Friday, February 20, 2009

Earth Matters: Partisan

In my line of work, you quickly learn you can’t please all the people all the time. In fact, I consider myself extremely lucky if I can please some of the people some of the time. By the same token, if I pleased all the people all the time, I wouldn’t be doing my job. Predictable pap and fluff is easy to write; being a burr under the saddle is more challenging.

“Whose saddle are you a burr under,” asked the guy on the chairlift. He asked what I write about after I told him I work for the newspaper. He probably regretted asking; if he didn’t he soon would.

“Different people,” I told him. “I spent the last eight years causing trouble under George W. Bush’s saddle. That got a lot of people kicking and bucking. It was a regular rodeo back when everyone thought Bush was the coolest thing since sliced bread.”

The guy on the lift grew quiet. All the chatty camaraderie was gone and the air around us chilled. It wasn’t just that we were riding a chairlift at 10,000 ft. in the middle of February. My foray into politics and avowal of, um…my personal predisposition ended our conversation more efficiently than could have a howling gale sweeping down Tower 11 Chutes.

I had stepped in it. Still high on new leadership in the White House, I wasn’t paying attention to my audience. Since things had gone so horribly wrong, since we continue to labor under a collapsing economic “house of cards,” I assumed everyone feels as I do: Among other things, that George Bush accomplished what Osama bin Laden could not. But I had misjudged.

The guy on the chairlift obviously knew better than to get into it with me. His silence suggested he had tried defending his political outlook before, but up against pervasive Obama enthusiasm perhaps knew he had failed. I imagine it would be tough to defend policy that crashed world economies, subverted the American Constitution and embroiled our nation in foreign war.

Having my ski boot lodged so firmly in my mouth, I followed his lead for the rest of the lift ride and kept my opinions to myself. I was by no means chastened, only again reminded that no matter what I think about the state of the world, the economy and politics in general, there will always be someone who disagrees with me. That diversity is healthy…unless someone gets really mad and throws me off the chairlift.

I should have known better; I’ve recognized volatility in diverse political views since I was a kid. My father and I, for example, ended up on completely different sides of the political fence. He was a staunch Republican, and although he insisted he voted for the person not the party, he almost always voted for Republican persons.

I, on the other hand, went through typical phases of political agnosticism and partisanship. My nascent and ill-formed political sensibilities were predictably antithetical to my father’s, and smacked of all the revolutionary and counter-culture trappings youth is heir to. My father was no captain of industry, but fancied himself a player. He felt what is good for industry and corporations, is good for America.

By the time my politics were fully formed, I knew I was a little left of right. Still, I considered myself conservative and independent and did not register to vote as either Republican or Democrat. I remained proudly unaffiliated until the 1990s, when I registered as Democrat so I could vote in primaries and help a friend to the Colorado legislature. I remained a Democrat during the Clinton years, but reinstated my unaffiliated status after Democrats couldn’t find their butts with both hands to defeat George W. Bush.

Somewhere in my emerging comprehension of politics, I came to understand the word “gridlock.” Gridlock happens when politicians exercise partisanship, when one side obstructs everything the other side tries to accomplish. One of the major bogeymen of our democratic system, gridlock usually happens along party lines, ensures that our government accomplishes absolutely nothing, and is a major frustration for Democrats, Republicans and anyone else who looks to our government for leadership and not partisanship.

Given our nightmarish and numerous national crises, I ranked Barack Obama’s hopes for “post-partisan politics” somewhere up there with the Holy Grail and deep powder skiing. I hadn’t previously known you could do politics without partisanship. And as it turns out, even Saint Obama is finding it exceedingly difficult to align Republicans and Democrats without historic baggage, and get them to work together to get the job done. Old, entrenched partisan habits are hard to breach.

Obama tried to “reach across the aisle,” retaining Robert Gates as Defense Secretary and appointing GOP Senator Judd Gregg as Commerce Secretary. Gregg snubbed Obama, citing “irresolvable conflicts” over Obama’s economic stimulus plan. Congress finally approved the $787 billion package with almost no Republican support.

Democrats claim the economic stimulus package will help ninety-five percent of Americans by saving or creating 3.5 million jobs, and providing billions in unemployment benefits, food stamps, medical care and job retraining. Tens of billions will go to states to aid schools and local governments. More than $48 billion will finance transportation projects, infrastructure improvements and development such as mass transit and high speed rail.

