gear lust, er ... list.

So part of this year's plan was to go lighter/farther/faster (faster will be tough, but I can definitely shoot for lighter and more remote). And along with that ideology comes a few new gear items for the year -

- Montbell Crescent 1 solo tent -

I've had my eye on this tent for a couple years now. Time to pony up for it - I say 'pony up' cos REI doesn't carry Montbell so I'll have to (*cough*) actually pay retail ... And I know - it tips the two pound goal for a tent at 2 lbs. 6 oz. (packed weight). But short of just tarping it, this thing is s-l-i-c-k. And I plan on doing at least one or two solo overnight trips this year (mostly for photography but also cos I tend to think it's good for the soul).

And ... paired with the GoLite pack below (1 lb. 10 oz.) and either my REI Flash UL 40 or Marmot Hydrogen 32 (both just over 1 lb.) bags - the three still add up to the ultra-light holy grail of under 6 pounds for the tent/bag/pack combo.

- Snow Peak Trek Starter cook set -

Yeah, this kit is wicked cool - holds the stove and a fuel canister inside the 700mL titanium pot (and an extra canister on top if needed). Weighs in at eight ounces for the whole deal. Uhh, yeah - eight ounces ... hot chocolate at night (along with a hot meal) and instant coffee (or white trash mocha) in the morning will always be on the menu.

- GoLite Peak pack -

Tried this puppy on one evening at the Seattle REI and shoved about thirty pounds in it - fit like a glove. Under two pounds (1 lb. 10 oz.). About 40L (size large). Check. Check. Check.

- Black Diamond Ultra Distance Z poles -

Okay, so this is probably the most exciting piece of gear I've discovered this year (the other three aren't new - this one is) - a pair of these carbon fiber poles tips the scales at a whopping nine ounces. Uhh ... that's about the weight ... of one carbon fiber pole. And (wait for it ... ) no camming device that will eventually break! No flick locks even - just whip 'em into place like a tent pole and never worry about them. I just ordered these - and cannot wait to try them out.

And from last year -

- Cascade Designs NeoAir pad (size regular 72" length) - 14 oz. - the most comfortable air mattress I've ever slept on in the backcountry and cannot feel the cold of the snow through it - this piece of gear is absolutely stellar - a rock star and well worth its minimal weight in gold as they say

- Black Diamond Raven Ultra Pro ice ax - 12 oz. - this thing is awesome, but I have to admit for the more technical climbs I've done I've wished for something with - well - a bit more heft to feel more secure (so for those I carry the lightweight Petzel Aztarex tool - the lightest ice tool out there)

- REI prototype single-wall 2-person Duet/Ace SW tent (put into production for a year I think before being pulled) - weighs in at 3 lbs. 15 oz. packed and stuffs down to nearly half the size of my next lightest tent, the REI Quarter Dome (which makes sense cos it's a single-wall without a separate rainfly and body)

Now just need to head out ... cannot wait. Just what'll be the first trip ... ?

introduction.

This piece I am calling Introduction (Live) is available for streaming and/or download on my reverbnation page (or above right in the widget).

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Apparently 'introduction' in Latin is - well - 'introduction' (as well as in French, another language I like to use for titling). And to think I was going for something that sounded cool ...

But Latin because of this verse I came up with today -

prope finem

opus est in

tamen illic 'nos tempus

to go along with this completely random idea I worked up today in Logic.

So it takes some imagination I must admit. A theatre (or heck an arena). The lights slam off and the place goes dark. Silence. More silence. Then this loud static. In and out. Joined by a four-part symphonic choir chanting the Latin phrase above. And it builds. More samples. Lots of smoke. MIDI-controlled lights timed with the static and tubular bells slice through it at points strobes fire in sync with it all. Videos flashing also in sync. Of polygons bending and warping and fitting themselves together colliding and rockets lifting off and photos of galaxies.

But anyway ... just an introduction of sorts. Whatever nonsense I heard in my head to introduce and then launch into Ferocity And Fragility. And a few more tricks learned whilst mixing this in Logic all thrown together in a day.

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... actual website under construction but coming soon ...

gagarin.

So today of course marks the fiftieth anniversary of Yuri Gagarin. Despite accolades and applauds from scientists and politicians on both sides of the Iron Curtain, it stung on this side. For sure. The Soviets had beat us. It didn't matter that less than a month later we repeated the feat by hurling Alan Shepard up into space. But Gagarin's accomplishment - and thereby the Soviet's - did achieve one very important thing for this country ... it launched our obsession of sending a man to the moon.

