Earth Matters: Glass half full

I was Santa Claus for several years before Christmas cheer got the best of me and I gave up the pretense. I passed out candy to Crested Butte children in what is now Jerry’s Gym: Ho-ho-ho, Merry Christmas, peace on Earth and good will toward men. I sported a fake beard and wore a red Santa suit over a big, round belly. At the time, the belly wasn’t fake. I was in the spirit; more accurately, the spirits were in me.

Ultimately, though, my skeptical nature got me expelled from Santa’s magical realm, and I reverted to my bah-humbug roots. Perhaps that is too harsh; although I tend to be disparaging, I actually do a decent job of observing the holidays. My glass is half-full because in whatever maturity I have achieved, I perceive the gratification of receiving in the context of the joy of giving.

This year, I awoke a couple of days after Christmas in an uncharacteristic funk. The night before, I had visited with swells for whom world-wide social and economic turmoil is some kind of distant interference in the white noise of their busy and affluent lives.

I felt like a poor country cousin, a provincial and pedestrian hayseed. My self-esteem was in the toilet. I felt I should have accomplished more in my life instead of pursuing my low-key, self-indulgent life here at the head of the draw.

My angst was so out of character I couldn’t at first place its source. Then I realized the unbidden emotional betrayal was simple envy, in this case the desire to wrangle the wherewithal and a big SUV on a ski trip to Canada.

“There will always be people wealthier than us,” commiserated one friend, “and you have to ask yourself, are they really happy?”

“Hell yes, they’re happy,” I responded. “They’re going on a ski trip to Canada. How could they not be happy about that?” Money may not buy happiness, but it sure can help.

To take the edge off my anxiety, I determined not to use those materially more comfortable as a metric. Instead, I would appraise my response to those less fortunate than I am, because by practically any metric, I have it pretty good. I consciously chose the life I lead and I entertain few regrets.

That train of thought might seem obvious and fundamental to more enlightened and highly evolved folks, but like I said, my emotion arose unbidden. As soon as I had thought it through, I immediately felt better. That thinking is glass half-full kind of stuff.

In the dark of winter, I sometimes experience something akin to cabin fever. I am a creature of the sun and when the orb transits too close to the horizon I feel its lack. Winter temperatures bouncing below zero fuel my lack-luster attitude; perhaps I should simply hide the thermometer.

I combat my seasonal disorder by getting outside into whatever sun presents. This time of year, sun is good stuff—curative—and I try to get as much as I can on my face. Some people say sun on the face is bad, others say we don’t get enough to maintain our immune systems. Whatever. I like sun and figure skiing is as good a prescription as any to get my required daily dose.

Skiing is my panacea and it always has been. During November, before it snows and when the sun shines only paltry light from the southern sky, I fret and sometimes sicken in the darkness. But when there is enough snow to ski, my attitude is on the ascendant. At the solstice, I celebrate because days start getting longer, snow falls and I’m skiing.

Even so, sometimes I whine about the damned cold and how my life could be so different had I not consigned myself to the frozen food section. But consign I did, and chances are I will remain until I’m freezer burned. At that point, cook me good and spread the sauce at the top of Total Recall.

In the short run, though, I walk down Teocalli Avenue and raise my eyes to an incredibly blue sky in crystalline clear air. My eyes play over the granite cliffs and distinctive summit of Crested Butte Mountain. I watch as perhaps a winter moon rises gibbous over the south ridge. That view never fails to thrill me. It fills me with joy for the natural community that surrounds me, and the human community among which I make my home. No regrets, only delight.

That is more than a glass half-full. In point of fact, my cup runneth over. And I am thankful.

Gravity Works: First pow

There is a big difference between skiing knee-deep natural, unconsolidated snow, and zipping across seventeen inches of solid man-made. Really? Ya think?

I’m not talking about obvious differences. Make no mistake, skiing fast on cold corduroy carries its own thrill. Lacking most all friction, acceleration and velocity are gravity’s playthings. And with those new shaped skis we paid so much for last fall, groomers transform velocity into sweeping, centripetal carves, consistent across the surface.

While I gripe about early-season “ribbon of death,” skiing, even lacking significant gradient, the groomed smooth and obdurate surface serves a purpose. Muscles and reflexes refresh in familiar use and tune me to edge and surface. If nothing else, I get used to the wind in my face. Ultimately tiresome? Yes.

Quickly, it seemed, early season turned into winter. This is good since if weather is colder than a well-digger’s ass, snow is more than a nice amenity. It is essential to my winter sanity and survival. I get to ski on it, and after all, I live in a ski town. Good thing, too, seeing as how I like skiing so much.

The ribbon of death is gone, buried under a foot or two of natural snow. It won’t reappear until next spring when temperatures and grooming will have transformed the surface into something quite different. But it snowed, and the wise powers-that-be opened the ski mountain. It kept snowing and snowed some more. My greatest hope at this point is that it just keeps snowing, although by the time you read this I’m sure it will have stopped…bite my tongue.

And that conjures a difference between natural and man-made snow. Yes, you can feel the difference under your skis or snowboard. I am not sure whether new snow is faster or slower—depending on temperature and wax—but it damned sure is softer. It carves and pushes, and when it’s cold like it is in December, it splashes and froths. When it finally gets deeper, you can float in it and push those big wide skis against it to turn or control speed. Or you can just let ‘em roll…but keep your tips up.

The sudden transformation from restrictive man-made snow to a blanket of the natural stuff stirred significant participation by local enthusiasts. Jokerville opened to a crowd anxious to test its mettle against more serious gradient than the kitchen table. Deep and with an established base, the natural snow quickly moguled up under the assault. They were natural moguls, though, and not hard and severe because like I said, it kept snowing.

Absent East River and extreme terrain, most of the rest of the mountain opened. As it continued snowing, I skied that knee-deep, natural and unconsolidated snow I was talking about. Down Jokerville—not a drop-in—next to the trees, I found da kine.

At first I was skeptical. It can’t´ be this good. It was still early season; we hadn’t gotten that much snow…had we? Damn; it felt like powder! After finding a few untracked shots tucked here and there near the trees, my pants had snow on them even past my knees. It finally hit me: That was the first powder day of the season. I’d been down in it and hardly even realized it.

There was a time when powder absolutely freaked me out. I remember standing at Vail when I was about eleven years old, powder up to my butt, crying in frustration. Those days are history. Now tears might fog my goggles, but they are tears of joy.

Dolores LaChapelle wrote, “We powder skiers…relinquish our human control and turn it over to the earth below us (the gravity) and the sky above (the snow which that sky gives us) and our way is laid out for us so we can live validly for those moments when we are so intimately a part of the fourfold…I know of nothing which teaches one to live validly as quickly as powder snow.”

Yeah. What she said.

Powder is best, but December powder is the best of the best because it’s so damned cold when crystals form and fall to the ground. Powder snow is the stuff of story and legend: champagne powder, cold smoke…totally sick dude. And there I was, knee-deep in the stuff on Jokerville. Totally sick, dude!

Gravity Works: If you don't ski opening day...

“How was opening day?” asked my friend.

“It was good,” I answered.

It was the best of times. Opening day at the ski area might not be the best ski day of the season, but any time spent skiing is better than time spent doing most anything else. After a month of anticipation, I was psyched to drag my lazy butt off the couch and out from in front of the computer. I wanted to see if it still fit onto a chair lift. Think festive.

Anticipation is probably at least half the thrill. Usually I start dreaming about skiing in late August, for sure by September. By mid-October, enthusiasts gather in front of the post office to talk snow and skis; by November the psych builds as temperatures fall.

Pre-season November is always difficult for me because it’s often too cold for me to bother my horses or hike the mountains. I get all antsy for lack of exercise, which is why more enthusiastic souls submit to pre-season physical training. I have always eschewed such routine not for doubting its value, but simply because I’m lazy. Hence, couch and computer.

The computer provides pre-season conditioning, reading about new equipment, surfing ski areas and summoning snow and weather reports from resorts where it hasn’t even snowed yet. I look at pictures of previous season powder and imagine coming season thrills. Oh yeah: the psych builds.

Pre-season conditioning also involves checking my gear, perhaps augmenting my quiver with a new and mostly un-needed pair of skis, and making sure my pockets have all the right stuff in them. I make sure warm clothes replace last spring’s lighter-weight gear in my locker. Inevitably, and no matter how many times I complete this drill, I always forget something. This year was no exception.

I had no intention of making it up on the hill in time to catch anything like the first chair. I mean, get real: About the only thing that can stir me out from between the sheets that early is a foot of fresh. No fresh on opening day; instead—typically—the day dawned bright and bluebird sunny.

