December 2025
Books read:
- The Colony by Annika Norlin (translated by Alice E. Olsson)
- Gravity’s Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon
Trails walked:
- Myers Homestead near Boulder (Dec 2nd)
- Three Loops in Heil Valley Ranch near Lyons (Dec 30th)
Song(s) of the month: The Love Me or Die by CW Stoneking
December Summary:
The end of the year has always been full of lists that summarize the news, movies, music, photography and cultural events of the past twelve months. I love reading these lists even though the music lists seem lately to consist of artists I've never heard of (a sure sign I'm getting old). It's a good way to find new music and also a good way to find music that you'd never really want to listen to, ever. My favorite list however, was by Angus Hervey who writes a substack that I follow called Fix the News. I wrote a bit about him and his work in the summary of my September 2024 blog. The title of his year-end blog is The Telemetry and the subtitle is: All the news headlines missed in 2025. I follow him because, like me, he sees that we are all going down the rabbit hole of negativity because of the way social media's algorithms work to keep people engaged, enraged, and afraid. Granted, 2025 had lots of bad news and he even writes this about it:
I write a monthly newsletter for my climate group, and one of my favorite activities is writing a section called Good News and Inspiration. I scour the internet for good news on climate. It's not hard to find, but you won't see any of it telecast on the news or on social media sites because good news doesn't sell, nor get clicks. In his year-end summary Hervey goes on to list numerous statistics on how the world improved in 2025 and how it's been improving for the past decades, even though people don't feel it. He writes:
He realizes that people's perceptions matter too and he addresses this by writing:
But while people around the world were inundated with horrifying stories about Gaza, Ukraine, political assassinations, flooding, fires, and mass shootings....
The world is getting better even though it's hard to see through all the click bait. And I think it's important for all of us to see this perspective. It's healthier for us and it helps us to realize that one person CAN make a difference in the world, especially if they have hope that the world can be made better. I'll leave you with Hervey's closing paragraph:
Amen.
My end of the year gift to you is a severely shortened blog. You're welcome. I only hiked on the 2nd day and the 2nd to last day of the month. In between this time was sickness, travel, and stress, which limited my reading and rambling a bit. But my reading brought a great story about a strange commune, and the challenge of reading one of the most difficult books ever written. Enjoy!
Things My Grandkids Say:
When my daughter-in-law asked her oldest child if he even knew what the word please meant, he responded: "Yes, it's the word you use to get the things you want!" Um, well, he's not wrong.
Well this very interesting song popped up on Spotify the other day. I loved it from the beginning notes. I thought to myself, who IS this guy? Maybe the offspring of Tom Waits and Memphis Minnie? He's a blues singer from Australia and has won many awards down under. His music reminded me of New Orleans and of the great HBO series Treme. It takes you back to a different time and place. This particular song is about black magic and love and death and hell. The music fits the words perfectly. Enjoy.
Sample lyrics:
Flames of Hell lick at my feetIn the shadow of the jungle, I feel the heatMatilda's waiting in Hell for me tooAll 'cause she died from a bad hoodoo
The trailhead is around 7 miles past Boulder on the winding and steep Flagstaff Road. There is a day-use area next to the trailhead that looks like a great place for a picnic. The trail follows an old dirt road and heads slightly downhill for the first quarter mile where you enter a pretty meadow with remnants of an old barn. I’ve read that there’s also an old sawmill up here, but I didn’t see it. The last couple of miles are a steady but fairly easy uphill, past meadows, aspen groves, and ponderosa pine. Myers Gulch runs by the trail but there’s no water this time of year. At the end of the trail, you’re rewarded with a bench and a great view to the west of the Indian Peaks and Rocky Mountain National Park. I sat on this bench for a while, until I got too cold, then headed back down to my car. At the trailhead I decided to walk part of the Josie Heath trail which connects mountain bikers and hikers to the Walker Ranch 8 mile loop, which I hiked back in May of 2021. It was starting to get windy and cold, so I cut this trail short and got back to my car. The following day, they got 10 inches of snow up here. No animals today other than deer. I saw what looked like moose poop and prints at the top. Could have been elk too, it’s hard for me to tell the difference in their scat. Someone said if it tastes like willows then it’s moose poop. Um, no.
