October 2025

Books read:

Everyone Who is Gone is Here: The United States, Central America, and the Making of a Crisis by Jonathan Blitzer
Abundance by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson
Pearly Everlasting by Tammy Armstrong
A$$holes: A Theory by Aaron James

Trails walked:

Wheeler Peak near Taos, NM (Oct 2nd)
Gavilan Ridge near Taos, NM (Oct 7th)
Slide and Picuris Loop near Taos, NM (Oct 9th)
Sheep Mountain near Loveland (Oct 24th)
Lion Gulch to Laycook Homestead near Pinewood Springs (Oct 29th)

Song(s) of the month:

Slaid Cleaves – Breakfast in Hell
Dar Williams - The Christians and the Pagans

October Summary:

In a galaxy far far away, before the mid 1990s, there were many families and friends whose political views differed as today. But you know what? It didn't matter that much. Back then, disagreeing with your spouse or kids or friends on politics was as harmless as disagreeing with them on which Godfather movie was best (Godfather II), or whether Ford trucks were better than Chevy Trucks (It's Toyota now), or whether pineapple should come anywhere near a real pizza (definitely not). There were some exceptions (Vietnam and Civil Rights impacted some families and friendships), but in general, and from my direct experience, it wasn't that big of a deal. We didn't define ourselves by our political affiliations. Today I've been reading a lot about families and friends fracturing due to politics. And many families and friends won't even broach the subject of politics anymore in order to maintain their relationships (probably the best solution for now). How did this all change? I'm sure you'll find as many reasons for this division as there are social media feeds, but from my reading, two things occurred in the mid 90s that took this division to another level. One, Fox News overcorrected for the left leaning mainstream media. Biographer Gabriel Sherman said, "One of (Roger) Ailes' lasting legacies will be that for millions of Americans, news is now no longer viewed as a way to be informed about the world; it's a way of gathering information that advances your side." (Do your own search about Roger Ailes and see what you find). Then Newt Gingrich started telling Republican members of congress to stop socializing with members from the other party and told the Republican party that they needed to be meaner and nastier to survive (perhaps a result of the 1998 midterms). Before this time it was common practice for members of congress to socialize with their opposite party. It was a large part of compromising with decency and with friendships thrown in. That is rare these days if it even happens at all.

Obviously those aren't the only reasons we see the division and hate of today. The Left has created a mess of it also. But social media put all of this on steroids. Now all of us can happily go our merry way down a rabbit hole of our choosing to satisfy ourselves that our view is good and righteous and the other view is evil and un-American. Many talking heads and politicians actively try and get us to hate people on the other side or to fear them or their policies. Wanna know why? Social media LOVES hate and fear because they get way more clicks than love and understanding. I read an opinion piece the other day that termed this time as "Bipartisan moral collapse. Finally, something the two parties can agree on!" But I take a look around me, my family, my friends. I know there are people on both sides, but they are still good people and not somebody to hate. Why are we buying into the hatred and division? If your news feed is making you hate your friends and family, then maybe you should stop reading that news feed. Last month I recommended Lukas Nelson's song Turn Off the News. Maybe that's the only solution. Ignore it, don't discuss it, don't try to come to an understanding of each other's views anymore because "facts" can be gathered on both sides to prove the other side wrong. Artificial Intelligence is going to make it even worse. Is there a path to understanding and open dialog? I'm a left-leaning Independent and my very conservative friend and I have email discussions regularly to try and understand each other's views. It's not always helpful (we recently were arguing who had the greater hatred: Trump towards liberals or liberals towards Trump; how dumb is that?), but we are proof that dialog is possible; maybe not understanding, but we have to start somewhere (or maybe we don't). If it comes down to losing friends or family over politics, then ignoring it is best in my opinion. Friends and family are more important than politics. We should stop treating politics as a religion. These last two statement were simple to believe 30 years ago, but it's harder now, and it's tearing our country apart.

OK, enough of that hot mess. I'm writing this the day after I stayed up until 1:00am to watch game 3 of the World Series which went on for 18 intense and entertaining innings. A classic ballgame with records and hearts broken all over the place. It's gonna be a seven game series! Baseball is still great, even though hardly anyone watches anymore.

This month my reading took me from Central America in the 1950s and 60s to understand our current immigration issues to a book on the simple task of making our world better to a Canadian lumber camp in the depression era and finally to what makes a person an a$$hole. My rambling took me to New Mexico's highest peak, then to leaf peeping in the mountains and the canyons near Taos. In Colorado I hiked in an oasis among the rocks and to the oldest homestead in Homestead Meadows. Enjoy.

Things My Grandkids Say:

“I don’t know what’s happening!” This sentence was blurted out by my 2-year-old grandson as we exited the garage one fine day. I was babysitting him on this day, and as we were exiting out of the garage in his little dump truck to head for the park, three very stern-looking police officers were in the driveway, staring at us. Um, what?! They wanted to make sure my wife was OK. What?! They said that they got a call from OnStar that my wife might be in trouble in her car. Ohhh!!! You see, a few moments earlier, my grandson was playing in my wife’s car, which, I think, all 2-year-olds love playing in real cars. He pressed the OnStar button because, well, it’s a button and it needs pressing. OnStar responded, I told them what happened, they said OK, and I figured that was that. Until it wasn’t. I still don’t know why OnStar called the cops after I thought we had ironed it out, maybe I sounded suspicious. Anyway, it makes for a good story after the fact. Grandkids... you never know what you’re gonna get!

