July 2023

Books read:

The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese
How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence by Michael Pollan
The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera

Trails walked:

Williams Lake near Taos, NM (July 4th)
Lion Lake in Rocky Mountain National Park (July 11th)
Finch, Pear and Hutcheson Lakes in Rocky Mountain National Park (July 18th)
Ypsilon Lake in Rocky Mountain National Park (July 20th)
Western Ute trail in Rocky Mountain National Park (July 25th)

Song(s) of the month – Amy Winehouse

Back to Black
You Know I’m No Good
Rehab
Tears Dry on Their Own
Valerie
Monkey Man
Body and Soul (with Tony Bennett)

Scientist Spotlight – Kate Marvel, climate scientist and science writer

July Summary:

When was the last time that you experienced a sense of awe? Something that just made you smile and shake your head at how incredible the world was? It’s a humbling experience because as wonderful as it makes you feel, it also shows you how small you are in the world. I’ve heard it said that when you have a truly awe-inspiring moment, your ego temporarily vanishes. Many Eastern religions and meditations focus on removing your ego (your selfness, your “I”) to create awareness of living in the present moment and awareness of the interconnectedness of all things (both living and “dead”). Some of the great books I’ve read have created this sense of awe, including one of this month’s books which Oprah Winfrey called “One of the best books I’ve read in my entire life. It’s epic. It’s transportive." Many of the places in nature where I’ve walked have created this sense of awe for me. The Grand Canyon just about every time I visit, Alaska’s braided rivers, Trail Ridge Road, the Superstition Mountains east of Phoenix. Most recently it was on my walk to Lion Lakes in Rocky Mountain National Park. I remember standing there just admiring Lion Lake with Mount Alice in the background and with Trio Falls spilling thunderously into the creek that feeds the North St. Vrain drainage. I was smiling and chuckling to myself (if anyone had been there, they would have stayed far away from the crazy, smiling person…luckily, I had the place all to myself). I wanted to stay there all day. How can anything be so beautiful? One of the books I read this month, How to Change Your Mind, talks about how certain psychedelics can create this same sense of awe. I think it’s important for everyone to experience this feeling. It helps you deal with the many things in our lives that create quite the opposite feeling. It certainly helps me deal with this month’s news on all the natural disasters taking place around the world. Record heat, forest fires, floods. All the climate change denial out there is ensuring that these things will keep getting worse. Fossil fuels are the main cause (this is a scientific fact) and one day they will disappear, and we will get all our energy sustainably, from the sun, the wind, the water, and the earth. It will make our air cleaner, our water cleaner, and our bodies healthier. It will save lives and create new jobs. It will be awesome! It’s going to happen; the only question is how soon? How much worse will everything have to get before we finally make that necessary change?

Sinead O'Connor passed away this month at the young age of 56. O'Connor dealt with mental challenges her entire life and the death by suicide of her 17-year-old son last year likely sent her over the edge. I wasn't a big fan of her music, although three of her songs do tend to make my various playlists: Her version of Prince's Nothing Compares to U; The Last Day of Our Acquaintance; and her haunting rendition (Anita Baker described her voice as “cavernous") of the 18th century Gaelic folk song Factory Girl. I suppose she's best known for tearing up a picture of the pope during an appearance on Saturday Night Live in 1992. A recent New York Times article described the event perfectly: "At the end of her second performance of the show, a cover of Bob Marley’s 'War,' O’Connor intoned gravely, “We have confidence in the victory of good over evil.” As she held tight to the word, stretching it like a castigation, she grabbed a photo of Pope John Paul II and held it up to camera. When she let the word go, she punctuated her exhale by tearing the photo three times, followed by an exhortation to “fight the real enemy.” She tossed the fragments to the ground, removed her in-ears, and stepped off the stage into culture-war infamy." Celebrities like Madonna and Joe Pesci denounced her. Protesters crushed her cassettes with a steamroller. Catholic leaders were outraged, including some who were forced to resign years later for their roles in covering up abuse. Even Todd Snider wrote about it two years later in his song Alright Guy:

I think I'm an alright guy

I think I'm alright

Now maybe I'm dirty and maybe I smoke a little dope

It ain't like I'm going on T.V. and tearing up pictures of the pope

Sexually abused as a child (sometimes underneath that picture of the Pope she tore up on SNL), she detested what Catholic priests had been getting away with for years (centuries?) and the subsequent coverup from church leaders. But on this topic she was about 10 years too far ahead of her time. It wasn't until 2002 that the Boston Globe uncovered the Catholic Church sex scandal creating greater awareness of the issue. The riveting 2015 movie Spotlight told the story of the Globe's investigative journalism. O'Connor was trying to shed light on the issue in her own way, but unfortunately for her it backfired and negatively impacted the rest of her career and life.

