Despair, Hope

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Someone said to my teacher, “I want to kill myself in despair over the suffering.” And I thought…

Dan, I want to lift you up in rejoicing over suffering ended, diminished, and accompanied in your ~60 years of mercy and my ~40 years of trying and if both of us fall over dead today, we know that younger people are moving up to the line and we’ll get past a 100 years of mercy one way or another. A 100 years, a 1,000 years, we’ll hold the line.

I was talking last week with someone who works emergency about working in emergency and how it’s possible to take (literally) just a moment or not even that, just in the way you be, to be nice; to bring some confidence and comfort to people at the edge of existence – and people going beyond that. You don't have to go anywhere to be a missionary. I was thinking about 10 or 12 years ago when I was in a room with a man in his 70s and his wife, also in her 70s who was dying and I noticed her breast was exposed in all the action and I reached over and covered her and her husband said, “It’s okay.”

My beloved wife

Links, a little freer, working out, food

Two new links, two new trips: Blog removed (Chris in the Marines in Afghanistan) and The Way Life Should Be (Mandela with the Jesuits in Maine).

Yesterday I realized that I was enmeshed in a political internet forum and that the ugliness was bad for me. The way it works is people will post on a topic and often the more conservative posters will then be attacked in personal and vicious terms by "progressives." And the thing is, the political forum is on a backpacking site so naturally I’d be going there. And I would think, I’ll just have a look at what’s being discussed on the political forum, and there I’d be. So I took it all out of favorites. I feel better already. Photo: Behind the refugee agency with some Karen people.

Today I rode home from the lake via Loving Street, which has the steepest hill. Oh man, what a grind! The first time I did it, I started to walk across Gaston (big, busy road) when I got to the top and realized my legs weren’t working very well at all and I couldn’t really turn around, so Mr. Rubber Legs was shaky-walking across Gaston. Time today: 1.15.

Last week I was lying in bed, thinking that it had been a long time since that same morning when Jun and I rode around White Rock and that maybe I’d work out tomorrow and then, come on, I need to take several days off each week and so okay, but the point is, when was the last time I wanted to exercise? Never in my life. Yet here I am, looking forward to the next 14 mile ride and especially the last hills. The schedule I mentioned in the last post remains the same:

Sunday – Ride home to around White Rock and back
Monday – Gym (at 35 minutes now)
Tuesday – Ride
Wednesday – Rest
Thursday – Gym
Friday – Gym
Saturday – Rest

And here I am, plotting and scheming to increase protein intake and learning lots of new good things about nutrition. Photo: Waiting for the clinic to open.

Started tonight getting food together for Colorado. It looks like this:
Breakfast: Freeze-dried eggs with cheese and bread (crostini-type toasts) alternating with oatmeal, fruit, and milk. Coffee and/or hot chocolate. I’m working on a protein drink – something like dried milk + protein powder (whey) + water chilled in snow. We’ll see how the test kitchen does (at least 50-50 chance of blech, I think).
Lunch: Granola or granola bars & candy bars for snacks
Dinner: Chili, burger, pasta, chips, cheese; Chipotle chicken, green beans, bread; Mashed potatoes, bacon, cheese, bread; Tom kha with chicken and rice; Spaghetti, pasta, burger, cheese, bread;

I’ll have this on the first (solo) part (Ute Creek Semi-Loop) and repeat it when DK and I are on the Elk Park/Chicago Basin shuttle loop.

Summer, Plans, Beautiful Things

DK left two days ago for Chicago first, then Berkeley for his last year of law school. It was a good summer with him here; a significant change from two people to three in our medium-size cottage; and the only thing I would change would be for him to be around more. From his blog: “Today I leave Texas, and I don’t yet know when I’ll be back. I had an unbelievably great time this summer. I could not ask for more.”

The plan as it stands is to head back to Colorado next month. Current thinking is for me to start with the Ute Creek semi-loop, a 25 mile lollipop loop in the Weminuche Wilderness. I’m giving myself a few extra days on the trail to go slow and acclimate and hoping I don’t go too slow so I get a few days in Fort Collins (the town of my dreams). Then I’ll meet David in Denver and we’ll go back to the Weminuche to hike the Elk Park/Chicago Basin shuttle loop. We’ll catch the train from Durango and get off at the start of the hike, hike a 40 mile loop, and then catch the train back to Durango. We’ll go back to Denver, he’ll fly to Berkeley and I’ll drive back to Dallas.