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| Artsy shot |
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| Old barn |
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| Typical views along the way |
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| Nice bench with meadow view |
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| Views of the big mountains at the end of the trail |
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| Longs Peak on the right |
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| Would be a nice fall hike |
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| This bone was picked clean |
Then the book takes off into different chapters describing each of these seven characters; their history and how they ended up living in this sort of commune at one with nature. The stories bounce around in time and place but are fascinating to read. What kind of life must one lead to end up living like this? Mostly interesting ones, with mixes of prison time, abusive relationships, tragic events, enlightenment in India, and grief. All of these chapters describing the characters culminate in some pretty intense scenes when Emelie finally meets the group and a drunken discussion of living in nature vs living in the city ensues. Overall a great character study and story of relationships. Here are some lines:
The group lingered, in an aimless way. Someone lay down, looking up at the sky. Someone else squatted by the water. They seemed to have no internal schedule, all just lazing about in their own worlds. Like a group of kindergarteners, only these were adults.
The psychiatrist had been asked when the world’s struggle with burnout began. “When the lightbulb was invented,” she said, because from that moment on people could work even when it was dark. Before, the world had sent a clear message: Now it’s light, so you should work. Now it’s dark, so you should rest.
A hundred years ago, we only knew of the injustices we saw in our own villages. Like: the neighbor had had a bad harvest. Then you could go over there and donate, say, a jug of milk or a pork shoulder. Problem solved. The neighbor won’t starve. You have done your part. But now: the refugees, the wars, the uprisings, the pandemic, the energy prices, the interest rates, the earthquakes, the shootings, the diseases. Every day something new. All the world’s wounds laid bare in real time, the imbalance of power.
Those who greet the weather with acceptance are spared a lot of grief.
The Guru’s room smelled strongly of incense, and of the Guru’s feet.
Revenge only means digging a deeper hole, not letting go. You won’t feel better because someone else feels worse.
“This is one reason why you Outsiders are so bonkers!” he giggled. “You think you can own a tree, or a river! But the tree always belongs to itself!”
Everyone has three personalities, minimum. One in real life. One on the internet. And one when you are drunk.
“Get out there,” I bellowed, like an American president at a campaign rally. “Get out and see other people, go to restaurants, fall in love, sleep around, eat processed food, talk to other people. Play football, have a glass of cava instead of this—”
As long as you are standing on one side, you can rationalize anything to support the side you are on. The reason that politician said that thing is probably because she was misquoted. The reason my husband is beating me is probably because I’m so annoying.
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| Old school house on the prairie |
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| How many others have taken this same shot? |
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| A cute little mountain biking skills course |
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| Nice paving job by the trail crews |
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| Lichen on the Lichen Loop! |
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| Views of the peaks near Boulder |
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| This was a very bad sign.... |
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| I love the fence zig zagging below |
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| An old limestone kiln |
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| Views through the cattails |
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| The Overland fire created lots of sticks |
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| Bighorn tree |
Was there a plot? I'm not sure. It starts with the bombing of London, where someone made a map with a Poisson distribution curve that showed that each bombing took place in a section of town where Tyrone Slothrop was having sex. Slothrop may have been a psychiatric patient, or maybe he was injected with some experimental drug when he was young and followed around throughout his life, or maybe he wasn't a real person at all, but part of a V2 rocket, or maybe he was a ghost from the past? Who knows? Maybe Pynchon. I suppose the beginning quote from the rocket scientist Wernher von Bran provides a clue: "Nature does not know extinction; all it knows is transformation. Everything science has taught me, and continues to teach me, strengthens my belief in the continuity of our spiritual existence after death." There is lots of sex in this book, some that made even me uncomfortable, which is hard to do. Lots of death too. Lots of singing and limericks about very inappropriate things. Slothrop, and many of the other characters seem to be in search of some secret device, called 0000, which was going to be installed in a rocket. We never know what that is, but we get a hint near the end when people in Los Angeles see a bright light, a rocket, and then nothing. A nuclear device? No idea. Many of the characters were in fear of something called The Firm which seemed to be controlling things. Some clues about that surfaced when companies like GE and Dow were mentioned (companies that had facilities in both the US and Germany before, during, and after the war). There are lots of great action sequences. A chase scene in an underground rocket facility in Germany, a plane chasing a balloon that is throwing pies at it, a man chasing his jews harp down a toilet, and an orgy boat cruise filled with people that want to kill other people on board. The depictions of starvation and black market survival in Europe after the war were harrowing. So much good stuff packed into so much confusion. I'm not sure I'd recommend it to anyone but I'm glad I read it. Here are some lines:
the Firm—who, it is well known, will use anyone, traitors, murderers, perverts, Negroes, even women,
to get what They want.
