Telluride

It would be somewhat boring and self-fulfilling to say that this past weekend's trip to Telluride was perfect, but in reality it was everything I was hoping it would be; yet another chance to spend time in some of the most beautiful and inspiring mountains in the country with people whose company I value like air. There is something deeply magnetic and soulful that resonates with me about Telluride; I don't know if it's the down to earth, quirky town, the wealth of world-class ski terrain at your fingertips, or watching the alpenglow fade on Palmyra Peak after a long day of skiing powder, but something just sticks with me. This past weekend I ventured down to the San Juan's again from Boulder with some of my good friends from Golden, former Colorado School of Mines classmates and all-around badass's.

We left Thursday afternoon after a whirlwind of a week, getting schoolwork done and building up anticipation for great skiing and seeing my good friend Ashley, who grew up and still lives in Telluride. The drive from the Front Range is surreal and fantastic, passing through mountains, desert, canyonlands, and back up out of the red dust of the western slope into the hulking white mass of the San Juans, the most rugged and remote peaks in Colorado. We got into town around 9:00, making great time on the sweeping, lonely roads of western Colorado. We went straight to the resort she works at to meet up with Ashley, who checked us into our basically free condo a block from the lift. Good having friends in Telluride!! We then set out to the Silver Dollar Saloon, or the Buck as it is known locally, a historic and rowdy "locals bar" down the street. After meeting up with some of Ashley's friends and hanging out for a while, we ventured across the street to another Telluride classic, the Sheridan Hotel, whose engraved ceiling panels and worn oak bar harken to the mining heyday here almost 100 years ago, when a largely lawless group of miners, schemers, and adventurers eked out a living in these mountains. The night deteriorated into a predictably fun and drama-filled shitshow from there, so I will spare the details, but needless to say I was impressed on Friday morning when I stepped into my ski bindings at 10:00 AM and got on the lift. Oh and did I mention free lift tickets? Not only is Ashley one of my besty's and and a local, but she has some nice connections as well. :)

Telluride has gotten almost 40 inches in multiple storms the past week, and conditions on the hill were wonderful, with the famous Colorado bluebird ski weather is full effect. I quickly dissipated the remains of the morning's hangover on the steep, mogul and powder riddled steeps of Chair 9 and Gold Hill, whose dramatic profile forms a serrated ridgeline above town. My quads burned as I hiked up the alpine crest of Palmyra Peak en route to Black Iron Bowl, a recently opened in-bounds hike to area known for steep chutes and deep powder. My hike was rewarded though with hoot and holler-inducing powder and a views across the valley that made most of life's tribulations seem pretty insignificant. Relaxing in the hot tub later that afternoon, sipping on a Sunshine Wheat and watching the golden alpenglow settle over the high peaks, I really saw that I am not in a position to complain about anything in life right now and feel so incredibly blessed by the good experiences and people around me. Carpe Diem!!!

Don't Let the Needle Skip Get You Sliced//It's All Love

-Tangents from the Underground-

What is sight, but a few pictures we snap for posterity from

the infinite possibility we stand before, the inconsequential funnel of reality,

the gaping maw of thought and ethics that divides everything. Stone and flesh,

fire and ocean, we thrive on the cold tranquility of virtue and precise formulas

of indifference.

Murder can be civilized and politeness can be vile, but the voluntary lapse in

consciousness we take when something is seen as truth without question,

I guess we are all just muses to someone, nature smiles eternal and all we can

do is squint and try to block the sun. Wired into the grid we are just around the corner from the beaten path, the wild tangents of the underground are hot and humid, thick with ideas

and lush with possibility, but the desert on constrained comfort is so comfortable.

we turn on the air conditioning of mass media and blast the fearsome and revolutionary into

submission; Phoenix in July it sizzles on gritty sidewalks.

The edge of the soul should be ragged and unkempt, open to ideas and not tied to daily doldrums, routine is beautiful and necessary, but need not be mindless.

-Desert Wanderer-

Sun spills over the wrinkled edges of the world and I,

a desert wanderer, trod on past silent valleys and the obvious want of water

and nothing.

Island in the sky I forge a hollow in the desert dust of humanity.

-Snowflakes-

Great silent mounds of fluffy crystals, you dampen unrest,

my mind soothed, enter the whiteroom, everything silent and immediate,

outside perceptions cannot enter, I am entombed, a voluntary subject of the

earth and sky. Pillows, blankets, the covers of powdery nothingness that I pull tight

over concerns and worries, all the bare brown rusty spots of the world are covered so

nicely, as if the next turn downhill was like taking another breath.

-South Georgia Island-

The boat slowed and shuddered as the rear engines shut down and the men scrambled on the deck to ready the anchors and salt-bitten, yellowed bowlines as we slid in towards the dock. The sun peaked over the high crest of glaciated peaks in the distance and I exhaled with the relief of the end of 500 years winter.

We had arrived. The 6 day passage from Tierra Del Fuego had been terrifying and beautiful, wrought with cavernous green rollers and looming icebergs, the gulls and albatross's curiously following our wake. It was here in 1914 that Sir Ernest Shackleton set off with his crew to try and cross the Antarctic continent. They would not set foot on land again for 497 days.

Not every place in the world was intended for human habitation, and I shivered in the cold fog as I thought of the closest people to our vessel, over 800 miles away.

On the open ocean at dawn, the sun burns with such an immediate and disarming intensity that it is all one can do do not stare at it and go blind. As the bustle of docking our 110 foot ship filled the harbor with the surreal thwacks and shouts of anthropogenic struggle, I struggled myself to fathom this consequence of this place we were in.

We were hear as scientists but also as adventurers, visitors to a seldom visited speck in the South Atlantic, 80 miles long and 20 miles wide, gray peaks robed in ancient blue ice soaring 10,000 feet above the fierce breakers.

I kept thinking of home in Boulder; the climbing gym, the coffee shop where I'd watch the yuppies and hipsters at work, Whole Foods, REI. Somehow in this place of such raw, primal beauty it all seemed hollow and plastic. I'd been waiting for this trip for so long, I suppose it's why in hindsight I took the underpaying, often tedious office job at NOAA, there had always been talk of this trip. It was never promised, just stirred around like cream in coffee, there but dissolved among daily trivialities like excel spreadsheets and powerpoints. When my boss called me into his office 2 months ago and dropped the bomb, in a hushed but excited tone, that I'd be part of a month-long expedition to study climate change on South Georgia Island, all the long hours wasted fantasizing in google earth of this forgotten strip of earth seemed worthwhile.

In this place there was only ever-shifting sky and boiling clouds, thousands of waddling, coalescing penguins and elephant seals, and the omniscient bulk of the mountains thrust over everything, scary and mysterious. I couldn't help but think back with humble reverence to the giant white rocks on a hillside as we left Fort Stanley, capitol of the Falkland Islands, which spelled out on crude letters "PROTECTOR." To whom this was addressed was a mystery; the salt-crusted and weatherbeaten fisherman coming in from the South Atlantic, the explorers and adventurers out to claim a slice of something, god even perhaps, protector of foolish human struggle. At the time, it seemed so surreal, the heaving, windswept Atlantic beckoning out of the tiny harbor towards South Georgia, sort of like the motto the British, in another inanely myopic imperialist war, had given the South Sandwich Islands when they 'won' them: "Let the Lion Protect his Own Land." Indeed, the lion had protected his own land, but this lion was not guns or whaling stations or pale, egotistical northern europeans, but the elements of nature that had always ruled this place.

The basic aesthetics of our first port and current location, the abandoned Norwegian whaling station of Grytviken, was surreal and sad. It is difficult to comprehend how hard man is on the land until you see one of the most pristine, remote places in the world laid fallow by rusting steel cables and tin roof warehouses, the rotting hulks of massive 4-masted schooners half sunk in the harbor. It was as if the whistle blew at 5 o'clock on a Friday and then never returned, content to rape and steal from this magnificent landscape and turn their backs against the remains. The remains of Grytviken was but a tiny fraction of the island though, I thought with slight consolation, though the idea of some self-righteous Nordic barbarian slaughtering one of those noble beasts on this very dock made me seethe.

Grytviken was an apparition of man's foolish ambition though, and I vowed to keep at such in my mind, and not let the rusting hulks of 1950's whaling ships and the arrogant white steeple of the town's meticulously restored 18th century church unfairly influence the beauty of this place. Though I'd scarcely been on land 10 minutes, I already felt the tremendous gravity of the island, the hundreds of penguins down the beach, the raucous seals and terns, the distant brooding peaks. We began to unload the equipment and supplies, the gaudy neon inflatable Zodiac boats so out of place in this cold gray landscape. The crew, 2 young Frenchman and the captain, also from the Cannes area, were also excited, as they had not made the voyager here before and were contracted out rather last minute to be our transportation to and from the island. They were to stay, but mostly would loiter around Grytviken and the vicinity of the fjord we were in, as we prepared to move inland and over the mountains for the duration of our stay, traveling into crevasse and avalanche ridden terrain where the footsteps of man had not been felt before.

This idea had always fascinated me, as silly and arrogant as it sounded, the idea of treading lightly and the earth and simultaneously claiming 'first tracks' in the name of conquest and adventure. A smile creased my cheeks as I though back to my last real wilderness trip, by real I meant greater than that week-long vacation backpacking trip in Utah or long weekend skiing the backcountry huts where neurotic yuppies tried to hide their iphone and crackberry communication with the rest of the world, the "sidecountry" I loved and hated. That last trip, 6 weeks spent whitewater paddling on the George River, the ragged edge of the Labrador peninsula trailing north into the aurora borealis. That had been so intense, relaxed but also unforgivingly harsh, and I marveled at how I'd made the journey over the past 10 years from an idealistic young man of 18 to today.

