useless.

Et comme il est beau, il est vraiment utile.

('And since it is beautiful, it is truly useful.')

Another member of North Cascades Conservation Council board sent out a link to a New York Times Op-Ed piece written by Richard Conniff the other day about the uselessness of earth's creatures.

I found it brilliant.

And it reminded me of that line above from Antoine de Saint Exupéry's The Little Prince, how - perhaps - if we could just see beauty - we might understand all things are useful.

freezing temperatures guaranteed.

 F R E E Z I N G   T E M P E R A T U R E S   G U A R A N T E E D .

Today, as I sat quietly while my computer chirred at some image processes, I leaned in a bit and read for the first time the bit of type on the little kitschy postcard reproduction of a Rocky Mountain National Park postcard that's been sitting on my desk for years.

It boldly touts the now-long-defunct, what-was a fourteen-by-eighteen foot cabin nestled among a field of boulders at thirteen-thousand feet on the approach to climb Longs Peak. 'No modern conviences,' says the first bullet. 'No trees to spoil the view.' Well, okay. 'Guests arrive on foot or horseback (no autos).' 'Freezing temperatures guaranteed every night.' And lastly, 'Water carried from snowbanks a few feet from the door.'

These, what must have been enticing claims back in the nineteen thirties, strike me as fascinating today for precisely two reasons.

First, the Boulderfield Cabin was itself completely unusual in the United States. Huts like this abound by the hundreds in the Alps, where they're staffed with a chef and crew to provide five-star accommodations in otherwise seemingly inhospitable mountain places. But here, in the country of John Muir's wilderness, devoid of the imprint of human beings… they do not. So this one, unique in its very existence, was even more so because of its lack of any modern conviences, or the ability to step off a tram and walk in the front door. You actually had to walk (well, or ride a horse). And the fact that this poster was advertising what amounted to a near-Muir wilderness experience in a cabin at thirteen-thousand feet, is fascinating.

It seems nowadays, this poster would read very differently. Quite the opposite, in fact. It would tout free wi-fi, air-conditioning (since someone may still require that to be comfortable even at thirteen thousand feet), cable television, RV hookups, and the like. Etc. etc. etc., for nowadays we cannot possibly be made to be uncomfortable. It could claim the view, but not without the wi-fi. The pure, snowmelt water, but not without the steak and lobster entrees.

So that was one reason.

The second then, this year is the fiftieth anniversary of the Wilderness Act. I will probably write a bit about that over the course of the year–about its significance. About how, maybe in the most pure and selfless way, we lazy, fat, greedy Americans got it right. Got it right in such a grand way as to provide a ray of hope for the very future of our periled civilization. About how, even with its claims of uncomfort, how strange it is still, our idea of wilderness, and the reasons for why we must continue to lay claim to the last vestiges of wild places.

This poster got it right. The stuff it advertises, that's the stuff stories are made of. From which adventure is born. John Muir, that grandfather of the idea of limitless wilderness, may have best written about his experiences in wilderness as such -

These beautiful days must enrich all my life. They do not exist as mere pictures–maps hung upon the walls of memory to brighten at times when touched by association or will, only to sink again like a landscape in the dark; but they saturate themselves into every part of the body and live always.

through a new reality.

T H R O U G H   a   n e w   R E A L I T Y .

This always happens. Another trip into the Sierras and my head is already filled with dreams of the next. On our way heading north home then I stopped again at the Mono Basin Visitor Center to pick up a copy of Steve Roper's book detailing the High Route he pioneered in the early eighties. Sitting next to pools hot California air while J swam halfway through the introduction or so Roper mentioned a book of photographs published in the mid-nineties by climber-photographer Claude Fiddler. I underlined it. Once home promptly ordered an old worn copy from Better World Books for a buck or so. A couple weeks later I was cracking open the spine.

---

It really is incredible. Smelled particularly old and dusty proper. The printing and paper and typography and design aside I was immediately drawn to a handful of Fiddler's large-format photographs. And so in the space of one in particular taken of Cathedral Peak in the pale hue of dusk I discovered a new truth. Or at least in some way to me a new sort of reality.

And as I poured over the frame what I realized was there were no overly-dense blacks. No over-saturated over-exaggerated hues. Just a soft mellow tone that spoke volumes to me of the moment more true than any photograph I have ever viewed of Cathedral. The far end of the photographic vision spectrum. 

But I also realized how this likely would not catch the eye of someone breezing through an endless barage of images as we approach sensory overload in this over-saturated (pun maybe intended) media world. Where posting a photo with text statistically gets higher rankings on Facebook. Where a quick photo is the new expression of every thought and idea we have. Marketing. Imagery is everywhere and in everything permeating our very conscious. The irony of course is how - despite all of this - so little of it is original anymore.

So surprising then on some level whilst sitting motionless staring into Claude Fiddler's frames of Cathedral and another of Wanda Lake sitting on the front porch I had the breath sucked right out of me. They were - maybe in a single word... effortless. Timeless. Not dated by their Instagram-filter-of-the-year effect but instead infinite for their austerity.

