The wind blows hard and the snow is shoved down my mouth, it taste like shaved ice, but a little bitter. I close my mouth and bury my face in the shaggy neck of my ride welcoming the relief from the blowing snow, but it smells like wet dog that just came out of a fetid swamp. The mammoth head sways left and right in cadence with each step, the massive curved tusks looking like the tines of a forklift, but so much more sinuous and elegant. I’ve learned to ride with the rhythm leaning left as the mammoth head sways to the right, leaning forward on the uphills and leaning back on the down.
Mindfulness
Reading Time: 2 minutes
mindful of the hidden brook that gurgles under a wooden landing, thick ferns and bushes, mindful of slippery footing in the muddy puddle of hiking boot depressions, mindful of pricking thorny raspberry bushes as I try to walk off trail to skirt the puddles, mindful of the rivulet of water flowing down the trail looking for its way to its ocean home, mindful of the soreness in thigh and calf muscles due to elevation gain and after two previous days of hiking, mindful of the chill from uphill sweat on a downhill north facing slope under the red woods,mindful of the mushroom bloom that pushes up through the ground under pine trees, mindful of the silence broken by a beach-scraping prop plane, mindful of the two crows preening one another on a rock and the raptor that lands on the browned grass of the field, mindful of the sweeping view of the rocky and rugged coastline, mindful of a wave pounding on black volcanic rocks jetting up into the air like the high collar of a white cape,
mindful of the iridescent blues of an iris and the clear blue sky, mindful of a sip of water and the bite of a crumbly snack mindful of the minute I sit and relax
Water, Earth, Wind, and Fire – Facing the Elements in the Deep South
Reading Time: 10 minutes
A Walk in the Woods
A mom and her daughter retreat into their car as we pull into the parking lot. They stop despite doors pulling them into their car to warn us that the wind is really bad and that one of them was hit by a falling branch causing them to abort their mission. Duly warned, we head out on the trail.
The wind roars overhead with the constancy and deepness of a Niagra Falls, news reports suggesting wind speeds of 40mph with gusts of 60. In the canopy of the forest, boughs of trees sway and bend out of sync. The trail narrows and disappears under a stream of brown leaf litter that camouflages protruding rock land mines and exposed root trip wires. I fall up the mountain trying to keep my eyes both down on the footing and up towards any overhead booms that might be launched my way by angry winds.
Continue reading “Water, Earth, Wind, and Fire – Facing the Elements in the Deep South”
Letters Home
Reading Time: 6 minutes
Day 1
Well, on my way. Made it to Santa Cruz. Car holding up so far. Driver holding up so far. Weather is pretty miserable up here, cold and raining.
I’m listening to the book “Wild Shore” by Kim Stanley Robinson, my favorite sci-fi author. The book kept me pretty occupied and relatively stress free bobbing in and out and around cars and semis as the book characters survive post apocalyptic America.
Time in the Desert
Reading Time: 9 minutes
Food for the Soul
Is planning an adventure an oxymoron? I thinks so, if you believe that the adventure begins when the trouble starts: a philosophical conversation for another time perhaps. I just want to share all the little desert moments on a simple weekend trip that, while perhaps not epic, are still food for the soul.
An Alternate Ending
Reading Time: < 1 minute
Bottom of the tenth inning. The winning run is at the plate. Montgomery throws, hangs a curve. Martinez rips it into the left field stands and the Indians win the world series. The stadium erupts in a pandemonium that lasts for thirty minutes. My brother Bruce texts a curse and calls Maddon the worst manager ever. He throws his cell phone on the ground. It will be a week before I hear from him again. The fans that aren’t enraged or crying just stare blankly into the void in disbelief looking forward without seeing.
So it goes.
Maddon’s blunder explodes into another Cub’s legend joining goats and Bartman and Garvey. Instead of an amazing season in which the Cubs achieved the best win record in Cubs history and a National League championship, they are remembered as a team that choked. Forget the amazing moments when Maddon worked his magic during the regular season: a two-strike suicide squeeze; toggling a pitcher between left field and the pitcher’s mound; pulling his team out of slump; pulling off post-season victories against the Giants and the Dodgers. Everyone will remember the one moment in the last inning of the last out of the last game and forget all the rest.
So it goes.
Tomorrow comes. History moves on. There is nothing to do but ride out the winter in the post-partum dullness of the off season. No tears, no joy, no ebullience, no uncertainty, no heartache and no awe. And no memory of great victory.
So it goes.
But wait ’til next year!
Best Game Ever
Reading Time: 2 minutes
The end of the season is at hand: win, lose or draw. Ha, draw. There is no draw. There is only greatness or another lost opportunity.