My fellow group members on this trip were lovely and detestable, caricatures of Boulder over education and outdoor stimulation. Really, this was great though, and a fine model for how the rest of the slovenly American population should conduct themselves. I suppose I was ridiculing myself in an attempt to come to terms with how blessed and empty my life was: filled with the intensity and immediacy of constant outdoor adventures, the culture and pretension of Boulder life, the alluring uncertainty of the future. The last bit though, the chaotic future I always prided myself on, was waning in appeal, and I found myself longing for the unquestioning love saw in the young families that overpopulated Boulder, the subject of my frequent derision and amusement. I was so damn tired of feeling like an anomaly, even out here among the seals and penguins, comically removed from the negative influences I saw as my reason for indifference.

Hans, a tall handsome Norwegian, smiled as he hefted a large waterproof case containing our CO2 measurement equipment, newly designed by some engineering lab rat back home. He always seemed happy and productive, his close-cropped dark blonde hair and bulging pectoral muscles hidden under a sweater a size too big. His wife and young son were pleasant and predictable, reasons I found to doubt myself in ever establishing a successful relationship. I was pleasant, certainly, but my bipolar-esque alternating between manic pride/happiness and depressed self-loathing/sadness made science and skiing sound far more engaging than human commitment. Sarah, on the other hand, was strange and unpredictable like myself, highly functional but also on some sort of alternate reality plane I found comforting and accessible. While for better or worse there was no romantic prospect between is I saw, we shared conversation and the occasional beer after work, and I enjoyed our collective idea of being fugitives in an increasingly homogenous Boulder. The Isle of South Georgia obsessed us both to an equal degree I think, and I was sincerely appreciative that our boss had included Sarah on the team at the last minute, as our senior paleoclimatologist had come down with a bad case of the flu.

We were to spend the first few nights in Grytviken, calibrating our instruments and our minds to the harsh, alien landscape of the South Atlantic. The giant, bright yellow North Face tents supplied to us by NOAA were almost comically out of place here, and we had began calling these portable living spaces "the space station on Mount Everest" on previous trips, a slightly cynical allusion to their techy functionality. Regardless, they were pretty much the best damn tents money could buy, and I always relished the long, windswept nights holed up in the yellow gore-tex cocoons, reading by headlamp or typing data into our little field laptops. It was late afternoon and I imagined this is what earthset and sunrise must be like on the moon, as the last crimson shards of light filtered over the horizon and the temperature plummeted at an almost perceptible rate. In the distance the cry of bull elephant seals filled the air with discordant grumbling, and the mountains stood watching, so close and large they threatened to topple over into the sea.

I returned to the ship after setting up our tent, Sarah skipping along behind me and laughing about the small group of curious penguins that had followed us onto the dock, our presence too alien and unfamiliar to cause any fear in them. It was so refreshing and disarming to be in place that must be a lot like Darwin's Galapagos, where animals have no distrust of people, and flock in curious awe of our arrival here. The penguins, they were the best, sleek and engineered for a cold, unforgiving climate, yet also silly and approachable, the type of creature you couldn't help but like, and envy in a way, as they seemed to always have ample company and food.

I thought of the King penguin, the dominant species here, and how I'd never forgotten my 7th-grade science teacher's instruction to us that they could hold their breath for 18 minutes and dive to over 1,500 feet. 18 minutes! I don't think I could do anything for 18 minutes, much less willingly deprive my body of the most fundamental ingredient of life. They waddled and flapped their wings, craned their rotund, brightly feathered necks in curious response to our activity, and pretty soon our entire crew was thoroughly distracted with the growing penguin congregation. Dinner/journal entry time was forgotten as we were overcome with the human animal instinct to observe and understand, something so stifled in the civilization we've created, I thought. Tomorrow we were to begin climbing, slowly and surely, up the stoic flanks of Mount Nelson, the 9,500 foot peak looming past the harbor, first summited almost 100 years earlier by Sir Ernest Shackleton and his crew, not in the spirit of adventure or conquest, but simply to get a good viewpoint from which they might plan the ill fated future of their expedition.

These mountains were not particularly huge nor inaccessible, compared to the high Karokoram in India or the Cerro Blanco in Peru, yet they were disproportionally fierce and intimidating, perhaps due to the committal, involved nature of this place, a speck in the cold wastes of the South Atlantic. The aspect the sun shone on was always oblique; slanting and inaccessible, and even in midday in January, the sun cast strange oblong shadows across the snow. The first rays of morning bothered by sleep and lit the inside of the tent with bright yellow reflection, and I crawled out of my sleeping bag and started to pack my gear for the days climb. On this first leg of the trip it would be just Hans, Sarah and myself, with the rest of the 10-person crew embarking on a different itinerary to the South, taking sea-level ice CO2 and O2 isotope readings to fulfill another part of our mission.

I relished the thought on standing almost 10,000 feet over the Scotia Sea in a few days time, the ragged edges of the world falling away at my feet, rock and ice obscuring the horizon line. I knew this was a shallow fantasy though, and everything from weather to crevasses avalanches stood in our path to the summit. I had always been a daydreamer, a romantic idealist in the mountains, who only faced reality when is was harsh and in front of my face, yet I felt I was pragmatic enough when the situation called for it to get done what needed doing. I clicked into my skinny little touring skis, and felt almost comical in comparison to the massive twin-tip powder skis I usually relied on for transportation in the mountains. I had to remind myself this was not the forgiving highway-serviced backcountry of Colorado, but place so removed and foreign to the rest of the world I could not equate its meaning to anything experienced before.

We moved swiflty and without complication, and I relished the company of two people in equal physical shape and motivation to myself; fellow climbers and skiers. As we progressed up the snaking blue tongue of the Admundson Glacier, the little harbor and our base camp faded and the views to the south and east were nothing short of spectacular. The teeming masses of penguins and seals seemed to coalesce into a mass of slowly moving gray and white dots, spread out on the tussuc-fringed shore of the island, amongst the stark white sand and pounding surf.

This didn't strike me as the type of place one came to take abn "eco-cruise" or an "adventure holiday" but rather represented the ragged, unkmept edge of the world onev somehow ends up at after having been jaded by everything else. That fit our team in a sense, ambassadors of an elite first-world scienctific organization bent on understanding how we were progressively fucking up the world, people who had answers to everything and nothing.

We settled on a distant rock island in the middle of the glacier as our lunch destination, and the calm, easy monotony of upward progress in good weather soothed my racing mind. 'Click slide clack' as each ski moved upwards a step, bringing us a bit closer to the cloud-enshrouded summit of Mount Nelson. The rock island moved closer and soon we sat on the gray flanks of gabbro and diorite, a 100 meter wide battlement stuck in a downward tide of ancient ice. The sun had come out and warmed the valley to a pleasant 45 degrees, and I wiped salty sweat off my brow as our group shed a half dozen collective layers, fatigued but not exhausted from our 4.5 miles and 3,500 feet uphill.

Some silly pop song resonated in my head, a common thing on long, singular treks like this, to have something so removed and alien to this landscape bouncing around in my thoughts. High on a distant sea cliff I could barely make out the festive yellow crests of Macaroni penguins, nesting for the summer in great throngs of hundreds of birds, inhabitants of the most extreme niche in this already dangerous island. I wiped cracker crumbs off my chin and enjoyed the last bit of sardines and cheese in silence, as we chose to sit for 10 or 15 minutes and simply enjoy the brilliant, deafening silence of this valley, the clatter of distant rockfall or wind the only sound. Suddenly, everything crystallized in my mind like a plume of magma shooting up throguh the crust, definite minerals appearing out of the hazy, boiling mix, somehow constant in space and time. I knew about the Boulderites, the rednecks, the genuises and the idiots, I knew what I would do tomorrow, and then next day, and every sunrise and sunset until there were no more. I wasn't going home.

Stockholm Skyline

The words came to me like they were written under my eyelids as the train roared into the station at Slussen, and the lucidity of the moment evaporated in the afternoon commuter traffic. " Be there where you wouldn't spend a single bill, 6 this Thursday", he had said with a mischievous grin, and disappeared into the cold Stockholm evening leaving me alone with my whirling thoughts and the image of his smile burning bright. Suddenly, it crystallized in my mind from the haze of work and caffeine: he had been watching me. The myriad characters, the steady stream of dreamers, schemers, and would be believers that filtered in and out of the Trident Cafe had always kept me a regular. An addict of the bookish corners and angular nooks of the Gamla Stan coffee shop, I lurked there most evenings after work. It was a short stroll down Vasterlangatten from the flat I'd started renting last June, fresh from the university and eager to mend the anxious boredom and tedium of the school bubble. Coffee was one of those vices that wasn't; something both necessary and frivolous, and as of late I'd only been able to justify it with accumulated change from around the house, half Kronar and assorted brass and silver tokens of monetary meaning. Money was so silly, just pieces of paper and metal we assigned arbitrary value, power over human life and suffering, the root of the 21st century dilemma.

