!

all i needed to know.

A L L  I   N E E D E D   t o   K N O W   A B O U T   P L A Y I N G   t h e   P I A N O .

Like David Helfgott's father says to Sam Rosen in Shine ~

'No … music … teachers, Mr. Rosen.'

So then to impart everything I may have ever needed to know in fact about playing the piano that I just recently came to realize I have learned from watching the film Shine fifteen years ago or something and now a twenty-minute TED Talk the other week ...



> Boldness of attack!

> You must tame the piano or it'll get away from you; it's a monster - tame it ... or it'll swallow you whole!

> Liszt broke plenty of strings.

> The notes first; the interpretation comes on top of them.

> It's all a question of balance.

> Learn to play blindfolded.

> Your hands must form the unbreakable habit of playing the notes so that you can forget all about them, and let them come from here … the heart!

> You must play … as if there is no tomorrow.

> Play only one impulse for the entire phrase; stop thinking about every single note and start thinking about the long line from the beginning to the end.



Now ... now it is time to put that education into good practice.

national novel writing month.

So November is National Novel Writing Month (uhh ... NaNoWriMo). Jeff mentioned it on our trip to the desert at the beginning of last month and I was trying to encourage him to pick up his pen (or tablet or laptop or whichever device he finds handy for the purpose) ... and write. Maybe not a novel. That seems a little ambitious to complete in thirty days. But - say - a novella. Or short story. Something.

And sitting on my porch yesterday half reading slash half thinking all the while watching the leaves fall away blow off the trees in the front yard I realized I was already missing mountains. And so I was thinking of past trips into such mountains just sort of reminiscing and I realized when I've written about them - all but twice - it has always been about a specific certain trip. Never just about the mountains in general. Or wild places in general. Or my thoughts on such. Maybe I generalized in a sentence or two. But the point being the intention was always really quite specific. We climbed this. Did that. And such.

The one - first time - was about having blisters and not showing it or complaining or hobbling too much because we were in the mountains and the blisters would heal.

The second was more recently about an annual trip with J into the Sierras this past summer where maybe it was about the specific place but I think in reading back over it was less so and more about the struggle of the journey. Less about the place. Hopefully. Maybe.

But regardless that is the writing I tend to like the most. Less about the place. More about thoughts and descriptions. Everything else. Not that I'm any good at it.

But in thinking just now about how I miss mountains and it is only the (ugh) fourth of November I thought rather than just scrounging through photos of past trips stored on hard drives (which I wholly still intend to do if for no other reason than to bring back the memories and - well - plausibly give me something to write about) I could stave off the feeling of missing them by - well - writing about them.

So I'm not sure what I'll complete by the end of the month. But that's not the point as I told Jeff. It doesn't have to be a novel. It just has to be complete. Whatever it is. I (and maybe he now) must complete some form of writing by the end of November. I don't think I mentioned to him at the time anything about publishing but I think it should have to be published. So I'm throwing that in. On paper. Not on this blog. Or his. Give it some sort of completeness that we could hold in our hand.

I have no idea if he will actually accept the challenge. But off I go ... I think mine will begin ~

'It started two weeks ago ... '

benjamin zander.

So J's and my new tradition is to watch TED Talks on Thursday evenings. We scroll through our Netflix and pick one out typically at random. Netflix handily organizes a dozen or so of them into groups on any given subject. Humanity's Future. Faith, Fate Or Fear. The Capitalism Paradox. Environment: Project Makeover. Knowledge Is Power. Just For Kids.



Music Revolution.



Buried in that group of videos was one entitled 'Benjamin Zander on Music and Passion.' Classical music in particular. His point to make was that classical music is not dead. That in fact every single human being has a passion for it. They just may not realize it. And to emphasize this point he uses clever and infectious humour and crazy hair and a Chopin prelude in E minor.



I about died laughing and was in the same moments brought to tears.

still. life.

This song came on shuffle tonight (have not heard it in some time).




I was - umm - vacuuming the rug in the living room in front of the speakers.




I - umm - turned off the vacuum.






Started the song over. Turned off the light. Cranked the volume knob on the hi-fi to earth-shaking (apologies neighbor Kim ... ). Lied down on the floor. Memories in a flood washing over me. And the realization just then how Suede had forged my idea of symphonic rock at least a decade before Muse still-impressive-but-so-less-impressive-than-the-Dog-Man-Star-era-Suede. Still Life. The Asphalt World. The 2 Of Us. This song this one song the epitome of symphonic rock absolute. Brett Anderson's voice and his range and dynamics unbearable. This song this one song ...






... epic.

'Ridiculous ... you’re right. It was a tragedy - a tragedy …

… a ridiculous tragedy.'

~ David Helfgott, Shine

matters of the utmost importance #4.

So ordering a bagel at the airport tonight I was asked one of the three questions that are always under any circumstance no matter answered with a yes.

Q: Do you want that grilled/toasted?
A: Yes.

Q: Do you want coffee?
A: Yes.

Q: Do you want to go to the mountains?
A: Yes.

ready.

I am going to miss this. Sheets drying on the line that is. Sun streaming. Slight breeze.



It's weird I know that I miss the rain. We all do here in Seattle. Even the hygienist at the dentist the other day. It's been months really since it's rained. And we all secretly love the rain.



We ... I ... love the sun too. And sheets drying on a clothesline of course. And summer breezes. And wearing canvas shoes sockless jeans cuffed high. Flip flops. Tossing frisbees at the park a few blocks from home. Leaving the windows open all night. It being light until late. Cassiopeia. Andromeda. But we ... I ... miss wearing wool. And scarves. Layers. And blankets. And seeing my breath hang in the air. And holding mugs of coffee or tea wrapped in both hands sipping slowly cos it is too hot to drink quickly. Crunching leaves. Golden. Yellow. Winding down.