Beautiful.

I look through photographs made today - my own included - like so much rubbish rarely moved as I was in an instant by Fiddler's simple work.

Beyond that I am aware of the possibility of its display. In a book viewed on paper held in my hands versus some illuminated monitor propped up glaring back at me. Something tactile and tangible. Thick with a worn sheen a little yellowed around the edges. Another thing I think we forget in our self-created screen-obsessed world… the beauty in the simplicity of holding a book or seeing a large image on display hung proudly on a wall framed perfectly. Of looking into a print made on paper of inks mixed together instead of photons and the effect it has on our subconscious. Of pouring over the recesses and the details. I remember reading once how our minds are literally blown away by the resolution of an eight-by-ten contact print. Of how we literally cannot process all of the information presented to us. All of the detail. And so the image seems unreal.

Little I see online seems unreal in this way. Maybe so - differently... as in unrealistic. Even something of my own from a trip of ours two summers ago into the Sierras I look at now with disappointment and dismay.

But if anything in this age of digital we are afforded a second chance.

And so I dug up the camera raw file buried on my server to look at it with a new eye. A new vision of what is truth. Or closer to it just a different way of seeing it maybe a little less pristine and processed and a little more yellowed around the edges.

So I muted it a bit. Softened the endpoints of the linear curve on the shadows and highlights. Opened up the midtones but with an overall flattening effect while at the same time compressing the tones slightly to give the twilight its proper respectable place. This was not a high-dynamic range image of false contrasts and phony saturation but rather a quiet evening best represented more in this way I now find.

---

A photograph is never honest I am aware no matter how hard we try. And just as this shows it can be interpreted infinitely. Here I can no longer completely recall the ambience there lying down in the grass getting eaten alive by the swarms of filthy mosquitoes trying to squeeze in a few more images of the fading light next to the outlet stream making its way down from Hungry Packer to Sailor Lake Picture Peak towering above it all. J off running somewhere getting his own photographs or swatting at bugs or both. Left to guess now erring if anything this side of under-processing. But I look at both renditions. Both interpretations. And - maybe like an imperfect performance of some piano sonata or other by old fragile hands - the muted image speaks to me in a deeper sense perhaps because of the very fact it now lacks the punch of its predecessor.

Even these thoughts I know are not original. Other photographers have approached their work in this way. Abstaining from the eye-catching sameness of exaggerated truths. This is nothing new. But regardless - for me I sense a pivotal moment in my ever-learning how to see - and ultimately interpret the wild places in which I will always explore and in my attempt - likely futile at best - to capture in a photograph their essence.

the power of strangers.

t h e   P O W E R   o f   S T R A N G E R S .

A friend of mine over IM the other day about her burgeoning yoga classes without realizing it no doubt said something offhand that left me thinking about it ever since. Simply she wrote ~

i need strangers to know that i exist

We were talking about her website and the Facebook and how though only friends of hers had bothered to 'like' her page in fact none of those friends had yet to come to a single class (umm, myself included). I think of this as I get random suggestions or invites or such to like someone's photography or artsy or whatever page (I don't usually bother). Not that there's anything wrong with that. Sending out a suggestion that is. But I wonder do they not realize the uselessness?

I too in fact did that a couple of years ago. Sent out an invitation to a group of friends on the Facebook (I did at least take the time to handpick a couple dozen or so) to like my music page. Within a couple of minutes though of sending it sitting on the couch afternoon sun streaming in I quite literally felt sick to my stomach. And really really stupid. Cos I realized the uselessness of it. Right then at that instant. That it was not going to do me a bit of good if some guy I happen to work with listens to my music and likes it or doesn't.

And I do not mean to categorically dismiss small random acts of magic.

But the two key words in that phrase are 'small' and (more importantly) 'random.' The odds that Dude X from work happens to know someone who happens to know someone high up the food chain in the record business are fairly small and (if it were to be the case) would be very very random indeed.

Not to say impossible. Just statistically about as likely as me being able to fly to the moon by building a spacecraft in my garage.



So back to what she said. About strangers. And needing them to know she exists.



That is the reality in that one little sentence. It definitely takes more work. To get strangers to know you exist. It's easy to send out a silly Facebook invite and maybe a little ego-enhancing rub to get a bunch of (I'll argue meaningless) likes. And thereby definition of 'easy' by extension fairly useless. It's much harder to think bigger. To find ways to reach out to complete strangers.

I don't yet know how to do that for certain. But just as certain I need to with this music I must write if I want it to support me (I do). As does she if she wants her yoga classes to support her (she does).



I'll need strangers to know I exist.

dosewallips.

D O S E W A L L I P S .

