Earth Matters and Gravity Works

Earth Matters: Glass half full

2009-12-28T13:17:00.000-08:00

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

2009-12-28T13:13:00.000-08:00

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...

2009-12-28T13:11:00.000-08:00

“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

2009-12-28T13:07:00.000-08:00

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

2009-12-28T13:03:00.000-08:00

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

2009-12-28T12:55:00.000-08:00

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

2009-10-13T18:45:00.000-07:00

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

2009-09-25T06:48:00.000-07:00

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

2009-09-16T07:29:00.000-07:00

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

2009-09-04T07:53:00.000-07:00

“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

2009-09-04T07:50:00.000-07:00

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

2009-08-26T07:12:00.000-07:00

“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

2009-08-03T06:48:00.000-07:00

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

2009-07-16T07:11:00.000-07:00

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

2009-07-04T06:16:00.000-07:00

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

2009-06-21T07:15:00.000-07:00

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

2009-06-07T18:36:00.000-07:00

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

2009-05-27T11:23:00.000-07:00

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

2009-05-17T08:06:00.000-07:00

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

2009-05-08T08:10:00.000-07:00

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.

Earth Matters: Payback

2009-04-24T11:44:00.000-07:00

I had just been caught at the unspeakable, and we won’t speak of it at any length here. My father labeled my behavior unspeakable, a not unexpected departure from my teenaged business as usual. We often landed on different sides of the fence; no surprise there.

I knew I was in it hip-deep in front of the fan, though, and stood ready to withstand my father’s wrath. I was still a minor and recognized his ultimate parental authority over me…just barely. I settled back in a chair anticipating all kinds of black scenarios, but he surprised me.

“I do not approve of what you do,” he said, “but I am not going to judge you. I will leave that to a greater judge than me.”

My first thought was surprise that my lawyer father wouldn’t act the judge. My second thought was that my father’s religious faith must be substantial and his love for me great. Furthermore, if he wasn’t going to judge me, then he might not exact punishment. Whew! What a load off. My surprise was piqued because I had thought my father unerringly of the spare-the-rod-spoil-the-child persuasion.

Since I was often on the receiving end of punitive response, I grew with the perception that punishment should at very least be carefully tailored to the infraction. I figured the Catholics might have it pegged with mortal and venal sin. Mortal wrongs were really bad and mandated severe punishment. Venal stuff, on the other hand, was perhaps not so morally bankrupt, but instead the consequence of failings hardwired into human nature. And after all, I was nothing if not human. I still am.

I also remember one of my first high school research papers, a study of capital punishment. I barely understood what I was researching at the time, which makes it even more improbable that I should remember it all these years later.

The gist: Does capital crime like homicide warrant the death penalty? After weighing conventional wisdom on the matter, I came down somewhere in the middle, conflicted and ambivalent, but convinced for whatever reasons that bad actions can expect to be met with severe retribution. That realization kept me out of trouble…well, most of the time anyway. Yet the threat of retribution didn’t deter others from wrongdoing.

Without calling it either venal or mortal, in 1974 President Gerald Ford pardoned former President Richard Nixon. Nixon served as my first serious political whipping boy during those Vietnam days, and his blatant disregard for law during Watergate further incensed me. I was outraged that with the stroke of a presidential pen, Nixon would walk; he would escape punishment for breaking the law.

Years later, and on a different political tack altogether, President Bill Clinton got into all kinds of trouble. The payback was a partisan effort to exact retribution on Clinton for his dalliance, appropriate if only because a president should exercise propriety. But after all, what Clinton did wasn’t murder. No one died. Clinton’s impeachment lasted months and cost taxpayers millions. What did it accomplish? Not a hell of a lot.

So have you guessed where all this is leading? Yup, when we’re talking presidential malfeasance, all roads lead to George W. Bush.

The Justice Department recently released Bush Administration memos declaring interrogation of “high-value” detainees outside proscriptions of domestic law and the Geneva Conventions. The memos claim Bush had the authority to approve any technique needed to protect the nation’s security. Defense Secretary Rumsfeld outlined twenty-four interrogation techniques to be used, among them “walling,” waterboarding, sleep deprivation and slapping.

Over objections from human rights groups and even members of his own administration, President Obama at first said he would absolve CIA officers from prosecution for using torture. He wants to move beyond, “a dark and painful chapter in our history.” Then he equivocated, laying it on the Justice Department or whatever; the saga continues.

Like before, I am ambivalent. The excuse, “just following orders” seems less and less exculpatory, but that’s what military service is. The buck must stop up the chain of command, at the highest office that issued the order. Then go after that guy and make the punishment appropriate to the offense. The Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld cabal—someone in that hierarchy must answer. Taking those guys down, though, will require a greater judge than me…or maybe not.

Earth Matters: Obligatory green article

2009-04-22T19:42:00.000-07:00

“You sold out,” accused my friend, a critic but friend nonetheless.

“I did no such thing,” I answered indignantly.

“What?” she asked. “Are these trees here different than those over there? How can you defend one bunch and not another?”

“I’ve re-evaluated my footprint,” I said. “I’m choosing my battles. I only have so much fight left in me, and I need to concentrate my energy where I think it’ll do the most good.”

I considered that a pretty good answer. It still sounded reactive and defensive, though. I call myself a treehugger and don’t like it when respected colleagues get in my face. Fifteen years ago I’d have been the critic. No one said it would be easy.

Easy or not, the wheel has turned from brown cloud to the vigorous green of awareness under the Obama Administration. The pendulum swings. Nor does it hurt that Earth Day morphed into Earth Week; only one week to be green. Suddenly—we are so psyched—everybody and everything is green.

This isn’t a bad thing. It is backlash from previous environmental wreckage. It could facilitate a return to sensible and scientific policy decision-making. What a concept. It is ironic though, to witness the turnaround from just a few years ago, when it was cool to be as greedy as we wanted to be, with little regard for the world in general. George Bush gave us that.

While enjoying our born-again green awareness, though, we must beware what we used to call “greenwashing.” Now we call it business as usual, whether green or not. Greenwashing is corporate and political slathering of a thin layer of green paint over the egregious brown cloud. It isn’t deep and authentic green; instead it is spin orchestrated to make the consuming public believe it’s all good. We’re on the path to environmental consciousness and a sustainable future. It’s a feel good thing, isn’t it?

True to my belief that balanced attention to television is a good barometer of popular opinion and conventional wisdom, green pixels flood from the glowing box. Green commercials are legion. Green products abound, whether or not their net impact on the planet is negative or positive. Green in the cash box is what counts.

On the internet I found green mortgages, green lenders, green politicians, green action funds, green learning sites and no lack of green spending sites. I visited MSN’s Lifestyle site where they encouraged me to “get my green on.” They invited me to tour ten coastal eco-resorts, and thoughtfully provided an Earth Day shopping guide. At Twitter I can join Generation Green to receive tips and tricks on how I can take action to protect my planet.

