Around Town Denver Summer 04
More notes from where the air is thin and the mountain hippies are thick…
Water, Water Everywhere
I approached the truck in front of my house tentatively. The Lakewood Water and Power guys caught me hose in hand. It was 10:04 A.M. on a Tuesday.
Denver Water District customers with odd numbered addresses like ours can only water freely twice a week on Wednesdays and Saturdays before 10 A.M. and after 6 P.M. No outdoor use of water of any kind is permitted regardless of address on Mondays.
On other days we can water flowers and vegetables--but no lawns, trees or shrubbery-- before 10 and after 6.
Washing your car is strictly forbidden except on Wednesdays and Saturdays before 10 and after 6. Hosing down your sidewalks and driveway, well, let’s just say decent people here don’t talk about things of that nature.
But I caught a break. The Nozzle Squad was in a generous mood. They decided my use of water on a sick locust tree only warranted a warning.
One of the two officers, a neo-shaver who’d probably seen too many Clint Eastwood movies, told me with a faint hint of a threat in his voice and a narrowing of his eyes that they’d slap me with a $250 fine if they ever caught me hose up and outside of acceptable hours again.
Due to water agreements imposed on the region 80 years ago when about 157 people lived here, Colorado and the rest of the Rocky Mountain states produce and “share” most of the huge volumes of melt water that make cities like LA and Phoenix possible.
We’re in the midst of a severe 6 year drought which has reduced Colorado River reservoirs like Lake Powell to dangerously low levels.
I flew out to LA this past June for work and to see good friends and for the first time in my life I really thought seriously about the irresponsible use of water in Southern California.
A few years ago I met a guy in L.A. who installed a small lap pool so his arthritic dog could get some exercise and presumably participate in doggie water aerobics. Of course, that’s an eccentric situation, but the examples in So Cal of people wasting water are so common that you don’t even notice them after you’ve lived there a while. The fact that a town like Pasadena, which is plopped down on a semi-arid mountainside, looks like a lush forest dotted with pools from the air is really all you need to know about water politics in the west.
It’s interesting how much your perception of the same set of behaviors changes depending on whether you’re part of the group that’s wielding most of the power or whether you’re not.
If the Lower Left Coast adopted the same kind of restrictive water policies we have here along the Front Range it would probably create a statewide temper tantrum. It might even lead to the recall of The Manly-Man and to the election of a 135 pound Girlie-Man with marshmallow buttocks, assuming for a moment that a guy who weighs 135 pounds could ever have marshmallow buttocks.
Some environmentalists and many economists argue that the best way to preserve the environment is to put a realistic market price on environmental resources and charge the consumers of those resources accordingly.
The idea that everything in the created world needs a market price to survive is disturbing to some of us. But many of the brightest men and women—including most Christians—seem to think that way now, so maybe that’s the best choice. It’s certainly the realistic way to go. There’s a lot to be said for making people pay a premium when they insist on using resources with little sense of self-discipline.
I’d welcome it from the standpoint of economic fairness. Water is the most precious natural resource in the western U.S. If the will of God requires punitive lawn militias I’d prefer to see them deployed in the deserts of Phoenix and Las Vegas and the semi-arid desert of LA where they belong, and water dividends that reflect the real economic value of water paid to the economies in the Rockies.
To get off subject for a moment, this may be the first time in recorded history that anybody has uttered the phrase “If the will of God requires punitive lawn militias.” Language is definitely a creative pre-school playground.
Buskerfest
We recently headed down the hill to see the Denver International Buskerfest. Front Range folks try to pack in as many festivals and celebrations as possible during the warm weather months here.
I’ve never run across the term “Buskerfest” before. Even as I type the word, the Microsoft Word program I’m using underlines it with a squiggly red line to show that it’s an unusual word that may threaten balanced living.
According to the sources I’ve checked, “buskers” entertain people on the street with a view to cash contributions placed in their hats, buckets or boxes.
It seems a “Buskerfest” is a celebration of talented beggars who perform according to their gifts and callings in the hope that folks with a more comfortable profit margin will approve by dropping bill and coin.
This sounded a little like fundraising for Christian missionary work, so I thought it would be worth checking out.
I also really like jugglers and magicians and contortionists and I rarely miss an opportunity to see them do that voodoo that they do so well and faithfully.
Denver city officials blocked off about 6 blocks of downtown streets along 16th Street to provide a stage. Over the course of three or four hours we got a chance to see about a half-dozen performers.
Rasta Yoga led off on the corner of Glenarm and 16th.
He was an exceptionally skinny and dreadlocked Jamaican with a gift for Indian yoga. For the conventionally conservative and middle class folks in the crowd, he was exotic and therefore interesting. For the more educated and discerning, he was just another double-jointed product of globalization.
