September 2023
Books read:
- The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics by Daniel James Brown
- Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver
- An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
Trails walked:
- Arapaho Glacier in the Indian Peaks Wilderness near Nederland (Sept. 6th)
- Lake Dorothy in the Indian Peaks Wilderness near Nederland (Sept. 13th)
- Caribou Lake in the Indian Peaks Wilderness near Nederland (Sept. 20th)
- Jasper Lake in the Indian Peaks Wilderness near Nederland (Sept 26th)
Song(s) of the month – Songs that make me cry…every time.
- He Went to Paris – Jimmy Buffett
- Poems, Prayers, and Promises – John Denver
- The Babysitter’s Here – Dar Williams
- Pilgrim – Steve Earle
- The Curse – Josh Ritter
Scientist Spotlight – Dr. Susan La Flesche Picotte, medical doctor
September Summary:
Well summer is over, and fall is in the air. Football season has started (and already ended if you’re a Broncos fan) and baseball season is reaching its always captivating climax. The leaves are painting the landscape with its dying colors and Halloween decorations are popping up in front lawns and in grocery stores. Living in Phoenix for nearly 40 years, we pretty much had two seasons: Hot and nice. I’m not knocking it; I loved my time there and grew to love the desert with its hidden beauty. Spring in the desert is still one of the most beautiful seasons anywhere. But fall in the mountains is quickly becoming my favorite season. The hiking is spectacular and there is rarely the worry of lightning storms up high (although I did get hailed on this month). The animals are more active as they prepare for winter and search for mating opportunities. The sun is still out long enough to enjoy a long hike and, barring a freak storm, the temperature is ideal. And my monthly energy bill is at its smallest of the year! Welcome to autumn.
A few weeks ago, I took my 3-year-old grandson to a really cool museum in Longmont called the Dougherty Museum of antique cars, tractors, carriages, and more. His favorite part was the old fire engine he climbed on to ring its bell. Near the Wells Fargo stagecoach exhibit there was a large painting of a stagecoach being pursued by “Indians” who were being shot at by those in the stagecoach. My grandson stared at this painting for the longest time and finally asked, “Who are the bad guys?” Well, 35 years ago, when I was raising my own kids, and I didn't know any better, the answer was simple. But now, after 35 years of reading, culminating in one of this month’s books, the answer wasn’t so simple. I copped out by asking him what he thought, and he said he didn’t know, and he pretty much insisted on an answer as he continued to stare at this large painting. How do you explain “Cowboys and Indians” to kids these days? It was so much simpler when we decided to just blindly believe the origin stories of this country without question and watched John Wayne shooting Indians to save the poor settlers. How do you talk about genocide to a 3-year-old? I decided you don’t and distracted back to the fire engine. I’ll let his parents deal with that. But when he gets older, I will love to have this conversation with him, but by then he will know way more about all of this than I do.
This month was Indian Peaks Wilderness month with my son who had time off work for paternity leave. We managed a weekly hike into this beautiful wilderness and spotted some of the oldest moose we’ve ever seen, one that had antlers more like an elk than a moose (what the heck was it?). My reading included true stories about the 1936 Olympic rowing team and the history of Indigenous people in the US; and I was privileged to read what was quite possibly the most perfect novel ever written. Enjoy.
Susan La Flesche Picotte is the first Native American woman to receive a medical degree. This was in 1889. Per Discover magazine she "became inspired to enter the medical field as a child, after watching an Indigenous woman die because the local white doctor refused to treat her illness." She graduated after three years of study from Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania as valedictorian, only 24 years old. Against the wishes of her school mentors she decided to return to her Omaha reservation in Nebraska to help treat her people. Per Smithsonian Magazine, "Soon after she opened the doors to her new office in the government boarding school, the tribe began to file in. Many of them were sick with tuberculosis or cholera, others simply looking for a clean place to rest. She became their doctor, but in many ways their lawyer, accountant, priest and political liaison. So many of the sick insisted on Dr. Susan, as they called her, that her white counterpart suddenly quit, making her the only physician on a reservation stretching nearly 1,350 square miles." She passed away at the age of 50 from bone cancer in 1915 soon after she had established the first ever hospital on an American Indian reservation.