Still indulging old partisan ways, Republicans characterized the bill as the wrong prescription for the flailing and failing national economy. House Republican leader John Boehner threw the thousand page bill on the floor in disgust and said, “The bill that was about jobs, jobs, jobs has turned into a bill that’s about spending, spending, spending.” I’m no economist, but if I’m not mistaken most of the spending is to create jobs. The Republicans got their tax cuts—most of them—and Democrats got their spending—most of it.

I have no idea whether or not the economic stimulus package will actually serve to resurrect the American economy. I have a sneaking suspicion it will take more than just money. But since the previous Republican administration helped get us into this mess, I say we give the new guys a chance to help get us out of it.

I’m sure circumstance defines that as purely partisan thinking. But if we can’t please all the people, it would sure be great to please ninety-five percent of them.

Gravity Works: Leaverite



It doesn’t get any easier with time. Gravity still works at the same constant, erosion has yet to noticeably diminish the mountain and encroaching age hasn’t caused muscles and joints to work any more easily. Perhaps my load is a little lighter only because with time, I’ve figured out how to carry less gear.


Carrying gear is an ambiguous burden. When I want or need the stuff, there is no substitute for having it. When I’m hungry, I’m glad to have carried maybe a little extra food. When it’s cold and starts to rain, I’m damned glad to have carried the extra jacket and rain gear. If I skin a knee, I’m glad I carried my first aid kit.


By the same token, all that stuff is heavy. Even if I keep things I need to an absolute minimum, my pack is mysteriously heavier than the sum of what it carries. As I add more stuff, items I probably won’t need but might want to enjoy on my trip, my pack increases weight not arithmetically, but geometrically. Some people carry books to read at an inspiring vista; I carry mining tools in case I find a shiny rock I can’t resist holding in my hand.


More accurately, I used to carry mining tools, back when I had the energy to haul them up the hill and the stamina to haul chunks of rock back down the hill. I collected shiny rocks and boasted a decent rock collection. My father admonished, “If everyone took just one thing home with them, there wouldn’t be anything left for someone else to see.” If he only knew.


Back when we used to go a-mining, I carried a variety of heavy tools. Certainly a rock hammer is still de rigueur; no self-respecting rockhound would venture into the high country or onto a scree field without one. I always carried a tool called a gadpry, used for wedging into crevices and prying. My kit included a variety of chisels: long boy, fat boy and a couple of babies, all designed for prying into various sized crevices and pockets.


I acquired a set of dental tools for cleaning pockets and prizing crystals from the pocket wall. Sometimes I carried a tool called a crack hammer, heavy with a wide head, to bust up the big stuff. At one point I even bought a long-handled hammer that could also serve as a walking stick. It was one macho, big hammer.


When digging for orthoclase near West Maroon Pass, we carried that gear and more. Our mining operation there required large screens made of hardware cloth to separate crystals from the gravel. We used a shovel to move gravel and hand-rakes to comb through it.


We carried our gear in and the gear and minerals out. We filled multiple Kelty BB5s with bags of orthoclase for the trek down to Schofield Park. Inevitably, we fortified ourselves with slugs of Jack Daniels, but just as inevitably, with or without fortification, we still had to carry loads back down the hill. No mules; we carried it on our backs.


At that time, Maroon Bells-Snowmass wasn’t yet a Wilderness Area, and we were free to stake our claims, carry all that gear up the hill and start moving dirt. Certain values hadn’t yet articulated in our mindset and world view. We didn’t then know how fragile and vulnerable the place was to our machinations. We had no experience of its sanctity.


It was all pretty low impact stuff, though. We tried our best, but we never leveled any mountains or caused excessive erosion. We didn’t fill valleys with waste rock. We never trashed the alpine environment, although from the gear we carried it was obvious we were trying. I have returned to most of the places we “mined,” and have found no visible trace of our industry.


Intervening years have tempered my enthusiasm for carrying tools, but also my desire to posses the shiny rocks tools help me get at. I still carry a rock hammer, but as much as I use it, it is more ballast than tool. It lives in my pack, down near the bottom where its weight rests on my hips. I leave the other tools at home not only because I don’t want to carry them, but because I have discovered the value of “leaverite”: leave ‘er right there.