This month’s reading included another great book by Abraham Verghese, a way to change your mind, and how the lightness of being can be unbearable. My rambling took me to some of Rocky Mountain National Park’s more remote lakes, and to a pretty lake in New Mexico.

Scientist Spotlight: Kate Marvel, climate scientist and science writer

She not only has a name worthy of saving our planet, but she also does work that helps take us a few steps closer to acting on the enormous issue of climate change. Marvel has a BA in physics and astronomy from Cal Berkeley and a PhD in theoretical physics from the University of Cambridge as a Gates Scholar. She’s done postdoctoral work on climate science and energy at the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University and at the Carnegie Institution for Science before joining the research faculty at NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and Columbia University. The marvelous Ms. Marvel currently works as a senior climate scientist at Project Drawdown, the world’s leading resource for climate solutions. Even more important than her climate research (in my opinion) is her outstanding ability to communicate this complex information. Most scientists are good at science, but generally not so good at communication with the general public. Kate is great at both. She was a contributor to the book I reviewed in my April 2022 blog called All We Can Save, she's provided regular articles on climate change to Scientific American and Nautilus, she gave an entertaining talk on the complexity of clouds and climate change in a TED Talk, and she began her public writing career with this terrific blog piece. We need more Kate Marvel’s in our universe.

Song(s) of the month: Amy Winehouse

The great Tony Bennett passed away this month. I read this in one of the many tributes to him: "He found a kindred spirit in Amy Winehouse, but their connection was short-lived. Their great rendition of Body and Soul, for Duets II, was the last thing she ever recorded. It was released as a single posthumously, on what would have been Winehouse’s 28th birthday." If you haven't seen the 2015 documentary Amy, I highly recommend you do; it's heartbreaking.

Amy Winehouse’s tragically short life ended at the age of 27, the same age that Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin, and Robert Johnson died. There were too many great songs in her short life to mention here. In her cover of Carole King’s Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?, she made it her own song. Ditto with the early 60s song made famous by Franki Valli, Our Day Will Come. The Beatle’s All My Loving sounds like a completely different, and better, song in her hands. And her biographical Just Friends tells of her impending doom due in part to her destructive relationship with Blake Fielder-Civil. But here are the ones I decided to go with. I’m not alone because most “best of” lists will likely include all of these.

Back to Black – Co-written with her “musical soulmate”, Marc Ronson, it’s one of many songs she wrote about her destructive relationship with Blake Fielder-Civil. It’s devastatingly honest and one of the best relationship-ending songs ever written. It’s too bad she could never take her own advice and permanently end that relationship. It starts out like a 60s soul group song with that piano and drum rhythm but it’s deeper than any of those songs ever used to be.

Sample lyrics:

We only said goodbye with words
I died a hundred times
You go back to her
And I go back to
I go back to us

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJAfLE39ZZ8&t=235s

You Know I’m No Good – She tells us many times she’s no good in this great song that begins with pounding drums and then a bass beat before the horns kick in, turning into what should be a James Bond cover song (she actually mentions Roger Moore in the song!).

Sample lyrics:

I cheated myself
Like I knew I would
I told you I was trouble
You know that I'm no good

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b-I2s5zRbHg&t=241s

Rehab – This is the song of hers I first listened to and I was hooked. It’s also the song that shot her up to stardom. But it’s like watching a live train wreck about to occur. When she sings that her daddy thinks she’s fine so she doesn’t need to go to rehab, it just kills you. She loved her dad but man, he didn’t love her back enough to help her because he was too busy soaking in the fame and money. The music and the voice in this song go together perfectly. It’s great.

Sample lyrics:

I don't ever want to drink again
I just, ooh, I just need a friend
I'm not gonna spend ten weeks
And have everyone think I'm on the mend

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUmZp8pR1uc&t=107s

Tears Dry on Their Own - This is my personal favorite song of hers. Another blisteringly honest breakup song that is somehow uplifting. The lyrics are brilliant…she was so talented. And this video, with all the chaos happening around her as she remains calm describing the disintegration of the relationship, is really good. And again, the music! Wow.