Mr. Yoga passed his entire body through a number of improbably narrow shapes including a tennis racket. He was like a camel that passes through the eye of a needle, or perhaps even more metaphorically, the very rare rich man in Jesus’ teaching that enters the Kingdom of Heaven.
Perhaps many comfortable and religious Americans should hire him as a salvation consultant. Lots of us could probably use the help of a contortionist to help us squeeze through. We could think of the whole thing as hiring a personal trainer.
He climaxed his act by stuffing himself into a very small and transparent plastic box and then closing the lid. I took this as a kind of artistic statement about the way some people choose to live their lives, but after watching him stare out vacantly at the crowd through his tangled body parts I had second thoughts about that interpretation.
The other busker who really stood out was a young man with the stage name “Aidan Orange.”
A few years ago he did a “stupid human tricks” segment on the David Letterman Show, so the buzz commanded us to check him out.
I can only make a guess, but I believe he chose his name so that some people would think of “Agent Orange” and perhaps associate his craziness with the effects of the toxic Vietnam era defoliant, and maybe more importantly, so that everybody would know that he was one of those people who “get it.” I thought he demonstrated his essentially good manners by throwing a bone to those of us in the over 40 demographic.
Aidan wore orange pants. He seemed like somebody with tons of attitude and maybe only pounds of ability. That’s the kind of thing that can lead to the presidency these days, so we all took him seriously.
Mr. Orange rode a 15 foot tall unicycle while trying to juggle knives and play “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction” by the Rolling Stones on the harmonica.
He wasn’t as successful as he may have hoped. The unicycle and Stones parts worked fine, but the knives part didn’t go according to plan. Some of the people sitting below him scrambled out of the way as the machetes rained down.
For his next trick he attempted to eat a flaming sword passed all the way down his throat.
Unfortunately, before he could get the blade lit he spilled some of the lighter fluid on the carrying case for the swords and on some of the other props. Somehow he ignited the case and the props and he was soon flailing around wildly trying to put out the fire.
His panic seemed genuine to me. I thought the whole thing was a spontaneous street satire about current international political events.
Others thought this was all part of the act and applauded loudly. Perhaps it was actually an intentional and sophisticated street satire about those same events.
Or maybe a lot of people just enjoy seeing things blow up and burn and go badly.
Sometimes there is no accounting for taste or for the way people can judge the same set of observed facts so differently.
So Political
Some of you have asked why I’ve become so political recently. One old friend even asked me in an email a couple of weeks ago why I’d “waste” my “wonderful soul and gifts thinking too much about politics.” She lovingly wanted to correct me for aligning myself with “tawdry liberal solutions.” American evangelicals can be so sweet when they’re giving you a swift kick in the sitter with the right foot of fellowship.
As a result, I thought it might be good to explain how I view biblical teaching on politics and why I think it’s an especially important time for more reasonable and balanced Christians to be politically involved. I’m not sure I qualify for that club, but maybe it will help some of you who are sorting out your own thoughts and feelings about political involvement.
I’ll put together an explanation of “Christian Anarchy,” which is how I’d identify my political thinking and which I believe is an honest and compelling attempt at grasping the political teaching of the Bible, in an essay in the next month or so. I’ll try to get it out early enough that people can use it before the upcoming elections.
And besides, I’d hate to have anybody label me as a “raving liberal,” though I do admit that the “raving” part is normally pretty accurate.
--Hey, why is it only liberals are said to “rave?”
I guess the nature of the “performances” on right wing television outlets like Fox News and especially conservative radio have yet to catch up in the popular imagination with the memories of some of the worst of 60’s far left lunacy, but from my point of view it’s only a matter of time.
I occasionally watch and listen to these sources, and when I do its always hard to tell whether some of these “balanced and fair” folks act like World Wrestling Federation types simply for ratings or whether they’re serious. When I do watch or listen I’ve rarely come across even a half-hearted attempt at objectivity.
I recently saw Robert Rubin, a respected economist, interviewed on Fox TV News while I was at the gym. It’s the place I do virtually all my TV viewing since you can’t easily hit the off button in the midst of that sweating fellowship.
It’s also the place I do most of my magazine reading in order to distract me from the effort of climbing to nowhere on a stair step machine for the promise of better health and the ability to do the kinds of sports I enjoy.
Anyway, I think the Fox “anchorperson” made three comments for every one he allowed Rubin to make. Makes you wonder why they even bother to bring people in to interview them.
I have a hunch many of the people on these kinds of stations and outlets are reasonable and thoughtful people “in the closet” who offer up transparent manipulation in order to make a nice living. But I like to think the best of people, so who knows.