Leaverite is pretty good stuff because its value appreciates over time. Over and over again, people can enjoy the beauty of the shiny rock or crystal of leaverite there in its rocky habitat. And since I know right where it is, I can go back and see it again whenever I want. Each time I visit is more valuable than the last. And leaverite doesn’t weigh a thing on the hike out.

Tuesday, February 17, 2009

Earth Matters: A deeper ecology of trails


“When we try to pick out something by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.” John Muir

Trails, like the ecology of the natural world, are connected. That’s what trails do: they connect places. Wildlife trails connect bedding places with watering or breeding places. Humans first used trails to connect with wildlife places, then to connect back to the dinner place. Trails, by their nature, follow the most efficient way to get someplace, looping into other trails, connecting among themselves, and threading the landscape.

Wildlife trails are quiet travelways, dynamic and changing, often disappearing then reforming. They are benign. Human trails usually become distinct and more permanent with intensity of use and purpose of destination. Our trails have complemented our evolution from two-legged tromping to 18-wheel interstate transportation of goods and services. Trails lead from one civilized point to another, imposing a civilizing effect on wilderness, which by all rights and by definition, is the antithesis of civilization. Human trails are not always benign.

Our vast western public lands require trails to cover great distances, to accomplish more efficient loops, and to serve a hierarchy of uses. Trails often develop from simple foot access trails into vehicle trails. This hierarchy complicates our understanding of the effects of trails on our natural environment. One person quietly walking on a single-track has less effect on wildlife than a person walking with a dog. A horseback rider has another effect, a mountain biker yet a different effect, and a motorcycle or all-terrain-vehicle still another.

Intensified human use of trails often precludes wildlife use of areas proximate to the trail. When animals exhibit “aversion behavior,” they are responding to the civilizing influence of trails: They are staying away from them. Studies show many birds avoid heavily frequented trails. Radio monitors show increased heartbeats in elk as humans pass nearby on a trail. Animals learn that trails often convey humans, and humans, by and large, are dangerous to wildlife.

Many species such as ever-diminishing populations of amphibians and many small mammals, don’t simply avoid trails, they flat-out won’t cross them. If animals will not cross trails to breed, they cannot successfully continue the evolutionary course mandated for them by nature.

Human trails create impacts on wildlife habitat, as well as on wildlife itself. We humans don’t like public trails leading through our front yards or living rooms, and wild animals respond similarly.

Trails fragment large blocks of uninterrupted habitat creating biogeographic islands. The boundaries of these are the trails themselves, and are avoided by apprehensive wildlife. Trails create edges of habitat on either side where adventive non-native or exotic organisms usurp energy and nutrients needed by native organisms. Hiking boots, pets, horses, and bicycle and vehicle tires transport and deposit exotic seeds into the existing ecosystem. As exotics proliferate, they penetrate from trail edges into interior habitat, unfairly competing with native species.

It is important to remember that we humans and our trail recreation needs are part of the ecosystem too. However, uses of existing trails and consideration of new trail construction are evaluated with a built-in anthropocentric bias. Should a trail be designated exclusively for hiking, or should its uses include motorized or other vehicular travel? Should a trail be allowed to dead-end somewhere, or should it be extended to create a loop? Is a trail important for getting someplace, or does it exist solely for recreation? Once we begin to use a place, we adapt it to almost exclusively human use, and under political and customary auspices, we continue to use it.

Trail construction and use should be considered from a biocentric point of view, specifically including humans as part, but only part, of the equation. Instead of continually expanding our influence into wild habitat before we know as many consequences as possible, we should exercise conservative restraint. For too long we have thought in terms of how our actions can hurt or benefit humans, with little thought to what effect we have on other inhabitants of our Earth. That thinking has led us to the extreme pass in which we now find ourselves.

Humans generally resent being granted no more consideration than our animal relatives, and that is an arrogant paradigm that must change. Thought and actions that don’t address and foster that change are part of the environmental problem and beg no solutions. From a biocentric point of view, there is but one constituency.

Thursday, February 12, 2009

Earth Matters: One kind word


Normally, I save ski stories for another readership. At the end of the day, though, this really isn’t a ski story. Furthermore, since Crested Butte is a ski resort, I am confident there is overlap; skiers read and readers ski. During winter, skiing informs my wherewithal and becomes metaphor and more. I will try to put non-skiers in the place.

