September 2022
Books read:
- Jack by Marilynne Robinson
- Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson
- Being the Change: Live Well and Spark a Climate Revolution by Peter Kalmus
- Clean: The New Science of Skin and the Beauty of Doing Less by James Hamblin
Trails walked:
- Gavilan Trail near Taos, NM (Sept 2nd)
- Black Lake and Blue Lake in Rocky Mt. National Park (Sept 7th)
- Spruce Lake and Loomis Lake in Rocky Mt. National Park (Sept 13th)
- Tombstone Ridge and Tundra Communities trails in Rocky Mt. National Park (Sept 20th)
Song of the month – One Love by Bob Marley
Scientist Spotlight – Frederick Law Olmsted
What does it take to change one's mindset? Something you've done or believed all your life? I've been thinking a lot about that, especially after this month's reading. I feel like I've learned more in the nearly 7 years I've been retired than in my previous 57 years. During these 7 years I've probably changed my mindset on more things than I did in all my years previous. I suppose some might call it a mid-life crisis, but I really think it's a combination of my late blooming maturity along with all the hours I've finally been able to put into my reading (and perhaps also working at writing down some of these thoughts).
Here are just some of the shifts in thinking I've made in the past few years:
- Acknowledgment of racial and social injustice in the story of American history
- and the privilege I've gained from it
- and why some people will never acknowledge it
- The symbiotic role of nature in our existence
- and the damage we inflict even though it's vital to our health and happiness
- The long term impacts of imperialism and colonialism on developing nations
- Deeper reading brings worldwide suffering to a deeper understanding
- I have a better understanding of why many countries despise "the west" and how brutal dictators are given free reign by their own people
- The exponential threat of climate change to our fossil fuel centric lives
- I've always "cared", but 7 years of studying the science makes it real
- I've cut my 60 plus year daily diet of meat in half...this is a tough one for me and I hope someday I'll not eat any meat at all (my wife has done a much better job than I in this area)
- The unbounded greed of most large corporations and the politicians they've bought
- The American dream to always grow and have more, needs to change to having enough and protecting the earth and vulnerable people
- Hatred of others is more of a reflection on me than on the "others"
- Everyone has their unique story that you know nothing about
- Nefarious media and unscrupulous "influencers" are complicit in making Americans, who have more in common than you'd think, hate each other
- Science and facts aren't as powerful as a well told story
- This took a long time for me to understand and believe
- The bible is still the best selling book of all time
There are many more things I've changed, like updated views on hygiene that I talk about in my review of one of the books I read this month. But everything I've learned seems to come down to: Be nice, help others, respect nature, advocate for the change you see as necessary to make the world a better place.
It was hard to write the blog this month, not just because of the content but because I dislocated my finger. See my description of the Tombstone Ridge hike for the gruesome details. So if you find typos, blame the finger.
I managed three beautiful hikes in Rocky Mountain National Park and one very nice walk and mushroom forage near Taos with my daughter. My reading consisted of two more great novels by the incredible Marilynne Robinson, a close look at what really reducing your carbon footprint looks like, and an entertaining and educational look at the science of hygiene and the skin microbiome. Enjoy.
Although not a scientist in the pure sense, I believe he acted like one. His plans to attend Yale were dashed when he contracted an illness. Olmsted basically took all the observations he had made as a sea merchant and journalist to create these incredible landscape designs that provide a beautiful space for people of all means to enjoy. Olmsted believed that huge public parks would be necessary to serve as the “lungs of the city,” as the skies filled with industrial smog. James Hamblin wrote in his book Clean, which I reviewed this month: "In most of New York you have to buy a three-dollar shot of espresso just to use the bathroom. Restroom access is one of the reasons that some people I know maintain expensive gym memberships. Meanwhile, in Central Park there are twenty-one public restroom facilities."
Yes Olmsted designed Central Park, along with many other great public spaces from Canada to California. He was part of the California contingent that advocated for designating Yosemite as a National Park to protect it. And lesser known was his work during the Civil War to improve sanitary conditions among the soldiers; and he is at least partially credited with helping the Union win the war by saving many lives that would have been lost to unsanitary conditions. He was executive secretary of the US Sanitary Commission which eventually became the American Red Cross.
Olmsted is known as "The Father of American Landscape Architecture". He died at the age of 81 in Massachusetts and is buried in the Old North Cemetery in Hartford, Connecticut.
Song of the month: One Love - Bob Marley
One of these blogs I'll have to go into more detail on Bob Marley's life and songs. But for now, this song just feels right for the way we need to get together in light of todays trials and tribulations. The song was written and published in 1965 and was released on several of Marley's subsequent albums. Some say it's based on the Curtis Mayfield song People Get Ready, but I don't see all that many similarities. This was the first music video produced for the song, released in 1984. It beautifully captures the joy of the song.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDZ9kmIA4yE
The trail is part of the Columbine-Hondo Wilderness area and was given the Spanish name for hawk (gavilan). I suppose it was given that name because of how quickly it rises, but then every trail here could be given that name. This wilderness area, which is across the NM150 highway from the Wheeler Peak wilderness area, contains the head waters for the Rio Hondo and Red River. It also has three mountain peaks that rise above the tree line (Gold, Lobo, and Flag). We (well, I) huffed and puffed our (my) way up the trail until we got to the second meadow which had great views of Wheeler Peak and the Taos Ski Valley. From here we crossed Gavilan Creek to look for mushrooms. After bagging our limit, we headed back down the trail. We only saw a couple of other people on this beautiful New Mexico day.