I suppose one could argue that she was one of the very few Native Americans to actually benefit from the boarding schools that the US forced upon indigenous children from the late 1800s through the mid-20th century. I believe it's more accurate to say she "overcame" that forced assimilation rather than to say she "benefited" from it. The goal of those schools was to remove their cultural past and assimilate them into the ways of the white people. Most children suffered tremendously in these schools and there were numerous instances of abuse and death. One of the episodes in the current season of Reservation Dogs addresses the boarding school issue in a really impactful way. It's a great series if you haven't heard about it. Funny and poignant at the same time.
On October 11, 2021, Nebraska's first officially recognized Indigenous Peoples’ Day, a bronze sculpture of La Flesche Picotte was unveiled by her descendants on Lincoln’s Centennial Mall. PBS American Masters has a really good 12 minute documentary on her life. Check it out here.
A friend of mine said that as he’s gotten older he cries over everything now. I can’t say that happened to me because I’ve always been a crier. At movies, happy and sad; at weddings and funerals (duh); and sometimes with music. I would say that the movies I cry at are likely an indirect result of the music playing at the time. It used to be (well in some places still is) sort of taboo for guys to cry. Those times are mostly in our past, so here I am writing about me being a crier. Even ex-Marine snipers cry as evidenced by this father watching his son pitch in the major leagues for the first time. So, here are the songs that I can currently think of that make me cry every time. They don’t include obviously sad songs like John Prine’s Sam Stone or heartbreaking past lover longs like Adele’s Someone Like You even though I’m willing to wager that there are people out there that cry when those two songs come on. This SNL skit using Adele's song is funny and pretty accurate.
He Went to Paris by Jimmy Buffett. I was deeply saddened by the death this month of the great Jimmy Buffett. Maybe I cried a little bit. The last time I got illegally stoned was at a concert of his in Phoenix…ah memories. He’s best known for his island songs like Margaritaville and Cheeseburger in Paradise, but for me, He Went to Paris is his masterpiece. It plays like a Hemmingway novel and contains a line near the end that I wouldn’t mind having on my gravestone (which, honestly, I don’t want a gravestone, but still). At the song’s conclusion, after reflecting on his life, the 86-year-old narrator says about life:
Some of it's magic, some of it's tragic
But I had a good life all the way
Poems, Prayers, and Promises by John Denver. Another singer-songwriter that is famous for other great songs (Rocky Mountain High, Country Roads). But this song, like the one above is just a beautiful statement about life. It’s another one where the narrator is reflecting back on his life and it also has a line that I would put on my imaginary gravestone:
I have to say it now, it's been a good life all in all
It's really fine to have a chance to hang around
And lie there by the fire and watch the evening tire
I have to say it now, it's been a good life all in all
It's really fine to have a chance to hang around
And lie there by the fire and watch the evening tire
The Babysitter’s Here by Dar Williams. I’m not completely sure why this song gets to me because unlike the first two on this list, it’s not any kind of reflection on life. However, the writing really hits you indirectly about choosing who you should be in a relationship with in the guise of a cute story about kids being enamored of their babysitter with hair so long that she can sit on it. Maybe it’s the innocence of the kids in the story offset by the heartbreak that the babysitter is experiencing. I don’t know, but it’s great. Dar Williams is an underrated and brilliant singer-songwriter. Sample lyrics:
But it's Saturday night,
I can't sleep, and we're watching the news
She says, "Do me a favor,
Don't go with a boy who would make you choose,"
And I don't understand, and she tries to explain
And all that mascara runs down in her pain
Pilgrim by Steve Earle. This one’s pretty easy to understand why I cry. My dad loved this song, and I included it in many of the compilation CDs I would make for him over the years. When he passed at the end of 2016, I included the song in his memorial as photos of his life flashed before us. Chills as I write this. Here are just a few of the great talents that are playing and singing along in this version of the song from Earle’s collaboration album with the Del McCoury Band titled The Mountain: Emmylou Harris, Gillian Welsh, John Harford, Del McCoury, Dave Rawlings, Cowboy Jack Clements, Sam Bush, Marty Stuart, Jerry Douglas. Douglas’ steel guitar just slays me every time. It’s a great song. Sample lyrics:
We'll meet again on some bright highway
Songs to sing and tales to tell
But I am just a pilgrim on this road, boys
Until I see you fare thee well
The Curse by Josh Ritter. A love song between a several-thousand-year-old mummy and an anthropologist? Well, it’s Josh Ritter, so why not. The piano waltz, the lonely trumpet and Ritter’s way with words turns this unlikely story into a beautiful love song. It’s best experienced by watching this incredible video by Liam Hurley. My 3-year-old grandson loves this video. I do too.