Song(s) of the month:

Slaid Cleaves – Breakfast in Hell

Dar Williams - The Christians and the Pagans

Breakfast in Hell - I was inspired to include this in my songs of the month after reading the wonderful book, Pearly Everlasting, which I’ve reviewed in this month’s blog. It tells the story of a girl raised in a Canadian lumber camp in the depression era. The lumberjacks would cut timber all fall and winter. When the spring thaw came, they would dump the collected deadwood into a river where it would eventually make its way to a river port where the wood was processed at lumber mills. River drivers would “ride” the logs down river, helping to clear them of logjams. It was an incredibly dangerous job. Here’s one of the lines from the book I read: “When a river driver died, the crew buried him beneath a tree and nailed his boots to the trunk. Ansell had come across these sad memorials over the years: strips of rotting leather and rusting calks still clinging to a black spruce trunk.”

I featured Cleaves’ great song, One Good Year, in my December 2023 blog. It’s a great song about desperation, nearly reaching the end of your rope, and just hoping for one good year. Cleaves got that good year when he released that song, which gave him enough money and notoriety to continue with the profession he loved. His song Breakfast in Hell has always stuck with me. It’s a song that should have been written by Gordon Lightfoot. It tells the true story of Sandy Gray, a river driver in Ontario who died while trying to clear a logjam on the Musquash River (maybe the best river name ever). Falls on that river are named after him. I’ve included an old photo of a river driver trying to clear a logjam just for a visual. Cleaves’ live version of the song is fun as he gets a bit of audience participation with a chorus of OOHs and AHHs, but I like the original studio version best:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKIOx4T4Gpg&list=RDnKIOx4T4Gpg&start_radio=1

The Christians and the Pagans - Dar Williams has already been featured twice in my songs of the month. The first was her great song Iowa and the latest was her song, The Babysitter's Here, which was part of a list of songs that always make me cry. She has an uncanny knack of writing songs about regular people that touch on so many of the issues we all deal with. Sort of like the Anne Tyler of songwriting. This song is so brilliant. It tells the story of a family that has been broken apart due to religious differences. But one Christmas, they reconcile for the day, which doesn't go swimmingly but it works out. This 1996 song is so appropriate for our current times since politics has morphed into a religion for so many. I hope we can all figure out how to reconcile the way this family did, even if it might be messy. Here is the chorus of the song, and the video is below:

So the Christians and the Pagans sat together at the table,Finding faith and common ground the best that they were able,And just before the meal was served, hands were held and prayers were said,Sending hope for peace on earth to all their gods and goddesses.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1GHDEdn2pXk&list=RD1GHDEdn2pXk&start_radio=1

Wheeler Peak near Taos, NM – Even though I had just climbed to the highest point in New Mexico this past July, I was able to do it again, but with one of my good college buddies this time. He was reminiscing about his father recently who used to take him on this hike many years ago. So we picked this second day of October which turned out to be the most perfect weather day. When I hiked Wheeler Peak back in October of 2021 I nearly froze up on top, but on this October day it was perfect, with hardly a breeze. It was warmer on this day than it was when I hiked it back in July of this year! Crazy mountain weather. We got an early start, around 8am since my buddy had to drive back to Albuquerque afterwards. We began our walk near lift #4 at the Taos Ski Valley, right next to the Bavarian Restaurant. It was chilly in the morning, with temps in the 40s, but we warmed up quickly as the hike is a steady uphill that begins immediately. We probably ran into around 20 other hikers on this perfect fall day, including a very nice hiking group from Atlanta, all wearing yellow baseball caps with the New Mexico Zia symbol emblazoned on it. Great group of people, especially their group leader, Bill. We also met a guy up on top who was in the process of hiking the highest peak in every state. This was #36 for him.

Most of the hike is a steady, moderate uphill, until a section about a half mile below the ridge. I always dread this section of the hike as it climbs 1,000 feet in just over half a mile from 12,000 to 13,000 feet. It’s brutal and we stopped many times to catch our breath and take in the breathless views. Once we got to the ridge, it was an easy final quarter mile to the top where we took in those fall colors below and gazed at the incredible 360-degree scenery…and also chatted with some nice folks. The walk back was easy (once we were done sliding down that half-mile chute below the ridge) and we celebrated our feat with a beer and brats at the Bavarian Restaurant near the trailhead. It was a special day with a special friend in this beautiful part of New Mexico where the aspens were glowing like our sweaty faces.