*  *  *

Beginning of October tomorrow. Another week forecast of sun. Upper sixties to low seventies. Have not had to fire up my furnace yet. And got to hang my sheets out again on the line today while helping install a roof the perfect weather for it not too hot not too cold and sun to warm the tar. Past September weekends still spent in the mountains.

So I'll take it and not complain too much. For sure.





I'll be ready though for when it first smells like rain and there are grey clouds looming and then it just drizzles or it pours doesn't matter and I can embrace autumn proper and wear a scarf and a layer of wool and hide under a blanket on my front porch watching it all unfold.

You seem to be

a perfect memory of the future

reminding me how life is meant to be ...

~ P   S   B

winner.

From the just-released album 'Elysium' ... And as only the Pet Shop Boys can do so brilliantly - this can be taken quite sadly or quite optimistically.

I choose optimistically.

petty things slip away in the silent high places.

Given the time frame in which the following was written (it was first published in April of 1918 - the North Cascades National Park would not be created for another half century) ... I found it grandly profound. Even without that frame I found her writing - all of it - quite profound. Hilarious at times. Poetic. She flips from storytelling to sentiment - wit to wisdom - in a sentence. She talks about snow and ice and silence being everywhere. About it always being good to do a difficult thing. About the impossible becoming possible. About how - without expecting it - they happened on adventure.



And here - near the end of it all - she writes of their experience going up and over Cascade Pass ...

The pass is too wonderful not to be visited. Some day, when this magnificent region becomes a National Park, and there is something more than a dollar a mile to be spent on trails, a thousand dollars or so invested in trail-work will put this roof of the world within reach of any one. And those who go there will be the better for the going. Petty things slip away in the silent high places. It is easy to believe in God there. And the stars and heaven seem very close.

~ Mary Roberts Rinehart
From Tenting To-night: A Chronicle of Sport and Adventure in Glacier Park and the Cascade Mountains

From within the sounds and banners of the vast horizon,
        without words, into an inner silence, came:
        Remember well this magnitude.
        Lift your eyes,
            that the great meanings shall not flow by unheeded.
        See.
        The world's beauty carries in trust
            the importance of your salvation.

~ Cedric Wright
From Words of the Earth published by the Sierra Club © 1960

the impossible challenge.

T H E   I M P O S S I B L E   C H A L L E N G E .

I had sent a photograph to K. Posted it in the mail to her earlier in the summer. It was random black and white of the Picket range in the North Cascades to share with her a moment captured of mountains she needs but cannot envision. The shadows and light. Her response to me later was simple. Profound. In a half-question she wrote back -

'Maybe what you photograph best is silence.'

And that stopped me in my tracks.

For that in a sentence so concise - so clear - defined in an instant what I must now do with this old wooden view camera and the whole vastness and solitude of the North Cascades. But in an instant later begged the question for me: how does one go about photographing silence?

After a moment of thought the only possible answer I could come up with frightening was a single word … unintentionally.

And I realized it seemed as if this project - limitless in its scale and just as frightening as my answer in its scope - is like the ultimate lesson David Helfgott received from his piano professor when attempting the similarly musically-limitless interpretation of the third piano concerto of Sergei Rachmaninov in D minor -

'You must learn the notes David … so that you can forget all about them.'

Learn so that we can forget.

But it made perfect and absolute sense. Discover our purpose. All that we intend to do. Then - and this I know will be the hard part … forget it all. Let the future - everything that it may be … just be. Knowing without knowing. Just doing.

I have no idea if I can photograph silence. I may very well fail. But I know for certain I will never know without trying ... an old wooden view camera and some beautiful lenses and a rickety tripod stuffed in my pack up over mountains and passes high across glaciers and down through valleys all there unfolding before me.

per aspera ad astra.

Requiem aeternam dona eis domine et lux perpetua luceat eis.

Neil Armstrong (1930-2012)

darwin’s god.

Monday July twenty-second.




Forty feet to go. Twenty. I let J catch up out of breath persistent as ever clambering up the rocks below a feeling in me impossible to write. A pride beyond belief exploding. I let him pass as I always do so he could lead to the top. Struggling now I could tell with his own will to make the last few steps to the col. I snapped a photo of him. Then followed behind. At the top at last there was the sign: ENTERING KINGS CANYON NATIONAL PARK LAMARK COL. Someone had scratched in the metal the elevation: 12,880. And then beyond there was the view. So epic it took me by surprise. Startled. There was the whole granite rampart of the Sierra spread out in front of us peak upon peak upon peak. Darwin and Mendel leapt forth from the canvas that had up until this point only existed in my mind. Now here tactile enough to touch as if a chiaroscuro painting heavy handed unfolding. Light and dark. I turned and pointed south in an exclamation of all that was real in that linear moment toward streams of sunlight bursting forth from the literal hands of God. A complete painting of Darwin Canyon unfolded awash in focused pale light. Brushstrokes of cadmium and bromine. The lakes still a thousand feet below shimmered effervescent. Scraped dirty ice of glaciers tens of thousands of years old. The granite millions and millions. And J. Above me on top of the rocks now silhouetted against the chromatic blue sky fading. I felt alight in the dim instinct of the mountains. Afire. The stone and ice and water and light and fear and joy and myself were one. There I wept. And now I stare at this journal here trying to etch the sense of that moment knowing I cannot. Hanging on the molecules of air were droplets of water like tiny prisms scattered somehow in four dimensions. The iridescent light over it all.