FOX News tells me sternly: “Green it. Mean it.” FOX wants to partner with me, “to help take simple steps that will help deliver a better planet to the next generation.” That makes me all tingly. These are the guys that bring us Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity and Greta Van Susteren. Green me up, Scottie!

NBC Nightly News featured an Earth Week series on the planet’s oceans: how we are filling them with trash and killing coral reefs. Part of the series described the crash of world fisheries by pollution or over-fishing. NBC neglected to mention a story reported a few months previously about Alaska’s proposed Pebble Mine and its threat to the Bristol Bay salmon fishery. Bristol Bay is one of the North Pacific’s most important fisheries. How green is that?

Green may be with us for a while. We will either figure out how to minimize our footprint or not. If not, we’ll keep pretending we are. Individual personal choices may yet be the best way to be green; those choices might mean not buying the green product, not buying anything at all.

I remarked on a friend’s new mid-sized pickup truck. Formerly she drove a big F-350.

“It’s my husband’s way of conserving,” she told me, “but I still have the other truck.”

Earth Matters: Obamaisms

2009-04-15T10:59:00.000-07:00

It probably started with the Tower of Babel and a bonehead named Nimrod. After the Great Flood effectively reset the clock on technological enterprise, Nimrod and his crew decided it was time to put down roots. They directed a then-united humanity to build the city of Babylon.

At first, Babylon didn't have much of a public works department, and construction was higgledy-piggledy. But Nimrod gathered his engineers, and together they conceived the idea of building a ziggurat, a great tower so tall it would have its top in the heavens. Humanity has always conceived big.

The project might be no big deal today when God is busy elsewhere in the cosmos. But in Biblical times God was trying to organize religion here on Earth and He took exception to Nimrod's hubristic effort to touch the sky. Seeing what the Nimrod crowd was doing, God judged humankind too big for its britches. If we could build a tower tall enough to touch Heaven, what would we think of next?

"Let us go down," said God, "and there confound their language." Soon, unable to understand engineers (ya think?) or each other, workers quit building and scattered across the planet. God figured all was good and went off to create the Andromeda Galaxy and Crab Nebula, apparently still works in progress.

God confounded our tongues so thoroughly that we invented a science to figure it out. "Etymology" studies the origin and development of linguistic form; from its basic elements and earliest use, through changes in form to its current and common usage. Etymology studies the evolution of language.

While biological evolution is an imponderably slow process, linguistic evolution is a human construct and happens faster. Following our diaspora from Babylon, varying languages informed us and became as much who we are as epicanthic folds, curly hair or variously colored skin. At some level, each generation contributes its own iteration to the process.

Take the word "dude," for example. When I was a kid my father took us to a dude ranch in Wyoming. Dudes were basically everything cowboys weren't. We were tourists, clients and city-slickers. We demonstrated no horse sense and practically no common sense. We were mostly a nuisance, but ultimately we provided the beans and coffee. A generation later, "dude" is just another word for person, male or female, common-sensical or not. The word has changed; language evolves.

Given the informative nature of language, it is no surprise that leaders and politicians influence language. They are, after all, in charge of coming up with the tag lines, catch phrases and sound bites that inspire, instruct and threaten. Their words contribute to our language. Dwight Eisenhower coined "military-industrial complex." Sen. Joseph McCarthy got a whole argot named after his intolerant and unfounded anti-communist pursuits. "McCarthyism" has evolved to describe demagogic, reckless and unsubstantiated accusation, especially toward a political opponent.

Nixon's Vice-President Spiro Agnew was particularly adroit at evolving the English language. Agnew—his speechwriters—coined "nattering nabobs of negativity," and "radiclibs." Radiclibs were radical liberals guilty of "pusillanimous pussyfooting on the critical issue of law and order." Law and order under the Nixon Administration: what a concept.

Because of his inability to put words together or craft a complete and meaningful sentence, George W. Bush has contributed to the English language in unforgettable ways. "You teach a child to read," observed Bush, "and he or her will be able to pass a literacy test." He asked, "Is our children learning?" and later said, "The illiteracy level of our children are appalling." Bush defended his own mastery of the language: "...I do not need to explain why I say things. That's the interesting thing about being president." Bush was so cool.

Saint Obama is a different breed of cat, well-spoken and articulate. Detractors grew accustomed to continuous verbal bumbling during the former administration, and roast Obama for invariably using a teleprompter. But hey, if you're going to write a dynamite speech, you might as well get it right when you say it.

History and usage define and create evolution of language, so Obama's policies won't translate into the vernacular for some time. Whether he succeeds or fails at economic policy, the president will be known for Obamanomics. If he is successful at facilitating Middle East peace, we will have the Pax Obama. EnvirObama will address the grievous harm to our environment visited by the former administration. And if he somehow fixes health care and other entitlements, we will have RxObama. But I wonder, did Barack Obama ever call anyone dude?

Gravity Works: Spring tease

2009-04-15T10:52:00.000-07:00

The fat lady is so over it. She finally had her say, and got to take off that itchy corset. It was doubly uncomfortable under her retro one-piece, and made it almost impossible to buckle her boots. To her credit, though, she looked pretty good flirting with the half-naked young stoners on Paradise deck. Who could blame her?

Besides, I know for a fact she wasn’t pounding down Phoenix Bowl or hiking Teocalli Bowl in that corset. Late season snow made for outrageous powder in all those favorite lines, and even motivated me to hike for it. I got fooled several times, skiing Morning Glory in the zone and forgetting the traverse back onto Headwall was closed. Oh well: the skiing invariably turned out to be great, and the hike out wasn’t all that onerous.

I am pretty sure, though, the fat lady made it to the peak of Crested Butte Mountain where a closing day party gathered to sing along. I’m not absolutely sure she made it to the party because I didn’t make it up there myself. Instead of hiking to the peak, and knowing I wouldn’t be able to enjoy the luxury until next ski season, I concentrated on skiing a few final lift-served runs. Why hike, I ask myself, when I should be skiing?

Unlike some of my more enthusiastic colleagues, exercise isn’t my sole motivation for skiing. I ski for fun and lifestyle, and if I must, I will commit exercise to accomplish that. I don’t entirely enjoy hiking up mountains, but the rewards are proportional to the effort. Regardless, I am honestly looking forward to skiing places where ski lifts will never turn. There is something to be said for that…besides the view and of course, the exercise.

One distinct phenomenon colored our final ski days: A great amount of Utah real estate blew into Colorado. Ski Utah, stay home. High winds carried red dust from Utah’s Colorado Plateau desert over our Colorado mountains. It was positively apocryphal; blood-red skies howled as red dust covered everything and colored the snowpack. It wasn’t the first time we’d witnessed Utah red—Taylor called it Navajo snow—but it was...memorable.

Skiing Navajo snow in flat light helped me distinguish the surface; slicing through it was a colorful experience. But it’s not all good. That stuff will make the snow melt faster since it absorbs instead of reflecting sunlight. It might make for good corn snow, but will probably also limit opportunity because the snow will get too warm and soggy too fast. Nor does Utah red bode well for summer water retention, since the snowpack will melt and flow back to the desert before its water has time to sink into the ground.