A very wimpy looking Williams Lake below

Expansive tundra with its landslides

The steep switchbacks

The other side of the mountain from the ridge, opposite the Ski Valley

The Cirque from Wheeler Peak

Pretty fall colors in the ski valley

Me and my college buddy on Wheeler Peak

The Bavarian Restaurant at the end of the trail

Beers and Brats, the perfect ending to the day

Everyone Who is Gone is Here by Jonathan Blitzer – I vaguely remember the controversy in the 1980s where the US was clumsily involving itself in the governments of Central American countries. It all stemmed from our outdated fear of communism. But during this time period, my wife and I were just starting our lives and careers together after college and raising our family, so we didn’t have much time or energy for the news. But, wow, if you want to know how our immigration system broke down and how gang warfare took over large US cities then you should definitely read this book. Spoiler alert, it was the fault of the US Government, on both sides of the aisle. The subtitle for this book is, The United States, Central America, and the Making of a Crisis, and it perfectly describes what the book is about. It’s an epic history of Central America from the 1950s through the present day. But it’s also a gripping story of immigration at our southern border, told from the stories of real people who were escaping the mess in their countries that the US helped to create. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about this book, especially the people whose stories are told in harrowing detail. The author spent years researching and interviewing people for this story. Jonathan Blitzer is a staff writer at The New Yorker and has received a National Award for Education Reporting, an Edward R. Murrow Award, and the 2018 Immigration Journalism Prize.

Immigration at the southern US border was for many years the result of Mexican men seeking temporary employment in our farms and factories so that they could send money back home. However, the dysfunctional governments in Central America (especially, but not exclusively, the Northern Triangle countries of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras) started to change that demographic as not only men, but women and children tried to escape the corrupt military and gangs of their crumbling countries. Immigration surged as more and more people from Central America escaped to seek asylum in the US. At one point in time, a quarter of the population of El Salvador was living in this country. The notorious MS13 gang was started in Los Angeles by El Salvadoran immigrants with the name Mara Salvatrucha. In the early to mid-1980s, MS was a band of outcasts and misfits populated with new arrivals from Central America, many of them ex Salvadoran military. They added the number 13 when they partnered with the Mexican Mafia which was nicknamed El Eme, for the 13th letter of the alphabet. As US deportations of gang members increased during the 90s and early 2000s, these gangs became embedded in their home countries in Central America creating even more terror for the residents, which in turn provided more immigrants at our border. An endless cycle.

Two of the people the author highlighted were Juan Romagoza, a doctor who was imprisoned and tortured for his support of the peasants and indigenous people of El Salvador; and Keldy Mabel Gonzáles Brebe de Zúniga who was a mother and sort of an informal pastor of the people in Honduras. Their stories help to connect the history of their countries with the immigration crisis. The torture undergone by Juan was hard to read, but necessary to understand the brutality of the government towards its own people. The title of the book comes from a courtroom scene in the US when Juan is testifying against the soldiers and politicians that ruined his life. At first he was unable to speak about it in court, he was so traumatized, but then he felt like all the people in his life that were killed over the years suddenly were with him, “Everyone who is gone is here!” Juan went on to run a health clinic for immigrants in Washington DC and eventually went back to El Salvador under a, briefly, non-corrupt government where he helped to improve his country’s health care system. Keldy was one of the first mothers to get caught up in the 2017 separation of families border fiasco where 5,600 families became separated at the border in order to “dissuade other families from coming here.” She and her sons emigrated from Honduras due to the violence that threatened their lives. She was separated from her sons for four years, two of them in an immigration prison in the US and two in Mexico where she was deported. Her sons ended up in Maryland where they lived in a dangerous tenement with their aunt and her family. Keldy was able to return to the US in 2021 and reunite with her three sons in Maryland. The description of this reunion was heart wrenching and brought tears to my eyes. How can our country of liberty and justice for all be so cruel to such good people? Here are some lines from the book:

For more than a century, the US has devised one policy after another to keep people out of the country. For more than a century, it has failed.

The first (Central American) asylum seekers were escaping regimes the US was arming and supporting in the name of fighting communism.

The CIA had overthrown the Guatemalan government in 1954 at the behest of an American corporation that, among other things, wanted bigger tax breaks abroad.

By 1984, at a time when 25 percent of asylum seekers were obtaining a positive result, Salvadorans and Guatemalans were being rejected at a rate of 98 and 99 percent.

MS-13. A wiry twenty-year-old named Ernesto Deras, whose nom de guerre was Satan, was its leader, having arrived in Los Angeles in 1990. Satan was a former Salvadoran soldier with an impressive combat pedigree: his battalion in El Salvador had trained at Fort Bragg, in North Carolina,

The law, called the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 (IIRIRA), established mass deportation as the new centerpiece of American immigration policy.

American deportation policy had turned local street gangs from LA into an international criminal network. MS-13 and 18th Street fanned across (Central America); their rivalries spread with them, mutating into something even more violent and ungovernable.

On Mother’s Day weekend 2014, Obama’s new secretary of Homeland Security, Jeh Johnson, was returning from California, where he and his wife were visiting their son, when a top official at Customs and Border Protection told him that the situation in South Texas was “out of control.” Thousands of unaccompanied children from Central America were showing up at Border Patrol stations, confounding agents and overwhelming the department’s resources. Decades of Central American history were crashing down at the US border.