Some may postulate that it was out of fear that the Soviets - should they gain the upper hand in the ever-escalating space race - might set up shop on the moon and build a base that would allow them to launch ICBMs back at us that drove our obsession of landing a man on the moon. But I tend to think (and I say 'tend to think' cos I, well, wasn't born yet) that was either based on paranoia or just a clever disguise to mask the real reason for our obsession: we had to win.

We as in the whole country. You. Me. Your next door neighbor. The milkman. Even the President. Afterall, we were the United States. We had something to prove.

So Kennedy - just a month and a half after Gagarin's orbital flight - then issued the proclamation that we must - by the end of that decade - land a man on the moon.

Some derided the dream as lunacy. Others viewed it as just another strategic move in the Cold War chess match between us and them. So what if it was totally masked in the name of defeating Communism. Rather than a battlefield in Afghanistan under the guise of the almighty Oil, Kennedy chose instead space as the loftier field of battle on which to wage war with the Soviets.

He cautioned Congress of its impending expense ($9 billion dollars in 1960) but they approved it without even batting an eye. And - much to the President's delight - the country answered his siren song. The entire country. Every one of us (I know, like I said technically I wasn't born yet but I'm just being figurative here).

For nine years the Apollo space program made the nightly news as it soared ever higher (yeah, literally and figuratively this time). The technological hurdles were immense. Certainly daunting. At times thought impossible. But collectively - and with the support of the Congress and the President on down to every American whose blood pulsed to beat the Soviets and prove our country was still the best - and with our brightest minds and technology at the time - Kennedy's decree became reality of course on July twentieth of ninety-sixty-nine.

How had we accomplished this seemingly impossible task? This seemingly insurmountable goal? In nine short years?

It is hard to imagine now I think just how insurmountable - how absurd - it probably seemed. We had committed ourselves to going from merely hurling a man into Earth orbit above the stratosphere to launching a crew at escape velocity out past the Earth's comforting gravitational pull (or the solar system's push, depending on your theoretical view of gravitational force) out and out ... to the moon. But not just to the moon for maybe a quick peek at it up close. No. To physically land on the moon. And not just to land. But to return safely back home of course.

Yeah. Wild. Insane.

But we did it. We did it ... huge. And we did it before the end of that decade - within ten years of first orbiting the Earth.

How?

How - fifty years ago - before the advent of all our (seemingly) new-fangled technologies - had we accomplished such an ambitious feat? We look back at video from mission control and gawk at the now-archaic computers thinking how did we do it with those things? It was this question that bugged me all day.

We did it, I surmise, because of one reason. And one reason only. Because (wait for it) ... the mandate came to us from the President.

Sure, America was all hot and bothered about Communism. And we were smug. And we had gotten undeniably beat to the punch by the Soviets with Gagarin's historic flight. But still - Kennedy did a fantabulous job of riling us up. He got us inspired. In the days of ordinary men still wearing ties to work - we were motivated. For a lot of reasons. National pride. Defeating Communism. Because our President told us to be.

And we succeeded.

So it wasn't so much the how? that bothered me I guess, but rather the more poignant question of why? Why don't we see that sort of national ambition anymore? Are we that apathetic? That tuned out? That absorbed in our Facebooks and whether or not our tweets have been retweeted to give a damn about anything meaningful and important and big and exciting?

In short ... could we accomplish Kennedy's goal with the same technology then but with the apathy we collectively as a nation display today?

That's what bothered me all day. And it bothered me because it seemed rather painfully obvious the answer to that last question was a big, fat resounding NO. As in absolutely not. No way José.

And - unfortunately - to prove it, all we have to do is substitute X for Y where X equals landing a man on the moon in under ten years and Y equals, oh - I don't know - say finding an ecological, economical and sustainable alternative fuel source to the big, fat, smelly, disgusting oil on which our society and economy has lived off like the prodigal, un-motivated forty-something-year-old son still living with and mooching off his mother.

I surmise an alternative already exists. The technology to discover and produce it anyways. We may have even already discovered it. But who the bloody hell cares? Shut up already Britny Spears (sp?) released a new album and I just accepted my thousandth friend request on the Facebook.

But that's not entirely fair. Because it's not really that, afterall. It's not us necessarily. It's them. And by them I mean quite literally our pathetic, corporate-run lame-duck government.

