Montgomery Pass

I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help.  ---Psalm 121

Satuday, February 25, 2012---that will be a day I will remember for a long time to come, to be sure.

It began like an ordinary Saturday. I had chosen not to go on the /r/coloradohikers group meetup this week. The organizer had scheduled a second trip up Bear Mountain outside Boulder---by popular demand he said---and although the "bear" theme was of course tempting to follow, I didn't feel like climbing that particular mountain again this week. For one thing, it's quite a steep and long ascent. Although I don't mind strenuous efforts, I was clearly the drag on the group last time and didn't feel like being in that spot again this week.

So I wound up dawdling away the early morning and didn't get out into the sunshine until after ten. All I had was a general inclination that I wanted to go snowshoeing, and my further inclination was to go up the Poudre Canyon to the summit at Cameron Pass. It would be a long drive, probably almost two hours, but driving up the Poudre is almost always a serene and beautiful experience, so I didn't mind how long it would take. Also there would surely be enough snow up there for a good snowshoeing trip.

The destination I had in mind was the Michigan Ditch trail at the very summit of the path. It is nearly flat and goes in for several miles. It would be a nice easy trip in and out, without too much exertion. But the scenery would be beautiful.

The roads in the canyon were almost completely clear, with ice in only a few places. I reached the summit of the pass around noon, parking in the parking lot at the trailhead at the summit. There were only three other cars there. It was indeed beautiful and sunny, but the wind was blowing ferociously in gusts, sending snow in great waves like mini blizzards. I sat there for several minutes contemplating my choices.

While I was there, I had the inevitable flashback that I was always have, when I parked at the summit of Cameron Pass, back to January 1987, when I was driving back to college in Oregon in my red Volkswagen Rabbit, the first car I ever owned. I parked at the summit of the pass on that trip, almost in the same spot, before going westward. It was one of those incredible road trips of my youth, during which so much happened in such a short time, and helped define my college experience. Among the things that happened was that later that day, on that same highway much further west, I spun out in my car for the only time in my life. The car landed in the ditch in the middle of nowhere. I was rescued in only a matter of minutes by pure chance by a passing truck, which pulled me out of the ditch without a scratch on me or the car.

After reminiscing like that for while, I finally decided that the wind was blowing too hard for a decent trip on the Michigan Ditch trail. So I headed back down the pass in the direction I had come, about a half mile, to another trailhead, which was sheltered from the wind. The parking lot was packed with cars.

I took out my Trails Illustrated Map of Cameron Pass and looked at my options. I could take the relatively flat trail on the south side of the road---that's what most people were probably skiing on that day, or I could take a trail across the road that went up a very steep incline a few miles to the summit of Montgomery Pass at the south end of the Medicine Bow Mountains.

My inclination was to take the high road. It would be strenuous, but I could go at my own pace, and it would surely be an awesome view once I got to the top.

So I took my snowshoes across the highway to the trailhead and put them on at the edge of the snow. Then I began marching into the trees and up the hill. It was indeed a beautiful trail, with the sun trickingly through the trees. On the way up, I passed several cross-country skiiers on the way down. One of them, an older gentleman, spontaneously warned me: "It's pretty windy up at the top."

I set a nice slow pace and after about two hours I could tell I was reaching the top. The snow grew very deep and in a few places I began to wonder if my snowshoes would provide enough flotation, but I never sank more than about eight inches downward, even in the powderiest section.

Just when I was wondering if I would ever reach the summit, I saw the tricking edge of the trees and a large snowfield ahead, with a peak behind it. This was surely the summit.

When I came to the edge of the trees, all of a sudden I could understand the warning I'd been given about the wind. It was blowing hard and steadily, with gusts that felt like a gale force coming right down off the top of the pass along the snowfield.

As I rounded the trees and came out onto the snowfield, I thought I was going to be knocked down in my snowshoes. At that point, to reach the top of the pass, I had to walk on the crunchy snowfield upward on the incline, straight into the wind. It was impossible even to keep my face upward. I had to look down at my feet and just keep putting one foot in front of the other, occasionally stealing glances upward to see how far I had to go.

Finally I reached the summit, where a small wooden sign indicating the top of the pass rocked back in forth in the constant wind. To the west, over the top of the pass, was a view over North Park toward the Rawah Range in the distance. It was incredible, but I could not look at it for more than a few seconds at a time because of the wind. I knew I had to get at least one good shot with my camera. My fingers nearly froze in place when I took my gloves off and held my smartphone up into the wind just long enough to attempt to get a shot. I couldn't even tell if I had gotten anything on the display.

At that moment, while putting my gloves back on, I looked around and saw beside me the towering summits of the mountains flanking the saddle of the pass. They were rocky and barren, covered with snow. As the wind blew around me, I had a sudden enormous feeling of the presence of the Creator, and understanding (yet again) of how one can experience the Creator this way so directly in the most barren of places, as Abraham surely did, so long ago. I felt humbled and the same time so lifted up by the presence of God. It made the trek to the top of the pass so completely worth while. Overcome by the emotion of it all, I struggled and knelt in the snow in prayer and thanked God for letting me experience this.

I wanted to linger, and looked for a place to hide from the wind, but the snowdrifts were sculptured so perfectly to provide no wind break. So having received the filling of the Spirit, I headed back down the snow field, now with the wind at my back. I noticed that my snowshoe tracks were almost completely invisible already from the blown snow that had covered them over, like sand at the beach.

In about five minutes I was back into the trees. At that point, my fingers began to warm up almost immediately and I was comfortable and relaxed all the way back down the trail at the road. I noticed when I got to the parking lot that the wind there had picked up quite a bit, and the snow was blowing there with the same force as it had been at the parking lot at the top of Cameron Pass several hours earlier.

I figured it had been a very good trek for the day and looked forward to a good meal. I knew there was a little hamlet called Gould on the other side of Cameron Pass where there was a restaurant, so I drove back up to the summit on the road and down the other side, at one time having to navigate a snow slide that had blocked half of the road.

When I got to Gould, I saw that the restaurant was closed for the winter with snowdrifts in front of it. So I turned around and went back up over Cameron Pass yet again and head down the road back towards home and civilization, thinking I would stop and get a bit to eat at one of the restaurants along the canyon highway.

As I drove down from the pass, I noticed that the wind had picked up even more. It began to feel like driving in a blizzard. Then all at once the wind would cease and it would be a sunny day again.