What she said next sounded barbed, but she meant it as a concession to the enormity of the president’s responsibility, rather than as a reprimand. “I don’t know how you can sleep at night,” she said. Obama replied, “You know what? I don’t really sleep at night, but let me tell you why. It’s not just that I worry about these kids from El Salvador. I also worry about kids in Sudan, and in Yemen, and in other parts of the world. And here’s my problem: we live in a world with nation states. I have borders. You may believe that it’s inherently unfair that a child born in El Salvador has a completely different set of opportunities available and a completely different set of dangers than a child born in the US. And that’s because it is unfair. I can’t fix that for you.”

Immigration tapped into a rich vein of American outrage, and Trump had an instinct for a galvanizing message. He had found a unified theory that could account for declining factory jobs, the anger and insecurity stoked by far-right media, an opioid epidemic, and the indignity of the country’s first Black president. Immigrants could be blamed for everything.

Gavilan Ridge near Taos, NM – This is one of my favorite medium range hikes in the Taos area. It’s around 2.7 miles each way with 2,300 feet of elevation gain, so it’s a really tough workout hike. The trailhead is near the southern boundary of the Taos Ski Valley, and the first half mile is a gradual climb up to the first creek crossing. Then it starts to get a bit steeper until, at 2 miles, you reach the first of a series of beautiful meadows. The aspens were at peak fall color on this day, and it was gorgeous. As you rise along the trail the views to the east get better and better. The trail flattens a bit as you pass through these meadows, but then at about 2.5 miles you pass the last meadow and the trail goes straight up for the last quarter mile or so. Once you reach the ridgeline and the junction with the Lobo Trail you have to climb another 100 yards or so north in order to get spectacular views of the cirque that includes Wheeler Peak and Lake Fork Peak with the ski valley below it. The trees were really showing off today, and I got some great photos. It was an easy walk back down to the car. I took my daughter and son-in-love’s dogs with me and at one point I was wondering why one of them was so far away in the trees…then I noticed they were both next to me looking into the trees. What was that? A bear? A coyote? I couldn’t tell.

All the photos here are just of the beautiful aspens. Enjoy

Pretty meadow below the ridge

Trail skirting the meadow

Dogs searching for squirrels

Lake Fork Peak in the background

Ski valley and Wheeler peak in the distance

Abundance by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson – I love Ezra Klein; I think he is smart, caring, empathetic, and a great listener. I don’t know Derek Thompson as well. But as I was reading this highly anticipated book, I kept saying to myself, “yeah, but…” many times. There is an idea in this book about a new political order that, at first, seems reasonable, but I couldn’t put my finger on why I was dissatisfied with their conclusions. I had to sit and think about it to understand why. They did a great job of explaining mistakes made by both Democrats and Republicans which have resulted in our current issues of rampant homelessness, widening income inequality, spiraling costs of living, expensive health care, an inadequately addressed climate crisis, and a hamstrung science community. Democrats are certainly to blame for the NIMBYism (Not In My Back Yard) seen in blue cities where homelessness has grown due mainly to people in those cities not wanting low-cost housing in their neighborhoods which drag down the values of their prized possessions. And although both Republicans and Democrats did a great job in the 70s to clean up our air and water, they also (mainly Democrats) added too many hurdles to jump over in order to get anything big built (Environmental reviews where any one person or group could block or delay for years a major project if it didn’t meet the letter of the law). The very tools that Democrats used to delay or block oil pipelines in the past have come back to bite them as they try to get transmission lines built to connect solar and wind farms to the large cities where the energy is needed. It’s a similar situation for today’s scientists. In order to get funding for a project, that project has to meet certain criteria which require the scientists to spend an inordinate amount of time writing grants that meet those criteria rather than creating the ideas that make the world a better place.

The book says that the US has lost its ability to build things, citing the glaring example of California failing to implement high speed rail even though billions of dollars have been spent trying. We don’t build enough houses for many reasons, including current homeowners needing scarcity of housing in order to keep their own home values high. Plus, building homes for the needy isn’t profitable. I was fascinated by their description of the invention of the mRNA vaccine for Covid. Here was an example of the US Government actually working at “warp speed” to create a life-saving vaccine in 10 months vs the 10 years it normally takes. Democrats refuse to credit the Trump organization for this feat. In some ways, it was dumb luck that a woman scientist from Hungary had already been working on this solution for years even though the NIH never gave her the money she desperately needed…it took a corporation, Moderna – Modern RNA, to hire her and use her ideas to create the mRNA vaccine. The Chinese released the genetic sequence of the coronavirus in January of 2020, a vaccine was ready in December of 2020. The Trump organization did clear the bureaucratic processes of testing to allow for the quick turnaround. But even the Trumpers don’t like claiming this success because they have decided that vaccines (especially mRNA vaccines) are bad. One of the greatest life saving measures in history, and nobody wants to take credit. That’s how strange our political situation has become.

One of the glaring mistakes made in this book is to completely ignore rural America and focus solely on urban America. This city-centric thinking is partly to blame for the rise of MAGA. The book’s farms of the future are vertical crops planted in cities rather than rural farmers providing food. And they keep saying that only cities can provide the environment to create great ideas. That just seems a bit prejudiced in my opinion. But don’t let those glaring omissions keep you from reading the book. There is some great historical context, and lots of great ideas in these pages. I would love to read it again, but I probably won’t. Maybe I’ll watch a video synopsis.

