"I’m used to it now, the waiting. An incomplete, unhurried emergence of understanding, sitting with questions that are sometimes never answered." from Stone Yard Devotional by Charlotte Wood
July 2024
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Books read:
The Peking Express: The Bandits Who Stole a Train, Stunned the West, and Broke the Republic of China, by James M. Zimmerman
The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate: Discoveries from a Secret World by Peter Wohlleben
The Three Body Problem by Liu Cixin, translated by Ken Liu
One Long River of Song by Brian Doyle
Trails walked:
Bandelier National Monument near Los Alamos, NM (June 30th)
Timber Lake in Rocky Mountain National Park (July 11th)
Green Lake in Rocky Mountain National Park (July 16th)
Mount Ida in Rocky Mountain National Park (July 23rd)
South Arapaho Peak near Eldora (July 30th)
Song of the month: Kim Deal – Coast; Eliza Gilkyson - Coast
Scientist Spotlight: Akira Endo – statin drugs
July Summary:
I just watched the opening ceremony for the Paris Olympics. They were incroyable! It brought back so many great memories. I was fortunate enough to spend lots of time in Paris when I worked for a French company for many years. I grew to love that city; its bridges, parks, museums, baguettes, and croissants. And its people. I met many good friends through my work there and still hear from them on a regular basis. I know there are lots of jokes about French people and their snootiness or lack of courage. Those are old stereotypes that don’t seem to die. In all my travels I’ve found people around the world to be pretty similar. They all want to provide for their families, do good work, and if possible, have a bit of fun. In France that usually includes lots of red wine…and cheese.
Speaking of what most people want, the next three months are going to be pretty awful politically (especially if you live in a swing state). Probably most of you who read my blog are clear about which candidate I’ll be voting for (or voting against). But I implore you to help keep things civil among friends and family. You may not understand why a friend or family member is rooting for one candidate or the other (or the other). But one thing that you should understand is that most people all want the same thing in life: a good job to provide for themselves and their families, good friends, some meaning to their lives, and if possible, a bit of leisure time in which to have fun. Don’t buy into the loud 10% at the extremes. You don’t have to hate someone who votes differently from you. They aren’t out to destroy our country. Chances are they are reading a whole different narrative about their candidate than you are based on their self-tailored news feeds. I do believe that facts, especially scientific facts, seem to have eluded the grasp of politicians (some more than others). But hasn’t that always been the case? Just when I think the times we’re living in seem the most divided, I read about another time in the past that was the same, or worse. We’ve been through all this before, it just seems like it’s on steroids now with 24x7 news and equal platforms for the extremes of society. So, good luck out there. Be safe. Be kind. Be understanding.
As of press time there are two wildfires burning near our home. The Alexander Mountain fire west of Loveland and the Stone Canyon fire north of Lyons. It's very smoky here in Longmont today, but I feel bad for the many people who have had to evacuate their homes due to these fires. And these are just two of the over 100 big fires burning in the west. The combination of the El Nino weather pattern along with climate change and folks wanting to live in the mountains have conspired to create a difficult summer in the west. I'm in constant admiration of the people fighting these impossible fires and those helping the evacuees and their animals. There are many good people in this world, despite what you read on your news feeds.
This month I read two China-centric books, one true, one fiction with a lot of truth within. I also read a book about trees and a beautiful collection of essays. My rambling took me from ancient cliff dwellings in northern New Mexico to three epic hikes in Rocky Mountain National Park, and a stupendous view in the Indian Peaks Wilderness. Enjoy!
Things My Grandkids Say: One of the essays included in a book I read this month by Brian Doyle (see below) included this perfect quote: “I believe that the coolest things there are cannot be measured, calibrated, calculated, gauged, weighed, or understood except sometimes by having a child patiently explain it to you…”
Meanwhile my 4-year-old grandson had this to say while watching fencing in the Olympics: “Why are astronauts sword fighting?”
Scientist Spotlight: Akira Endo – statin drugs
I started taking statins when I turned 40, 25 years ago. My Arizona doctor said my cholesterol was too high and these drugs are so effective that many doctors he knew took them even if their cholesterol wasn’t high. I read the same thing in a National Geographic article about them. So, statins became the first ever drug I took on a daily basis, and it remained the only one up until a year ago when my Colorado doctor said my blood pressure and prostate could both use some reducing.
Before statin drugs were discovered in the 70s, there were other drugs that tried to remove or reduce cholesterol from the body, but they all had severe side effects and weren’t all that effective anyway. Akira Endo is the medical research scientist who discovered the first statin drug-compactin. Statins lower the “bad cholesterol,” aka LDL cholesterol. It wasn’t until the late 80s when statins became generally available (after passing the rigorous testing required after invention of a drug). According to the science heroes website: “Statins have now been out for more than 30 years, and many long-term studies have been completed. A most remarkable occurrence has been the number of studies that have been stopped early. In those, statins were so successful, having so many fewer of those on statins dying than those in the placebo control group, that continuing the study and keeping statins from the control group was determined to be unethical.”
Endo was born on November 14, 1933, in northern Japan. He was raised on a farm during World War II. He graduated from Faculty of Agriculture of Tohoku University in March 1957 and went to work at Sankyo. The company sent him to the US for two years of study, and he started his statin research shortly afterwards. Today he is retired, living in Tokyo. I loved this quote by Endo: “I did not start the research to make money or become a big man. Since I was born as a human in this world, I wanted to leave my mark before I die. I want to die after I do at least one thing useful for the world.” It’s estimated that statin drugs have saved 26,000,000 lives. That’s pretty useful.