Red snow didn’t prevent the fat lady from warbling on the peak. She closed out eighteen months of skiing for me, the longest ski season of my life. It isn’t completely over yet, though, since I still anticipate skiing during May and June. But even the diehard in me recognizes a coda when he hears it. Hardly had her dulcet echoes subsided when chairlifts closed and ski patrollers pulled the ropes.

With ropes gone and closures vanished, the whole mountain is open again. Teo Two might offer decent powder, and the West Side will offer good corn to anyone with the energy to get up there. Moguls will vanish into the surface and the skiing should be good. For my part though, when I choose to hike, I’ll do it somewhere I haven’t ridden lifts all winter. Hiking makes me more discerning.

Always bittersweet, I concentrated my last few runs on not getting hurt, not getting hit. Sometimes I want ski season to last forever; sometimes it is entirely appropriate that it be over. One way or the other, over it is.

Once again, the cyclical nature of resort living defines my life. We lifestyle enthusiasts pack off into whatever off-season pleasure and adventure we can conjure. Winter passes, spring teases and summer beckons. Don’t complain about the heat.

Earth Matters: Scribble

2009-04-10T13:16:00.000-07:00

I have a hard time calling myself a victim because I know I am very lucky. I am lucky because I got what I wanted. I live in a place I wanted to make my home since I was a kid. I try to be a good citizen in the natural community that surrounds me, and I engage a human community that is as much a part of me as the air I breathe and the snow I ski. Such is the nature of my place and my home.

One affordance of my place is its isolation. While isolation is not necessarily a good thing for our growing tourist industry, it is mother’s milk to those of us who walk the trails and climb the ridges. Living at the head of the draw in the fastness of the Rocky Mountains offers peace and refuge we can walk to. Isolation insulates us from the vicissitudes of life in that big world out there…most of the time.

But this time, those vicissitudes are so severe they have finally trickled down to places like Crested Butte. Resorts are places where visitors have a good time and spend money if only to escape their everyday troubles at home. We will always host visitors, but now perhaps not so many. And that hurts.

Thus, I am not a victim of a trashed economy, but merely a participant. I participated by getting laid off one writing job—hopefully only seasonal—and laid back at the other. I’d rather be laid back than laid off because I consider myself a pretty easy-going guy and have a lot of practice at being laid back. It’s in my temperament.

Given that, I anticipated relief from a weekly deadline I’d met for some thirty years. I actually like that deadline, though, because it requires sitting down and writing, actually chasing the cursor and getting words down on a page. Sometimes that is no easy task, yet it is one that has become a part of me and my routine. Routine is also part of my temperment.

So I faced my deadline day with ambivalence…and succumbed to routine. I sat down to write knowing this week’s offering wouldn’t appear in this week’s paper. With luck it would run in a couple of weeks. The pressure is off, but instead I labor under a different master, one of my own contrivance; one more easily duped but less easily appeased. Scribble on.

Thirty years is a long time to scribble and I’m an old dog who looks askance at new tricks. But if I want to scribble at all, if I can’t adopt new tricks, at least I can adapt to a new way of scribbling. What that means is coming up with a new formula, foregoing the old as too dense, too involved and, well…too much.

“It doesn’t have anything to do with your art,” said my boss, trying to hide a grin, “but with reductions in advertising because of the economy. We don’t have as much room for words. You have to cut it down.”

“But how will I develop complex ideas?” I asked. “How can I generate and hold interest? How can I use sources to make a point without all those words.”

“Did you ever hear of a sound bite?” he looked at me, the matter closed. That’s why he’s the boss.

That’s what a new formula is: short, fast and to the point. Think attention deficit.Bite my tongue.

Furthermore, it is no secret that newspapers—print media in general—are in trouble. They’re going broke, and apparently even our resort newspapers are feeling the crunch. Is there any guarantee that when the economy rebounds newspapers will bounce too? Not necessarily. So where are we getting our information?

Information is flowing across the internet. Even television relies on the internet to decide what is on the public radar, what news is fit to air. And many of those radar blips come from blogs, comments and commentary, diaries, journaling and vanity publishing, all freely available online. Anyone can blog; it’s Darwinian.

I have been trying for some months to successfully enter the blogosphere, but that environment is different than writing for a local weekly newspaper. The blogosphere hosts a broader audience. Readers are interested in more diverse topics than we can perhaps generate up here in our high-altitude isolation. Writers have to earn readership and it isn’t easy to place even well-crafted sound bites where readers can find them.

But I’m not letting any of that discourage me. I figured out how to blog, where to publish my (extended) sound bites, and now I can feed my need to keep scribbling. Write on. Now if only I had a deadline.

Earth Matters: Uninformed

2009-03-29T07:31:00.000-07:00

I tried really hard, but I couldn’t get my mind out of the political gutter. I tried to conjure wonder; instead I couldn’t free myself of the mire that must be the stock and trade of punditry. I looked up “pundit” to make sure my obsession is an occupational hazard and not a personal problem. I discovered there is such a thing as a punditocracy: gods forbid.

Surrounded as we are by a natural world chock-full of wonder, I figured to distance myself—escape—our collective and disturbing social and economic context. I revel in the quickening smell of pine and Douglas fir, and make a point of appreciating terrain features as gravity draws me down the ski hill. I remarked on the first robin to light in the aspen trees outside my window…just before the blizzard hit. That’s about it, though; I failed my escape attempt.

I blame much of my failure on television. I can’t resist paying attention to pundits inside that box, men and women paid considerably more than me. I don’t begrudge that differential because although my deadlines are just as sharp and my responsibilities as well-defined, I don’t have to wear a necktie.

Before I used television, I formed independent, albeit sometimes uninformed opinions. Independent opinions are good because they require original thinking. Unfortunately, uninformed original thinking is only exercise and can actually be injurious. I work pretty hard to keep my foot out of my mouth and generally only make stuff up when I am sure either the muse or my editorial voice is active. Otherwise, it’s just the facts, ma’am.

But then the facts get filtered, and that’s where the television pundits have their say. True to my calling, I try to balance perspectives. That is, I try to listen to both liberal and conservative pundits, or at least get the gist of what they are saying. I admit to finding it difficult to listen to a Rush Limbaugh diatribe or sympathize in any way with Bill O’Reilly or Glen Beck. I honestly hope my antipathy isn’t as much for what they are saying as it is for how they say it.

Predictably, I enjoy listening to Daniel Schorr, Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow, and—it figures—HBO’s Bill Maher. Maher’s commentary is often over the top, usually raunchy and sometimes not even funny. Maher had me at George W. Bush, though, and while he tries to give equal time to drilling Obama, I can tell his heart isn’t in it. Bush was easy pickin’s for all of us.