I was getting so tired of them looking at me, or rather, tired of myself, my mind endlessly judging and picking apart actions and consequences. The girls around town, there were so many kinds I suppose, all mysterious and half there, apparitions perhaps, sent to haunt my identity until I figured out what to do. I liked them, like the attention, the looks, that really what it was all about. The indifference, the fixation, and lustful stares, all of it was delicious and immediate, like an ice cream cone on your 10th birthday, is was the Pavlovian response of my narcissism. I knew I wasn't physically attracted to them because they never lasted in my memory past the initial obsession, the control of thought and want. Sure, I fantasized about them occasionally, the beautiful blonde girls loitering around the Art school downtown, their childish appropriations of the latest style that much more endearing. The feminists, the vacuous party girls, the detached, judgmental hipsters, they were all confections on a tray to be sampled and compared, just a nibble and never a full bite. Alas though, for better or worse, I never thought back with private embarrassment on the all-consuming fixation I had with them, unlike the boys, who were conquerable and accessible, a sort of personal contest. This latest one, well, he was something special, or perhaps just insane and unimportant, but at the time, well he filled my robotic daily routines with bold color and a future worth speculating on.

So it was decided; here was Thursday and we were to meet for coffee and a fuck, no wait, I interjected that last bit, unlike the others I don't see that leading us in a good direction, at least at first. Anyways, coffee and words as it may be, words from my soul and not from a pen, at the place I wouldn't spend a single bill, Trident Cafe on Vasterlangatten. I doubted my nerves until the jittery sensation of being light in the stomach passed and a sharp note of hunger rang out across my smooth, strong abdomen and the train from Slussen home turned into a subterranean torpedo navigating various eateries and nightclubs until the familiar appeared, a pizza place a block from my stop. I strolled in with easy familiarity and silently exchanged a 50 Kr. bill with Antoni for 2 slices and a beer, the gaudy neon Italian flag in the window illuminating shoddy plastic tables and the snowy cobblestone street outside. Antoni was this generally disagreeable, hairy, shoddily dressed 1st generation Sicilian immigrant, and though we had exchanged perhaps 50 words in the 8 months he had been frequenting the restaurant, usually about mundane trivialities like the weather or the latest city politics, I felt as if he understood me. Suddenly and with an intense nostalgia for something I never had, I wished more people in my life were like this, casual but intimate, indifferent yet also perhaps compassionate. This boy I was about to meet with, well, he was a man really, his good looks boyish but not inexperienced. This man, Stefan I think his name was, he had this tailored charisma that was carefully measured out in spoonfuls to the world, a sort of orchestrated insincerity. Beyond this though, I think he was brilliant and insecure and most importantly, kind, the most underrated and trod on virtue in our modern throw-away culture.

I exited the shiny steel and chrome cage of the metro station and suddenly was above ground in the teeming cobblestone square, the muted red and yellow paint on the looming apartment buildings a perfect companion to the boiling grey sky. I could have lived in Ostermalm, I could have lived down on Rigsgatten among the hipsters and weirdos, but instead I inhabited my little wood and stone studio, a spartan hideout for 7,000 Kr. a month above the tourist hell of Galma Stan, the teeming masses transfixed on some ancient cobble or brick. To be fair, Stockholm was an always will be trendy without trying to hard, fun without the bland tastelessness of American pop culture, and true to all those who crave individuality among the even gray palette of the social democratic republic of Sweden. Thinking back to my childhood on the cold, teal Atlantic coast above Gothenburg, the weekend trips to Oslo, the treeless granite islands we used to explore on summer afternoons, I realized what a sheltered dreamscape a rural youth had afforded me. I feel so blessed among the current miasma of self-inflicted urban neurosis to have had thins humbling perspective, our 17th century stone farmhouse perched on a slanting green sliver over the harbor, Papa coming home late in the evenings from tending the town's elderly and poor as the only doctor for miles around.

I knew nothing about Stefan, we met by chance at at the holiday party for the advertising firm I do graphic design for, turns out he writes promotional garbage on whatever slimy new technological savior we've been paid to advertise. He works at the downtown office, or used to, rather; he mouthed off to a supervisor on some sort of ethical dilemma or other, and at any rate, now he slings expresso to cool kids and faux bohemians at Intelligencia, the retro-ish bar and coffee hangout a few blocks south of here. I admired his easy confidence, his lack of hesitation or reservation at calling his primary source of income a bunch of greedy scumbags and walking out with a gait that was just short of cocky. He might be an asshole, he might have nothing important to say, but he was superficially pleasing and something he wouldn't mind walking around Slussen or Gamla Stan with arm in arm, the old people trying to feign indifference to this coupling of masculine perfection, the girls jealous, the boys curious or indifferent.

Prematurely worn from a work week I didn't need, I figured I ought to at least swing by the apartment and change into something a bit more comfortable and and edgy than my old work suit, nice at its prime but now just a faded pseudo-hip appropriation of the standard office zombie garb. I marveled at how humans thrive so much on daily routine and guaranteed fixtures when we claim to be so driven by spontaneity and creative uncertainty; really I guess we are just creatures of the familiar, needing a warm, dry place to live and money to make things happen. The steps up the 4th floor walk up had been tedious and annoying at first, but now I almost savored to brisk trot up the airy, well-lit foyer, the anticipation of a place that finally felt like home building. I made a deft motion towards my overcoat pocket and unlocked the door, the old wooden floor creaking in my path. It was cute, no, bachelor spartan was perhaps the right term, indicative of someone with relative success in society but still stuck in the uncertainties of one's early twenties. I decided abruptly and randomly on a cream and red striped t-shirt and my favorite pair of jeans and kicks, old puma's from the late 70's, and grabbed a quick drink of water under the sink before skipping out the door. "Shit, 6:45!" I thought, and a sharp bead of nervous sweat pricked my brow, though my narcissistic side wouldn't let me risk messing up my hair to wipe it away. Oh well, Trident was only 2 blocks away, and being 5 minutes early was something my parents did on dates.

5 minutes later I coiled up my little blue ipod into my coat pocket and stepped into the judgmental, privileged cocoon of intellectual prowess that constituted the coffee shop, feigning casual indifference to anyone I crossed eyes with, the style these days it seems, which I hated but participated in nonetheless. He was sitting in the corner, alone and reading a small, tan hardcover, legs crossed and a half-drunk Americano sitting on the windowsill. "Shit! I must be late" i thought, though I knew of course this was false and I he was just early. I walked over and tapped him on the shoulder, and suddenly I was back to what I did best, playing the relentless defensive, always on guard for the next moment to interject some personal triumph or embellishment. We shook hands and shared smiles that felt more sincere than the "you looked hotter on the internet" sort of half-smirks I'd become accustomed to lately. He WAS a unique specimen, as I had expected but refused to let myself ruminate on, not wanting to build something up into disappointment. I'd like to say I'd become a body snob, but I suppose the truth was I always was, its hard to feel a romantic connection to someone when the physical chemistry isn't there, and I thought with slight embarrassment to the wonderfully complex past encounters i'd let fade away on this principle. He was slim without being too skinny, fit but not one of those comically puffed up gym addicts; hyper-masculine compensation not withstanding. I could tell he was kind, I've gotten pretty good at reading smiles and the subtle body language of humility these days, as I hoped some of it might rub off on me.

We talked about the usual topics, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, to paraphrase the Americans, but there was something else, something unspoken and urgent I kept feeling. It wasn't the usual "lets cut the small talk and go back to my place" sort of suggestion, but rather like childhood friends who had shared things unspoken and distant, then re-discovered their friendship as old men. He kept laughing in a way that wasn't patronizing or polite, but actually excited and sincere, and it excited me sexually and intellectually. I wondered how I would fuck this up, as I never trusted myself to take the right actions, to go to his art showing or film night on the weekends instead of heeding my latest sports fixation; climbing on the coast or sailing in the archipelago. Still though, I was so tired of modeling my character on others, impressing everyone but myself, that to do something in a completely selfish spirit sounded perfect. At any rate, the last bits of cold coffee stung my lips like the tugging up time, and as darkness firmly settled over Stockholm, I felt it might be time to suggest something else. He seemed quite content to sit on the broad sofa that framed our corner between bookshelves and talk or stare or laugh wholeheartedly. My comfort with semi-awkward proximity to someone I wanted to badly was waning, however, and bed sounded safe and appealing. Suddenly, he grabbed by arm and I almost jumped with surprise as he whispered into my ear "lets go for a walk!". The cynic in me could see where this was going, but despite my weary mind from work and body from the gym, I still wanted this, this spontaneity, so I agreed silently and we set off.

We didn't talk, just walked in enough of each others personal space to stumble and half trip over the deliciously awkward proximity. He led my down the sloping waterfront district, the amber lights in the fancy boutiques and restaurants lighting the silhouettes of wealthy 40-something couples out to dinner, a weeknight's spending. Suddenly, the sloping gray cobbles ended and were replaced by noble iron moorings and brass railing, the grand yachts and motorboats lined up like ducks in the chilly January evening. It was indeed cold and I wondered if the boiling black clouds building on the western horizon would finally bring the snow we were supposed to get this winter, amidst Christmas rain and the talk of global warming in Sweden. Suddenly, like the crescendo of a free jazz piece that after 20 minutes of rambling finally crystallizes into an apex of craziness, Stefan leaned in and kissed me, and every weary piece of my body melted away like ice in the sun.

The Arguement for Nuclear Power in the 21st Century

One of the most powerful and accessible technologies we have in the United States to relieve our current energy and environmental crisis is one that was invented three quarters of a century ago. While the initial catalyst for the development of nuclear fission was darker and more violent, in the aftermath of WWII, a miraculous and revolutionary application of this new technology developed: energy. In a flurry of activity, the U.S built dozens of nuclear power plants, uranium refineries, and research facilities to understand and and improve the fascinating new process. The science behind most nuclear power plants today is relatively simple. They use enriched uranium in which the concentration of the U-235 isotope is increased from 0.7 percent U-235 to about 4 to 5 percent U-235.

