October 2022
Books read:
- The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo
- The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity by David Graeber & David Wengrow
- How to do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy by Jenny Odell
- Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens
Trails walked:
- Serpent Lake near Taos, NM (Oct 6th)
- Joder Ranch Trail near Lyons (Oct 14th)
- Mount Ida in Rocky Mountain National Park (Oct 19th)
- Wapiti/Ponderosa Loop in Heil Valley Ranch near Lyons (Oct 26th)
Song(s) of the month – Meschiya Lake
- When I Get Low I Get High
- I Get the Blues When it Rains
- Satan Your Kingdom Must Come Down
- Waiting
Scientist Spotlight – Marija Gimbutas, archeologist and anthropologist
October Summary:
The World Series is taking place as I'm finishing up this month's blog. Those of you who have followed my writing know that I love baseball, a dying sport that is way too slow for our attention distracted society (One of the books I read this month addresses this somewhat). In 1960, baseball was American sports fans' most popular sport. TV and the NFL changed that. The other thing that changed it was that baseball games went from averaging 2.5 hours to over 3 hours due to many things that they are trying to address now, but it may be too late. Even though it seems to be turning into a niche sport enjoyed by only a few, I will always love the game. The way it unfolds like a novel, slowly building up the characters and the suspense, with interspersed surprises along the way. Plus I still believe that hitting a baseball is the hardest thing to do in sports; the best players fail 70% of the time to get a hit.
There is one very negative aspect of watching the World Series live during an election year: the preponderance of political ads. Does anybody seriously believe ANY of these ads? From either side? It's almost laughable to watch these hit jobs. Those on the conservative side depict our country as being some sort of dystopian world created by progressives, while those on the progressive side warn of a coming dystopian world if we elect conservatives. Fuzzy black and white unflattering images of the "bad guys" and colorful, happy images of the "good guys." Do the people making these ads really believe Americans are that dumb? Maybe we are. Maybe they're right. I mean, they spend millions on research to determine just what buttons to push. It's depressing and confounding. I remember growing up as a kid, my dad was a Democrat and my mom was a Republican. Neither of them defined themselves as one or the other and they frequently voted for someone outside their party. They always told us that we should vote for the person that we think is the smartest and had our best interests at heart. That's how I started my voting. Readers of this blog may be surprised to learn that I first registered as a Republican. However I never voted down the party line; I always chose the person I believed was right for the job. By the mid 1990s with the advent of Fox News and the religious right's takeover of the Republican party, I changed my affiliation to Independent, where I've been ever since. Even as an Independent I still voted for the person I felt was right, voting for McCain in 2008 over Obama because I thought he deserved it and was the most qualified and had the public's interest at heart (even though he screwed up in his running mate choice). And I voted for Bush Sr. over Clinton in 1992 because I thought he was smart, a good man, and cared about the American people. Everyone has their key issues and my key issue these days is climate change. Since it's been my key issue, and since Republicans continue to drag their feet on the topic, I have been mostly voting for Democratic politicians, hoping that this critical issue of our time will finally be addressed. Believe it or not there are Republicans out there who have actually studied the science and want to aggressively address climate change, unfortunately they end up getting voted out in their primaries now because climate change is not part of the conservative agenda yet (see Bob Inglis and Carlos Curbelo). It will be, eventually. The conservative pollster, Frank Luntz, showed in 2019 that 75% of Republicans under 40 supported a tax on carbon. This reminds me of one of the lines I read in one of this month's books:
Max Planck once remarked that new scientific truths don’t replace old ones by convincing established scientists that they were wrong; they do so because proponents of the older theory eventually die, and generations that follow find the new truths and theories to be familiar, obvious even.
This month I read three nonfiction books on everything from tidying up to ancient history to the social ramifications of social media. I did manage to sneak in one fiction book which was riveting. My hikes included a snowy walk near Taos, an epic Rocky Mountain National Park hike, and two nice walks in the foothills near home. Enjoy.
Scientist Spotlight: Marija Gimbutas
Yet another woman in a mid 1900s scientific man's field who was criticized by her (mostly male) peers, but whose works have been vindicated by time and enlightenment. I heard about her work while reading this month's The Dawn of Everything and so I wanted to know more about her. Born in Lithuania in 1921 to parents who were both medical doctors and who supported traditional folk arts, she grew up amongst the most acclaimed Lithuanian musicians and writers of her day. She received her university education in Lithuania and Germany in several fields of study while she and her husband were raising two children and being rocked between Soviet and Nazi occupation in the late 30s and early 40s. The family moved to the US in the 1950s where she became a lecturer and translator of eastern European archeology documents. In 1964 she became a Professor of European Archaeology and Indo-European Studies at UCLA. She combined several disciplines in her search for archeological answers, including religion, philosophy, anthropology, linguistics, ethnology, and mythology; this was unusual in her field at the time but has become more common today to help reveal the mysteries of the past. She also was able to read 18 different languages, which is an incredible advantage when reviewing the works of past scientists who have studied ancient European history.
Yet another woman in a mid 1900s scientific man's field who was criticized by her (mostly male) peers, but whose works have been vindicated by time and enlightenment. I heard about her work while reading this month's The Dawn of Everything and so I wanted to know more about her. Born in Lithuania in 1921 to parents who were both medical doctors and who supported traditional folk arts, she grew up amongst the most acclaimed Lithuanian musicians and writers of her day. She received her university education in Lithuania and Germany in several fields of study while she and her husband were raising two children and being rocked between Soviet and Nazi occupation in the late 30s and early 40s. The family moved to the US in the 1950s where she became a lecturer and translator of eastern European archeology documents. In 1964 she became a Professor of European Archaeology and Indo-European Studies at UCLA. She combined several disciplines in her search for archeological answers, including religion, philosophy, anthropology, linguistics, ethnology, and mythology; this was unusual in her field at the time but has become more common today to help reveal the mysteries of the past. She also was able to read 18 different languages, which is an incredible advantage when reviewing the works of past scientists who have studied ancient European history.
