This Makes No Sense At All

Yesterday I was feeling the pressure of planning, but this morning we dropped everything and went to Briones Regional Park to do one of their trail challenges - a short loop,  less than five miles, but for a couple of hours there was no computer, no distractions, just enjoying California spring, lush grass, cows and cow pies, poppies popping out everywhere. A coyote cruising through the tall grass, stopping for something in the distance. Probably one of the gophers, who are busy pushing dirt out of their holes this morning. I had a perfect shot of one about a foot away. Sun was at my back, he had no chance to see me, just light fighters out of the sun in those old world war II movies. But Susan had seized the camera a minute before, to capture a burst of orange up ahead, so I just settled for a moment enjoying a gopher's nose at close distance.  Hardly seems fair to call it training. Where's the pain and misery? Now this same route in  mid winter, pour...

This is a big year for us. Finally completed the Torres del Paine circuit in March, in June do the last segment of the Arles Route over the Pyrenees into Spain, and in Aug-Sept complete the 2600 mile Pacific Crest Trail, starting near the southern border of Washington state and reaching Manning Park in Canada about 40 days later. Along with that we are trying to keep up our connections with friends and relatives, and Susan needs to attend to the needs of her 99 year old and somewhat independently  living mother. Not to mention normal house maintenance. It is difficult to keep on top of everything. Yesterday looked at detailed daily mileage for the Pcific Crest Trail trip to get exact time for trip and location of resupplies. Today I checked the flight to France to see whether we arrived in time to go on to Oloron Sainte Marie the same day. Yes, barring delays so querying hotel in Oloron for reservations. Our calendar every day says "walk". Today there was a note: Carry bac...

Warning, totally unrelated to hiking, other than hikers are lovers of beauty. We just came back from a birthday party which we have been attending for at least fifteen years. Normally it is on Angel Island in San Francisco Bay. Everyone brings potluck food, and we eat, the kids play, and everyone hikes all over the island to work off the food consumed. Today, rain, so we descended on the birthday honoree's house instead. Well, one of the on and off attendees of this event is a textile artist who came bearing her new book, which she had just received from the publisher. I spent quite a bit of time looking through it. This book has about twenty five years of research into it. The author comes from a family tradition of weaving, and when her husband got a teaching assignment in Saudi Arabia, she got introduced to bedouin weaving. Visiting the weavers, learning their customs and circumstances, became a full time obsession. The result is this gorgeous book, full of the author's ph...

In my heart of hearts, I credit my some of my relative contentment with where life has put me to my upbringing and choices I have made, but mostly to a long string of fortunate rolls of the dice. I come to this particular thought via an accidental car radio button sending me to rant radio. As for Godde, well, I follow Claire Bangasser's thoughtful struggles with Catholicism, and her Godde is a more reasonable person than the God of my Protestant upbringing. The radio rant happened to be one of those conservative hate radio commentators extending the fable of the ant and the grasshopper, only he has the ant giving in and feeding the grasshopper, and successive generations of grasshoppers, till the grasshoppers demand everything, eat all, and everybody dies. Well, I can understand some of the objections to taking from the deserving and giving to the underdeserving. Isn't it the way of Darwin, that those without survival skills die out, for the long run survival of the species?...