The authors’ conclusion was that we need to create a political order that embraces abundance for humanity rather than scarcity. But abundance can have a different meaning for different people. We already live in a time where food is more abundant than ever before. Technology gives us many tools that help make our lives better. But we’re also more economically unequal than ever before, and that technology has made us more socially disconnected and depressed than ever before. There is too much abundance for some and not enough for others. Are they proposing a sort of new age communism? They quoted Marx quite a lot in the end. As we now know, Marx’ ideas were hijacked by dictatorships in Russia and China which resulted in the eventual end of communism as most of us know it. Abundance was a book of great thoughts and insights, but it left me with more questions than answers.

Here are some lines:

This book is dedicated to a simple idea: to have the future we want, we need to build and invent more of what we need. That’s it. That’s the thesis.

After World War II, an explosion of housing and infrastructure enriched the country. But without regulations for clean air and water, the era’s builders despoiled the environment. In response, the US passed a slew of environmental regulations. But these well-meaning laws to protect nature in the twentieth century now block the clean energy projects needed in the twenty-first.

Over the course of the twentieth century, America developed a right that fought the government and a left that hobbled it.

In 1950, the median home price was 2.2 times the average annual income; by 2020, it was 6 times the average annual income.

In the 1960s, it was possible to attend a four-year college debt-free but impossible to purchase a flat screen television. By the 2020s, the reality was close to the reverse. We papered over the affordability crisis with low prices for consumer goods

Too often, the right sees only the imagined glories of the past, and the left sees only the injustices of the present.

We have a startling abundance of the goods that fill a house and a shortage of what’s needed to build a good life.

In much of San Francisco, you can’t walk twenty feet without seeing a multicolored sign declaring that Black Lives Matter, Kindness Is Everything, and No Human Being Is Illegal. Those signs sit in yards zoned for single families, in communities that organize against efforts to add the new homes that would bring those values closer to reality.

Though they make up less than 1 percent of the population, lawyers currently constitute more than one-third of the House of Representatives and more than half the Senate…When you make legal training the default training for a political career, you make legal thinking the default thinking in politics. And legal thinking centers around statutory language and commitment to process, not results and outcomes.

Liberals speak as if they believe in government and then pass policy after policy hamstringing what it can actually do. Conservatives talk as if they want a small state but support a national security and surveillance apparatus of terrifying scope and power. Both sides are attached to a rhetoric of government that is routinely betrayed by their actions.

Despite making up only about 14 percent of the US population, immigrants accounted for 23 percent of US patents from 1990 to 2016, 38 percent of US Nobel Prizes in chemistry, medicine, and physics from 2000 to 2023, and more than half of the billion-dollar US start-ups in the last twenty years.

Today’s scientists spend up to 40 percent of their time working on filling out research grants and follow-up administrative documents, rather than on direct research.

Today’s politics are suffused with cynicism and pessimism about government because “a way of living sold to us as good and achievable is no longer good, or no longer achievable.”

Slide and Picuris trail loop near Taos, NM – This is another of my favorite medium range hikes in the area. The Slide Trail uses an old dirt road that’s now closed to traffic to reach the Rio Grande River from the rim of the gorge. It’s 1.7 miles and 600 feet from the rim to the river. I’ve hiked this out and back several times since it’s relatively short, a good workout, and has beautiful canyon scenery. But a nice add-on is to go back up to the rim via the Picuris trail which gains that 600 feet of elevation in less than a mile rather than the 1.7 miles on the Slide Trail. So you get a really good thigh burner for a mile with increasingly beautiful views of the gorge and the river that runs through it. From here it’s a relatively flat 2.5 miles back to the trailhead along the Klauer Trail. At the river on this day I saw about 15 cars parked, all with Texas plates. Normally there are maybe 2 or 3 cars down here. It was a group of artists, painting the river, canyon, and changing trees. They were enjoying themselves and laughed when the dogs jumped in the water to cool off.

Slide Trail colors and cliffs

ditto

So different from the mountains

The Rio Grande

Views while heading up the Picuris Trail

Petroglyphs

Slide Trail middle right

Ribbon of color along the Rio Grande

Pearly Everlasting by Tammy Armstrong – This was the perfect book to read following the first two nonfiction books I read this month (Everyone Who is Gone is Here and Abundance). It was a finalist for the Barnes and Noble Discover Prize in 2024 and won the HarperCollins Canada Prize for Best New Fiction. After reading about the troubles and unlikely solutions of the real world, it was healing to dive into the fictional world of Pearly Everlasting with the beautiful writing of Tammy Armstrong. It’s certainly the only book I’ve read which was set in the lumber camps and towns of New Brunswick, Canada during the depression years. It was a fictional account of a true newspaper story the author had read about; here’s her description of that in the acknowledgements section: “In the winter of 1903, William Lyman Underwood, a wildlife photographer, made his way to a lumber camp deep in the woods of Maine to photograph a woman nursing her newborn daughter alongside an orphan bear cub. This encounter inspired his memoir, Wild Brother: Strangest of True Stories from the North Woods. And while Pearly Everlasting is a work of fiction, it was initially inspired by Underwood’s encounter and lengthy friendship with Bruno after the bear was sent, at two years old, to live out his days in an animal sanctuary in New England.”