 |
| Fall is coming |
 |
| Great views of Taos Ski Valley |
 |
| Humongous mushrooms! |
 |
| ...and whatever voodoo bone charm this is... |
 |
| Yuuuge! |
 |
| More great views |
 |
| Daughter walking up the trail |
In the first novel we learn that Jack Boughton had returned home after a 20-year absence. We know that he has been a disappointment to his family for most of his life and we know that the death of a daughter he had out of wedlock was tangentially his fault and the reason he left home 20 years ago. This novel fills in that 20-year gap, and it’s a tragic story of a gifted man who can’t keep himself out of trouble. But one day he meets a woman with whom he falls in love (and it’s reciprocated). The only problem is that this is the 1950s and he’s white and she’s black. Interracial relationships were still illegal in most of the country during this time and didn’t become legal in the entire US until the 1967 Supreme Court ruling in Loving vs. Virginia. Robinson did a masterful job of depicting the desperation of two people from different races being in love in Missouri during this time, when it was against the law. The scenes of her family members trying to “rescue” her from this doomed relationship are filled with tension. Jack knows that he’s only bringing misery to her and her family and he tries many times to call it off. But neither he nor she are willing to give up on their strange love affair. Strange, not only due to race relations at the time, but also because she is a solid citizen with a teaching job and a home; but he’s basically a bum with a prison record and no home. He described himself best in the novel: “I’m a gifted thief. I lie fluently, often for no reason. I’m a bad but confirmed drunk. I have no talent for friendship. What talents I do have I make no use of. I am aware instantly and almost obsessively of anything fragile, with the thought that I must and will break it. This has been true of me my whole life. I isolate myself as a way of limiting the harm I can do.” But their shared experience of being children of preachers, plus their shared love of books, poetry, and music bridges those divides.
If you’re looking for action in a novel, these books aren’t for you, but if you love great writing and deep character development then enjoy this, hopefully not final, installment in this beautiful series. Here are some lines:
“I always lose track of Thanksgiving. It moves around. It’s not for people with disorderly lives.”
Aunts never just drop by. Aunts weigh in.
It is odd, what families do to their children—Faith, Hope, Grace, Glory, the names of his good, plain sisters like an ascending scale of spiritual attainment
He suspected he drank to give himself a way of accounting for the vast difference between any present situation and the intentions that brought him to it.
He crouched by the water and washed his face with his hands, like the first man who ever lived and died would have done, exactly. No one saw him. He was careful of that. People find attention to personal hygiene in public disturbing.
There was a misleading raucousness in a rooming house, where, in fact, many a turbulent soul was, so to speak, silently coming to the end of his rope, or belt or electrical cord, or whatever.
His father would certainly write back, which would give Jack some sense of what he might expect, beyond the usual fondness and pardon and groundless hope.
He seemed to have interrupted something, no doubt a conversation so intense that a moment passed before they adjusted to the fact that anything else could matter.
He was suddenly sure that one small whiskey would give fluency to his thoughts and clarity, as well. How he could find himself persuaded of this again and again, despite all evidence to the contrary...
Jack was not in the habit of mustering hopes, since they invited disappointment,
I started today’s weekday hike at the Bear Lake parking area where there were two spots left. The Glacier Gorge trailhead is the most ideal starting point, but it was full when I passed it. I headed down the trail to Glacier Gorge, then up to Alberta Falls which is where many of the tourists end their hike. The falls are nice but there are many more spectacular falls in the park (but this one is only a one mile walk from the Glacier Gorge trailhead). After around 3 miles I was at the beautiful Mills Lake with its giant rocks and beautiful backdrop. There were several people here along the shore, enjoying the cool lake and the views; some were fishing. Next up the hill was Jewel Lake, even prettier than Mills but with not a single person there even though it’s just a hundred yards or so from Mills. It’s another 2 miles uphill to Black Lake, through thousands of downed trees that were blown over in the November 2011 windstorm; it must have been a lot of work to clear the trail of these trees after that storm. This is a pretty walk, following Glacier Creek, with occasional meadows, waterfalls, and ever increasingly beautiful views. Black Lake is the end of the official trail system here and there were 4 other people enjoying the relative solitude and beauty of this place. There are waterfalls pouring into the lake which is surrounded by tall mountain peaks (Arrowhead, Chief’s Head, and Spearhead, all aptly named). It’s another mile and 600 feet of elevation gain to reach Blue Lake (and total solitude) from here. The social trail is easy to follow for the first half mile and then it’s fairly easy off trail route finding from there to the lake. And what a spectacular setting! It’s sitting on a shelf with expansive views of Mills and Jewel lakes to the north and of the tall and rugged peaks to the south. I was able to climb a ridge above the lake to get some good perspective shots of this beauty. I just sat there taking it all in and replenishing my energy with some snacks. There are several other alpine lakes in this area that I plan to visit on later hikes. Green Lake (to which I’ll need to hike with a friend since there’s a class 3 scramble move to reach it), Shelf Lake, Frozen Lake, and Solitude Lake are all calling my name.