26 MAY 2013.




Found the campground at the end of the road. Abandoned. Just passed a young couple with backpacks and yellow lab leaving not five minutes back down the road-turned-trail. Before the washout eleven years ago this place would have been packed Sunday of Memorial weekend. No doubt all the other campgrounds easily accessed are today. Bustling. The smell of campfires. Kids playing. A good thing. But this one is six miles up the road from the washout (and eleven hundred feet of elevation). Reminds me of Buck Creek on the Suiattle past where the road was erased by the river. Deserted. I see blue sky. Filtered sunlight hits me cast through the breaking clouds and parting trees. Moss drips off everything. Smells fresh. And the Dosewallips runs pure and clean and cool next to me. Chilly. The air feels damp and slightly heavy. Darker clouds clump together. An hour to get here. Probably fifteen or twenty minutes back. Tops. I came here for a photograph but am staying to think now just sitting on this picnic table wet from the rain. It's quiet. Wish I had stuff to stay the night. Not ready yet again for the comforts of home. Haven't earned them. I wanted to photograph Dosewallips Falls (which I did) but honestly came here for an escape. For the quiet I knew I could find here at the end of the road. Alone. And so I cherish this moment now in between. The then and the yet to be. So many questions. There is music littered in my head of the struggle. But I know this: I will always need these sorts of moments. The in between can just be a long week with another right behind. Does not have to be heavy like now. But these times of stillness. And peace. I do not honestly think they need to always be alone. I have a picture in my mind of J here riding around. Of us skipping rocks in the river. Playing Uno in the tent or at the picnic table damp. Of someone else. Smiling. Laughing. Beautiful. Always worth the effort these moments. Thinking back how I looked forward to the uphill. I guess I relish the downhill too but not the same. Maybe I cherish the up so much more because it is still the journey … whereas going down means going back. Returning. And a part of me never wants to go back. So I hold onto a piece of every one of these moments to bring back to my mind during all the other times when I am not sitting next to a river awash in filtered sunlight slightly damp and a little chilly. Wipe my nose. It's cold.

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

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.

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

bach and beauty and bureaucracy.

Johannes Brahms once wrote about Johann Sebastian Bach’s Chaconne in D minor for violin in a letter to Claire Schumann -

‘On one stave, for a small instrument, the man writes a whole world of the deepest thoughts and most powerful feelings. If I imagined that I could have created, even conceived the piece, I am quite certain that the excess of excitement and earth-shattering experience would have driven me out of my mind.’

And it is with this piece that a dude in jeans, a t-shirt and ballcap started his forty-five-minute-long violin concert at a metro station in Washington D.C.

One thousand and ninety-some people passed by. Seven people stopped to listen.



'What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.'



W.H. Davies writes to begin a poem entitled Leisure (six stanzas later he ends it with ‘A poor life this if, full of care, we have no time to stand and stare.’). What - of the nearly eleven hundred people that walked through the metro lobby that morning - only one single person realized was that the dude was in fact a world-reknown violin virtuoso who had just sold out a concert in Boston a few days before where tickets went for an average of a hundred bucks a piece. And his violin was a 1710 Stradivarius worth a reputed three-and-a-half million. Dollars.

It was a sociological experiment that the violinist - Joshua Bell - had agreed to when approached by the Washington Post. The idea of course was to see that if under less-than-ideal circumstances (a bustling train station during morning rush hour chocked full of policy analysts and project managers and budget officers and consultants and bureaucrats suits and ties and all scrambling to get to work) and cloaking the identity of the performer under jeans and shirtsleeves beauty so-to-speak could - as Emmanuel Kant may have envisioned - transcend it all.

But alas ... it did not.

People just said they were busy when asked afterwards. Had other things on their mind. Some who were on cellphones spoke louder as they passed him to compete with his 'infernal racket.' It seems perhaps the explosion in technology has in some ways limited - not expanded - our exposure to new experiences. Increasingly - with large thanks to the likes of the Facebook and Google and their filter bubbles - we get our news from sources that think as we already do. And cram our iStuff with music we already like.


No time to stop and listen to something that would have apparently made Brahms blow his brains out because of its beauty.


So it sort off makes me sad I guess. Maybe cos I’ve been on a Bach kick reading a couple of books and watching a couple more documentaries within the past few weeks about the late great Glenn Gould. Maybe cos even the pitiful and notoriously-retarded Youtube comments on a recording of Bach’s Chaconne by Itzhak Perlman are littered with things like ‘Not even Plato had the fortune to listen to such music’ and ‘Pure magic, plain and simple’ and ‘It is the sound of God when he cries.’ Maybe cos I hope that I would have stopped had I wandered through that particular metro station that particular morning even if I did not recognize the Chaconne in D minor.

Because hopefully I would have recognized the beauty and taken a moment or two to soak it in. Soak it up. Remember how Kant said ‘the beautiful itself is either enchanting or touching, or radiating or enticing.’

And leave then having been reminded ... it is everywhere.

