Lost down the trail (Con’t)

The story about Eric Robinson continues. Ksl.com posted this new article updating the search efforts, but read this one first. He hasn’t been seen or found. With all the effort, all the helicoptors, the 21 men on the ground in search of him, all the prayers that are being said.. Everything; no one has found a trace.

We knew of the man Everett Reuss. Maybe one day I’ll publish parts of that as an extended blog, the story I did on him. Everett Reuss wandered around southern Utah and into the four corners area frequently until one day he vanished into Davis Gulch, leaving behind an eerie camp. When searchers found the camp, his two  burros were gone and so was he. But camp looked as though it was expecting his swift return.

If you do the digging you’ll find out more and more about the mystery. But this man, Eric, has no burros, no dog with him as he wanders off into the sunset. Even Ed Abbey would be jealous. Eric, the Austrailian adventurer is gone and no one will find him. I hate to say it. I have to say it. Men like this venture deeper and deeper until one day, as Ed Abbey described Everett Reuss, he loses the thread. The man becomes like a voice on the wind, the adventure having consumed his soul entirely, leaving nothing behind.

I offer my sympathies to his family. Let the man be known as a legend, fearless to pursue the desire of his heart. If you read this somewhere out there in distant days, remember those of us who follow.

The new ghost town

Human nature is consistent at least. Human nature is survival. Do what is necessary, find food and shelter. In today’s society that means get a job, find a room to rent, and live some kind of social existence. I believe that it used to be different and more along the lines of: find good earth, plant a crop, build a home, feed your family, and make a few honest friends. We now buy food at the market because somebody else grows it or makes it. Most food doesn’t seem to come out of the earth as much as it does cans, bags, and boxes. With a sustenance like that, who needs to stay in the country and grow food?

We now rent a room or buy a house close to where we work. Most people seem to work in fields of industrial complexes and maybe in cubicles too rather than in the fields of golden wheat. The new social existence is much like Rome. You go from the edge of your new metropolitan life and deeper into the city for a ball game or a concert where there are other people of the same life as you, starving for something of flavor, something new, but finding the same thing as everyone else finds there: some instrumental sounds, some vocals, and an anomaly of artificial structures.

This is the end of the small town. There will be a few that remain, of course. I live in Heber, Utah, for now. But I don’t believe I will ever return to a city. This is why some of these towns will have a place forever. But to understand what is happening, please see this KSL.com article.

middle of the day, a state highway is main street and nothing passes here

It used to be that the small towns that were left for ruin were old mining towns in mountain or desert places. I have a fascination with these and the mystery of their history. Here’s a photo of one.  This picture is Eureka, Utah. This is half a ghost town, to use the words of Utah Phillips.

And there are a lot of towns like this. They are dead mining towns, all over the west. They’re everywhere in Nevada. The ones lucky enough to be along a highway are kept on life support as the oldest of the old hold on to a dream that life might returns here. The towns off the beaten path are forgotten and in most cases shoved into the annals of written logs, disappeared forever as the government destroys them because they’re a safety hazard in the effort to create jobs for the underclasses.

Miners left as the rich ore played out. The larger mining companies would come in and control everything anyway. This left nothing for the man, only for the machine of progress. Now, as the next phase of ghost town production enters, we have a new breed but the same old equation. The local, small farmers are bought out by the mega machine of agriculture and live stock leaving no reason to stay in the countryside creating a life. The children of the farmers leave for better opportunity in the city, forsaking all that is good.

As the parents who stay behind in the small farming towns die off and the children seldom return, the ghosts fill the voids and most of America will be left in the shadows, slowly falling to ash.

As the small town life is forgotten another piece of America dies. As the metropolitan life grows and the city sprawls people forget about the value of open skies, clean air, faceless deserts, and rocky mountains and there is no protecting them anymore. The ghost town of the miners spells the equation. We only have to look at the history to see what happens next. It is a sad moment in time for me.

Lost down the Trail

I was reading the new this morning about the man, Eric Robinson. He’s currently 64 years old, 5’7″, and lost in the Uintah mountains, being now 6 days overdue.. Here’s the article, KSL.com. His wife comes on the video and seems somewhat calm about this all, probably because Eric hikes all over the world. That’s a pretty good life: walking down trails, finding the way, seeing the earth as an explorer would. He always comes back.

The Uintah range foothills are right out my back door. He’s out in the area of Kings peak from what I understand. It’s a big range. It’s not like the Eastern Sierra’s of California, but it big enough. It’s a place that is shrouded in old mysteries and Native Folklore. And, as sad as it seems, he may be gone for good. At some point men decide it is their time to move on. And a man like this, well, why would he let himself pass on to the next life whilst idle in an arm chair?