Song of the month: Kim Deal – Coast; Eliza Gilkyson - Coast
Kim Deal and her twin sister Kelly started their careers covering Hank Williams and Led Zeppelin songs in their native Dayton, Ohio. Kim went on to play bass and do some vocals with the great Boston band the Pixies before “creative differences” found her out of the band. Most rock critics agree that the Pixies went downhill pretty quickly when she left (She went back to them 10 years later for a few years’ run). She started her own band, The Breeders, and had some success with them in the 90s and into the 2000s, including their platinum album, Last Splash. Although I like some of her stuff with the Pixies and Breeders, I wouldn’t say I loved it. But when I heard this song which she released this year (she’s 63), I took a step back and went woah! I can’t really explain why I like it so much. Maybe the horns which make it sound like a second line band out of New Orleans was trying to cover Jimmy Buffet. That, along with her breezy voice that sort of reminded me of…..
Eliza Gilkyson also wrote a song called Coast, which I have already written about back in my January 2022 blog. I thought I would toss it in here too since it’s such a great song and their voices sound a bit similar.
Kim Deal’s Coast sample lyrics:
Clearly all of my life I've been foolish Tried to hit hard, but I blew it But it don't even matter It's just human to want a way out It's human to wanna win
Bandelier National Monument near Los Alamos, NM – My wife and I spent a nice day in northern New Mexico on the last day of June. We had breakfast at the famous Rancho de Chimayo, visited the Santuario de Chimayo, then walked around Bandelier National Monument, and ended the day with a walk down the artist’s enclave of Canyon Drive in Santa Fe. I was probably 10 years old the last time I visited Bandelier, but I remembered it pretty well. At that time, we were able to enter the sacred kivas via their rooftop ladders which was a fun adventure for a ten-year-old. In 2024 however, most of the sacred spaces are protected from visitors’ entry. But there are still ladders to climb among the many cliff dwellings up here. The monument is named for a Swiss archeologist, Adolph Bandelier, who researched and worked to preserve this area.
Most of the structures were built by Ancestral Puebloans from around 1150 to 1600 CE. There are an estimated 3,000 dwellings in the area. Two thirds of this 50 square mile monument is designated as wilderness with several trails ranging in elevation from 5,000 to 10,000 feet above sea level. I plan to explore some of this wilderness in the future. But on this day, we stayed in Frijoles Canyon (one of my favorite place names) along the 2 plus mile loop that allows you to visit the many cliff dwellings, including the Alcove House, aka Ceremonial Cave with its 140 feet of ladders to climb. The upper part of the loop takes you through some of the cave dwellings where you’re exposed to the sun on a hot day. But the return on the lower part of the loop follows Frijoles Creek below the shady cottonwood trees. It was a nice visit to a special place. I hope to explore more of the monument in the future.
Ruin foundations from above
Wife making her way among the cliff dwellings
Serious cliffs
Ladders reaching up to Alcove House
From inside Alcove House
Looking down the ladders
Reaching to the sky
The Peking Express by James M Zimmerman – History is filled with incredibly fascinating events that most people have never heard about. After reading about the Opium Wars (August 2022 blog), I found myself more interested in how China came to be what it currently is. In the opinion of many historians, the events surrounding the 1923 Lincheng Incident helped to shape modern day China. The Lincheng Incident, as it was called then, occurred when tribal bandits derailed the new express train that ran from Shanghai to Peking and then kidnapped all the foreign and Chinese first-class passengers, leading them on a long and arduous walk through the mountains. Not everyone survived, and nearly all suffered greatly. The author used newspaper accounts, personal diaries, and interviews with relatives to put together a riveting account of this incredible story.
In 1912 The Republic of China was formed after centuries of dynastic rule. Sun Yat-sen became its first leader, but there was never any stable government from this time until the Chinese Civil War ended in 1949 and Mao Zedong took over and proclaimed it as the Peoples Republic of China (PRC). Lots of other events occurred during this period, including the Japanese invasion, and two World Wars. All these events led up to the formation of the PRC. But the Lincheng Incident also played a role. It portrayed the Chinese government as incapable of ensuring the safety of foreign visitors, resulting in a series of coups. This all led to their civil war and Mao Zedong had himself a national hero (the lead bandit, Sun Meiyao, was a poor peasant and former soldier trying to point out the corruption of the government and the mistreatment of its peasant population).
Nearly 1,200 bandits looted the train after derailing it, and then took 300 hostages, mainly rich Chinese businessmen, but also 25 foreigners, including Lucy Aldrich, the sister-in-law of John D Rockefeller. Most of the female hostages were released within a few days, but the men who weren’t shot in the initial siege were held for over a month in a rugged mountain enclave. The lead bandit, Sun Meiyao, started to negotiate for the expulsion of the corrupt warlords and to have his men re-instated into the army with back pay. Most of the bandits were ex-soldiers who were abandoned by the government and left to starve, but there were also other peasants and a few criminals that were in it mainly for the stolen loot.