And that’s how the story begins, at a lumber camp (this time in New Brunswick), with a mother nursing her newborn daughter (Pearly Everlasting) who was cuddled up against an orphan bear cub (Bruno). I know, it sounds like a corny Disney movie from the 1950s, but trust me, this is no Disney story. The accounts of lumbering accidents, depression starvation, and outdoor survival would make this story more suitable for Sam Peckinpah or Steven Spielberg. The author spends some time describing the hardscrabble life at the lumber camp where Pearly’s father is the camp cook and her mother is the camp healer of ugly injuries. Even though life is hard, it’s mostly idyllic for a tomboy with a pet bear exploring the woods each day. But the story quickly fast-forwards to a terrible winter when Pearly Everlasting (named after the healing flower) turns 15 and tragedy strikes her family (there was lots of tragedy in the world in the early 1930s). The villainous camp boss (there are definitely clear villains in this story) meets a suspicious death which eventually results in Pearly running away from camp to “The Outside” in search of her bear.

There are so many great adventure scenes in this book, making it a page-turner: train wrecks, bear attacks, spring log jam accidents…even evil twins! I started slowing my reading as I got close to the end because I didn’t want it to be over. But it did end, and in a most adventurous way of course. There are so many characters to love in this story: Pearly and her family of course, the two ladies who traveled the lumber camps recording songs and stories, the kind-hearted veterinarian, the boarding house owners, and Ansell who is one of the kindest persons you will ever meet in a novel (or in real life). What makes this book so good was the author’s hauntingly sparse writing which somehow took you right into the middle of those lumber camps and the incredible people that worked and lived in them. Here are some lines:

All of us, with our bruised kindnesses and broken parts, looking out for each other because it was a matter of survival.

The boys in the farms around the Beechers’ place were mainly of a rough nature—orphans and leftbehinds filled up with nameless moods, bottomless angers, and humiliations.

Poorly mended bones, arthritis, swollen joints—each told a story of weather.

I heard something running somewhere in the night and then I heard just the night.

sometimes, when she and Bruno were out, she’d sing the bad luck songs. The ones forbidden in camp because they brought death with them. But she sang them sometimes, testing the bad luck for herself.

When night made a mirror of the window, I stepped outside,

The cord muscles in my neck hurt from trying not to cry.

I can’t remember when those rooms in my heart closed up. I do remember the wolf moon came out that night, bright as jar glass.

Woodsmen called the rare day when the wind held back its tongue a “poor man’s overcoat.” A welcomed absence. (reminds me of Victor Villasenor’s Rain of Gold which said that “the sun is the blanket of the poor”)

the Mountie interrupted, impatient to get back to the Outside, away from this ragtag of characters with their scars, missing fingers, and scarecrow faces.

Ansell had forgotten about the scars. They’d since silvered and were, to him now, just a mild curiosity, especially for small children who had not yet learned to keep their questions quiet.

These kids’ faces— hunger all over them.

Frog Pond Road, where the poorer families lived in board-and-batten houses with too few rooms and too many children.

He smiled, but Ansell could see a private sort of sorrow in his face, caught in the hollows and wrinkles. The kind that had settled there a long time ago.

They talked about other things and ate bowls and bowls of hare stew. And sometimes the tree branches, sleeved in thick ice, snapped like gunshot outside the windows and they would pause to listen to the silence that carried after, before they spoke again.

And when she’d recovered, she gave herself a new name and left her family because she no longer believed they afforded grace and forgiveness to the ones who needed it most.

I see Mama sitting where the Crooked Deadwater’s dark iris rickles over mossed-up rocks, and its quiet click of water passes on to elsewhere.

I write them slow, carefully spelled letters and I take them down to the camps for the mail. I like to tell them about Papa still cooking the best camp grub around. I tell them how the trees have grown so big up here on Greenlaw Mountain the spring light lives inside their boughs and rarely comes out to warm our yard. But by summer, the light climbs down and spills itself wide—a carpet Bruno naps in longer each day. This is how we take our days. This is how we make them stay.

