Glacier National Park: The Disney World of Mountains

No that is not a compliment.

We have a new contestant in the most not-worth-it thing I've ever done competition.  Driving to Glacier National Park.  The drive is long, ugly, boring, and into the middle of nowhere.  Global warming has severely damaged the park.  So have pine beetles.  And fires.  West Glacier you will hear is a beautiful heavily forested area of rolling hills with views into the rocky peaks to the west.  That is probably a good quote, but read the year its attached to. Probably someone like John Muir from about 1917.  Lot of old quotes of old dead famous people are posted in parts of Glacier.  You know, back when there were glaciers and only a few lodges.  Well I drove through West Glacier and saw a lot of scorched trees, then I hiked it, and went through many miles of pine beetle feasting grounds.  The same sort I posted pics of for my Elegy for the Uintas.  Don't ask me for any more pics of dead pine trees.  You see 5 million, you've seen them all.  West Glacier is lousy and ugly and will be for at least the next decade.  Probably the next millenia.  However, if you want to stay during peak season within 100 miles of any part of Glacier you'd like to be, the West Glacier Lodge is a good choice.  Its cute, cheap (by National Park lodge standards), quiet, and access to the public shuttle system along "Going to the Sun Road" is divided somewhat nonsensically into East and West, with a transfer at the top at "Logan Pass".  So if you want to try that shuttle, start from the West or you will have long waits, long lines, and little time to do anything or see anything all day other than the backs of other bored and frustrated people and the dark clouds swooping in to soak you or blast you with wind.

Ah Glacier- you know all those pictures you see of fields of flowers, staggeringly bright sparkling towers of rock, horns, elegant spires, and the like?  Endless brilliant emerald fields of grass?  Sparkling lakes?  Yeah, that happens probably 3 days per year now.  Most of those pictures are old.  The best Glacier picks I've seen are from before 2002, which concerned me- it certainly did- but which I wrote off.  Well, just to warn you, you need to know that it rained or was cloudy somewhere in the park every single day I was there, and especially at Logan Pass, the most popular part of the park.  Also know that Logan Pass is surrounded and sheltered by peaks and will only bloom for a few weeks each year.  Good luck not living locally and timing your trip right.  Most of the park was starting to dry out and the snow was all gone in my week there, but Logan Pass was still an ugly mess, barely thawing.  So it was a double jip.  And of the 3 times I visited Logan Pass, one I was inside a cloud, one time horrifying black clouds were coming, which caused flash flooding 2 hours later and washed away much of the "Going to the Sun" road, trapping people or making them take an extra 100 miles to get back to West Glacier.  And the third trip up was beautiful, sort of, but hazy, with a dull sunset, bear threats, baby goats galore, and all in all, it was worth the hike.  Even though the hiking there is on board walks and is astonishingly crowded with annoying people out of their element, peeing themselves at every wind or bird call, with shouts of "bear!  Dad a bear!"  and such.  It is usually not a bear, though a mother was denning up for the summer with her cubs near Hidden Lake, a premium destination of Logan Pass, and did threaten some idiots taking photos of the babies and getting to close.  I had to explain to a few people the behavior of bears: if a den isn't secret, its useless.  Its a trap and a slaughter ground.  So that's why she kept charging you when all you wanted was to see where they were living."  God people scare me.  I missed these wild bears and some fighting marmots due to my car issues.  Sigh.  All I got was baby goats on camera.

"Going to the Sun" road is an engineering marvel and well worth seeing.  Good luck with that.  In peak season and middle day especially you will lose hours sitting on steep slopes with your engine overheating waiting for mile long lines of tourists, and dangerous construction at the edge of lovely abysses.  Its a mixed experience.  Avoid middle of the day, and do not take the shuttle.  A word on the shuttle- I tried it once after my radiator leaked, dried out, overflowed, blew, and cracked (which apparently was entirely my fault by the way as I was spoken to like a pathetic idiot by rangers and everyone employed by Glacier who I bothered talking to- personally I felt pretty bad-ass for having extra coolant with me, like I always do, a funnel to pour it without spilling, duct tape to patch the crack- okay Bar's Leak would have been more useful, but still- and for then being able to drive with the heater on for 100 miles to the nearest car repair center- more on that later, with no further problems and without once panicking or raising my voice)- and I am convinced the budget is kept low to make the shuttle intentionally bad.  Now you may call me a cynic, but Glacier operates a paid tour-bus system called the "Red Bus" line; cool old-fashioned Rolls Royce stretch limo things that are bright red and cost $17 and fill up fast.  They are driven by nice people in bow-ties and vests who say things over to you on a microphone, such as "here is Jackson Glacier...which Montana's congressmen are presently spending millions of dollars to debate over as to whether it is a glacier or a seasonal snow-field due to climate change not related to global warming or local mining in any way."  Charming.  And rather expensive if a decent free shuttle were available.  Do you see why it might be in the interests of the park to offer a free shuttle, but not a good one?  One hour waits at bus stops and then being told: "yes there are 22 seats, but I am required to keep 11 open at all times when I leave this first stop to allow for others at later stops to come aboard" is not good business.  I spoke with the director of the system who was annoyed he gets negative reviews.  His opinion was mostly that people are whiny, entitled, and unrealistic.  Its a VERY narrow, busy road under construction and thousands of people daily are going to the same small parking lot on the side of a high mountain to hike the same 3 trails.  There will be problems, especially when storms move in and everyone wants to leave at the same instant.  Fair enough.  But I got to the bus station at 8:45 am- too late I know, and had to wait until 9:15 for a bus to show, until 9:30 for the driver to be ready to roll, until 9:40 for 9 people to volunteer to wait for the next bus because 11 seats had to be left open for other passengers...um?  Strange, when standing is allowed.  It took 1 hour to travel 20 miles due to lots of stops where no one got on or off.  Then once at Logan Pass we could not see 3 feet before our faces, so everyone wanted to go down, and guess what?  I had to wait 90 minutes to be able to, and it took another hour to get back.  That is not good public transit.  You might as well not offer it.  And I'm sure the Red Bus line could not agree more.  They do take credit cards, by the way.