I was rested and ready to ski. Now temporal awareness would shift to a metric of fifteen minute intervals between bus pickups. Acceleration and momentum would define rips down the strip. Gravity would circumscribe experience and focus compelling force into frictionless advance. Physics rules.

Actually, all that evocative prose is a remembrance of seasons past. Opening day is never like that. Instead, skiing is zooming down a strip of man-made snow in a mere fraction of the time it takes to ride a chairlift to the top of it. Most of the fun is had standing in the lift line talking about skiing, people watching, and appraising ski fashions and those wearing them.

Skeptics scoff at early season skiing because there aren’t enough ski runs open, because what is open is too gentle-gradient to make turns, because they don’t like man-made snow, because the lift lines are too long or because the lifts run too slowly. I know one skier who simply won’t use Teocalli Lift because it is slow and old.

Other people simply have a difficult time making the transition between summer activity and winter thrills. It is a physical and psychological leap to stop playing golf, hiking and fishing, and gear up to freeze your ass off on a chairlift.
Skiing every chance I get is important, though, if for no other reason than what I call “hardening.” Hardening is what trees do as temperatures fall, drawing their sap and whatever vital juices into their core and roots. They harden themselves to the cold.

I harden myself by submitting to cold wind in my face, freezing on chairlifts and trying to warm my hands and feet against the cold. This may not be too important now while temperatures are still relatively warm, but the discipline will stand me in good stead when December and January temperatGravity Works:ures try to kill me. I’ll be able to take it; I will be hardened to it. I am ready for it.

Now I spend time every day watching long-range weather forecasts and praying for snow. Snow gods are getting used to my entreaties that the El Nuño doughnut hole will go bother someone else. All the signs are there; ski season has begun.

Earth Matters: No puff piece

I wish I could sit down and write some Pollyanna puff piece that made everybody feel good and soothed all the angst. I wanted to write a parable or allegory drawing on some old fable or fairy tale, but I couldn’t find the template. My skills are not equal to the task.

Both sides of the ongoing Snodgrass NEPA debate have asked me to toss my hat into one corner or the other. Also, both sides of the debate have enjoined me from doing so. People in the middle—ambivalent, undecided or whatever—asked me to articulate their indeterminate feelings. Others want me to write a puff piece like: Hey, we are all a community together, so let’s just get along. Right. Pollyanna pap. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

Instead, the gods of discord and dissension dance a jig down Elk Avenue to the tune of disparate opinions, fraying tempers and dissolving friendships. Mayhem rules. A visit to the post office or grocery store means running a gauntlet of questions, commiseration, fault-finding, blame laying, justifications, rationalizations, speculations and worry. Petitions proliferate; hearts burn.

Neither side in the debate is really to blame for the state of affairs in which our community finds itself, although each side would be first to blame the other. Had not the ski company proposed expansion onto Snodgrass, we wouldn’t be at such loggerheads. Had not opponents to the proposal taken exception to the manifest order of things, we’d be progressing into a prosperous future. We are polarized and pummeled; some simply stopped paying attention, others are just plain tired.

One of the just plain tired people told me she’d thought national economic woes would cause the community to draw closer and pull together. She lamented the perfect storm of local discord and national anxiety. One feeds the other.

After remaining passive for years, those supporting ski area expansion finally found their voice. I do not understand why they didn’t more firmly join the battle at the get-go. After protesting at the Forest Service office in Golden last week, one newly outspoken enthusiast wrote on Facebook: “I love yelling things at people that they deserve…” Catharsis.

Opposition to expansion has been uncharacteristically quiet. It has the good sense not to gloat over Forest Supervisor Charlie Richmond’s decision to disallow the proposal into the NEPA process. Furthermore, recognizing that such victories are infrequent and short-lived, the opposition can be no more than cautiously optimistic. And they must have expected a backlash.

In a small town like Crested Butte, backlash can be brutal. Instead of agreeing to disagree—traditional status quo—people are in-your-face one way or the other. Businesses are afraid to sign onto petitions and they’re afraid not to. Discrimination happens.

Of course this isn’t the first time our community has been divided. Back in the day, we young, newcomer, hippie types opposed a proposed molybdenum mine on Mt. Emmons. The old-timers who lived here before, those who made their livings digging coal, thought a mine was a capital idea. They saw paychecks, economic development and resurrection of the community. Neither side won that fight; tanking molybdenum prices made the battle moot. But bad feelings persisted for years.

And I wish there was a way to prevent bad feelings now. Things have come to such a pass, most everyone feels strongly one way or the other, that no matter what the ultimate Snodgrass outcome, bad feelings will give “social inbreeding” new meaning. Perhaps my greatest fear is that seeing our community as divided as it is, some opportunist will use that disparity to his own advantage.

My friend and mentor George Sibley opines an economic divide, a line “between those who have to compete for their income in the local economy, and those who don’t” And he’s probably mostly right. Somewhere there is a line, and it might as well be there. He provided no answers to our conflict, though, no silver bullets.

I can’t provide answers or silver bullets either. Perhaps one reason I couldn’t find a parable to apply to our situation is because parables often end by providing a lesson or an answer. At this point, I can’t envision an end, much less a lesson or answer. Having worked on neither side of the conflict, count me among the just plain tired.

Earth Matters: Speak no evil

They tell me timing is everything. In journalism it is important to be timely otherwise it’s all yesterday’s news. Yesterday’s news is fine for lining the bird cage or training a puppy, but it isn’t worth beans in the context of current events.

I am not making excuses when I say it isn’t always easy to be timely in a weekly newspaper. Furthermore, having been laid back by current economic malaise, I have even less control over when my maunderings might be published. So timely is relative; I try to write as if it doesn’t matter.

While it may already be yesterday’s news, I write here to congratulate newly elected members of the Crested Butte Town Council. As cub reporter for the Crested Butte Pilot, I covered town council news for many years and five different mayors. I know sitting behind that council table is no easy job. While it might seem like a popularity contest during the election, trust me: it’s not.

Unfortunately, neither is a town council election an exercise in pure democracy. This sad circumstance confronted me during the candidates’ forum prior to the recent election. Members of the voting public were frustrated because candidates were advised not to answer questions about important issues facing Crested Butte.

There are at least three issues council members and candidates can’t discuss publically outside formal council meetings. These include the proposed Foothills Annexation, proposed Sixth Street Station development, and the proposed Mt. Emmons molybdenum mine. All these proposals are important to town residents who wanted to know where prospective candidates stood on the issues.

Questions: How the hell can voters decide who to vote for if candidates can’t answer any and all questions? Why are council members enjoined from discussing important issues in any forum other than regular and scheduled Town Council meetings? What happened to council members sitting down with constituents over a beer and discussing town business?

I know the answers: First and foremost, the Town wants to avoid future litigation from proponents of proposed projects. The Town must act in either a quasi- or direct regulatory capacity concerning proposed developments. Should council members or prospective council members demonstrate they have already made up their minds about a project, the proponent could appeal a final decision. He could say the decision was made before all evidence was on the table and could ultimately have grounds for a lawsuit.

My gripe is not about erudite, prudent and well-meaning advice to elected representatives. My gripe, and the angst expressed by the voting public, is that the enjoinder subverts democratic process. One question remains extant: How the hell can voters decide who to vote for if candidates can’t talk?

Having posed these difficult questions, a responsible pundit would set about proposing answers. Try as I might, though, I can’t think of any.
Gone are the days when an elected official can say: Elect me because I believe Foothills annexation is more trouble than it is worth, a waste of time and money in an economically difficult business climate. Deep in the past is the time a council person could say, we don’t need to develop Sixth Street Station until all other commercial property in town is built out and rented.

Thirty years have passed since council members and town staff could say flat out, “I am opposed to a molybdenum mine on Mt. Emmons and I will fight to prevent one from being developed.” Back in the day, that was the mantra by which candidates aspired to Town Council. Town staff was unabashedly tasked with working to prevent a mine.
Furthermore, I remember sitting with mayors, council members and town staff in numerous watering holes, strategizing how to beat the mine. Our cards were on the table; mine operators knew they would have to overcome not only public opinion but also town government at every level.

Perhaps one strategy that came from those confabs was the town’s watershed ordinance, conceived back then to keep the mine out of Crested Butte’s drinking water. Adopted by town government and upheld by the courts, the ordinance established the town firmly in a regulatory capacity. From this position we are today unable to let any cats out of the bag as to whether or not we want a mine.

I wonder if this is some kind of irony, or something altogether more sinister.