Sample lyrics:

Even if I stop wanting you
A perspective pushes through
I'll be some next man's other woman soon
I cannot play myself again
I should just be my own best friend
Not f__k myself in the head with stupid men

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojdbDYahiCQ&t=179s

Valerie – I couldn’t have a list of all tragic songs, so how about a fun song? Valerie was written by the English indie rock band The Zutons, but this cover by Marc Ronson and Amy Winehouse is pure unadulterated fun. And this clever video of a bunch of women who are NOT Amy Winehouse singing with her voice makes it even more fun. Evidently Amy couldn’t attend the video shoot so someone came up with the idea of a bunch of different women lip syncing the song. It works really well. Her voice was just too good.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bixuI_GV5I0&t=244s

Monkey Man – This 1968 reggae song from Toots and the Maytals is transformed with Amy singing along with her favorite band, The Specials. This version makes me a bit sad because even though it’s a fun song you can see that she is very drunk or high during the performance, and you can see the sadness in her eyes (as Bruce Springsteen put it in Candy’s Room: “There's a sadness hidden in that pretty face / A sadness all her own / From which no man can keep Candy safe”),

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-lEgNyJQ2is&t=103s

Body and Soul – This was her final recording which is appropriate because this is the music that she really loved and Tony Bennett was her idol. If she’d had her wish in life she would have recorded and sung standards like this in small nightclubs for the rest of her life. Just look at the smile on her face and the hug she gives him at the end. This is what she wanted, but could never really fully achieve.

When Bennett heard of Winehouse’s death, he wrote: “Amy Winehouse was an artist of immense proportions, and I am deeply saddened to learn of her tragic passing. She was an extraordinary musician with a rare intuition as a vocalist, and I am truly devastated that her exceptional talent has come to such an early end. She was a lovely and intelligent person, and when we recorded together, she gave a soulful and extraordinary performance. I was honored to have the opportunity to sing with her.”

Body and Soul is a popular song and jazz standard written in 1930 with music by Johnny Green and lyrics by Edward Heyman, Robert Sour and Frank Eyton.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_OFMkCeP6ok&t=72s

Williams Lake near Taos, NM – A rare hike with my wife, whose rebuilt ankle has mileage limitations. My daughter joined us for an Independence Day hike to beautiful Williams Lake at the end of the Taos Ski Valley. I wrote about my winter hike to this lake in my March 2022 blog. It looks very different in the summer! And there were many more people on the trail! After climbing 2 miles from 10,000 feet to 11,000 feet, we sat down to enjoy the spectacular views. The weather was perfect. We ended our hike at The Bavarian restaurant near the trailhead where we had beer and pretzels. A perfect ending to a perfect hike in the alpine reaches of New Mexico.

Daughter and wife goin' up

Pretty Williams Lake

Lake lounging

Taking in the view

Cool green plants near the creek

Post hike beer, pretzels and fries at The Bavarian near the trailhead

The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese – I reviewed Verghese’s great Cutting for Stone in my March 2020 blog. It remains one of the best novels I’ve read. The Covenant of Water is now in the same category. It’s epic, along the lines of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’ One Hundred Years of Solitude. I was happy to read all 736 pages and I could have just kept on reading about these characters. One review I read said it would take 100 pages to summarize this book which is not far from the truth. A quick synopsis would be: The novel spans the first 77 years of 20th century India and tells the tragic and hopeful story of three generations of some of the most fascinating characters you will encounter.

In a review by the New York Times, titled Abraham Verghese’s Sweeping New Fable of Family and Medicine, the reviewer said, “It is a better world for having a book in it that chronicles so many tragedies in a tone that never deviates from hope…. grand, spectacular, sweeping and utterly absorbing.” And from the author’s own website: “The Covenant of Water is a hymn to progress in medicine and to human understanding, and a humbling testament to the hardships undergone by past generations for the sake of those alive today.”

I doubt I could summarize it any better. Do yourself a favor and read it. Even Oprah gushed about it! Here are some of the multitudes of great lines:

She is twelve years old, and she will be married in the morning. Mother and daughter lie on the mat, their wet cheeks glued together. “The saddest day of a girl’s life is the day of her wedding,” her mother says. “After that, God willing, it gets better.”

If there’s a fire in my house and I must choose between my husband and my clay pot . . . well, all I can say is he’s lived a good life. The curries I will make in my pot will ease my widowhood!

He alone amongst all the people she knows uses his two ears and one mouth in that exact proportion.

Now and then, while nursing Baby Mol, she’ll hear one of the children wailing. In the past, she’d have raced out to investigate, but now she tells herself, “A crying child is a breathing child.”