I imagine that August and September may be the best times to visit this area in the summer. There were still some muddy spots, and I can imagine that it’s a quagmire in June and July. A winter hike/snowshoe could be interesting, but it would be a long hike during short days. I made my way back to the trailhead and when I got to the junction where I had to choose another half mile uphill to Bear Lake or 0.3 miles downhill to Glacier Gorge, I chose the latter and waited for the shuttle to take me to Bear Lake. It was worth the 15-minute wait to avoid that uphill slog after 12 miles. On the drive out I saw two turkeys and a huge bull elk. Cars were starting to line up along Moraine Park Road for a chance to view and listen to elks bugling in the early evening.
 |
| Poser chipmunk |
 |
| Glacier Gorge trail leading to the most amazing views |
 |
| I've been to all of these destinations after today |
 |
| Lone tree shot |
 |
| Beautiful Mills Lake |
 |
| Camping to the right, more walking to the left |
 |
| Glacier Creek views |
 |
| Artsy fish shot |
 |
| Aptly named Arrowhead Peak...or is it Spearhead? |
 |
| Horseshoe Bend? |
 |
| Ribbon Falls |
 |
| Ribbon Falls |
 |
| Rock wall views |
 |
| Black Lake reflections |
 |
| Black Lake from the hike up to Blue Lake |
 |
| Jagged mountain peaks |
 |
| Blue Lake just hanging on up here |
 |
| Blue Lake looking the other way |
 |
| Better view of Blue |
 |
| Blue Lake with Mills Lake far below |
 |
| Beautiful alpine terrain |
 |
| I think Solitude Lake is up on that shelf...next time... |
 |
| Trail art |
 |
| Carnage from the 2011 windstorm |
 |
| Aptly named Jewel Lake |
 |
| Mills Lake with sun shining on distant rocks |
 |
| Great lighting for this tree-lake shot at Mills |
 |
| The poser chipmunk was STILL there! |
 |
| Guess we'll never know why.... |
An interviewer once asked her why it took her so long (24 years) to write another novel after Housekeeping. Here is her response: “It was largely as a consequence of the experience of writing ‘Mother Country’(a non-fictional account of the Sellafield nuclear waste disaster in the UK) that I began what amounted to an effort to reeducate myself. After all those years of school, I felt there was little I knew that I could trust, and I did not want my books to be one more tributary to the sea of nonsense that really is what most conventional wisdom amounts to. I am not so naïve as to imagine that I have escaped that fate except in isolated cases and small particulars. But the research and criticism I have done have helped me to be of my own mind in some degree, and that was a feeling I had to achieve before I could enjoy writing fiction.”
I feel much the same about my formal education. I have spent my seven years of retirement largely trying to reeducate myself, and it’s been an amazing journey.
So, the novel, Housekeeping. I enjoyed it. The writing is great. The story is interesting. It’s not at the depth of the Gilead novels, which totally makes sense now that I know what she was doing during the years after her first novel. The story is about three generations of women in a family in Idaho but spends most of the time in the 1950s where two pre-adolescent girls (Ruthie, the narrator, and Lucille, her sister) are being raised by a series of relatives after their mother drops them off at grandmas and then drives her car off a cliff to kill herself (this was 11 years before Thelma and Louise). The lake she and her car end up in is the same lake in which her father had died in a tragic rail incident several years before. The girls rely on each other to the exclusion of all others (family or friends) and eventually their aunt Sylvie, who has lived a transient and homeless life, comes to take care of them. Some have described the book as a female Huckleberry Finn and that description is not bad, because the girls certainly have their fair share of adventures that would not be approved of by most adults. However Sylvie seems to understand the girls better than other adults and gives them pretty much free reign to skip school or stay out in the woods all night.
Lucille eventually grows to despise this about aunt Sylvie, while Ruthie becomes more and more tied to her aunt. The sheriff and the school administrators start to suspect that the girls are being neglected and a court date is set to remove the girls from Sylvie’s care. I won’t spoil the ending which is brilliant. In the end, the story is about family and about one’s memories of relatives they have lost and how those memories can become bigger than life.
Here are some lines:
My grandfather had sometimes spoken of disappointment. With him gone they were cut free from the troublesome possibility of success, recognition, advancement. They had no reason to look forward, nothing to regret.
It was the kind of loneliness that made clocks seem slow and loud and made voices sound like voices across water.
She put our suitcases in the screened porch, which was populated by a cat and a matronly washing machine, and told us to wait quietly. Then she went back to the car and drove north almost to Tyler, where she sailed in Bernice’s Ford from the top of a cliff named Whiskey Rock into the blackest depth of the lake.
the sound of the night wind in the mountains was like one long indrawn breath.
I could smell how raw the wind was. That sort of wind brought out a musk in the fir trees and spread the cold breath of the lake everywhere.
what with the prevalence of loneliness and religion and the rages and ecstasies they induce, and the closeness of families, violence was inevitable.
“That’s how it is with family,” Sylvie said. “You feel them the most when they’re gone.”
...families will not be broken. Curse and expel them, send their children wandering, drown them in floods and fires, and old women will make songs out of all these sorrows and sit in the porches and sing them on mild evenings.