When an atom of U-238 absorbs a neutron in a nuclear reactor, it becomes U-239, which decays in a short time to Pu-239. If a Pu-239 atom stays in the reactor long enough, it absorbs another neutron and becomes an atom of Pu-240 if it doesn't fission. When the reactor is turned on, the multiplication of fissions is allowed to continue until the reactor is generating power at the desired rate. Then control rods that absorb neutrons are inserted until exactly one neutron from each fission causes another fission.

The power to produce electricity comes from the fact that the two atoms produced by the fission of a U-235 atom fly off at high speed, but they don't get even an inch before they hit something and are stopped. Stopping converts their energy of motion into heat, and the reactor heats up. If the heat weren't taken away, the reactor would melt. The heat from fission is taken up by water or steam pumped through the reactor. The hot steam goes through turbines connected to electric generators. About 2/3 of the heat energy is lost, and is emitted to the atmosphere or to a body of water, a river or the ocean. This loss is a consequence of the Second Law of Thermodynamics and applies to all power plants, nuclear or coal-burning.

After 18 months or two years, most of the U-235 in the fuel is used up, and the fuel rods consist mainly of the products of fission, which remain radioactive and continue to generate heat. The fuel rods are placed in large pools of water which takes the remaining heat. The fuel rods become less and less radioactive with time.
After the rods have cooled off for a while, they should be chemically reprocessed to extract left over uranium and some plutonium that has been produced. The left-over uranium and the plutonium can then be converted to more reactor fuel. The fission products can then be buried in stable rock formations. The U-238 that is left over is used in "breeder reactors", which are not currently used in the U.S for political reasons, but are successful in most other nuclear-capable nations. [Excerpt from John McCarthy, Dept. of Computer Science, Stanford University, Nov. 13th 1995.]

Ok, now that we have a little background into how the science works, we can discuss the political and environmental ramifications of nuclear power and how they have shaped the present situation. As I mentioned earlier, most other nations with significant nuclear energy generating capability [The U.K, Japan, France, ect..] rely on a type of reactor design known as Breeder reactors, which have the ability to process both thorium and uranium isotopes, as well as re-processed fuel from spent fuel rods, vastly increasing both their cost efficiency and versatility in a dynamic and changing fuel market.

Obviously, safe and effective fuel storage is still a huge concern, but what seems lost on the American public in the wake of 3 Mile Island and Chernobyl is that it IS in fact possible to safely manage nuclear waste. 3 Mile island was a essentially a non-event thanks to rigid safety protocols and design failsafes in the reactor system, and Chernobyl was massively deliberate human error coupled with an outdated, unsafe reactor design. The stupidity and short-sightedness of Soviet-era politics is evident perhaps nowhere else as clearly as the Chernobyl engineers deliberate refusal to allow emergency shutoffs to occur at the time of the meltdown, yielding the nuclear holocaust that followed.

The obvious major advantage to nuclear power is that there are essentially no airborne pollutants emitted, and while the impact of heated water on the nearby lake or marine ecosystem is important, with proper management and design this can be minimized to where is is WAY less significant than that associated with our other so-called "green" energy technology, hydroelectric. The unrealistic environmentalists love to point out the inherent risk and difficulty of safely storing nuclear waste; ie spent fuel rod assemblies, but given 21st century technology and especially if Yucca Mountain permitting continues, this is largely a moot point. The major advantages of nuclear energy, the efficiency, the lack of greenhouse gasses, the fact that the world's premier uranium producer is our northern Neighbor, this all seems lost on irrational liberal superstition. I consider myself a fairly progressive liberal, yet am pragmatic and realistic enough to realize that a large part of the solution to our current energy crisis is in technology we already have.

Thomas Friedman recently wrote a great editorial in the New York Times concerning the people, including some relatively influential conservative politicians, who have used the recent blizzards on the east coast and anomalous winter weather as ammunition against global climate change. This is not only ignorant, it is dangerous and incredibly short-sighted as well. Notice I did not use the term 'Global warming"; this is a misnomer that only fuels the argument of the right against an indisputable global climactic phenomenon that we cannot afford OT deny any longer. The climate of every corner of our globe is being altered at an increasingly unnatural rate, and even with the confounding impact of being near the apex of the post-glacial warming period, scientific evidence for anthropogenic change cannot be denied.

Unfortunately, the ignorant "know nothing" attitude of much of the GOP and their huge corporate constituents has pervaded, and their current attitude seems to focus mostly on the paradoxical mix of somehow decreasing taxes and increasing thinly regulated drilling and petroleum exploration. to be fair, the American public needs to be informed on these matters in a responsible and non-partisan way, not through sensationalized rags like Fox News and the Huffington Post. Yes, I'm afraid both the far left and the far right seems to be willing to take significant steps to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels, but at least I suppose the left acknowledges the problem to begin with.

The revitalization of the nuclear industry in the U.s begins with a major overhaul of current infrastructure, and I was pleased and surprised to see that President Obama has recently approved an $8 billion loan to construst 2 new nuclear power stations in Georgia, and has plans for fulfilling the ~$18 billion in green energy loan guarantees promised in Bush's 2005 Energy Policy Act, which unsurprisingly did not reach fruition under that administration. The oft-cited idea that nuclear energy is an uneconomical, welfate-state subsidized experiment in taxpayer money is quite simply false. While shortcomings of the energy utility system in heavily nuclear dependent countries like France and Japan do exist, last I checked they didn't have the massivly outdated and unreliable power grid we face in much of the U.S, where ancient coal and natural gas plants have been grandfathered in under the Bush and Clinton administration's backwards policies.

In Europe and Asia, most successful nuclear power plants have been built by semi-private utilities with a heavy degree of goverment subisidization and regulation. Economically and environmentally, this is necessary given the nature of nuclear power and the initial infrastucure cost. The lifespan of a well-maintained nuclear plant is more than double that of a large coal-fired generator, however, and while fossil fuel power in the U.S relies largely on coal and natural gas extracted from dirty, poorly-regulated operations in Appalachia and the Western U.S, not only do we have significant uranium reserves here in the U.s, the world's largest, cleanest, and most econmical producer of refined uranium for fuel rods is Canada. Why then, when we have not only the technology but also a stable, geaographically advantageous source of fuel, do we not embrace nuclear energy? The short long story is this: poltics and economics. The latter can be realistically surmounted, but it WILL take tax increases, and a collective realization that changing our dirty energy habits is not going to be cheap. I think President Obama realizes this, and his recent approval of the loans for the Georgia plants shows the initiative.

In another recent NYT od-ed piece, the possible "comeback" of the American nuclear industry was discussed is a forum like commentary by several prominant political and watchdog group figures. To be honest, I was rather dissapointed by the choice of comentators, as they all seemed unwilling to give up the superstition of another Chernobyl or some sort on economic black hole. The following comment from a NYT reader on this piece struck me as timely and well-put: "I have a farm in Pennsylvania, about equidistant from a nuclear and a coal burning generator. From the nuclear plant, all I see is steam; from the coal plant, a ribbon of yellow-brown sulfurous smoke. In a lifetime, the average American will produce 200 railroads cars of coal waste. If the same energy were produced by nuclear, the total waste would fill a Coke can." Think about it.

2/15/10 Debate at CU: Karl Rove and Dr. Howard Dean

Tonight I was lucky [or unlucky some might say] enough to attend a debate hosted at CU between former Bush strategist and eminent neoconservative Karl Rove and former Vermont governor, Democratic Party Chairman, and presidential candidate Dr. Howard Dean. As one might imagine, the discussion was extremely heated and opinionated, given both their respective political leanings as well as the general climate here in Boulder. While unfortunately much of their intention was lost in a cloud of partisan squabbling and personal cheap shots, there was some insight into the current American political machine to be gleamed.

One point which struck me as particularly interesting and unfortunate was the apparent refusal on either side to take a strong, progressively independent viewpoint on almost anything, rather, both men seemed to stick closely to established party norms and expectations. This is a flaw in Mr. Obama's legislation I have seen recently as well, and I'm afraid really effective political action in America may be slowly lost to this sort of centrist "please everybody" apathy. While I tend to strongly disagree with Mr. Rove on topics ranging from legislation to foreign policy to domestic economics, I will say he is a vastly superior public speaker to his confidant George Bush and has an impressive array of propaganda-oriented facts at his disposal.

What gets lost in this mile-a-minute rhetoric, however, is the fundamental flaw in his logic; that all the debt and recession and ills of America can be attributed to irresponsible liberal spending and short-sighted policy. What is truly short-sighted is his blind trust in that the momentum of the deeply flawed American economic machine will somehow keep things afloat without any sort of outside stimulus. Mr. Rove's repeated reference to the unnecessary government spending spree of the recent Obama administration Stimulus Package is not only inflammatory, but also disrespectful to the brilliant economists who dug us most of the way out of a deep recession in the only possible way. While distrust in the government coupled with apathy to change the status quo has always been the double-edged sword of American politics, the current situation is particularly dire.