Everyone who is looked down on can look down on someone else. Except the lowest. The British just came along and moved us down a rung.

the growth on his upper lip so sparse that each hair could be named after an apostle.

Leprosy deadens the nerves and is therefore painless; the real wound of leprosy, and the only pain they feel, is that of exile.

“Fiction is the great lie that tells the truth about how the world lives!”

“to bring about social change, you must understand the first principle about money: no one wants to part with it.”

“Ammachi, when I come to the end of a book and I look up, just four days have passed. But in that time I’ve lived through three generations and learned more about the world and about myself than I do during a year in school. Ahab, Queequeg, Ophelia, and other characters die on the page so that we might live better lives.”

In August, in the space of three days, atomic bombs level Hiroshima and Nagasaki. A hundred thousand people die in an instant… “I’m happy that I’m old, so I’ll be spared what’s coming. If we can kill each other so easily, then that’s the end of the world, isn’t it?”

Malayalis of all religions doubt everything, except their faith.

“What would Jesus say when there’s food in one house and the neighbors starve. If Jesus returns, don’t you think he’ll vote Communist?”

The coffin is lowered. Dirt rattles on the lid with a note of such finality that she discovers a new reservoir of tears.

Her father’s brain looks like any other brain. But it isn’t. It held his unique memories, every story he wrote, and the ones he might have written; it held the love he had for her. It holds the mystery of why he came to Madras.

“You can confide in quiet people. They make way for one’s thoughts.”

Mariamma feels her short life on earth compressed into this moment, this one moment that’s weightier than the sum of all those that came before. Her heart pounds.

Lion Lake in Rocky Mountain National Park – There are several long adventures in the Wild Basin area of Rocky Mountain National Park. There are also three nice waterfalls within 3 miles of the trailhead which draw several visitors. I’ve passed these waterfalls on previous hikes (Copeland, Calypso, and Ouzel) in winter, spring, and summer. I would pass them again on this hike. I first heard about the Lion Lakes from a guy I met while eating lunch at the stunning Andrews Tarn. This guy had climbed up Flattop Mountain via Bear Lake and then came down via the glacier above Andrews Tarn, which he said was a bit sketchy. He told me to check out Lion Lakes someday because he thought it was the prettiest place in the park. This was the day (sort of). I started at the large parking lot in the Wild Basin section of Rocky Mountain National Park. Luckily on this weekday it was only half full. I’d say 90% of the people here are hiking to one of the three waterfalls. Most of the other hikes from here are pretty long. For example my hike this day would be 14.5 miles which is….a lot. About a mile and a half up the Wild Basin trail I took a right towards a series of backcountry campsites. I have seen this called the Thunder Lake trail on some maps, but officially it’s not a named trail, just access to the campsites. This trail saves about a mile and avoids the crowds at Calypso and Ouzel Falls. At 3 miles you reach the junction that will take you back to Ouzel Falls (I’d be taking this on the way back). Four plus miles in is the junction with the Thunder Lake trail; going left here takes you to Thunder Lake (which I hope to hike to some day). I turned right up the steep steps towards Lion Lakes. From this junction it’s just over 2 miles to get to Lion Lake #1. Most of the snow was gone but there were a couple of places where I had to slip and slide through some of the remaining snow on the trail after our big winter. Lion Lake #1 is spectacularly beautiful. To the west is the cartoonishly triangular face of Mount Alice and to the north are the cliffs of Chiefs Head Peak. Interestingly, last September I was on the other side of Chiefs Head on a beautiful and long hike to Black Lake and Blue Lake. Those lakes are only two miles from Lion Lake #1 as the crow flies, but the trailheads are 26 miles apart! I ate a breakfast burrito on a rock near Lion Lake #1 while I contemplated trying to climb up to Lion Lake #2 or even further to Snowbank Lake even though recent reports indicated that they were not passable due to snow. Re-energized by the burrito, I headed uphill, passing by the beautiful Trio Falls which spill out of Lion Lake #2. I got to within a stone’s throw of the lake but was blocked by a massive wall of snow (see photo below). I tried going around it but there was just no way, plus I was thinking about those seven plus miles back to my car. So I satisfied myself with the knowledge that I could do this later this summer or next, maybe in August or September when all that snow has melted.