I was thinking about the day and how nice it had been, when I began to approach the trailhead where I had parked to reach Montgomery Pass. When it was still visible just head, all at once I felt my car begin to slide on the road on a patch of ice. At the same moment that my car began to slide out of control, the wind threw an incredible blast of snow over the road and within a half second, my car was completely shrouded with a whirlwind of blown snow. I could see only a few feet out of the car in front of me. It was as if I were inside a snowglobe.

In the midst of this blindness, I could feel the car sliding to the left, and I knew I was now in the wrong lane, helplessly moving forward down the hill at a fast clip, directly into blind snow without any sense of what might be ahead of me. I knew in an instant that if any car were in the oncoming lane, then I would see it only in a flash of an instant before we hit head on.

I knew there was nothing I could do. I knew that my life could end in an instant, and yet I felt completely at peace about that. Instead all I could think about was how I might be about to ruin someone else's day/month/year/life by my own stupidity, and how ashamed I would be about that.

Then after a few seconds of hurtling in the blindness of the oncoming lane, I felt my car begin to rotate, and to slide further to left. Now I knew that I was spinning off the road. In some ways, it was a relief, because I knew that at least I would be moving out of the way of any oncoming traffic.

Of course the idea of sliding off the road was not much appealing at all, especially since I couldn't see at all where I was going. Yet again I felt no panic---just resignation and a sense of "well, I guess we're going see where this goes."

The car spun completely around, so I could tell I was now facing uphill and moving sideways off the road. Just when I thought I was going to go off the edge of some embankment and was already calculating in my head about having to get my car out of the snow, my vehicle came to a gentle halt, as softly as a lamb lying down, halted by the snow at the edge of the road.

Finally it was over. After another second, the wind suddenly ceased and the snow around me dropped down and everything was clear. I was essentially parked along the road, facing uphill. It was as if I had simply pulled over beside the road, ironically only a few dozen feet from where I had put on my snowshoes a couple hours earlier.

I turned the key and the car started right up. With a glance along the clear road, I pulled out and turned around, to head downward away from the top of the pass.

You would think I would have felt all shaken about it, but I didn't feel anything of the sort, only great peace, and thankfulness above all that I hadn't ruined anyone else's day.

Of course I drove extra slowly as I descended down towards to the Poudre. It took about another minute until a car passed me in the opposite direction---a large pickup truck. I laughed when I saw the license plate---the unmistakable initials of a friend of mine with whom I had been recently corresponding by email.

I drove onwards about a half hour before I reached the first open restaurant, at the Glen Haven resort. After I pulled over into the muddy parking lot beside the highway and walked up to the door I was welcomed by a standing bear carving. Inside there were little bears on every day holding the salt and pepper shakers. I used a bear-shaped honey container to sugar up the hot tea I ordered.

While I waited for my burger and fries to arrive, I took out my smartphone and opened my Bible application. Since there was no connection in the canyon, I knew I wouldn't be able to access the particular translation I had been reading, since I hadn't downloaded it to the phone. I figured the application would simply open to a blank menu of the Bible, but instead, when the screen came up, I found myself looking at a passage that had loaded from the King James version that I downloaded and which was on the card in my phone.

The passage that came up was one I had not read in weeks. It was as if a passage had been selected for me at random. It was Psalm 121, which begins...

This week's bear

I knew I'd found the right classroom in Boulder High School for the after-movie discussion on Saturday evening when I saw what was on the door. I especially liked the New York City theme mixed in, as well as Bob Dylan (whom I've actually met and dined with, in 1993).

The Big Fix (2012)

Seen: last night at Boulder High School, as part of Boulder International Film Festival.

“The primary function of a theater is not to please itself, or even to please its audience. It is to serve talent.” Robert Brustein.

This week I had planned on going on the Saturday outing of my hiking group as usual, but I woke up at 4 a.m. and realized I might be on the verge of a scratchy throat. A little voice inside my head told me to forgo this week, and so I rose early and sent a message to the group organizer that I would see them next week probably.

Instead I decided to rest from the stress of the week, which had been more than usual. Still I needed something to get out of the house for, and perusing Facebook I noticed a status update from Occupy Boulder suggesting that people see the movie The Big Fix, which was showing this weekend as part of the Boulder International Film Festival.

The post had a link to the Youtube trailer for the movie (link) (which is not to be confused with the 1978 Richard Dreyfuss detective movie).When I clicked on the Youtube link, I was a little suspicious, because it was from a "green" organization and mentioned the threat of "climate change," which made my eyes roll. I'm still very much a supporter of legitimate environmental causes, but from my perspective the theory of man-made climate change is way, way overblown to the point of being, well, bunk. Most of the people I know working in anything related to "climate science" actually share this belief to some degree. Something really rotten is going on, if you ask me.

Fortunately it turned out the movie was not a documentary about climate change, but rather about the fiasco of the BP Deepwater Horizon well disaster in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010, and the injustice of it, and how big money has corrupted politics. Now that's a subject I can sink my teeth into, especially in regard to BP (formerly British Petroleum), which has close connections to a subject I've been researching for several years.

I had never heard of the Boulder International Film Festival, so naturally I was intrigued and went to their website (link), where I could buy tickets to the movie. Looking at the listings, I wished I had known about the festival sooner, but I thought it was good enough to catch a least one movie. Although I could have seen a different movie than The Big Fix, I thought it was appropriate to follow through on the initial random suggestion. Besides, how often do I get a chance to see a bona fide hippie-style environmental documentary in Boulder?

Much of the BIFF was taking place at the Boulder Theater, a nice venue to see movies downtown (and with a great neon sign), but The Big Fix was showing in the auditorium of Boulder High School. Since I'd recently been back to my own high school for productions (both the building I went to, as well as the new and inferior structure), I thought this would a nice continuation and contrast.

The high school was swarming with people with festival badges when I got there in the late afternoon. I went into the lobby and picked up my ticket at Will Call. One of the fun things about film festivals is that they are sort of a halfway phenomenon between live theater and movies.

Before the screening, I killed a few moments wandering down the hallway perusing the glass cases full of trophies from decades ago. It was nearly a carbon copy of a trophy case from my own high school just forty miles away, in a rather pleasingly fun way. Even the school colors are the same, but with the letter "B" instead of "C." It felt almost like being in a parallel universe (except our mascot was waaaayyyyy cooler, for the record).