The partisan derisiveness which has framed the last few major elections was clearly evident in Mr. Rove and Dr. Dean's behavior, and the audience sadly behaved in a similar way, making me both proud and also deeply embarrassed to be from Boulder. The booing and shouting, the idiot in front of us who shouted "you're both scumbags!" at the end... it all made us seem so, well, 2-dimensional. In order to change the current system, we need to first logically and coherently understand its workings, minus the irrational emotion component. Most of the discussion on domestic affairs was predictably hung-up on trivialities of Obama's healthcare plan, the behavior of Wall Street exec's, et cetera. What was interesting, however, was how when the discussion turned to foreign policy, both sides came to a surprising level of agreement, choosing to embrace the current attitude of America as the worlds valiant policeman rather than accept a little hubris and sense of place.

Have we learned nothing? Haven't the past 50 years of largely unprovoked, policy-oriented military strikes taught us anything? Clearly we are not willing to embrace a safer, more stable post Cold War world in which we DON'T have to have absolute control and influence over every other large foreign country. How much longer will the American public believe the guise of humanitarian intervention and grave threats to our security? At this point, the only major threat to American security is ourselves, and more immediately, our budget. When we can embrace enough humility and insight to actually learn something from the success [and also failures] of the large, successful European and Asian republics, than perhaps the partisan squabbling will cease.

In terms of domestic policies in need of major immediate overhaul, the healthcare bill is grave in its implications on American well-being and economic prosperity, but almost comical in its centrist -oriented ineffectiveness. Both sides seemed lost to the fact that the current plan is a weak compromise incorporating the ineffective aspects of both the privatized and public options. Perhaps it is some remnant of the Cold War hysteria, or maybe a genuine believe in the overriding superiority of our system, but Americans refuse to embrace an obviously superior and more effective system than hints of "socialism" in the slightest.

Never mind that everything from our agricultural system to our recent bank bail-out to our public services are subsidized in a way that makes Communist Russia look like modern-day Sweden, we refuse to recognize anything we have been fed to believe is "necessary." Necessary much of it is, in fact, if you want to see what happens when a bone-headed voter base refuses to raise taxes to fight a massive city deficit, just look at the current situation in Colorado Springs, Colorado, where utilities are disconnecting power to save money. Hopefully Focus on the Family get their lights turned off first. Then again, as if they needed light to concoct their agenda of hate and intolerance.

The fact that we are the only civilized country in the world without socialized health care, never mind that September 11th rescue workers who were denied health care in America can go to Cuba and get essentially free medicine of superior quality for free as visitors, we have it all figured out right and it's the rest of the world that needs to get with the program. It seems our ego is equalled only by our stupidity, to admit mistakes an move on, instead of focusing so much on blame and retribution. It seems the media has forgotten largely about the current war in Afghanistan, partly a conflict inherited by Obama, but also one of his creation and continued support.

We are stuck in a costly and ineffective occupation overseas which threatens not only our budget but our reputation in the Islamic world as well. In attempting to eradicate a rogue extremist minority among a war-torn people who just want to be left alone, we are in turn breeding an new culture of hate, one that has seen the greed and inefficiency of the American political machine and wants change. I have tremendous respect for the people in Washington and across our country who are working for compassionate, progressive change, but it is often a case of too little too late. As Dr. Dean said in his closing remarks, "I am tired of being quiet and right. The time is now and we have to be loud and right!" The world is looking very closely and critically at American foreign and domestic policy right now and we cannot afford to tarnish our reputation further with bullish, unilateral militiary operations and a bone-headed economic policyy that refuses to recognize the neccesity of taxation.

In his talk, Mr. Rove pointed out that we have the highest level of corporate taxation in the free world, to which I would counter that we also have the most powerful and important corporations in the free world, which need a similar level of management. If you want to see what happens when giant corporations are allowed to grow completely unfettered by governement regulation, just look at the curent situation in China, where the post communist free market economy has been ruled laregly by a hedonistic greed which ignores social and environmental impacts. The environmental degredation, the gross misdistribution of wealth, the rampant greed and corruption at a high level, this is should all be forshadowing of where we are headed if he don't do something immediately. In most successful republics, the government is afraid of the people, but here it seems we are afraid of the government, or perhaps just apathetic.

The magnitude and gravity of the current situation is lost on many Americans, I'm afraid, and beyond irrational extremists like the current "tea party" movement, we seem unable to catalyze and significant change. While I disagree with president Obama on many things, I think fundamentally he is a highly intelligent and pragmatic man, and I have a deep respect for both the voters who put him in office and his work. His actions are largely guided by what I like to call pragmatic compassion, or a regard for human welfare and the physical and economic health of our populace, a refreshing change from the deeply embarrasing previous 8 years of American politics. He is smart enough to realize that there are important things to be learned from the successful socail welfare states overseas, and while the globalization, size, and diversity of the U.S may not be conducive to a social welfare model, aspects of this NEED to be embraced.

It is almost as if the distrust of government and taxation that spurned our initial revolution and independence from Great Britian is still influential in our collective consciousness, that we are afraid to part with our money in any form we don't understand. I think that fundamentally, this starts with education at a grassroots level, especially of the poor and working class, as these people in particular feel disconnected from state-subsidized services. Instead, they see the corporate greed and rampant spending of the government at a big level, not their local libraries, roads, schools, et cetera. As simple as it sounds, I really think people in the U.S don't understand how pulblic services are funded, and somehow feel they are entitled to these services without taxation. The fact is, in 21st century America, unrestricted capitalism is not only a bad idea, but extremely dangerous to our security as well.

On an immediate level, our infrastructure is imperiled, and the stimulus package has yet to accomodate the type of improvements we need so that bridges don't fall into trhe Mississippi and children in public housing aren't eating lead paint. Our public transportation is 3rd world comapared to Europe or even China, where 42 new high speed Rail lines are being constructed, a massive relief on the collective carbon footprint of the country. The problem is that the current focus on defecit reduction leaves no room for infrastructure spending, which in many parts of the country, is of equal importance to job security and healthcare. I will say that Mr. Rove made an excellent point in noting the current hypocrisy and inefficieny of much of the environmental movement, which, instead of recognizing large-scale solutions we already have in our technological aresenal, choses to focus on inefficient, "feel good" measures. We need to recognize the value of what we have; the fading nuclear industry needs to be revived, the massive dams of the Western U.S rebuilt and made more efficient, and large areas of the southwest covered in solar panels and passive solar energy generators. The bottom line is we are not willing to collectively lower our standard of living to the point where we make significant environmental strides with current technology, and our government research at the moment looks like underfunded amatuer hour compared to the rest of the world. Yes, I'm angry, yes, I'm belligerent, but I'm also cofident change is coming!!

Dark Winter, Snow's Bright.

The winter closed like a door quietly tugged shut out of politeness and momentum. This is not to say that all was gloom and darkness, rather, the bright yellow glow of the sun on the snow faded and the crooked wooden slats of the cabin reflected nothing anymore, at least until tomorrow. Ralph sat on the edge of the neat, antiquated bed in the corner of the cabin, trying to think of what to write. It wasn't that writing was imperative, or even necessary given the circumstances, but he thought in light of the physical weariness the days chores dealt him, he ought to exercise a bit of intellectual muscle and pen something half decent. Writing was always so cathartic, removed from the sweat and delicious fatigue he felt most days, whether the gym,the backcountry, or the simple chores of daily existence, labor was never at standstill. Rather, it was a constant companion, by choice and need, something to savor in times of uncertainty.

Uncertainty framed the current situation quite well, as the last stray bits of amber sunlight filled the myriad cracks and inconsistencies of the little wooden cabin. Spartan, but not a dump, he mused. A dump implied no class, and how could a 19th century fishing cabin on an island in the Puget Sound not have charm? He had lived in dumps, oh that he was certain of, with embarrassing clarity. The 1970's movie set mirage of Beverly Hills did little to belie the fact that a tiny fraction of UCLA students could afford to live anywhere close to campus, and he felt like an Anglo-Saxon archeologist, exploring the ethnic neighborhoods of south central Los Angeles during his 5 1/2 years there. 5 1/2 years, and all he had to show for it was a BA in english and Art History, he thought. Art History ought to be capitalized, even in thought, he insisted, because while it had been bastardized by the common suburban hipster, at its core it represented something noble and meaningful. 5 1/2 years, an urban refugee exploring the gritty, addictive streets of LA; the sketchiness, the sexiness, the I-might-be-Next-iness.

He recalled with uneven clarity the broken strips of sidewalk and leaning palm trees outside his shack of a house at Venice & Empire, the heat sizzling on the pavement like a gritty urban sort of mirage on summer afternoons. The fetid chaos of the city was escapable though, and driving out to Zuma Beach with his wetsuit and board, he felt like a refugee seeking some sort of solace from something both necessary and unspeakable. He loved how cold and raw the Pacific always felt, scarier and deeper than the Maine coast even, a welcome escape from the LA gridlock. The ocean up here was wild as well but also mysterious and ill-defined, the Puget Sound a maze of channels and islands connected by some sort of common ecosystem. Gone were the handsome blonde surfer boys and celebrities of the Orange County beaches, the garish beach chairs and umbrellas under the palm trees. Instead, nature here demanded a sort of stoic resiliency against the unpredictable tangle of water, mountains, and rain, all competing for attention. He liked the thought of this damp outpost in Washington somehow being connected to the sunny beaches of the O.C, the currents flowing upcoast carrying thoughts and ambitions across the continent.