This area contains the headwaters of North St Vrain Creek which merges with South St. Vrain Creek in Lyons, forming the St. Vrain Creek that flows through my town of Longmont (South St. Vrain Creek originates at Isabel Glacier in the Brainard Lake Recreation Area). After gazing at the spectacular views from up here and trying to suppress a giant smile on my face as I took in all this beauty, I reluctantly headed back. I chose to take that extra mile of trail to see how full Ouzel and Calypso Falls were. It was a good call because they were gushing. After seeing nobody at Lion Lake I passed lots of people walking to these falls. I hobbled my way back to my car and patted myself on the back for tackling this long hike. And that guy who told me Lion Lakes was beautiful was not wrong. This area is special, and you have to walk a long way through the woods to get there. But when you’re the only one there at the end, it’s worth the effort to have all that beauty to yourself.

Informative sign at Wild Basin trailhead

Wildflowers abounded

Colorado State Flower - Rocky Mountain Columbine

Copeland Falls

Raging North St. Vrain

Very rocky path nearly the entire way

Tree shaped like a goat's head?

Unnamed pond on the way to Lion Lake

Mount Alice with Lion Lake #1 in the foreground

Mount Alice and Lion Lake

Flowers, lake, mountains!

Trio Falls pouring water into Lion Lake

The trail to Lion Lake #2 ended here without an ice axe

Ice axe and crampons needed here...

Precarious snow overhang

Awe inspiring

Mount Alice peeking out over all this beauty

Just beautiful

So many flowers

Dragon wood

Ouzel Falls on the way back

Finch, Pear, and Hutcheson Lakes in Rocky Mountain National Park – I decided to torture my body again this week with what turned out to be a 15.7-mile march to these beautiful lakes which are also in the Wild Basin area of Rocky Mountain National Park. I would say that of the 15.7 miles. Only 0.7 included a smooth dirt path; the other 15 miles were as rocky as its namesake park. Needless to say my feet were pretty sore for a couple of days. Although not as spectacular as the Lion Lakes hike, this is still a special area. Especially so since on a hike with daughter-in-law last year we summited St. Vrain Mountain where we were able to see these remote lakes from the top. Finch lake is a destination for most of the hikers starting out at the Finch Lake trailhead. It’s about 4.5 miles each way which entails a pretty good day hike for most. Plus it includes great views of Longs and Meeker Peaks along the way. And Finch Lake is very pretty, surrounded by tall pine trees. But no, I wanted to keep going so I headed uphill another 2.2 miles to Pear Lake which sits just below the tree line at the base of Copeland Mountain. I was still feeling pretty good (especially after my peanut butter and jelly sandwich), so I decided to keep going. I walked another mile plus to the lower Hutcheson Lakes before finally giving up. It would have been another mile and a half to reach Coney Lake, but it turned out to be a great decision to leave when I did. That’s because the dirt road to the trailhead was actually supposed to be closed starting this day for improvements. I only made it in because I got here so early in the morning. As I was driving out, the ranger was closing the gate. He was nice enough to reopen it for me and wondered how the heck I got in because if I was another few minutes late, I would have been stuck there for the night with the ranger gone and no cell service. Good thing I stopped hiking when I did!

The only people I saw on this day were backpackers who had special permission to stay up here during the road improvement. Another great, but also tiring, day in the wilderness. No animal sightings today except for a gaggle of turkeys on the drive in.

Finch Lake trailhead

Big family of turkeys on the drive up

Steep up to start

Finch Lake

Lily Pond with St. Vrain Mountain the background

Pear Lake at the base of Copeland Mountain

I ate lunch by this colorful rock by Pear Lake

Loooonggg waterfall into Pear Lake

Hutcheson Lake

I stopped here, about 1.5 miles from Coney Lake..
the clouds weren't looking good for being above tree line

Kachina tree

Back at the lily pond in better light

Final goodbye to Finch Lake

How to Change Your Mind by Michael Pollan – One of my favorite TV shows of late has been Ted Lasso. I love it mostly for its life affirming take on having a positive outlook towards other people and events in life. I also enjoy trying to spot which books the characters are reading during the show. In the final scene of the series finale, I saw that Ted was reading How to Change Your Mind by Michael Pollan. So I put that book on my list and I’ve finally read it. And like most of Pollan’s work it’s enlightening and entertaining. The book’s subtitle is: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence. And the science has a lot to say about all of those topics. Even though there are six chapters, I saw it as three different sections. The first tells the story about how research on psychedelics was legitimate in the 1950s and 60s with several scientific studies proving their effectiveness on addiction, depression, fear of death among terminal cancer patients, and certain mental illnesses. But unfortunately, the late 60s and early 70s saw a lot of pushback from governments and organizations against what had become the counter cultural revolution of recreational drugs, free love, and anti-Vietnam. Sprinkle in Art Linkletter’s belief that his daughter committed suicide while on the drugs and add Timothy Leary to the equation and all scientific studies on psychedelics came to a grinding halt in the 70s. The second section tells the story of Pollan’s venture into trying, in order: LSD, Psilocybin (mushrooms), and MeO-DMT (or, The Toad). Since he wasn’t part of a formal study, much of this experimenting had to be done underground by folks who have been doing this for decades because they believe in its powers. The last section goes into the neuroscience behind these mind-altering drugs which is becoming prevalent since the governments around the world slowly started allowing studies to commence in the 90s (the backstory behind this is fascinating). And now that medical technology has improved since the 1950s (especially with brain imaging and our understanding of the brain), we can provide more scientific explanations for what is happening while on psychedelics.