The auditorium was about the same size as the one in my own high school as well. The ellipsoid lights hanging from the side brought a smile to my face.
Before the screening a guy from the festival came out and introduced it, and let the director (I think) speak for a few minutes. The guy from the festival said the movie was painful for him to watch, because he had been part of the Obama White House during the whole crisis, and could vouch for the truthfulness of some of the criticisms in the movie. Fortunately he made only passing mention of "climate change" and the need for "carbon solutions," which have nothing to do with the subject of real pollution and environmental degradation caused by high-level corruption.

The movie began with a short history of British Petroleum, which basically is synonymous with the history of 20th Century Iran. I was extremely pleased at the short history of the Iranian coup of 1953 and the involvement of western intelligence services.  Like I said, it's a subject that I have been researching very heavily for a number of years now in connection to a particular historical individual.

The movie itself was well-produced and professional. It was presented from a highly personal viewpoint, since the film maker was from Louisiana. The suffering of the residents was portrayed very poignantly, as was the malfeasance and indifference of the corporations and the government. I was fun sitting there watching a movie criticizing a Democrat president surrounded by a bunch of people who no doubt voted for him with great enthusiasm in 2008.

Still I thought the film felt short. It didn't really tell me much I didn't already know. For all its power, the paradigm of the movie was still wallowed in the old-school "oil companies are evil" thing. Why can't the government do something? In many ways, things are far worse, and far more corrupt, than were portrayed in the movie.

What was shown was only the tip of the iceberg, or the top of the oil slick, one might say. The message could have gone a lot further, but it was probably at exactly the right temperature for the aging hippie crowd of BIFF, which sees the world in a certain way where "oil companies" are the enemy.  They openly booed at the mention of the infamous Koch Brothers, who have become a convenient stalking horse for the liberals. If only we get out these bad apple rich guys...

The movie indeed hinted at the wider level of corruption, but really didn't explore it much. In the end, I thought the first few minutes of the history of Iran at the beginning were the most powerful. I wished the whole movie had been about that.

After the film, there was the normal question-and-answer session with the director. People from the audience came up to the microphone in front of the stage one after another. The level of the questions was about what I expected from a Boulder audience, and included things like: "how about the green organizations get together and endorse candidates in the upcoming election?" and "why can't the Pentagon get its gasoline from some other oil company than BP?" and "how can I boycott gas stations that use BP gasoline?"

From my seat in the auditorium, I wanted to go up to the microphone and say: "It's all way too late for any other these things. We are way past the point of no-return. We are just about to have a huge disastrous war with Iran, which no one here is mentioning, and all we can really do is spread the message of what is happening so that we can pick up the pieces after the disaster that is about to befall the entire nation."

But of course I didn't say any of those things. I didn't want to be a Cassandra. Maybe I should have said it, but I didn't.

At the end of the question-and-answer, the guy from the festival said that since this was a "Call to Action" movie, there would be a continuation of the discussion in one of the classrooms down the hallway.

I thought it would be fun to go, so on the way out of the auditorium, after depositing my ballot (I gave the movie 5 out of 5---why not?), I followed the signs down the hallway, and into a small classroom that appeared to be part of the English department of Boulder High School, or more specifically, the drama program, since the ceiling was covered with quotes about theater, including the one I cited at the top of this write-up.

I took a seat by a large poster of William Shakespeare from the 1993 Colorado Shakespeare Festival.  A discussion was led by a local woman who elicited possible political actions from the people in the room, all of which seemed as quaint and old fashioned as the ones that people had brought up in the auditorium.

Everyone there seemed very concerned about defeating the pipeline that was to bring oil form the Canadian tar sands. It was the most important thing to them, it seemed. I wanted to ask why, because I don't really understand this issue. Aren't they going to drill up that oil anyway? Doesn't this just mean we'll get more of our oil from overseas, shipped by water, instead of over land?

But I kept my mouth shut of course, and my mind started to drift, like a bad high school student. After a while I noticed that on the wall in back of me, beside the Shakespeare poster, were, much to my surprise, small drawings of Ancient Greek triremes, as well as one of the Trojan Horse. On the shelf next to me was a thick text book labeled "Mythology." As the people in the room debated about a letter-writing campaign to stop the pipeline they hated, I flipped open the book and read a few paragraphs about the aftermath of the Trojan War.

End note: looking up that quote from the ceiling, I found this other one from Robert Brustein: “Theatergoing is a communal act, movie going a solitary one.” 

Weighing in

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Today my Ultralight gear obsession took a new step with the purchase of a cheap kitchen scale at Wal-Mart. I've had a fish scale for a month, but it is useless for less than a pound. Now I can weigh my lighter items of gear. In case you're wondering the weight of a Trails Illustrated Map of Indian Peaks/Gold Hill, the answer is three ounces.

The bear who came to tea

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No shortage of bears on last weekend's hike up to the top of Lookout Mountain. The gift shop was full of black bears in various poses on the shelves around us as we ate. My favorite one was this one in the photo, however, guarding the cream next to the hot water dispenser. In the background one can almost make out the counter where one can purchase the aforementioned peanut butter cups. I can assure you the bear was quite friendly and generously allowed me to fill up my cup for my Earl Grey.

Chimney Gulch

Here we are, on our way up, with Golden in the background. My GoLite down jacket (size: XL, color: Chili Pepper) performed like a trooper keeping me warm in the 10 degree weather (rest assured I was wearing a hat/balaclava most of the time, but took them off for this photo.)

And here we are on the way back down, near the same spot, having paid our respects to Buffalo Bill (I insisted on toasting Mr. Cody with our beers afterward).

Lookout Mountain

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 Woke up before dawn this morning and saw it was ten degrees outside, and a fresh coating of powder out the window. Wasn't exactly enthused to be going out hiking, but got going on schedule and drove two hours down to Golden, where I was the first one at the trailhead.

There were four of us today---Jonathan, the organizer, as well as Andrew, an ex-New Yorker I met on the first hike, and Zanen (?), a Texan whom I hadn't met before.

We started off on the snowy trail up Chimney Gulch. Surprisingly they wanted me to take the lead and set the pace. It seems they were quite happy to have me do it, and were somewhat glad the hyperkinetic pace-setters from previous trips weren't there.

As it happens, I had done this hike before. Well part of it, at least. Last summer when I was living in Boulder, I went off an spontaneous drive one weekend and wound up in Golden, where I drove up Mount Zion and parked at the Windy Saddle, halfway up, then walked up the trail to the Buffalo Bill grave and museum at the top of Lookout Mountain.

This time we were starting down in Golden itself, not halfway up, yet it still strange to be hiking the same route as last summer. A redo, in a way. 