Anyway, back to the hike. I parked my car in a small parking area about 100 yards from the Fern Lake trailhead since its parking was already full at 9:30am on a Tuesday. The hike starts out as a pleasant stroll alongside the Big Thompson River with a very mild elevation gain. At around two miles in I reached the junction with the Cub Lake Trail which I hiked as part of a loop in June of 2021. Here I spotted a mama deer and her fawn. The mama just walked past me but her fawn stood and stared at me like I was some kind of wonder to behold. I imagine young animals feel the same way about spotting humans as we do about spotting them (curious and maybe a bit startled). From here the trail gets steeper. I took a breather at Fern Falls at around mile 2.8. These falls are beautiful and, in my opinion prettier than the more famous and popular Alberta and Chasm Falls. I continued upward to the 4-mile mark and the junction with the Spruce Lake “unimproved” trail (at least that’s what the sign said). The trail is certainly not in the best of condition after two major fires but it’s still relatively easy to follow with the help of some well-placed cairns. Even though the parking lot was full, I only ran into maybe 20 people on the trail, most of them hiking to Fern Lake or the Cub Lake loop. But once I turned onto the Spruce Lake trail, I only saw 4 other people at Spruce Lake and nobody at Loomis Lake. Spruce Lake (at mile 4.8) has a beautiful setting with the needle-shaped Castle Rock to the right and the Gabletop Cirque as the backdrop. I saw two guys fishing and one couple camping at one of the two backcountry camping sites. Next, I headed straight uphill towards Loomis Lake. It’s probably only a half mile from Spruce, but I walked closer to three quarters of a mile as I navigated around downed trees and across boulder fields. There is somewhat of a social trail, but it gets lost many times in the tumble of downed trees. It was worth the adventure as Loomis Lake is gorgeous! The Gabletop Cirque forms a dramatic backdrop to this barely subalpine lake (10,200 feet elevation). I really enjoyed sitting on a rock, eating snacks, watching the fish in the lake and admiring the great views. It was tough to leave, but I had to get back to civilization, so I headed back down. It took me an hour to climb from Spruce Lake up to Loomis, but only half an hour to get back down. Just past Spruce Lake I saw a female moose to my right. She was well camouflaged among the blackened trees, but she sure noticed me and stared at me with her ears flickering until she realized I was no threat. Then she resumed her munching of flowers. A few seconds later I spotted a male moose to my left. He was not happy to see me, and I had to walk off trail a bit to keep my distance. Eventually he also realized I wasn’t a threat and continued grazing. Well that certainly got my heart pounding even though I was walking downhill! They were maybe 20 yards away at most. It’s always a thrilling feeling to be that close to such magnificent animals in the wild without the protection of your car. It makes you feel very small and unprotected, but it’s still an incredible feeling (I wonder if that’s how that fawn felt when it saw me…). With a bit more pep in my step I headed back down the Fern Lake trail to my car. Saw lots of elk in Moraine Park as I drove out. There were several cars parked along the road waiting to hear the elk bugling as it is the start of the rutting season.
 |
| The hike starts out following the Big Thompson River |
 |
| Cute fawn wondering what the hell I was |
 |
| Pretty stretch of small waterfalls along Fern Creek |
 |
| Growth after the fire |
 |
| Trail art, likely enhanced by humans... |
 |
| Beautiful Fern Falls |
 |
| Fire pox? |
 |
| New growth among the charred trees |
 |
| Some trail maintenance on the "unimproved" Spruce Lake trail... |
 |
| Spruce Lake with the pointy Castle Rock behind |
 |
| Loomis Lake backdropped by Gabletop mountain |
 |
| Panorama of Loomis |
 |
| Primo lunch spot |
 |
| Trout cruising the shoreline |
 |
| Artsy shot |
 |
| Still some wild aster or fleabane? hanging in there |
 |
| Big ol' moose munching on wildflowers |
 |
| "Do NOT mess with me" |
 |
| Saw this elk cooling off in Estes Lake on the drive home |
Kalmus is an interesting person. He's brilliant - BA in physics from Harvard, PhD in physics from Columbia, and currently working as an associate project scientist at UCLA's Joint Institute for Regional Earth System Science & Engineering. He's taught high school physics, worked as a software developer and won several science awards for his early work in gravitational forces in space, including the NASA Early Career Achievement Medal. But I imagine the award he's most proud of is the inaugural Transition US Walking the Talk award. Because, unlike most people today who are concerned or terrified about climate change, he may be the one who is most walking the talk.
Tombstone Ridge and Tundra Communities trails in Rocky Mt. National Park – Back in November of 2021 I hiked from Beaver Meadow in RMNP to the Ute Trail with the intention of making it to the top of Tombstone Ridge. I was stopped less than a mile from the top due to heavy snows. My goal today was to hike from Tombstone Ridge down to where I had to stop last November so I could “connect the circuit”. Something I wrote in that November blog post seems to have been a harbinger for today’s hike; I wrote: “Perhaps if I was not alone I could have made it, but I was a long way from help and there was NOBODY on the Ute Trail on this day.”
The Tombstone Ridge hike follows the ancient Ute Trail across a spectacular tundra that many people have seen from their cars while driving Trail Ridge Road. The Ute Trail was one of a few transcontinental trails used by indigenous tribes to cross the Rockies in search of buffalo out on the prairies. It’s about a two mile walk from the small trailhead parking along Trail Ridge Road to where it drops off steeply into Windy Gulch. I saw maybe 10-15 people walking along this 2-mile section of trail, but I was on my own after the drop off. The trail is steep and crumbly the entire way down and I kept checking my GPS to see when I was getting close to where I stopped last year coming up. I was around a quarter mile away when I slipped on the loose rock (probably because I was checking the GPS). I felt a pain in my left hand and looked and saw that my middle finger was at a 90 degree angle to my other fingers. Ow! Some sort of inner being took over and I immediately reset the dislocated finger. I moved it around until it felt right. Then I just about passed out and got nauseous. I sat down to collect myself, got out the first aid kit, took some ibuprofen, taped the injured finger to the other two fingers next to it and then kept heading down the trail. I had to complete the circuit! The climb out was tough, but I kept thinking about those ancient indigenous tribes making this journey and how I’m sure they had injuries (some of them had to be as klutzy as I was, although maybe the klutzy ones got weeded out over the years). Even with the moderate pain, I was able to enjoy the epic views on this hike.
I thought about heading straight home but decided to walk the short Tundra Communities trail that starts at the Rock Cut along Trail Ridge Road. I could either be home with a painful swollen finger or in this beautiful place with a painful swollen finger. I’m glad I did this because I met a fellow New Mexico State alum at the trailhead. We exchanged stories about professors and our lives since then. Then I headed up the paved trail with its informative and interesting signs and got to see even more great views. After this small walk I made a stop at Lava Cliffs because it has one of the coolest views (I discovered this when I asked a ranger what her favorite stop was along the road). By this time the temperature was dropping into the 40s as a storm was coming through, so I decided to head back.