Sheep Mountain near Loveland – Back in November of 2021 I hiked up to Stone Mountain near here. They share the same trail for 3.5 miles before you turn left for Stone Mountain or right for Sheep Mountain. Today I turned right. The trail starts at a large parking area south of the 34 highway between Loveland and Estes Park. You start climbing right away as the trail switches back and forth up the side of a mountain. As you rise, the views of Big Thompson Canyon and its namesake river get better and better. The only downside is that the traffic noise from the highway can be heard for the first couple of miles, but it fades quickly as you rise. It’s a steady climb of around 1,600 feet for the first 2.5 miles before you level out in a beautiful oasis of aspens and rock formations. This is the best part of the trail. The aspens were still hanging in there, but the leaves will likely be gone in a week or so. There are several interpretive signs explaining the geology and plant life in this area. After this brief and beautiful respite, the trail starts climbing again. At mile 3.5 you reach the junction for Stone Mountain (left) and Sheep Mountain (right). From here, Stone Mountain was a fairly level walk of three quarters of a mile, but you have to work for Sheep Mountain as it’s another 1,000 feet in less than a mile and a half. At the “top” is a large cairn that folks have been adding to for years evidently. There are a couple of interpretive signs about the Continental Divide and Stephen H. Long (Longs Peak namesake). It’s nice and peaceful up here (I was all by myself all day) with some nice rocks upon which to eat your lunch, but no big views like there were on Stone Mountain. I did manage to walk off trail a bit to get some peeks of the peaks, but if you want views, climb the much easier Stone Mountain. If you want a better workout, hike to Sheep Mountain, or hike both peaks on the same day. I did not do this as Sheep Mountain was enough for me today. Overall a nice walk in the woods with a good workout and a pretty oasis of aspens scattered around cool rock formations. I think in my post about Stone Mountain I mentioned that this area reminded me of Prescott’s Granite Mountain in Arizona. Good memories. No cool animal sightings other than ravens and magpies. In the oasis I heard several birds which my bird app identified as a Townsend’s Solitaire, Red-breasted Nuthatch, Black-capped Chickadee, and Pygmy Nuthatch.

Big Thompson Canyon below as I rise

Nice views of the canyon and the eastern plains

Great rock formations

Start of the small oasis on this side of the slot

Little oasis

Not only were these trail markers visually appealing, but they exactly matched my GPS numbers

Mountain Lion poop

Peeks of Longs Peak

Carter Lake far below

Storm brewing in the mountains, which is why I was here

Wider view

Giant cairn at the "top" of Sheep Mountain

Sun capturing blades of grass

Ditto

A$$holes: A Theory by Aaron James – The author is a professor of philosophy at Cal-Irvine, with a PhD in Philosophy from Harvard. In this book, which he wrote in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, he tries to form a philosophical definition of what makes a person an a$$hole. He then provides examples from the past and present of people he believes fit this definition. And finally, he provides some ideas on how we, as individuals and a society, can somehow find a way to deal with these people that tend to ruin our days. Along the way he theorizes about why it is that the overwhelming number of people that fit his definition are male, why it seems that there are more of them lately, and how some countries’ political and financial systems provide a gateway for a$$holedom. He spends some time asking if entire countries could become degraded or even collapse if enough a$$holes in business and politics take over. At the time of his writing (2011) Italy was already, in his view, an a$$hole country, Japan would never become one, and the US was well on its way to becoming one.

Here is his definition: "An a$$hole allows himself to enjoy special advantages in social relations out of an entrenched sense of entitlement that immunizes him against the complaints of other people." So, not only does he take advantage of social situations to please himself, but he doesn’t care what anyone says about it. We can all relate to these people that have upset us and possibly ruined our day or week or year or life. The person who cuts in line at the grocery store, the person who cuts you (and many others) off in traffic while weaving in and out, the coworker who belittles others and sucks up all the air in the room, the restaurant customer who berates a server for no good reason, the celebrity proclaiming “Do you know who I am?”, the talking head berating people publicly to gain clicks and likes, the politicians berating those on the other side for hating our country, the boss who takes all the credit and dishes out all the blame, and on and on.

We basically have two options when confronting an a$$hole: We can ignore him and go on with our lives (which annoys us later for being so passive) or we can yell at him or flip him off or explain to him his a$$holery. But telling him off does no good as you can see by the definition…he doesn’t care. Ignoring him grates on our desire for justice. So what do we do? The author’s solution is to basically take a deep breath, understand that there are and always will be a$$holes in this world, and then focus on what and who is still good in this world and how you are part of that. He acknowledges that this really isn’t a great solution, but it seems reasonable. The larger concern of course is if the number of a$$holes running a business or a country gets large enough or powerful enough then the socially cooperative people could just give up or even join the dark side. Then the business or country risks degradation or collapse (see Enron in 2001 or Germany in 1939).

Here are some of the people he named from history and modern times that he places in this category: former Italian president Silvio Berlusconi, Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad...the self-important developer-entertainer Donald Trump, the harsh pop music critic Simon Cowell, or the narcissist actor Mel Gibson. Ann Coulter. Noel Gallagher of Oasis, arguably the most self-consciously a$$hole rock band in history. Radio host Rush Limbaugh is also conspicuously rude, but to enormous personal profit in money and political influence. Filmmaker Michael Moore is slightly more coy, dressing up sloppy treatment of his subjects in a cloak of social morality. Oxford biologist Richard Dawkins is similarly self-assured in his broadside against theism and religious belief, The God Delusion. Larry Summers, who served in both the Clinton and Obama administrations and as president of Harvard University. Supermodel Naomi Campbell, who assaulted her housekeeper with a cell phone, or General George Patton, who slapped a wounded soldier while touring a war hospital. Henry VIII, king of England, does, however, seem to qualify. He broke from the pope in Rome and appointed himself head of the English Church for the worthy cause of divorcing his wife, Catherine. Vice president, Dick Cheney, who often ignored Bush and simply did as he pleased. Newt Gingrich created the United States’ polarized political climate. As Speaker of the House, he ordered Republican lawmakers to stay home much of the week in order to avoid forming bipartisan relationships and in his having an affair while his wife was in the hospital with cancer. Steve Jobs’ knowledge of how much people love his gadgets could potentially explain why he felt entitled to park in handicapped spaces. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange invokes high principles of transparency in letting the public know what governments are up to. But the unprincipled and reckless way he exposes diplomatic confidences suggests that he is equally if not mainly concerned with being in a position to do a lot of damage. John D. Rockefeller was apparently enriched not because Wild West American capitalism gave him free rein but because, as he put it without apology, “God gave me my money.” Jerry Falwell, for example, hardly missed an opportunity to seize the limelight with catchy comments about Jews (who “can make more money accidentally than you can on purpose”); or homosexuals (“AIDS is not just God’s punishment for homosexuals, it is God’s punishment for the society that tolerates homosexuals”). Kanye West famously crashed Taylor Swift’s MTV award acceptance speech, insulting Swift to boot and also said: “But my greatest pain in life is that I will never be able to see myself perform live.”