The hike up was beautiful. The newfallen powder looked like sugar coating on the trees, and in the sunlight, the blowing flakes made multiple colors, like some kind of LSD trip.

We made good time and found ourselves at the top around noon. By then the sun had come out fully. It was all of thirteen degrees, but I didn't feel it, because of all the exertion.

Even the though the rest of the group didn't care, I insisted we go inside the gift shop and the little restaurant at the top. I love that kind of cheesy tourist stuff. I makes me feel like it's 1972 and I'm traveling with my grandparents again. I even bought one of those smashed souvenir pennies there. I have a little collection of them that I began when I left New York seven years ago. It's not an obsession, just something I do whenever I remember to do it.

My favorite part of the day was when we were on our way up and stopped at on overlook looking down at the valley of Clear Creek, right as it comes out of the mountains towards Golden. I took the opportunity to give the group an impromptu five minute presentation on the history of the Colorado Gold Rush, one of my favorite historical topics. 

I took a Toblerone along this week, but I didn't even finish it. Turns out they have awesome peanut butter cups in the gift shop up there, as I had remembered from last summer. One of the great things about hiking is you don't have to worry about eating too much sugar. It's all guilt free.

Afterwards, at Andrew's invitation, we went down to the Old Chicago in Lakewood, where I had two pints of beer and loosened up enough to engage a lengthy fun-spirited debate with Andrew about religion and spirituality.

Ten degrees? Bah!

 

Thank You, Edward B.

A note found blowing in the wind, reprinted here:

If there is one thing about you that I have cherished above all else, it is your innocence. It is innocence that I felt in you, when I was in your presence. It was innocence that I felt in myself too, when I met you, that had seemed lost, but was refound whenever I was near you, and made me ashamed that I had ever lost it. It is your innocence that I miss most of all, for it replenishes me, even now, and makes me feel the world is new with each breath.


I know why things must the way they are. There is no mystery about that to me. Yet that does so little to lessen the sorrow I feel. Yet sorrow, like joy, is one of the two wings of human experience, as Rumi points out. How can we fly without them. Embrace your hurt to make it the greatest joy. You above anyone else have taught me this.


Thank you---for everything, for so long. You more than anyone else in my life have taught me what it feels like to feel myself connected to another person's life, and through that one connection---you---I have felt myself connected to the rest of humanity. How could I ask for anything more beautiful than that?


Innocence, yes, I know it is still in you, below everything else that may have clouded it over. It is still as strong as ever, still as pure as ever. To know that it still springs so pure is to feel a warm wind in my life every single day.


Thank you, yes. Thank you. Maybe I'll never get to tell you that in person, so I will throw it into the wind, like petals of a flower, and hope that the beauty of it finds it way to you somehow, in some roundabout way, in some beautiful sunny day, when the wind caresses your face, and the sunlight beams in your eyes once again.


I will be your friend forever.

Lady Moon

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 This week the Denver area got hit by a huge snowstorm, prompting the cancelation of this weeks reddit group hike, which was to be down in Golden.

But up in Larimer County the storm was much less severe, hardly more than the dumping we got in late October. By Saturday the roads were completely clear.

With no group hike, I thought I might just relax on Saturday. But by noon, I was more than a litte stir crazy. I got in my car and thought I'd go from a drive, like I used to back in high school. I wound up going up to Red Feather Lakes, into the Roosevelt National Forest area.

My snowshoes and gaiters were still in the trunk from last week, and when I passed the Lady Moon trailhead, I decided it was time to get a little exercise.

It was a perfect sunny afternoon. There was about a foot of snow on the ground, and there was already a nice little trench from previous snowshoers and cross country skiers. I didn't even have to use my poles.

The trench went about a mile along the trail before looping around. I didn't feel like blazing any new tracks in the powder, so I turned around and called it a day. I took this picture with smartphone on the way back, passing through a meadow. You can almost make out a woman crosscountry skier in the middle of the meadow.

The trail was very flat. Up near Red Feather, the terrain is a plateau, more or less, with small mountains poking up. It was the perfect amount of exercise before the sun went behind a cloud and the temperature started to drop.

A very nice afternoon. As I drove back through town, it occurred to me that the only thing missing this week was the ongoing "bear" theme. Just as I was thinking about this, and stopped at a stoplight, a van pulled up to my left. When I looked through the passenger window, I just burst out laughing. I couldn't beliee what I saw. Right through my passenger window was an enormous looming emblem of a standing ursine creature staring back at me with the words: Bear Archery. 


"Perfect,"  I muttered.

Lunch@Penelope's

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Downtown Estes Park---a complete dive, to be sure, with mediocre service and not-cheap food, but it is the only place I know in the world with photographs of both Isabella Bird and Marilyn Monroe on the wall.

I was just about to head out of town when I realized how hungry I was after showshoeing, and I just had to visit my favorite hamburger joint. The place was crowded for lunch. I ordered an elk burger and fries and took one of the only tables left, all by my lonesome, while I waited for my order. Fortunately it was the one right below Isabella, where I always prefer to sit.

I was feeling a bit guilty about hogging up so much space, but then after about five minutes who should appear but my new friend Jonathan, who had come there independently.

While we waited for our food, I pointed at some of the old photographs on the wall. Jonathan is from Wisconsin and just moved out here last year. He asked me if I knew much about Colorado history. "Probably more than most people here," I said.

It was an unexpected pleasure, sharing lunch on a sunny winter day after so much exercise. I might have even said that it was the whole point of it all.

Bear-Dream-Emerald

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So I guess I'm smack in the middle of one of my outdoorsing phases.

This past week the organizer of /r/coloradohikers on Reddit (link) proposed two meetups, one on Saturday and Sunday. The Saturday meetup was another hike outside Boulder, to the top of the mountain that is above the Flatirons. The Sunday one was to be a snowshoeing adventure in Rocky Mountain National Park.

I briefly considered committing to both of them, but decided it was folly. I decided to go with the snowsheoing expedition on Sunday, for various reasons. One is that the snowshoes that my sister bought me for my birthday have been languishing unused and even unwrapped in the trunk of my car since October, and I dearly wanted to use them at least once this winter.

It also seemed quite appropriate to go on the showshoing expedition, because we were to meet up in RMNP at Bear Lake, which would continue the "bear" theme of my life lately.

So I skipped the Saturday meetup. That evening I heard from the group organizer. Evidently it was to be just him and me for the showshoeing trip. That made it much harder to back out, which was a good thing.