The above photo is Hidden Lake overlook at Logan Pass, with the fabulous and frequently climbed Mt Reynolds at left- a climb I wanted to do- and rarely climbed Bear Hat to the right- an amazing mountain I've had earmarked for 2 years.  And still do.  Rangers I asked not only were unwilling to register me to climb it, but did not even know how to as they had no idea what peak I was talking about.  Seriously.

So there are probably 3 good days of weather per year.  Logan Pass is especially unpredictable and you could never pay me to drive that road again.  My friend who directs the bus line got in a fever when I back-hand complimented the construction along the road, saying, "I was amazed not only by the road but that construction can be done while thousands of cars pass inches away without even looking because the road curves, they are scared or distracted (nice views) and probably texting and taking pics, and are incompetent at driving anyway to begin with in normal situations."  This is apparently a sore spot as road construction recently took a PR hit when a worker fell 200 some feet and nearly died, and because this is year 7 in a $800,000,000 project that was originally supposed to take 3 years and cost $200,000,000 but was violently opposed by the local businesses who said having only sections of the road open would destroy tourism and ruin their lives.  That is probably true, though my friend did not agree.  Trust me I thought, no one is driving all the hell of the way through Montana to visit this place if only 66% of the park is open.  No way.  Tourists want to see it all.  While sipping a soda, at 100 miles per hour.  So I understand why they are doing it the way they are.  I do.  But I fully expect it is being done wrong enough that the construction will never end.  And more cars will blow up near Logan Pass idling on hills, like the blonde girls I saw on my first day at the park, when I thought, "this day is going bad, but at least my car did not explode at the top of Logan Pass".  They by the way had a parade of men helping them.  When mine blew?  Cars pulled up next to me and took pictures of animals through me.  Clearly, no one cared.  They did not care, squared.  So luckily for me, I was prepared enough.  I mean I didn't have a spare radiator in the trunk, which the rangers seemed to think I ought to have had, but I managed alone.  Screw all of you who were in Glacier the same week as me.  I hate you all, by the way.  How about asking if I'm fine, or offering to follow me down?  Or suggesting to me where I need to go for car repairs, you locals?  Global warming makes the sky hazy, really hazy on good days now, at least in summer with all the car fumes, and its hot, and the mountains are dry and ugly with tiny little snow patches comically still called glaciers.  But it is damn pretty if you aren't being struck by lightning, none the less.

Glacier is now on the whole pretty much an amusement park.  Lines, waits, lines to wait to park, (seriously after 10 am do not expect to park without the help of a surly cocky ranger in sunglasses and on a walkie talkie with another surly cocky ranger who will then waive cones at you to direct you to your parking space).  This will go on until 5 pm or so when every restaurant of mediocre Montana cooking will fill up for 500 miles if you are hungry, which I hope you are not.  Probably you won't be because you'll have spent most of the day even if starting at 6 am, looking for parking, rather than hiking, or waiting for a shuttle.  Because if you start a trail at 6, finish around 11, and want to start another, guess what- you can't.  The rest of the day is useless.  So you should probably have good lodging.  Camping is useless, difficult, and expensive, at $20 per day if you want water, or $10 in primitive grounds, where you fend for yourself and need a purifier.  Reservations are not generally taken for the campgrounds (2 take them up to a year in advance) and if you want a site you may have to visit several, driving in circles looking for an open one.  I spent 2 hours my first day there doing this, got the last spot in the last circle I checked, put 100 miles on the car driving between all these awful grounds, and got flooded because it started to pour immediately.  The people next to me came back from a hike to find their tent in 6 inches of water as a pond had formed.  Sucks for them, but luckily they were already wet as the wife blamed the husband for all of it.  He must have been one of those rain gods Doug Adams wrote about in his books.  I covered West Glacier, so here is your guide to the east: There is East Glacier, an adorable town consisting of 3 diners, 2 lodges, all charming, and 5 billboards that range in their subject from "huckleberry pie" to "Huck!" with a painting of some huckleberries and a pie slicer.  I kid you not.  Also if you stay there you will have a 50 mile drive to get to the popular regions of the park where hiking semi-exists, and this will take you near an hour.

Two Medicine is a cool sort of sub park that gets low notes for "being just park" as the rangers say.  They don't have any amenities or touristy stuff at all!  Can you believe it?  Gasp with horror.  All they have is a 1 hour boat tour of the lake (expensive as hell even by expensive as hell boat tour standards), and its a small lake by the way.  And a campground with flush toilets, electricity, running water, noise galore, fishing, and 400 signs warning you bears will ruin your life if you set down your piece of huckleberry pie for even a second- and $50 citations which apparently pay the salaries of aggressive campground managers.  Also a little restaurant and a huge general store, and a boat dock, and a parking lot guarded by armed rangers on walkie talkies.  But that's it!  The rangers practically told half the people coming to leave with a chuckle.  "Oh you won't like Two Medicine," they assured cars of the curious.  "There's virtually nothing here but forest.  You don't look rugged enough to last here."  You can't make this stuff up.  Why would I even try?  There is excellent hiking here however, with lots of lakes, cool peaks, windy passes, wildlife, flowers, less crowds, and awesome hazy views.  That will be a separate post where I go over the trails I tried.  Running Eagle, or Trick Falls, is handicapped accessible in Two Medicine and along a very short trail.  It is sometimes a double falls and sometimes a single.  Pictured above.