It was a pretty drive back home as the aspens were starting to turn yellow and my finger was starting to turn blue.
Clean by James Hamblin - One of the most entertaining and informative books I've read. Hamblin graduated from the School of Medicine at Indiana University, did his internship in internal medicine at Mount Auburn Hospital and then began a residency as a radiologist at the UCLA Medical Center. He left his residency to become a health journalist at The Atlantic and has since spent most of his young career communicating health issues to the public. In the course of working on this book, he also got a degree in public health and finished a residency in preventive medicine. He's an excellent communicator and uses humor as an important tool. I laughed out loud many times reading this book. I found out afterwards that he was part of a comedy troupe in college and did some improv in LA during his residency.
Although he loved his work on gravitational forces in space, he changed disciplines to study clouds in the atmosphere and their relationship to climate change. He did this after realizing that the climate problem was getting exponentially worse with very little being done to fix it (this is pretty much why I decided to make climate change education and activism my retirement work). In addition to his work, he made the conscious decision in 2010 to "walk the talk" and completely change the way he and his wife and 2 young boys live (luckily for him, his wife and kids have, so far, been all in on this effort). In four years he reduced his carbon footprint from around the US average of 20 tons of C02 per capita per year to 2 tons (near the per capita carbon footprint of India or Indonesia). Note that the US per capita emissions was around 20 tons in the first part of the 2000s but has since reduced to 15.5 due mainly to renewable energy starting to become mainstream and to people taking their own individual steps.
How did he manage this huge reduction? That's the main story in the book. It's a lot and honestly, I don't know that I could make the same kind of commitment, but I have taken steps I'm proud of. His 5 biggest changes in carbon impact were: 1. Eliminating flying (it was his largest contributor as a research scientist), 2. Changing his diet to vegetarian, 3. Bicycling to work, 4. Freeganism (rescuing still good food that restaurants and grocery stores were throwing away), and 5. Composting.
Those are just five of the many, many ways in which he's changed his lifestyle. Others include: Growing as much food as he can, retrofitting his 1984 diesel car to run on waste vegetable oil from restaurants, fixing stuff instead of replacing it, solar hot water heater, and probably his most controversial step: humanure. Yes, it's scientifically possible to use your own waste for compost, but the process is complex, taking 2 years to produce safe compost. Google it.
His main point in all of this, other than to reduce his carbon footprint, is to point out that it has brought him and his family closer to the local community, closer to nature, and made his family healthier and happier. He and his wife also meditate daily to deal with all the normal anxieties of life, like raising kids, working, and of course their intimate knowledge of the toll climate change is exacting on their kids' future. And one nice surprise I learned is that he's involved in his local chapter of Citizens Climate Lobby, the same group I'm in!
Kalmus lives in temperate Southern California, which makes it much easier to bike to work all year and to grow food all year. We don't all have this luxury. He's received many positive reviews for the book, but my favorite was this from one of my favorite climate scientists, Katherine Hayhoe: "So often, we feel that nothing we do will make a difference. Peter doesn’t just dispel that myth, he buries it: under his feral bee hives, his urban chicken run, and his compost heap (just don’t ask what’s in it). These gut-wrenchingly honest yet obstinately hopeful reflections provide a roadmap to building our own personal bulwark against the storm we face today."
There is also a companion documentary that my wife and I recently watched. It's called Being the Change: A New Kind of Climate Documentary. It's not quite as complete as the book but is very good nonetheless. You can watch it for free on Roku and Vudu or for a fee on Amazon Prime and Apple TV.
The Tombstone Ridge hike follows the ancient Ute Trail across a spectacular tundra that many people have seen from their cars while driving Trail Ridge Road. The Ute Trail was one of a few transcontinental trails used by indigenous tribes to cross the Rockies in search of buffalo out on the prairies. It’s about a two mile walk from the small trailhead parking along Trail Ridge Road to where it drops off steeply into Windy Gulch. I saw maybe 10-15 people walking along this 2-mile section of trail, but I was on my own after the drop off. The trail is steep and crumbly the entire way down and I kept checking my GPS to see when I was getting close to where I stopped last year coming up. I was around a quarter mile away when I slipped on the loose rock (probably because I was checking the GPS). I felt a pain in my left hand and looked and saw that my middle finger was at a 90 degree angle to my other fingers. Ow! Some sort of inner being took over and I immediately reset the dislocated finger. I moved it around until it felt right. Then I just about passed out and got nauseous. I sat down to collect myself, got out the first aid kit, took some ibuprofen, taped the injured finger to the other two fingers next to it and then kept heading down the trail. I had to complete the circuit! The climb out was tough, but I kept thinking about those ancient indigenous tribes making this journey and how I’m sure they had injuries (some of them had to be as klutzy as I was, although maybe the klutzy ones got weeded out over the years). Even with the moderate pain, I was able to enjoy the epic views on this hike.
I thought about heading straight home but decided to walk the short Tundra Communities trail that starts at the Rock Cut along Trail Ridge Road. I could either be home with a painful swollen finger or in this beautiful place with a painful swollen finger. I’m glad I did this because I met a fellow New Mexico State alum at the trailhead. We exchanged stories about professors and our lives since then. Then I headed up the paved trail with its informative and interesting signs and got to see even more great views. After this small walk I made a stop at Lava Cliffs because it has one of the coolest views (I discovered this when I asked a ranger what her favorite stop was along the road). By this time the temperature was dropping into the 40s as a storm was coming through, so I decided to head back.