In the incessant rain and gray, thoughts of southern California increasingly distracted his focus away from work at hand, and the tug of the palm trees and surreal white houses was painful at times. LA has always been a pitstop though, a wayward diversion for the satisfaction of society and parents and programmed ideas of success; he knew this from the start. No house party in Silverlake or beachside bonfire in Malibu was going to invalidate this. However alluring or spontaneous life could be, it didn't have the consequence of chopping wood in the cold rain on an island in the Pacific. The real wild was always over the next mountain, behind the setting sun; ethereal and hidden. He caught the edges of it in the wild stares the bums downtown would give you, the way they descended on the steel and concrete jungle of LA at night like the penguins coming in from the sea, that was wild, but only because it was real. Real like the thousands of undocumented sweatshop workers they wanted to deport because they didn't have papers, real like the riptide at Topanga Beach, real like the professor they fired because he spoke out about "dont ask, dont tell." These things made him seeth, boil with anger but also recoil in fear, scared to face something so immediate and impossible.

Impossible, that was the real modus operandi in LA. As his parents said, it was a great place if you had money, and not so great if you didn't. They had money, to be certain, to where money was not something discussed out of politeness, yet the hollowness of LA resonated with them too, cause god bless them, they were smart. On paper, he fit the young urban Angeleno model quite formulaically: well-educated, clad in slim jeans and pastel striped t-shirts that hugged his smooth frame, sharp angles of black polycarbonate ray-ban's rakishly askew on his well-structured face. He had that build all the girls seemed to yearn for these days; all sleek rounded shadows of muscle on nothing, toned without being beefy, slim without being scrawny. You panned upwards and the rounded shadows met sleek angular lines of a northern european jawline, bright hazel eyes lit under thin blonde tangles. He was good-looking without being cheesy, somehow he kept just enough of that middle school goofiness to render an air of aloof distraction which people found so endearing.

He loved straddling the barrier of what people found acceptable and comprehendible; the myriad identity boxes Americans loved to squeeze themselves into. He thought with envious intensity of how little he remembered of the first six years of his life in Stockholm, but felt like the freedom and openness of Nordic culture had somehow helped shape his current nonetheless. He could dance for hours with the hipsters and weirdos in some dark, warm night space, clad in leg-hugging jeans and rakish neon stripes, then go rock climbing in Malibu Creek the next day with the guys he liked to call "the alpha-bros." Not that these stereotypes of masculine intensity understood his duality of purpose, to them he was just a buddy to swap belays with and maybe a beer or two after. Like a Venn diagram whose spheres just begin to overlap, juggled a mixture of purposes and ideas. None of this affected his current plight, or destiny as it might be; however, only the achilles heel of his vacant narcissism could bring him down out here, among the fallen green logs and pebble beaches. An owl landed on a distant branch, its stoic hoot-hoot-haw a perfect soundtrack to the dull gray drizzle, the sun of the northwest. The general monotony of the weather here was a sort of distant comfort, something predictable after the vicious Santa Ana winds and choking morning smog of LA.

The cabin was perfect, flawed in just the rights ways, livable but also a constant project. An inheritance from his mother's father, one that had surprised everyone; Angus and him were always close, to be certain, but with a dozen other grandchildren, the sole bequeathment of his prize cabin has come out of left field. Somehow it didn't surprise Ralph, however, he took the news like a quiet investor who waits for just the right moment to revenge the loudmouth masses and cash his check. They had talked about what came next, what came after LA, and agreed the logical progression was a retreat to make Thoreau and Hemingway proud, a soul journey but also a re-focusing of priorities and purpose after the material mirage of Los Angeles had faded in the north coast fog. Chopping wood was pedestrian and also brilliant, he thought, something so foreign to the flannel and trucker cap clad 20-somethings that constituted his confidants in LA, their lame approximation of the blue collar ethic humorous in comparison. He thought of all the strange and divergent memories that framed his time in LA and the one he settled on, sitting on the edge of the warm quilted bed, surprised even him.

It was last June and he was piss drunk stumbling to the men's room of the El Ray, one of the many indie-esque theaters populating this barren stretch of Wiltshire boulevard. He settled on a vacant stall and as he sat on the cold, filthy toilet seat, the drums pounding on the other side of the wall and fluids on the floor he dared not think about, something struck him like a frisbee to the forehead. The handle on the wall next to the shitter; it was silver, not just silver but brilliant metallic white, and he envisioned a world where everything basked in a metallic glow, thoughts and intentions bouncing off each other in space like x-rays. Suddenly the reality of being alone and drunk at another obscure show faded and everything radiated cool silver brilliance, slow motion across the dancefloor as the singer wailed on about something arcane and lost. Sometimes he would daydream about this alternate silver universe, imagine god dropping a gazillion gallons of gold paint on LA in the middle of the night and everyone waking up shiny and reflective. In a way, he lived in an alternate color dimension now, but the gleaming metallic luster of LA was replaced with the simple, predictable grays and whites of the ocean, the forest, the brooding sky. Everything was primal and regular here, even the extremes like the rogue waves in from Japan or the distant rumble of the earth's plates struck him as so much more tolerable and necessary than the reflection on a bathroom stall handrail in LA, hollow and cheap.

He missed sushi, he missed waking up and finding the girl next to him to be even more intoxicating than she was the night before, minus the intoxication. He missed the smiles of the Mexicans who served him Carne Asada tacos at 2 in the morning, he missed the smell of the chilly fog burning off in the valley in the morning. This was all a trade off, though, for the beauty and rugged simplicity of the northwest; perhaps tomorrow he'd motor in to Bellingham on the little skiff, he though, after all, it was only 20 minutes away. The wild tangled mess of the Puget sound reminded him of the Maine coast he'd grown up sailing, but here the jolly pastel lobsterpots and granite-rimmed islands were replaced by the shadows of massive, brooding volcanos, and mysterious depths choked with kelp where sea otters played.

The view from the little front porch was the best in the whole channel, and on the rare clear days, the whitecapped summit of Mt. Baker loomed on the horizon, an omniscient eye over the ocean. The lights on the nearby islands focused and crystallized into little yellow dots and Ralph tugged at the knitted covers and slipped off his worn workpants, the bed quietly sighing as he slipped in. Tomorrow was so beautiful and possible, and for the first time in his life, he cried for no reason or consequence, only because he was so damn happy the future was now.

Sunday Brunch at Sputnik's

Meow.



My Cousin Rebecca, Los Angeles, November 2009.



Handprints, Kane Springs Canyon, Moab, Utah. October 2007.



Hawk over slickrock, Moab, Utah, October 2007.



Full Moon, Arizona Desert, Summer 2007.



Golden, Colorado. February 2006.



Hairpin Turns, Mount Zion, Golden, Colorado. Winter 2006.



Great Sand Dunes, Colorado, October 2007.



Road to Paradise Valley, Santa Rosa Mountains, Nevada. June 2006.



Vines, Oyster Bay, New York, December 2005.



Pond Algae, Oyster Bay, New York .December 2005.



Galena, Gilman, Colorado. Colorado School of Mines Geology Museum, Fall 2006.



Fluorite, Westmoreland, New Hampshire. 20 Cm. 2005.



Mill #2, Ogdensburg, Sussex County, New Jersey, October 2004.

Rounding the cape in a strong Gale

A short story I wrote recently:

"The keel of the sailboat sliced evenly through the chop, brooding and elongate, a wooden eye into the murky warm depths of the sea, and it was all Clark could do to keep the yearning, groaning mast firmly attached to the deck as the kind of gale the old timers like to talk about whipped the channel into a pudding cake frenzy. It wasn't supposed to have happened like this; he thought, as if aware for the first time of the glaring inequality, the way his grandmother used to call the myriad woes of life "private matters", as if that would somehow make it all better. But, in a roundabout way such that fate met retribution, the niceties of waiting for the right circumstances hadn't lined up quite right, and, his ducks no longer in a row, he did the only thing he knew how to do: escape.

The facts were quite simple, really: It was May, 1978, and he was one week away from graduating magna cum laude in art history and classics from Brown. In an LSD-trip-induced euphoria, he had driven the old station wagon down to the boatyards in Newport at 3 in the morning, and, well, he fucking stole a boat, that's what he did. None seemed overly appealing at the time; noble teak and mahogany yachts of the blueblood legions, dirty 2-stroke Boston Whaler's and fishing skiff's of the white trash, gaudy dories and catboats of the vacationing nuclear families, freshly painted by Jimmy and his pops. He chose.... well, he chose the biggest damn one, wouldn't you? For an act whose premeditated fantasy had cost him so many hours of concentration in class the past few years, it was surprisingly easy.

The massive Honda inboard burbled pleasantly to life with a gentle twist of a key already in the ignition.... god bless the trust the old money had in the world. The 85' sloop slid slowly out of Newport harbor under power as the last bits of exploding neon stars faded over the inky black water with the remnants of the LSD, and suddenly Clark sobered up so intensely and vividly that he cried out in fear over the ebbing dark tide, holy shit! this was real, no going back, no telling, no regretting, everything from now on was forward and immediate. The rush of possibility, however, quickly faded on the sharp salt spray whipping over the whitecaps, somewhere off Nantucket he gathered at this point. Heading of North 30 East, which would put him somewhere between Lisbon and Gibraltar, he mused.

There is something immediate and terrifying about losing sight of all points of land for the first time in the Atlantic. You don't feel small, you feel singular, enigmatic, an oddity in a 2-dimensional landscape of air and water. You long for a lawn, a football game, an icecream sandwich, an identity. Until ,that is, you realize life is now absolved of trivial meddling and preoccupations and heeds only to sun and wind, night and day. For Clark, this was also forgiveness, absolution from the self inflicted sins of LSD and meaningless sex, cheat sheets and stale Christmas's. Life in the gentle womb of blueblood privilege and East Coast aristocracy was such a cruel blessing, he thought, comfortable yet intellectually bankrupt, full of opportunities for other people, people with options and abandon.