My theory so goes that back in the 1960s (before good ol' Reaganomics) corporations were not what they are today. And our government was not controlled by them. So the President could issue an insane mandate like 'within ten years we're gonna land a man on the moon' and Congress could respond with a boisterous 'hell yeah we are!' And that ... that then inspired the whole country. And yeah - we got it done.

So imagine for a moment the same vitality. The same vigor. Obama getting up from behind his cloak of corporate politics and interests and insisting that we - the United States of America - by the end of the decade - find and implement a replacement energy source for oil. I know, it sounds absurd. Funny, actually. But wait ... so did landing on the moon. And then imagine Congress gets on board. Shifts our taxpayer dollars from sleezy bank bailouts and hostile military efforts in our undying attempt to secure every last drip of oil for ourselves to a fully-funded, blank-check program to turn the tide for humanity by ending our dependence on fossil fuels. We have the brains. The know-how.

So the scientists get to work. There's a palpable fever in the air as we race to come up with the solution. Maybe other countries join in the fun because it's not us vs. them anymore and like it or not America is seen as a leader (which is a double-edged sword, cos when we suck - like we do now - the whole world knows it). It (gasp) makes the nightly news and we (even bigger gasp) actually tune in.

Think we could do it?

Of course we could. Absolutely. No effing doubt about it.

Think it'll happen?

Yes. Absolutely ... when we run out of oil.

When we realize it's either that or the end of our society and our iPads as we have come to know. When we realize it's either that or back to our nomadic ways. Or even better - our extinction. Then we'll frantically invent the solution. It might just save us. Just like the kid who's used to getting all A's so he waits until the day before the big final exam to study thinking he's got it under his belt. Maybe he passes. Likely. Maybe he doesn't. But if he does, then no harm done, right? Cos he got to party that much more without bothering himself with studying.

And it's not really our problem afterall. And by our I now mean you and me. Here and now.

Predictions for peak oil have been and still are all over the place so all of those filthy rich dudes in navy suits running the corporations that in turn run those filthy rich dudes in navy suits that run our government will be turning into oil themselves before we run out. And in the meantime they get to party that much more.

So where's the inspiration?

Why isn't there as much inspiration in doing what's right - if even for those who have not yet lived - and thus for the ultimate survival of our species if I dare say - as there is in beating the Soviets to the moon? Why must we collectively continue to wade in apathy and self-centeredness rather than being like the geeky, proactive kid who sits up in front with his square-framed glasses answering all of the teacher's questions and acing all the tests not because he got lucky but because he wanted - no, needed - to get every answer right. To prove to himself, to his teacher, his parents, his friends - the whole bloody world so-to-speak - that he could. Deep down we were jealous of that kid. We didn't admit it at the time but we did to ourselves and our own kids years later.

So bravo Gagarin. Bravo.

Our past is chocked full of accomplishments as great as this. Greater, even. And we have so much untapped potential. What though ... the question I always come back to ... what of our future?

reblog_003.

So I am trying to plow through Stephen Hawking's A Brief History In Time which is sort of amusing cos normally the only time I find to read is late late at night sometimes after having had several glasses of wine which makes reading something like this a bit entertaining ... like trying to understand general relativity and the difference between Newton's absolute time and space and Einstein's relative time and space and how light bends as it crosses through a particularly strong gravitational field, thus making a star near in-line with our sun appear to be in a different position in space than it, well, actually is ... and so on.

But of course Hawking writes much about Einstein (Hawking of course is widely-considered to be the brightest theoretical physicist since Einstein himself), and so randomly perusing through my old blog again I came across this little quote I had posted -

A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.

~ Albert Einstein

Well put. There is much trouble caused I believe when we consider ourselves 'superior' to other life on Earth.

Yes, through evolution our brains have increased in size of course to the point now where we have the capability to write symphonies, determine to the millionth-decimal place the relationship of a circle's diameter to its circumference, question our own reason for being and so on and so on and on and on. Remarkable. Absolutely.

What seems to get overshadowed though with our anthropocentric thinking - even from a religious point (and - without getting into a religious debate - I only say that because of the irony that it tends to be Western religions holding onto this idea despite dozens and dozens of contradictory statements in the Bible, of which this one is one of my favourites) is - given our position - a clear direction that we are tasked with caring for and being stewards of the Earth and all its varied life. Not to - because of some self-imagined superiority - harm and pillage it for our own selfish gain.