The work for which she was criticized was the discovery that there were widespread periods of relative peace among European tribes and that one of the reasons for this was because of the shared matriarchal/patriarchal tendencies of those peaceful societies. This theory was disputed by one powerful archeologist at the time (Colin Renfrew) because it didn't match his, now disproved, theories. He, and many of his proteges spent years attacking her work by presenting half truths and propagating them through their work, including calling her work sexist by stating she attributed the peace to the matriarchy when in fact she never said this (all of her work suggested a partnership). Charlene Spretnak wrote a comprehensive article in 2011 describing the backlash against Gimbutas and how all of those criticisms of her have proven to be unfounded. Gimbutas was aware of these attacks and shortly before her death in 1994 had an abiding faith in science and predicted that it would take thirty-five years for her insights, observations, and conclusions to become accepted by the field. As the authors of The Dawn of Everything have revealed, discoveries in the field in the past 20 years have vindicated many of her theories.
An interesting aspect of her life was that she was colleagues with the famous mythologist, Joseph Campbell who was an influence on my understanding of the world when I read his Hero With a Thousand Faces several years ago. Another interesting aspect (among so many) is that American author Mary MacKey wrote four award winning historical fiction novels based on Gimbutas' work (The Village of Bones, The Year The Horses Came, The Horses At The Gate, and The Fires of Sprin), which I have now placed on my reading list.
Song(s) of the month: Various by Meschiya Lake
Serpent Lake near Taos, NM - We picked early October to visit our daughter and her fiancé in Taos this month. It gave us the opportunity to get our fix of delicious New Mexican food, plus it gave me another opportunity to do a hike with my daughter. Our initial plan was to hike Jicarita Peak, a nearly 13,000-foot peak in the Pecos Wilderness between Taos and Santa Fe. But plans change with the weather and we ran into 4 inches of snow on the ground after 3 miles. Who knew my first snow hike of the year would be in New Mexico!? This hike was in the northern most burn area of the Hermit Peak/Calf Canyon fire that devastated northern NM this summer, wiping out 4,000 homes and destroying several structures dating back to Spanish colonial times. Not only was the snow getting deeper, but there were several downed trees at this point so walking was getting tougher. We called an audible and headed over to Serpent Lake instead, which was around a half mile away down in a small valley. For most of the hike we had some light rain, clouds and fog so there weren’t any views today. I imagine Serpent Lake is gorgeous when you can see it, but today it was like a Scottish Loch…I kept expecting a large serpent to rise from the fog…I mean it was named Serpent Lake for a reason. By this time our toes were getting cold and we didn’t spend much time taking in the non-existent views. We headed back down the trail and back home to central heating and dry socks.
The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo – I’ve had this book on my list for a while. It was published in 2014 and was so popular that she was listed as one of Time's "100 most influential people" in 2015. I’m not necessarily looking to declutter and as a matter of fact it’s probably impossible for reasons only those close to me know. But I did want to see what all this was about. I’ve met and worked with many Japanese people and have visited Tokyo a couple of times. I find that, in general, my personality is more suited to the Japanese way of life (subtle, collectivist, quiet) than it is the American way of life (blunt, individualistic, loud). However, even though I’ve always had a strong work ethic, I don’t think I would want to outwork any of my Japanese coworkers who regularly put in 16-hour days.
Tidiness and cleanliness are Japanese cultural hallmarks, so when one Japanese person stands out in this area, one should probably pay attention. Marie Kondo was apparently born to be tidy. Throughout her book she talks about her childhood as one long life lesson on how to be tidy. She seems to make a pretty good living now helping others get their homes in order. You’ve probably all heard her mantra, that you should discard any of your belongings that don’t bring you joy. She generally sees her clients discarding up to three quarters of their belongings after following her process. And she claims a 100% success rate in that none of her clients have ever reverted to their old ways.
Her philosophy includes having a healthy respect and regard for all of your belongings, including thanking them for their use (thank you shirt for keeping me warm and feeling confident today). It probably seems strange to most of us, but I can understand her point. It’s having gratitude, and that is something clearly lacking in most of our lives these days. In Braiding Sweetgrass I learned to have gratitude for nature, so maybe it’s ok to have gratitude for inanimate objects that you use every day.
Here are a few lines:
Start by discarding. Then organize your space, thoroughly, completely, in one go. If you adopt this approach—the KonMari Method—you’ll never revert to clutter again.
People cannot change their habits without first changing their way of thinking.
One reason so many of us never succeed at tidying is because we have too much stuff. This excess is caused by our ignorance of how much we actually own.
the best way to choose what to keep and what to throw away is to take each item in one’s hand and ask: “Does this spark joy?” If it does, keep it. If not, dispose of it.
Things that bring back memories, such as photos, are not the place for beginners to start…The best sequence is this: clothes first, then books, papers, komono (miscellany), and lastly, mementos
When you come across something that you cannot part with, think carefully about its true purpose in your life. You’ll be surprised at how many of the things you possess have already fulfilled their role. By acknowledging their contribution and letting them go with gratitude, you will be able to truly put the things you own, and your life, in order. In the end, all that will remain are the things that you really treasure.
Imagine what it would be like to have a bookshelf filled only with books that you really love. Isn’t that image spellbinding? For someone who loves books, what greater happiness could there be?
The space in which we live should be for the person we are becoming now, not for the person we were in the past.
If you have lived in Japan or the United States all your life, you have almost certainly been surrounded by far more than you need.
our possessions very accurately relate the history of the decisions we have made in life.
But when we really delve into the reasons for why we can’t let something go, there are only two: an attachment to the past or a fear for the future.
The question of what you want to own is actually the question of how you want to live your life.
In essence, tidying ought to be the act of restoring balance among people, their possessions, and the house they live in.
The true purpose of tidying is, I believe, to live in the most natural state possible. Don’t you think it is unnatural for us to possess things that don’t bring us joy or things that we don’t really need? I believe that owning only what we love and what we need is the most natural condition.
Joder Ranch near Lyons – I’ve passed by this trailhead between Boulder and Lyons many times since moving to Colorado, but there were always more interesting places to go. But with the baseball playoffs in full wild card swing, I was looking for a quick hike in between games so I headed here.
Anna Joder started a ranch here in 1954 and it became an award-winning Arabian horse ranch housing nearly 100 Arabian horses. She passed the ranch down to her son and daughter-in-law and they eventually sold it to the Boulder Open Space and Mountain Parks in 2013. By 2015 the Joder Ranch trail was built, with eventual plans to connect Boulder to Lyons via multi-use trails.