Earth Matters: Temperature rising

I used to think good bourbon kept the bugs at bay, that I could get vitamin C from screwdrivers, and that a little beef bouillon mixed with vodka provided my required dosage of protein. When I was unfortunate enough to get sick, I would drink hot toddies with copious quantities of brandy warmed and mixed with Gran Marnier, a dollop of honey and some lemon. I was generally a robust and healthy mixologist.

As most alcoholics do, I was simply fooling myself. Truth be told, all that booze probably didn’t help my immune system one bit. Furthermore, and if memory serves, I didn’t get sick any more or less frequently when Kochevar’s was my health care resource of choice. Hangovers were my most common malaise.

Having plugged the jug, I am much more aware of what I ingest. I know what I eat, I measure my hydration, my weight is more easily controlled and my head is—relatively—clear. This is all good stuff in the context of what I hope is a healthy and active lifestyle. In retrospect, it is a little surprising that I weathered those more, uh…holistic years as well as I did. Just lucky, I guess.

Sober clarity provides the opportunity to actively avoid illness and disease, as much as a man my age can. That is to say, instead of sitting in an airport bar sucking down bourbon and soda, for example, I now spend my time scrubbing my hands until they chap and rinsing with hand sanitizer. Anticipating my time in a tin can rife with contagion, I hydrate, cleanse and avoid obvious germ hangouts like handrails and door handles.

It doesn’t do any good. I’d have been as well served sucking down that bourbon…except for the hangover. Despite all my sanitary precautions, a recent flight on the biohazard express penetrated my heretofore healthy system.

Living up here at the head of the draw, I am not often exposed to the vast variety of germs that make themselves at home in our human congregation. No epidemiologist, I figure constant exposure to an assortment of virulent bugs better prepares an immune response. In other words, our clean mountain air serves to keep us healthy only if we stay there. The minute we expose ourselves to foreign viruses, or when visitors import those critters to our mountain fastness, we are bug bait. Katie, bar the door.

Thankfully, the bugs didn’t kick in until I had made it home to Crested Butte. My most distinct apprehension about air travel is that I will get sick in some distant and unsympathetic port. Not only would I have to endure the agonies of disease with no commiseration, I would suffer the condemnation of those I was unintentionally exposing to my obvious sickness. At home, only my cat would suffer exposure, and I’m pretty sure cats don’t get human disease.

Health care begins, and ultimately ends at home. Here I can shuffle a block or two to the doctor’s office and hope he can provide cure, comfort and solace. Alternatively, I can flop on the couch and read or watch television, and consume mostly worthless over-the-counter comfort and remedy.

Television provides scant comfort because the news is rife with information about widespread viral death and immunization that may be worse than the disease or altogether worthless. In the midst of the H1N1 pandemic, we continue arguing about health care reform and are continuously bombarded with advertisements about everything from erectile dysfunction to restless leg syndrome to…whatever.

It is no small irony that health care reform debate rages in the midst of the most virulent pandemic to impact our population in almost a century. Health care reform opponents should take a look around at a society sick on lousy diets and increasingly vulnerable to any formerly unknown and potent virus that comes down the pike.

They should consider the souls who don’t have a doctor a block away and who couldn’t afford him if they did. Those who like health care the way it is should check out profit margins of big pharma and health insurance providers. They should sit next to me in an airport when I’m spewing contagion.

Between bouts of coughing and on top of the pain of a swollen throat, I pray I haven’t fallen victim to what one friend calls “pig flu.” That eventuality might cause me to seek solace in warm brandy and Gran

Earth Matters: Flat earthers eat their children

I can’t help it. Darkness burrows into my soul and chews at my attitude like an evil malignancy. My brain shuts down and sleep becomes my only escape. I awake to no morning sunlight and close my eyes again to deny outside darkness.

Cold fingers my marrow, freezes my hands and numbs my skin. I don gloves and more clothes—that’s why they make gore-tex—and gather warmth to my core. I can take the cold—I signed up for it—but the darkness gets me. There is nothing for it at 39 degrees north latitude except to move south…and that won’t happen.

The irony isn’t lost on me when this time of year I again jump on the sky-is-falling-global-warming bandwagon. Here I am, up at the head of the draw at 9,000 feet in the frozen food section, freezing my ass off and hollering that global warming will destroy the world…as we know it. I’m sure that would be just fine for some folks.

Other folks simply don’t believe global warming is happening and deny anthropogenic—human—causes as responsible. U.S. Senator James Inhofe said, “Much of the debate over global warming is predicated on fear, rather than science…The threat of catastrophic global warming is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American People.”

I have a friend in Denver who categorically denies global warming and rejects any assertion that human industry is at fault.

“It is simply liberal propaganda,” he posits, “promulgated because they can’t find any other meaningful agenda.”

I asked when was the last time he visited Rocky Mountain National Park to see where the glaciers used to be. When was the last time he walked on a receding glacier or negotiated recessional moraines? Been in any floods lately? He pleaded a restrictive work load and admitted he seldom leaves Denver.

These are the guys I liken to flat-earthers. Whatever minimal understanding of human nature I enjoy informs me that those who denied the earth as round, labored under the same mindset as those who today believe there is no such thing as global warming…and if there were, it’s not our fault. Yes: flat-out, hot-headed human nature.

But, hey! Columbus has already weighed anchor and is headed off across the warming ocean to a new world. Science confirms the poop in the fan, although the minute one bunch of scientists stands up and says the world is melting, another stands up and says the first is full of nonsense. More human nature.

Anecdotal and visual evidence is worth something, however, and I’m convinced that sure as winter is around the corner, global warming is changing our world. Here is some of that anecdotal stuff I am talking about.

Many years ago, I weighed anchor myself on a 1,000-mile canoe trip north down Canada’s Mackenzie River. This massive and moving body of water drains much of northern Canada through its delta into the Arctic Ocean. We floated haphazardly north in the giant flow, paddling up tributaries to fish and camping on shores scoured yearly by ice flows at spring breakup. Farther north, trees disappear at timberline into hummocky infinities of reindeer moss and permafrost.

An August, 2009 Associated Press article brought my Mackenzie trip back to me: “Climate trouble may be bubbling up in the Far North.” Among the myriad problems of melting ice caps, it seems permafrost is melting and releasing greenhouse components carbon dioxide and methane gas. Think stinky swamp gas trapped inside frozen tundra, melting and bubbling up. This is a feedback loop: Climate changes melt permafrost which releases methane which contributes to warming which melts…on and on.

I have also walked on Alaska’s Root Glacier in the Wrangell and St. Elias Mountains. The glacier is melting and it is difficult to figure where the glacier ends for the recessional moraine obscuring its nose. Unable to transport erosional material, the glacier itself is largely covered with debris. I have not experienced the flooding in Bangladesh where the Ganges, Brahmaputra and Meghna Rivers meet sea level a little too high for human habitation. Nor have I witnessed ongoing wildfires turning California to ash.

In the long run, it won’t matter what the flat-earther, global-warming deniers think. We are probably long past a tipping point where we could have reversed our warming climate trends; denial simply won’t matter. Furthermore, I’ve discovered that flat-earthers didn’t really eat their children, but maybe they should have.

Earth Matters: De-escalate

What? No missile shield in Eastern Europe to protect us from the nukes they’ll be lobbing at us? Katie, bar the door.

I spent considerable youthful time worrying that living at ground zero in Colorado Springs I’d be instantly vaporized in an air blast that would level most of the Front Range. Now peace-monger Obama wants to open the door to any crazy militant that can package up plutonium and launch it our way. I’d probably best get back to building my air-raid shelter; call me paranoid.

While the nuclear threat from Russia is probably less than it was when I was a kid in the 1950s, nuclear proliferation in countries like Iran, Pakistan and North Korea is still scary. George W. Bush’s way of coping with the threat was to install a missile defense system in former Soviet Bloc countries Poland and Czech Republic. Obama has scrapped that plan.

Russia’s Deputy Defense Minister Vladimir Popovkin lauded Obama’s cancellation of the missile defense plan as a “victory of reason over ambitions. Naturally, we will cancel countermeasures which Russia has planned in response,” Popovkin said. One such countermeasure was deployment of Iskander missiles along Russia’s border. I feel safer already.

Although Russia was the most outspoken opponent of the proposed missile defense shield, the plan was designed to address threats from rogue states like Iran and North Korea. Russia simply didn’t like the idea of the United States setting up missiles and radar in its former satellite countries and right on its border.

Obama’s intelligence, hopefully better than Bush’s, suggests that Iran isn’t as close as we thought to acquiring nuclear attack capability. Instead of irritating the Russians, Obama’s defense strategy would use radar in Alaska and California to detect launches, and respond with forty-four interceptor missiles in Alaska and California, and another 130 based on ships.