On an annoyingly winding road through savage burn areas is the Cut Bank region of the park, down a 5 mile dirt road (passable from what I saw to 2 wheel drive vehicles, with primitive camping that usually will not fill up.  Water is available nearby at a creek and hiking has several options with Amphitheatre Mountain (hard to reach but amazing views from what I've seen of an amazing peak called Split Mountain), Mount James (easy as far as Glacier goes according to my climber's book, but still with rotten rock and scree and danger and annoyance) and the fabulous Triple Divide Peak I looked forward to for years and am bitter to not climb on this trip, as it is a special mountain.  If you pour water out on top, it will flow in three directions because the summit is on the Continental Divide and actually feeds into 3 different continental watersheds.  No other peak I have heard of can claim this.  The climb is said to be tedious, dangerous, and on awful rock, though mostly just a steep walk.  There are a few lakes but not much else I noticed on the map.  Only the rugged need go.  One backcountry campsite is located strategically to attack those 3 peaks, but otherwise you are looking at a 20+ mile roundtrip day to Cut Bank campground, and few would be up to it, honestly.  The back-country site fills up regularly as it is central on a long several day hike route that is popular.  Also those kind of backpackers take priority to one-night-stand campers, so I was basically laughed at when I inquired about getting a pass there.  The message I took home from this is what most serious mountain people I know have already decided for themselves: if going to Glacier, go rogue, because dealing with the infrastructure and the rangers is not worth it.  And Glacier does not want you there anyway.  Right near Cut Bank road I came on a crowd of photographers setting up tripods to snap pics of wild horses in front of Mt James and Triple Divide Peak.  It was amusing as 50 cars came out of nowhere with that photographer's sense of doing what the competition is.  They all parked in a rush, staked a spot, and fought for those hazy pics of horses in a field of scorched flowers.  Hey I did too.  The best pic is below and the central peak is Triple Divide.  Mt James looms large just near the edge on the right.  The two share a pass, where they are climbed from.

Near the "Going to the Sun Road" is St Mary, a town whose motto is, according to several locals I spoke with, "if you want it, you'll pay for it."  This is a 2 month per year town that shuts down from October through late June, with a gas station, some stores, many lodges and campgrounds, and prices that make gougers proud.  Hey it is middle of nowhere, so cut them some slack.  Not in St Mary however is: decent food, a single person who knows the area at all, any towing or automotive service whatsoever.  Strange, if you ask me.  I would avoid St Mary personally.  However, if you want to camp outside the park, this is the best option.  Johnson's is about on par with the park itself; $20 per night, though they fill up only after the official campgrounds do in general.  And you pay taxes so its a bit more.  Locally owned.  And there is a KOA for $33 plus tax, with a pool, hot tub, and all the entertainment that drunken University of Washington students can bring while having all male chicken fights in a pool during a rainstorm.  If you are into that sort of thing.  The pool is a very nice feature.  I thought the hot tub would help my legs hold up to the rigours of hiking, but instead, I used both to ease my epic boredom while not hiking, due to weather, car, and crowd problems.

Many Glacier is the most popular east side option I hear.  2 hotels, one reasonable, and one outlandish, a campground that you couldn't get into if your parents had tried to make reservations before you were born during peak season, popular trails, secret goat trails, famous peaks, eating, bus tours, and all that.  I never got there this trip, due to the car.  An expensive shuttle does go there a few times a day from St Mary but its expensive even by rip-off national park standards.  However, it will at least show up at set times.  The nearby town of Babb is a moderny piece of trash thrown up to look old fashioned like if the Old West were made of cardboard and stucco.  I'm not sure why its there, actually.  Near Babb you can, if desperate, go camping at Duck Lake, a few miles further from the park.

Other nearby towns are on the West: Whitefish or Kalispell.  Kalispell is actually a year-round city, with several grocery stores and multiple streets.  If you have car trouble, get here if you can.  Its 30 miles from the West end of the park, meaning 60 or so from Logan Pass, mostly downhill or flat.  But if your tent is over on East Glacier, you're boned as they say, because the two nearest towns are Browning, and Cut Bank.  Browning is terrifying.  Though one of the highlights of my trip sadly was hearing a creepy old man try to flirt with a whorish woman by asking for a light.  He expected her to walk across the gas station to light him up, while she insisted he take the 10 steps to her to get a light.  I got the hell out of there quickly, and had to, as there is no car service in Browning either.  Unless you want your oil changed in someone's backyard.  The town is mostly silver bullet trailers dumped at strange angles and half sunk into mud like ships going under in a huge plain.  Cut Bank has a small mall, 75 casinos, a movie theatre which is extremely clean with good seats, a few hotels, most of them owned by one family, a well-stocked, sparkling grocery store with reasonable prices and excellent selection, a McDonald's, a freight train passing through every hour, a fun center that had rollerskate disco taking place my Saturday in town, and one hell of a big creepy penguin statue.

I was sent on local advice to Cut Bank to pick up a radiator that was overnighted at darn good price ($104) from I assume, Great Falls, 100 miles south.  Unfortunately, the same stupid locals did not mention I was picking this up at a store, not a store/garage, and that every garage (12!!!!) in town would be closed until Monday.  So I wasted a weekend sitting in a motel room with ants on the wall in Cut Bank, Montana, being annoyed with Montanians.  More on this in the next post because this is getting very long. To close, here are some pics of flowers up close, which came out good.  More pics and stories in the next blog about Glacier.  And lots more on Cut Bank Montana.

Anti Depressants are a Scam, Why Promotheus's Liver Is Still Getting Pecked Out by the Sysophus Crow

And now for more of those well thought-out, carefully constructed, completely serious essays on sensitive subjects of a political or important subjects which in no way should you take as humorous, tongue in cheek, parodies, or social terrorism (trying to piss you off because I think you could use a good off pissing (piss offing?).