The trail is a 4 mile out and back that starts just off US36 about halfway between Boulder and Lyons and ends on Old Stage Road near Buckingham Park. The trail rises around 500 feet in 2 miles and takes you from rolling grassland hills up to ponderosa pine forest with nice views of the plains and the Flatirons along the way. I imagine that hiking here in the summer would be a bit warm with possibilities of rattlesnake sightings but fall and spring seem ideal and it could be a nice winter walk also. The traffic was very light on this Friday afternoon; a couple of dog walkers and one mountain biker. It’s a fairly easy trail with a steady elevation gain. The first half of the hike is along an old dirt road and there are some private driveways here that would be confusing if not for the helpful trail signage pointing the correct way (I didn’t run into any cars making their way to or from their home on this day). The second half is more of a normal walking trail through the pines. It doesn’t have the sweeping views of the front range trails nearer Boulder, but it’s nevertheless a nice walk when you only have an hour or two in between wild and wooly baseball playoff games (how is it possible that the mighty Dodgers got beat!? That’s playoff baseball).
The Dawn of Everything by David Graeber & David Wengrow – A finalist for the 2022 Orwell Prize for Political Writing, this fascinating book searches for answers, and asks new questions, about human history based on the latest 30 years of discoveries in the fields of archeology and anthropology. David Graeber was an anthropologist and David Wengrow is an archaeologist, both based in England. Graeber passed away suddenly in September of 2020, just one month after he and Wengrow completed the book (after 10 years of research and writing). It was generally well received throughout the anthropology and archeology communities, and even those that had issues with the book admitted to its revolutionary ideas. Reviews ranged from “a masterpiece” to “interesting”.
I can’t possibly synthesize all their ideas in this 700-page book of human history, but I’ll try to mention a few. The book begins and ends with the story of a Wendat (aka Huron) chief named Kondiaronk who lived in what is now northern Michigan in the latter half of the 17th century. He was a brilliant orator, philosopher, and thinker whose ideas quite likely made their way back to Paris via his relationships with French explorers and missionaries. It's possible (even likely given the evidence in the book) that the Enlightenment thinkers of France in the 18th century built on many of his ideas. Of course, I was really drawn to this idea because I have slowly been coming around to the idea that indigenous tribes were always the best stewards of the land and of community (until Europeans and “progress” took it all away).
In between the beginning and ending of the book, the authors take us to ancient civilizations from China to the Americas to Europe to India to Mesopotamia to Africa and all places in between. They suggest that current popular views on the steady progress of western civilization (Francis Fukuyama, Jared Diamond, Steven Pinker and Yuval Noah Harari) are not supported by recent anthropological or archaeological evidence. They believe that the transition from foraging to agriculture was not a steady progress throughout history and show proof of large-scale societies that have developed in the absence of nefarious kings and top-down systems of government. They offer up evidence where people rose up to change the inequality of large urban civilizations into a more egalitarian society that thrived for centuries. Mention is made of other archeologists and anthropologists in the past that share their views, but most of them were ostracized by their scientific communities because their views didn’t fit the norms of the day (See this month's scientist spotlight).
There is more and more evidence of societies led by women that were successful and far less violent than the normal patriarchal societies of war and violence which we know more about (mainly because there’s more evidence of violent times – broken skulls, sacrificial temples etc.; and far less evidence of peaceful times, although this is changing with better archaeological technology like LIDAR).
At times, the authors went too deep into the woods for me and I had to Homer Simpson my way through (mmm donuts), but mostly it was very readable and fascinating. Here are some lines:
what we have now is a spectacular improvement on anything our species accomplished in its history so far (unless you’re Black, or live in Syria, for example).
the real breakthrough moment came when we decided to move away from European thinkers like Rousseau entirely, and instead consider perspectives that derive from those indigenous thinkers who ultimately inspired them.
anyone making an argument that non-Christian ways were in any way superior might find themselves facing charges of atheism, which was potentially a capital offence.
Between war, slavery, imperialism and sheer day-to-day racist oppression, the last several centuries have seen so much human suffering justified by minor differences in human appearance that we can easily forget just how minor these differences really are.
Perhaps the only thing we can say with real certainty is that, in terms of ancestry, we are all Africans.
One of the things that sets us apart from non-human animals is that animals produce only and exactly what they need; humans invariably produce more. We are creatures of excess, and this is what makes us simultaneously the most creative, and most destructive, of all species.
The term Fertile Crescent was invented in the nineteenth century, when Europe’s imperial powers were carving up the Middle East according to their own strategic interests.
much of what we have come to learn in the last forty or fifty years has thrown conventional wisdom into disarray. In some regions, we now know, cities governed themselves for centuries without any sign of the temples and palaces that would only emerge later; in others, temples and palaces never emerged at all.
In each of the cases we’ve considered so far – Ukrainian mega-sites, Uruk Mesopotamia, the Indus valley – a dramatic increase in the scale of organized human settlement took place with no resulting concentration of wealth or power in the hands of ruling elites.
All the evidence suggests that Teotihuacan had, at its height of its power, found a way to govern itself without overlords – as did the much earlier cities of prehistoric Ukraine, Uruk-period Mesopotamia and Bronze Age Pakistan.
the Natchez (who called themselves Théoloël, or ‘People of the Sun’) represent the only undisputed case of divine kingship north of the Rio Grande.
...women, their work, their concerns and innovations are at the core of this more accurate understanding of civilization… What until now has passed for ‘civilization’ might in fact be nothing more than a gendered appropriation – by men, etching their claims in stone – of some earlier system of knowledge that had women at its centre.
Instead of some male genius realizing his solitary vision, innovation in Neolithic societies was based on a collective body of knowledge accumulated over centuries, largely by women, in an endless series of apparently humble but in fact enormously significant discoveries.