There were several fascinating subplots throughout the book. Including the heart wrenching story of the many children that were prisoners on the mountaintop being held for ransom from their rich families. Many of them were brutally killed by being tossed over a cliff, while the others were starving in poor living conditions. The story of the lead hostage negotiator, Roy Scott Anderson, was also interesting. He managed to successfully negotiate the release of all the foreign hostages by personally guaranteeing that the Chinese government would abide by the bandits’ demands. For six months, the government did what the bandits requested, but eventually they machine gunned the remaining bandits and beheaded their leader, Sun Meiyao. It’s a fascinating read and an interesting look into the early days of the Chinese Republic.
Timber Lake in Rocky Mountain National Park – The western portion of RMNP is a farther drive from my house, but the good news is that I get to drive on one of the world’s most beautiful roads to get there. I never tire of driving Trail Ridge Road. I’m awestruck every time I’m on it. The views just go on forever. I left home at around 6:30am and arrived at the Timber Lake trailhead at 8:15 where there were already 5 other cars (some of them were likely backpackers at one of the 4 backcountry campsites along this trail). The forecast called for 97 degrees along the front range, but it was 49 degrees when I started walking (and 79 degrees when I finished). The trail heads south, parallel to the park road for the first mile and a half where you can hear the din of cars in the background. But then heads in a generally easterly direction as it winds its way between Jackstraw and Gray Jay mountains. There are nice views through the trees on the way up, but no unobstructed views until you’re at the tree line near the lake. The flowers were going off all along the way, including one of the prettiest proliferations of Rocky Mountain Columbines I’ve seen since hiking Chasm Lake. Another great aspect of this trail is the number of open meadows you pass, some of them very large and all of them very green. Around 3.5 miles in there was an unmaintained trail heading south towards Long Meadows. I’d never heard of it and would like to hike it someday, but I wasn’t up to adding 1.6 miles to my already long 11.5 mile walk today. I reached the northern end of Timber Lake at 5.3 miles and took in its beauty for a bit with Mount Ida rising to my left (I might be able to spot this lake from Mount Ida if I headed off trail a bit to get a peak). I wandered along the right side of the lake and found a smaller lake where I stopped for brunch as the marmots peaked over rocks to see if I was willing to share (I wasn’t). After lunch I headed up high above the lake to get a better view and to see if there were any other high alpine lakes up here (there weren’t). Got some nice shots of Timber Lake from this vantage point, and then headed down around the other side of the lake where I passed a couple of unfriendly fishermen who seemed bothered by my presence. I wished them luck (no response). Oh well, not everyone enjoying the outdoors has to be friendly, I guess. The walk around the lake was pretty mushy from snowmelt but I imagine it will be more hard packed in another month or so. I ran into a very curious marmot on this side of the lake. It walked right up to me, maybe hoping for a handout. I just watched him/her for a bit and got a kick out of its goofy gait as it walked away disappointed (maybe it was wondering why I wasn’t being friendly and offering food). The walk back to the trailhead was an easy downhill as I passed some backpackers huffing and puffing their way up. I saw maybe 10 people today. No big animals, just marmots and pikas up high.
Very pretty walk into the woods at the start
Columbine blooming in the green
Floral creek
So many columbines
Making my way around landslide
Beautiful meadows
Meadows with the ramp up to Mt. Ida in the background
Timber Lake
Small pond above Timber was my lunch spot
I walked about halfway up here to get the below shot
Shot of Timber Lake from above
From my walk on the other side of Timber Lake
Pretty Timber Lake
Well fed marmot looking for more food
Probably calling me names for not feeding him
Timber Creek flowing out of its namesake lake
The Hidden Life of Trees by Peter Wohlleben – I really wanted to like this book that was published in the US in 2016, but I found it a chore to read. The topic is of great interest to me, but I think I’ve been spoiled by reading The Overstory and Braiding for Sweetgrass. Those two books described trees and nature in a much more poetic and compelling way. I found Wohllenben’s writing to be very repetitive, as though he could have gotten his points across in about half the number of pages. There were still some interesting stories and facts about trees that I enjoyed, so it wasn’t like it was a waste of time for me. As a matter of fact, below are some fascinating facts included in the book (perhaps it should have been solely a list of interesting tree facts):
If a giraffe starts eating an African acacia, the tree releases a chemical into the air that signals that a threat is at hand. As the chemical drifts through the air and reaches other trees, they “smell” it and are warned of the danger. Even before the giraffe reaches them, they begin producing toxic chemicals.
Insect pests are dealt with slightly differently. The saliva of leaf-eating insects can be “tasted” by the leaf being eaten. In response, the tree sends out a chemical signal that attracts predators that feed on that particular leaf-eating insect.
Dr. Suzanne Simard of the University of British Columbia in Vancouver has discovered that they also warn each other using chemical signals sent through the fungal networks around their root tips, which operate no matter what the weather. Surprisingly, news bulletins are sent via the roots not only by means of chemical compounds but also by means of electrical impulses that travel at the speed of a third of an inch per second.
Birds that gobble the tart fruit make random deposits of seeds wrapped in their own little packages of fertilizer.
A mature beech tree can send more than 130 gallons of water a day coursing through its branches and leaves,
When you measure water pressure in trees, you find it is highest shortly before the leaves open up in the spring. At this time of year, water shoots up the trunk with such force that if you place a stethoscope against the tree, you can actually hear it. In the northeastern U.S. and Canada, people make use of this phenomenon to harvest syrup from sugar maples, which are often tapped just as the snow is melting.
Spruce store essential oils in their needles and bark, which act like antifreeze. And that’s why they don’t need to jettison their green finery but keep it wrapped around their branches in the cold season.