And - at least from where I'm sitting so-to-speak - it would seem this act of stewardship can certainly be carried out without our thinking of ourselves as superior, which inherently then puts us at odds with everything else on Earth.

Einstein was just trying to remind us of this. That life is beautiful and we are more similar to all of it then maybe we sometimes think. Certainly more inter-connected to it then we often realize.

It's nothing new and - like right and wrong - through our evolution and upbringing we all know it to be true. And ... maybe most importantly I feel ... remembering this and practicing it is necessary and a critical component to our continued survival.

ps - it is no coincidence in either the fact that Einstein's statement can be taken to also mean 'being separated from the rest' as holding ourselves up in our drywall boxes because that's where we feel comfortable and safe rather than getting out and experiencing nature in all its grandeur and uncompromising power and beauty (and no, this does not mean stopping the car at the roadside pullout to quick take a snapshot of some mountains), or in the irony that in doing so (getting out into nature) often creates the very ability in us to understand better how similar and connected we are to everything, thereby shedding ourselves of the notion of any sort of superiority complex ...

murals and megapixels.

So ... REI is opening a new store in Olympia, Washington next month and a month or so ago I was approached by the designer assigned to the store graphics if she could look through my images on Flickr to possibly use one or two. Now if I haven't made it terribly clear through this blog or over on my Flickr, I have never thought too highly of my own photography and consider myself more or less a complete hack etc. etc. etc. blah blah blah. So it clearly was the PR work of some folks at REI other than myself who pointed her to my stuff and her subsequent asking me to use a couple she had found that apparently her client (in this case, the visual team) actually apparently liked.

The funny part of course is that I do all of the retouching and prep work for all of the photos and signs found in all of the stores, so ... when this mural job came through I got to work on, well, my own photos for a change.

So this photo of Hidden Lake will grace the wall behind the store's cashwrap, while this pano of Rainier will hang above the front entrance -

But maybe the coolest part was the timing - about this same time I had been considering a DSLR with more res than my 20D - a 35-mm-esque, not-too-shabby 8MP that has served me so well these last almost-two-years since making the leap to more-or-less abandoning film (although I thought it was cool the designer kept selecting an image that I had shot with my trusty $40 Ciro-Flex TLR 6x6cm garage-sale medium-format camera that I would have had to rescan at a high-res in order to enlarge to the size she needed but that of course was totally doable since it was, well, medium-format film).

But anyway ... in order to be able to capture even more detail and blow up my photos even bigger (yeah, than four hundred-something inches), I needed more than 8MP ... so an immediate follow-up opportunity to score a used Canon 7D - with a more-like-medium-format-18MP sensor - presented itself and I lept at it. And in the process realized how I have never - umm, as in ever - bought a new piece of photo equipment. Ever. Garage sales. Craigslist. Hand-me-downs. Etc. Yeah - I'm cheap, I know. It was a leap last year to buy two additional lenses, but I - well - bought both of them used so there.

So in testing out the new-to-me 7D, I have to admit I've come to the conclusion that it is an awesome piece of kit. Feels solid. Feels pro. The shutter makes a quiet-but-satisfying kunk. The screen is lightyears more impressive than the tiny one on my 20D. There are three custom all-settings options right on the mode dial. It of course shoots HD video. And so on. But all of this makes me sort of laugh and cringe at the same time when I slap on my cheap, plastic Canon lenses ... that is, until I remember just how bloody awesome those cheap, plastic lenses are when viewing a recent pano I shot (still taken with the 20D though) up at Baker when we hauled it up there last month for the annual snowcamping trip -

That's a screenshot viewed at 100% in Photoshop - it's so tack-sharp and full of detail I could stare around at it on-screen at that size for hours peering into and at all the shadows and trees and folds of snow and depressions of crevasses and on and on. Cheap plastic lens my *** - that 55-250mm Canon deal is the, well - real deal (on a Canon APS-C crop sensor, of course). I think some people tend to get too worked up over having the most expensive gear ...

But anyway - I'm excited for another year of shooting (and yes, I know - the irony of being excited to shoot photos that I am also convinced have already been taken better by others and millions of times before me doesn't necessarily make sense) - the 7D will be awesome to heft along with those plastic lenses and my kick-arse Canon 10-22mm ultra-wide on all those trips I have penciled in already for the upcoming season.

And it'll be fun to wander down to the new store when it opens to check out my, err, REI's new murals ...