He opens his eyes, falls in love at first sight
With the girl in the doorway
What beautiful lines, how full of life
After thousands of years what a face to wake up to
Our initial goal was to summit South Arapaho Peak but we had to stop just above the glacier due to time constraints. The hike is spectacular. The first couple of miles is a steady uphill climb of around 1,000 feet through the forest with occasional views, but then you emerge from the tree line and the views just blow up all around you. Here you exit the Arapaho Pass trail and turn right onto the Arapaho Glacier trail where it gets a bit steeper for the next two miles and 1,500 feet of elevation gain (it would have been another 500 feet in about a quarter mile to reach the summit). Once on the ridgeline you have a great view of the glacier and its namesake silt-colored tarn at the bottom. To the northeast is a valley of lakes that provides 40% of the drinking water for the city of Boulder; the lakes in this drainage are off limits to visitors in order to protect the drinking water system. To the southwest are a beautiful series of tundra ridges leading to various peaks on the Continental Divide. Many of the alpine lakes are also visible on this walk. We called it a day and headed back down and got a nice surprise near the intersection of the Arapaho Pass trail: two giant bull moose were lounging on the ground watching us approach them from above. We stared in wonder for a bit, got a couple of photos and hurried down the trail for the critical NFL fantasy league draft that my son had to participate in. It was a great day and I hope to hike more of the trails in this area soon, including Lake Dorothy which looks beautiful from where we were.
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| Views starting at the 2 mile mark |
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| Mounts Jasper and Neva up high |
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| Son taking in the views |
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| Climbing high; you can see Fourth of July road snaking far below |
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| Diamond Lake way out there |
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| Looking at where we'd be hiking the following week; see the faint trail, upper right? |
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| South Arapaho Peak looming large |
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| Arapaho Glacier and small tarn below |
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| There's no way we're gonna make it and get home in time for my fantasy draft |
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| Wider view of the Arapaho Glacier watershed that feeds Boulder |
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| Getting windy on the way down |
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| Spotted two big old moose lounging |
Rowing had been an historically European sport that migrated to the Ivy League schools in the northeast part of the country. It was the sport for sons of politicians, lawyers, bankers, and businessmen. However, in the 1930s, the Pacific Northwest, along with the University of California found a couple of great coaches, a master boat builder from the UK, and a bunch of boys who were sons of lumberjacks, fisherman, and farmers. They came to dominate the eastern schools in a sport that, at the time, was as popular as college football with thousands of fans attending or listening on the radio.
In addition to the compelling stories of the rowers, their coaches, the boat builder, and the depression, it was also a story of how Hitler was preparing for world domination but was masterfully using propaganda to deter other countries from concerning themselves too much about his nascent Nazi party. For the 1936 Olympics, he cleaned up Berlin to hide all evidence of Jewish persecution. He, along with his award-winning filmmaker, Leni Riefenstahl, would show the world that the German nation was a peaceful and organized country, ready to host the world’s greatest athletes.
Most of us have probably heard the story of how Jessie Owens won four gold medals at the 1936 Olympics, infuriating Hitler that a “colored” American runner was defeating his Aryan runners; but not many know about this incredible story. It was documented in a 2016 PBS American Experience episode titled “The Boys of ‘36” which is available to rent on Amazon. It’s a truly heart warming story about the determination and will of the human spirit and about the beauty of operating as a team.