*  *  *

A little over an hour earlier we were huddled under a rock overhanging while the storm at last died down. Rippling off in the distant west and north. We had been there almost three hours cowered while lightning flashed and hail dumped from blackened skies to cover the mountains as if from a fresh dusting of snow. At one point tucked in a ball with Stanley and George as his pillow J fell asleep all the while the hail fell and thunder exploded. I shivered. We were facing north and could see the way back from where we had come down to all the lakes we had passed. Upper and lower Lamarck. Grass. And North Lake even where the trail began splitting from the other heading over Piute Pass further to the north. Out even beyond then the outskirts of the dusty eastern Sierra town of Bishop and across the Owens Valley and White Mountains stark. More rain. Hail. The bolts of lightning seemed not to stop. Thunder shook the granite. But eventually it all began to quiet. The thunder more distant. Subtle flashes of lightning replaced sheer strikes still northwest over Mount Emerson and Humphreys and the red rock of the Piute Crags. North over Owens Valley. At last sunlight illuminated Bishop. The hail gave up. We had to decide at that hour whether to continue on to the col still another thousand feet above or retreat down to treeline and a small snowmelt stream. We decided for the col. Grabbed our packs. As we climbed the skies eased more and as we crested the final plateau and snowfield below the col the sun found us while dark clouds still clung to peaks west. J valiantly kept up and I stopped every so often to look back and see him soldiering on his legs unwilling to quit. The group of three we had met earlier at the start of the climb had given up and decided to pitch camp near the tarn below the col. We greeted them again as we made our way past up through the talus a giant mess of boulders to the snow and then the last hundred feet crumbly sand and rocks.

*  *  *

The descent down to the lakes seemed to stretch onward to infinity. Both of us drained from the storm nervous and frightening. Steep and no real path. I’d pick up the hint of a trail through the talus and gravel benches but lose it in an instant. The lakes and patches of green dotting their shores beckoned in the fading day. There after such exaltation I felt the rush of an impending low. Crawling over talus along the second lake inching our way over to a flat area just further beyond. More storm clouds approaching. How did J do it? How was he so strong when I felt on the edge of such collapse straining to keep leading us on? Struggling with every pore of my being for the strength. I saw my own transience. Tried to understand the meaningless of the mountains. How they simply exist. How I do not. Here this place so wild and desolate as to overwhelm. Mythic. Unchanging and changing. Above all the sky. We arrived and let our packs thud heavy on the granite. Rushing against what little light was left in the canyon I lit the stove (always such a welcome and comforting sound!) and while our food cooked rushed about setting up our tent and preparing camp here on a small perch nestled against a wall of rock. The light melted to pink. The granite glowed radiant with the hue of stormy Sierra summers. In all of my desperations to get us settled for the night I managed to stop only a few moments before fetching water and inflating air mattresses and unstuffing down bags. To absorb the spectacle of the light falling and filling against the stone the ice the water. Everything around us. Flicked on the lantern in the tent glowing a pale soft green against the dark sullen blues and greys and blacks of night. We engulfed our hot meal. J literally fell backwards muffled into his bag exhausted. Me - I braved the night to quick as I could do dishes and fetch water. Finally crawled into mine soft and warm. I could feel the storms descending like a dense heavy blanket. Spectacular.




Monday July twenty-third.





Awoke to hail beating down. Five o'clock. Just getting light. The sound of thunder clapping rebounding scattered off the walls surrounding us and returning as an echo of itself. Lightning flashes through the walls of the tent. Rain. Hail. Rain. Then slowly the dawn. A grey glow. The storm ravaged outside around us and I scurried deeper into my bag all the while J slept. Eventually both of us awake and around eleven finally a calmness settled. Slowly. At last I could peek out and eye the clouds south towards Evolution. They were breaking up. Hints of blue skies propelled me to break camp after together a quick hot breakfast. Shouldering our packs we headed off through the trail-less canyon picking our way along and around each of the lakes following at last an outlet stream as it spilled itself onto Darwin Bench epic below before branching out to bring life to tens of tarns and smaller streams all combining to crash a mile south far down into Evolution Valley. We scampered along the eastern edge of the bench to find the 'good use trail' (as Roper described it ... ) that would take us down to the John Muir Trail and onward to Evolution Lake. Followed it to the top of the final switchback climbing up from McClure Meadow far below. Then at last to Evolution. Cloud shadows. The immensities of Mounts Mendel and Darwin. And finally Mount Spencer ahead as we came upon the lake. Found a spot on which to toss our tent. Now to wander. Explore. Try to put to good use a view camera carried all this way over mountains. Find a photograph to make that possibly captures the grand scale of it all. Witness water from the outlet of Evolution crash and carve its way over disappearing falls to a creek far below winding through endless meadows illuminated. Shadows lengthen. The setting sun.




Tuesday July twenty-fourth.





I love Sierra mornings. Not like yesterday morning the thunderstorms on again off again hail. But these like today where I watched from inside the tent shadows created by the sun. Moving. Spilling. Falling. Our little camp goes from shadow to full sun in an instant. Brewed some coffee. Now sitting on granite wrapped in my sleeping bag the sound of Evolution Lake lapping at the shore nearby. A light breeze. Spectacularly quiet. No clouds though today. A group of hikers sets off around the far side of the lake east through this Evolution Basin. Over the Goddard Divide and Muir Pass east. Down into LeConte Canyon and further onward. The light last night was brief. It turned quickly from pinks to greys and then lost to dusk. Today under harsh unforgiving skies we climb point 11576 on the map above the western edge of Evolution Lake. To see south toward the divide and Sapphire and Wanda Lakes and a realm of rock barren jumbled and forsaken. Return to break camp and head back up to Darwin Bench for the night. J is up and moving now. Soon we'll be off.




Wednesday July twenty-fifth.