Who was the first person to figure out that you could make bread rise by the addition of those microorganisms we call yeasts? We have no idea, but we can be almost certain she was a woman
Mount Ida in Rocky Mountain National Park – On many drives along Trail Ridge Road in RMNP over the past couple of years, I’ve stopped at the Rock Cut overlook to gaze out at Mount Ida and the alpine lakes below it. The useful website rockymountainhikingtrails.com lists this as the number one hike in RMNP, and I honestly can’t argue with that subjective viewpoint. Likely named after the Mt. Ida on the island of Crete, birthplace of Zeus, I knew I would hike it some day and today was the day. A perfect October fall day (it was in the upper 70s in Longmont and in the upper 30s/lower 40s on this hike, most of which is over 11,000 feet). I started out at the Milner Pass trailhead, which is actually closed now due to bathroom improvements, so I had to park along Poudre Lake and walk a hundred yards or so to the trailhead. It’s a sporadic climb (some steep parts, some level, some downhill) of 2,500 feet in 5 miles to reach the summit; don’t believe the sign at the trailhead that says it’s 4 miles to Mt. Ida. In just over a mile of forest walking you’re deposited onto the beautiful tundra where most of this hike takes place. The views are stunning everywhere you look. Be sure to gaze into the chasm on your left at the base of Mount Ida before summiting, it’s, erm, gorgeous. The last mile or so to the summit is your typical route finding and boulder hopping that you encounter at this elevation, but compared to most summits of this height, there is an actual trail most of the way if you’re able to stay on it (not always possible due to conditions, your exhaustion level, your desire to take a more direct route to the top, etc.). The views from the top are spectacular; alpine lakes below, 360-degree views of mountains and valleys, and some nice shelter from the wind which was blowing at around 20-25mph up here today. If I were to hike this trail in the summer I’d want to leave real early because you are above tree line for most of the hike and I wouldn’t want to be up here in a thunderstorm. This was the advantage of hiking it on a nice fall day…zero chance of thunderstorms on this day.
I also managed to get a glimpse of some bighorn sheep not too far away and some elk pretty far away. I’d say that I ran into maybe 7 people on the entire hike today and I had the summit to myself, so lots of solitude this time of year during the week. Another perk of this hike is that the drive there and back is along Trail Ridge road which is always a treat to drive. It will close soon due to winter conditions so it was great to be out here before it does.
How to do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy by Jenny Odell - Jenny Odell is an artist, writer, and Stanford professor based in Oakland, CA. This book was published in 2019 and mainly has received positive reviews, although some of the negative reviews revolving around her privileged ability to “do nothing” while living in the Bay area of northern California do have their points.
So, this really isn’t a “how to” book regardless of what the title says. It’s really a philosophy book about a certain way to approach modern day life. She references philosophers and artists from the past to put her own personal philosophy into focus. Of course I was thrilled when she referenced Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer, one of the best books on nature and how to live life I’ve ever read. If you are a person who makes your livelihood via social media, then you will likely hate this book. But if you’ve found that social media seems lacking, or that it takes away time from other things you love, then you might appreciate its message.
I guess if I had to list four takeaways, it would be the following:
1) Context. Social Media, in general, lacks context, especially on complicated issues like climate change, history, immigration, gun rights, abortion, etc. This lack of context leads to misinformation and to unproductive online arguments. Context takes time and space to provide and to understand. It’s why reading a 300-page book vs a 300-character tweet (ok 280) can make all the difference in the world. Also, the time you may need to process information doesn’t always fit into the immediacy of social media.
2) Information may need to be delivered differently to different groups. The two examples she gave here are good. In the first she describes a college student coming back from a study abroad program in Europe. Before social media that student would provide his parents with a G-rated version of his experience; his friends with an R-rated version; and his professors with a more culturally nuanced version. Today, his experience will be there on social media for all to see, good or bad.
The other example was her study of organized activism prior to social media, where messages (on racial inequality for example) were first vetted in small groups, then practiced in small presentations, then vetted even more in larger groups before finally going to the public at large. Now messages, good or bad, are spewed immediately to potentially millions of people (sometimes this is good, other times it can be disastrous).
3) The healing power of nature. I’ve read so many books about this topic and I’ve been fortunate enough to be able to experience this feeling. Nature does heal and we’re just now starting to get back the knowledge which indigenous people used to know (and live by) instinctively.
4) Algorithms. Social media is rife with algorithms that eventually provide you with feeds that feed your own confirmation bias. I loved her example of Spotify, where her musical suggestions stayed in her lane, but then she was never exposed to music she never knew she’d enjoy. My own personal example here has to do with the excellent HBO series that nobody has heard about called Treme. It’s by David Simon of The Wire fame and it’s all about post-Katrina New Orleans; the food, the music, the corruption. I’ve found music during this show that Spotify would never have suggested for me that I have loved!
Here are some lines:
The convenience of limitless connectivity has neatly paved over the nuances of in-person conversation, cutting away so much information and context in the process.
..the villain here is not necessarily the Internet, or even the idea of social media; it is the invasive logic of commercial social media and its financial incentive to keep us in a profitable state of anxiety, envy, and distraction.
simple awareness is the seed of responsibility.
Media companies trying to keep up with each other create a kind of “arms race” of urgency that abuses our attention and leaves us no time to think.
my most-liked Facebook post of all time was an anti-Trump screed. In my opinion, this kind of hyper-accelerated expression on social media is not exactly helpful (not to mention the huge amount of value it produces for Facebook). It’s not a form of communication driven by reflection and reason, but rather a reaction driven by fear and anger.
what drives the machine is not the content of information but the rate of engagement.
Students duly and expertly carry out complicated maneuvers in which one misstep—whether that’s getting a B or getting arrested for attending a protest—might have untenable lifelong consequences.
In the short term, distractions can keep us from doing the things we want to do. In the longer term, however, they can accumulate and keep us from living the lives we want to live,
Let’s not forget that, in a time of increasing climate-related events, those who help you will likely not be your Twitter followers; they will be your neighbors.
My dad, a musician for much of his life, says that this is actually the definition of good music: music that “sneaks up on you” and changes you.
I have long appreciated the way that indigenous stories animate the world. They are not only repositories of observations and analyses made over millennia, but also models of gratitude and stewardship.
Context is what appears when you hold your attention open for long enough; the longer you hold it, the more context appears…lack of context can be felt most acutely in the waves of hating, shaming, and vindictive public opinion that roll unchecked through platforms like Facebook and Twitter.
because apologizing and changing our minds online is so often framed as a weakness, we either hold our tongues or risk ridicule.
thought and deliberation require not just incubation space (solitude and/or a defined context) but incubation time.