So early Sunday morning before dawn I drove to Estes Park, earlier enough to grab a donut at the Donut Haus just outside of town, where I like to visit, but which is usually jam packed in the summer. I also discovered the fun fact that if you get to the park early enough, you can enter without paying the usual twenty dollars. Already the day was off to a good start.

I found the Bear Lake trailhead without problem. There was hardly any snow in the park at lower elevation, but there was plenty at higher elevation.

About half a dozen cars were already parked there---I felt like a true early bird. I fumbled using the scissors on my keychain to cut the plastic straps on my snowshoes. I felt like a real amateur. The truth is that this was the first time in my life I had ever been snowshoeing. When I was younger, it always seemed like something quaint and weird, like something the Hardy Boys would be doing.

The group organizer, Jonathan, found me in the parking lot and waited for me to get ready, in my obsessive compulsive way. We carried our snowshoes up to the benches at the trailhead and I found myself hoping that I knew what the hell I was doing, while pulling the bindings onto my feet.

But it wasn't too hard to figure it out, and in a few minutes we were off. He obviously knew I had been the slowpoke on our trip up Bear Mountain, so he didn't mind when I apologized in advance that I might be slowing him down.

We decided to make a hike up the trail from Bear Lake to Bierstadt Lake. I very much liked the idea, since that exact trail was the very first Colorado hike I ever made, with my family, in the summer of 1978, when we first moved out here. I hadn't been back to this trail since then.

We started up Bierstadt Moraine, but about halfway up, we ran into a woman in microspikes coming down who ironically asked me, "Have you been on this trail before?"

"Not this time of year," I replied, not mentioning that it had been over three decades.

She said that she hiked this trail a lot, and had been up to Bierstadt Lake two weeks ago, but today she had been unable to even find the trail, because of the snow that had blown over it. She cautioned us to be careful and not get lost, if we proceeded.

"Where are you from?" she asked us. "Fort Collins," I said. "Boulder," said Jonathan.

She seemed quaintly relieved at that, as if she could trust us not to kill ourselves on the trail. Turns out she was from Loveland.

So we climbed up to the top of the moraine. It wasn't too hard. I was barely winded and doing very well in the snowshoes. But the woman turned out to be right. The trail was completely unidentifiable, so we decided to turn around, but not before discovering a complete igloo that someone had constructed. I decided not to climb inside.

So we descended the Moraine back to Bear Lake, where we decided to take an alternative route, up from Bear lake towards Dream Lake, and then Emerald Lake, which was about two miles in, and right at the foot of the mountains on the Continental Divide.

It was a steep trail, and I did very well. Getting winded or fatigued wasn't my main problem this time. Rather it was the strain of the muscles right at the top of my thighs, at my hips, where the tendons were sore by the time I got to Emerald Lake.

I only embarrassed myself once, when I foolishly walked too close to a sunken tree and discovered the nightmare of being caught in the loose snow there (people actually die from being "drowned" in snow pits). It took a great amount of my remaining energy to get myself back on my feet. But I believe people should be forgiven when they fall down while snowshoeing (or cross-country skiing).

It was a great warm day, overall. We put in about 2000 feet of elevation gain, topping out around 10,500 feet. But I barely felt it. I must be getting back in shape.

By time we got back to Bear Lake, the parking lot was crammed full of people just starting out for the day.

There was something so oddly satisfying about the whole experience, beyond the physical exertion. I can't quite explain. Maybe there is part of me still trying to be a real Coloradoan after all these years, and somehow I fulfilled part of that.

One of the best fun moments of the day was when a woman on the trail who had been following us told me, when she caught up to me, that because of the tan color of my gaiters, she thought I was hiking in bare legs. "Hard core!" she said. It was almost as if she granted me the benefit of that, even after she found out it wasn't true. It made a better story, I suppose.

Only one minor screw-up: I forgot the Toblerone bar!

Here are some pictures that Jonathan posted of our trip. That's me in the red down jacket standing in front of the Igloo on Bierstadt Moraine, and on the frozen surface of Emerald Lake.

Rest stop on Lumpy Ridge

Gear shown: trusty Nalgene bottle (one of the first pieces of gear I bought two years ago at REI), Natl. Geographic trail map for Rocky Mountain National Park, Toblerone (of course---for the bear theme, see this), REI Flash containing trail food, emergency stuff, etc., Black Diamond Trekking Poles (also an early purchase from two years ago). Fixed to outside of pack are heavy mittens (unused) and small packing cube containing my microspikes.

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The Pleasure of Swiss Chocolate at High Altitude

The fun I had hiking with the reddit group that went up Bear Mountain had me eagerly volunteering to go on the second scheduled hike, which was to be down near Colorado Springs (because of weather, supposedly). It was to be a long hike up Mount Rosa, which supposedly was the peak the Zebulon Pike actually climbed instead of the one named after him.

The trek would be even more daunting than the week before, at higher altitude, and with a greater vertical rise, but a little voice kept telling me to follow through and commit to going ,which I did. I've learned to follow that little voice as much as possible.

For the half the week, I wasn't sure I could make it physically, however, because it took that long for my thigh muscles to recover from the flexing they took the week before. But by Friday I was all psyched to go. I went out to REI and bought a bunch of trail goodies, and went to the Mountain Shop in downtown Fort Collins and got the National Georgraphic Trails Illustrated map for the Colo. Springs area. I was even so motivated as to go to Office Depot and make color copies of both sides of the map, to splice them together to get an impromptu map of the entire trail.

I spent Friday afternoon getting my little REI flash pack prepared, using my new twist ties to fasten my microspikes and trekking poles to back. I looked like a real alpinist.

Then on Friday evening I got a message via reddit from the group organizer saying that almost everyone had canceled except for two people, so he was calling the trip off for this week. Part of me was disappointed, of course, but in reality I was quite relieved. I knew the physical challenge might be beyond me right now, until I get in better shape. Yet I felt I'd earned "cred" among the group for having stuck my guns until it was canceled.

But I couldn't just stay at home on Saturday. I was all geared up, literally, and needed something to do. So I kept my alarm on, and in the morning I left around sunrise and drove by myself up to Estes Park, one of my favorite places.

I drove up to the Lumpy Ridge trailhead just north of town. From there you can walk right into Rocky Mountain National Park (for free!). It's a popular place to access the park, as one can imagine, but on this morning, there were only two other cars in the large parking lot.

I spent the next six hours hiking up the canyon along the ridge into the park, passing the curious towering rock formations that are popular with rock climbers in the summer, including the famous "Twin Owls" that are visible from Estes Park proper. There are some amazing views of Long's Peak and Mount Meeker along the way (like this one).