Morning of the fourth day. Sitting on granite with sun and breeze looking out over Darwin Bench. Clouds materializing off in the west distant horizons it seems as if over the ocean! Listening to The Violent Bear It Away. Goosebumps. A Godsend the wind. For some inexplicable reason I realize how I am drawn to this view now here of a faint trail far off beyond that leads into a clump of gnarled whitebark pine disappearing off toward the edge of the bench. Beyond the drop to the chasm of McClure and Evolution Valleys. And beyond that the massive wall of Sierra granite peaks immense. The Hermit looms. I am mesmerized with that trail. I know where it goes because we found it - followed it - two days earlier onward to Evolution. But if I did not know - and even that I do - it disappearing off to somewhere that cannot be seen pulls me forward like gravity and reminds me of how I know but do not know. A mad-crazy wild. A treeless waste. Moby crescendos and tears well up in my eyes all of this exploding right now in this absolute moment unbearable. The secret of mountains. How they and we are the same. How we are both made up of the same elements. How we are both alone mountains and men. I here on Darwin Bench. Mendel beside me. Everyone everywhere spinning through the universe. Surrounded by these peaks in this immensity of silence is awesome. I am alone. I feel the onset of something more grand and frightening than of which I can speak. I break down in the instant. Walls crumble. I expect nothing. I am nothing. I aim to go forward lightly from now on without hesitation or thought of attainment. Ruined and at the same time reborn under the glistening sky. These experiences. This solitude. The complete and desperate loneliness. But just the same in utter contrast and harmony the sharing of these moments. How they parallel each pushing and pulling the other. The ones alone like this right now with the ones of J and I together. The immense pride a father himself weak of his son who under his own little power crested the mighty Sierra Nevada thirteen thousand feet above the sea then followed his father himself lost flailing inwardly down miles and miles. Always following without question. Without hesitation. Only trust. An absolute and complete trust that frightens me whole but also gives me an unbearable strength. An unbelievable responsibility to bear for which I am never certain I can truly fulfill but cherish the crushing weight of it perhaps more than anything else this life has so far brought. It is in these places looking off into infinities endless where I can find some resemblance of peace. Let my insecurities and failings and weaknesses disintegrate into the atoms of the air. I exhale. It is okay to feel alone at times. Vulnerable. Scared. Petrified even as I do now a sinking feeling deep within. To cower under granite and let the hail and lightning and thunder crash down and shatter the still silence and security of everything that once was now surely soon to be lost. The very frightful torment to realize the weight of everything every moment I have ever lived and have ever rejoiced and have ever regretted. To pick a way through a treeless canyon under towering granite and glaciers where I know storms have raged and ravaged raw the stone and waters pure then let revealed again the sounds of meadows and of waterfalls and of streams all finding their way endless to the ocean towards the omniscient sun. Clouds paint broad strokes across a calm sky. Tonight we plan to camp at the lake just below the col on the other side of civilization. Will have to watch the weather. It can approach fast and I do not want us stuck on this side of the crest. Should be going soon. From here it seems an impossibly long climb to the col and I relish this delicious moment made complete with the realizations of all I am. Of all I am not. I could sit here in the sun warm on granite forever. Just lie down. Rejoice in the sun and the storms and the skies. The soft trails that show the way. The sharp talus that does not. The shade and the water of streams. Listen. Feel. Push on. This wildness is in me now. I take it with me. Inside me. When I am back over on the other side of the crest I reassure myself now I will always have this moment. And the moment suspended at the col with J. Music washes over me like the imperial sun flowing through me and becoming part of everything that is here now real. I can touch it all. But time to let the silence now fill me. Time to go back. Find J (I see him looking for me now!) Skip rocks together in the tarn near camp. See if I can beat his six skips (the record so far!) Be his dad. Be strong for him. Lead him once more up and over these mountains. Reveal everything. Hide nothing. Climb. Laugh. Play. The present here and now.




Thursday July twenty-sixth.





Last morning. Had breakfast then coffee (coffee is infinitely more delicious out of beat up metal mugs!) Now sitting again on granite. Always. There will be time later for couches and cushions. For now there is sun and breeze a kind of summer Sierra perfection. Even the bugs have kept away. I am staring south to Mount Lamarck and the monolithic Sierra crest rugged stretching like a craggy spine along the topaz sky. Remnants of glaciers nearly melted forever now scrape hold to rock. Clinging. Grasping on with all their might. We were on the other side of all this just yesterday. Removed from everything else. From the impending tragedy that has me here now myself clutching to the past. To the present. Fearing the future. The arriving. The leaving. On the other side of the crest there was nothing but ourselves and light and stone. The elemental space found in these places where only God is as the Buddha described everywhere and in everything the sun and the stars and the time and the space in between it all. We were at the cosmic center of the universe. Nothing else mattered. I could forget all that had happened. All that had not and would still. Shortly we pack up for North Lake and Spencer and showers and swimming pools and real food and cotton. I try to hold on to this moment. Desperate. We even might try to see a movie in Bishop tonight to complete our reintroduction frighteningly abrupt and sudden back into civilization. For certain the Bishop town pool will do the trick swarming with California kids in bikinis and smiles skin darkened under months of the Owens Valley sun. But I will try when we've returned to keep this center. I must. No matter what. To not lose hold of the moment atop the col now centuries ago it seems the light shimmering everything else God it seemed even the universe holding its breath standing still for us. Allowing the pause. I face the crest now intentionally. To my back the view north to Bishop and the valley. An old gentleman khaki-clad daypack had passed us earlier as we stirred around camp. Seemed a bit lost looking to find the way to the col for the day. Silliness. Doesn't he know as Muir once said that to truly experience wilderness one must spend the night out in it? Under it. Surrounded by it. Where we can be boundless. Where our imagination makes us infinite as he once wrote. But I pointed the man in the right direction nonetheless. Just no sight of him yet across to the steep ridge switchbacked up onward to talus (he should be climbing it by now?) Maybe he turned back. We just have to pack. Easy hike out all downhill. A few miles. Crazy I think now the geology of mountains. How they all rise and rise and rise ever higher to a crest then fall away on all sides in every direction determining in their very essence which way the rivers spill to the oceans. Summits splinter the space above. To themselves fall away over time. Eons. And on the other side such wildness. Such incredible breaking beauty. How far one can go with only a pack placing one foot in front of the other. Thousands and thousands of feet up and down. Miles and miles and miles. J plays and swats at flies nearby. I must finish writing this. The sounds of the stream below the upper and lower lakes the only thing that breaks the silence now in between. The blue polarized sky cloudless. The grey granite looming.