It was a pretty drive back home as the aspens were starting to turn yellow and my finger was starting to turn blue.
 |
| Informative sign at the trailhead |
 |
| Epic views from the start |
 |
| Looking back to the trailhead parking |
 |
| Ute trail leading eastward to the buffalo hunting grounds.... |
 |
| Longs Peak on the left |
 |
| Trail heads sharply downhill here...hang on to your fingers... |
 |
| Trail art |
 |
| Steep and crumbly |
 |
| Fall starting to peek through |
 |
| Views back on top |
 |
| View from the Tundra Communities paved path |
 |
| Nice rock views at the end of the half mile path |
 |
| Mt. Chiquita which I hiked with a college buddy last year. This area must attract New Mexico State alums... |
 |
| Great tundra views |
 |
| Views |
 |
| Funky rock formations |
 |
 |
| I liked this shot of the clouds and rocks |
 |
| Inkwell Lake, center, and Mt. Ida, upper right...future planned hike |
In the book, Hamblin takes you on an educational journey through the history and current state of skin hygiene, from soap to skin care products. He takes several interesting detours (Frederick Law Olmsted, Florence Nightingale) that all sort of lead to the fact that not all the bacteria we carry (in our gut and on our skin) are bad for us. As a matter of fact, many recent studies are showing that we have tended to destroy too much of this good bacteria in our effort to be clean and healthy which may have resulted in many of today's maladies that weren't so prolific years ago (eczema, asthma, psoriasis, gluten allergies, nut allergies, some autoimmune diseases, etc.).
Well before I read this book I had already stopped using deodorant (initially had some BO until my armpit microbiome restarted and now...nothing...mostly). My dermatologist had already told me to stop soaping my entire body as it was drying my skin (now I only soap my hands and "bits"...armpits, privates, feet). And recently I read that shampooing every day was harmful to hair and that once a week with occasional use of conditioner is best, so I've started that routine also with hair that is now not as dry. I still shower daily, but mainly just with water...I have a hard time stopping this morning ritual...plus it gets rid of my unappealing bed-head...which may eventually disappear with the rest of my hair. The book applied scientific evidence to these practices I've started late in life. Most scientists involved in the study of the skin microbiome (who aren't being paid by multi billion dollar skin care companies to develop the next big moneymaker) have the same routine...soap only hands and bits, no shampoo, little to no skin care products, other than sunscreen.
Here are some lines that do a better job of describing the tone of the book than I can. I had a hard time keeping this short, so feel free to stop here, but you'll miss out on some entertaining and interesting facts:
I’d left a career practicing medicine in Los Angeles to try becoming a journalist. Against the advice of pretty much everyone, I was transitioning from a profession that promised a half-million-dollar salary into a globally imploding job market.
I toyed with living in a van, because Instagram made it look so glamorous, but was discouraged adamantly by my girlfriend and everyone else in my life.
What if all those products in our bathrooms—shampoos to remove oils from our hair, and conditioners to replace them; soaps to remove oils from our skin, and moisturizers to replace them—were mostly effective in getting us to buy more products?
It was possible for me to stop showering in large part because I was born with extra credit in the ingrained currency of acceptability in America: I’m an ambulatory white male who appears generally healthy.
The global market for soaps, detergents, deodorants, and hair and skin care products is now valued in the trillions of dollars. The industry has grown to unprecedented heights largely on the promise of defending our bodies from the outside world.
The vast majority of our skin microbes seem to be not simply harmless but important to the skin’s function and, so, to the functioning of our immune systems.
Rates of the inflammatory skin condition known as atopic dermatitis, or eczema, are increasing rapidly. According to the World Health Organization, the prevalence of psoriasis more than doubled between 1979 and 2008.
...to even speak of not showering is, as it’s been put to me, “not really dinner conversation.”
an increasingly isolated, indoor way of living seems to have played a role in altering the functioning of our immune systems—and our primary immune organ, the skin—in ways we are just beginning to understand.
If you ever feel self-conscious about sweating, you might explain to those around you that your body is simply partaking in an elaborate and mysterious biochemical ballet.
Like the microbes that fill our guts, the microbes on our skin rarely cause disease. If anything, they may help protect us from disease. And everything we do—and don’t do—to our skin has some effect on these populations.
In 2014, a group of researchers swabbed the faces of 400 volunteers in North Carolina and discovered microscopic mites called Demodex living on their skin...the initial response from me and so many others was: Good lord, get these off me instantly. Upsetting as it tends to be for people to learn about their mites, it would hypothetically be worse not to have them. When something is a feature of 100 percent of people, this is as close as we will ever get to a proper definition of “normal.”
Life is a constant tension between the need to be close to other people and the need to protect ourselves from other people.
Dr. Bronner: He is pro-legalization and anti–drug war. This would surprise no one who saw him, unless you knew he was the heir and CEO of one of the fastest-growing soap companies on the planet.
(American) colonists more often made (soap) themselves out of surplus animal fat and lye, applying it only in cases of extreme filth. Washing regularly was not simply expensive, but also ate away at clothes and skin alike. The process slowly improved and made soap more tolerable. As some soapmakers began to use a new base, potash, bathing with soap became more common. A method of processing the ash became the first patent in the United States. The one-paragraph document was approved by Thomas Jefferson and signed by George Washington in 1790, giving rise to a patent process that would shape the future of capitalism.