Looking out over a sea of mountains rising above valleys of clouds immersed under a shimmering sun. My son when he smiles without inhibition before he realizes he is doing so his hair in need of a cut so it is starting to curl. A strain of a Bach melody held on the D string then taking off furiously building and building to some ultimate end that should be able to most certainly transcend it all.

wilderness clichéd.

So during our trip to the Bugaboos a week or so ago and a few other Canadian provincial and national parks (Banff and Jasper and Kootenay) I gained some perspective on what seems to be an entirely American notion of 'wilderness.' In addition last night a trip to Half Price Books yielded a find of a large-format book of Ansel Adams' called The American Wilderness.

In time I plan on writing up my thoughts in particular to wilderness from what I gleaned as being the Canadian approach to such and now of some thoughts on the Adams' book, but for this post went back to a journal entry I've up until now left unpublished (if you can call blogging about it 'publishing'). Coincidentally, it was from another annual autumn trip of mine and Jeff's (we do this every autumn - take a trip somewhere and do some backpacking and sightseeing and have visited places from Yosemite to the San Rafael Swell and points in between from the Rockies and Sierras to the southwest and now the Canadian Rockies).

In this entry below I recount our trip last year where we detoured a bit south to the Maroon Bells (on my request to be fair) and my thoughts on having hiked a couple easy miles up to Crater Lake beneath the pair of impressive north and south peaks ...



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25 september 2010.

Maroon Bells. Sitting here at Crater Lake after a two-mile hike with a throng of others. Found a spot above the lake nestled in the quaking aspens listening to the sound of the wind through the leaves over the sound of people yapping down by the lake. The view is astounding. And the aspens have turned their brilliant autumn yellow. There is a dusting of fresh snow. The weather is about as perfect as one could ask for. All ingredients mixed together begs the question can wilderness be a cliché? And in asking that in fact seems to me to be asking the bigger question that I think of often climbing and backpacking the mountains of Washington brutal and honest in their indifference weeding out the throngs of tourists the trails from foggy valley bottom to craggy peaks thousands and thousands of feet high steep ... is clichéd wilderness good or bad? That hordes of people stomp along the the two-mile trail to Crater Lake under the Maroon Bells to eat their fruit and brownies and take their photos under cloudless bluebird skies. Do they really truly walk away with a respect and awe for our natural world having been mesmerized by the sound of the wind through the aspens of the smell of air evergreen forest of the sight of these imposing peaks? Or just a postcard photo of themselves and another place they can tick off a list? Like Delicate Arch the other night. We didn't take the three-mile hike instead opting in the little light there was left for the shorter viewpoint just to see it if only from a distance. Got there right as the sun dipped below the horizon to see - literally - a hundred people lined up shoulder to shoulder tripods and all along the ridge west of the arch perched precariously on a canyon edge. Did they leave with an Abbey-esque reverence for the place or just another stupid photograph of an arch at sunset photographed by millions? Does accessibility like this do more harm than good? Or maybe more accurately simply does it do any good at all? Surely not everyone can have the respect for nature as Abbey and Ruess and their deserts or Muir and Adams and Manning and their mountains. So they just take their photos. Maybe they think twice about sustainability. Of the idea of the seventh generation. Of preserving wilderness rather than exploiting it. Or maybe they just sigh cos they had to take a bus up here to the Bells in an effort to reduce the pollution instead of driving their car cos thirty years ago even then it was obvious all the autos were wreaking havoc on the mountain air and the meadows. Maybe all they take away is a photo of them under blue skies and a kind of place I think is often misunderstood if not at least underappreciated so no harm done but no good either? People tossing water bottles and such on the ground. A kid carving something in the pristine bark of an aspen his mother standing nearby not noticing or saying anything. In the end do the throngs of tourists to these places help or hurt? Maybe I sound cynical or maybe I have turned elitist or into some old curmudgeon. Talked to some climbers headed down the trail behind us they had a go on Pyramid but turned back a hundred feet shy of the summit finding themselves on a bit of ice while their crampons and axes were tucked safely back in their trunk. Oops. But they get it I'm certain. How many now did we pass on the trail who also get it versus how many who did not? Just up there for their scrapbook photo from the lake a hundred feet from the bus stop only to turn around to head back home. Maybe that sounds elitist. Maybe not. I think of the trips I have planned that I hope to make before the snow starts to fall in earnest back home. Kool-Aid Lake in the North Cascades. I'll leave the same throngs of tourists behind lollygagging at Cascade Pass and head up the daunting if not slightly intimidating climbers' path carved into the side of Mixup Peak and then up to Cache Col to drop down on the other side under Mixup and Formidable and Spider to pitch a tent or toss my bag at the shores of Kool-Aid. The other trip of course to the Enchantments like I do every year a grueling ten-mile approach up six-thousand feet in itself weeding out the tourists and the ones who don't really care or don't get it leaving only those that do and who enjoy the solitude of one of the greatest little corners on Earth. Not like the Maroon Bells. Not like Delicate Arch. Bumping elbows with a hundred other photographers all with their tripods and expensive cameras just to take a photo that has already been taken a billion times. Manning writes -


'Wilderness - genuine wilderness - is the sum of many processes of life and death, growth and decay.'