Essay 1: We are all pigs beneath a tin roof.

Anti depressants do not work.  Now, hold your horses, there, dear reader.  Before you write me an angry letter to tell me how depressed you are, and how much more depressed you would be (or less because you would be so depressed you would kill yourself and thus stop existing entirely) without your magic happy pills, and before you write to me and say, you jerk, you drink beer, you are worse than Hitler (remember I am in Utah you out of staters) and should be burned at a stake, just bear with me, and grant me 3 hours of your time to finish a short blog of the usual length, with my usual brevity and concise treatment. 

My first reason to suggest anti depressants do not work, is that no people have ever been more depressed than Americans.  Also I have never met a single person on anti depressants who was not obviously depressed.  Actually I can tell who is on them almost immediately, for the simple reason, that they are depressed.  Now if you are paying an arm and a leg for a thing, you sure hope it works, and are bound to believe it does, and if you feel you need a thing, you sure will convince yourself you do.  And hey, when you feel helpless you try anything.  Every culture for about 5,000 years had a rain dance, except in Seattle, where they had dances for droughts, probably.  If the ground wasn't too soaked and slippery for dancing.  Does this mean, even when it rains, that there is truth to the rain dance?  Benefit?  Well there is no harm to it.  I doubt one could argue that rain dancing made the Gods think, "look at these idiots, they actually think that thrusting of the hips and all this groveling would make us send them rain?  Didn't they read the instruction manual we sent down, oh no, no...wait, here it is, we didn't send it.  So they'll have to invent science.  Whoops!

Well, actually I can argue that, and am, as of now.  I think a better policy would have been to waive middle fingers all together at the sky and sneer, give us rain now, or else we will use our primitive cave tools to carve into the mountain face that you are a chicken and no one should worship or listen to you, because you lie, and lie, and lie again, like every drug addict, or boyfriend. 

There is a benefit to placebo effect, but if you are going to suggest that taking brain altering chemical combinations is good for people, and paying a lot for them also helps, then you are a jerk.  Sugar pills for free would be much better.  Or how about this: stop making people feel bad in the first place.  Jeez guys, try skydiving before you start messing with your brain, or go get drunk.  Okay if you don't keep getting drunk, it makes you more depressed after you sober up, but just keep getting drunk!  That still does less damage to your body than these pills probably do.

Now for a quick introduction to how chemicals are developed.  Ever hear the 10,000 monkeys on a typewriter analogy?  That with enough monkeys one of them will by accident write "War and Peace?"  Well, big pharmaceuticals hire thousands of chemists and say, play around.  They invent new compounds, these compounds, synthetically tricked up in labs through no plan or foresight, are then given to various animals.  If the animals die, the compound is a poison and is sold as such.  Pest control, and so forth.  If the animal gets perky it is a stimulant or anti-depressant.  Then it is given to different animals, say monkeys.  If they don't die, it gets tested on humans.  Any report or result that proves nothing is not reported.  The companies only have to report what they want.  So 10 dud results and 1 study that shows a slight improvement means a new anti depressant is on the market.  And people actually tell me to take these things!  Depressed people!  Who admit to me they get so sad sometimes they just with they were dead or can't get out of bed for 2 days!  These people say I am crazy to go do risky things all by myself in the middle of nowhere, though that: gets me high on my own natural hormones without the use of drug or alcohol, is fun, makes me happy, gets me in fabulous shape, is a break from the otherwise unbearable safe monotony of ever day life, has the benefit of taking me to natural wonders, has given me more confidence than I ever would have thought I could have before starting, and has numerous other benefits, the only downside being, I will probably die while doing it one day.  So okay, it isn't exactly innocence.  But its not a habit I have to steal electronics and cars to hock to support.  So its got at least one up on meth.

You people are all insane.  Have I mentioned this?  You are.  But you don't know you are.  That's part of the insanity.  Just because everyone is doing something does not make it sensible.  Parents used to say this, now they do not, because they are too busy texting, which they used to tell their kids not to do.  Now they rarely know they have kids.  Anti depressants do not work, lastly, in my mind, for this reason: people are not all depressed for chemical imbalances.  Autism, boredom, and depression were all invented a little after electricity, and hot water heaters.  Until then, life was hard, and anyone who said that was looked at as an idiot not doing their part.  If they were doing their part, they would not have had time for talking.  People still died then, so mourning was tasteful, and within bounds.  You buried your dad, you didn't whine about missing him to your kids and therapist for 20 years.  Life was a challenge so quitting it was seen as cowardice and people thrived and succeeded as much on pure hate and refusal to be beat as to enjoyment or the pursuit of happiness. Or maybe, I mean, I wasn't there you know?  But now, we are so removed from our natural environment, that I am convinced there is a fundamental disconnect.  We are unhappy because we are not doing what we were designed to do and have not quite evolved out of.  Our eyes cannot adjust to light changes as quickly as a light switch can open a circuit.  So we get tingly dots for a few seconds.  If we can keep electricity around for another 40,000 years, our descendants may be able to see instantly going from pitch dark to blazing bright rooms, but in the mean time, you cannot take enough of the cave man instinct out of a man to make reading a newspaper on a subway train in an underwater tunnel content.  In his tie and business suit, some part of him, even if dormant, and never stoked or suspected, feels this is wrong.  He will go to a doctor and be told he has a chemical imbalance and be assigned some pill or other.  He trusts this doctor as a professional with more knowledge and expertise (or why would he be there?  I have not gone to a doctor in over 5 years by the way, even for broken ankles, wrists, fevers of 104 degrees that made me break out into hives wherever skin touched skin (armpits, inner thighs) and you would not believe what else) and so will trust the pill, and expect it to work.  And when we expect a thing, we will convince ourselves it is.  After all, the problem is hardly defined, is at the edges of awareness.  Can be kept at bay by busyness and chasing skirts or bowling or whatever else.