Who was Dorothy? I’m always curious about how places get named. I stumbled upon a really interesting blog from writer Sarah Hahn Campbell who tries to hike to places named after women and to write about those women. She couldn’t be sure, but her best guess is that it was named after the wife of Ellsworth Bethel, a high school botany teacher and leader of the Colorado Mountain Club in the early 1900s. He was the one who suggested to the US Board on Geographic Names that the Snowy Peaks be renamed to honor Native American tribes and chiefs and was successful in creating the new names of Apache, Arikaree, Kiowa, Navajo, Ogallala, and Pawnee Peaks. Sarah discovered that Bethel had also written to the board to name a little heart-shaped lake in the Indian Peaks Wilderness after his wife, Dorothy Stokley. So that sounds like the right Dorothy to me. Not much is known about her other than she moved back to Washington DC after her husband died. Mount Bethel, near Loveland Pass, is named for him.
Back to the hike. It was a picture-perfect day with a few clouds all the way until we reached the Caribou Pass junction. Then the mountains happened. The wind kicked up and hail started flying at us sideways. We managed to make it the 0.4 miles to the lake, but we didn’t have a chance to enjoy it much because of the weather. We decided to head back down the hill before it got worse. A loud clap of thunder encouraged us to get down off the tundra quickly. The views from Arapaho Pass are incredible (I think). Caribou lake to the north looks like a place I’ll be hiking soon. I plan to visit this area more often in the future as there is so much to explore and it’s so incredibly beautiful. We spotted pika, marmots, deer, and a soaring peregrine on today’s hike, but the two giant bull moose from the previous week had moved on to greener pastures evidently.
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| Old mining equipment near the Independence Mine |
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| Lots of clouds...uh oh... |
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| Welcome to Colorado, here's some hail and wind |
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| Hail pounding Lake Dorothy |
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| Let's get out of here |
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| Looking down at next week's hike to Caribou Lake, hopefully with less hail and wind |
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| Lugged all this fishing equipment up here for nothing |
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| It's clearing up, should we go back? No way |
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| Still have a way to go to get below tree line |
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| Beautiful valley pointing towards Mt. Neva |
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| Lots of uphill |
Why was it so good? Fascinating characters, a life that was tragic and magic (as Jimmy Buffet wrote...see above), social commentary about those left behind in our society, underneath all the evil the world contains there are the most wonderful people out there that care, beautifully descriptive writing on nearly every page, and possibly the most perfect ending ever written. The last few pages were physically difficult to read through all the tears. I can’t say they were either sad or happy tears. Maybe just tears from an appreciation of such a great story told.
I suppose I should tell you a bit about the story, but really what’s the point. Just know that it’s a masterpiece and will still be read hundreds of years from now. Well, OK, it’s the story of a boy born in a trailer in rural Virginia to a mother full of bad choices in life and father who died tragically months before his birth. The boy goes through a series of nefarious foster homes ending with his running away at a young age to find his paternal grandmother. This grandmother sets him up to succeed in a decent foster home, but an unfortunate football injury combined with the outside forces of the opioid crisis turn this temporary success into a living nightmare. The few good people in this boy’s life conspire to try and save him once again. Do they succeed? Read it. Seriously, read it. It will show you why reading is the greatest form of entertainment and education life has to offer.
There are so many great scenes in this book, but one that stuck with me was when Demon took his grandmother’s disabled brother out to fly a kite in his wheelchair (a kite he had written his poetry on): “The string was pulling hard in the wind, but I towed it back to Mr. Dick and put it in his hand. Hang on tight, I said, and flopped on the ground beside him, panting like a dog. He was quiet, holding that string and kite with everything he had. The way he looked. Eyes raised up, body tethered by one long thread to the big stormy sky, the whole of him up there with his words, talking to whoever was listening. I’ve not seen a sight to match it.” That’s when you knew Demon was worth saving.
Also, Demon summarizing his Black teacher's description of the Great Migration: “He said there used to be a ton of Black people living here, that came for the coal jobs. Not being allowed decent pay down south, plus oftentimes getting killed down there for the reason of Blackness. It had mostly all along been more free around here in the back-ass end of Virginia, not slavery, due to the farms being piss-poor tiny and not the big plantations. But then the mine jobs started petering out and they all went on to Chicago or someplace. For the jobs and also this thing of Great Migration, the far south being hell on earth with the Black-hater laws, and them wanting to put as much road as possible between themselves and hell.”