So I wonder whether punditry informs me. Do I actually learn anything by listening to talking heads? Perhaps it just entertains me because I either agree with what they say or it outrages me. Maybe commentary simply deludes me and I need to chase down something akin to fact, not opinion.

Fact is often elusive. It is naïve to take the maunderings of politicians and economists at face value. Trying to pin Bill Clinton down about the fact of his matter, for example, came down to what the definition of “is” is.

In our current economic malaise, politicians—even the smart ones—have no idea how to make things right because disaster has never quite looked like this before. It is ironic, sad and scary that economics falls into the bailiwick of politicians whose job description is kissing babies, cutting deals, and conducting—or not—diplomacy between nations. In our case, we exported economic collapse to the rest of the world.

Nor can economists, even those who invented the complex schemes that got us into the mess, provide a fix. They can only surmise what went wrong but have no clue where to go from here…wherever here is. Slogging through all the source smoke, mirrors and muddy water, pundits like me get to take their shot at it.

Bottom line: What our Great Recession says to me is that free-market capitalism doesn’t work. Ah, but that’s not exactly true. Unregulated free-market capitalism doesn’t work. But if a market is regulated at all then it isn’t free, right? Creeping socialism. Commie rat. Pinko freak.

Here is more blasphemy: Credit—debt—is a slippery slope off which average folks have a difficult time climbing. Debt generated by the federal government sums at such a grand scale we mere mortals can’t visualize or comprehend, much less pay it back. That is a slippery slope, too.

While I don’t presume to diagnose and propose solutions to world economic collapse, I can’t help wondering how borrowing more money to throw at the same miscreants who got us into trouble in the first place will fix anything. I’m pretty sure that is not original thinking and on practically every level must be uninformed. It seems only common sense.

Earth Matters: Changing horses

2009-03-29T07:25:00.000-07:00

I ought to be getting used to it. Having ended ski season fifty times, it is sweet sorrow around which I am always conflicted. I anticipate spring and summer unreservedly, but I will miss skiing. We actually never stopped skiing last year; a pact fulfilled, a bit psycho—obsessive, compulsive—healthy and all kinds of fun.

Yet undeniably, living at a ski area, the yearly end of lift-served skiing is a major demarcation across all sectors of my life. Ours is a seasonal lifestyle, perhaps more so than most. We enjoy four distinct seasons each with its own pleasures; even mud season carries with it a certain, uh…cachet. It is the nature of the place though, and as the years pass, I know as soon as one ski season is behind me another approaches.

The actual changeover from ski season to après-ski mud season can be jarring. Accustomed to appropriately frantic end-days behavior, suddenly we transition to significantly more restrained pursuits…or not. The change is not subtle: ski season ends and I get my life back. Maybe it’s just me.

This year that transition has teeth sharpened on economic malaise practically unknown to an entire generation. Not in over twenty years has economic debacle so permeated our culture that it trickled down to places like Crested Butte. While I remain convinced that resorts are sustainable and people will always visit, no question: national economic woes will affect our traffic.

It is the rule not the exception that most ski resort businesses close up shop when skiing ends. Off-season is a good, authentic time of year when we relax after hosting visitors. This year, in the economic toilet, it is both blessing and curse to close the doors. One way or the other, there is relief.

Off-season means broadening my perspectives. I will lead a life less circumscribed by fifteen-minute bus-schedule increments. I will bother my horses instead of the ski patrol. If I want to ski, I will earn my turns in the time-honored manner of walking up hills in order to ski down them. I will frequent high ridges where ravens alone ride the thermals, and when I’m done I will sit in front of this machine and try to describe what I saw there.

“What?” asked my boss. “No more politics?”

Oh, there will be politics. How could there not be? If Earth really matters, then everything I see while out stomping around the mountains is worthy of respect. And the only effective path toward its preservation is political.

The converse is also true. When I spent my time writing about rodents in the backyard and saving the Uncompahgre fritillary butterfly, I found myself fighting an uphill political battle that ended at the Oval Office. And George W. Bush paid me no mind.

Furthermore, if I belabor economic disaster I get depressed and lose sleep. While the world should never forget how we got into this mess and who put us here, I have flogged that dead horse mercilessly. That is not to say I won’t flog him again, but it is time to get back to basics, to my fundamentalist and radical roots. I want to convey some sense of wonder.

Don’t be surprised then, to read about skiing in Earth Matters, because to me the fact that gravity works is a wondrous phenomenon. Don’t get freaked out next summer when I start going off about trolls or high-alpine sirens. And if the muse starts dictating, you can be sure I am paying attention and trying to get it all behind the cursor. Radical fundamentalism is often at its best when it is fanciful and nonsensical; just ask any radical fundamentalist.

John Muir wrote, “When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe.” That is no news to an ecologist, and probably confusing to everyone else. Who knew the Uncompahgre fritillary butterfly would land on Bush’s desk? Who knew obscure derivative financial instruments could lay waste a world economy?

My job is to pick out something by itself and demonstrate what it is hitched to, how it is hitched, and why any of it matters. Politics is part of that, but politics can’t exist all by itself. It is connected to the other stuff, even seemingly frivolous pastimes like skiing, hiking and annoying my horses.

My horses don’t know about all that connected stuff; they know only that they are hitched to the post. It is probably better they don’t know about the big picture, because if they did know they’d be so full of themselves they’d be almost impossible to deal with. And I want things a little easier than that.

Earth Matters: Social networking for dummies

2009-03-29T07:19:00.000-07:00

It is deceptively easy: Walk into one of Crested Butte’s many fine watering holes and plop down on a barstool. Make sure stools on either side are vacant and inviting to other networkers who might share your thirst. Signal the bartender and order a beer; when you pay, leave a generous tip. Now simply wait for someone to follow your lead, buy them a drink and strike up a conversation. Welcome to social networking.

Such intercourse is deceptive because its consequences can be anything but easy. Social networking facilitated by PBR or Jack Daniels often leads to circumstances that quickly become complicated. Sometimes, for example, you get tangled in a network from which tomorrow morning you want to extricate yourself as quickly as possible. If you drive your car, it can lead to social networking in the Graybar Hotel.

While I practiced this thirst-quenching method of social networking for years, its inherent complications finally took their toll and forced me to seek other means of social interaction. Not surprisingly, even in a socially inbred place like Crested Butte, that proved a challenge. Luckily, and just short of becoming a cynical recluse, enter the internet.

It probably started with email, instantaneous communication that doesn’t generate writer’s cramp or require a trip to the post office. You can use shorthand, and misspellings are easily forgiven. Furthermore, if you don’t want to communicate right now, wait until tomorrow. If you don’t want to communicate at all, hit delete.

Like most things internet, technology quickly outpaced the normal progress of human communication. Social networking came into its own with virtual innovations like MySpace and YouTube, networks now so-last-year with evolution of Facebook, Twitter and Qik. Instantaneous news became fodder for wannabe pundits to blog and comment, to toss their two cents into any old hat, to vent vitriol, and express opinions informed or otherwise.