Afoot and light-hearted, I take to the open road,
Healthy, free, the world before me,
The long brown path before me, leading wherever I choose.

Henceforth I ask not good-fortune—I myself am good fortune;
Henceforth I whimper no more, postpone no more,
Strong and content, I travel the open road.

The earth—that is sufficient;
I do not want the constellations any nearer;
I know they are very well where they are;
I know they suffice for those who belong to them.

(Still here I carry my old delicious burdens;
I carry them, men and women—I carry them with me wherever I go;
I swear it is impossible for me to get rid of them;
I am fill’d with them, and I will fill them in return).

I am larger, better than I thought;
I did not know I held so much goodness.

All seems beautiful to me;
I can repeat over to men and women, you have done such good to me, I would do the same to you.

I will scatter myself among men and women as I go;
I will toss the new gladness and roughness among them;
Whoever denies me, it shall not trouble me;
Whoever accepts me, he or she shall be blessed, and shall bless me.

Now I see the secret of the making of the best persons,
It is to grow in the open air, and to eat and sleep with the earth.

Here is realization;
Here is a man tallied—he realizes here what he has in him;
The past, the future, majesty, love—if they are vacant of you, you are vacant of them.

The efflux of the Soul is happiness—here is happiness;
I think it pervades the open air, waiting at all times;
Now it flows unto us—we are rightly charged.

Here rises the fluid and attaching character;
From it falls distill’d the charm that mocks beauty and attainments;
Toward it heaves the shuddering longing ache of contact.

Let's go! We must not stop here!
However sweet these laid-up stores—however convenient this dwelling, we cannot remain here;
However shelter’d this port, and however calm these waters, we must not anchor here;
However welcome the hospitality that surrounds us, we are permitted to receive it but a little while.

Listen! I will be honest with you;
I do not offer the old smooth prizes, but offer rough new prizes;
These are the days that must happen to you.

You shall not heap up what is call’d riches,
You shall scatter with lavish hand all that you earn or achieve.

Of the progress of the souls of men and women along the grand roads of the universe, all other progress is the needed emblem and sustenance. 

Forever alive, forever forward,
Stately, solemn, sad, withdrawn, baffled, mad, turbulent, feeble, dissatisfied,
Desperate, proud, fond, sick, accepted by men, rejected by men,
They go! They go! I know that they go, but I know not where they go;
But I know that they go toward the best—toward something great.

Have the past struggles succeeded?
What has succeeded?

Now understand me well—
It is provided in the essence of things, that from any fruition of success, no matter what, shall come forth something to make a greater struggle necessary.

I give you my hand!
I give you my love, more precious than money,
I give you myself, before preaching or law;
Will you give me yourself? Will you come travel with me?
Shall we stick by each other as long as we live?

~ Walt Whitman

Excerpted from 'Song of the Open Road' (from the larger work Leaves of Grass)

The earth never tires,
The earth is rude, silent, incomprehensible at first;
        nature is rude and incomprehensible at first;
Be not discouraged, keep on, there are divine things well envelop'd,
I swear to you there are divine things more beautiful than words can tell.

~ Walt Whitman, 'Song of the Open Road' (from the larger work Leaves of Grass)
Excerpted from These We Inherit the Parklands of America by Ansel Adams

this we inherit.

What time's my heart? I care.
I cherish what I have
Had of the temporal:
I am no longer young
But the winds and waters are;
What falls away will fall;
All things bring me to love.

~ Theodore Roethke

Excerpted from the Sierra Club Exhibit-Format Series book The Wild Cascades: Forgotten Parkland 

Courage – so be it righteous – will gain all things.

~ Ludwig van Beethoven
April, 1815, to Countess Anne Marie Erdödy

Fear – to a great extent – is born of a story we tell ourselves.

light meter calibration.

So I realize I am getting ahead of myself cos I am still writing out a bunch of random thoughts about the purchase a month or so ago of an old beautiful cherry wood field view camera and what I have been going through in order to get up to speed using such an incredible instrument. More on that eventually.

But part of that getting up to speed included breaking out some of my old film equipment stuffed in scratched Pelican cases one of which was my Soligor Spot Sensor II (analog version) light meter. I took it and some Polaroids and the Westa camera to K's parent's place in eastern Washington over the fourth to test.

The Polaroids were coming out blank.

Unsure of whether or not it was a bad lot of expired Polaroids (I've now tried two separate packages though both dated the same so likely from the same batch) or my inexperience at operating a view camera (although a precision photographic instrument it's not really rocket science) or ... the light meter misreading the reflected light.