My inability to get up the hill in New Mexico with Jim Z was a major wake-up call. Shortly after returning home I joined the Lakewood Gym and have been working out five days/week since then. Last week I biked around White Rock Lake Sunday and Tuesday (14 miles each time and the hard part is the hills on the way home) and worked out at the gym three days. This seems like an excellent schedule that addresses cardio and legs with some upper body as well. I’m pretty excited about it all – glad that I’m getting it done kind of like cardiac rehab before an MI. I’ll have 7 weeks to get to an improved condition.

Along with the same theme of health, or something like that, a week ago I bought a Cuisinart ice cream maker for $5 at a garage sale. The test case was basic chocolate ice cream and it’s grrrreat. Since I started baking, especially around the holidays, I’ve been thinking it would be a good idea to be able to make some primo vanilla ice cream to go with certain pies or some dark chocolate ice cream or fresh peach ice cream – so many possibilities, like mixing in chocolate covered peanuts, other things from bulk... The next test will be to make that primo vanilla, the one with 1.5 cups milk, 1.5 cups cream, a vanilla bean, 2 eggs and 3 egg yolks, and some sugar. ¡¡Ay Caramba!!

And now to the photos. In the top photo there's more beauty here than is first seen. Lupe’s daughter, obviously, and her hair(!) - and also that she's planning to cut her hair and give it to an organization that makes wigs for people with cancer. And there's the man in the photo, Alan, the dermatologist who gives several days each month to the poor – he’s beautiful. And the room they’re in, the derm room, started by Carrie K when she was a resident and still going years later while Carrie’s gone on to teach at UPenn – the room is beautiful (not to mention Carrie!) and then there was Kelly (in the photo here), who worked in the derm room for three years and who passed on at such a young age. That was one of the saddest things - and she was beautiful.

Safely home

This post is about this photo: Chris, me, David, hanging out like we have for 20 years. Chris is headed back to Cali Wednesday and a month or so later, on to Afghanistan. David is leaving for Berkeley in a few weeks. What can I say? Old man, young men, father, brothers and sons.

Semper Fidelis means Always Faithful

Journeys in the West

Having some formatting problems with adding photos causing broken sentences and then losing photos when I try to fix the problem. Reminds me of Windows 10 years ago. I'm just going to put the photos back up - again and we can live with broken words. Photo: CK & JZ, Wheeler Peak Wilderness in New Mexico

Leslie and I had breakfast at Whole Foods, then came home to say goodbye to David. I was on the road around 9:30 and then the endless Texas drive through Denton, Decatur, Wichita Falls, Vernon (State Hospital for the Criminally Insane), Childress, Clarendon, Amarillo, Vega, into New Mexico, and to Tucumcari, an unappealing town that I guess exists mostly because it’s hard to drive all the way from North Texas to Albuquerque or Santa Fe. There are new hotels/motels on the newer highway (I40) going past Tucumcari, but along the old Route 66 that runs through town, there are classic 1950s motels all along the highway. I stayed in one of the latter, pretty cheap, 56 Cadillac parked at the office, guy with Vaseline Hair Tonic or something like it working the desk, naugahyde furniture, the works. Photo below: Jim at our campsite in the trees

It was an okay room and I dug it a lot. Up early,

peanut butter sandwich and apple (from home) and cooold milk and coffee for breakfast. I took Highway 104 to Las Vegas and drove for several hours in the dark and in the dawn without seeing any other vehicles. On to Taos, where Jim Z. walked into the coffee shop were we planned to meet about 2 minutes after I arrived. It was a good trip backpacking with Jim, except I fell out on the second day; actually I was pretty much fallen out the first day, but on the second day realized there was no way I could make it up that mountain in any sort of reasonable time. Jim was kind and helpful and in the end, it was a good trip.

The first night we camped on the side of a hill under some trees on land that turned out to be privately owned. Joe, the man who owned it drove up in his pickup, saying, “You need to explain yourselves.” “Uh-oh,” I thought, “I need to stay out of this conversation.” Jim talked with Joe, who said we were welcome to stay on his land as long as we didn’t have any animals with us and didn’t build a fire. The next two nights we camped

in a grove of large pines near a stream and then hiked out.

From New Mexico I headed to Colorado, where I hung out in Fort Collins and Boulder for a few days, waiting for Jeff. Happy me in those mountain towns where (unlike Dallas) I look pretty much like everyone else. That’s a real nice thing for me. Photo: CK & Dr. Love

Jeff got to the hotel around 1am and I awakened long enough to let him in, and slept through him eating, showering, arranging his gear.

The next day we drove to the festival

site, where because of eagles nesting, camping alongside the river and under the trees next to the music had been changed to a treeless field far from any water and a 40 minute drive from the music. We camped kind of at the edge, near some other older people and a coffee and taco stand. A 20-something woman camping nearby attached herself to us and we had good times sitting around the campsite. When it came time to head to the music, the organizers had just one or two buses running and there about a hundred people clustered at the bus door, reminiscent of buses in Phnom Penh, except the buses there are spiffer. So we just spent several nice, though sunny days at the campsite.