As Chicago’s stockyards started overflowing with excess lard that would often be thrown away, young entrepreneurs took notice. Where others saw piles of decaying animal fat, they saw the American dream. They flocked to the city to get into the soap business much the same way that forty-niners had gone to California in search of gold...two brothers stood apart from the rest. Their name was Lever, and the company they founded would become the world’s largest distributor of soap. They built Lever Brothers—now Unilever—not through innovation in the art of soapmaking, but through the unsubtle art of branding. They sold soap as a health product that would save your life.
Beauty and soap fully merged into one idea with the 1924 birth of the slogan: “Keep That Schoolgirl Complexion.” This was a time when almost no women were admitted to institutions of higher education, so schoolgirl didn’t mean looking like a caffeine-addled grad student.
Lever Brothers introduced a product called Dove with the slogans: “Looks like a soap, it’s used like a soap—but it is not a soap” and: “Dove won’t dry your skin like soap.” Dove was indeed not soap—at least not a “pure” soap. It contained (and still does) an emollient cream, or moisturizer. This decreases its cleansing soapiness but also decreases its propensity for drying skin. That is, the product becomes closer to nothing.
Lever Brothers and other soapers created similarly long-running, simple, loyalty-based shows that would eventually come to be known as soap operas. The most enduring, The Guiding Light, started in 1937 as a radio show by an ill-named soap company called Duz (“Duz does everything”).
Before “talkies,” people were usually famous because they had done things in the world, like inventing the aircraft or leading a country into or out of war. There were musicians and actors, but their faces were not ubiquitous, and their lives were not tracked in minute detail to the point that they would have the power or credibility to drive many people to buy a certain kind of soap. Now, with their moving faces looming over awed crowds, movie stars would become the original influencers.
The wrenching of the new generation’s attention away from TV screens and billboards (just as attention was wrenched from radios a generation before, and trolley-car signs a generation before, and commissioned paintings a generation before) may be the challenge that the soap industry cannot conquer. This has opened a new entryway for start-ups, gurus, and influencers to guide consumers to their products.
The popular acne treatment, a “zit stick,” contains the topical antibiotic benzoyl peroxide. This is the most common ingredient in over-the-counter acne treatments. It is sold in some form by most every skin care, cosmetics, and drugstore brand. Glossier’s product is $14 for just over one tenth of one ounce. I pull out my phone and see that Walmart sells a stick containing 1.5 ounces (nearly fifteen times as much) for $5.
Baumann tells patients that just eating one of those chewable vitamin C pills is “much, much, much more effective than those expensive collagen drinks.”...The definite way to get vitamin C into your body’s cells is the less trendy, time-tested option of eating fresh fruits and vegetables.
The extremely popular product C E Ferulic costs $166 for a single ounce. It’s made by a company called SkinCeuticals and promises to protect against UV radiation and pollution. The three ingredients are simply stated right on the front of the bottle: vitamins C and E and ferulic acid.
“It’s really sad,” she said. “I’ll have a lady come in with Crème de La Mer and these $600 creams, and she thinks she’s doing everything right for her skin, but she’s not on a sunscreen and she’s not on a retinoid and she’s not on vitamin C.” The next patient will be someone who comes in and feels guilty that she’s not taking better care of her skin because she’s busy taking care of her kids. She’s only using sunscreen and a little vitamin A. “I laugh because the second lady’s doing better for her skin than the first.”
Acne is one of the most common reasons that antibiotics are prescribed. Some patients take them for months or even years, despite a very low likelihood that they would be of any benefit and clear evidence that overuse is dangerous. That sort of chronic, unnecessary use of antibiotics renders them ineffective in cases when they’re actually necessary. It also disrupts our gut and skin microbes. Such changes are clearly linked to changes in the functioning of the immune system. They seem to play a part in causing and exacerbating autoimmune disease.
in the U.S., where economic growth has long taken priority over consumer safety, only eleven substances are banned or restricted from use in personal care products. Meanwhile, the European Union and Canada have been reviewing ingredients in personal care products for decades. More than 1,500 chemicals are banned or restricted from these products in the European Union, and some 800 are banned or restricted in Canada.
Adina Grigore is another breakout star from the New York indie scene—and an especially unique case because she both gave up showering and started a skin care company. It’s called S.W. Basics,...“So what I’m trying to do with the line is go, ‘Leave your skin the f**k alone,’” she tells me. “Just leave it alone as much as you can.”
Living among the rolling hills of corn in Pennsylvania and the supine expanses of corn in Indiana are people who almost never get asthma and have very few allergies. And they have, by all credible accounts, abnormally good skin....the Amish communities... “We rarely see eczema or skin problems,” he says...Almost all the studies she reviewed found that farming communities had very low rates of hay fever and allergies.
Some people are likely to develop an autoimmune condition no matter what they do, but the odds are at least affected—if not largely determined—by exposures that train the immune system. Exposure early in life is the key. By three or four years of age, a child’s microbiome is established and the immune system has completed much of its training. Even if a person does not develop an autoimmune condition until later, it seems that the foundation of inflammatory processes is laid in the first few years of life.
Hay fever was once so rare as to be fashionable—a sign of status and affluence. The condition was almost exclusive to isolated elites, while farmers—who were regularly exposed to higher levels of pollen—almost never got it. Since the 1950s, rates of hay fever—as well as multiple sclerosis, Crohn’s disease, food allergies, type 1 diabetes, and asthma—have all roughly tripled.
He’s dressed in jeans, sneakers, and a brown T-shirt, his face unshaven and hair tousled. He does not noticeably smell bad, nor does he look unhealthy, but rather like he doesn’t give a damn what I think of him, because he’s worried about more important things, and he has been working on them since the moment he woke up. He is, in other words, a scientist...“So, I shower,” he says, cutting right to the chase. “I do shower, even though I know the potential implications of it. Not every day, and I don’t tend to use a lot of soap when I do. Occasionally I will wash my hair with a shampoo, but I use a very, very light shampoo.”