So I started digging on the interwebs and found some random but very little help on calibration of old analog spot meters (thank God it is analog though ... I'm not sure what it would take to calibrate a digital meter - surely more than the tools I employed for this little bit of surgery I'll explain below). Of the two pieces of information I found amongst the many more numerous posts of people inquiring as to calibrating these particular meters (with no real answers) the first was that there is apparently only one guy somewhere in Vermont who does these kind of repairs and the second was buried in replies to one of the posts about how - unbeknownst to many I can only assume - hidden under the logo of the meter are three teeny tiny pan pots that the guy assumed were used for calibration (but said he was scared to touch them so left them alone).

I however ... am not. Armed with a utility knife to pry off the little metal decal (glued on most likely with a drop of super glue on either side - exactly how I will reattach it) and a small safety pin I went to work -

A close-up above showing the three pan pots which I discovered roughly as such: the left one is a trim dial that fine-tunes the calibration (i.e. barely changes the reading of the meter), the middle one is the roughest dial while the right pot is in between the two. Simply using the end of the pin I was able to dial these around to adjust the sensitivity of the meter.

Not really visible in the first picture is my masking tape mockup of the Zone System on the lens barrel (I can't believe you can actually pay money for what amounts to a small piece of masking tape marked in permanent pen with the eleven zones from 0 to X that then align with the various EV readouts - on the Soligor the EV scale runs from 2 to 18).

So not really being terribly scientific at this point - I just knew the meter was mis-calibrated and was overexposing by two to three stops (two at lower light levels; three at brighter levels) - I took my trusty 7D and found the  grey house across the street to be close to an 18% grey.

Purposely throwing the image out of focus I set the 7D's light meter to the spot mode (which has about 1.5% coverage area dead-center - the Soligor has 1% coverage but close enough) - the lens (although not a prime lens unfortunately but again - not really being too scientific here) zoomed to roughly 50mm or a 1:1 ratio - taking the camera away from my eye the proportions across the street were about the same) - and aperture priority of f/5.6

I got a reading of 1/125th of a second at an ISO of 100.

So setting the Soligor similarly to ASA 100 I aimed it at the house - it was a bit low (reading an EV of 10 which - with an exposure of f/5.6 and 1/125th - would place the grey two stops above middle grey - i.e. two stops overexposed). I wanted an EV reading of 12 which would put the grey of the house at roughly 18% and match the exposure reading of the Canon (although I know Canon's meters tend to run a smidge hot - again - this is hardly scientific until I get to the next step).

A few little adjustments to the pan pots and boom -

In order to test at least a little validity of this crazy setup I brought the resulting files into Photoshop.

Now I am fully aware of the gamma correction in Adobe Camera Raw vs. another application like Canon's Digital Photo Professional utility (thus - the huge disparity of gamma corrections between applications and the multitude of RGB profile spaces like ACR's ProPhoto or Canon's fairly arbitrary and highly-generic 'Wide Gamut' color space and the gammas of each) and how that certainly affects the rendering of values (as does the bit-depth and so on).

I probably should have stressed at the start how this is hardly scientific as I seem to continue to repeat that mantra - and that if you did choose to pay some guy in Vermont a hundred clams (I'm too cheap and always assume I can do whatever myself) to calibrate your light meter he probably has some more - umm - professional standards ... or maybe not haha.

But anyway - I used ACR and converted the blurry image of the house to the sRGB color space (roughly a gamma of 2.1 I believe). I cropped in and then introduced yet another variable by having Photoshop's behind-the-scenes-unknown-to-me-and-everyone-else-besides-Thomas-Knoll algorithm convert to greyscale (20% dot gain).

Dropped an eye dropper on the image and ...

Pretty darn close (theoretically an RGB value of 128 is middle grey - i.e. 18% grey - but it depends on the gamma curve and color space - with a gamma correction of 2.2 and sRGB I believe it is supposedly somewhere closer to 114 ... ). But after the 3.5 million other variables introduced in this highly arbitrary calibration exercise a value of 123 is pretty incredible. Which tells me - albeit somewhat roughly - that f/5.6 125th/second at ISO 100 was the correct exposure to capture what I wanted and place it at a value equal to middle grey (highly important with Zone exposure!).

I'm feeling much better.

Now - all of that of course is completely useless because I do not plan on somehow incorporating my 7D into the mix when photographing on sheets of 4x5" film with an old wooden camera. So the real calibration is of course the combination of dialing in the meter to my specific film (ADOX ASA 25 panchromatic) and developer (ADOX Adonal)-slash-development (temperature of the developer/how much agitation/total development time) combination. Using that combination after shooting an image of an 18% grey card (which I think I have but I'll have to dig ... ) under fairly controlled lighting (a shady spot outside) and developing the film and then subsequent print - I'll be able to judge just how calibrated it all is by how close the print looks like the 18% grey card.

And that actually is a really good reason for figuring out how to calibrate my light meter myself.

So that test will come later tonight when it's dark out and I can develop some film ... but for now the meter is likely quite close in calibration and I am feeling much better about taking it (and the Westa!) to the Sierras ...

the violent bear it away.

Maybe the best song in to which to go running.

Or standing alone in the middle of crazy wild spectacular beauty.

Or driving through granite vistas eternal.

Endless.

Or just lying under a birch tree looking up at lazy clouds hanging in pale blue skies.

ansel.

People wonder why I don't express more interest in traveling around the world. The fact is, I really haven't completed explorations of my backyard! Two-dimensionally, I am jealous as Hell over your flying by the Himalayas! JEZUZ!!! But - after all - the other day I walked by some fresh green moss in my garden; this is a terrible confession for an old grizzled mountaineer to say - but that moss looked mighty impressive to me!

From a letter to Dorothea Lange, February 22, 1959

snowpack.

So this is a little alarming for all of the Western mountains except basically the northern Cascades ...

And ... pretty dramatic compared to last year where J and I found ice on Hungry Packer Lake the end of July ...