In return for us backing off the defense system in Eastern Europe, we hope Russia will join the United States in castigating Iran into backing off its nuclear program. It will be a while before Iranian nukes could touch the U.S. homeland, but Iran’s Shahab-3 missiles have a range of 1,240 miles. That’s enough carrying power to reach Israel, or NATO countries Greece, Bulgaria or Romania…or for that matter, Russia.

Obama’s de-escalation, if it can be called that, was not welcomed in Central and Eastern Europe. Former Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek said, “This is not good news for the Czech state, for Czech freedom and independence. It puts us in a position where we are not firmly anchored in terms of partnership, security and alliance, and that’s a certain threat.” Oh, well; Obama’s Republican foes didn’t like the move either.

Although Obama’s new “smarter, stronger and swifter” plan maintains United States defense capabilities, I perceive eliminating missile sites on Russian borders as de-escalation of bellicose saber rattling. Despite irritating the Poles and Czechs, it might have placated the Russians…at least a little. It probably doesn’t faze Iran’s Ahmadinejad, who keeps insisting the Holocaust didn’t happen, and North Korea probably hasn’t got the news yet and could care less anyway.

From my perspective as a card-carrying peacenik, de-escalation is a good thing. Nuclear non-proliferation is a good thing. Diplomacy over pre-emptive and overwhelming force is a good thing. Civil discourse over vitriolic polarization is a good thing. If we could achieve a little domestic de-escalation right here in the homeland, that would be a good thing. If only…

Earth Matters: Hot button

They are all around us even if we don’t know they are there. I didn’t really know what hot-buttons were a few years ago; now I can’t tap out a couple of hundred words without touching a hot-button and igniting a firestorm of response. Suddenly we are a polarized people and Elk Avenue is no longer isolated enough to be immune.

Perhaps it is a matter of perception and I am over-reacting. Back in the day, a hot-button issue was whether I let my hair grow longer than GI Joe. Wild and crazy hippies were an issue when rednecks cruised Main Street using sheep shears to impose sartorial standards. Sex, drugs and rock ‘n roll were contentious in a society changing from the values of my father to those of his son.

Barber shops and bars are traditionally places where discussion devolves to religion, politics and other hot-buttons. I always thought that might be dangerous in barber shops where men wielded sharp instruments and respondents were captive in a barber chair. Now, of course, the discussion pool is limited because walk-in clients don’t sit around and instead must make appointments.

Bars remain places where alcohol loosens tongues, fires emotions and encourages hot-buttons. While I no longer spend any time in that environment, I remember well hot-buttons that when touched, caused venerable guzzlers to forgo their beverage and walk out the door. Politics has always been a hot-button.

It is certainly no less so now, although I suspect the definition of politics has expanded to fully encompass affairs of state foreign and domestic, government—how much, how little—and policy crafted by governance.

Since I am by no means, and never have been an outright anarchist, I concern myself with government and governance. That means, if I talk about it at all, I’m always pushing the politics hot-button.

I’m told there was a time when a majority of Americans were pretty much on the same page regarding their government, although I bet that attitude falls under the rubric of Pollyanna good ole’ days. On this point, the hot-button is revisionist history; the first generation makes history, the second generation remembers and the third forgets. Get used to it.

Perhaps every generation believes it is living through uniquely interesting times, and that future and past generations experienced bland, either good or bad times. The Great Depression, for example, was interesting only to those able to sustain themselves through the economic debacle. To everyone else, it was a bad time. We remember the Eisenhower era as a time of American well-being. But ask those persecuted under Joseph McCarthy’s witch hunts if they were happy. Oh yeah: communism was a hot-button.

The relative heat of buttons varies with time and throughout history. During the Clinton Presidency, for example, the hottest button out there was Monica Lewinski…or maybe that was just an excuse. Undoubtedly, some folks hated Clinton as much as I hated his successor and set about spending millions on impeachment that had no effect whatsoever. That was a hot-button for me.

George Bush refined the art of heating buttons to a fine point. He created hot-buttons with red herrings, deflecting criticism from the Iraq War, for example, into whether and how gay people should serve in his armies. Finally, through his own ineptitude, Bush himself became the hot-button…at least in my experience.

Hot-buttons tickle my fingers now; health care reform is practically as hot as buttons get. No wonder, since the amount people pay for health insurance increased 30 percent from 2001 to 2005, while income for the same period increased only 3 percent. Approximately 50 percent of personal bankruptcies are due to medical expenses. We are a better nation than to countenance that.

The latest hot-button is President Obama’s address to the country’s school children. Conservatives fear the President will somehow brainwash kids, which to me demonstrates lack of confidence in their own parenting skills.

Ouch! Hot! My keyboard is melting.

Earth Matters: Dead bear walking

“People can pretty much take care of themselves,” I remember my father telling me. “If we get into trouble we can usually figure a way to get out of it. It’s probably our own fault we’re in trouble in the first place.”

My father undoubtedly never thought I would remember so much of what he told me, especially an observation that implies a high degree of personal responsibility. A habitual screw-up even as a kid, I figured if I took responsibility for my screw-ups I could perhaps approach something resembling redemption. It worked…well, some of the time.

“Animals, on the other hand,” continued my father, “don’t have that luxury. Animals are at the mercy of us humans and don’t have a say in the trouble we put on them.”

Those words colored my life more than my father could ever have known. In the face of the way we humans treat animals, I usually find myself on the animals’ side. I figure we two-leggeds can probably help ourselves. If you think man’s inhumanity to man is egregious, consider man’s inhumanity to animals…poor, dumb animals.

Often we don’t even realize how our actions inadvertently affect animals. Having been granted dominion over most everything, we go about our business with little regard for those we believe lack sentience, feelings or enough brains to understand what we do. But I think that is wrong.

We don’t consider bears, for example, to be the fastest swimmers in the gene pool. Faced with a bruin in the boonies, however, there is no question in our viscera that the bear is higher on the food chain. He may not be smarter than we are, but he is darned sure bigger, meaner, grouchier and hungrier. The only time we are higher on the food chain is when our opposable thumb can work the bolt on our varmint rifle.

I watched this morning, as Crested Butte’s Finest cruised the neighborhood monitoring bear activity. The officer stopped and grabbed his shotgun, then jumped back in the car and took off down the block. This was bear hunting the modern, urban way.

Habituated bears, town bears, are animals used to being around humans because they eat our trash. Our current crop of dumpster divers are second generation trash bears who know no other means of finding an easy meal. Mama taught them how to do it. These are doomed bears; three such critters have been killed in town this year.

It’s our fault—collectively—that bears are in town. Instead of out cruising for berries or digging up grubs, they tip over dumpsters to get at our discarded barbeque ribs and break into cars for the popcorn we left on the seat. They don’t know how to find food differently, and here they will ultimately meet their demise. No doubt: a garbage bear is a dead bear.

Our community has actually made progress in bear awareness. Most of us now know why bears visit, and we’ve locked up our garbage or otherwise taken steps to discourage bears. Bear Saver trash receptacles, lockable dumpsters and truly inscrutable public trash cans keep bears out. More evolved or not, I still haven’t figured out how to get into some of our trash cans.

I mentioned to a Colorado Division of Wildlife officer that I don’t remember so many significant bear visitations in the past. He told me back in the day we let our dogs run loose which ran the bears out of town. Now we must corral our dogs and keep them on a leash, so bears have free rein.

“What if we let the dogs run loose just for a week or so?” I asked. The local constable rolled his eyes and said, “It’s one of those damned if we do, damned if we don’t situations. If we relax dog laws we’ll start getting more reports of dog bites.”

Roving dogs, marauding bears: life at the head of the draw. The poor bears.

Earth Matters: Road trip

Imagine you are the Secret Service. You’re all tricked out in your conservative suit, button-down collar and school tie. Your tasseled loafers are shined to a mirror finish and your earpiece communicator is synchronized to a fare-thee-well. You’ve traded in your Crown Victoria for a giant Cadillac Escalade because…you are taking George W. Bush on a Road Trip.

Imagine all you want, but this part, at least, is true. Bush and his entourage visited Crested Butte last week as guests at a wedding celebrated by another Texas oil family. I think the wedding was at a ranch in Gunnison, but Bush’s Crawford contingent chose to stay in Mt. Crested Butte. I guess Gunnison’s Holiday Inn Express just wasn’t…uh, secure enough. Instead, Bush drove a big ‘ole SUV and lassoed the entire sixth floor at Mountaineer Square.

I first heard of the former politician’s visit to our fair valley as a request—not assignment—from my boss. Given all the homework I’d done on the previous administration, my editor figured I’d be the one to perhaps conduct an interview with Mr. Bush and pose a few poignant questions.