(City) Parks don’t just give us the space to “do nothing” and inhabit different scales of attention. Their very existence, especially in the midst of a city or on the former sites of extraction, embodies resistance. (I thought of my last month’s scientist spotlight, Frederick Law Olmsted, after reading this)
Wapiti/Ponderosa Loop near Lyons – The day before the season’s first snow came to the Front Range, I decided to hike up to the Ponderosa Loop. I walked this loop in April of 2021 where I accessed it from the Picture Rock trail in Lyons. Today I approached it from the Wapiti trail in the south near Altona. This part of the trail was closed in 2021 due to recovery from the 2020 Cal-Wood fire and was just reopened in the spring of this year. This set of trails has been set up for mountain biking and maintained by the Boulder Mountainbike Alliance, but I only ran into 5 bikers today (plus one trail runner and zero hikers). The Main trailhead was closed for repairs (which may explain the low number of bikers) so I started a mile and a half south at the Corral trailhead.
I stitched together 4 trails for this hike, starting on the Grindstone Quarry trail where I saw remnants of an old quarry where they dug up grindstones for sharpening blades in the early 1900s. About halfway up this trail I stood for a while and watched a coyote on the edge of a prairie dog town that was inciting a loud panic among the prairie dogs. Next, I hopped on the Wapiti trail which currently has a detour around a nesting golden eagle pair who set up their home here while the trail was closed for fire recovery. The detour is along a dirt road and only lasts half a mile so it’s not bad. I didn’t see any wapiti on this trail, but I saw SOOO many deer. Plus, I saw one of the aforementioned golden eagles hunting above the prairie dog town. I reached the Ponderosa Loop trail at mile 4.4 and made my way around it clockwise to get a nice view of the South St. Vrain valley leading into Lyons. And I saw lots of ponderosa pines, so it’s an appropriately named trail. To get back to the Wapiti trail, I opted to walk the Wild Turkey trail in hopes of finding its namesake bird, but only saw an old abandoned trailer sitting in a meadow. I guess Abandoned Trailer would be a bad name for a trail. It was a crisp, cool day in the forest with temps hovering in the upper 40s, so the 11.5-mile walk didn’t seem as long as it was. I’m glad I didn’t get stuck here overnight because I saw the place covered with snow the next morning from my house!
Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens - One of the biggest selling novels ever, this 2018 book was on everyone's to-read list a few years ago, especially after Reese Witherspoon included it in her book of the month club. I try to avoid reading the "it" book of the season, at least until after the hubub has died down. But both my daughter and daughter-in-law highly recommended it. And I'm glad they did (and I understand why they did). It's a story about a girl, Kya, who was abandoned by her family in the marshes of North Carolina in the 1950s. She managed to live by herself with some help from the nearby African American community (who were as shunned as she was by the local townsfolk). Her story of fending for herself as she aged from a frightened 7-year-old to a confident and capable woman was intertwined with a murder mystery that occurred in 1969. The stories eventually merge into a riveting courtroom drama reminiscent of To Kill a Mockingbird (complete with the "colored" section in the balcony of the courtroom).
The most beautiful part of the writing involved Kya's relationship with the plants and animals of the marsh. The writing involving other people was a bit more standard. This all made sense to me when I read that the author is a zoologist who has spent a lot of time on her own in the wilderness. As a side note, there has been some controversy about the author's involvement in the murder of a poacher in Zambia in the 1990s. It sounds like the stuff of another novel.
My wife and I recently completed watching all 3.5 seasons of the great post-Katrina New Orleans TV series Treme. Hardly anybody watched it (it was the lowest watched drama on HBO while it ran), but the critics loved it. And since it was created by David Simon and Eric Overmyer of The Wire fame, we had to watch it. It was great. It's about the music, food, crime, corruption, and culture of New Orleans set in the days and years following Katrina. There was so much great (and varied) music in the show. I found myself Googling the artists after each show and adding some to my playlists. One of the artists I discovered was Meschiya Lake. She was noticeable for her powerful presence due both to her voice and her facial tattoos! Reading about her I found out she is from South Dakota and when she was 9 years old she won $500 in a singing contest. She eventually joined a circus troupe, travelled Europe, learned to sing all the great jazz and gospel songs of the past and ended up in New Orleans where she found "her people." She's been a staple there ever since, winning several local awards for her music. She's also become somewhat famous in Europe where jazz is better appreciated than here in the states.
Dan Baum, writing for the New Yorker at the time described her best: "Meschiya Lake rocks back on her heels, lifts her chest, and opens her throat like an air raid siren to croon in a thrilling pre-microphone style that…can make you feel by turns as though you were shivering around a campfire in a railroad yard or drinking in a Budapest nightclub in 1938."
Here are a few samples of her work:
When I Get Low I Get High: Chick Webb and his orchestra with Ella Fitzgerald first recorded this in 1937. This is her busking with her group, The Loose Marbles, in New Orleans circa 2007:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUeI4Q9ePEg&t=5s
I Get the Blues When it Rains: Written and first recorded in 1928 by Carl Haworth, it's been covered by dozens of people since, including Judy Garland, Jerry Lee Lewis and The Mardi Gras Jazzband. This is Meschiya a few years (and a few tattoos) later in 2010:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IgPBRnM6R94
Satan Your Kingdom Must Come Down: The first known recording of this gospel standard was in 1931 by Blind Joe Taggert. It's also been recorded by Willie Nelson and Robert Plant which goes to show that it defies a genre. This is Meschiya and her band, The Little Big Horns, playing the song last year in New Orleans:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PzI1fVhCmaA
Waiting: Here she is with Erika Lewis as their band Magnolia Beacon with an original of theirs. This shows her talented range. Erika Lewis (another New Orleans music icon) was also featured occasionally on Treme:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oakNZzm5FLM
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| A bit swampy at the start.... |
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| Daughter avoiding the waterlogged trail |
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| This is the trail.... |
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| Waterfalls where they shouldn't be due to fire and flooding |
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| Foggy mountain breakdown... |
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| Trail art...black eagle? |
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| Snow!!! |
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| The trees were draped with mossy hangings like a rain forest |
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| It got a bit challenging here with downed trees blocking the trail |
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| Daughter and Wonder dog along the gloomy lake |
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| Searching for the serpent of Serpent Lake...or the Loch Ness monster... |
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| Heading back through the snow |
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| Bright green among the blackened trees |
Tidiness and cleanliness are Japanese cultural hallmarks, so when one Japanese person stands out in this area, one should probably pay attention. Marie Kondo was apparently born to be tidy. Throughout her book she talks about her childhood as one long life lesson on how to be tidy. She seems to make a pretty good living now helping others get their homes in order. You’ve probably all heard her mantra, that you should discard any of your belongings that don’t bring you joy. She generally sees her clients discarding up to three quarters of their belongings after following her process. And she claims a 100% success rate in that none of her clients have ever reverted to their old ways.