At the end of her acknowledgements, Kingsolver wrote: “For the kids who wake up hungry in those dark places every day, who’ve lost their families to poverty and pain pills, whose caseworkers keep losing their files, who feel invisible, or wish they were: this book is for you.”
There are enough great lines in this book to create a great book of quotes. Here are just a few:
The wonder is that you could start life with nothing, end with nothing, and lose so much in between.
I told her nobody ever asked me that question before, about growing up and what I wanted to be, so I didn’t know. Mainly, still alive.
They said the most of our tobacco now was getting sold to China. Meaning I guess we were helping to kill the communists, so. God bless America and all that.
We drove around with “Proud Tobacco Farmer” stickers on our trucks till they peeled and faded along with our good health and dreams of greatness.
Moral of the story, Mom always saying she wouldn’t be caught dead in a church. And here she was, losing every battle right to the end, in a white casket from Walmart, the other place she hated to be.
I didn’t bring up hunting…not knowing where she stood with the whole city-person outlook on shooting Bambi.
You tell me why it makes sense for guys wanting money from you to come and take your car, so you can’t earn another dime. That’s the grown-up version I guess of teachers yelling at you for hating school.
If you spend one penny less than you earn every month, you’ll be happy. But spend a penny more than you earn, you’re done for. He’d look at me with those dark, sad eyes and lay this on me. That the secret of happiness basically is two cents.
It was that fall type of day where the world feels like it’s about to change its mind on everything.
The Charles Dickens one, seriously old guy, dead and a foreigner, but Christ Jesus did he get the picture on kids and orphans getting screwed over and nobody giving a rat’s ass. You’d think he was from around here.
…his poor grandparents that married at fifteen with no bigger hope in the world than to have kids and not watch them die.
Her fingernails alone had seen more maintenance than any part of that property.
She said Purdue looked at data and everything with their computers, and hand-picked targets like Lee County that were gold mines. They actually looked up which doctors had the most pain patients on disability, and sent out their drug reps for the full offensive.
It was late winter now, where sunset puts its claim on much of the day.
Like every boy in Lee County I was raised to be a proud mule in a world that has scant use for mules.
Sidewalks. I saw kids out there tipping skateboards, like pavement was a normal thing. No clue.
Earlier in the day on the way up, near the junction with the Arapaho Glacier trail we spotted three huge moose. Two males and a female. All of them seemed ancient and were just sitting there watching us. One of the males however had antlers that looked more like an elk than a moose. Was it an elk hanging out with his moose friends? No way, it was too dark and had that moose face that is unmistakable. But the antlers looked like an elk and nothing like a moose. That bothered us the whole way up. Did elk and moose breed? We didn’t think so as they are different species. Mystery. On the way back down we spotted them again, but this time they were up and about, feeding instead of sitting. So we got better views. Still elk antlers on that moose. Check out the photos for yourself. After the hike my son contacted the ranger station and they said to send photos. We submitted the photos to the ranger district and to CPW (Colorado Parks and Wildlife). Per CPW, moose and elk "generally" cannot breed but it is a known fact that as moose age, their antlers become thinner, losing that wide shovel-like face the older they get. If so, that was a very very old moose.
A fascinating day that also included spotting a dusky grouse near the trailhead and another large bull moose on the drive out; this one with actual moose-looking antlers. Colorado is amazing.