At first I refused to believe George W. Bush had abandoned his two long-horned steers back at the ranch. It was difficult to understand why he would venture into the liberal enclave that is the upper East River Valley. While I realize there are significant holdouts who still believe Bush is the coolest thing since thumbscrews, most of us hold the realistic opinion that Bush was the worst president since Attila the Hun. I did my best to popularize that opinion, which is undoubtedly why my boss suggested I conduct an interview.

I declined my boss’ suggestion on the grounds that I might not be able to craft my queries with the proper deference. I’d likely end up in Gitmo, and I’d just as soon spend the rest of my life in Crested Butte. I don’t do well in hot climates, and even New Max down in Florence might be a little warm for me.

Alerted to the presence of the Beast, I watched the drama unfold over the weekend. One tenacious observer commented on Facebook: “So a couple of days ago I’m driving down the mountain, and I see this dude driving a big SUV that looks just like George W. Bush…turns out it was George Freakin’ W. Bush…He kind of had this look on his face like; ‘damn, I git to drive agin’!”

Another Facebookie wrote that he observed a large black bear crossing the road in Mt. Crested Butte and wondered if the bear was there to perhaps “visit (or maybe eat) W!” A response to his comment: “Poor bear would get very sick from tainted meat!” And remember, bears can eat almost anything.

I took my research to a bench on Elk Avenue. While Facebook is fun and I can peruse it without leaving the house, the bench has the advantage of face-to-face. Body language and scenery are articulate.

“If you could ask George W. Bush two questions,” asked a friend, “what would they be?”

“Only two questions?” I protested. “I want three.”

“Okay three,” she acceded. “What would they be?”

My first question would be, “Why did you invade Iraq…really?” After all, it was something of a stretch to believe the old weapons of mass destruction drivel. Saddam Hussein was too busy gassing Kurds with imported American nerve gas and blowing up fish with hand grenades to be serious about weapons of mass destruction.

My second question would be, “How can you sleep at night?” Having perpetrated so much nasty stuff during his term in office, and with the blood of so many American soldiers on his hands, I don’t know what sleeping pills Bush uses, but I want some.

My third question would be, “How come you didn’t reply to any of my letters?” Even Bill Clinton—between dalliances—had the common courtesy to send me form letters. Courtesy was not Bush’s strong suit, and if it had been, I bet he couldn’t spell it. Maybe that’s why he didn’t write back: spelling impaired.

Finally, my research turned up an interesting tidbit of unconfirmed information. Imagine you are the Secret Service and your GPS unit tells you the best way to get to Crested Butte is to drive up over Schofield Pass. Then imagine you get your big ‘ole Cadillac Escalade hung up somewhere in the Punchbowls. Now imagine those tasseled loafers scrambling on the rock.

Earth Matters: Hat trick

“So you’re causing a ruckus again,” observed one reader. “You’re stirring the pot with all those ‘take life too seriously’ people.”

“Well, that’s kind of my job,” I answered. “I paid my dues.” I spent years as a humble reporter assembling objective reportage every week. “Now I get to go off once in a while.”

Actually, this summer I’ve tried to be informative and entertaining, but ultimately I’ve been marking time until I could write my truth from my heart. That’s what it’s about for me. Luckily, not everyone agrees with my truth; think how boring that would be.

Any writer is lucky to work in interesting times, or conversely, perhaps good writers help make their times interesting. If someone wasn’t out there stirring the pot, even making some people angry, interesting would be a relative thing. Edward Abbey stressed the importance of stirring the pot: “…if you don’t keep it stirred up you get a lot of scum on top.”

I’ve always considered Abbey a good writer, and no question: he made a lot a people mad. He definitely informed and educated a generation of Americans, and he didn’t give a hoot in hell whether people liked him for his radical rants or not. I once asked Abbey how he could be such a misanthrope and hope to do good in the world. He answered that people who thought he was a misanthrope didn’t know him.

Abbey also held that people who lived in desert places were more to his liking than those who lived among mountains. He considered us xenophobes and socially inbred. I say to hell with Abbey, and I think he would have approved that attitude. He is correct in one respect, though; our relative isolation confines us in a stew pot that has nowhere to vent except back upon itself. So be it; there are compensations.

One of those compensations in our small mountain town is our newspaper. The newspaper gives us a voice, a place to put out there what is on our mind. Yes, I enjoy a bully pulpit because I earned it from years of being a reporter. But anyone who signs their name can write a letter and see it published in the newspaper. Never take this public voice for granted; not every newspaper in every town provides it.

So it bothers me only a little when folks disagree with what I write and respond with a major case of ire. It affirms me and lets my boss know I’m doing my job. One colleague always complains I’m a higher-paid pundit than he is. Perhaps we should institute a sliding pay scale where the writer with the most hate mail gets a raise.

I would be a wealthy writer—if there is such a thing—this week, because my email inbox is full of critical missives, my boss had to increase the page count to print outraged readers, and the tyranny of my cell phone is having its way with my ear. The only person I haven’t heard from is George W. Bush himself, which isn’t surprising since he never responded to previous letters I wrote. I even signed them.

If response mail is any indication, in the last couple of weeks I achieved a hat-trick. I angered what the left wing would call the right wing because I pummeled George W. Bush after his visit to our fair valley. I didn’t think I was being that harsh; we can never forgive and we must never forget. “Bush doesn’t matter,” opined one critic. “He’s a war criminal.” Whoa: I didn’t say that.

The second element of my hat-trick: I angered what the right wing would call the left wing. I trespassed on ground over which I seldom venture, and offended those who seek a different path for development of the ski area and proposed ski area expansion.

Having been so soundly thrashed by both sides of that particular debate, I hope here to very carefully watch what I say so as not to prolong or exacerbate the discussion. Writers must carefully measure their words, although sometimes such care gets in the way of truth and generates its own consequences. Damned if I do, damned if I don’t: such are the rewards of the bully pulpit.

Finally, I offended the fringy middle with my assertion that we must somehow achieve health care reform. Few issues in our national debate stir so many opinions and feelings. Yet I believe if something isn’t broke, leave it alone. But if it’s broke, and I believe health care is indeed broken, then fix it.

Okay, now about that raise…or not.

Earth Matters: Retro fit

I must have been about ten years old, staggering up Mount Antero, spewing breakfast across its face with altitude sickness. It was a day I can never forget for its challenge and for the opportunity to experience mountains as formidable chunks of rock. I learned it is best to treat them with due respect…and perhaps not eat a big, heavy breakfast.

I also learned that as much as I wanted to enjoy mountains, I would always find walking uphill at increasing altitudes a difficult undertaking. I would always sweat and swear, stagger and plod up the hill. No Reinhold Messner here.

My childhood presentiment manifested in adulthood and persists today. Bottom line: for someone who loves hiking in the mountains, I am one lazy slacker. So be it; at least I do it. Generally, though, I only commit exercise with the luxury of a purpose in mind.

Inevitably the question arises: why bother hiking up the damn hill anyway? Mallory’s answer—because it’s there—serves in simplicity but ignores nuances like the view, or the view and the flowers, or the snow and sliding down it, or whatever. Farther down the list is hiking for the sake of exercise. I can’t imagine Mallory on Everest simply for the exercise, and I bet he wasn’t into it so much for the view either.

But hell, Mallory is dead and times have changed. Now mountain exercise, at least in our user-friendly mountains, rewards hard-body, lean-and-mean athletes…and those who have learned to eat lighter breakfasts and walk slower.

It is difficult to ignore a certain physical vitality that derives from living at high altitude and (gulp) even exercising in that environment. Walking to the Post Office counts, but lying on the couch with the remote control doesn’t. Endurance runners blast past me at 12,000 ft., having started running a couple of mountain ranges over and planning to be home maybe for a little tennis before dinner. Too much!

Living smack in the middle of what has been called the “recreation archipelago,” most everyone is physically fit. It makes sense that mostly fit people would favor a demanding environment, one where if you want to leave town, in every direction but one you have to walk uphill. Damn right; that’s why they call it the head of the draw.

In our youth- and fitness-rich place it is difficult to imagine places where men my age still smoke a pack a day, knock back a sixer before sitting down to a heart-attack-on-a-plate, followed by the average five hours a night of television. While I myself have struggled with couch potato issues and consequent table muscle, I now recognize virtues of staying fit and mostly trim. I am retro fit.

I am not alone. A report by Trust for America’s Health (TFAH) and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation shows Colorado as the only state in the Union with an obesity rate lower than 20%. Colorado’s rate is 18.9% compared to the heaviest state, Mississippi weighing in at 32.5% obesity in the adult population. Explaining the obvious, experts suggest Colorado is more active, Mississippi more sedentary. I’m sure it has something to do with the heat…and maybe the fritters.