Such places are the last of our primeval landscapes. The few surviving samples of a natural world to walk and rest in to see to listen to feel to comprehend and understand. To care about. There isn't much of it left. What there is (and this is key) is all that all of us will ever have. And all of our children. And so on. It is only as safe as people - knowing about it - want it to be. But do enough people know? So I come back to that question. Are the mothers and fathers with the strollers scrambling off the bus to get a view of the Maroon Bells in fact spreading the good word to their children that this wilderness is here and is finite? Is not safe and needs to be preserved? Maybe they will not take up mountaineering. Or head up and over Buckskin Pass to peer to peaks beyond. Maybe they will never again step into wilderness. But they will have had a glimpse. And is that enough?



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It is interesting to read my thoughts from last year given the perspective gleaned from this last trip to Canadian 'wilderness' in the Bugs and a trip into dare I say more traditional wilderness a couple weeks ago up to Whatcom Pass in North Cascades National Park. I feel I have gained a bit more insight into the idea and essence of wilderness since jotting down those thoughts sitting next to Crater Lake amidst all the others who had made the quick trip there, but that still - even back then - perhaps reveals the path I am headed - elitest or not - in my view of wilderness.

Not to jump too much ahead of myself, but pulling a quote from the Adams' book to close seems to sum my thoughts and direction perfectly and as succinctly as possible ~

'We either have wild places or we don't. We admit the spiritual-emotional validity of wild beautiful places or we don't. We have a philosophy of simplicity of experience in these wild places or we don't. We admit an almost religious devotion to the clean exposition of the wild, natural earth, or we don't.'

a glimpse.

Sixteen miles in. Six-and-a-half hours from shouldering my pack twenty pounds or so back at the Hannegan Pass trailhead earlier that morning. It was just about four in the afternoon. Another mile to go Whatcom. I had to command my legs to move up over the overgrown trail hot in the three-p-m sun. And then just below the pass I hit the sub-alpine zone. A beautiful scene of Brush Creek meandering and cascading through open heather meadows sprinkled with pinks and purples contrasted by greens and greys. It smelled amazing. A certain alpine freshness. I found the campground and a spot on which to toss my pack before heading up the last couple hundred feet and quarter-mile through heather to the pass for a bit of a break. Crested it with views east into the Little Beaver valley and Whatcom enormous rising from the rocky ridge that led south. Challenger was blocked from view. I'd have to climb higher before I could see it which I would in a bit. And then Luna from even higher. Right now writing this in my tent by headlamp Moby on headphones is mixing with the sounds of the chirping outside. The moon is bathing this alpine basin around the Tapto Lakes above Whatcom Pass washing out all but the Big Dipper. Cassiopea. Tired. Long day. Wandered around the basin away from where I set up my small camp to check the place out after dinner while the sun set behind Shuksan and Ruth to the west seemingly very very far away. I had passed by Ruth earlier that morning on the way over Hannegan. Am looking forward to sleep. Have on my Sacred Socks cozy-warm wool but it's crazy-warm outside. I don't think it's even supposed to dip much below sixty tonight. 9:23. I'll probably try to sleep and write more tomorrow. Have all day to myself up here before I head back the eighteen-plus miles to Spencer. Hoping for clouds or some beautiful light like we had on Sourdough two weeks ago or Cache Col two weeks before that but no such luck tonight and not really expecting it for tomorrow. This trip is just for a glimpse. A glimpse east into the crazy-wild Little Beaver valley. A glimpse of the crazy-remote Challenger. And Easy Ridge. And Whatcom. The Pickets. Finally. Morning now. The sun was late in getting to me camped here under this ridge to the east. But now it is here and I have already finished my essential morning cup of coffee the sound of a snowmelt stream nearby. Sitting on granite warm in the sun. Can tell it's going to be a warm day even at six-thousand feet. Already had the thought of swimming in one of the lakes crazy for September. A slight breeze feels heavenly. I can see Shuksan towering over everything to the west. And Ruth in front of it. Whatcom of course and the whole of Easy Ridge spread out to the south. Had some lunch and then climbed back over the ridge holding the Tapto basin for an absolutely incredible view of Challenger and the Little Beaver valley. I sit down now on some lichen-stained rock and pause to listen. The monumental cascades of waterfalls coursing down deep into the valley make a constant muted roar miles away. I can see pockets of glacier remnants clinging to life on the ice-scoured north side of Challenger. There's a lake even tucked under the sheer shadowed wall where the Challenger glacier stops abruptly somehow seemingly to defy gravity. As far east through the valley that I can see the landscape mellows. Ross Lake is hidden from view but I wonder if I can see Desolation Peak? I'll have to check a map when I get back. The breeze has mostly disappeared and I am reminded of how out here only the elemental matters. A breeze to ward off both the last of the bugs before the Autumn chill drapes itself over the mountains and the heat of the sun. No sound but that distant roar of waterfalls. Complete peace. I think back to the hike yesterday to get here. And about wilderness like this in general I guess. There are two other tents back down among the Tapto Lakes. I saw one guy head out on his way this morning. Then another. Not sure to where. Then silence. And still ... silence. What if there was a car ferry up Ross Lake to the Little Beaver valley? Or worse a road around it maybe turning the wild lake empty of any motorized boats into another place of a Lake Tahoe sort. Then say a road up Little Beaver smack up to where the insane geography of it finally impeded civilized travel. Then a parking lot there. And from that spot once crazy-wild wilderness maybe an Alps-like tram up here to Whatcom Pass. So that everyone can see this wild silent splendor that is this place buried deep in one of the wildest spots in the lower forty-eight. Except then it wouldn't be silent. It would certainly be more accessible. The seventeen miles in from Hannegan was probably a breeze compared to the eighteen mile easterly approach up the Little Beaver. Granted it doesn't need to be done in seven hours but regardless. It's a very long haul to heave pack up and over two passes. The ferry-slash-car-slash-tram option would be so much easier this place today would instead be thronged with people all clambering for the view. Afterall it is mindblowingly-spectacular.