Pigs on big farms spend all their lives under a tin roof, never seeing the sky.  They do not even know what a sky is, so how could they know they are missing it?  Chickens who are "free range" (a garbage term) are provided access to fresh air, but only after 5 weeks- until then they are kept indoors for their own safety from germs (legal) and by that time, they are so accustomed to life in a pen, they will not go outside, for fear, and from shaky legs that they do not trust.  But this choice of staying inside does not mean they are meant to, that they are happy having wobbly legs and having never seen a sky.  They miss the sky, though they fear it and it feels unnatural.  They have no nature anymore, and they cannot be happy.  Yes chickens and pigs are now bred selectively without a "stress gene", meaning they cannot be happy or unhappy, and can now be cultivated with their tails and with their beaks as they will not let other pigs eat their tails and open them to infection, and will not peck their neighbors to death in frustration, but that is not happiness, and if you think it is, then go sign up for a frontal lobotomy, or shove a pencil through your eye at just the right angle...I support D.I.Y. attitudes in all things. 

Do I need to bang home this analogy?  Touch screens are not our natural environment.  TV is not our natural environment.  Rock and roll, or bless me, thank you depression era stars for writing it, early swing music, is not natural.  Spend a little time each day detoxing: garden, meditate, read (still not natural, but closer than a computer screen), make food from scratch, take up a new hobby.  Play darts (the modern miniature golf of spear hunting), go skydiving.  Do something you never thought you would do, and never thought you could and think you should not.  Move across country, or to Alaska, or to Siberia.  Try anything.  You're depressed already.  And its still better than taking drugs from evil bloodsucking corporations bent on world domination that you have no idea even how to pronounce.  Take a risk.  Risk everything even.  Go gamble, hell, why not?  We are the least happy people in history, I imagine.  There was no whining, few diaries in older times.  People did not walk about in fear, or misery.  Slaves were happier than Americans are right now.  And yet look at all our pleasures...our bodies are designed for bouts of activity, for desperate escapes, for danger, for threat, for long periods of inactivity- broken up by emergencies.  Without the emergencies we fall into malaise.  I was never happy growing up.  And I thought the problem was me.  I was comfortable, I was loved (theoretically), I was safe, the environment I was in was good.  It was just all so damned boring.  I thought that all the time.  It would be better if it were worse, just so something might happen.  The Diary of Samuel Pepys is interesting.  He gets into these zones where he says "Up.  And to the office.  Went as far as I dared with a pretty wench at the King's Tavern.  Then home and to my wife."  About 10 times in a row.  And then you get, "All of London is on fire!  And the Dutch fleet is rumoured to be at the mouth of the Thames, having sunk or captured 5 of our best ships.  God preserve us!  We shall all be sold into slavery or worse!"  Then the entries are good for a few weeks before settling back into the tedium.  We really need that government Viking program of mine.

Essay 2: Look what you've done with Zeus!

Blogs are a funny thing.  Mostly, they are badly written without much thought and are dull if not trash.  Few people say anything and few readers want to find anything being said.  They are generally tedious.  Hey at least I am not that!  I make it a full time hobby to offend people.  If you can go even a day without offending anyone at all, you probably are not saying anything.  Or much.  And if you have not been offended today, your friends and enemies are too boring.  Find some new ones. 

But if I were to write a brilliant poem about a deep and abstract concept, you would not read it.  But a half-hearted blog, which amounts to little more than a diary, with the added vulgar touches of being written for others to see (oh the vanity!) and wasting electricity to be both written and read, a blog, I say, you are reading right now, as you can see.  Yet I am writing one.  It amuses me mildly at times.

Had the founding fathers had a magic crystal to see the future with, and if they could view you, and your neighbors dear reader, how do you think they would feel exactly?  Proud?  Happy?  Confident and assured they were on the right path breaking from England?

"Look what a well-read, fit, healthy, moral, intelligent, and industrious people we have formed. Honest in their dealings, happy and generous and communal.  They have done away with slavery and are atop the world."  Is this what they would say?  I doubt it.  I think instead they would have torn up the Declaration of Independence and turned themselves over to England for immediate hanging.  Hanging would have been too good for how they felt.  Look what we have done with the powers of the Gods.  With free time.  When a man got any leisure time in the 18th century he invented a thing, or at least named it, whether it was the origin of species, or oxygen. And now what does one do with it?  We have more of it than we can put to use and fun is getting to be too much of a chore.  With the power of the gods to capture time and freeze it into images, we get average doughy mothers taking 400 pictures per hour of their normal average and superfluous children (99 percent or more of the species could be wiped out tomorrow by plague or meteor with no harm- and strike that- even large good.  Those who remained would pollute less, be forced to breed with those unlike themselves, and live lives of stimulation and interest, and would represent in some way, a stronger gene pool, as something in them would have spared them) in fields of tulips where hundreds of other average doughy mothers did the same thing all day.  Curse you Deguerre (modern inventor of the photograph by accident- and yet we celebrate him?), how happy children were before the strange device of cameras was known!  How free children could run, not being stopped every few feet a Tulip Festival to pose, which leads to a lot of damned egotism that does harm (especially in those children who grow up to be ugly and unpopular; its like a tease- when I was six people like me!  They think). 