I remember a trip to Wisconsin some years ago where beer, fried fish—fried everything—and bratwurst contributed to ten pounds of excess…uh, material around my middle. I didn’t climb many mountains that summer, and my exercise consisted mostly of 12 oz. lifts. Had I not got out of Wisconsin, I would soon have gained the more portly demeanor of my hosts.

The TFAH obesity report, “F as in Fat: How Obesity Policies are Failing in America 2009,” suggests the current economic crisis could exacerbate the obesity epidemic. Furthermore, the study found Baby Boomers have a higher obesity rate than previous generations. As Baby Boomers age, related costs will sizzle federal health care programs as the fat hits the fire. Well…the report didn’t put it exactly like that.

For my part, in my born-again retro-fitness program, I will continue burning fat in high, thin and usually cold air. I am firmly convinced that merely being outside during winter burns calories just to keep warm. I will also watch what I eat—if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it—and make every attempt when I’m not exercising, to keep my table muscle trim.

Or maybe this is all just some kind of lame excuse. Just maybe.

Earth Matters: In rockets' red glare

Fireworks lit the sky. A gibbous moon sheltered shyly behind scudding clouds, and the silhouette of Crested Butte Mountain shone darkly against the sky. Another report flashed, and then exploded into cascading red stars. People oh-ed and ah-ed.

“Where are you from?” I asked the man next to me. He was a little older, and I couldn’t tell if I’d met him before or not.

“Pueblo,” he answered. “We just came to Crested Butte for the Fourth of July.”

“Welcome,” I said. “How do you like it so far?”

“It’s great,” he said. “A lot of small towns celebrate Fourth of July with parades, but Crested Butte knows how to do it up right.” Another firework report punctuated his compliment.

“Pretty patriotic stuff, that,” I observed, indicating the fireworks.

“Enjoy it while you can,” he responded. “We won’t be able to after a couple more years under Obama.”

I looked at him blankly, warily, knowing we were probably broaching dangerous ground. Talking politics is always sketchy even with someone whose opinions I know are relatively consonant with mine. Talking politics with someone I don’t know and from a completely different political and social environment is looking for trouble.

“How’s that?” I asked, living dangerously.

“Obama is ruining this country,” he asserted. “You know all those nice, big houses back over there on the hill?” He indicated homes above ski jump hill. “Obama would do away with all that.”

“You think so?” I encouraged. Now that we were out there on thin ice, I figured in for a penny, in for a pound. I wanted to hear a point of view other than the sometimes insular perspective we develop and accept as dogma up here at the head of the draw.

“Hell, yes,” he expostulated. He was getting exercised without even knowing he was talking to a raving and unreconstructed liberal. Like him, I deplore the economic toilet in which we are swirling, but I see a different hand on the flusher. Undoubtedly, I also postulate different ways of fixing the mess.

“I think it is too early to judge,” I responded as gently as I could.

I did not, for example, explain how I thought our economic malaise began back in the day when we came to believe air bucks were salvation and plastic was the key to heaven. You can’t get through the Pearly Gates without a credit rating, and the only way you can get a credit rating is to be in debt. Free lunch? You betcha.

“I don’t think it’s too early to judge,” the man sputtered. “Obama wants to redistribute the wealth. He wants to take money away from rich people and give it to people too lazy to work for it.”

“He has only been in office six months,” I said, trying to calm troubled waters. Instead of telling the guy he was spouting hogwash, I figured the more tactful position would be to wait and see. “I still think it’s too early to judge.”

“I don’t,” he insisted. “Obama is going to turn this country socialist and turn us all into communists.”

Holy cats, I thought. What the hell had I go myself into? This was one of those guys who wants Obama to fail, even if he resurrects the economy, fixes health care, reinvigorates social security and other entitlement programs, restores our standing with respect throughout the world, achieves Middle East peace, conquers the Taliban, executes Osama bin Laden and puts an end to war in our time. None of that would matter; we’d all be pinko, socialist commies.

Several things occurred to me. I could get into a pissing contest with this guy, engage him and argue with him, and probably ruin an otherwise beautiful evening for both of us. Furthermore, no way could I win him over; I could tell he was as set in his ways as I am in mine. What was the point in that? You know you’ve crossed some kind of threshold when tact and discretion prevail.

“Well, one thing is for sure,” I told him. “It’s the Fourth of July, that’s a beautiful fireworks display, and we can all celebrate that.”

And that’s what we did.

Earth Matters: Patriotic plunge

Patriotism usually isn’t my strong suit. A child of the 1960s, and having cut my political teeth on Vietnam War protests, I am too critical and cynical to be out there waving flags. I flat didn’t understand slogans like: My country, right or wrong. “America, love it or leave it,” almost sent me to the ticket counter. Back in my hippie days, though, I didn’t have the coin. I still don’t.

Youth was my time for rebellion, and there was plenty to rebel against. The 1960s social revolution was a perfect storm that distilled and galvanized my attitude toward politics and the powers that governed our nation. It wasn’t that I didn’t like the United States; it was only that the old, white men who ran the place were killing American soldiers in a cause I didn’t understand and couldn’t believe in.

Nor would the bastards let us vote. I found it unconscionable that young men could get drafted and sent to deadly foreign jungles. Yet we couldn’t vote those who sent us there out of office. We had no say in any of it.

I avoided that war by hook and crook. Although I wonder how my life would be different had I gone to Vietnam and survived, I’m not ashamed to admit that I was a draft dodger. Those who have never lived under threat of conscription perhaps cannot understand.

In 1975, the Vietnam War ended. I hadn’t been drafted, killed, maimed or psychologically trashed with post-traumatic stress. I hadn’t been thrown in jail for resisting, and hadn’t surrendered my citizenship and moved to Canada. I still lived in the heart of the mountains I’d chosen as home. I was still young, and I anticipated a good life skiing, hiking and doing the things I had determined would define my life.

My first experience of real patriotic feelings came in 1976 when we celebrated what I remember as a “tri-Centennial.” July 4, 1976 commemorated two hundred years of United States sovereignty, one hundred years of Colorado statehood, and almost one hundred years of Crested Butte existence. Maybe we were pushing the latter by a couple of years, but what the hell. We were high on ending the Vietnam War, and oh, did we party down.

I remember sitting around a big fire in the side lot of the Grubstake—now the renowned Brick Oven—drinking beer and shots, and (gulp) singing patriotic songs. We enjoyed all the patriotic classics, but I remember our rendition of America the Beautiful caused tears to run down my cheeks. That is my first recollection of patriotic zeal that flowed from my heart. Friends and camaraderie on free American soil in Crested Butte…I will never forget.

Flash forward.

I have enjoyed the advantages of that free American soil into my adult years. Although I might be hard-pressed to call it outright patriotism, I am grateful for my freedoms, and with notable exceptions, I am proud to be an American.

Notable exceptions, however, can be a patriotic buzz-kill. For example, I sat to write this Fourth of July missive during each of the last eight years, and I found it difficult. While the attacks of 9-11 stirred my American blood, our government’s thoughtless and illegal incursion into Iraq shamed me. The rest of the world vilified and disrespected us. Worse, had we not been perceived as thoughtless and dangerous by the world community, we appeared a swaggering laughingstock.

It was difficult for me to sit down at the keyboard and write about how great a nation we enjoyed. The words choked in my throat; keystrokes wouldn’t come. Since I had nothing good and patriotic to say on the Fourth of July, I figured I ought to shut the hell up. I tried my best, though, to put lipstick on the pig. Damn, it was an ugly pig!

While the pig has become more comely, there are still American soldiers in harm’s way in Iraq and Afghanistan. To these men and women I extend words and feelings of gratitude and respect. Although these folks weren’t conscripted into service, when they volunteered they probably had no idea about Islamic fascists, car bombs, suicide bombers, improvised explosive devices and the rest. Now they do.

My patriotic heart goes out to families who must welcome back to American soil only a flag-covered box. I respect the men and women whose lives have been forever altered by disfigurement and amputation. These are our friends and neighbors, Americans like us who paid a terrible price at our nation’s bidding.

To these folks, I can only say thank you for your service. To them, and to the rest of us, I wish a heartfelt and patriotic Happy Birthday America.

Earth Matters: Well outside the draw

Crested Butte is a place where we leave our doors unlocked but lock our dumpsters. I believe this custom first developed because we all trusted each other not to steal. Furthermore, few of us had much of value to steal, but the trash company charged money to haul away refuse. It was an economic consideration.

