Words, Music, & Outdoor Adventures

Here she is folks, the second (or tied for first) best looking dog. I just have to decide on a name.

And she loves Abbey, too:

Who:

What: Hiking*

Where: (backside of SolVista looking south east)

Why: the dogs (and human) needed exercise, the temperature was perfect, and the scenery delightful.
Tomorrow is the big*day: I hopefully bring home a new dog. Stay tuned*to see the perfect dog.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tLbD1FaXzC4

Tonight I got home after dark and ran into the moonlight with Abbey Dog. The clear dark sky with the illuminating moonlight*kept me running*for 36 minutes. What can I say, a little farther each day. I feel great and that’s all that matters.

2009 Ironman Coeur d’Alene

I was reminded of a book I read many, many years ago: Forest & Crag. The thick, blue book with a great photo of the White Mountains on the cover is a book about hiking in the northeast. I googled the authors and discovered that Guy killed himself a few years ago. He had such*an interesting life and climbed just about every mountain in New England. When I go home, I will have to get this book, it’s somewhere in New Hampshire or Maine in a box. Here is a review from the memoir Laura wrote:

“The Watermans attempted to live according to the 19th century Romantics. Wordsworth would have approved of their naming the trees at Barra. Their life was simplified, pared to the bare essentials. Every half-hour of every day was scheduled, though Laura describes never feeling rushed. But it was organized to be maximally productive, a necessity if they were to make their mode of living work. And the things scheduled were fine things: reading, writing, music; and the chores of 19th century living: baking, wood-cutting, gardening, syruping. Their amusements were 19th century amusements: reading aloud, writing letters, playing the piano.

The Watermans lived out their dream at Barra of life as they thought it ought to be lived. They might be accused of a lack of seriousness, and indeed much of Guy’s activity - counting blueberries, baseball to Milton, climbing the peaks of the White Mountains from the four points of the compass in all weathers - can only be described as useless activity - in a word, play. Yet it is play of such a high order as to transcend ordinary life and perhaps touch the eternal. Guy is reported to have told someone that the only time he ever felt good was above timberline in a snowstorm. Perhaps in his last frozen moments on Mt. Lafayette he found the peace that had eluded him for so many years.”

I wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to capture the blueness of today’s sky but the photos came out great.*I was walking with Abbey and Buddy without my camera and looked up to see the the golden aspens against a blue-blue sky. I went back to my house and got my camera and was able to take these pictures. It’s warm today; 70. A perfect fall day.

H.G. Wells said, “Every time I see an adult on a bicycle, I no longer despair for the future of the human race.”

Stephen King said, “I’ll try to terrify you first, and if that doesn’t work, I’ll try to horrify you, and if I can’t make it there, I’ll try to gross you out. I’m not proud.”

A really interesting poem from Mary Oliver -

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes, over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting o over and over announcing your place in the family of things.

It’s never too late to be what you might have been. –George Eliot

Gary and I hiked up to Devil’s Thumb today. Most of the trail is on the Continental Divide Trail. We hiked through rain, hail, thunder, and lightening. We made it safe and sound.
Here is a view of Devil’s Thumb Pass.

As we made it above treeline, the rain and hail came. Looking west there are views of the Town of Tabernash, White Cliffs, and the Never Summer Wilderness.

This is where we hung out for a few minutes waiting for the weather to pass before continuing to The CD ridgeline.

7.86 Miles round trip.
Altitude at the Trailhead: 9,609
Altitude at Devil’s Thumb: 12,236

Everyone wonders (including me) why Abbey licks so much. Here is the answer:

Dogs don’t lick people because they’re hoping for a hot meal. They lick because we’re their parents, or at least the head folks in the house. Even when dogs are old, gray, and grizzled, they see themselves in some ways as being our children, and a lick shows how much they respect us.*

You can tell a little bit about your dog’s personality by how much licking she does. *

Dogs who are very bold or independent are restrained with their licking because they don’t feel as though there is anyone they have to win over. *

Outgoing, sociable dogs, on the other hand, lick everyone all the time.*

We play a role in all this licking too. It doesn’t take dogs very long to learn that laying a wet one on the cheek is a great way to get cooed over and rubbed the right way. So in a way, the instinct to lick is both ancient and immediate; dogs do it naturally, and we en- courage them to do it more. * People are never sure how to react to licks. The first emotion is generally “Aw, that’s cute,” closely followed by “Yuck.” Imagine where that tongue has been! But it’s not as unhygienic as it seems. At worst, dog licks are like wiping your face with a slightly dirty washcloth. Not exactly cleansing, but hardly worth worrying about. In fact, there’s some evidence that it may be good for you.

http://www.colorado.edu/news/releases/2007/348.html

The Center of the American West presents the Wallace Stegner Award each year to an individual or individuals who have made a sustained contribution to the cultural identity of the American West through the literature, art, history, lore or understanding of the West. Previous recipients include Terry Tempest Williams, John Nichols, Rudolfo Anaya and Vine Deloria Jr.

**** (from a letter by Emily Dickinson)

When you wrote
you would come in November
it would please me
it was November then-but the time
has moved. You went
with the coming of the birds-they will go
with your coming,
but to see you is so much sweeter than birds,
I could excuse the spring. . .
Will you come in November, and will November
come, or is this the hope that opens
and shuts like the eyes of the wax doll?

The Summer Day *

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I meanthe one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,how to be idle and blessed,
how to stroll through the fields, which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

I knew, as well, that my time at the ocean was almost over, that open water could also be a river, that home might be a broken-down shack with hardwood floors and somebody else’s furniture, a place that could forgive you all your years of expectations, a place that could allow you - in time-*- to forgive yourself. And I knew I would be alone in Hope but not forever. I’d done harder things than be alone before in my life; an awful damn lot of them.

Click here to see the cutest dog in the world in the Summit Paper.

Alice Sebold said, “It’s very weird to succeed at 39 years old and realize that in the midst of your failure, you were slowly building the life that you wanted.”