Her philosophy includes having a healthy respect and regard for all of your belongings, including thanking them for their use (thank you shirt for keeping me warm and feeling confident today). It probably seems strange to most of us, but I can understand her point. It’s having gratitude, and that is something clearly lacking in most of our lives these days. In Braiding Sweetgrass I learned to have gratitude for nature, so maybe it’s ok to have gratitude for inanimate objects that you use every day.
Here are a few lines:
Start by discarding. Then organize your space, thoroughly, completely, in one go. If you adopt this approach—the KonMari Method—you’ll never revert to clutter again.
People cannot change their habits without first changing their way of thinking.
One reason so many of us never succeed at tidying is because we have too much stuff. This excess is caused by our ignorance of how much we actually own.
the best way to choose what to keep and what to throw away is to take each item in one’s hand and ask: “Does this spark joy?” If it does, keep it. If not, dispose of it.
Things that bring back memories, such as photos, are not the place for beginners to start…The best sequence is this: clothes first, then books, papers, komono (miscellany), and lastly, mementos
When you come across something that you cannot part with, think carefully about its true purpose in your life. You’ll be surprised at how many of the things you possess have already fulfilled their role. By acknowledging their contribution and letting them go with gratitude, you will be able to truly put the things you own, and your life, in order. In the end, all that will remain are the things that you really treasure.
Imagine what it would be like to have a bookshelf filled only with books that you really love. Isn’t that image spellbinding? For someone who loves books, what greater happiness could there be?
The space in which we live should be for the person we are becoming now, not for the person we were in the past.
If you have lived in Japan or the United States all your life, you have almost certainly been surrounded by far more than you need.
our possessions very accurately relate the history of the decisions we have made in life.
But when we really delve into the reasons for why we can’t let something go, there are only two: an attachment to the past or a fear for the future.
The question of what you want to own is actually the question of how you want to live your life.
In essence, tidying ought to be the act of restoring balance among people, their possessions, and the house they live in.
The true purpose of tidying is, I believe, to live in the most natural state possible. Don’t you think it is unnatural for us to possess things that don’t bring us joy or things that we don’t really need? I believe that owning only what we love and what we need is the most natural condition.
Anna Joder started a ranch here in 1954 and it became an award-winning Arabian horse ranch housing nearly 100 Arabian horses. She passed the ranch down to her son and daughter-in-law and they eventually sold it to the Boulder Open Space and Mountain Parks in 2013. By 2015 the Joder Ranch trail was built, with eventual plans to connect Boulder to Lyons via multi-use trails.
The trail is a 4 mile out and back that starts just off US36 about halfway between Boulder and Lyons and ends on Old Stage Road near Buckingham Park. The trail rises around 500 feet in 2 miles and takes you from rolling grassland hills up to ponderosa pine forest with nice views of the plains and the Flatirons along the way. I imagine that hiking here in the summer would be a bit warm with possibilities of rattlesnake sightings but fall and spring seem ideal and it could be a nice winter walk also. The traffic was very light on this Friday afternoon; a couple of dog walkers and one mountain biker. It’s a fairly easy trail with a steady elevation gain. The first half of the hike is along an old dirt road and there are some private driveways here that would be confusing if not for the helpful trail signage pointing the correct way (I didn’t run into any cars making their way to or from their home on this day). The second half is more of a normal walking trail through the pines. It doesn’t have the sweeping views of the front range trails nearer Boulder, but it’s nevertheless a nice walk when you only have an hour or two in between wild and wooly baseball playoff games (how is it possible that the mighty Dodgers got beat!? That’s playoff baseball).
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| Joder Lake? near the trailhead |
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| Nice views of the foothills |
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| Entering the forest after a mile or so |
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| Someone built steps to climb this tree... |
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| Nice sun shining on the hills |
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| The plains on the way back |
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| Joder Lake autumn reflections |
I can’t possibly synthesize all their ideas in this 700-page book of human history, but I’ll try to mention a few. The book begins and ends with the story of a Wendat (aka Huron) chief named Kondiaronk who lived in what is now northern Michigan in the latter half of the 17th century. He was a brilliant orator, philosopher, and thinker whose ideas quite likely made their way back to Paris via his relationships with French explorers and missionaries. It's possible (even likely given the evidence in the book) that the Enlightenment thinkers of France in the 18th century built on many of his ideas. Of course, I was really drawn to this idea because I have slowly been coming around to the idea that indigenous tribes were always the best stewards of the land and of community (until Europeans and “progress” took it all away).
In between the beginning and ending of the book, the authors take us to ancient civilizations from China to the Americas to Europe to India to Mesopotamia to Africa and all places in between. They suggest that current popular views on the steady progress of western civilization (Francis Fukuyama, Jared Diamond, Steven Pinker and Yuval Noah Harari) are not supported by recent anthropological or archaeological evidence. They believe that the transition from foraging to agriculture was not a steady progress throughout history and show proof of large-scale societies that have developed in the absence of nefarious kings and top-down systems of government. They offer up evidence where people rose up to change the inequality of large urban civilizations into a more egalitarian society that thrived for centuries. Mention is made of other archeologists and anthropologists in the past that share their views, but most of them were ostracized by their scientific communities because their views didn’t fit the norms of the day (See this month's scientist spotlight).
There is more and more evidence of societies led by women that were successful and far less violent than the normal patriarchal societies of war and violence which we know more about (mainly because there’s more evidence of violent times – broken skulls, sacrificial temples etc.; and far less evidence of peaceful times, although this is changing with better archaeological technology like LIDAR).