And though health obsessed, your average American will not walk a quarter mile to a grocery store or restaurant or gym, where they will walk on a treadmill, wasting electricity that for all you know or care, comes from feeding tigers through mesh strainers.  (This would not stop you from using it.  Nor would learning it comes typically from burning coal, which is mined dangerously by family men (in America) and by small children (in some but not all, other places.)  Do you care?  Of course not.  Hey I'm using electricity to write this too, but at least unplug your appliances when not in use and try not to have a light on it you could just open the blinds hey?  Americans are disgustingly fat, dress pathetically, never take their eyes off screens, are news obsessed but know little of what is going on at any given moment, retain less, know no history, understand less, barely pay attention enough to vote in elections, bitch constantly, drive recklessly, buy homes they cannot afford, did not build, take pride in that, sneer at anyone who likes to read, learn, or exercise (a favorite question I get: why are you on skates?  As if there is something shameful to being good on wheels and not driving everywhere or doing something fun that requires skill), who have little will power, are slaves to their stomachs, to many companies, are hive minded, cowards who perform in their lives no military service and look down on those who do, yet insist on trumped up military spending, and I could go on and on.  I doubt the founding fathers would have gone on with their experiment if they knew their eloquence and philosophy would give way to text messages of 140 or less characters and a public who cannot handle basic math.

And look what we do with everything.  Free time.  Destroyed.  We fritter it away.  Four generations back, your family was probably illiterate.  Now you can read, and the highest art you utilize it for is Tom Clancy, if that.  The farmer who slaved away to make your life possible down the line would smack you, if you could get textbooks and manuals and novels out of his hand long enough for him to notice you.  Flight!  Sweet!  Weekend trip to Vegas!  That's putting it to good use.  Fire?  Prometheus was chained down for stealing it from the gods to bring it to man.  Why?  Were they unjust, selfish?  Ha.  The gods knew just what they were doing.  Look around at your neighbors.  You think anything beautiful or potent can go unharmed in our care?  Is not sullied?  Or that fire has done us good?  We are helpless in the dark, afraid all the time, and outside of professional athletes who could crush Roman gladiators easily, are weaker than other humans have been.  We have comforts and the most average slacker can lounge about more than the highest Pharaoh ever managed, and can be more comfortable, for being free of flies.  But he does not even know it.  Don't point it out.  He is too busy being a loser, feeling down.  Fire has made us soft, but not much better.  All right, we are not animals.  And an interesting book "How Fire Makes Us Human" suggests that cooking food is a kind of pre-digestion which allowed more tissue to go to our minds and brains, as our intestines could shrink compared with primates who have to process raw and dangerous foods.  Okay, but we are moving in the wrong direction.  Our machinery is better but we let it rust.  The gods are still furious that fire was given to us.  Had Prometheus stolen it for himself, and used it to read at night, to cook his own food and develop a fine pallette, he would be in the stars with them. But he made the mistake of thinking the masses deserved what they would not reach for themselves, that they would put to good use what he would put to good use.  Free time should be earned.  It is a travesty how many hours I have had to waste in lurid cubicles.  But there is no tragedy in most people having to rot in lurid cubicles.  And democracy was a fine experiment but the problem with voting is no one cares a damn for it when they feel it is a right.  Make someone fight for the vote, they treasure it, they follow the issues deeply and weigh their decision.  We ought to take the vote away from everyone.  That would fix America.  Because every average Joe would get pissed off enough to pay attention and take the power back.  But that will have to wait for another day and another (bad) essay.

If you Use a Camelback, you're a sucker

When hiking I rarely meet anyone without a Camelback these days.  I find them unnecessary and silly.  They are difficult to clean, the hose can break or rupture, there are several parts to replace, they can tear (mine did when I had one), the twist cap where one fills the bladder can slip and leak (mine did) or slip and cause tearing around the rim for permanent leaking (mine did).  And it costs $40 or more for a decent one, and is annoying to store unless in a specially designed backup.  Those are all the bad.  What is good about them?  Well everyone assures me it is essential to get a constant and steady influx of water, which is nonsense, and counter-productive.  First, studies and experimentation will show you that your body and mind attain more satisfaction from one gulp than an equal quantity of water in sips.  Second, sipping a little water at a time encourages your body to sweat, as it gets the idea that you have water to spare.  Third, if you are worried about hydration, then replacing what you lose is idiotic.  Would you rather replace hubcaps the neighborhood punks steal, or not have them stolen to begin with?  A better plan therefore, is to soak your shirt.  Start wet and your body is tricked into thinking it has already sweated, or at very least, will not sweat.  You sweat more as the sweat beads evaporate, so with a layer of water atop your skin, the sweat does not come out, or much slower.  Last, off the top of my head, having a water bladder and sipping from it makes you weak.  Either you have water nearby (a creek, rain, a waterfall) or not.  If you do, then you need not carry water.  It is silly too.  More weight on your knees and back are bad for the body and the stamina.  I suggest you lose more stamina with the weight of the water than you gain by the constant rehydrating.  If you do not have water nearby, then you need to be working on wilderness skills: how to not only read, but interpret a topographic map, for one.  If crossing desert or leaving a canyon or creek bed, study the map for stream crossings, and try to guess based on the terrain around you (color of leaves/bushes/brittleness of ground/recent weather if you know it, or what you can guess of it) which will be running and how deep.  Or seek out springs, estimate how far you will travel until you hit water again.  Then carry a little more water than you think you need.  And never drink water (this is my best advice for all hikers) until you start to need it.  If you baby yourself you will be a baby.  I don't know when it came into fashion to coddle one's tummy while punishing the muscles, but people these days will work out like demons, all the while making sure to get a perfect influx of electrolytes and all that.  Let's call this the marine principle- but I needed a new paragraph about a paragraph ago.

