement, then the talent runs out and in middle age they start slowly to decline...In the 1990s he was almost incapable of not writing a masterpiece - The Human Stain, The Plot Against American, I Married a Communist.  He was 65-70 years old, what the hell's he doing writing that well?"

Goodbye Columbus is a very short novel (novella?) about a middle class Jewish man working a low paying job in the public library who falls in love with a Jewish girl from a wealthy family.  All the issues of class difference come into play, along with Jewish identity, love, and family relations.  It's a very entertaining and enjoyable read.  But I enjoyed the five short stories that were included just as much.  All of them were great, but the most memorable for me was Eli the Fanatic which was about a Jewish lawyer (Eli) who was hired by his community to shut down a Yeshiva (Jewish religious school) in the neighborhood that was possibly creating division between the Jewish and non-Jewish people of the community. It's really a story of Eli's slowly deteriorating mental health and the description of his fall is so intense that you can almost hear the sounds in his head getting louder and louder until he finally breaks.  

Here are some of the many great lines from this collection:

...pepper wasn't served in her home: she'd heard that it was not absorbed by the body, and it was disturbing to Aunt Gladys to think that anything she served might pass through a gullet, stomach, and bowel just for the pleasure of the trip.

I only hope she dies with an empty refrigerator, otherwise she'll ruin eternity for everyone else, what with her Velveeta turning green, and her navel oranges growing fuzzy jackets down below.

Like her sister, she seemed to have a knack for asking practical, infuriating questions.

From the back, round-shouldered, burdened, child-carrying, they looked like people fleeing a captured city.

and there out before me I could see the swampy meadows that spread for miles and miles, watery, blotchy, smelly, like an oversight of God.

he wanted to know how Rabbi Binder could call the Jews "The Chosen People" if the Declaration of Independence claimed all men to be created equal.

I asked (the Rabbi) if He could make all that in six days, and He could pick the six days he wanted right out of nowhere, why couldn't He let a woman have a baby without having intercourse....that was the first time my mother was called to the school.

she suddenly turned back to the house to make sure the door was shut against daytime burglars, bugs, and dust.

Sooner or later, everyone's wife finds their weak spot.  His goddam luck he had to be neurotic!  Why couldn't he have been born with a short leg.


Happy Reading and Rambling!