If you think of your skin as a house party (as people do) and you have room for twenty guests, you want to invite at least twenty people you at least sort of like so as to minimize the space for people you don’t like—who might end up hanging out late into the night, and then asking for breakfast the next day, and then messing up your bathroom and emptying your fridge and eventually burning down your house.
Lifebuoy is responsible for popularizing the concept of “B.O.”—which was, and remains, an advertising term—and that it brought the brand into the big leagues of soap. Between 1926 and 1930, sales quadrupled...This was insecurity- and fear-based marketing of the sort that would later come to dominate the industry.
Maternal microbes colonize infant intestines in childbirth and immune cells are transferred while breast-feeding. Young children continue amassing microbiota in every contact with family members, while playing outside in dirt, getting licked by dogs, and sharing toys with friends.
The best advice right now is to think of hygiene as similar to medicine—extremely important in some scenarios, and also very possible to overdo.
she tells me that she does what she can to expose herself to nature—and limits her use of antibacterial products. She rarely uses deodorant and avoids hand sanitizers. She showers in the same way as most of the other microbiologists, which is to say, conservatively.
Guest, whose cancer is now in remission, has gone on to work full time with dogs who can pick up on signs of cancer and other conditions...Dogs are sensing much more than our body language or disposition; the dogs really can discern health from disease based on chemicals we emit.
If compounds we emit—based on the microbes we carry—can attract mosquitoes, the implications go beyond malaria. Our chemical signals may even help answer the age-old question of why some people can sit around the campfire and get eaten alive, while others are barely bothered. The current approach of slathering ourselves and our lawns with toxic chemicals is begging to be improved. Some researchers believe the answer lies in the microbes on our skin and in our mouths—not killing them, but masking the specific compounds they give off that mosquitoes detect.
coffee shops draw us even when we just sit in front of our laptops and endure bad music and don’t acknowledge anyone else—except when asking strangers to watch our laptops while we go to the bathroom—something about even the small contacts and physical presence of others seems to sustain us. This might be, in part, due to the chemicals we all give off.
Ben de Lacy Costello has studied the volatiles found in human feces, urine, and saliva, so that you don’t have to.
The grounding effect of walking into a forest can be in part due to the change in the air that’s hitting our airways and skin. The air we describe as “fresh” might be more than just clear of contaminants—the air pollutants responsible for seven million premature deaths every year—but also laden with chemical signals from plants and animals. Fresh air means more than just the absence of bad things; it means the presence of good.
some products that claim to be “probiotic” actually include “bacterial lysate.” That means the bacteria have been lysed, or heated, killed, and broken down...expecting probiotic effects from introducing lysed bacterial parts into your existing microbiome is about as plausible as expecting bacon to populate your pig farm.
I meet Whitlock himself. I shake his hand and am not offended, despite his having spent the better part of two decades without a shower.
I couldn’t help feeling that what started out as a fun piece about showering had somehow turned into an inquiry about the future of billion-dollar industries. Some of the most cutting-edge research is coming from people funded by or working directly for companies that are developing products to sell. There are few experts one can talk to who don’t have money in the skin care game.
There is additional security here because the facility houses nonhuman primates, which people sometimes try to liberate.
The time-tested way to optimize the immune system still seems to be through once-common, diverse, early-life exposures.
Around the world, millions of girls drop out of school each year because of hygiene issues relating to menstruation.
The fallout from douching—the act of flushing the vagina with water and other products in order to “clean” it—may actually be the first widely recognized instance of the negative effects of hygiene on the microbiome...Part of why it took so long to figure out what was going on—and why douching is still practiced by some women in the U.S. and around the world—was a lack of conversations around women’s health.
If you don’t like the word “anus,” you may want to skip this bit and go for a long walk and reflect on that fear of anuses. Say the word aloud, again and again, louder and louder, until it loses its power over you.
Hospitals in the 1800s were where people went not to be healed, but to suffer and die. They were a sort of anteroom to hell—or heaven, sorry, heaven. Wherever your head is.
Though (Florence) Nightingale had a moment as possibly the world’s first hygiene influencer, by the end of the century the roots of germ theory would take hold. Nightingale’s advocacy of open air and exposure to nature got lost in the crusade to eliminate all microbes.
The most urgent needs in the domain of human health today, globally, are clean air and water. Close behind are toilets, social connection, exposure to nature, and an active life in a safe environment.
A century and a half after Olmsted’s vision for public health led him to build parks, we’ve built fences and walls, and many of us live on cul-de-sacs with lawns full of pesticides and herbicides that are intended to kill everything but one particular species of grass. Our bathrooms are lined with bottles and creams and sprays that promise to protect us from the outside world, and now, increasingly, to restore the ecosystems we have washed away.
I’m not suggesting everyone should give up on skin care or quit showering. More than anything, this whole experiment helped me understand their value. These habits are profoundly personal, and it’s important that decisions about them are made with maximal autonomy...This book is meant only to offer an alternative perspective on how our personal care habits affect our bodies and the communities on and around us.
From pharmaceuticals to soaps and other personal care products, Americans are clearly overpaying for—and overusing—products and services that are supposed to make us healthier. The pattern of consumption is unsustainable, and much of it may be doing more harm than good. The greatest advances were those basic gestures at exposing people to nature—letting us have space to move, clean air to breathe, people to socialize and build relationships with, and plants, animals, and soil that bring us the microbes we evolved to be covered and sustained by.
Until next month, happy reading and rambling!