If wood is too wet when it freezes, it can burst like a frozen water pipe. This is the reason most species begin to gradually reduce the moisture content in their wood—and this means cutting back on activity—as early as July.
Tokin writes that the air in young pine forests is almost germfree, thanks to the phytoncides released by the needles.
Walnuts have compounds in their leaves that deal so effectively with insects that garden lovers are often advised to put a bench under a canopy of walnuts if they want a comfortable place to relax in the garden, because this is where they will have the least chance of being bitten by mosquitoes.
Green Lake in Rocky Mountain National Park – I was really excited to take somebody I knew up to this spectacular setting that I call the Glacier Gorge Cirque which has become a favorite of mine. See my previous write ups on Blue Lake and Frozen Lake in this area. My daughter-in-law joined me for this long hike (12.5 miles) to yet another spectacular alpine lake in this wondrous park. I’ve said before that if you’re willing to put in the miles in this park, you will be rewarded with visits to special places that few people have seen. We left Lyons (our meeting spot) at 6:30am and both the Glacier Gorge and Bear Lake trailhead parking lots were full on a Tuesday at 7:30! It’s that time of year. So we drove back down to the park and ride and took the shuttle to the Glacier Gorge trailhead. We passed the normal throng of tourists in the first mile up to overrated (in my opinion) Alberta Falls, then a few more adventurous souls making their way to Mills Lake along Glacier Creek and to Sky Pond along Icy Brook. Normally I see very few people after Mills Lake, but today we encountered two large youth groups heading towards Black Lake. I love seeing young people out enjoying the outdoors. They were all nice kids having fun. Along with the youth groups we saw maybe 4 other people at the spectacular Black Lake with its waterfalls and towering mountains. We stopped here for our brunch and to rest up for the push up to the Glacier Gorge Cirque. As we were ready to hike up, a father and his two daughters asked for help in finding Frozen Lake (to find Elsa maybe). I told them about how to get there and I think they decided to be satisfied with Black Lake, which was probably a good call for them. We started up the very steep hill walking next to one of the many creeks that flow into Black Lake. About halfway up we ran into a woman who was questioning whether she made the right decision to head to Blue Lake. She looked to be in good shape so I encouraged her to keep going because it was worth it. She did, and we later saw her wandering around Blue Lake from our high vantage point at Green Lake.
Once you reach the tundra at the end of the steep hill (a quarter mile and 400 feet above Black Lake) you enter another world. You’re at the western base of the park’s largest peak (Longs). There are creeks and ponds everywhere, blocking your way every time you think you’ve picked the right route. There’s still some snow up here and a few marmots and pikas…and lots of bighorn sheep poop. We headed in the general direction of Green Lake (bring a map) which was another mile away and 600 feet of elevation gain. But the beauty of this place takes away all your tired legs and lungs. We were passing by a profusion of flowers, waterfalls and creeks, surrounded by steep and jagged mountains with the entire world below you to the north. We finally reached the tiny and pretty little Green Lake with its crystal-clear water. So beautiful. We took a look at the skies and decided we should quickly head back because you don’t want to be on the tundra in a lightning storm. I made a few wrong turns on the way back and we ended up trudging through some marshy areas and some thick juniper bushes as the rain came (no lightning). We put on our rain gear and finally managed to find the social trail back down to Black Lake. When we got back down to Black Lake, we let out a sigh of relief now that we were on a superhighway instead of that marshy tundra. It rained just a bit more but then the sun came out and we peeled back into our shorts and t-shirts for the walk back to Glacier Gorge trailhead and the shuttle to our car. Another spectacular day in RMNP.
Passing Alberta Falls on the way up
DIL on one of many creek crossings
Approaching the beautiful Mills Lake
DIL and I at Jewel Lake
Beautiful walk up to Black Lake
Black Lake with McHenry's towering above
DIL making her way through the tundra brush
Flowers growing at the western base of Longs Peak
Rock and water
Beautiful up here in the tundra
Finding a route up to Green Lake
Crystal clear Green Lake
The world just drops off
Rain hits while route finding
So beautiful
Black Lake from up on the tundra
Glacier Creek and its stunning background on the way back
The Three Body Problem by Liu Cixin – I had heard about a new Netflix series with this book’s name, so I read up a bit and discovered that the book it’s based on (this book that I just read) won the Galaxy Award (Chinese version of the Hugo Award), the Nebula Award, and its English translation won the Hugo Award! All of them pinnacle awards for science fiction writing. It was also lauded by Barack Obama and by Game of Thrones author George RR Martin who wrote of it: “This is a very unusual book, a unique blend of scientific and philosophical speculation, politics and history, conspiracy theory and cosmology, where kings and emperors from both western and Chinese history mingle in a dreamlike game world, while cops and physicists deal with global conspiracies, murders, and alien invasions in the real world.”
I really enjoyed the first 90% of this book. The final 10% was too much like reading a physics textbook. But still, that means that I enjoyed 270 pages of a 300-page novel. That’s not bad. Also, since this is the first in a trilogy, perhaps that 10% will make more sense if I read the next two novels which I likely will do.