I guess we won't have to worry about too much snow for this year's Sierra trek - although the entire southwest US may be a bit concerned ...

fake empire.

A new song on repeat ...

The National

Fake Empire

Close eyes.

Fade away.

like this hail that is falling down out of the sun.

For whatever reason it always come back to me this idea of trying to distill in reason words and such why it is I am drawn to mountains. Have not been able to yet. But in a moment this morning sun sifting through windows fog in and out the train rushing north reading The Snow Leopard pressed up against the glass I come across this idea in a way that catches my attention. Read it again. Pull out a pen to underline the paragraph. There it was. Of why I go. Why I take J.

They have just left the porters behind and crossed over Jang La pass on their own carrying full loads for once. Fed up with sluggish porters snowblind in mountains amidst from where they were born. Matthiessen describes that feeling carrying his rucksack he calls 'free life' the way a mountaineer would write it ~

'The mountains had been a natural field of activity where, playing on the frontiers of life and death, we had found the freedom for which we were blindly groping and which was as necessary to us as breath.'

But then - after near death - he says the same mountaineer would describe freedom in a much more luminous form. About how having won his freedom which he would then never lose. And about how - having been given the rare joy of seeing - a new life would have been opened before him.



... as necessary to us as breath ...



Like Daumal writes -

'There is an art of conducting oneself in the lower regions by the memory of what one saw higher up; when one can no longer see, one can at least still know … '

The obligation to take the lesson learned of mountains when plodding along our own symmetry.




This getting out then surrounded by mountains white 'thick and silent' comes down to Matthiessen his own idea of freedom. The 'possibility and prospect of free life' he writes - of 'traveling light, without clinging or despising, in calm acceptance of everything that comes. The absurdity' - he continues - 'of a life that may well end before one understands it does not relieve one of the duty to live it through as bravely and as generously as possible.




'I am here to be here, like these rocks and sky and snow, like this hail that is falling down out of the sun.'

give a mile. or four. or five.

The scene was sort of sad. Sort of picturesque. Quiet.

Moss-covered logs once vehicle curbs. Sword fern and huckleberry where once cars parked. Pavement cracked and covered seemingly ancient. The sound of the river off in the distance nearby. J clambering up on a lichen-covered rock at the head of the Sulphur Mountain trail. Making goofy faces. K down wandering silently off somewhere. The Suiattle #784 trail sign almost eerily unupdated a tattered map of the Glacier Peak Wilderness stapled front and center. Laminated hiding under plastic. No cars though today. No one actually. Just us.

A mile or two back we had met one guy coming down on bicycle (we too were on bikes). Climber. Had an ice ax strapped to his pack so we just assumed. Seemed out of it. Told us he had been twelve miles deep earlier that day. Not sure from where but we bid him safe journey as he took off downroad. We hung around for a bit. Planned to be back to head up Miners Ridge. Image Lake. Or Sulphur Mountain.

Weather moving in from the west. Time to go.



-----



A couple hours earlier I found myself sun fighting through the approaching cloud layer chumming with a group of men all old enough to be my dad slumped in the grass of Green Mountain Pasture. A light breeze. Them lamenting on the good ol' days all with stories to tell but not enough time to get to them all. Of the Ptarmigan Traverse namely since only a few miles east Downey Creek empties into the Suiattle where most climbers plunge out of alder thickets to wrap it up crazy-exhausted relieved ecstatic.

Listening to them meander about days gone by made me wonder though were they all just grumpy and griping about why things couldn't just be the same? Should I have told them to get over it? Things change. Ethics change. Rivers change. Sandstone and granite. The ebb and flow of it all.

But then it hit me. Pretty hard actually and something clicked.

Isn't more or less the essence of the Wilderness Act (we were sitting smackdab in the middle of Glacier Peak Wilderness after all) to—well—prevent things from changing? Cos if this sort of stuff always changed—roads and boundaries and use and such—from one generation to the next then—well—just a few down the line and what will be left? How much will have changed?



A mile here. A mile there. Who's counting anyway?



So taking off from the meadow the three of us up towards the bridge over Downey I thought to myself it seems these candid and kindhearted old men of which whose company I had to remind myself I had been in and for what we should be thanking them might just be on to something. 'I'm old school wilderness' one of them had huffed to me with a partial twinkle in his eye as he prefaced a reply to my question of why not just pave the last four miles of the road? I rather like a river walk he spoke without answering hinting at a gesture to shush and listen to the quiet still air surrounding us.

Admittedly though despite my age I suppose so am I.

There are plenty of unwild places left it seems. Not enough wilderness. Some may argue that but hardly radical. And the debate has heated up through quick searches of the interwebs as the deadline for public comments draws to a close the end of this week. Alt B or C? Fix the whole road all twenty-three miles back up to the Sulphur Mountain trailhead and campground next to the creek or leave the last four or five miles from Green Mountain Road for foot and bikes and packs? What's four or five more miles anyway?



A mile here. A mile there. Who's counting anyway?



-----



The ride uproad was enjoyable. A barely-perceptible up. The last four or five miles from Green Mountain to Sulphur Mountain maybe four hundred feet or so. Quiet. The cedars dripping with moss. A grove of birch near the riverbed. Leaves shuttering. Had to stop my bike even to really appreciate it the sound of knobby tires on rocky roadbed half overgrown drowning out the essence of the river and silence of forest and air. A good sort of eerie.

It didn't necessarily or really make sense to me why at that point in between reality and sublime all the rage all the fuss all the back and forth over four or five miles? Why must we feel I guess that 'access' can only mean vehicle access? Why must we drive so much? Always be in such a hurry? It seems when all the arguments are made for or against B or C or this or that what it all everything comes down to is something simple ... that essence of dew clinging to a fern not coated with dust from a road or fumes.