That’s the way it used to be, at least, and if it isn’t like that now, the spirit of such trust and freedom is still alive in our attitude. If and when that confidence and expectation disappear, we will have lost an irreplaceable quality of life.

Community at the head of the draw provides benefits that compensate for isolation that at times seems stifling. Think cabin fever and social inbreeding. Think escape. Think remove from the mainstream; everything else is downstream.

That remove is an affordance of place locals enjoy and visitors envy. Still, being so distant from ordinary life in the fast lane requires adjustments. It doesn’t suit everyone. For example, I grew up in Colorado Springs about five miles from ground zero if the Soviets had nuked NORAD. Vaporization would have been instantaneous. Here in Crested Butte, it would take a while for nuclear winter to freeze me out.

That particularly nasty scenario came to mind as news of North Korea’s nuclear escalation trickled into our headwaters. Back in the day, that news would only very slowly have made its way from mainstream to upstream. North Korea might have developed and deployed its weaponry before we in Crested Butte ever even knew they had nukes. But now we know.

Kim Jung Il’s expressed intention of lobbing nukes at South Korea, Japan, Alaska and wherever else, demonstrates The Dear Leader’s inability to be a world citizen at any level. North Korea is isolated not by geography like Crested Butte, but by ideology and intention. The country’s aggressive and belligerent posture sets it apart from the rest of the world; no one really wants nuclear confrontation.

While I seriously doubt foreign policy wonks will be soliciting my opinion, I think the United States should stay well out of North Korea’s nuclear face. After all, during 1950-53 we adventured on the Korean Peninsula and it didn’t go especially well for us. The Chinese People’s Volunteer Army overwhelmed U.S. forces causing the longest American military retreat in history. North Korea withdrew from the 1953 armistice May 27, 2009.

Intent on payback this time with nukes, Korea’s bellicose intentions would only flare with United States intervention. Instead, with its newly earned world stature as Olympic host and banker to the United States of America, the People’s Republic of China should throw some of its weight at The Dear Leader. Nuclear threat or not, it is doubtful Kim Jung Il or his illustrious successor will dare the Chinese tiger. And the United States should let them do it, you know, just to the 38th Parallel.

With North Korea off the foreign policy plate, the United States could then concentrate on another distant proto-nuclear threat. Iran is neither as crazy nor as isolated as North Korea, although with Ahmadinejad calling the shots, crazy doesn’t seem too farfetched.

While North Korea neither knows nor cares what the rest of the world thinks, Iran’s culture and education, political geography and oil reserves place it at the forefront of world attention. Iran and North Korea have only nuclear aspirations and antipathy for the United States in common, but that’s probably enough.

Different beast that it is, I used to brag Iran up. I defended the country’s democratic process; just because they elected someone we don’t like is no reason to, for example, pre-emptively invade the country. I believe the people of Iran are educated and sophisticated enough to exercise and enjoy democratic rights.

Ahmadinejad believes that also, which is why we may never know true results from Iran’s recent election. Defending allegations that the vote was rigged, President Ahmadinejad has shut down the internet, cell phone access—anything that might help opposition supporters organize revolt. Riot police and hard-line Ansar-e Hezbollah militiamen (so-called “ninjas”) are fighting riots in the streets.

That is something else North Korea and Iran apparently now have in common: government by brutal dictatorship. You can take that to the dumpster and lock ‘em in.

Gravity Works: Meaning

I am fairly sure what I’m doing is basically meaningless. At the end of the day, who really cares whether I ski every month for the rest of my life or never again. Will it help me get into heaven? If I don’t, will I end up in hell? The big gravity sucker in the sky probably isn’t even paying attention…meaningless.

So far I’ve only skied nineteen months, but when—not if—I ski during June I’ll have spent twenty months with my feet in ski boots for at least a few turns. Sound hot and sweaty? Oh, yeah. That’s what exercise is all about. Besides, all that alpine touring gear is expensive, and I want to get my money’s worth.

I’m sure that after skiing for twenty months I’ll be sorely tempted to rack up four more months, two years of consistent skiing. Then in November the ski area will open, and I’ll ski another six months…and so on and on until they burn me on a pyre of old skis and spread the ashes on the West Side. How meaningless is that?

Meaningless or not, it hasn’t always been easy. Finding snow and dredging up motivation was most difficult in August, September and October. Although I kept my gear packed and ready to walk out the door, skiing was a long way from the front of my mind when summer sun baked rocks and wildflowers pushed through alpine meadows. Skiing? How meaningful can that be?

Skiing during May isn’t as easy as you might think either. After putting the gear away in April, resurrecting it a month later requires devotion to gravity-driven experience. Motivation is easier to summon than later in summer, because all the moves are still there. Muscle memory still clamors and reflexes remain honed.

And usually there is still abundant snow in the high country. Last summer we could pick and choose; my favorite ski trip was on the back side of Ruby in July. This year, though, Utah red dust caused the snowpack to melt more quickly, and sometimes creates a saturated snowpack that is avalanche dangerous and posthole difficult to ascend.

Nor does Utah red make for particularly good skiing, because the stuff is slow and catchy. Purists don’t like to ski the red because they believe skiing should take place on a pristine white interface. No question: it’s like skiing mud, but other than its higher coefficient of friction, what the hell? It is snow and it is skiing…even if I did have to hike for it.

And naturally, I loved it. Our May ski trip was a return to Schuylkill, where many years ago I broke my fibula and had to ski 1,500 feet down on a broken ankle. I’ve gotten over it, though, since Schuylkill is close-in and after wading a swollen Slate River, reasonably easy to access.

Schuylkill’s northern exposure holds snow, important because I figure if I’m going to spend the energy hiking up, I damned well want to ski all the way to the bottom. I want to minimize postholing in debris covered drifts in the trees, and I don’t want to slog through mud and willows…too much.

Two days before May transited to June, I knew if I was to ski twenty months, I’d better get my ass in gear and get up the hill. True to form, my ski stuff was packed—a little dusty from disuse— and ready at the door. We felt no urgency; given the dust-covered snowpack and relatively cool temperatures we started late, took our time and the snow held our weight.

I discovered—no surprise—that hiking up hadn’t gotten any easier over the year. Still, my resolve was solid, knowing that my rewards would be great. Carrying skis and boots was a chore, but easily preferable to hiking up in ski boots. When finally we donned boots, skis and skins, it felt good to have the boards on my feet.

And they felt even better on the way down. And that has meaning.

Earth Matters: Obligatory weather

I watch as rain—hard rain—beats the puddles outside into froth. Wind periodically flashes water against the window and surfs across the puddles. It feels Pacific-Northwest but decidedly not maritime. The end of May at 9,000 feet at the head of the draw.

Henrietta reads weather on the radio; precipitation for days but snow accumulation expected to be less than an inch. It could be worse: I remember one Memorial Day with 18 inches of fresh on the yellow daffodils. Weather-wise folks predict one thing for sure is that the weather will change. Yeah? So change it.

Actually the weather is just fine, demonstrating again how it is foolish to write about weather. I decry cold and damp because so soon after winter, I’d like sunshine in bluebird skies. Typical monsoon moisture arrived early this summer; I wonder if we should anticipate late summer drought…better to just be here now.

There is any number of reasons not to write about weather. Certainly its relevance in the greater scheme of things is suspect; farmers and climatologists pay attention while the rest of us enjoy and endure. Although we affect climate, we are at the mercy of local weather. Inter-relationships between the two are complex.

During May year before last, weather was sunny and warm encouraging spring beauties and pasque flowers. Last year, May was cold and snowy, accumulating additional inches on an already overwhelming snowpack. We thought winter might never end. This year’s rain is at least falling on mostly snow-free ground; a mosaic of green contrasts with winter’s monochrome. This isn’t so bad.

Whether we prefer rain or shine, since we can’t do anything about it, it’s not worth getting exercised over. Yet we attend weather forecasts like religion. During winter, I devour information from as many sources as I can find. I pride myself on having discovered the resources and developed the vocabulary to understand them.

“Since we can’t do anything about it,” asked a friend, “why the hell are you writing about it?”

“Politics is boring,” I answered. “It’s the same old stuff.” The economy is in the toilet, one bunch wants torture, and another bunch doesn’t. Wars rage, politicians point fingers and give lie to anything that can be called post-partisanship. What is left to say?

Weather is a relatively safe subject unless I unwisely talk about climate change and global warming. I have one friend who steadfastly insists there is no such thing as climate change. I liken him to someone who some years ago, refused to accept the spherical nature of the Earth. And he doesn’t want to hear any Chicken Little carbon footprint bullshit from me.