The vertical rise over four miles was less than two thousand feet, yet I was quite winded along the way (partly because it is at a higher altitude than I'm used to lately). I was glad that the other hike was canceled. I probably would have embarrassed myself, or wound up torturing myself to death. A light easy week was in order.

I turned around and headed back just in time to get chased by a snowstorm coming down off the continental divide.

It was a great solo day.  Just a little over nine miles total. I had to (or should I say, got to) use my microspikes for the top part of the trail as I got to the crest of the ridge.

I even saved most of my trail goodies for the next week. The only thing I wound up eating was my Toblerone bar, a staple of mine on the trail since I bought a huge one in Switzerland in 1985 with virtually the last money I had while heading home. Good memories always make a good hike too.

And my thighs feel great. All ready for the next one.

Spotaneous Puppet Show@Chez Westminster

It had been weeks since I'd been to a legitimate show of any kind. Thus it was very nice to be treated to a spontaneous puppet show after school staged by my three nieces this afternoon, using the family room sofa as a stage. The first show was a three-act drama involving homemade paper bag puppets (show here with cousin Becca looking on). The revolved around a girl looking for her lost dog and cat.

The second show was used conventional puppets, involving a princess and a unicorn. Wasn't quite sure about the plot of this one, but it was marvelous nevertheless. Much applause was given.

What I missed out on in Amarillo

So I didn't go to Occupy Congress in Washington, D.C. this week, as I planned.

I originally planned to join the folks from Occupy San Diego on their cross-country Greyhound bus ride. I was going to take the bus down to New Mexico, or to Amarillo, Texas, and join their convoy. I had even contacted the organizer in San Diego about joining them, and donated money so that others could buy bus tickets.

But I got signals in my guy saying not to go to D.C. right now, for various reasons, among them being my discovery that the Occupy Congress thing was going to be just a one-day event. I thought they were going to try to set up an Occupy encampment on the National Mall.
I thought that would be the end of it.

As it happens the big story of the entire Occupy Congress event has not been what happened in D.C. on Tuesday (the day of protest), but what happened to the Occupy San Diego people on the way there. The entire group was kicked off the bus in Amarillo by the Greyhound driver, who stated that he disagreed with their politics and did not want them on board.

The entire S.D. contingent spent the night stranded in the Amarillo bus station, until they got an apology from Greyhound and were given an express bus all the way to D.C.

It was a huge thing in the social media, and made the national news in multiple outlets. Keith Olbermann called the driver, Donald Ainsworth, his "worst person in the world" for that day (not that I'm a big Keith Olbermann man). The "Amarillo 13," and the stranded occupiers came to be called during the event, were greeted with a hero's welcome when they got to D.C.

Here's one article on what happened.

So that's what I missed out on. That photo in the article of the Occupiers in the bus station was probably taken about the same time as the one at the top of Bear Mountain that I posted. I traded one experience for another, I suppose. Quite an adventure they had in Amarillo---yet one I felt like I wasn't mean to participate in. How weird.

3000 feet above Boulder

I didn't mean to do it---to take my first ever real video using my cellphone. But that's exactly what happened, when I standing on the very top of Bear Mountain on Saturday with the /r/coloradohikers group from reddit. I was actually trying to take a picture, but somehow, with the clumsiness of my thick gloves, I wound up hitting the video button instead.

Actually I took above three short videos. I was not aware of it until I was looking at the photos last night with my nieces.

Today I decided to take the plunge and join the modern video era---I decided to upload my first video to Youtube. It was suprisingly easy. It was so easy that I'm ashamed I was intimidated about it.

So here's the first one, a mere eight seconds of footage from the top of Bear Mountain, looking down on the city of Boulder. Keep in mind that I didn't think I was taking a video at the time. Also that's me huffing and puffing after four hours of hiking to the top.

Here's a second one, a bit shorter but with a few of fellow hikers in the shot. As you can tell, I'm got a long ways to go to be a decent videographer.

Atop Bear Peak

Last year my life seemed to have a curious recurring theme about bears. This was especially true when I was living in Boulder, and no incident was more indicative of this than when I actually walk right past a bear right in town in June.

I spent a lot of time hiking while I was there, but one of my regrets was that I didn't climb Bear Mountain, which is essentially the highest point on Boulder Mountain, the mountain that flanks the south side of the city. It seemed like an obvious thing to do, yet I was still somewhat intimidated by the steepness. Right at the end of the summer, one of my co-workers---a cheerful Swede named Lars---invited me along on a hike to that spot, but I didn't quite have the gumption to do it. Also I worried I might slow him down, given that he used to be a ski instructor in Aspen.

It's this latter thing---fear of being the slow person in a group---that has kept me from going on a group hikes in the past. It's not only that I feel out of shape compared to others, but also simply that I like to take my time, to preserve my energies over the long haul, and also, most especially, I like to just daydream and stare off into space. I don't like the idea of racing through things, as many like to do.

So it was with some trepidation that I decided to go along on a group hike this weekend. I found it through the website reddit, which I've used as my primary news source for the last five-plus years. Recently someone started a coloradohikers subreddit there with the idea of soliciting group hikes. Since I've been planning to do more hiking this year, it intrigued me. When I saw that the first hike was to be to none other than the top of Bear Mountain, I knew this was absolutely something I had to do.

To make it easier on myself---meaning, harder to back out---I replied to a message on the message from someone needing a ride from Fort Collins. Thus I committed myself early, and arranged by text message to pick the person up near campus at a quarter to seven on Saturday morning. Thus there was no backing out when I woke up yesterday morning.

My companion for the ride down was named Franklin. He was a student at CSU studying pre-vet-med, and wanted to go vet school after graduation. I told him about my job at CSU many years ago, where I had milk and slaughter goats. Franklin turned to be from New York---from out on Long Island.

We got to the South Mesa trailhead right at 8 in the morning. There were about ten people there. I had to scramble to pay for parking so I could leave with the group.

The first couple miles were gentle. It was sunny and warm. I was wearing my new Golite down jacket over my new Kulh wool fleece, as well as a hat and balaclava. About a mile in, I was sweltering. Some of the others were almost stripping down to their t-shirts and shorts by this time, but when we got up into Shadow Canyon, it got cooler quickly and I was glad I had worn all my layers.

It was about then that we started hitting snow and ice on the trail, and all of us who brought them got our microspikes. This had in fact been my purchase the day before, upon recommendation of the hike organizer. I had used my entire REI dividend for a new set of Kahtoola Microspikes. I had debated whether to buy a pair, but on the trail, it became obvious that I wouldn't have been able to make the hike without them.