One decidedly informed writer is Joshua-Michèle Ross of O’Reilly Media writing at Forbes.com. Ross describes, “The Rise of the Social Nervous System,” the internet as transformative communications network and foundation of society, business and government. Which he demonstrates, is exactly where we’re at: 1.6 billion people connect with computers, 3 billion use internet mobile devices…cell phones and the rest.

Ross works in the rarified atmosphere of something called Web 2.0, a next generation internet only hinted at by today’s innovations. According to Ross, all that connectedness is a “social nervous system that makes us aware of a broader context of relationship with humanity…Even a kid with a mobile phone can capture a revolution.”

Importantly, Ross credits the social nervous system with helping coordinate action from human input; for example, posting current events on Twitter. “Using a social nervous system,” writes Ross, “we are finding solutions to some big problems such as controlling disease or responding to emergencies. Most important, we are creating a feedback mechanism that exposes the actions of a powerful few to the many—and the trivial day-to-day life of the many to the whole of humanity.”

Ross suggests the social nervous system promotes a healthier balance of power, adding that assumed inalienable rights to privacy are forfeit. “Those who do not connect share and collaborate will have a hard time in business and in social life…Given the complexity and precarious position of the modern world, getting people to genuinely reach out and touch their neighbors is a good thing but it will come at the price of reshaping our identities as part of a larger, interconnected whole.”

Early on, my first thought was: Who on earth wants to be jacked into the “trivial day-to-day life” of the interconnected whole anyway? Isn’t life complicated enough? So not without certain irony did I get my comeuppance in the social network of Facebook; one friend calls it “FaceButte.” The irony is that a multitude of real-life, brick-and-mortar Crested Butte friends uses internet social networking to communicate, wish each other happy birthday and discuss what time to go skiing. And hell, it isn’t trivial at all.

Right about here, I can sense your eyes glazing over; computer stuff does that. Perhaps it’s time to go sit on the bench in the sun, or maybe you should go get that beer.

Earth Matters: Good money after bad

2009-03-10T08:41:00.000-07:00

“What the hell do you know about economics?” questioned my friend. “You can’t even balance a checkbook.”

Well, yeah. “Not much, really,” I answered lamely. “You’re right. I’m terrible with money. It has taken all these years, but I’m changing my spending habits.”

“So what you’re saying is that it took a worldwide economic meltdown for you to turn into mister thrifty?”

“That might be over-simplifying,” I suggested. Usually, when I get frustrated or upset, I either go skiing or go shopping. I’ve always thought it a shame that shopping costs so much money; it would be such good therapy otherwise. And I can shop summer or winter.

“So now when the economy needs you out there shopping,” continued my friend, “you’re cutting back. You’re part of the vicious cycle.”

Presumably, to stimulate the national economy, everyone should go out and spend money. The problem is that no one has money to spend right now. So since we’re all trying to hang onto our shekels, fewer of us are buying new cars and yachts and trophy homes. Because no one is spending money, no one is making money, credit sources dry up…a vicious cycle.

And it’s the American way. If something is screwed up, throw money at it to make it better. If we run out of money print more. We can always borrow the big bucks since we are a productive nation, able to drag itself up by its bootstraps to pay back the debt. Oh, we do love our credit.

Continually throwing money at our ever-deepening economic collapse, though, may not be the silver bullet. Tossing good money after bad perhaps only lines the pockets of those who facilitated the collapse in the first place.

I may not know jack about economics, but I watched what happened after congress and the previous administration approved the tax payer-funded $750 billion bailout in September 2008. Eighty-five billion dollars went to American International Group (AIG), which company immediately sent its executives on a $440,000 retreat at a California spa resort. Give me a break!

Taxpayers also ponied up $14 billion for the auto industry, reasoning correctly that car manufacturing is vital to our national interest. Were we outraged when executives of the Big Three automakers flew private, luxury jets to Washington to request an additional $25 billion in bailout money? Hell, yes, we were outraged. What were they thinking? Do they feel so transparently entitled?

Knowing nothing about economics, I can’t help wondering if our premise isn’t skewed. We keep throwing money at the problem and the problem isn’t getting fixed. Albert Einstein said, “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

We’ve been doing bailouts since the poop first hit the fan in 2008. It took us a few months to realize—admit—that we were in the teeth of an unprecedented economic disaster. By then it was too late. A perfect storm of sub-prime loans, unfathomable derivative financial instruments, over-arching profligacy and outright greed took us to the bottom. Think bottom-feeders; think Bernie Madoff and his $50 billion ponzi scheme.

This line of reasoning leads to the kicker. The kicker is that money we keep throwing at the problem is all on credit. Even recognizing easy credit as the problem that got us into this feedback loop mess in the first place, we continue to spend money as if we had it. We’re borrowing from Peter—future taxpayers, China, whoever—to pay Paul—bottom-feeders. Perhaps I shouldn’t be so harsh.

“Go ahead,” encouraged my friend. “Tell us what you really think. Your credibility is in the toilet anyway. Be harsh.”

Economic malaise is like a force of nature except we, not nature, caused it. There is nothing natural about it except the consequences. We’re in a pickle because our hardwired predilection for immediate gratification and our pervasive predisposition toward greed put us there. Yet although we got our own selves into this mess, we have no idea how to get out of it. Keynesian economics, the old models that pulled our fat from the fire before, aren’t working. We don’t know what to do, so we just keep doing the same old thing.

“You see?” asked my friend when I’d finished my rant. “You really don’t know a thing about economics.”

Hell, yes.

Earth Matters: Hiatus

2009-03-10T08:35:00.000-07:00

It is typical: The economy didn’t collapse when I was young and could ignore or otherwise deal with it. Karma, Murphy’s Law and Keynesian economics being what they are, it had to happen when I’m an old dude, unable to move off the grid and live in the woods with a stone ax. Perhaps that is too cynical a point of view.

Instead, I should be looking for that glass half-full. Economic advisors tell me, for example, that our economic meltdown is prime-time for bargains. If you have money, they say, current depressed prices present an excellent opportunity to invest in stocks or buy real estate, diamonds, yachts, automobiles, airline tickets, flat-screen televisions, appliances and other big-ticket items. The question of who the hell has money goes begging.

The glass is half-full with other silver linings…or molybdenum linings as the case may be. Economic malaise has sent recently bullish commodity prices into a bearish tailspin that might otherwise have me dancing in the streets. I say otherwise, because when the price of molybdenum crashed in the early 1980s and AMAX withdrew its proposal to mine Mt. Emmons and Red Lady Bowl, we did dance in the streets.

Those were heady days. The difference is that back then molybdenum prices crashed in a more isolated way. Prices didn’t reflect devaluation of our world economy as they do now. That is a significant difference. Now we are all in the toilet and molybdenum prices are merely collateral damage. Molybdenum prices have fallen more than seventy percent in the past six months.