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| Ran into these old moose again, a bit closer this time |
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| Those look more like elk antlers than moose antlers |
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| Caribou Lake, our destination. So 800 feet down after we've already climbed 2,000 feet |
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| Looking north to the Indian Peaks near Brainard |
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| I headed up to that cirque behind Caribou Lake |
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| An especially cute little pika |
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| Base of the cirque pretty dried out by now |
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| Bright green moss leading to the most amazing view |
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| Son catching lots of fish to make up for last week's hail-out |
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| Caribou Lake reflections |
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| A beautiful setting |
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| Son and I |
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| Great lighting for this valley shot |
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| Ran into the moose with elk antlers again |
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| Two old buddies from way back |
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| This guy was about as close as I want to be to a moose in the wild |
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| Dusky grouse |
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| Saw this guy on the drive out |
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| Trees thinking it's fall |
Robin D. G. Kelley an American historian and academic, who is the Gary B. Nash Professor of American History at UCLA wrote this review that says it better than I can: "This may well be the most important U.S. history book you will read in your lifetime. . . . Dunbar-Ortiz radically reframes U.S. history, destroying all foundation myths to reveal a brutal settler-colonial structure and ideology designed to cover its bloody tracks. Here, rendered in honest, often poetic words, is the story of those tracks and the people who survived – bloodied but unbowed. Spoiler alert: the colonial era is still here, and so are the Indians."
Here are some lines:
North America in 1492 was not a virgin wilderness but a network of Indigenous nations, peoples of the corn.
English settlers brought witch hunting with them to Jamestown, Virginia, and to Salem, Massachusetts. In language reminiscent of that used to condemn witches, they quickly identified the Indigenous populations as inherently children of Satan and “servants of the devil” who deserved to be killed.
The English government paid bounties for the Irish heads. Later only the scalp or ears were required. A century later in North America, Indian heads and scalps were brought in for bounty in the same manner.
Our nation was born in genocide.… We are perhaps the only nation which tried as a matter of national policy to wipe out its indigenous population. Moreover, we elevated that tragic experience into a noble crusade. Indeed, even today we have not permitted ourselves to reject or feel remorse for this shameful episode. —Martin Luther King Jr.
Land-poor white rural people saw (Andrew) Jackson as the man who would save them, making land available to them by ridding it of Indians, thereby setting the pattern of the dance between poor and rich US Americans ever since under the guise of equality of opportunity...Jackson was easily reelected in 1832, although landless settlers had acquired very little land, and what little they seized was soon lost to speculators, transformed into ever larger plantations worked by slave labor.
A Georgia volunteer, afterward a colonel in the Confederate service, said: “I fought through the civil war and have seen men shot to pieces and slaughtered by thousands, but the Cherokee removal (Trail of Tears) was the cruelest work I ever knew.”..Half of the sixteen thousand Cherokee men, women, and children who were rounded up and force-marched in the dead of winter out of their country (to Oklahoma) perished on the journey.
Indigenous peoples in the West continued to resist, and the soldiers kept hunting them down, incarcerating them, massacring civilians, removing them, and stealing their children to haul off to faraway boarding schools.
The Seventh Cavalry attack on a group of unarmed and starving Lakota refugees attempting to reach Pine Ridge to accept reservation incarceration in the frozen days of December 1890 symbolizes the end of Indigenous armed resistance in the United States. The slaughter is called a battle in US military annals.
In the first land restitution to any Indigenous nation, President Richard M. Nixon signed into effect Public Law 91-550 on December 15, 1970, which had been approved with bipartisan majorities in Congress. President Nixon stated, “This is a bill that represents justice, because in 1906 an injustice was done in which land involved in this bill—48,000 acres—was taken from the Taos Pueblo Indians. The Congress of the United States now returns that land to whom it belongs."
On the front page of one newspaper, editors placed two photographs side by side, each of a pile of bloody, mutilated bodies in a ditch. One was from My Lai in 1968, the other from the Wounded Knee army massacre of the Lakota in 1890. Had they not been captioned, it would have been impossible to tell the difference in time and place.
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| Old sign for an old townsite |
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| Middle Boulder Creek; Eldora ski run in the background |
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| Colorful hillside |
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| Lots of options |
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| Nice meadow provided a brief reprieve from the trees |
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| Jasper Lake with Devil's Thumb background |
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| Well fed chipmunk |
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| Mount Jasper straight ahead |
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| View from the other side |
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| Started climbing up Storm Gulch. Stopped here. |
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| Steep and rocky but one day I'll see Storm Lake |
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| I liked the way the sun shined on the top of this ridge. Sunshine Ridge? |
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| Son catching just one more trout! |
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| Jasper Lake reflections |
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| Pretty walk down |
Until next time, happy reading and rambling!