But no ... thankfully. That other option is not yet an option.







And so I sit here on this ridge in shorts and shirtsleeves and flip flops where trees give way to rock a slight breeze completely by myself. The shadows on Challenger lengthen and swallow up the tiny lake I spied earlier. The folds in the snow on the glacier become more apparent. The light softens. And all of this to only that distant sound of cascades soon to silence with the coming of winter. I am enthralled by silence. In awe of this glimpse into such a wild place. And grateful to those who maybe sat here at this same spot and saw a wilderness worth preserving. I realize that in my staunch defense of wilderness preservation I also know not everyone can sit here and gaze and gasp at the sight of the Challenger glacier or immerse themselves in this sort of quiet. And searching for an answer or maybe more a justification I decide or maybe even know that is what makes it special. That those people who just drive the cross-state highway and pull off at the Diablo Lake overlook maybe only do so to stretch tired legs and point and say 'look at that mountain!' ('that mountain' being the six-thousand-foot relief of the north face of Colonial - a fantastically-wild climb). Take a photo of Diablo's glacial-silted turquoise waters and continue on their way. Sure they've seen something but I tend to think (or again justify) that they have not connected. There is no effort. Just a photo op. So with no effort it can be argued ultimately has any benefit been gained? Will they rush home and phone their legislators to support and save wild lands? Maybe. Not likely though I'd be willing to bet. But the one who treks up the mountain passes through fields of heather and wildflowers and granite far-removed with everything they need on their back grueling at times blisters maybe sore muscles for sure to finally arrive seventeen miles and hours and hours even maybe days away later to throw down pack. Sit. Stare. And take note of the silence of wilderness. Glimpse into its core. Spend a night or two or three or more sleeping out under the Milky Way. Open a tent fly up to the sheer vastness of trees or meadows or mountains or skies. Watch an icefall crash on a glacier across a valley as old as time. What can they learn? Take away? Much likely more than the passerby numb down there just winding around the bends of a highway as it contours the same landscape those who hike can feel inching across it by boot. Going now to scout some tarns or streams or rocks looking for a good foreground to strike against the incredibleness of Challenger. Not sure what the evening will bring but know it will be spectacular. I'll be dying to be done as I crawl back up Hannegan on my way out tomorrow. Then down. Down down down to the trailhead. But still grateful to have been here. Still in awe at such a place. Still reminded this was just a glimpse and I will most definitely - most definitely - be back.







Trip stats -

:: 17 miles one-way to Whatcom Pass (2000' gain to Hannegan, 2600' loss down to the Chilliwack crossing, 3000' gain back up to Whatcom Pass); another 1.5 miles to Tapto Lakes with an additional 1000' gain/300' loss; total time from trailhead to Tapto Lakes = 7 hours

:: The ranger back in Glacier apparently thought I was insane for attempting Tapto Lakes in a day confessing she normally takes three and subsequently actually would not give me a permit to Tapto for both nights instead suggesting I stay the first night at Whatcom Pass before heading up the rest of the way and still smug at thinking I wouldn't-slash-couldn't make it which of course did not stop me from, well, camping at Tapto Lakes both nights. Stupid rangers.

:: The cable car crossing of the Chilliwack was awesome despite hearing that there is a log draped over the river downstream at the ford.

:: There are lots of fly-infested camps along the Chilliwack buried in old-growth forest (not that there's anything wrong with that) for those less-inclined to attempt the entire trip in one day (umm, not that there's anything wrong with that either).

:: There were signs of bears at Whatcom and down below at Graybeal camps but I never actually saw one.