The drive home was okay. I missed the turn-off at Raton Pass, so went a ways out of the way and once again drove many miles, this time on Highway 56/412 Springer to Clayton, without seeing another vehicle. Then I was again on Highway 87 Dalhart to Dumas and somewhere along the way there was a huge thunderstorm and I got off at a picnic area. I jumped out and ran through the rain (watching for rattlesnakes) to stand under the concrete cover over the picnic table, peeing into the torrent. Dash back to the car

to unleash the magic of the Campry, stretching out with my feet in the trunk and the rain pounding on the car roof and falling soundly into some of the best and dreamingest sleeping imaginable. Photo: CK & LK around 1970

Then that long cross-Texas drive and finally home and so glad to see Leslie and David. Several things were learned on this journey, including that I need to get it together on my physical status. To that end, I’ve resumed biking and walking and yesterday started at the Lakewood Gym. Another thing I learned was that Mike4 H. was right: the best way to Colorado is I35 through Oklahoma into Kansas to I70 on into Denver.

Lighter

Here we go again, Wheeler Peak Wilderness for 3-4 days with Jim Z, on to Fort Collins area for an outdoor party with Jeff, and then … just got word this evening that Martin can’t make it to the Weminuche Wilderness, so the last of the trip is cancelled. Jeff and I may backpack a few days or hang out in Boulder – or not – I don’t know. Photo: We think that's a finch in the left center - the only one we've ever seen

Brief aside/ introduction to the next paragraph: I talked with a nurse today who told me she helped take care of me in surgical ICU and that I was in pretty bad shape. She did reassure me I didn't say anything I'd regret - I have NO recollection of being on a ventilator - days completely lost and that's probably best.

Since that hospitalization, I have been even more fully aware of the many and deep connections to Leslie. Over the past few days I've had feelings of dread about being away from her for so long. In the final analysis - by the time the trip rolled around - this trip was based more on getting into the mountains with Martin vs. just getting into the mountains (though I was really looking forward to getting up there with Jun, too). Anyway, I’m probably coming home a few days early. Photo: At the clinic

The moment I realized the trip would be shorter than I'd planned, I felt lighter. I'd already begun having feelings of dread, and now - now I'm distinctly lighter.

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Dream the world all alive
Busily conspiring humming like a hive
Dream the world all alive
I dream it as me

Rise as fair and tender leaves
Brightening in countless eyes
And the sweet song of whales
Beneath the sea

If I could sing only one song I'd sing of you
If I could sing only one song I'd sing of you
If I could sing only one song
If I could sing only one song I'd sing of you

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All that's the best about me is about you or for you or from you.

Bread, Hope

Bread I’ve baked in recent months:

Yeasted French (Acme Bread Company recipe from Glezer book)*
Yeasted herb slab (also Acme)
Sourdough,* San Francisco style from Reinhart book*
Sourdough, French (we liked the SF better)
Sourdough with kalamata olives
Sourdough with pepper jack cheese – a breakthrough!
No-knead French*
No-knead sourdough
No-knead French with rosemary
Whole wheat (Tassajara and Reinhart recipes)
Banana bread (not yeast or sourdough)

*Books include Artisan Baking by Glezer, Artisan Breads Every Day by Reinhart, The Tassajara Bread Book by Brown. Sourdough starter made from recipe in Glezer book. No-knead bread is from NPR recipe here.
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Photo: And dreams emerge - a photo of Hong from Alison in Hanoi & Australia

Some of my notes from a church school lesson. Reading the notes again, I’m amazed and uplifted. Things in parentheses are my additions.

People need an upward vision in order to find an earthly place to stand. Purpose in life not solely self. Faith (and experience) gives us a spiritual place to stand.

If you want to save your life you must lose it.

We are called to put on love in all its manifestations. Love is hope-bearing. We’re in the business of bringing hope/vanquishing despair.

A story about a young man, dying from AIDS, asking his father, a Baptist minister (a religion and role associated with a lot of judgment), “Daddy, will you come lie in the bed with me like you used to.” Choosing the heart of his faith over theological judgment, the father lay down with his son and held him as he died.

A metaphor for living a sacred life is building Jerusalem – where we live. William Blake wrote a poem on this and it became the hymn, Jerusalem. We are in the business of bringing hope AND building Jerusalem – in our life/heart, our family, our church, our community, our world.
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I don’t know who this is from: Our entire universe is contained in the mind and the spirit