It is futile to proselytize someone who doesn’t want to be convinced. Science tells me our climate is changing and my human actions are accelerating it. But one person’s science is another’s smoke and mirrors. I wonder when my friend last walked where a glacier used to be…probably never.

Climate is one of those macro things we will ignore until too late, and then we will suffer. Politics might someday affect the climate, but it probably can never change the weather. I will be already recycled when polar bears are extinct, when deserts claim our continents and oceans inundate our shorelines.

Weather on the other hand, provides common ground for complaint or approbation. We can debate whether climate is changing, whether or not we cause it, whether we can adapt or fix it. But we will agree that it’s raining or sunny, or whether we’d like it to stop snowing and melt. We can disagree about climate, but not so much about weather.

Moreover, in the ski and tourism business, we qualify as farmers of snow and sunny summer climatologists. Rainy days limit enthusiasts who want to get out in it, but rain serves to melt stuff out and make plants grow. Since the snowpack melted so quickly from under its winter red dusting, rain washes and greens it up.

My weather sources tell me it might rain for a while. But in my experience, only fools and those paid big bucks attempt to predict the weather. Moreover, in a few weeks, the days start getting shorter; that is totally predictable. In the meantime, duck the showers, dodge any lightning that might threaten and try to ignore the persistent wind. Rest assured: The weather will change.

Earth Matters: It's the spin

My head is empty. The space between my ears is a void where occasionally random thoughts scatter on the edge of perception. Good stuff that, if not entirely productive. My empty head is probably a be-here-now state wherein the soul moves spontaneously through life and time. Productive is good, too, though; the cursor summons.

The cursor can have no idea how difficult it is to answer its call. We pundits had it too easy for too long, when outrage spurred the cursor across the page. Now, instead of the left-wing bitching about the right, the right-wing is bitching about the left. Maybe it’s only liberal-leaning pundits who are scrambling for something to go off on.

Thankfully, at least from one perspective, the Bush Administration is staying in the news. George W. Bush himself is keeping a fairly low profile—thank the gods—mountain biking, nurturing his two longhorn steers and practicing not stepping in it.

Instead, former vice-President Cheney is trying to salvage some kind of legacy, or maybe just come clean and hope his ass doesn’t land in the slammer. While in office, Cheney was a quiet, behind the scenes kind of guy. He was an eminence gris who with Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Rove and the other neo-conservative whackos, pulled George W. Bush’s strings. Previously so laconic, it seems out of character for Dick Cheney now to be spilling his guts.

But spilling—and spinning—he is. Cheney told Fox News, “I don’t think we should just roll over when the new administration…accuses us of committing torture…” Cheney credited aggressive interrogation techniques with saving potentially “hundreds of thousands of lives.”

In another interview, defending policies he helped orchestrate, Cheney said Bush authorized the “enhanced” interrogation techniques. “I think those programs were absolutely essential,” said Cheney, “to the success we enjoyed of being able to collect the intelligence that let us defeat all further attempts to launch attacks against the United States since 9/11.” He expressed “no regrets.”

Cheney also criticized President Obama, saying America is not as safe under the Obama Administration. “He is making some choices that, in my mind, will, in fact, raise the risk to the American people of another attack.”

In yet another interview, Cheney spun himself off the deep end. According to Associated Press, Cheney expressed his preference for right-wingnut radio commentator Rush Limbaugh over former Secretary of State, patriot and soldier General Colin Powell. “If I had to choose in terms of being a Republican,” said Cheney, “I’d go with Rush Limbaugh.” Yeah, well I guess that figures since having had enough of the mendacious Bush-Cheney cabal, and after having essentially destroyed his career, Powell washed his hands of the whole mess.

For his part, Rush Limbaugh is in the position of having a wealth of material with which to rail against Barack Obama. Obama personally affronts Rush Limbaugh, the same way George Bush got under my skin. I know how Limbaugh feels; it’s scary.

Limbaugh wants Obama to fail, and it doesn’t matter whether Obama actually fixes anything or not. The means, according to Limbaugh, justifies no end. “I hope Obama fails,” said Limbaugh. “Somebody’s gotta say it… Why in the world do we want to saddle [our kids] with more liberalism and socialism? Why would I want to do that? So I can answer in four words, ‘I hope he fails’.”

Grasping hopelessly at a failed past, and for reasons I can’t begin to fathom, Dick Cheney and his minions are looking to the likes of Rush Limbaugh for leadership. Nothing could better demonstrate the failure of the Republican Party to find its ass with both hands. Spinning Obama to the dark side is a sorry effort to refute the determination of American voters.

For my part, I don’t want Obama to fail at fixing the world economy, restoring tenets of our Constitution and re-establishing moral high ground so readily abandoned by Bush and the rest. Furthermore, it is difficult to dislike a man whose own self-deprecating humor can defuse or enlighten a situation.

Still, I’m working to develop a sixth sense, a highly-refined and sophisticated bullshit meter, a functional sensory perception to filter information. It is important to occasionally calibrate my spin meter with the truth, whatever that is and wherever it might be found. The effort should keep my head full and not empty, which may be productive…or not.

Earth Matters: Wipe your nose

No question: more people are sick of it than are sick with it. This isn’t our first big rodeo, after all, so how can a flu virus throw us into such a tizzy? But a tizzy we are in, mass hysteria fueled by a news media intent on keeping us healthy, informed and on the edge of our seats. At the end of the day, though, the barrage of scare-mongering is better than not knowing.

People weren’t as well-informed back in 1918 when another flu virus spread throughout the world, to the Arctic, to remote islands…everywhere. The so-called Spanish Flu pandemic lasted two years, infecting more than half the world population and killing as many as 100 million people.

The Center for Disease Control (CDC) calls the 1918 influenza “the mother of all pandemics.” Almost all flu viruses since that bug got loose are descendants of the 1918 virus. In 1918, health care workers were too ill to tend the sick and grave-diggers too far gone to bury the dead.

So what’s the difference between epi-demic and pan-demic? Epi- means almost all; pan- means all. An epidemic spreads rapidly and extensively affecting many individuals in an area or population at the same time. A pandemic is a widespread epidemic over a great geographic area, affecting a large proportion of the population. A human pandemic in our global village could conceivably touch practically everyone.

Although we didn’t have television to rub it in back in 1918, we were scared. Rather than providing too much information like we have now, the government downplayed the influenza, spinning the country into confronting World War I cannons instead of the flu. Disinformation: some things never change.

Viruses do change, however, and the 1918 flu virus finally mutated into a less virulent and deadly beast. People stopped dying, got well and went about their business. And in the frenzy of world war, we the public forgot the whole thing. The CDC didn’t forget, though, and estimates about 36,000 U.S. deaths each year from flu.

We started paying attention again in the late 1990s when avian flu spread into our human population. Bird flu is a different breed of slime than our current swine flu. Instead of spawning in pigs it occurs in wild birds and can spread quickly to domestic fowl. In 2005, bird flu hit five states, Asia, Europe and Canada.

After bird flu, for the first time in modern history, we began to understand how easily seasonal flu outbreaks could evolve into epidemics. On our constantly shrinking planet, we could conceive of a pandemic, an unknown viral messenger carrying doom on international flights throughout the world. Scary stuff, that.

And in April when swine flu suddenly swept out of Mexico after killing scores of people, I admit: it scared hell out of me. Several circumstances contributed to my paranoia. This was the first time I had watched a pandemic spread on television, itself a viral medium. Watching people in masks was sobering.

Furthermore, the bug was an unknown strain of virus, something new that we couldn’t identify and for which we had no silver bullet flu shot. Lastly, this flu was killing people, not in Asia or some far-flung cauldron of contagion. Instead, people were dying right here in North America, just south of the border…too close for comfort.

Perhaps paranoia is too strong a word; after all, paranoids catch the flu too. So I am one of those who washes his hands until they chap. I don’t sign with public pens, I sanitize the grocery cart, I don’t use handrails and I touch doorknobs only with my outside fingers. As a result, I don’t get sick too often. Yeah, I know…I’ve been called that before.

Maybe I watch too much scare-television or maybe I read too many “outbreak” novels. Maybe it’s because up here at the head of the draw we aren’t continuously exposed to nasty viruses. And maybe it’s because I feel too readily the global nature of our modern lives; one minute you’re in Mexico City, eight hours later you’re anywhere in the world.

Undoubtedly, a nightmare pandemic will happen because historically influenza pandemics of varying severity occur at 20-40 year intervals. In 2004, one World Health Organization director described an influenza pandemic as “inevitable.” Don’t worry, though, and don’t be scared because that might weaken your immune system. But don’t cough, don’t sneeze and wipe your nose. Then go wash your hands.