At the bottom of Upper Park, over on skier’s right, there is a little steep shot—maybe 50 feet—before you reach the flats. It is really no big deal, by no means extreme or scary, a place I often ski in transit to the base area. Over the last forty years of skiing there, I have grown accustomed to bearing right, picking up speed and feeling the G-forces as I drop into the compression at the bottom. Acceleration and momentum are features of the situation.

Skiing essentially the same line all those years is habit and routine generated by liking what I’m doing. The enjoyment of skiing the same place over and over is the thrill of carrying speed into the little steep where I accelerate even more. I will probably never tire of the experience; there are many such places on Crested Butte Mountain.

Last week I came ripping through Upper Park, as conscious as possible about other skiers and where they were relative to where I was and where I was going. I consider myself a defensive skier because I wear wires in my left orbit and zygomatic arch from a skier collision back in 1971. I ski on the edges, for example, because I figure it reduces odds of getting hit. They can come at me from only one direction; maybe that’s wishful thinking.

So there I was, over on the edge, zipping down onto the flats and picking up speed, when on my left side I caught a flash of a snowboarder way too close to me. He was moving as fast as I was, perpendicular to my line of travel. My glimpse of him lasted but a fraction of a second until in a flash he was right on top of me, with obviously no idea I was there. It was too late even if he had seen me, to avoid a collision.

And collide we did. Those things happen fast, and I have no idea how it actually played out. I think he rode over my skis, which brought him down to the hard snow like a ton of bricks. I felt myself falling and rather than straining trying to stay on my skis, opted to fall on my butt and spin out onto the flats. I honestly don’t think either of us was at fault, and there was no body contact.

The snowboarder had hit hard, though, and I knew he was hurting because it took him a moment to recover. As soon as he got his wind, he hollered an oath of pain and frustration that I thought would set the tone for what I was sure would be a classic confrontation between skier and snowboarder.

Having been in post-collision pissing contests before, my first response was adrenaline-fired anger. This guy was going off, and by god I could go off too. I expected, “You old fart, why don’t you watch where you’re going,” or “Dude, what are you doing in my line?” I was trying to figure out how most quickly to get my skis off so I could meet his assault head on. But none of that happened.

Instead he looked at me lying on the snow and asked, “Dude, are you alright? Where did you come from? My bad, man, I’m sorry. My bad.”

My anger evaporated like spindrift off a hot rock. I knew the collision had been neither of our faults; he hadn’t seen me drop into the little steep place nor could I have missed him coming at me T-bone.

“Yeah, I’m okay,” I answered. “How about you? Are you okay?”

Suddenly, we were just two guys enjoying our thrill who had unfortunately and unavoidably smacked into one another. No harm, no foul. His kind words—after his expletive—had defused a nasty dynamic that almost always plays out in predictable ways. “I would have killed him,” said a friend later when I told him about the incident. “I couldn’t have helped myself,” he fumed. “I would have killed him.”

One kind word—sorry—did wonders. No fighting, no yelling, no name-calling, no insults or epithets. One kind word changed the dynamic from one of interpersonal conflict to one of calm concern and consideration. We each cared that the other hadn’t been hurt. We were both contrite and admitted culpability. I was more blown away by the unexpected encounter than I was by being knocked onto the snow.

Two days later that snowboard incident jumped to the front of my brain pan when Barack Obama told NBC’s Brian Williams, “I’m here on television saying I screwed up, and that’s part of the era of responsibility. It’s not never making mistakes; it’s owning up to them and trying to make sure you never repeat them and that’s what we intend to do.” Obama told CNN’s Anderson Cooper, “I take responsibility for it and we’re going to make sure we fix it so it doesn’t happen again.”

Obama admitted his mistake in nominating Tom Daschle as health and human services secretary, Daschle owing back income taxes. “Ultimately,” continued Obama, “it’s important for this administration to send a message that there aren’t two sets of rules—you know, one for prominent people and one for ordinary folks who have to pay their taxes.”