And here are some lines:

…talk radio, where airtime is given to commentators who thrive on falsehood and invective. Even as this demonstrably degrades the public debate so vital for a healthy democratic society…

We have suggested that the a$$hole is morally repugnant because, even when the material costs he imposes are small, he fails to recognize others in a fundamental, morally important way. This is the heart and soul of our account of why the a$$hole is so bothersome

(Society) expects assertive behavior from men and boys and are not surprised that a few bad apples go too far with it (“Boys will be boys”). Assertive women and girls, by contrast, are considered way out of line. Deep gender culture, not maleness, is primarily to blame for the fact that a$$holes are mainly men.

Perhaps “collectivist” cultures are less likely to engender or tolerate the required sense of entitlement than are “individualist” ones.

As the wise Epictetus explains, “If [a way things appear] concerns anything outside of your control, train yourself not to worry about it.”

A$$hole management is less science and more art. It is less like following a procedure than having the knack for an art or a craft in Aristotle’s sense: it can be learned only by doing, not by following rules that one could fully grasp ahead of time

…recall the dark fall days of 2008, when the U.S. and world economy was about to fall off a cliff, and U.S. treasury secretary Hank Paulson gathered the top bankers together to tell them that they were being forced to accept $125 billion, with no strings attached, in order to shore up their troubled balance sheets and buoy market confidence. To which John Thain, Merrill Lynch CEO, piped up and asked, “What kind of protections can you give us on changes in compensation policy?” This is a stunningly clueless a$$hole move. The taxpayers were in effect being forced, for the good of the country and the world, to protect the bankers from their own recklessness, at a huge cost. And yet the bankers’ main concern was their bonuses.

A$$holes are a given fact of life. They are a fact of life we must somehow make peace with if we are to be at peace with life itself. A$$holes are unacceptable. We can’t, or shouldn’t, accept the way they treat us, even if we could get used to it. And we can’t, or shouldn’t, accept their destabilizing influence in cooperative life. Both are unacceptable from a moral point of view.

Lion Gulch to Laycook Homestead - I've hiked up Lion Gulch to Homestead Meadows four times now. The meadows are so named because they were settled with the help of the Homestead Act of 1862 which gave up to 160 acres to anyone willing to commit to farming or ranching on that land for five years. The goal was westward expansion and to allow non-slave-owners to own their own land. It passed in 1862 during the Civil War only because the Southern Democrats were no longer part of the country at the time; they would have voted no to protect slave-owners. As I mentioned in my previous write-ups of this area, the Homestead Act led to further repression of the Native population as several follow-up laws (Dawes, eg) were passed to enable the dispossession of that land. These are the kind of discussions that are being erased from National Parks during this administration so that we can all feel better about ourselves I guess.

My goal is to visit all eight homestead sites in this area. I've already explored the Brown, Griffith, Irvin, and Walker sites on previous hikes. Today I was able to find the Laycook site which I failed to do on a previous hike. So that leaves three more: Boren, Hill, and Engert (which was burned down in the 2002 Big Elk fire according to the informative sign at the trailhead). It was just over 9 miles total and around 1,700 feet of elevation gain. The day was sunny with a slight breeze and temps in the upper 40s to lower 50s. A great day for a hike. The first three miles are up Lion Gulch in about 1,500 feet. It's a decent workout. At mile three I reached the beginning of a narrow meadow and at mile 3.5 I reached Homestead Meadows which has some nice interpretive signs describing the place. There are several old roads and trails up here leading to the different sites. It was another mile up and down a big hill to get to the Laycook site. I'm glad I did some research because even with a sign indicating the Laycook site, there was no path and no sign of a cabin. So I just walked off trail for a bit and eventually found it. It's in pretty good shape, with the roof still on the main cabin and some kitchen utensils and an old bed frame. There is an outhouse and another smaller cabin up the hill. They sure picked a great spot, with a large meadow in one direction and Lion Head mountain in the other. I hung out here for a bit trying to imagine living in this place in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Very hardy people making a living up here. Another nice day in this pretty and historic site.