Two teams that haven’t won a series in 68 or more years; the Cubs down 3-1 in the series with their backs against the proverbial outfield wall, already making an incredible comeback, a game 7, in the world series. The whole season comes down to this one game.
But the script writers are working overtime. There is more. Let’s knock out the Indian’s ace, roll over the highly vaunted Cleveland relievers, and make it an easy win with a three run advantage with the fastest recorded thrower in baseball coming to the mound. No, we’ll bring in the Cubs highly vaunted ace and let him blow a three run lead on a two-run Davis home run that rocks the stadium to its foundation. The faces of the Cubs fan go pale as the years of frustration and folly flash through every fan in the Cub empire. Cub’s fans everywhere curse Maddon’s choice to over pitch the legendary Chapman in game six.
The Cubs hold and the game goes into extra innings. The game goes to the middle relievers of both teams, the guys that don’t touch the ball until all the starting arms and closers and aces have been exhausted. The guys that aren’t supposed to touch the ball at all in a game 7 of the world series.
The script writers need to build up more tension, as if game seven in extra innings of two improbable teams and the chance for an improbable come back in the series by the Cubs and an improbable come back in the game by the Indians isn’t enough. Let’s throw in a rain delay, just for fifteen minutes. Not long enough to dull the tension or lose an audience, just long enough to make everyone think about the possible endings and to think about how they game progressed to this point: a throwing error and a wild pitch that knocks over Ross allowing two runs to score followed by his redemption home run to end his long and productive career on the highest of notes, Bryant’s incredible base running scoring on a short fly ball and taking three bases on a Rizzo double, more redemption on a home run after two errors by struggling Baez who so dominated earlier series, Schwarber’s improbable return and success at the plate, Almora’s tag from first on a Bryant fly ball to the wall, to score moments later on a Zobrist double, and finally another Davis RBI to bring Cleveland to within one with the winning run at the plate.
And then a little tapper by Marinez to Bryant at 3rd and all the years of waiting, all the curses, all the bad breaks, all the lapses in judgement, all the just bad luck just evanesce into the history of baseball. None of my siblings will have to wish that I could have been there. I have seen it. I have seen it with my own two eyes. The Cubs have won the World Series in one of the best games I have ever seen.
Improbability
Reading Time: < 1 minute
Improbability drive finally kicked into high gear? Has the world flipped on its head so that sun rises in the west? Is the 12th of Never a fall day in 2016? Has the entropy of hell sufficiently lowered for a snowball fight? Have geneticists developed a flying pig? Will monkeys fly out of my butt? Or the Cubs win the series?
A Reckoning
Reading Time: < 1 minute
You promised that you'd do it When the Cubs won the series The chances so improbable, It wouldn't happen even in theory, The girl you said you'd marry, When the Cubs won the series Well its fifty years later, I hope you love her dearly The debt you said you'd pay back When the Cubs won the series, Well its forty years later, The interest accruing yearly All the healthy things you said you'd do When the Cubs won the series, Well its thirty years later, Even your scale refuses query You told me you'd put spots on zebras When the Cubs won the series, Well its twenty years later, Spots instead of jail stripes would be rather cheery You promised me a ton of cheese When the Cubs topped the world, Well its ten years later, And your milk hasn't curdled You thought it would be the end of time When the Cubs won the series, There is no more waiting now Your plight is getting serious. A day of reckoning is here Your old promises you mock Now you will be accountable When the Cubs put you on the spot
The Accord
Reading Time: 3 minutes
I am 108 years old. I was born on Oct 15, 1908, the day after the Cubs won the last game of their last world series victory. My life has been great, full of adventure and travel and working with smart people and making love to beautiful women and sometimes being a little closer to history then I would have liked. But through it all, baseball, the Cubs, have marked the time. Baseball has passed the days and the nights creating as many highs and lows and stories as the time that passed through it.
I’ve only had one regret in life, I think. I don’t know. It is just something that has lurked in the back of my mind. Maybe, I just have the slightest trace of PTSD. I have never shaken it. I was 36 years old at the time, leading men onto sandy beach to die during a beautiful sunset over the ocean in the South Pacific. Our intelligence was bad, there were far more enemy troops here then expected. Men dropped on either side of me as we stormed the beach. Zeros cruised over head straffing and dropping bombs; concussion blasts ripping men to pieces as they ran. The life expectancy on the beach was about five seconds. A wave of enemy soldiers came at us, bayonets clashing, rounds firing and whistling by me on all sides. I broke through the line and saw a thousand more men up on the hill ready to charge us. I dove into a foxhole and put my back to the dirt wall and the enemy. The only victor in this bloodshed would be the last person to get there when everyone else was already dead.