The novel begins during the Chinese Cultural Revolution of the late 1960s and early 1970s when its version of communism was rooting out what it called the elitism of scientists and academics. Many of these so-called elitists who weren’t killed were subjected to ridicule or imprisoned or escaped to Taiwan or to the West. In the novel a young woman astrophysicist named Ye watched her father, a college professor, tortured and killed. She was eventually sent to prison. When her skills were required for a secret program, she was allowed to do some physics work but under light guard with little hope of ever leaving the remote mountain post where this program took place. This program turned out to be a search for extraterrestrial life in the universe and she was key to providing a method of communication. So this is the basic beginning of the novel which then goes into a wild set of scenarios that included a virtual reality video game about life on a planet called Trisolaris whose people are trying to solve the problem of instability of their climate due to the three suns hovering above (The 3 Body Problem). In the game, famous scientists like Isaac Newton, John von Neumann, Archimedes, and Copernicus try to help solve this instability problem to no avail. In addition to this crazy VR game, there are mysterious suicides of scientists being investigated by a gruff and clever policeman with the help of a physicist working on nano materials. Eventually we learn about a cult of people, led by an extreme environmentalist billionaire, that is working to help extraterrestrials from Trisolaris destroy the human race so they can take over the planet Earth. Sounds crazy huh? Well it is, but it worked for me. Themes of classism, xenophobia, religion, political intrigue, and environmentalism all get folded into this story of the human race and its search for intelligent life (both inside and outside of our planet).
Mount Ida in Rocky Mountain National Park – I last hiked this jewel in October of 2022. What a difference hiking in October vs July. On that October day I had the summit to myself and ran into maybe 7 people the entire 10 miles. On this July day, my daughter-in-law (DIL) and I shared the summit with maybe 20 people and saw probably 50 the whole day. Summer is a popular time up here, sometimes even on tough hikes like this one. But as a friendly guy from Dallas told me, he considers this the best bang for the buck hike in RMNP. You gotta love the Texan’s way with words. I’d say his words are pretty spot on though. Even though it’s a 10-mile hike, with 6 of those miles above the timberline, the overall gradient isn’t bad. There are steep sections to take your breath away and flat sections to retrieve your breath. And the two big advantages in summer are the number of animals and wildflowers along the way. We saw so many marmots and pikas! Plus, two animals that I’ve only seen once in my nearly 4 years of hiking up here: a ptarmigan and a pine marten (DIL joke: Why couldn’t you hear the ptarmigan going to the bathroom? The p is silent). We also saw so many elk on the drive up plus some bighorn sheep on the hike. When I hiked in October the marmots were already hibernating. But today they were EVERYWHERE! Including begging for food at the summit (See photo from DIL below). One of the disadvantages of summer hiking here is the fact that you spend so much time above the tree line and if a thunderstorm rolls in, you’re really exposed to lightning. On this day we started hiking at 8am and were back below the tree line by 1pm, but it was a rare summer day with no thunderstorms up here. Also, there was hardly any wind at the summit, making for a nice little picnic for us and the 20 other people up here.
It was pretty hazy/smoky up here today due to big fires in Canada, something I expect will occur with more frequency moving forward. Like all hikes in the western portion of RMNP, the big bonus is getting to drive Trail Ridge Road again to get here. So incredibly beautiful.
Poudre Lake near the trailhead
Rock formations on the way to the tundra
You reach the tundra pretty quickly with views of the Never Summer mountains
Capturing the perfect photo
The trail goes on forever
Looking back towards the trailhead
DIL got a good shot at the well camouflaged ptarmigan
Some ponds at an overlook before the final climb
We still have to make our way up that ramp
The trail disappears and reappears among the rocks
Wildflowers looking up!
Wildflowers looking down!
Arrowhead and Inkwell lakes down below the peak
Lake Julian
DIL got this marmot to pose for her
DIL looking for more marmot posers
On top of the world
DIL and I on Mt. Ida
One Long River of Song by Brian Doyle – A good friend gifted this book of essays to me recently. This friend has a gift for finding the best in people and searching for the positive in everyday life. It’s no wonder that Brian Doyle is one of her favorite authors (she wrote this fact in the very nice letter she penned inside a beautiful card with a painting by Erica Fareio, a Flagstaff artist and friend of our daugther). Doyle is considered to be a “religious” writer and has had numerous essays published in catholic publications. If religion looked more like Doyle’s writing, then I believe that more people would be going to church these days. In this book of more than 80 essays, he speaks mostly about the everyday things we all experience – our families, our friends, our hobbies, our ailments, our desires, the natural world, the endless scroll of bad news, our childhoods, and prayer. When I hear a TV preacher explaining away why he loves a power-hungry man who cheats on all of his wives and strives mainly for retribution I have to wonder if “religion” even has any meaning. But reading this book of essays shows me that it can have deep meaning and grace. Some of my favorite essays in this collection included: Leap, a story of the people who leapt from the towers on 9/11; The Praying Mantis Moment when a soccer team of six-year-olds stopped their game in order to safely remove a praying mantis from the field; The Creature Beyond the Mountains about giant sturgeon in the Columbia River; Our Daily Murder, about mass shootings; The Bullet, about an American soldier in Iraq that gets shot by a bullet made in Lake City, Missouri; Dawn and Mary, about the Sandy Hook principal and psychologist who ran at the shooter instead of sheltering in place; Address Unknown in which the author writes a letter to his brother who recently passed away; Hawk Words which describes the last conversation he had with his brother before he passed away; To the Beach where he describes his bike ride to the beach when he was 13 and his brother was 12, four miles away, and how their oldest brother gifted them a precious memory; and Billy Blake’s Trial which is more of a short story describing the sedition trial of poet William Blake.