The glass half-full tells me tanked molybdenum prices work to my advantage. Thompson Creek Metals’ proposal to mine Mt. Emmons would find a tough row to hoe if the company were to seek financing to mine in this economic maelstrom.

According to Mining News, the global economic slowdown has “cast a pall over the mining industry…” Mining executives expect a significant reduction in exploration activity and at least thirty percent of exploration companies to go out of business.

Commodities analyst VM Group says $50 billion less will be injected into the mining industry in 2009 and 2010 than expected before the recession. The group projects impacts to future production efficiencies and metal supply, and crippling of early stage production. This would presumably lead to another metal price boom when the recession is over because demand would outstrip supply. Katie, bar the door.

For its part, Thompson Creek Metals is cutting cash injections while sitting on $270 million in cash and a $35 million untapped credit line. CEO Kevin Loughrey plans to preserve capital until market conditions improve. Thompson Creek Metals will reduce molybdenum production from a previously estimated 34 million pounds to 24 million pounds.

The company recently closed its Smithers, British Columbia—Davidson Project—office as a cost saving measure. The Davidson Project, a proposed underground molybdenum mine, is completely off the books with no budget at all for 2009. The company’s other mines, Idaho’s Thompson Creek Mine and British Columbia’s Endako Mine, will reduce output considerably.

But Kevin Loughrey is betting on the come that molybdenum prices will recover as government economic stimulus packages take effect. He expects molybdenum demand to rise as emerging-market economies build new energy infrastructure and as developed countries replace worn pipelines, retool aging oil refineries and gear up for nuclear power production. “Long term,” said Loughrey, “we still feel very comfortable with where moly is headed.”

What does all this cost-cutting mean for Crested Butte and the Mt. Emmons Project? Probably not much. Thompson Creek Metals must still pay property owner U.S. Energy $1 million a year to maintain Thompson Creek’s seventy-five percent option to mine ore from under Red Lady Bowl. The company will undoubtedly continue its evaluation and permitting process, an undertaking that will consume at least a decade. The price of molybdenum could yo-yo several times during that period.

The current hiatus in activity—cutbacks, cost saving, whatever—is misleading. Thompson Creek Metals is using the time to insidiously insert itself into our community. Confident that the recession will end and metal prices will rebound, Thompson Creek believes time is on its side.

We could hope the company would close its Gunnison and Crested Butte offices like it did in Smithers, BC. We could hope that Thompson Creek would see the light and not plan a molybdenum mine smack in the middle of Crested Butte’s watershed and our tourist and emerging amenities-based economies. We could hope that pigs grow wings. Katie, keep that door barred.

Earth Matters: Fat chance

2009-03-10T08:29:00.000-07:00

I am no war monger. A child of the Summer of Love, my pacifist leanings were honed by experts in the art of social revolution. Coming of age in the Vietnam Era galvanized my opinions and beliefs even if I didn’t fully understand how they would affect my life and what I would become. It’s not all bad; there are more destructive world views.

My world view assumes there are no good wars. Since war is apparently hardwired into human behavior, however, I must acknowledge some wars are less bad than others. One—maybe the only—criteria is justifiability. Is there a damned good reason to engage in martial conflict?

I have been told to stay away from the politics—reasons—for going to war. At some remove from the halls of power, I undoubtedly do not have a comprehensive understanding of geopolitical peregrinations and international conflict. Okay: I’ll buy that. But with due respect to those with differing opinions, like the critic says: I know what I like.

That is not to say I like the war in Afghanistan. But on grounds of justifiability, it’s better than any other war we’ve got. If we are to wage war, and apparently we must, we should be fighting the real enemy, the religious extremism, ignorance and grinding poverty imposed by the Taliban in Afghanistan. No question: the Taliban seriously frosts my lilies.

Afghanistan is fertile soil for the likes of the Taliban. Conquering armies have stomped the Afghan mountains for centuries en route to rape and pillage in India. Scythians, Persians, Greeks, Seljuks, Tartars, Mongols, Durani, Russians and Americans have all colored Afghan soil. Afghans, people who live among the Hindu Kush Mountains, go with the flow. Separated into fiercely independent rival fiefdoms, the country’s isolation defines some kind of sovereignty that sustains today.

Writing in 1925, journalist Lowell Thomas wrote, “Afghanistan dislikes the foreigner…Those of the wilder tribes of Afghanistan…are prone to give token of their enmity to the foreigner in the shape of whining bullets that oftener than not reach their mark.” Of Asia in general and Afghanistan in particular, Rudyard Kipling wrote, “Asia is not going to be civilized after the methods of the West. There is too much Asia and she is too old.”

The Taliban is a nasty bunch of Sunni Pashtun Islamic terrorists that ruled Afghanistan between 1996 and 2001. Not entirely homegrown, the Taliban are religious extremists, many educated in Madrasahs, fundamentalist Islamic schools in Pakistan. The Taliban enforces the strictest interpretation of fundamental Islamic Sharia Law ever seen in the Muslim world. Believing, “the face of a woman is a source of corruption,” education for girls and women is forbidden. Women are not allowed to work and face public flogging and execution for violations of Taliban and Sharia laws.

The Taliban finds refuge in Afghanistan because of geographic isolation and the non-centralized nature of Afghan sovereignty. Taliban strongholds proliferate in mountainous border terrain between Pakistan and Afghanistan, where al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden is thought to be holed up. Following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, in 2001 the United States invaded Afghanistan to oust the Taliban and bring bin Laden to justice. We met with mixed results.

We should have known—history informs—that no one ever really wins fighting a war in Afghanistan. Yet Afghanistan was the obvious place to join conflict because that is where bin Laden was hanging out in the Tora Bora caves. Although United States and NATO forces ran the Taliban out of town, we were singularly inept in finding and holding bin Laden to account. Presumably, he is still in residence.

We kicked the Taliban out of Kabul, but they didn’t go away. According to Radio Free Europe, NATO’s top intelligence officer in Afghanistan said the tribal nature of the dominant Pashtun population makes the Taliban insurgency difficult to contain. Because Afghan society is complex and hermetic, no one knows who, how many or why the Taliban insurgency is increasing in strength and activity. We should not be surprised that we know nothing about it.

Riding the crest of American public opinion that the United States should withdraw from Iraq, it makes a certain amount of sense to redeploy troops to neighboring Afghanistan. There, we hope a “surge” of American military might will forever banish the Taliban, establish peace and security in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and generally make everything nice. Fat chance.

Earth Matters: Partisan

2009-02-20T07:01:00.000-08:00

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

2009-02-20T06:52:00.000-08:00

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.

Earth Matters: A deeper ecology of trails

2009-02-17T10:07:00.000-08:00

“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.

Earth Matters: One kind word

2009-02-12T09:37:00.000-08:00

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.

Gravity Works: Rock Glacier

2009-02-05T09:17:00.000-08:00

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.