At times, the authors went too deep into the woods for me and I had to Homer Simpson my way through (mmm donuts), but mostly it was very readable and fascinating. Here are some lines:
what we have now is a spectacular improvement on anything our species accomplished in its history so far (unless you’re Black, or live in Syria, for example).
the real breakthrough moment came when we decided to move away from European thinkers like Rousseau entirely, and instead consider perspectives that derive from those indigenous thinkers who ultimately inspired them.
anyone making an argument that non-Christian ways were in any way superior might find themselves facing charges of atheism, which was potentially a capital offence.
Between war, slavery, imperialism and sheer day-to-day racist oppression, the last several centuries have seen so much human suffering justified by minor differences in human appearance that we can easily forget just how minor these differences really are.
Perhaps the only thing we can say with real certainty is that, in terms of ancestry, we are all Africans.
One of the things that sets us apart from non-human animals is that animals produce only and exactly what they need; humans invariably produce more. We are creatures of excess, and this is what makes us simultaneously the most creative, and most destructive, of all species.
The term Fertile Crescent was invented in the nineteenth century, when Europe’s imperial powers were carving up the Middle East according to their own strategic interests.
much of what we have come to learn in the last forty or fifty years has thrown conventional wisdom into disarray. In some regions, we now know, cities governed themselves for centuries without any sign of the temples and palaces that would only emerge later; in others, temples and palaces never emerged at all.
In each of the cases we’ve considered so far – Ukrainian mega-sites, Uruk Mesopotamia, the Indus valley – a dramatic increase in the scale of organized human settlement took place with no resulting concentration of wealth or power in the hands of ruling elites.
All the evidence suggests that Teotihuacan had, at its height of its power, found a way to govern itself without overlords – as did the much earlier cities of prehistoric Ukraine, Uruk-period Mesopotamia and Bronze Age Pakistan.
the Natchez (who called themselves Théoloël, or ‘People of the Sun’) represent the only undisputed case of divine kingship north of the Rio Grande.
...women, their work, their concerns and innovations are at the core of this more accurate understanding of civilization… What until now has passed for ‘civilization’ might in fact be nothing more than a gendered appropriation – by men, etching their claims in stone – of some earlier system of knowledge that had women at its centre.
Instead of some male genius realizing his solitary vision, innovation in Neolithic societies was based on a collective body of knowledge accumulated over centuries, largely by women, in an endless series of apparently humble but in fact enormously significant discoveries.
Who was the first person to figure out that you could make bread rise by the addition of those microorganisms we call yeasts? We have no idea, but we can be almost certain she was a woman
I also managed to get a glimpse of some bighorn sheep not too far away and some elk pretty far away. I’d say that I ran into maybe 7 people on the entire hike today and I had the summit to myself, so lots of solitude this time of year during the week. Another perk of this hike is that the drive there and back is along Trail Ridge road which is always a treat to drive. It will close soon due to winter conditions so it was great to be out here before it does.
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| Cool rock towers near the trailhead |
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| Trail winding its way up into the tundra |
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| Cool mountains to the northwest |
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| Trail winding up and up... |
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| Even animals need switchbacks to climb up here... |
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| Rolling hills with Grand Lake in the distance |
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| Small pond with a view |
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| There's Mt. Ida...a bit more to climb |
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| Mountains and mountains forever |
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| Grand and Granby Lakes far below |
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| Inkwell and Arrowhead Lakes...would be a tough hike to reach them |
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| A zoomed out view... |
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| Some pretty ponds in a valley north of Mr. Ida |
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| Bighorn sheep grazing near the trail |
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| The trail crossing the tundra back to my car |
So, this really isn’t a “how to” book regardless of what the title says. It’s really a philosophy book about a certain way to approach modern day life. She references philosophers and artists from the past to put her own personal philosophy into focus. Of course I was thrilled when she referenced Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer, one of the best books on nature and how to live life I’ve ever read. If you are a person who makes your livelihood via social media, then you will likely hate this book. But if you’ve found that social media seems lacking, or that it takes away time from other things you love, then you might appreciate its message.
I guess if I had to list four takeaways, it would be the following:
1) Context. Social Media, in general, lacks context, especially on complicated issues like climate change, history, immigration, gun rights, abortion, etc. This lack of context leads to misinformation and to unproductive online arguments. Context takes time and space to provide and to understand. It’s why reading a 300-page book vs a 300-character tweet (ok 280) can make all the difference in the world. Also, the time you may need to process information doesn’t always fit into the immediacy of social media.
2) Information may need to be delivered differently to different groups. The two examples she gave here are good. In the first she describes a college student coming back from a study abroad program in Europe. Before social media that student would provide his parents with a G-rated version of his experience; his friends with an R-rated version; and his professors with a more culturally nuanced version. Today, his experience will be there on social media for all to see, good or bad.
The other example was her study of organized activism prior to social media, where messages (on racial inequality for example) were first vetted in small groups, then practiced in small presentations, then vetted even more in larger groups before finally going to the public at large. Now messages, good or bad, are spewed immediately to potentially millions of people (sometimes this is good, other times it can be disastrous).
3) The healing power of nature. I’ve read so many books about this topic and I’ve been fortunate enough to be able to experience this feeling. Nature does heal and we’re just now starting to get back the knowledge which indigenous people used to know (and live by) instinctively.
4) Algorithms. Social media is rife with algorithms that eventually provide you with feeds that feed your own confirmation bias. I loved her example of Spotify, where her musical suggestions stayed in her lane, but then she was never exposed to music she never knew she’d enjoy. My own personal example here has to do with the excellent HBO series that nobody has heard about called Treme. It’s by David Simon of The Wire fame and it’s all about post-Katrina New Orleans; the food, the music, the corruption. I’ve found music during this show that Spotify would never have suggested for me that I have loved!
Here are some lines:
The convenience of limitless connectivity has neatly paved over the nuances of in-person conversation, cutting away so much information and context in the process.
..the villain here is not necessarily the Internet, or even the idea of social media; it is the invasive logic of commercial social media and its financial incentive to keep us in a profitable state of anxiety, envy, and distraction.
simple awareness is the seed of responsibility.