Doyle passed away in 2017 at the age of 60 from a brain tumor. He left behind a devastated family and a lifetime of work that will continue to inspire people for ages. Here are some of my favorite lines from this set of essays:
You can brick up your heart as stout and tight and hard and cold and impregnable as you possibly can and down it comes in an instant, felled by a woman’s second glance, a child’s apple breath, the shatter of glass in the road…
I study the silence of my wife. Her silence when upset; a silence I hear all too well after twenty years of listening for it.
The fact that there are wild creatures bigger and heavier than cars right there in the river in a city of two million is astounding.
Most of what we do know is that we don’t know hardly anything, which cheers me up wonderfully.
Every marriage is pregnant with divorce…
I read recently about one man who got divorced so he could watch all sixty episodes of The Wire in chronological order.
…you see an owl launch at dusk, like a burly gray dream against the last light, you flinch a little, and are awed, and count yourself blessed.
I am a guy who wanders around looking for nothing in particular, which is to say everything.
He says most wars, maybe all wars, are about money in the end, and that when we hear the beating of war drums, we should suspect that it is really a call for market expansion. He says war is a virus and imagination is the cure.
He (Peter Matthiessen) talked about his beer belly, what there was of it, which he thought every man of sense ought to have after age 60 or so, or else perhaps you have been…too fearful of joy, as he said.
I believe that the coolest things there are cannot be measured, calibrated, calculated, gauged, weighed, or understood except sometimes by having a child patiently explain it to you, which is another thing that should happen far more often to us all.
The best pre-meal grace he ever heard: “We are part of a mystery we do not understand, and we are grateful.”
...once at a dinner party (William Blake) suddenly said to the child next to him, “May God make this world as beautiful to you as it has been to me,” a sentence she remembered the rest of her life.
South Arapaho Peak near Eldora - Another hike with Daughter-in-law (DIL). We arrived at the 4th of July trailhead at around 7:45am on a Tuesday. Parking lot was full and cars were starting to park along the limited parking on the road, but we found a spot just below the main lot. I've read that you have to arrive by 5am on weekends or you're not getting a spot. There's a reason that this place is so popular, even with its relatively medium sized parking lot and 5-mile four wheel drive road. Once you get above the tree line it's like you're in the Swiss Alps. Mountain views forever up and down the Continental Divide. The first two miles take you on a mild uphill with ever increasing views to a beautiful meadow right at the tree line. I've spotted moose here on previous trips but no luck today. At this 2 mile mark we turned right onto the Arapaho Glacier trail for a steeper 2 mile walk up to a ridge with great views of Arapaho Glacier and the Boulder watershed. If you decide to stop here like my son and I did last year, it would still be an epic hike. But since DIL is a peak bagger we had more work to do. The last half mile climbs 800 feet and is mainly class 2/3 route finding, although there's a decent trail for part of the way. We took our time (it took 45 minutes to climb that last half mile) and finally made it to the top where the wind was roaring. The views are stupendous from up here. You can see both the Eldora and Winter Park Ski areas, along with several 14ers. It really is a tremendous view. We could see hikers on North Arapaho peak, but that's a class 4 scramble that I'm no longer interested in. Ptarmigan again! After seeing only one ptarmigan in my first 4 years here I've now seen 2 in the past two weeks! This one had little babies she was herding. Other than the ptarmigan and marmots and pikas, not many other animals today. We also got a bird's eye view of the Alexander Mountain fire that was burning near Loveland. Later on this day another fire started near Lyons. It's a tough summer in the west for fires.
DIL navigating a waterfall crossing
Views start early and never stop
Pretty meadow at the 2 mile mark
Mama ptarmigan
Gathering her chicks
Intimidating South Arapaho Peak looming
It's a steep climb/scramble
Arapaho Glacier watershed
Very cool plaque installed nearly 100 years ago showing direction and distance of many of the features you can see from up here
Top of the world
DIL taking photo of the plaque
Alexander Mountain fire near Loveland
North Arapaho Peak is that long, flat peak left-center
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Scientist Spotlight: Akira Endo – statin drugs 
Bandelier National Monument near Los Alamos, NM – My wife and I spent a nice day in northern New Mexico on the last day of June. We had breakfast at the famous Rancho de Chimayo, visited the Santuario de Chimayo, then walked around Bandelier National Monument, and ended the day with a walk down the artist’s enclave of Canyon Drive in Santa Fe. I was probably 10 years old the last time I visited Bandelier, but I remembered it pretty well. At that time, we were able to enter the sacred kivas via their rooftop ladders which was a fun adventure for a ten-year-old. In 2024 however, most of the sacred spaces are protected from visitors’ entry. But there are still ladders to climb among the many cliff dwellings up here. The monument is named for a Swiss archeologist, Adolph Bandelier, who researched and worked to preserve this area. 
The Peking Express by James M Zimmerman – History is filled with incredibly fascinating events that most people have never heard about. After reading about the Opium Wars (August 2022 blog), I found myself more interested in how China came to be what it currently is. In the opinion of many historians, the events surrounding the 1923 Lincheng Incident helped to shape modern day China. The Lincheng Incident, as it was called then, occurred when tribal bandits derailed the new express train that ran from Shanghai to Peking and then kidnapped all the foreign and Chinese first-class passengers, leading them on a long and arduous walk through the mountains. Not everyone survived, and nearly all suffered greatly. The author used newspaper accounts, personal diaries, and interviews with relatives to put together a riveting account of this incredible story.