Earth Matters: Quoth the Raven

2009-01-31T20:40:00.000-08:00

The cursor blinked back from my computer screen with the visceral impact of a thunderbolt. The time had come to pass: My favorite gadfly and topic of ridicule is finally tending his two longhorn steers down in Texas. The cursor, like Edgar Allan Poe’s Raven, bobbed above my imagination’s door croaking, “Nevermore.”

Hogwash, I told the Raven. History is out there to get written, and by god I’ll do my share of writing it. But the thing about history is that it needs to cure a bit, percolate around in the consciousness, get digested into a coherent cause of future effects. Naturally, I lack time and energy to wait that long and crave immediate gratification. I’m spoiled; the last eight years were easy pickin’s.

The Raven ogled me with his shiny black eyes, reproachful and taunting. He is no muse, but maybe he’s open to a little dialogue.

“You got lazy,” observed the Raven. “Now that you actually have to think, you’re experiencing a failure of imagination. Maybe you should go back to your roots,” he grumbled. Thanks, Raven.

My treehugger taproot runs deep and my rhizomes spread wide. Being a treehugger is a calling that requires participation on a personal level, and action on a collective level. A sincere treehugger must do all the day-to-day things which a person can do to “make a difference,” while at the same time recognizing big-picture issues and taking action to make them better.

When I started out in the treehugger business, I quickly realized that big-picture issues were often out of my reach. I couldn’t save the whales or keep gorillas from becoming bush meat; I couldn’t keep Russia from cutting down the Taiga forest or Japanese trawlers from scraping ocean fisheries clean of every living thing.

I decided instead that I would make my difference in the place I lived, Colorado’s Rocky Mountains. Shortly after that, I realized events had outstripped my efforts, which no matter how well-meaning couldn’t hold their own in the face of big-picture stuff. It didn’t matter how hard I worked to save the Uncompahgre fritillary butterfly, for example, while global warming continually vanished its habitat.

What to do? Throw up my hands and declare despair? No. The thing to do was take a closer look at the big picture. Whether or not I could actually do anything about it didn’t matter. The macrocosm was the only real game in town.

My macrocosmic consideration manifested two realities: First, if the planet’s climate collapses, nothing we do, except maybe preserving our ability to build fire, will make a hell of a lot of difference. Such catastrophic collapse could quickly change the way we humans do business here on planet Earth.

Second, of all our human business, warfare is particularly devastating to the natural environment. The natural world is collateral damage to nations at war; we think in terms of human not environmental costs when we wage war. Pictures of burning oil wells during the Gulf War demonstrated to me how war clouds landscapes and destroys populations, human and otherwise. If earth really matters, war is one of the worst things we can do to it.

Furthermore, it is futile to address big-picture stuff like war and climate in any arena other than political. Personal choices like turning off the water while brushing my teeth or choosing cloth over plastic at the market aren’t political. Lobbying a government to regulate carbon emissions or pursue diplomacy over warfare is political action at every level.

So I transited from pure and fundamental tree hugging—rodents in the backyard and herons in the willows—to political observation and commentary that ultimately changed the nature of my thought.

“Not only did you get lazy,” said the Raven, now perched on my monitor, “but you got wrapped up in politics and forgot about what matters, the stuff politics is really about.”

“At the end of the day,” I told him, “environmental stuff is purely political. There is plenty of bad stuff going on, but a lot of good stuff too.”

I’d like to think we have turned some kind of environmental corner. President Obama said, “We cannot afford more of the same timid politics when the future of our planet is at stake. Global warming is not a someday problem, it is now…This is not the future I want for my daughters. It’s not the future any of us want for our children. And if we act now and we act boldly, it doesn’t have to be.”

Obama says he will make combating global warming a top priority, and that he will “reinvigorate” the Environmental Protection Agency. He says he will protect our children from toxins like lead, be a responsible steward of our natural treasures and reverse previous administration attempts to chip away at clean air and water standards.

In economic hard times, it is difficult to think about saving the planet. But there must be ways that saving the planet will also help our economies. “Ecology” and “economy” are related words. President Obama intends to establish millions of new “green jobs” creating renewable electricity sources, increasing energy efficiency and weatherizing homes.

Obama will invest $150 billion over ten years in advanced energy technologies. He intends to increase fuel economy standards, enact a windfall profits tax on excessive oil company profits and invest cap-and-trade pollution credits in the nation’s energy future. This is all good news for the environment.

I looked at the Raven. “So how’s that for getting back to my roots?” I asked.

“Well, it’s a start,” the bird ruffled his feathers and pecked at my mouse pad. “And you should be proud of yourself for not even once hammering the, uh…former administration.”

Ravens are thoughtful—even talkative, but I’d never encountered one quite so garrulous. I reminded myself that I had asked for this dialogue.

“But I have just one request,” continued the Raven, looking uncomfortable and shifting from foot to foot. “Will you please lay off the metaphors?” I looked at him and shooed him off my computer before he pooped on the keyboard.

“Only that and nothing more?”

Gravity Works: Avalanche

2009-01-24T21:03:00.000-08:00

Sunlight lanced from behind scudding clouds, shining for the first time in days. The mountains remained shrouded though, and I couldn’t see any avalanches from my window. Last time the weather cleared, I noticed the whole north ridge of Coon Basin had slid to the ground. Now I wonder what I’ll see next time it clears up.

Avalanche spotting is a hell of a lot safer from my living room, through the window, than it is out in the wind and snow and danger. If actually recreating in places where avalanches live, it is important to know what you’re doing and treat that stuff with respect. It’s killer.

I was saddened a couple of weeks ago when Mike Bowen got caught and killed in a slide. I didn’t know Mike well, but I used to pick him up when he was walking Slate River Road, returning from riding the chutes off Mt. Emmons. It would be almost dark, cold…whatever, and here would come Mike, walking along with his board slung behind his back. I would turn around and drive him to town, and he’d tell me how good it was out there, up there and over there.

I always wondered at how he had the cajones to ride the backcountry alone. I’d had singularly unpleasant backcountry experiences, and at the time, was glad as hell for my companions. Mike, on the other hand, seemed perfectly comfortable with winter solitude and seldom travelled with a friend. I didn’t know him well enough to say anything; if he wanted to do it alone, more power to him. I know lots of people who would rather ski alone than with a posse. I figured he knew what he was doing.

I think it is easy to take the backcountry for granted. It is all around us, it is our medium and our métier. The mountains define us and inform what we do; summer and winter, they are why we live here. We become familiar with the backcountry, and forget it is not familiar with us. We hike the same ridge or ski the same route over and over, and think we have it down. It’s under control. Nothing can happen. We take it for granted. Then things change.

My direct experience with avalanches is thankfully limited. Certainly it is not as dramatic and lurid as avalanches sweeping cameras away in ski movies. Even so, except for watching them on screen, avalanches are always dangerous and potentially deadly. Over the years, I’ve lost quite a few friends to avalanches, and acknowledge snow slides as a feature of our place. It is our job to stay out of them.