He wanted only to be wrapped in the wraithlike form of the sea, naked and vulnerable to everything, for once free of the bullshit safety net from responsibility his parents clad him in. He used to go sit down at the boatyard docks every day almost, reading or smoking cheap cig's or just watching the sailboats stutter haphazardly around the bay. Sometimes he'd see schoolmates there; friends, lovers, rivals, they never asked him what he was doing maybe intimidated but maybe disinterested instead. He was well-liked, not one of the preppy sweater 'good-to-meetcha' fraternity sociopaths, but not exactly a math nerd either. He wasn't sure whether he liked boys or girls, cats or dogs, responsibility or escape, so he tried everything just becuase he could. Took in a spot-eared mutt from the pound, fucked the captain of the football team on the locker room bench,, took the prettiest girl in his class to senior formal. He was so tired of everything though, tired of caring, tired of winning without trying, that sailing, which for once he could thank his blueblood lineage for, felt like an extension of his skin and bones right now, as the boat shot out into the night.

In the distance, a brooding horn wailed in eerie harmony into the black, and soon he could make out the heaving breakers, cresting upwards over the earth. Nog Ledge, he thought with sudden certainty. 398.5 miles North Northeast of Nantucket, and the last bit of land from here to France. He could thank his preparatory school geography teacher for this bit of nautical lore. As the horn faded and the churning green wake burned with the rising sun, the only thing that crystallized in his mind was tomorrow.

-Part II-

Sometimes dawn comes like the northern lights; mysteriously and ethereal at first, then suddenly quite forceful and charismatic and before you know it, the reality of what is happening has to be faced in full. Such was this particular morning over the western Atlantic, May 17th 1978, and while Jimmy Carter promised peace in Isreal and Anita Bryant took rights away from people somewhere to the east, in this place there was only deep blue ocean, not green or brown or filthy oil-slicked yellow of the coastline, but such intense blue that almost burned the eyes if you stared at it too long. Clark stretched out like a cat on his back on the shiny maple boards of the bowsprit as it whipped forward over the water, riding high over the uneven staccato of the swells. A sudden shrill cry rang out in the still air and he jumped with instinctive fright as a small group of gulls, no terns, Arctic terns on their way south for the summer flew near overhead, the first living thing he had seen since he left Newport 2 days ago.

He pondered the idea of rigging up some sort of improvised fishing pole and reeling in a great heaving, monstrous swordfish, battling it for days like Hemmingway's Old Man and the Sea, but thought better of it, as the cabin was already prodigiously stocked with cans and staples, thank god, as the miasma of LSD had prevented any foresight in bringing necessities on the night of the escape. He lowered a bucket over the starboard gunnels and filled it with cold briny water, and, searching for a brush to clean the remnants of last night's vomit from the sleeping berth downstairs, he felt for the first time as if the seasickness had finally passed. This was good. The regret, the self-loathing, the fear, this had all passed as well, and he felt stoic and resolute, a man created from nothing and with infinite potential.

With a loud glancing blow and a deep shudder, his smug contemplation shattered, and he ducked and covered his head as sharp wooden splinters sailed over the deck and the boat stuttered and slammed to a stop. 'Well, this is it, he thought without particular immediacy or attachment, I'm going to drown alone in the Atlantic'. Just then the yacht lurched forward and he opened is eyes again to see a large rectangular metallic object bob up in the wake and drift slowly backwards.... a shipping container. He had heard of these things...He followed the racing magazines loosely and occasionally on these 'around the world' adventure races, one of these giant floating shipping containers would be encountered, fallen off some massive ship in a storm and just waterlogged enough to float inches below the surface vertically, silent deathtraps ready to slice a fiberglass hull in two. Thank god for this ancient wooden ramming rod of a keel, he thought, as besides a torn off bowsprit and some mangled anchor lines, the craft seemed basically unharmed. A quick trip below decks confirmed this, as the triple reinforced hull hadn't even been punctured, rather, the thick old wood had absorbed and softened the blow, saving the boat.

Three days elapsed and the tribulations of daily uncertainty seemed slight in comparison to the shipping container incident; Clark rode on an ambivalent high of having escaped imminent disaster somehow. The weather was slowly making a turn for the better, the churning gray swells increasingly replaced by calmer, more certain winds and fair skies. The escape from the storm-bound and mortal coast last week seemed distant, and he relished this new found freedom of nothing but ocean and more ocean.

He recalled as a small child returning to New York from one of the frequent trips to Stockholm and glimpsing out the window of the plane what looked like tiny rectangular dots afloat in an endless blue canvas, a king surveying his kingdom from the window seat of a transatlantic flight. He thought of this distant memory warmly and abstractly, a vestige of a carefree childhood. Though he would not have even registered as a dot from above now, the surreal magnetism of the ocean drew him so intensely and uncharacteristically inward that what lay immediately ahead took a minute to register with him. Perhaps 2000 yards off the starboard bow, the flat blue horizon was split by a looming, shining wall of gray metal, a massive oceangoing container ship bound for Athens or Dubai, perhaps the very source of his earlier brush with disaster, he mused ironically. What was but a whimsical rectangular dot from 35,000 feet was now perhaps no more a threat, but undeniably huge and intimidating nonetheless, an anomaly in this seemingly lifeless landscape.

It didn't appear to be going particularly fast, and as he passed perhaps 500 yards to the north, a few men on the upper observation deck waved and smiled, tan and trim in white uniforms as he peered at them through the spotting scope. A light on the deck flashed and he remembered enough of Nautical rules to recall this was a friendly 'hello' signal, and sent a return across the channel between them. He recognized the blocky white letter on the hull as Arabic, and imagined the sailors returning home sometime next week; their white adobe houses in some nondescript suburb of Medina or Riyadh, kissing their wives, picking up their children, sitting down to a dinner of deliciously foreign, aromatic things. Suddenly, Clark longed for a meaning, a regularity of purpose these sailors had, to be employed and accountable, attached to someone else's schedule. He envied their easy contentment, their trust in Allah and the shipping company.

Somehow he knew he could never be provided for by others, he had to provide for himself singularly, absolutely. Food, clothing, shelter, these were all things to be had in times of success. He thought of the cozy investment baking job his uncle had lined up for him in New York this July, the transparency of money when all it meant was a phone call to mom, the shame of hundred dollar bar taps and designer jeans. The wind kicked up from the east and he paid out the mainsheet dangerously far, the boat shuddering as if took up speed with the sail. The most dangerous point of sail, 'running with the wind', he mused, the risk of course being an accidental jibe, sending the boom across the deck with the sort of force that cracks skulls and tears halyards from their stays. This afternoon's breeze, however, was behaving most agreeably, and he trimmed the sails to his liking before retiring to the cabin to read his latest obsession, Rudolf Wurlizer's 'Nog'.

Nog was this sort of disillusioned space cowboy who drifted around a wild, romanticized west, gleaming bits of brilliance between LSD trips and existential identity crises. He wanted so badly to meet Nog out here, afloat on some sort of derelict ocean raft, drinking gin out of the bottle and waxing poetic on the meaning of it all. nog wasn't created for this world, of course, he thought, but neither was Clark Nilsson for that matter; suburban space alien from planet disenfranchised. The sailing was helping though, it was so pure, so spiritual; he missed the days of teaching sailing up in Wiscasset, the "prettiest little village in Maine.' Fairytale clouds floating over dark green islands and gaudy pastel lobster pots, the little wooden Mackinaw's overcrowded with laughing kids and duffle bags. The comfort of association, a place neither home nor foreign territory, was lost out here on the open ocean, god damn!, what a great equalizer of human strife and worrying.

The fog, that was the best he thought, that damp, cold Maine fog that would move in for days, everything dark and piney and mysterious. There was none of that out here; just the most blinding blue he could have ever imagined, bigger than that sky over the Montana prairies, harsher and more acrid than the cloudless ceiling over the Nevada playa in July. In a sudden inclination, he stripped naked and, one foot planted high on the great wooden wheel and the other on a bench cushion, he cried out in a silly, childish assertion, diving head first into the rolling green waves. It was colder than he had expected, clear and salty, and, in a sudden panic, he thrashed towards the life ring he had tied to the stern line, as thoughts of sharks and sea monsters crowded his imagination.

As a child, he had been quite terrified of the uncertainty of the ocean; his legs never settled into a rhythm or balance; rather they kicked erratically as if deflecting the lurking creatures below, watching. He thought of this spot, this moment; he might be the first human ever to swim here, dangling in a alternate reality 10,000 feet above the floor. That's what really got him, what scared and fascinated him, was the fantastic 3-dimensionality of it, the vertical immensity of the unknown. Suddenly he shivered and then, letting go of the lifering, dove down as deep as he could go, perhaps only 5 or 6 meters, and opened his eyes, seeing maybe 30 meters down into the great green nothing. When he came back up he gulped delicious air and hooted and hollered like he'd won the game single-handed, for he had glimpsed the edge of the void, something we all wish to peer over. He'd seen it before, nature uninterrupted, like looking through two mirrors till the edge fades off around an imperceptible bend, he'd seen it is pieces from the tops of desert peaks, dawnlight on some distant island, forests damp and infinite.