Timber Lake in Rocky Mountain National Park – The western portion of RMNP is a farther drive from my house, but the good news is that I get to drive on one of the world’s most beautiful roads to get there. I never tire of driving Trail Ridge Road. I’m awestruck every time I’m on it. The views just go on forever. I left home at around 6:30am and arrived at the Timber Lake trailhead at 8:15 where there were already 5 other cars (some of them were likely backpackers at one of the 4 backcountry campsites along this trail). The forecast called for 97 degrees along the front range, but it was 49 degrees when I started walking (and 79 degrees when I finished). The trail heads south, parallel to the park road for the first mile and a half where you can hear the din of cars in the background. But then heads in a generally easterly direction as it winds its way between Jackstraw and Gray Jay mountains. There are nice views through the trees on the way up, but no unobstructed views until you’re at the tree line near the lake. The flowers were going off all along the way, including one of the prettiest proliferations of Rocky Mountain Columbines I’ve seen since hiking Chasm Lake. Another great aspect of this trail is the number of open meadows you pass, some of them very large and all of them very green. Around 3.5 miles in there was an unmaintained trail heading south towards Long Meadows. I’d never heard of it and would like to hike it someday, but I wasn’t up to adding 1.6 miles to my already long 11.5 mile walk today. I reached the northern end of Timber Lake at 5.3 miles and took in its beauty for a bit with Mount Ida rising to my left (I might be able to spot this lake from Mount Ida if I headed off trail a bit to get a peak). I wandered along the right side of the lake and found a smaller lake where I stopped for brunch as the marmots peaked over rocks to see if I was willing to share (I wasn’t). After lunch I headed up high above the lake to get a better view and to see if there were any other high alpine lakes up here (there weren’t). Got some nice shots of Timber Lake from this vantage point, and then headed down around the other side of the lake where I passed a couple of unfriendly fishermen who seemed bothered by my presence. I wished them luck (no response). Oh well, not everyone enjoying the outdoors has to be friendly, I guess. The walk around the lake was pretty mushy from snowmelt but I imagine it will be more hard packed in another month or so. I ran into a very curious marmot on this side of the lake. It walked right up to me, maybe hoping for a handout. I just watched him/her for a bit and got a kick out of its goofy gait as it walked away disappointed (maybe it was wondering why I wasn’t being friendly and offering food). The walk back to the trailhead was an easy downhill as I passed some backpackers huffing and puffing their way up. I saw maybe 10 people today. No big animals, just marmots and pikas up high.
The Hidden Life of Trees by Peter Wohlleben – I really wanted to like this book that was published in the US in 2016, but I found it a chore to read. The topic is of great interest to me, but I think I’ve been spoiled by reading The Overstory and Braiding for Sweetgrass. Those two books described trees and nature in a much more poetic and compelling way. I found Wohllenben’s writing to be very repetitive, as though he could have gotten his points across in about half the number of pages. There were still some interesting stories and facts about trees that I enjoyed, so it wasn’t like it was a waste of time for me. As a matter of fact, below are some fascinating facts included in the book (perhaps it should have been solely a list of interesting tree facts):
Green Lake in Rocky Mountain National Park – I was really excited to take somebody I knew up to this spectacular setting that I call the Glacier Gorge Cirque which has become a favorite of mine. See my previous write ups on Blue Lake and Frozen Lake in this area. My daughter-in-law joined me for this long hike (12.5 miles) to yet another spectacular alpine lake in this wondrous park. I’ve said before that if you’re willing to put in the miles in this park, you will be rewarded with visits to special places that few people have seen. We left Lyons (our meeting spot) at 6:30am and both the Glacier Gorge and Bear Lake trailhead parking lots were full on a Tuesday at 7:30! It’s that time of year. So we drove back down to the park and ride and took the shuttle to the Glacier Gorge trailhead. We passed the normal throng of tourists in the first mile up to overrated (in my opinion) Alberta Falls, then a few more adventurous souls making their way to Mills Lake along Glacier Creek and to Sky Pond along Icy Brook. Normally I see very few people after Mills Lake, but today we encountered two large youth groups heading towards Black Lake. I love seeing young people out enjoying the outdoors. They were all nice kids having fun. Along with the youth groups we saw maybe 4 other people at the spectacular Black Lake with its waterfalls and towering mountains. We stopped here for our brunch and to rest up for the push up to the Glacier Gorge Cirque. As we were ready to hike up, a father and his two daughters asked for help in finding Frozen Lake (to find Elsa maybe). I told them about how to get there and I think they decided to be satisfied with Black Lake, which was probably a good call for them. We started up the very steep hill walking next to one of the many creeks that flow into Black Lake. About halfway up we ran into a woman who was questioning whether she made the right decision to head to Blue Lake. She looked to be in good shape so I encouraged her to keep going because it was worth it. She did, and we later saw her wandering around Blue Lake from our high vantage point at Green Lake. 
The Three Body Problem by Liu Cixin – I had heard about a new Netflix series with this book’s name, so I read up a bit and discovered that the book it’s based on (this book that I just read) won the Galaxy Award (Chinese version of the Hugo Award), the Nebula Award, and its English translation won the Hugo Award! All of them pinnacle awards for science fiction writing. It was also lauded by Barack Obama and by Game of Thrones author George RR Martin who wrote of it: “This is a very unusual book, a unique blend of scientific and philosophical speculation, politics and history, conspiracy theory and cosmology, where kings and emperors from both western and Chinese history mingle in a dreamlike game world, while cops and physicists deal with global conspiracies, murders, and alien invasions in the real world.”