Nor do I intend to have any direct experiences with avalanches, at least not if I can help it. This does not mean I will hover behind the window, waiting to watch Coon Basin slide. It does mean that I won’t be out backcountry skiing until I deem the snowpack consolidated and safe. Deeming the snowpack safe, of course, is a judgment call, an interpretive exercise in which the price of misinterpretation can be costly.

So I’m going to cough up the price of an avalanche refresher course offered by Crested Butte Mountain Guides. It won’t be my first such course; I attended San Juan County Sheriff’s Department Avalanche School back in the 1970s. The tools were different, but the fundamentals remain the same.

Although I think they do the same job, avalanche prediction tools have been refined and become more sophisticated. You still have to observe relative densities in the snowpack and identify poorly bonded layers. You have to be able to spot a potential slide surface and integrate that information with aspect, terrain features and…well, the list goes on.

Rescue equipment has also evolved. Avalanche beacons or transceivers are more accurate and—hopefully—more user-friendly. Although my old Pieps still beeps when I turn it on, I’m told it is obsolete and that I’d best buy a new one. I griped about paying $350 for my new BCA Tracker until someone asked the obvious question: How much is my life worth? Damn, I hate questions like that.

Having shelled out all that money, though, I figure I’d better learn how to use the thing properly. Furthermore, what is the sense in hauling it up the hill if I can’t figure out how to use it in the urgency and adrenaline heat of an avalanche burial? Better go to school.

But a probe is still a probe and a shovel is still a shovel, and you still have to dig a snow pit. At least I think you do; that’s why I’m taking the refresher course, to find out for sure. But even then, properly trained or at least exposed to the information, I may still not venture out onto a snowpack I know from observation is sketchy. Call me timid, call me lightweight, call me whatever, but call me alive.

In acknowledging another friend lost to winter and avalanche, it is important to also recognize the men and women of Crested Butte Search and Rescue, and all others who worked hard in dark and dangerous conditions to rescue and, sadly, recover Mike Bowen. For those of us who enjoy winter, wilderness and all those tempting backcountry lines, it is good to know Search and Rescue is there.

Mike Bowen, I’ll wave at your spirit walking Slate River Road and know you had some fine turns out there, up there and over there. It is heartrending to lose a man who shares many of our common motivations, enraptured by cold smoke and gravity, deep in winter’s thrall.

Earth Matters: Upside

2009-01-24T21:00:00.000-08:00

Between the time I write this and the time you read it, we will have inaugurated a new President of the United States. My most significant challenge will be a grammatical one: not knowing whether to write in the future or past tense. My challenge isn’t in the same league as that of President Obama who by every metric will have his hands full.

They tell me to experience great joy we must have experienced great sorrow. To experience great knowledge, we must have experienced great ignorance. To enjoy the good, we have to taste the bad. Presumably, it is education: to appreciate something, we have to know its antithesis. For every upside, we require a downside to compare it to.

It is easy to distill a downside from the last eight years of bumbling, malfeasance and self-serving misdirection. The upside is more difficult to define in a distillation of hope and speculation. Furthermore, my present is the emotional maelstrom of pre-inauguration frenzy. Yours is the hard reality of a man three days at his desk and facing daunting tasks. He wanted the job; I hope we are indulgent with the honeymoon.

My first concrete glimpse of the horrible downside was called “rollback.” Previously, I didn’t know what a rollback was or that it could be so easily implemented. I didn’t realize the man at the top could wield so much power or be so evil…so vindictive.

I was busy hugging trees and basking in the relative environmental enlightenment of the Clinton Administration. Having worked for over a decade, I felt we were making progress on the enviro front, although we didn’t yet understand global climate change as the thousand pound gorilla. Many of my environmental bogeymen appeared to evaporate in the heat of climate change, but regardless, I thought we had advanced on a number of levels.

Then came the rollbacks. The Bush Administration decided it didn’t like any science that didn’t support political and business agendas. Administration delegates refused to sign the Kyoto Protocols, for example, and join with other world leaders in studying climate change. No science was good science unless it made money.

Within hours of assuming office, Bush rolled back proposed protections under Bill Clinton’s Roadless Area Conservation Rule. I had worked hard for roadless area protection in Colorado, figuring it wasn’t too crazy to preserve as much roadless public land as we could identify. Bush immediately cancelled implementation of the rule.

Roadless preservation was a forgotten pipe dream in the face of energy development roads which threaded western public lands like some kind of disease. Thumpers and drill rigs threatened Wyoming wilderness and Utah national parks. Even Western conservatives were shocked as dozer blades scraped their favorite places to bedrock. Roadless? Yeah, right.

Sorry: I’m raving. This is my own personal grievance. As it turns out, my other grievances feel personal too, but I’ll try not to rave.

So far, I have not been personally scarred by either the justifiable Afghanistan War, or by the totally unjustifiable Iraq War. Yet American men and women remain in harm’s way on distant shores. The upside in Iraq is that fewer Americans die there now. Yet I wonder if families of the million Iraqis killed see any upside at all?

Afghanistan, justifiable or not, has been a downside for hundreds of years. Rudyard Kipling wrote: “When you’re wounded and left on Afghanistan’s plains, And the women come out to cut up what remains, Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains, And go to your Gawd like a soldier.” Cool place to have a war, eh?

In Afghanistan we are trying to facilitate peace between factions we don’t understand, and whose only commonality is their hatred of the United States. Osama bin Laden still finds sanctuary. Afghan opium producers quickly identified an upside in a burgeoning heroin trade, but then they have known about that for millennia.

On our domestic front, the war on what was once a healthy economy can only be called successful. That may be an upside for some folks, but for the rest of us, finding an upside will be a long row to hoe. Unemployment claims rose over 30% in the last five weeks; almost a million Americans lost their jobs last week alone. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, job losses are large and widespread across most major industry sectors.

Economic analyst John Mauldin writes, “We are in completely uncharted territory in terms of the economic landscape.” Mauldin predicts unemployment headed above nine percent, consumer spending off by at least three percent in 2009 and 2010, and Gross Domestic Product down as much as five percent. He predicts the longest recession since the Great Depression. I keep trying to find the upside, but I’m having trouble with that.

The upside lies in our choice of new leadership and a new worldview. Although it is difficult to overcome skepticism honed over the last eight years, maybe—just maybe—we can shame the greed mongers into doing the right thing. Perhaps that is too much to ask.

We can only hope President Obama is equal to a job whose difficulty and complexity are unprecedented in American history. We are optimistic he can bring about health care and entitlement reform. We hope he can strike a balance between environmental stewardship and energy independence. We pray he can stimulate production to generate jobs and invent new models to resurrect our economy. We hope Obama can create partisan inclusion to forever eliminate historic gridlock. Post-partisan politics: what a concept.

While I’m writing this, I’m still living on the downside and it is difficult to see beyond the disaster that has been the last eight years of American governance. You reading this, on the other hand, are living under enlightened leadership that offers hope and the promise of change in a new day. You are reading this on the upside. Be proud of the choice we made…and enjoy.