Edward Abbey once wrote about finding a dead man out in the Canyonlands park. He wrote romantically about the man and said that if there was a way to go out, why not just find a good rock and wait there to die? Sounds good to me. I feel for his wife. I wish the little lady the best in this search. If I had time I’d go out there to look with everyone else. But some of us are stuck in the distance and some of us know, also, that the place is big and should a man decide it’s his time, then maybe it is.

Bon Courage, Eric!!

Pine Beetle

I was recently out in Colorado, near Winter Park, in the Grand Lake and Granby Lake area.  It’s beautiful there. But I was surprised to find that all the dead pine trees, there were many, were from the pine beetle. I thought it was sad to see entire forests leveled by this insect. This picture is of a hill near Lake Granby.

The information, generally, about the mountain pine beetle is that it attacks the weak trees. It doesn’t seem so. Here’s a little info published by Colorado State University.

As the beetle devastates forests in this area one is left to wonder when the great fires are coming. The forest service and private property owners are afraid of wild fire so, as seen in the photo, they hew the dead into these huge piles to burn in the winter.

To me, there is something larger at stake. We learned from Yellowstone that large fires restore the soil and the new forests emerge. This is necessary. Is it that the pine beetle makes this process come about? I’m no ecologist and definitely no expert of environmental concerns like this. But it seems to me that nature has a way of cleaning up the old and ushering in the new, all with fire.

The collection of the dead trees and piling them will not benefit the soil. What will be able to grow now?

Along to Hideaway Park

Under the Rocky Mountain view beyond the deck, beyond the lake, air is cool and fresh. The sky is new and the sun is rising from is interstellar slumber. Us mortals are waiting for its warmth. But patient because we have no need to rush the moment.

Below is a valley that was traveled over a hundred years ago. I don’t know what our history is for this spot. It seems to me that it was a place where ranching was home. These high mountains and the valleys below appear to be perfect for making a homestead.

In the old west the plan was to head this direction in search of a different life than what was being bred in the east coast metropoli. One had only to come out here and stake his claim on the land of his choice. There weren’t real estate agents. There weren’t closing costs. There was enough land for everyone. But then you needed cattle and there weren’t enough of those.

Today, the history of the place seems general to me because I don’t know names or dates, event or reasons. So the pioneer trail that was tread here is a mystery to me.

The grocery store line

I was at the market the other day thinking about nothing and overheard a conversation. It wasn’t anything of real import. It was basic news, or gossip about a neighbor that these two women knew. “Oh, her son is doing this,” and “His daughter is doing that.” Just random things that have some gravity in their lives but it doesn’t matter to some one like me. in fact, it didn’t matter to anyone else either! It was just something to talk about.

So, in that instant I made an analysis of the conversations that I hear. The conversations that people have in a comfortable financial situation when they meet is somewhat like the latter. The conversations that wealthy people have is about where they’re going, what they’re doing, and their fortunes, routinely. Then there’s the less financially fortunate. Their conversations are more about how good it is to see their family and friends, what their kids are up to, when they get the chance; most of the time I hear something about their life not being good enough. And generally, in that class of people there are obviously the grateful and the ingrates.

I find that among  my peers their obsession with being outside makes them consistently satisfied with their lot in life, no matter their financial situation. I find that those consumed by work aren’t so. It’s an interesting disparity. But those with a better quality of life have more healthy conversations. Quality of life seems relative, to me, to the perspective which they have of their world.

I don’t believe that’s there’s a truly wealthy cynic. How many people do you uplift everyday through what you say? People who make the world a better place have a better life given to them. What an equation! Wandering through the country side and wild places of the world help me enjoy life. It helps me to be more grateful for what I have. I hope it helps me entice others to live happier lives. I also find that those most jovial people, the ones who can make you laugh consistently and smile all the time, they have more success in life than any other.

Upon checking out with my groceries I lost the thought until I decided to record it this morning, sitting in a cafe in Steamboat Springs, Colorado. I’m on my way to Winter Park to ride bikes. Get out of the city y’all.

Protecting the water you drink…

So, this morning I was going through emails and started reading an article posted by High Country News, Hydrofracked: One Man’s Quest for Answers About Natural Gas Drilling. I’d never heard of this issue, in part I’m sure, because there are so many issues concerning our environment that I wasn’t paying attention. Please read the article as it made me start thinking about things like electricity, cooking, heating water, et cetera.

What is the price we pay for heating and electricity? Louis Meeks knows that price and what it took for him to arrive at the conclusion that he wasn’t crazy.

It’s one thing to protect wild lands and places, but when you have to defend your rights to clean drinking water, by yourself…. well, make your own conclusions.