The hike was brutally steep in the snow, nevertheless, especially the last few miles up to the top. My arms grew very weary pulling my trekking poles out of the snow.

I was by far the slowpoke. The group had to stop and wait for me to catch up as the last one. But I didn't feel so bad. It was obvious that I was probably at least twice as old as every other person in the group. Slow and steady wins the race. I know how fast I can go, and I wasn't go to go any faster.

Sheer willpower kept me going the last few miles. Each step seemed like the last one I could take. I would look up to the summit and think: no way can I make it, but also "I'm not going to stop, no many how long it takes me to get there."

Finally, at a little past noon, we got the very windy summit. Those without layers were surely suffering then, but I felt toast warm, except for my toes that were freezing in my non-waterproof boots. I scrambled to the top of the rocks and touched the USGS marker at the summit. I'd made it to the top of Bear Mountain at last.

On the way down I lagged behind the group again, not because of exhaustion, but because I didn't want to twist my ankle. In this case, a few others lagged behind with me, including Ben, who was from New York City and had grown up in White Plains. We talked about the military history and the Revolutionary War as we walked together.

That was one of the quirks of the whole trip----the first four people I introduced myself to were ex-New Yorkers, and everyone else was from somewhere else. As far as I could tell, I was the only person there who had grown up in Colorado.

By the time we got to the trialhead, I was walking in spirit with the group, not lagging behind, and with a smile on face. I'd preserved my energies just the right amount. By this time everyone was talking outloud about all the food they were going to eat.

As we stood at the trailhead in the parking lot, everyone said how much fun they had had, and they we should do this on a regular basis. Already there are plans for another hike next week.

On the way back to the Fort, Franklin and I stopped at my suggestion at the A&W in Berthoud where we wolfed down burgers, fries, and root beer. That A&W is my favorite place to stop between Boulder and Fort Collins. Berthoud is a nice little town. Franklin said he had never been in an A&W before. It was the perfect end to the day.

I've included the photo that another hiker took of us, at the top of Bear Mountain. I'm the guy in the back, in the red down vest, happy just to have made it to the stop. My friend Franklin is down in front with the yellow hat.

Here's the map of Bear Mountain.

My favorite thing in the world

This is what my bed looked like this morning in Westminster shortly after I got up--full of stuffed animals. They weren't there in the guest room the night before when I went to sleep. Instead they were piled on me as I slept (or rather as I pretended to still be asleep) around six thirty in the morning.

My nieces love to do this to me---pile their "aminals" on me while I'm in bed. They started it when I was staying with them back in Massachusetts in 2008-2009.

On the first night of my visit this time, they told me to make sure to stay in bed so they could do this. But I got out of bed anyway, thinking they had forgot. But they hadn't forgotten. Instead when they saw me, they made me get back in bed and pretend to be asleep with my eyes closed. I can hear them sneaking up to my bed with the animals. Maura giggles while Sarah whispers directions to her: "put those ones over there by his head."

This morning I made sure to stay in bed until they were finished. Then I pretended to awake with a giant roar, flinging all the animals off the bed and sending my nieces running out of the room in delight.

Did I mention this is my favorite thing in the world?

Android Baby

One of the surprises of this past Christmas was my father's gift to me of a new Android smartphone. I had thought about taking the plunge and finally getting some kind of device like that, but hadn't settled on it (I'm always way behind any electronic trends). I was really excited when I opened it.

It took me a week to finally set up the account and get in working. The first use I got out of it was to use the clock to count down the new year with the homeless people at Occupy Boulder.

For a couple days after that, I was sure it was all a horrible mistake. It seemed like it was "too much connectivity" and had the possibility of driving me insane (literally). Fortunately I think I'm learning to mitigate the downsides and have learned some fun upsides of having this kind of device.

I really like being able to call up Youtube videos and watch them, or listen to the music on them. I've been using the Youtube app to explore  a New Year's resolution to finally educate myself about classical music, starting with Mozart. I spent a couple days listening/watching various versions of Exsultate, Jubilate, which Wikipedia tells me is Mozart's earliest works that is still performed in concert on a regular basis. I watched at least ten different versions by ten different sopranos.

This was particularly fun when I was down in Westminster visiting my nieces. I showed them some of the videos and they watched various versions with me, huddling right next to me as we watched on the tiny little screen. It's the kind of the memory that I hope they keep in their minds in the years ahead, partly because it is so "of the times" of the year 2012. Someday they talk about doing such things, and it will seem wonderfully quaint.

Later on that evening, Sarah came into the guest room and decided she wanted to play a version of "house" with me. She had brought her baby doll into the room in her toy stroller. She left the baby with me and told me to change its diaper if it needed that.

"Just throw the diaper away into the trash, and then pick it up and use the same one," she told me. Then she took the stroller and left the room to go off to "King Soopers" to go grocery shopping.

When she was out of the room, I dutifully changed the diaper just as she instructed, throwing it away and then picking it up out of the trash again to use the same one---just so I could tell her truthfully that I had done it.

Then I decided to have a little fun of my own. I used my Android phone to search Youtube for a "baby crying." I found a video and confirmed it was what I wanted. Just before she came back into the room, I pressed "play" on the video on the phone and then slipped it into the crib behind the doll's head.

My little stunt was a big hit. Children always appreciate it when you make a sincere effort to participate in their games, but this was extra special. It made me feel like I wasn't so behind the times after all. Old dogs can learn new tricks.

Ultralight Rainbows

Yesterday was a beautiful day down in Westminster. It was sixty degrees when I arrived in the mid afternoon. I walked around for a hour before heading over to the school, where I ambushed the girls on their way out the door. They didn't expect to see me there. Maura rode home with her mom, but Sarah insisted on walking home with her uncle, holding his hand most of the way. We raced the last couple hundred yards through the park in order to beat my sister's minivan to the front door.

When I got back to my sister's house, the new tent I had ordered had arrived. My current tent is way to heavy---not something one can carry in a pack. As part of my Ultralight '12 initiative, I had agonized over which shelter to buy, and after much deliberations on weight and utility, I had settled on a Tarptent, because I liked the concep. I specifically chose the Double Rainbow, which comes it at a mere 41 ounces for the full set up.