How can you stay angry at someone who admits to having made a mistake, apologizes and promises to do better in the future? Obama’s display of candor and humility is perhaps the greatest contrast we have seen so far to the swaggering hubris of the previous administration. It is refreshing. It demonstrates that Barack Obama is, after all, human like the rest of us. There is precedent for that and it worked. But this isn’t really a ski story.

Thursday, February 5, 2009

Gravity Works: Rock Glacier


Once you think you’ve been there and done that, you find while you might have done that, you’ve never really been there. I hike to spots I’ve visited dozens of times only to experience the place as if for the first time, or in thrall to some new micro place within the whole.

In point of fact, I had never been on top of this particular rock glacier before. While some question the reality of rock glaciers, I believe those folks are mistaken. Rock glaciers are the real thing; just ask anyone who has hiked across one. There is no disputing they exist.

According to the Journal of Geophysical Research, a rock glacier is “a tongue-like or lobate body, usually of angular boulders, that resembles a small glacier, generally occurs in high mountainous terrain, usually has ridges, furrows and sometimes lobes on its surface, and has a steep front at the angle of repose.” So there you go.

There is debate over rock glaciers’ origin and mechanism of flow. The University Center in Svalbard, Norway, says, “Based on field evidence, some authors claim a general non-glacial origin for rock glaciers, while others find that certain rock glaciers contain a significant core of glacial ice.”

I remember the debate from Geology 101 in college. Some think ice underlies rock glaciers, and in places where ice glaciers proliferate, I imagine ice underlies practically everything. Rock glaciers are diverse individual features, though, and really nothing more than huge piles of rock driven by their own mass and weight to move slowly down the hill.

Around Crested Butte, where the closest we have to ice glaciers are persistent snowfields, I believe rock glaciers move of their own volition with help from nothing but gravity. Rock glaciers require a serious source of talus to create the pressure that actually pushes them into motion. Serious talus is chunks of rock that erode off the mountain above, and god knows we have plenty of that going on around here.

There are some classy rock glaciers peeling out of our mountains; so far none threatens active real estate. Rock glaciers move more slowly than ice glaciers, covering only up to a meter per year, but are still valued as efficient coarse debris transport agents. In other words, rock glaciers accomplish the job of erosion capably, helping move rock on its inexorable way down the hill. Geology in action.

Since all that rock is actually moving as one discreet mass, flow structures appear as ripples and waves. These form because everything moves all the time, just like liquid. Soil doesn’t have time to develop; rocks are continually broken and broken again by stuff falling from above. On an active rock glacier no lichen grows because it doesn’t have time to form.

From below, the nose of a rock glacier is imposing: big and steep. Rock lies at its angle of repose only by grace of its coefficient of friction. Walking up the front of a rock glacier disturbs all that and makes for rockslides; the footing is more challenging than on the grassy slope next to it.

The top of a rock glacier looks like easy walking because it appears flat. Actually, considerable topographic relief manifests as “furrows and lobes,” gullies, ravines, sinkholes, runnels and ridges. Much of that terrain lies hidden in a general mishmash of fallen and falling rock that less sensitive souls would designate a wasteland.

Naturally, we were cruising exactly that wasteland. It is the kind of place where you cross a humpy upland to confront an extremely steep-walled gully. The walls of the gully are gravel, but pummeled by rockfall to a hard and slippery surface. It is footing that led to fourteen stitches in my knee a few weeks ago, so I was particularly careful descending.

In the bottom of the gully it was quiet and peaceful with only a trickle of water under the rocks to define the dynamic nature of the place. The quiet is deceptive, like the quiet of a pinball machine just before you insert your quarter. Up-gully, the peeling face of an unnamed 13,000 ft. peak was source for rocks that during a rainstorm or spring runoff must spin through that place with random and deadly abandon.

Scrambling up the opposite wall of the gully, rocks clung only by the lightest touch of friction and slid out from under us at the slightest touch. At least there was no exposure, instead only the dead end drop back into the gully under the rockslide. On top again, we found another humpy upland and another steep gully. And another and another all hidden within a wilderness of broken rock.

As I rolled yet another ankle, I longed for green grass, alpine sod that wouldn’t shift with my weight. Still, the rock glacier was a place full of wonder, ancient snow tucked into hidden grottoes, the silence of geologic time throbbing in my ears. All that rock looked suspiciously familiar, but I was sure I had never been there before.