The movie: 180 South

Mitch, my 6 year younger nephew and I have always been adventurers. He spends his days on a ranch in California and sailing in the Carribean  during parts of the summer. He and I used to travel all over to races when we rode bikes together. Last night on a short sejour traveling from California to the British Virgin Islands, he handed me the DVD for the movie 180 South. I’ve put the Youtube trailer link below. It is one of the best adventure documentary movies I’ve ever seen:

If you care about what Edward Abbey was on about, you need to watch it. If you relate to the man who was Everett Reuss, then you need to see it. If you believe that John Muir was onto something, then you need to hear this.

When civilization,  such as it is, starts to rob you of your mental stability and you have to run into the deserts or forests to find peace, you must understand as well as I do that you cannot find this peace in the city and the concrete places of the world.

I blog about finding peace and identity in the wild all the time. As a result, I believe that we must protect these places. Here is what one of Yvon Chouinard’s friends in Santiago had to say about it in this movie:

“How can people who are trapped in the city try to create a more ecologically minded world if you don’t know that it’s possible? A good example of how people become closed off from their ecosystems is with their Walkmen or iPods. So you start to further close yourself off. You don’t want to breathe the dirty air, you don’t want to hear because it’s annoying, you don’t want to look because it’s ugly. That is why we don’t understand nature, love it or take care of it. We don’t realize that we depend on it psychologically and physically 100%.”

- Juan Pablo Orrego, Santiago, CHILE (180 South)

Toward the end of the movie, when asked what Yvon wanted to call the route of their ascent of an unclimbed peak, Cerro, he replied, “Nothin’. Just climb it and walk away…” with a type of hopelessness in his voice. “It doesn’t matter any more…. Each of us in our own way gotta do something, save your soul, ya know. Whatever that is.”

Into the Escalante

Looking up through narrowing canyon walls the blue of the sky calls about thoughts of treasure lost deep at sea. As my sandaled feet tread thin water in the bottoms I move through time and find my way through the desert. My footprints cross under the shadows of cottonwoods and looming, desert varnished cliffs. And just as they should be they are lost to the moving spring water. 

The desert has long been home to my deepest thoughts and refuge for my aching heart. As I wake in by bed at home I see sun scorched rocks and distant plateaus. In my minds eye I look to the passing clouds over the red stone of canyon country to start my day. These wild places are where I enjoy the peace of my own life. It takes away the pressing social interference of a civilized life.

Imagine the voice of the most beautiful woman you’ve ever known and you’ll hear the voice that comes to me on the wind. Everything is bright and laid out before me and I am left with my thoughts, the ones that matter. I don’t have to be anywhere else. I’m in no hurry. While the juxtapose of a traffic light frustrates me, being stranded at a spring in a desert under the Escalante sun is a welcome adventure.

Imagine a place that brings you comfort in the most terrible of circumstances or even escape from the mundane social existence that we all live and you will have this place. These wild places where the only access is on foot. There are places like this that are protected from industrial development. Places like this are subject to become endangered, or even decimated. It seems that an area can qualify for wilderness protection or “other multiple public uses.” Please take a look at this article published in the High Country News.

I’ve taken time to join the efforts of SUWA and the Sierra Club because I don’t want to lose the places that are real and also part of my dreams. Wild places cannot be wild if they are sectioned off to the neighboring coal mine or power plant. Please help protect the wilderness.

While many think that organizations like this are for the granola’s and hipsters of society, take a look at what the Sierra Club is doing. You’ll find that they’re moving people to take action against air pollution in densely populated areas. If you live in Salt Lake City, or even along the Wasatch Front please take a moment to consider the level of toxins you take in with each breath simply due to the proximity of oil refineries and the Kennecot super-smoke stack.

Girls on the Ridgetops

“I’m from New York working on my masters program, so I’ll be here for a while,” said the brunette sitting across from me on the snowy saddle overlooking the Millicent lift of Brighton. She was fit and I suppose was probably a runner. She was out with a group of a dozen other girls. They were guided by someone in the Utah Avalanche Center and the SheJumps organization. She was cute. Just like all the other girls.

“It’s only my third time out,” she added. I was excited, and seemingly getting to know a new friend. Well ten seconds later she wandered off to the other side of the ridge. So I concluded, that nothing would happen there, even with a potential for a new backcountry buddy. And from other experiences with women in the wild places of the world, they get super distracted. So my new archetype of women in the backcountry is that they tend to wander off.

Be wary of this. Especially if you’re like me. I wander off. Two people wandering off in the wild isn’t an especially productive event.

Looking up the ridge and above at the top of a nearby peak there were more of these groups. There must have been 30 women up there, all told, as a part of this group. I don’t like seeing the wild being filled with so many people. That takes away the wild. But since this was slack country, I wouldn’t expect the wild to actually suffer this kind of static footprint.