So, after reading these 400 plus pages, do I want to personally try psychedelics myself? Hell yes! Even though I came of age in the 70s, I’ve always been pretty conservative about drugs, and other than marijuana, have managed to stay away from them, probably due to the incessant messaging growing up in the 70s (and from my parents) about how drugs destroy lives…and many of them do. But study after study now seem to show that psychedelics are different. They’re not addictive for one. Do some people have “bad trips”? Yes, which is why the research now shows that the “set and setting” of the experience are key to providing a safe space for your mind to wander. Indigenous people around the world have for centuries used certain plants for ceremonial “trips” facilitated by experienced elders meant to enlighten its people and to heal the sick. The science studies in the 1950s were started because a few scientists had traveled to Mexico to experience the ceremonies themselves. At this time it appears that eventually certain psychedelics will be approved for treating conditions like depression, obsessive compulsive disorders, addiction, and terminal cancer angst. The open question is whether they will be allowed recreationally (as one person in the book said, why wouldn’t we be allowed to re-create ourselves?).

Here’s my take on its use as a recreational drug after reading this book. The overwhelming majority of “healthy” people that have taken the drugs under controlled conditions describe coming out of the experience as changed for the better. Most have trouble describing in words how this occurred. I learned a new word, ineffable, which means “too great or extreme to be expressed or described in words.” People have described experiences where they saw the interconnectedness of all living things; or they could see the universe being created; some even re-experience their own birth. Yes, it all sounds very new-agey and far out. But the thing that convinced me that this is something to take seriously, are the brain imaging results. There’s an area of the brain called the Default Mode Network (DMN). It consists of various parts of the brain, mainly in the posterior cingulate cortex (PCC) that teach you, from past experience, how to react and feel. Children up to the age of 5 have not developed this part of their brain yet (they haven’t had enough experiences) which likely explains how their imaginations can be incredible. Well, while on psychedelics, the imaging shows that the DMN is shut down while other parts of the brain are firing. So people are “seeing things” that all their years of experience would not allow them to see. Pair this with the recent findings on the mycelium (fungi) network that helps trees communicate with each other and the interconnectedness of things starts to make sense.

I spend a great deal of time in nature, and I know from this experience that I always come back feeling better. I can always tell when I haven’t been out for a while; I become more irritable and antsy. Nature helps relieve this. There are places I’ve been which create a sense of awe in me. Just this month, on my hike to Lion Lakes, I couldn’t stop smiling and shaking my head at how beautiful the place was. It was hard to leave. This sense of awe is also how many people describe their psychedelic experiences. I think everyone should be able to experience a sense of awe. It will reduce your ego because you will see how small you and your problems are in this vast world. It’s why I believe that psychedelics should be allowed recreationally. I used to think that the only way we can fix the divisiveness in our country was if some catastrophic event occurred to reset everyone's point of view. But the more I think about it, this would probably just make things worse. Now I'm wondering if psychedelics may be the only way we can fix this divisiveness; many people that have been studying them believe that this may just be possible. Pollan foresees places in nature, sort of like today’s spas, that would allow for the recreational use of psychedelics. But as he says, we need to make sure this kind of experience is affordable for all, not just those that can afford spa experiences.

To circle back to Ted Lasso, I saw an interview with Jason Sudeikis recently where he was asked what the inspiration for Ted Lasso was. His answer? An experience on mushrooms in Amsterdam. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why Ted Lasso is filled with so much positive energy….and also why I will one day have this experience myself….and hopefully share it in this blog.