This time though, the immediacy of the experience caught him off guard and suddenly he was crying, toweling off and slipping on yesterdays jeans and cardigan and blubbering into a handkerchief. Tears of gratitude though, not sadness, for having left behind the dull functionality of Brown and New York and social networking for something trying and beautiful. The sharp string of salt in the half moon crack in his left palm shook him out out this emotion though, and he wished he hadn't climbed so damn hard on the last trip upstate; his finger strong and calloused from caressing sharp quartzite and granite edges. He always looked at people's hands when he first met them, his grandfather taught him that; said you could learn an awful lot about someone just by studying their hands.

His hands were rough and kind, clean angular lines with neatly trimmed fingernails. He was always wary of grownups with delicate, child-like hands; everyone should work with their bodies, he though, perhaps not in the fields or the factories but in somthing purposeful and regular, whether the even creases of a paintbrush trapped for hours neath thumb and forefinger, or the deep calloused grooves of fishing line and marlin twine. He gripped the dark, oiled wood of the wheel and felt timeless and unconstrained; he could have been a captain 400 years ago, returning to the old world from an expedition of learning and adventure.

Feeling free and adrift, he shouted commands to imaginary crew members and sang out to the terns and the fish. In a place like this, he thought, memories have to be paper thin because they were constantly being rewritten. He thought nostalgically of the hours spent as a child peering into the curving glass expanse of his bedroom fishtank, the contents always shifting and ethereal. He realized quite suddenly that now the glass was the sky and he was just a fish in the ocean, studied by god and no one. He wondered what the French authorities would think.

Part II

Like the northern lights appear at night, with sudden and disorienting immediacy, so did this particular dawn over a cold, cloud swept patch of the Eastern Atlantic, May 26th, 1978. For Clark, the significance of time had faded and been reborn with a different clarity, one which rode on the even, rhythmic swells of the sea, and the familiar orange fireball which dipped and rose over the vast horizon each day. The terrestrial consequences of having essentially pirated a yacht at 3 in the morning in an LSD-induced euphoric mania were quite terrifying, but out here in the sterile expanse of the ocean, laws and guilt were not things to be considered with any great thought. There were some things he missed, like a nice hot shower whenever he felt sweaty and salty, a restaurant meal, the sound of the birds, the wind through the trees, even a car rolling down the street. Oddly, yet with perceptible satisfaction, people were not on this list of continental longings, and he felt quite content in his own company, as the physical divide of a thousand miles of ocean was marginal compared to the social rift he felt between friends and strangers alike.

To be singular was a gift, to be singular was a gift, he kept reminding himself with blind neurosis, but really it was a curse, a fucking curse, goddamn it. He was not singular is a way that developed over arrogant alienation or misanthropic ideology, but genuinely, undeniably unusual. The battle of assertion of self was constant, to be confident but not cocky, aware yet somehow not transcendent. The simple remedy of course was reckless distraction through things he found sincere and effortless passion in; rock climbing in the Gunks or North Conway on the weekends, digging through old jazz records, stealing some retired millionaire's yacht's at 3 in the morning. At this point in the journey, or the experiencerather, as it had become more sensory than physical, retreat was unthinkable. The only option was to ride the cresting wave of austere ambition he felt, and hope favorable winds and weather brought him somewhere along the South coast of France, where he felt the authorities would be more understanding of his, errr... situation. The situation, well, the situation was that everything was fucking peachy, the days filled with purpose and spontaneity, the nights terrifying enough to keep him grounded to firm reality.

The sterile magnificence of the North Atlantic is completely incomprehensible to anyone who hasn't spent the better part of a week in a small boat, adrift and with a minimum of plans. Clark has always been fascinated as a child growing up in New England with the heavily romanticized, mysterious maritime tradition of yesterday, and today; the rough-hewn, foul-mouthed swordfish longliner's he saw in Gloucester, their animosity towards the sea in reality a profound respect. The mountains were imposing and real as well, but always seemed to offer some sort of comfort, some egress from the storm, on the blindingly 2-dimensional canvas of the sea, there was no cave to hide in during a blizzard, no warm, well-lit hut in the distance. This was truly a place we were not designed to inhabit, or perhaps even understand, and he began to feel like an earth-bound astronaut, exploring some sort of alternate inner space. The old mariners, the sailors, they were always pragmatic and apprehensive, hoping for the best yet expecting the worst. The invisible lifeline that had kept Clark tethered to reality and safety his whole life, or perhaps just his own exceptionalness, seemed to guide him eastward, and he kept the heading steady across rising swells and horizontal rain: North 30 East.

He thought of his current existence, and a wave of peripheral satisfaction tingled from his toes up to his head, the joy of unfettered freedom, the ability to guide one's life in any desired direction without outside concerns. The hours wasted in bars, in the library, at home doing nothing, he wanted it all back, to postpone the endless niceties and trivialities of tomorrow until he could condense some sort of experience out of it. The 6 night and 5 days at sea had begun to unwind his calculated indifference to discomfort and burden he played to well most of the time. Things began to itch, to come undone, to turn bleach white and crack in the mean salt spray and relentless sun, and while he felt strong and youthfully immortal, the edges became ragged and organic. He wondered what it might be like to have a companion, not just on this trip, but someone who made time and boredom irrelevant, and though of the insecurity that hid under his smug judgment of the complacent, domesticated couples he saw everywhere in his early 20's; like cows grazing on mediocrity in the prime time of their lives. Maybe they were happy though, that was the problem, in his own refusal to compromise his idiosyncratic habits and absurd standards, he hadn't stopped to consider that perhaps these people had just managed to find something that eluded him so efficiently all his life.

Sailing is a beautiful sport, yet much like skiing and rock climbing, suffers from a gross misperception in popular culture as a self-fulfilling reckless prophesy for rich white guys. While this was essentially true, that did not invalidate the fact that there was something monolithic and singular about traveling in a little boat, and he suspected the urge to do so dwelled in many men. He was so tired of having to fit everyone into sharp, geometric boxes to understand them, uniformity and stereotypes were necessary to comprehend the skewed plane on which he stood, an unwitting subject to everyone else. He had no dreams of business or conquest, no illusion of empire, only the desire to keep the company of a few good men or none, for as George Washington said, "it is better to be alone than in bad company." Right now he was neither alone nor in bad company, for he considered the sea and it's myriad ecosystems to be a benign and familiar accomplice, the ballast and the medium of his journey.

The course and the liquidation of the adventure had begun, and it's momentum kept him faithful that safe harbor in Europe would be reached soon. There, he would disembark, assume a new, optimistic identity, and travel on foot though Europe, meeting fresh, vibrant young people along the way he hoped, future friends and lovers. The snide smirks of the the drones that make up most of the world, there to toil away at some dull bit of functionality all their lives, well, they burnt off like the morning fog, and he imagined the highlights of their lives, mere afterthoughts in the rear view mirror of his existence. Suddenly, amidst this self-assuring facade of superiority, he though of Tucker Lindquist, his best friend at Brown, how they were so unpretentious and natural in each other's company, the warmth of proximity to someone who knew your ticks and cherishes your shortcomings, and he started to cry. On land, he would have stopped this foolish show of emotion at once, yet in the spirit of solitude and the experience, he just kept on crying, for a good 30 minutes it seemed, the kind of wrenching and sobbing that clears you sinuses and leaves you sore and contorted, the body weary as the soul. He didn't know if he loved Tucker, Tucker Lindquist, he found an old pen in the cabin and, the boat on a long tack sailing itself, wrote his name on his hand. He looked at it, and then blubbered a little more. Goddamn it, the world wasn't fair, it wasn't even close to just; the people who loved you most made you hurt so bad sometimes, out in the windy, cold expanse on the North Atlantic. The world was so strange, so fabulously incomprehensible, all he could do was love nature and himself, two things that pointed north to salvation, steady as the dawn, burning with sincerity.

Memories began to seem warm and abstract; the anxious present and looming future clouding his reason as he reeled in a big, silver fish, no idea what species, but delicious sliced up on the teak deckboards and eaten in reddish marbled cubes, life that 20 minutes ago was writhing in the sun was now nourishing him. How violent and cyclical nature was; apologetic to no one, solely focused on survival and perpetuation. He looked wild and handsome now, lean muscle and sinew taunt and faded to a rugged tan, hair tangled and bleached in the sun, all sharp angular lines of masculinity amongst the organic curves of the ocean. Perhaps he'd go for another swim, he though, the day had too much flexibility already, and some order might bring the coming days into focus. The last swim had been gorgeous and terrifying; the 15 meters of so he could see down into the teal water fading into 2 vertical miles of liquid expanse. This inner universe was comforting in it's scale and uniformity, yet he couldn't help but see the zoo of idiots and distractions that fouled his social interactions on land, suspended at even intervals in the blue tomb, taunting him even here.

Clark thought with affection posterity of the crazy people, not the rich art kids and SDS activists who feigned eccentricity for attention, but the genuine kooks, the marginally functional fringes of society; endearingly strange. This is what he wanted to interact with, to stay fragmented and incoherent until suddenly some bit of indisputable brilliance emerged from the babbling, which it did occasionally; oh it did. He would invent new cultural impressions, pseudonyms and alter existences when he pleased, the truth was always secondary to the experience, and besides, when the right person came along, the truth always found it's way back into things. He hadn't drank or done drugs in 7 days and to be honest he felt like shit. The worst of it had passed, but to emerge unscathed from the voluntary haze of narcotics and lies to myself was both beautiful and painful. A lone Arctic tern passed overhead, en route to the north for the summer, and Clark marveled at his sleek design, the effortless way he glided forward, propelled by instinct and ambition.