Mount Ida in Rocky Mountain National Park – I last hiked this jewel in October of 2022. What a difference hiking in October vs July. On that October day I had the summit to myself and ran into maybe 7 people the entire 10 miles. On this July day, my daughter-in-law (DIL) and I shared the summit with maybe 20 people and saw probably 50 the whole day. Summer is a popular time up here, sometimes even on tough hikes like this one. But as a friendly guy from Dallas told me, he considers this the best bang for the buck hike in RMNP. You gotta love the Texan’s way with words. I’d say his words are pretty spot on though. Even though it’s a 10-mile hike, with 6 of those miles above the timberline, the overall gradient isn’t bad. There are steep sections to take your breath away and flat sections to retrieve your breath. And the two big advantages in summer are the number of animals and wildflowers along the way. We saw so many marmots and pikas! Plus, two animals that I’ve only seen once in my nearly 4 years of hiking up here: a ptarmigan and a pine marten (DIL joke: Why couldn’t you hear the ptarmigan going to the bathroom? The p is silent). We also saw so many elk on the drive up plus some bighorn sheep on the hike. When I hiked in October the marmots were already hibernating. But today they were EVERYWHERE! Including begging for food at the summit (See photo from DIL below). One of the disadvantages of summer hiking here is the fact that you spend so much time above the tree line and if a thunderstorm rolls in, you’re really exposed to lightning. On this day we started hiking at 8am and were back below the tree line by 1pm, but it was a rare summer day with no thunderstorms up here. Also, there was hardly any wind at the summit, making for a nice little picnic for us and the 20 other people up here. 
One Long River of Song by Brian Doyle – A good friend gifted this book of essays to me recently. This friend has a gift for finding the best in people and searching for the positive in everyday life. It’s no wonder that Brian Doyle is one of her favorite authors (she wrote this fact in the very nice letter she penned inside a beautiful card with a painting by Erica Fareio, a Flagstaff artist and friend of our daugther). Doyle is considered to be a “religious” writer and has had numerous essays published in catholic publications. If religion looked more like Doyle’s writing, then I believe that more people would be going to church these days. In this book of more than 80 essays, he speaks mostly about the everyday things we all experience – our families, our friends, our hobbies, our ailments, our desires, the natural world, the endless scroll of bad news, our childhoods, and prayer. When I hear a TV preacher explaining away why he loves a power-hungry man who cheats on all of his wives and strives mainly for retribution I have to wonder if “religion” even has any meaning. But reading this book of essays shows me that it can have deep meaning and grace. Some of my favorite essays in this collection included: Leap, a story of the people who leapt from the towers on 9/11; The Praying Mantis Moment when a soccer team of six-year-olds stopped their game in order to safely remove a praying mantis from the field; The Creature Beyond the Mountains about giant sturgeon in the Columbia River; Our Daily Murder, about mass shootings; The Bullet, about an American soldier in Iraq that gets shot by a bullet made in Lake City, Missouri; Dawn and Mary, about the Sandy Hook principal and psychologist who ran at the shooter instead of sheltering in place; Address Unknown in which the author writes a letter to his brother who recently passed away; Hawk Words which describes the last conversation he had with his brother before he passed away; To the Beach where he describes his bike ride to the beach when he was 13 and his brother was 12, four miles away, and how their oldest brother gifted them a precious memory; and Billy Blake’s Trial which is more of a short story describing the sedition trial of poet William Blake.
South Arapaho Peak near Eldora - Another hike with Daughter-in-law (DIL). We arrived at the 4th of July trailhead at around 7:45am on a Tuesday. Parking lot was full and cars were starting to park along the limited parking on the road, but we found a spot just below the main lot. I've read that you have to arrive by 5am on weekends or you're not getting a spot. There's a reason that this place is so popular, even with its relatively medium sized parking lot and 5-mile four wheel drive road. Once you get above the tree line it's like you're in the Swiss Alps. Mountain views forever up and down the Continental Divide. The first two miles take you on a mild uphill with ever increasing views to a beautiful meadow right at the tree line. I've spotted moose here on previous trips but no luck today. At this 2 mile mark we turned right onto the Arapaho Glacier trail for a steeper 2 mile walk up to a ridge with great views of Arapaho Glacier and the Boulder watershed. If you decide to stop here like my son and I did last year, it would still be an epic hike. But since DIL is a peak bagger we had more work to do. The last half mile climbs 800 feet and is mainly class 2/3 route finding, although there's a decent trail for part of the way. We took our time (it took 45 minutes to climb that last half mile) and finally made it to the top where the wind was roaring. The views are stupendous from up here. You can see both the Eldora and Winter Park Ski areas, along with several 14ers. It really is a tremendous view. We could see hikers on North Arapaho peak, but that's a class 4 scramble that I'm no longer interested in. Ptarmigan again! After seeing only one ptarmigan in my first 4 years here I've now seen 2 in the past two weeks! This one had little babies she was herding. Other than the ptarmigan and marmots and pikas, not many other animals today. We also got a bird's eye view of the Alexander Mountain fire that was burning near Loveland. Later on this day another fire started near Lyons. It's a tough summer in the west for fires..jpg)
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