Ypsilon Lake in Rocky Mountain National Park – Daughter-in-law (DIL) was able to get a sitter for the baby so I went with her on this hike even though it was forecast to rain all day. We brought our rain gear and dry clothes for afterwards. In 1982 the dam at Lawn Lake (built in 1903) burst, sending 30 million cubic feet of water down Roaring River. Stephen Gillette, who worked for the park service, went to work an hour earlier than normal that day to collect trash at the Lawn Lake trailhead (the same trailhead we used today for the Ypsilon Lake hike). When he got there he heard a noise that sounded like a jet engine about to crash and then he saw huge pine trees rocketing down the river. He backed his truck up to block the entrance to Endovalley road (likely saving the life of at least one tourist who was about to enter). He called the rangers from the emergency phone (which didn’t always work but thankfully did that day) who began evacuating campers. Three campers died during the flood, but likely dozens where saved due to the fact that Gillette went to work early that day and reacted quickly. Six feet of water filled Main Street in Estes Park, but luckily the Olympic Dam that made Estes Lake was able to hold the flood waters which raised the lake level 2 feet. If the lake had been at its normal size (it was 4 feet low due to drought) the dam may have failed and there certainly would have been more casualties.

You can see the damage when you visit the Alluvial Fan site on Endovalley road. And DIL and I saw it up close about 1.5 miles from the trailhead where the Ypsilon Lake trail splits from the Lawn Lake trail. I thought about this flood as we walked across the new bridge that spans the Roaring River. Today, this spot would make for a nice and easy day hike where you have some great mountain views alongside the river. The trail is a nice, steady climb, from 8,500 feet to 10,700 feet in just over 4 miles. It then dips down a couple hundred feet as it approaches the pretty Ypsilon Lake and Ypsilon Falls. We saw maybe 20 hikers out today as this part of the park is much busier than the Wild Basin area that I had hiked earlier in the month. For a nice photo tip, stop at the tiny Chipmunk Lake about a quarter mile before Ypsilon. There is a much better view of Ypsilon Mountain from here. Earlier this month a cherished outdoorswoman from Boulder, Bailee Mulholland, lost her life doing a free solo climb of one of the many steep faces of Ypsilon. It looks pretty daunting from here. Tragic.

DIL and I had lunch at the falls while the mosquitoes had their lunch on our blood. Note to self: remember bug spray on these summer lake hikes. We thought about perhaps heading up another 1,000 feet in one mile to Spectacle Lakes above the tree line, but DIL had to pick up the baby from daycare, so we decided not to risk it. That turned out to be another good decision because when we were halfway back to the car it started dumping rain on us (we were very lucky that the rain had held off until this point). And the lightning and thunder were incredible. Maybe the loudest I’ve ever experienced, and that includes monsoons in the Grand Canyon! Had we decided to continue up to Spectacle Lakes above the tree line we would have put ourselves in a more dangerous situation. We were thinking about the group of 8 teens from a camp we saw making their way up there earlier in the day. Well we were happily warm in our rain gear as we arrived at the car. Evidently, we were the only ones prepared for rain because several of the other hikers we saw that day were running down the trail soaking wet, freezing, and complaining. We changed into our dryer clothes we brought and had a nice, warm drive back to town. We saw several elk on the drive; and on our walk saw two huge male deer, a marmot, and lots of greenback cutthroat trout in the lake. Hopefully we’ll get another chance to see the Spectacle Lakes when we have more time and there is a reduced chance of thunderstorms.

Roaring Creek with Longs Peak in the background

Stairway to Ypsilon

First peek at Mt. Ypsilon

Chipmunk Lake with Mt. Ypsilon behind

Cloud reflections in Chipmunk Lake

Ypsilon Lake

Ypsilon Lake reflections

Lunch spot by lower Ypsilon Falls

Greenback cutthroat trout in the lake

DIL photographing the lake

Ypsilon Falls spilling into its...umm...namelake

Great view of the Fall River valley

It poured on us the last two miles

The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera – This had been on my to-read list for a long time and when I’d heard that Kundera died this past month, I decided to finally read it. There was a movie made in 1988 based on this 1984 book, but Kundera hated the movie and said it didn’t resemble his book in any way. He never let a work of his be adapted into a movie again.