By the time one has pulled one’s nth victim or part of a victim free of one’s nth pile of rubble, he told her
once, angry, weary, it has ceased to be that personal... the value of n may be different for each of us
Pointsman can only possess the zero and the one. He cannot, like (Roger), survive anyplace in between.
His greatest triumph on the battlefield came in 1917, in the gassy, Armageddonite filth of the Ypres salient, where he conquered a bight of no man’s land some 40 yards at its deepest, with a wastage of only 70% of his unit.
She works at St. Veronica’s hospital, lives nearby at the home of a Mrs. Quoad, a lady widowed long ago
and since suffering a series of antiquated diseases—greensickness, tetter, kibes, purples, imposthumes
and almonds in the ears, most recently a touch of scurvy
she seems determined to overwhelm him with her history and its pain, and the edge of it, always fresh
from the stone, cutting at his hopes, at all their hopes.
there’s no heat, not much light, millions of roaches. A smell of cabbage, old second Reich, grandmothers’
cabbage, of lard smoke that has found, over the years, some détente with the air that seeks to break it
down, smells of long illness and terminal occupation stir off the crumbling walls.
“I’m sending all the soldiers home. We’ll close down the weapon factories, we’ll dump all the
weapons in the sea. I’m sick of war. I’m sick of waking up every morning afraid I’m going to die.”
Back in a room, early in Slothrop’s life, a room forbidden to him now, is something very bad. Something
was done to him, and it may be that Katje knows what
The zoot suit is in a box tied with a purple ribbon. Keychain’s there too. They both belonged to a kid who
used to live in East Los Angeles, named Ricky Gutiérrez. During the Zoot Suit Riots of 1943, young
Gutiérrez was set upon by a carload of Anglo vigilantes from Whittier, beaten up while the L.A. police
watched and called out advice, then arrested for disturbing the peace.
“Why are you burning my doll’s hair?” “Well, it’s not her own hair, you know.” “Father said it belonged
to a Russian Jewess.”
One of the sweetest fruits of victory, after sleep and looting, must be the chance to ignore no-parking
signs.
Toward dusk, the black birds descend, millions of them, to sit in the branches of trees nearby. The trees
grow heavy with black birds, branches like dendrites of the Nervous System fattening, deep in
twittering nerve-dusk, in preparation for some important message.
Margherita played the lesbian in the café, “the one with the monocle, who’s whipped to death at the end
by the transvestite, remember?”
Pökler found a woman lying, a random woman. He sat for half an hour holding her bone hand. She was
breathing. Before he left, he took off his gold wedding ring and put it on the woman’s thin finger,
curling her hand to keep it from sliding off. If she lived, the ring would be good for a few meals, or a
blanket, or a night indoors, or a ride home. .
a person feels good listening to Rossini. All you feel like listening to Beethoven is going out and
invading Poland. Ode to Joy indeed.
Berlin police supported by American MPs in an adviser status. “You will show
me your papers!” hollers the leader of the raid. Säure smiles and holds up a pack of Zig-Zags, just in from
Paris.
It means this War was never political at all, the politics was all theatre, all just to keep the people
distracted . . . secretly, it was being dictated instead by the needs of technology
When he comes in among trees he will spend time touching them, studying them, sitting very quietly
near them and understanding that each tree is a creature, carrying on its individual life, aware of what’s
happening around it, not just some hunk of wood to be cut down.
Round rocks knock together under the stream. A resonant sound, a music. It would be worth something
to sit day and night, in and out, listening to these sounds of water and cobbles unfold.
they enter a slow-withering city, alone on the Baltic coast, and perishing from an absence of children
Soon there won’t be enough food or coal in Germany. Potato crops toward the end of the War, for
example, all went to make alcohol for the rockets.
He was rescued by a Polish undertaker in a rowboat, out in the storm tonight to see if he can get struck
by lightning.
In Mecklenburg Thanatz steals a cigarette butt from a sleeping one-armed veteran, and is beaten and
kicked for half an hour by people whose language he has never heard before, whose faces he never gets a
look at.
The Komical Kamikazees: Every morning, and sometimes evening too, the Scatterbrained Suicidekicks mosey down to the palm thatched radar shack to see if there’s any American targets worth a crash-dive, anywhere inside their
flying radius
Until next time, happy reading and rambling!