:: I may have become slightly delirious on the way back down the Hennegan trail through the Ruth Creek valley long-ago clearcut by the good ol' troopers of the US Forest Service so that all hikers now unfortunate to come down (or even more unfortunate to go up) in the afternoon get blasted by the sun no relief from what should have been a pristine old-growth forest hike but now just endless clumps of maple and other such brush and thus I may have been yelling at a fly that was pestering me once I finally reached the trailhead and was just desperately trying to get in my car and leave and there may have been a family or two having a nice lunch in the picnic shelter wondering what was wrong with that dude yelling at a fly and flailing his arms around.

:: The north fork of the Nooksack River makes a prime spot in which to dunk head, arms and feet after enduring the God-forsaken Hennegan trail which nearly quite literally never ends and for which even an attempt to drown the mundaneness of it out with Placebo's 'Battle of the Sun' proved futile.

:: Regardless ... this trip is utterly incredible. No, really. Utterly. I will be back.

home.

I am home here climbing along ridges above clouds

seas of white.

I am home here on front covered porch wood old but not peeling scarf wrapped around neck steaming mug

wrapped in hands.

I am home here in front of piano old and beautiful and worn

imperfect.

but I am

not home here.

at the edge of light.

It comes blundering over the

Boulders at night, it stays

Frightened outside the

Range of my campfire

I go to meet it at the

Edge of light.

The mountains are your mind.

~ Gary Snyder, excerpted from The High Sierra Of California

one-hundred-eighty-seven years ago today.

I started the final term paper for my senior-year of high school advanced English lit class with a similar sentence that Harvey Sachs uses in his book The Ninth: Beethoven And The World In 1824 ~

Ludwig van Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 in D minor, op. 125, is one of the most precedent-shattering and influential compositions in the history of music.

To be precise, mine went something like this ~

Ludwig van Beethoven's Ninth Symphony in D minor, the "Choral," his one hundred and twenty-fifth work, is and will always remain his greatest, most monumental gift to all mankind.

Before anyone draws any conclusions - or calls me out for possible plagiarism that garnered me a perfect 'A' for my rather scrutinous diatribe of Beethoven's Ninth (beating the to-be valedictorian's grade by nearly a full letter and prompting his mother to insinuate to mine that she must have also helped me on my paper, to which my mom could both honestly say she did not as well as report back to me it seemed his mom had apparently helped him) - keep in mind I handed in that term paper in 1994, and Sachs' book was published last year. Maybe Sachs got hold of my term paper somehow ...

Regardless, it was one-hundred-eighty-seven years ago today that - in a small Viennese theatre named the Kärntnertor - that what was indeed to become nearly-unilaterally-thought as the greatest achievement in Western music (and dare I say all of art) was performed for the first time by a hack-by-today's-standards smattering of musicians and vocalists.

Similarly, Beethoven is just-as-nearly-unilaterally considered of epitomizing and in fact being 'the quintessential genius of Western culture.' About his last symphony, the Russian revolutionary and at-times-anarchist Mikhail Bakunin whispered to conductor and composer Richard Wagner in 1849 (a mere twenty-five years after its premiere performance), that 'if all the music that has ever been written were lost in the expected world-wide conflagration, we must pledge ourselves to rescue this symphony, even at the peril of our lives.' The Ninth is considered 'both an extraordinary, living musical organism and a milestone in the history of civilization.' And so on.

The superlatives for this monumental work and achievement can continue ad infinitum. I certainly spared none in that term paper that I perhaps somewhat pompously but honestly and affectionately titled -

Uhh, yeah.

To continue in my pompous-even-at-eighteen-years-old vein, I then indicated on the second page of said paper that the complete (emphasis used for real back then) orchestral score and a sound recording of the symphony (I did though leave out the terse suggestion of how only Zubin Mehta's live performance with the New York Philharmonic from back in 1983 could be considered worthy of listening) should be used when studying my paper, as well as that 'a thorough understanding of introductory music theory is assumed of the reader.' I was fun even back then. And apparently also just a smidge opinionated.

I included an English translation of Freidrich Schiller's An Die Freude ('Ode To Joy') and then - over the course of eleven carefully-typed, double-spaced pages (with no help from my mother, by the way) proceeded to prove - through at times a bar-by-bar 'critical analysis' of each of the four movements along with historic snippets much like what, over the course of two hundred pages, Sachs tries also to accomplish - that indeed this was Beethoven's greatest gift to mankind.

It wasn't hard.

I didn't use the term 'unilaterally' above (twice even) for no reason or without just cause (or at least not to my over-opinionated-self). I wrote about how Beethoven was never certain about the use of a choral finale or - for that matter - the theme of the 'Ode' itself. It is widely-known that he was what Sachs called a 'write, rewrite, and re-rewrite man ... not a wholly-spontaneous creator.' He went on to say that 'Beethoven knew that perfection was impossible.'