Of course it would be easier to drive the road to its end. Park. Stretch some before heading off down the Suiattle River trail. It's not like I don't take advantage of roads. Hennegan Pass. Cascade Pass. The cross-state North Cascades highway-turned-eyesore. So for me then I guess I could stand to walk four or five extra miles if I wanted. A couple hours on foot. Quicker on bicycle. Maybe the campground at Sulphur Creek would be more special. Maybe a little tougher to get to than all the others sprawled beside or tucked off pavements. Maybe I just sound like an old curmudgeon.



-----



We get back to the truck parked off the road just outside the gate at milepost twelve. I walk past a pile of garbage spilling cascading down the hillside toward the river. Ugh. Close my eyes for a second to forget that. Go back to the lichen and the moss and the ferns and cedars at the end of the disintegrating road the quiet pristine. Still the sound of the Suiattle. Try to picture all of this not now not today but when it's finished and the debates have died down and the construction dust has settled. Fifty years from now. A hundred. More.

Which is the better scene?












To send in a comment to the USFS use this address ... wfl.suiattleriverroad@dot.gov

for a minute i was wondering if you'd come around.

The new song on repeat

repeat

repeat

submitted.

Not sure really what to say. Burnt out I guess. Nights til two a-m. Sometimes three. Pretty much yeah. But in a good way if I suppose.







Yeah in a good way stuffed in the corner of my living room.

It's been a pretty solid couple months.

But it's off to the orchestra at the eleventh-plus hour the score all hundred-and-forty-six-or-something pages and a recording.


And looking back to it I remember these particular bits and pieces. In my bedroom maybe just folding clothes or something a long time ago hearing the introduction this huge orchestration of symphony and furious piano fortississimo and all. The chord progression maybe before that a simple arpeggiated piano line with some modulation thrown on top. A little orchestration to go along with. Then eventually maybe three months ago the main theme uttered on the Bechstein in E minor starting all quiet and building up to this raging thing of sorts landing on a F major at some point the ending everything. Building the orchestrations around that from this noise in my head. Painting the bricks of the fireplace all of a sudden stopping to go over to a mic by my living room window singing some vocal melody line eventually transposed and sung by someone who can sing much better than I. Going back and forth between the kitchen and my corner to record another idea. Writing out this part or that to play on the piano scratching in pencil notes or chords to go with it spinning around to record the idea erase try another take over and over and over and over.


All of those bits and pieces now bits and bytes on a tired hard drive maybe just maybe someday something more reverberations in a music hall perhaps created instead by real instruments real musicians and such.




...




After everything though all of it I sit here in the dark now just listening to this noisy recording made late one night the tube preamps adding some warmth though to the Bechstein some theme or other in C-sharp minor unmastered unorchestrated unanything and lean back in my chair and close my eyes and fall into it like nothing else not a finished song having spent months and months composing and finessing but no rather some three minutes of me improvising on an old piano in the dark.






But here then is the full recording of Singularity or in two parts over on my reverbnation page whilst I close my eyes to the sound of an old Bechstein.










... many thanks to James for his tireless efforts of hauling it down to my place to deal with me asking for just one more take just one more take the song would not be the same without your voice ...



* image of humanoid Robonaut 2 [R2] courtesy of nasa.gov/

After six or eight or I don't really know how many weeks taking over my life the score is complete along with a rough mix that I will spend the next week or so polishing and mastering.










But for now ...










... for now it is finished.

Singularity in the key of E minor ...

We are like a star collapsing

beyond our understanding

beyond our comprehension

extrapolated rapidly-accelerating returns

integrated artificial infinite change

the world to pass ...

... to know the mind of God is to know ourselves ...

Now to just finish the laborious orchestrations ...

duh.

So I am going through old files setting up a new-to-me computer and found this that I had stashed probably a long time ago ...

a snapshot of sixty-three bars.

I came across something a bit ago that - well - actually piqued my interest. Rare perhaps I don't know.

Well rare in the context it has to do with music (umm - cos I'm quite picky about the little amount of music I perceive to being acceptable to spending my time listening). And rare also as it has to do with perhaps my own music. Never easy to put out there and such but an upcoming composition competition for Seattle Rock Orchestra - whom I have been following for a while now as their style and direction seems to fall in line with my - well - symphonic rock-type of music project I am currently and continually obsessed a bit with - did catch my attention.

Already working on a song I have taken to calling 'Singularity' which is - yes - based on the theory of the technological singularity where mankind potentially evolves from carbon-based neurons to silicone-based hardware - it seemed at least partially logical to just step up its production and composition in order to potentially enter it in this somewhat unique opportunity-of-a-competition.




Singularity like a star collapsing beyond a point in accordance with the law of accelerating returns. Of integrated semi-conductor complexities. Event horizons. Feedback loops. Theoretical computations.

It was mostly just an idea in my head based on a simple harmonic minor tonic-fifth progression. Scrawled in my notebook five sections ... an introduction - middle one - middle two - orchestra - and finale. A piercing flute on the final E minor of the intro. Emphasis on the diminished A. An idea in four-part counterpoint amongst the strings during the orchestra section. A voice. Soprano-alto-tenor-bass choir. A rock ensemble and strings and flute and oboe and clarinet and bassoon and French horn and trumpet and trombone and percussion and timpani in E and B and ...

... and of course piano.

Of course piano. Three-four triplets up and down the keyboard for the first minute-twenty before a fortissimo E minor introduces the first of the middle sections.

And that is all I have for now.

Sixty-three bars. And much work to be done. So enough rambling and back to orchestrations.