How marines train (if every memoir I have read was not making up the same lies; I have no direct evidence or experience): you get no gatorade and no protein bars.  You get water, and food.  Large meals, in a hurry, not snacks, and water only rarely, mostly at the end of the day.  Snacking, and I have mentioned this on my food blog, fits into the same principles as water bladder sipping, with the nozzle right an inch from your mouth so you never take a parched step is a scam.  Let us get there the Socratic way.  I will ask you this: why do we keep seeing million dollar studies on vitamin C and colds?  Do you think the benefit of vitamin C is yet in doubt?  If so, then why are the orange juice companies promising us good health and fewer colds?  Are they lying?  The link is quite proven, conclusively, to put you at ease.  Orange juice industry people are not lying to you.  But why then the studies?  Is this all the doing of scientific experts and specialists who with 25 years of vitamin C behind them are too old and settled to try a new line?  Well they are abettors, but how do they get money?  Begging.  And by producing desired results regularly.  Who would want these results regularly, in press releases, and tied to famous big name scientists at big name research labs and universities?  Well in our vitamin C example, the orange juice industry.  Out of sight out of mind.  But every few months, particularly near the beginning of a new growing season, you will see lots of vitamin C and colds studies popping up in magazines.  So back to snacking.  Why would hundreds of studies prove "grazing" is better than meals?  Who would want these studies?  Right, the food industry.  Any branch of it, but snack companies in particular.  Companies are always looking for ways to get you to pay more for food (over your dead body as they find, Americans think of food as quantity only, not quality, we want more, not good, food for our money, which makes sense since Americans have bad taste in everything and pick loud and long movies over thoughtful and meaningful ones) or if not more for the same food, than to eat more food.  Thus we have all these studies, funded by the food industry where nutritionists discover and prove it is better to have 6 small meals than 3 and even better still to have 12 than 6.  Why?  Because you eat more, stupid.  People are not satiated by a snack.  It does not even register in the brain, nor does it trigger much in the way of digestive hormones.  It is a non-event, like a small earthquake you sleep through and have to read about in the paper.  What's more, look at all the new products we have, all with sickening amounts of packaging to dispose of, though that is beside the main point: 100 calorie snack packs (a genius move by the food industry- people pay up to 10X more per calorie for these to stay thin, and the people buying them are often not thin, and these same people if served a 1/4 pound burger at a sit down restaurant rather than 1/3 pound burger would cause a scene or not come back), single serve yogurts, slim jims, and on and on.

And this allegedly to stop the spread of diabetes, which became a problem about when the "grazing" theory came out and became popular.  This also did away with the family dinner (well it was a nail in a very tightly sealed coffin anyway) which is better for the various food industries, because if the kids aren't going to sit with Mom, why should she bother making something from scratch when there are TV dinners and boil in a bag dinners and all that sort of thing with much wider profit margins.  I have strayed again, but I will find my way back.  Would you believe I adore the book Tristram Shandy?  It is a mock auto biography by an author who is barely born by the end of the book, as he keeps getting distracted and going into details about friends of his father, philosophical debates between cardinals about whether a baby trapped in the mother's womb can be baptized by "squirt" or no before both expire at the hands of the clumsy midwife, the correct pronunciation of things in Latin, and so on.  At first (and here was my problem at age 12 when I first tried to read it and threw it away in disgust) one thinks, my blessed soul, I am 50 pages into this book and this clod has not gotten himself born yet!  And then, poor woman, his mother has been in labor near 100 pages!  But then by the 200th page, it is really just a marvel that the author could draw the thing out.  I am listening to the audio version right now and I have never laughed so hard as when this comic genius reading the thing, takes a shallow breath to drawl out in fine classical british accent the single word "foot...note".  And now, I need a new paragraph again or we shall never see the light.

You are told to snack to sell you 100 calorie wheat thin packs.  You are told to sip water constantly to sell you a water bladder with replacable parts, that, if they are marketed as replacable on the label, you can be sure, will need replacing.  There's more money to be had that way.  And also to make you a week sissy weenie, there I've said it.  The weenier you are, the more crap REI can convince you you need.  I know how you feel.  They spend the few sentences of every paragraph enticing you in these outdoor magazines.  Then they tell you how prepared you must be.  Which involves a staggering expense of gear.  Now I learned the hard way that some gear is necessary.  One cannot simply live in a fine place like Utah and throw on old beat up tennis shoes and go sally up a mountain for a day.  I tried that first thing on moving here.  And ran out of water on a dry trail, had to eat some dirty snow (I found two handfuls of it between some rocks in a miserable gully in late August) because all the small creeks and springs in the area were dry, sucked a pebble for three hours to keep my throat from getting too dry, resisted blowing my nose or spitting for fear of wasting the fluids, got so dehydrated I could not walk anymore, and just rolled myself down the steep gravely slope, ruining clothing and skin in the process, but recovering when I heard a creek some hundreds of feet below me, enough to drag myself to it, plunge in, cool my overheated body, gobble up water until I threw up (I knew better but you try stopping yourself sometime- torture is pure audacity, it is sexual frustration acted out.  There is no need for it.  Simply do not give a man water for 24 hours and keep him in the sun.  There is nothing worse I promise you. If you disagree you have not been thirsty, you only think you have.)  I dreamt of water for miles, I could think of nothing for an hour but the word "water, water, water."  I learned a valuable lesson and went water bladder shopping the next day.  Which took things too far.  Only after the thing broke and I was too cheap to replace it (let me here insert that those who tell you something like a Camelback will last years do not hike much.  My roomate has a tent that has lasted him 6 years and he will scold me with superiority when I find a small tear in a backpack or sleeping bag.  Well, he has never used his tent.  So I would hope it did not tear by being stored in a dry closet.  And he hikes at most 2 days per year, so his Camelback is still in fine condition, true.  But even taking care of my things, which I do, they wear out and break.  This leads me to believe I must post on products very soon, in a more general blog.