But back to my paper ... I wrote of its 'gigantic proportions' (before I had discovered the gem 'ginormous') and how it more-or-less was responsible for effectively bridging the gap between the Classical and Romantic eras of music history. I quoted Donald Tovey - a notable musicologist among other things - who once wrote 'of all the single works of art, of all passages in a work of art, the first subject of the first movement of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony has had the deepest and widest influence on later music.' To which I responded in my own attempt to back up his statement ~

The opening pianissimo fifths, subdominant and dominant in the key of D minor, gradually quicken and pile up into a colossal wave of the descending D minor triad ...

and how Beethoven masterfully built the tension through the use of a gradual crescendo lasting for six bars.

And on and on. And on. And on.

How the timpani comes in playing the dominant F to the key of B-flat. How the second movement ends on the major parallel triad of how it began (parallel keys share the same tonic, in this case the D) and how Beethoven again does this modulation in the fourth movement at bar 230 while seven bars later the movement proceeds to its second section and the tempo ups to the marked 'Allegro assai.' And how - as the movement draws to a close - 'Beethoven is unrelentless in his quest for power, piling tension on top of tension' while 'the chorus is nearly shouting, doubled rhythmically by the entire orchestra.' Of how the orchestra tries to bring the symphony to an end in bar 936, 'but it takes three more powerful, fortissimo quarter notes, enforced with pairs of triplets by the entire woodwind section and the rumbling thunder of the timpani, to finally conclude the symphony.'

How it all ends on the triad it sought to build way back in the opening bars of the first movement with those pianissimo descending fifths ... the D minor.

It should come as no surprise then that I - as a rather self-described precocious teenager - did in fact own a copy of the complete score of this symphony, and would listen intently sitting alone in my room on my bed thumbing through it bar-by-bar, line-by-line, page-by-page as the music unfolded. Unaware of my surroundings. Completely drawn in. Absorbed.

Beethoven was well-known to be scornful. Conceitful (there was only one Beethoven after all!). Pompous. Even hostile - constantly lashing out at friends and acquaintances only to come crawling back quickly after seeking their forgiveness for his verbal brutalities. But at the same time, he portrayed a perfect juxtaposition of a love for humanity but contempt for human beings. A sense of his own musical superiority but physical frailty. An affection for others 'inextricably bound up with affliction.' So on May the sixth, at the final rehearsal for the following day's concert, the composer 'stood at the theater's stage door and embraced, one by one, each of the amateur orchestra and chorus members who were participating, gratis, in the proceedings.' He was grateful. And humble. His own humility had crept in for a moment and taken over.

I could go on of course. More than I already have. My own history admittedly quite tied up with Beethoven. Like of how there is a reason I strongly feel - like the second movement of the Piano Sonata in C minor, op. 111, shows in that Beethoven took us so profoundly into his heart and - as Sach's put it 'into the heart of the Universe' - that anything that followed would have been 'impossibly anticlimatic' - be it Beethoven's Fate or ours that there is no tenth symphony.

That there is not because similarly - in his Ninth - he took us further into his heart than ever possible from any other composer or any other musical work before or after - that he simply had to leave this Earth before he completed another. From those opening pianissimo fifths of the first movement to the blistering Scherzo to the strains of the most-eloquent and beautiful of all slow movements to the grandiose finale and crashing end.

'What must have run through his mind as the ink dried on the last notes?' Sachs asks.

It is hard for me to imagine the mind that can come up with the idea that 'all uniform motion is relative, and that there is no absolute and well-defined state of rest (as in, no privileged reference frames) from mechanics to all the laws of physics, including both the laws of mechanics and of electrodynamics, whatever they may be' - otherwise known as Special Relativity.

But even more difficult for me to imagine the mind that can come up with two-thousand-two-hundred-and-three bars of music that can bring the whole of humanity to its knees.

It has been often said in various but similar ways that if everyone on Earth could hear (insert composer's name, be it Bach or Beethoven or Mozart), there would never be another war. Beethoven had no idea his last symphony - with near-exponential vigor following the premiere performance - would take on a life of its own and come to epitomize more eloquently than any other musical work this particular sentiment.

The summer following that historic evening one-hundred-eighty-seven-years ago today he - disgruntled and grumpy with his affairs and those around him - ran off to the country to escape the throngs of Vienna and take up residence alone as was his custom. To put the symphony behind him and begin working on his final (and again - thought nearly-unilaterally to be the most extraordinary in the genre) string quartets.

And of course then - unknowing of the Fate of the Ninth - Beethoven died just shy of three years later.

I think of myself - that kid sitting on his bed in the dark my ears wrapped with headphones listening painfully loud to Mehta conducting the New York Philharmonic to click on a reading lamp so that I could trace the notes of the score with my finger as it poured itself - as indeed Beethoven poured himself - out to me. To be wowed. Intoxicated. Absorbed. I thought then as I do now that - indeed ... the Ninth Symphony is Beethoven's most monumental work, and his greatest gift to all mankind ...

... then ... now ... and for all eternity.

'You are so weak on this Earth made of granite ... '

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?