I have to say that I liked but didn’t love the book. Even though it’s on many “best of all time” lists. It’s deeply philosophical, exploring the themes of heaviness (taking the world seriously) and lightness (just playing in life without consequences). Set just before and after the Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 the novel follows the lives of Tomas (a surgeon), his wife Tereza (a photographer), and Tomas’ mistress Sabina (an artist). Another of Sabina’s lovers, Franz, also plays a role in this tangle of infidelity. There’s lots of sex in the book, perhaps one reason why it was adapted into a movie. Reading the book solely for this plot of infidelity would be missing all the philosophical points that the author tries to make. But adding in the Prague Spring and subsequent Russian invasion gives the story a bit more heft. He even breaks the fourth wall by interjecting his reasoning for creating the characters in the novel the way he did. I found that method a bit distracting. I can’t say that I fully understood all the points the author was trying to make but as he himself said in an interview with Philip Roth in 1980: “the novel has no place in the world, the totalitarian world, whether founded on Marx, Islam or anything else, is a world of answers rather than questions. It seems to me that all over the world people nowadays prefer to judge rather than to understand, to answer rather than to ask, so that the voice of the novel can hardly be heard over the noisy foolishness of human certainties.” Kundera thought readers should come to novels looking for more than just plot – they should leave with more questions than answers. In a tribute to Kundera after his death, Salman Rushdie thought that "‘lightness of being’, warned us that life allows us no revisions or second drafts, and this could be ‘unbearable’, but it could also be liberating.”

Rather than try to explain my elementary understanding of the book I’ll leave you with a few of its interesting quotes.

The heavier the burden, the closer our lives come to the earth, the more real and truthful they become. Conversely, the absolute absence of a burden causes man to be lighter than air, to soar into the heights, take leave of the earth and his earthly being, and become only half real, his movements as free as they are insignificant.

We can never know what to want, because, living only one life, we can neither compare it with our previous lives nor perfect it in our lives to come.

She would have liked to tell them that behind Communism, Fascism, behind all occupations and invasions lurks a more basic, pervasive evil and that the image of that evil was a parade of people marching by with raised fists and shouting identical syllables in unison.

The only people in the pews were old men and old women, because they did not fear the regime. They feared only death.

She had left a man because she felt like leaving him. Had he persecuted her? Had he tried to take revenge on her? No. Her drama was a drama not of heaviness but of lightness. What fell to her lot was not the burden but the unbearable lightness of being.

Silence lay between them like an agony. It grew heavier by the minute.

There is no certainty that God actually did grant man dominion over other creatures. What seems more likely, in fact, is that man invented God to sanctify the dominion that he had usurped for himself over the cow and the horse.

Western Ute trail in Rocky Mountain National Park – I’ve seen the beginning (end?) of this trail many times from the Alpine Visitor’s Center at the top of Trail Ridge Road. I finally had the chance to check it out. Native Americans (Utes and Arapahos) likely traveled across this now national park using several east-west routes, including Forest Canyon, Flattop Mountain, Fall River and this route, known as Trail Ridge. They used these passes for migration from summer and winter hunting grounds along the Great Plains. There are two sections of the Ute Trail in the park. I’ve hiked the Eastern Ute trail on a couple of other occasions, one of which resulted in the dislocation of my middle finger. The Eastern Ute starts at a non-descript pullout on Trail Ridge Road and heads east toward Timberline Pass and then drops steeply down into Windy Gulch (a finger-dislocatingly-steep drop), ending at Beaver Meadows in Moraine Park. The Western Ute begins at either the Alpine Visitor’s Center or at Milner Pass near Poudre Lake. It’s around 4 miles each way, making it an 8-mile out and back trail. Many people like to start at Milner Pass so that the uphill portion is out of the way first, but honestly, at 900 feet elevation gain in 4 miles it’s not that steep, so for me, starting out at the Alpine Visitor’s Center saves a few miles of driving.

It's a terrific walk. It was 49 degrees and windy at the start, so I bundled up as I headed down. Lots of pikas and marmots were trying to warn me off the path. The views are epic from the beginning. The only downside is that you are walking between two winding sections of Trail Ridge Road for the first mile, but it was far enough away that it was barely noticeable. At a mile and a half there are great views of Forest Canyon with some small ponds in the foreground. The views would get even better in another mile. The snow covered Never Summer Mountains are in your view the entire time you’re above the tree line. I saw some elk and deer along the walk, in addition to marmots and pikas. The last mile and a half are through the subalpine and then you’re in the trees with a few meadows popping into view along the way. Instead of heading down to Poudre Lake at the official end, I decided to head up the Mount Ida trail for around a quarter mile, mainly because someone told me they saw a huge bull moose heading up that trail. I didn’t find the moose, but I found a nice rock with a great view of Specimen Mountain where I ate my peanut butter and jelly sandwich. I passed maybe 20 people total on this day, fairly spread out so it didn’t seem very crowded even though I was never too far away from Trail Ridge Road. It was a balmy 63 degrees when I made it back to my car.