Back to water bladders.  Once it broke, I began to just let myself get thirsty, because the water bottles were on my back.  I could not drink easily by walking.  So I would just stop for a gulp every hour.  Then that got tedious, day after day, so I went to every 2 hours, then 4, then I was only sipping water at noon, and rehydrating when I stopped around 4 to set up a camp.  As I was not drinking, I stopped eating.  Now I eat only a few handfuls to start the day and the rest when I stop.  It is wonderful convenient if you want to make big miles in a day, and it is not even close to a hardship anymore.  That's the thing about hardship is you get used to anything.  When people sipping their waterhose (IVs will be sold in a few years) and eating a handful of trailmix or a 100 calorie craisin pack every 45 minutes by a timer meet me, and imagine what I must be going through, they cannot imagine.  Well it is this: much less than they.  Every 40 minutes they start to crave that snack, and every 5 steps, to want water.  My body and I are in perfect concert.  I demand that it endure, and when we stop, I will take the boots off, not put them back on, and pamper my body fully.  I know how to rest and I know how to push.  For my troubles, I get no hunger pangs.  I can go a whole day without food and not even get much of a rumble.  I love it.  I start to notice hunger as I am eating.  I have to press myself to eat at first.  I get thirsty when I am drinking.  There is no constant denial that the Camelback kids believe I must go through.  I suffer so much less having suffered.  For one gets to the other side, or over the crest, well, use your own analogy.  Its better, trust me.  And you can lighten your load.  I am all about a light load and will blog on that soon too.  The other consideration, even if you do not want to be a mighty man of blood and iron, is that when something goes wrong, such as you run out of water and are lost, if you are not used to getting water all the time, you will be able to endure without it.  This summer I got myself into trouble with a friend who always sips water and politely suggested to me I was silly not to take care of my body.  Well we were nowhere near water and wound up on our feet for 18 hours, covering 20 miles, going up or over 2 peaks, climbing all told 8,000 feet of elevation, much of it on broken vegetated cliffs with loose rock, debris, and with lots of exposure.  It was stupid and should have been avoidable, but the difference in our staminas was rather shocking.  He noticed it too, and I think I may have won in some part a convert to my method of thinking.  I only wore out at the very end, when I had been without water and food for 10 or so hours, though I hid it from him, as I'd been a pillar till then and it was dark and I did not want to worry him.  I ate some snow every few feet.  He had more water on the day as he had his Camelback, but his bag was enough heavier for it that he dumped some expensive and nice equipment.  And this is a very fit person.  In ideal conditions, he can whip me: that is, running a marathon on asphault he would run circles around me.  I had 1 liter of water in those 18 hours.  I have also done 12 mile desert hikes in the last year on 90+ degree days with 1 liter or less of water.  I usually bring a few swallows back with me and ritualistically pour them out or over my head when I reach my car.  I do not ever want to be truly thirsty again.

So, carry either: a 1 liter bottle to refill, or if going more than 5 miles from road or town or car, then I suggest taking 2 bottles of that size.  One should be narrow-mouthed and one wide-mouthed at the opening.  Why?  The narrow is easier to drink from when walking, the wide can be stuffed full of snow if you cannot find water.  Try stuffing snow into a small opening sometime and you will see how frustrating it is,and time consuming.  Also, eat all she snow you want I say.  I have never gotten sick from it.  Beware of water though.  However, consider that guardia and other viruses won't get you sick for a few days to a few weeks usually.  So do what you need to to make it through the day, then worry about the cramps later.  When you are in your own comfortable house and have people to listen to your moans and pity you.  Priorities.  For purification, there are 2 good options, and one decent one.  The decent is to carry an emergency filter straw by Aquamira.  It costs $6, will work for 20 liters of water or so, and will kill most anything.  It weighs one ounce.  A better choice is a water pump.  I prefer the Katadyn Hiker Pro, by far, to any other.  The next best option is the Katadyn Hiker, which is the same pump but a less stylish color, and with a lower quality filter that will need replacing faster.  However, if you will use the pump less than often, go with that one and save $10 or so.  They weigh about 1 pound, have a fine carrying case, are an up and down easily pumped device which it would be hard to break, and offer some hose features that I lack the power of words to communicate, but which will make sense reading the instructions.  Those I know with other brands are envious as the Katadyn is easier to clean, store, and use.  I do not like the MSR as it has a swing hinge pump and will wear out over time, I expect.  Let us say it is an established fact that a swing hinge on a single pivot is more vulnerable to physical stresses and forces than a pump that simply goes up and down, though I have no evidence that the MSR will break faster.  I only know, that it should, in most cases.  A hypothesis.  Also I like the bottle adaptor with the Katadyn pump, as it has fit snug onto every bottle I have tried it with, to prevent spills and make for even easier pumping.  The MSR would not fit a narrow-mouth Nalgene bottle and spilling was a problem.  The Katadyn is a really fine product and at $79 or so, in the middle of the pack on pricing.  The other option I used to prefer is Aquamira (not iodine) droplets.  The trouble is, the bottles leak, though if you leave the foil seal mostly on under the cap, and press it down after using, it is better.  But for each liter of water, you need to mix a few pipette drops from Bottle A with Bottle B.  And scrambling around, they do leak.  So you need to bag them.  But they will kill anything, with even more certainty than a filter, so if going into a wilderness area where there will be cows (yes the government allows herds of non-native animals into wilderness areas to do much harm to it; the original definition of wilderness area explains that they are needed to keep jerks from overgrazing and destroying the lands, but assumes the right to graze; perhaps I will blog about the trip some of you have heard about where a herd of mother cows and I had a showdown and four of the ladies marched in line towards me snorting before I noticed I was between the herd and a wobbling little calf that had strayed off) or sheep (Uintahs, Wind Rivers), you may want to go with these to be sure you don't get infected from cowpies in the water.  Also they weigh about 2 ounces and will not leak on flat terrain.  And cost $15, which will last you for a hiking season, unless you are on the Appalachian Trail, and then they will last you a month to six weeks.

This has been another smug and exuberant rant where I come off as a superior know it all.  I hope you enjoyed it.