Media companies trying to keep up with each other create a kind of “arms race” of urgency that abuses our attention and leaves us no time to think.
my most-liked Facebook post of all time was an anti-Trump screed. In my opinion, this kind of hyper-accelerated expression on social media is not exactly helpful (not to mention the huge amount of value it produces for Facebook). It’s not a form of communication driven by reflection and reason, but rather a reaction driven by fear and anger.
what drives the machine is not the content of information but the rate of engagement.
Students duly and expertly carry out complicated maneuvers in which one misstep—whether that’s getting a B or getting arrested for attending a protest—might have untenable lifelong consequences.
In the short term, distractions can keep us from doing the things we want to do. In the longer term, however, they can accumulate and keep us from living the lives we want to live,
Let’s not forget that, in a time of increasing climate-related events, those who help you will likely not be your Twitter followers; they will be your neighbors.
My dad, a musician for much of his life, says that this is actually the definition of good music: music that “sneaks up on you” and changes you.
I have long appreciated the way that indigenous stories animate the world. They are not only repositories of observations and analyses made over millennia, but also models of gratitude and stewardship.
Context is what appears when you hold your attention open for long enough; the longer you hold it, the more context appears…lack of context can be felt most acutely in the waves of hating, shaming, and vindictive public opinion that roll unchecked through platforms like Facebook and Twitter.
because apologizing and changing our minds online is so often framed as a weakness, we either hold our tongues or risk ridicule.
thought and deliberation require not just incubation space (solitude and/or a defined context) but incubation time.
(City) Parks don’t just give us the space to “do nothing” and inhabit different scales of attention. Their very existence, especially in the midst of a city or on the former sites of extraction, embodies resistance. (I thought of my last month’s scientist spotlight, Frederick Law Olmsted, after reading this)
I stitched together 4 trails for this hike, starting on the Grindstone Quarry trail where I saw remnants of an old quarry where they dug up grindstones for sharpening blades in the early 1900s. About halfway up this trail I stood for a while and watched a coyote on the edge of a prairie dog town that was inciting a loud panic among the prairie dogs. Next, I hopped on the Wapiti trail which currently has a detour around a nesting golden eagle pair who set up their home here while the trail was closed for fire recovery. The detour is along a dirt road and only lasts half a mile so it’s not bad. I didn’t see any wapiti on this trail, but I saw SOOO many deer. Plus, I saw one of the aforementioned golden eagles hunting above the prairie dog town. I reached the Ponderosa Loop trail at mile 4.4 and made my way around it clockwise to get a nice view of the South St. Vrain valley leading into Lyons. And I saw lots of ponderosa pines, so it’s an appropriately named trail. To get back to the Wapiti trail, I opted to walk the Wild Turkey trail in hopes of finding its namesake bird, but only saw an old abandoned trailer sitting in a meadow. I guess Abandoned Trailer would be a bad name for a trail. It was a crisp, cool day in the forest with temps hovering in the upper 40s, so the 11.5-mile walk didn’t seem as long as it was. I’m glad I didn’t get stuck here overnight because I saw the place covered with snow the next morning from my house!
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| Old quarry office building |
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| Old railroad cars were used to house workers |
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| Another cool old building |
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| Fall leaves turning along the flood plain |
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| Frequent flooding due to the Cal-Wood fire |
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| Storm's a comin' |
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| Coyote causing a stir in prairie dog town |
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| Early 1900s grindstone quarry |
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| This tree can be saved! |
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| Lots of work done out here to save small trees that survived the fire |
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| Nice views south approaching the Ponderosa Loop |
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| Not sure what this old stone building was used for |
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| Very late season thistle hanging in there for one more day |
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| Spotted this black squirrel and I've recently read they are very rare |
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| Nice landscaping work by the Boulder Mountainbike Alliance |
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| Heart rock |
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| Nice views of the South St. Vrain valley near Lyons |
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| An old cable pulley near the top...probably used to send lumber down to the valley |
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| An old abandoned trailer in the middle of nowhere |
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| Lots of bones up here...appropriate pre-Halloween hike I guess |
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| Twin deer suspicious of my intentions |
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| Nice views of the Heil Valley (?) looking south towards Boulder |
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| Loved this fence shot near the main trailhead |
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| Golden eagle soaring above |
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| No idea what this is...was... |
The most beautiful part of the writing involved Kya's relationship with the plants and animals of the marsh. The writing involving other people was a bit more standard. This all made sense to me when I read that the author is a zoologist who has spent a lot of time on her own in the wilderness. As a side note, there has been some controversy about the author's involvement in the murder of a poacher in Zambia in the 1990s. It sounds like the stuff of another novel.
I read it over a weekend, even though it was nearly 400 pages; that's how riveting it was. It's rare that a novel could be described as a coming of age, nature book, murder mystery, love story, poetry book, and courtroom drama....but that's what it is. It contained one of my favorite lines I've read in a novel: She feels the pulse of life, he thought, because there are no layers between her and her planet.
Here are some other lines:
Swamp water is still and dark, having swallowed the light in its muddy throat.
A swamp knows all about death, and doesn’t necessarily define it as tragedy, certainly not a sin.
Crows can’t keep secrets any better than mud; once they see something curious in the forest they have to tell everybody. Those who listen are rewarded: either warned of predators or alerted to food.
Kya remembered Ma always encouraging her to explore the marsh: “Go as far as you can—way out yonder where the crawdads sing.” “Just means far in the bush where critters are wild, still behaving like critters."
“Ya need some girlfriends, hon, ’cause they’re furever. Without a vow. A clutch of women’s the most tender, most tough place on Earth.”
...the moon pulled herself naked from the waters and climbed limb by limb through the oaks.
“Michael Row the Boat Ashore,” a yearning and melodic tune sung by slaves in the 1860s as they rowed boats to the mainland from the Sea Islands of South Carolina.
“Unworthy boys make a lot of noise,” Ma had said.
Why should the injured, the still bleeding, bear the onus of forgiveness?
the ocean seemed angrier than the marsh. Deeper, it had more to say.
"Ya have the right to remain silent . . .” She didn’t hear the rest of it. No one hears the rest of it.
he stopped under the deep canopy and watched hundreds of fireflies beckoning far into the dark reaches of the marsh. Way out yonder, where the crawdads sing.
Thanks for reading this far and happy reading and rambling!