Fortunately it was a great day to set up a tent. I wasn't even planning to set it up, but the girls were very eager to help me try it out. So with them "helping" (mostly by swinging on the swingset while I fumbled with the directions), I got the tent set up just as the sun was setting. The first order of business was to pack the three of us inside and engage in a game of coloring with markers of many colors of course. It is surely an auspicious start for the Double Rainbow.

Helium

Another trend for the new year---ultralight. Two years ago I went on a weird binge of deciding I needed to get real outdoor gear. I had been motivated by my trip to France the year before that, when I realized how poor my gear was, and how it limited my movements and options. Then when I got back to Colorado in spring 2010, I got obsessed with visiting REI everyday and figuring out what I wanted to buy. I went through a phase of buying out lots of gear with the idea of being able to take off on the spur of the moment and hike up into the mountains, if need be.

This phase culminated in the trip I took this past summer/fall to the west coast. I camped using much of my gear, although some of it turned out to be a bust, and hardly useful at all. I guess that's a common experience. Nevertheless it did allow me a great spontaneity of travel---being able to camp anywhere I wanted, and to take off into the mountains in my car on whim, as I did when I left Fresno and headed up into the Sierras. I felt very mobile.

But now I feel like I've entered a new phase again. For one thing, I've decided that I'm going to take to the road again, but I am going to ditch my car. I'm either going to sell it or store long-term, I haven't decided which. I'm going to go back to being on foot, and carrying everything on my back. Where I'll go...well I haven't decided that, but I know this is the right thing.

As part of this, I've decided to embrace the concept of "ultralight," which is a trend in backpacking that, as it sounds, indicates that one tries to travel as light as possible. Every ounce counts.

I've learned that many of my gear choices from 2010 were poor choices on this score. They were okay for car camping, but were not ok when one tries to minimize the weight one carries on one's back. So it means buying a bunch of new gear. I've been making out a list of what I need, and using the site geargrams.com, which lets one keep a gear library/list organized by weight and category.

My first major purchase was a new backpack. This stung somewhat, since I'd recently bought a 350 dollar Gregory Baltoro internal frame that is awesome, but is over seven pounds in weight. I never have really used it, except to keep it in the trunk of my car. But it's too heavy.

I wound up purchasing a new Golite Odyssey on sale for a mere ninety bucks at the local Golite outlet in downtown Fort Collins. It's about three and half pounds. I could have gone even lighter, but I wanted to keep some excess capacity in the bag, because I figured I may need it for the various kinds of travel I might do.

It was fun to buy it. I thought about it for a couple weeks and finally dove in while the clearance sale was going on. It was especially fun to buy it here in my hometown. It reminded me of buying my old blue Camp Trail Explorer pack way back in the spring of 1985, at a little now-defunct store on South College, earned with money I made delivering singing balloon-a-grams. Lots of helium involved. I took that to Europe that summer, and trekked through the Eastern Bloc,  Turkey, and all the way to the ruins of Troy. It was "the trip that changed my life" right before I went off to Oregon as a transfer student.

I need that kind of energy of transformation again, and I felt a little of that old magic buying the Golite backpack. I was all of twenty years old back in the summer of 1985, and the world felt so different. Times have changed. It's freaking awkward trying to feel that way again. It's more than a little bit painful to feel how the world has changed, and trying to feel that optimism about life again. It seems so easy when you are young, to think you can summon newness into your life no matter what age you are. When are approaching fifty, it is a different story. You have to find a way to give yourself permission to be new, and that is not so easy to do sometimes. Or least it doesn't feel that way. I have to fight the voice that says "who the hell do you think you are, getting another chance to be new?"

Or as Satan himself once told me, in play:

Can't be born twice over, Can't be!

I thought it was good luck that while I was trying the pack on, I remarked to the attendant that I felt lighter with it, than without it, as if it were filled with helium. He replied that they had actually joked about helium-filled packs.

Then I walked down College with my back and stopped at a food cart vendor (something that didn't exist here in 1985). It was directly across the street from the offices of the long-defunct Balloon Family, my place of work. The building was bought out a decade ago by a locally famous billionaire businesswoman and turned into the headquarters of her charitable foundation.

I looked at the chalk board of food items and realized they were all Greek items, exactly the same kind that one buys in Greece---spinach pies, cheese pies, baklava. I could tell at once that the proprietor was Greek, so I used some Greek phrases interacting with him while I ordered. I showed him my new Golite Odyssey backpack.

"Maybe I'll use it in Greece," I told him, before biting into my spinach pie.

Nutritional Upgrades

My new regimen:

1. Beyond Tangy Tangerine, 2 scoops daily. The directions suggested four scoops daily for my body weight, but I decided to halfsy on that for now, because this stuff costs fifty bucks a jar, and I wanted the first jar to last a whole month, rather than fifteen days before reordering. I'm very pleased with the results. Among other things, it's like coffee for me---I never forget to take it. My body seems to like it a lot. I'm getting down to the end of the first jar now and need to reorder, which I'm going to do without delay. I'm also getting a jar for my dad, after telling him about it.

2. Powdered Whey, two scoops daily with milk as chocolate-flavored shakes. I bought some off the shelf from Whole Foods for about fifteen bucks for a large jar. I have one shake for breakfast, another for lunch. It has pretty much replaced all the sugary crap I used to eat, including Starbucks Frappucinos, which I don't miss at all. Very pleased so far.

3. Omega-3,-6,-9 gel tablets. I take three of these a day, one with each meal, for "essential fatty acids."

4. Magnesium chelate tablets, three per day. I bought these for my tendonitis. They seem to have really helped. It really makes me think that the off-the-shelf fruits and vegetables we are eating are truly stripped of basic nutrients.

To say that I feel like a new man, and that I feel in the best shape of my life, why only exercising mildly, is just for starters. Among other things, my mood has great improved, even in the midst of things that would otherwise cause me grief and sorry (including the state of the country and the world).

I don't weigh myself, but from my beltline it's obvious that I've already lost a few pounds (all the while gorging on chocolate over Christmas). It has definitely cut down on my sweettooth cravings in a huge way, and I no longer seem to be prone to overeating (both lifelong problems for me). The key point is that this has taken zero willpower on my part. I has just "happened" somewhat like magic.

One final bonus I noticed today while looking in the mirror is that the chronic rosacea on my nose seems actually be subsiding. My ex-wife was concerned about this years ago---my nose was always beat red and broken out in small lesions. I had given up that anything would ever change it, but today, in my mirror, my nose actually seemed more brown than red for the first time in living memory.

Of course I know that none of this is scientific at all, but I'm not out to prove anything, just to feel better---and that seems to be happening.