Flicks
Silver City
I’ve been a big John Sayles fan for many years. He’s written and directed a bag-load of flicks including Lone Star, Passion Fish, City of Hope, Matewan, and Brother from Another Planet. You could do a lot worse than renting and watching them. I’d start with Lone Star, though they’re all thoughtful, visually beautiful, and very entertaining. In a somewhat different world Sayles would be as well known as Steven Spielberg. He’d probably be uncomfortable with that outcome, which may be part of the reason I like his work so much.
I got a chance to see an advanced screening of Silver City, Sayles’ latest movie.
Silver City is set in Colorado. If you do a good job with the cinematography in any movie rooted in the towns, landscapes and skies here you’re going to have something visually remarkable. They did a very good job with the cinematography.
I’d guess they filmed it in autumn when Colorado is all cobalt blue skies and a stunning contrast of a dozen tones of evergreen set against the yellow-gold of the shimmering and turning aspens. They got the landscape spot on. Some of the people who see this film are going to move here.
The townscapes of Denver and especially Leadville, the old mining town at 10,000 ft. where I stay as a base-camp for climbs in the highest parts of the Rockies, look a little bit better than they ever do in real life. But I wouldn’t say the images are exaggerated. Like a shot of botox to the foreheads of the well to do, they’re a pleasant and hardly noticeable enhancement.
Silver City is a murder mystery. It’s also a political satire. Chris Cooper, who I think is one of the best American actors right now (he was the corrupt CIA program director who was assassinated at the end of the “Bourne Identity” and the wonderful sheriff in “Lone Star” among a ton of parts), plays the role of Dickie Pilager, a relatively clueless and inadvertently malevolent candidate who is running for the governorship of Colorado. Though I don’t think Sayles intended it to be so topical, it’s pretty relevant.
It’ll come out in U.S. theaters sometime in September or October and its well worth seeing.
Books
Mountains of the Mind
I’ve been climbing mountains and doing high altitude trekking for about 15 years now, and it’s always been hard for me to explain to anyone else, and maybe even to myself, why I do it. I’ll admit that it’s difficult to justify expending a lot of effort and time in sometimes dangerous and nasty environments, particularly when there is no obvious payoff other than reaching the top of a large mass of rock and ice.
Luckily there are often passionate people with remarkable skills of observation and gifts for language and logic that can help make sense of the things we do.
“Mountains of the Mind” is that kind of book. Once in a while you read something that helps explain yourself to yourself.
But it goes way beyond capturing the wonder and allure of mountains or the psychology of climbers.
It’s really a riveting social history of western culture in the past 400 years, and how geology and science and romanticism and modernism have created not only a cult of the mountains but also the way that current westerners think and feel about the world. It might even be fair to say it’s a look at some of the foundations of modern western spirituality. The leading book reviews in the U.S. and the U.K. gave it uniquely positive support, and I’m not even sure how to describe its genre. It’s sort of a new genre of its own.
Robert Macfarlane, who wrote Mountains of the Mind, is an experienced climber and a verbal wizard with a gift for simile and metaphor and a razor sharp eye for even the smallest and most telling details of high altitude environments. Because of his verbal gifts I’m sure he could have written a remarkable book about bathroom plumbing, but the fact that he focuses his skills on one of his life’s passions—maybe even obsessions—makes it truly worth reading. The book delighted me.
Mountain Bike Like a Champion
None of you should ever read this book.
I took up mountain biking when we moved to Denver. If you’re a serious citizen of Colorado you’re probably a mountain biker. As the Apostle Paul once said, when in Rome, ride a piece of metal with fat rubber wheels down a mountainside.
I’ve spent a good bit of my mountain biking time in the past year falling off the bike and crashing into things, sometimes with other people watching my painful failures from an up close and personal vantage point.
This past couple of weeks I finally rode some challenging intermediate trails clean. In mountain biking lingo, that means you rode the whole length of the trail without falling down or stopping. I can now add not humiliating myself on a mountain bike to a growing personal list of useless and satisfying skills.
The author of Mountain Bike Like a Champion is a guy with the improbable and distressing name of “Ned Overend.” Ned was one of the inexplicable pioneers of mountain biking and a champion mountain biker for 20 years.
The worst thing that can happen to you when you’re flying down a very steep and rocky trail on a mountain bike is to suffer, in mountain biking lingo, an “endo.” That means you brake too hard on the front wheel or hit something immovable so that the front wheel stops dead and the back wheel lifts off the ground and you get thrown over the handle bars. I’m now fairly familiar with this maneuver.
“Endo” is shorthand for “end over end.”
The author of this mountain biking bible has the last name “Overend.” Those who have experienced the results of his teaching first hand might slightly modify his name to “Over End.”
His first name is Ned, which with the quick shift west of a single letter becomes “End.”
I love the idea that the Skill Master of mountain biking, with a little imagination, has the name End Over End. Sometimes satisfying truth is embedded in a name.
Water, Water Everywhere
I approached the truck in front of my house tentatively. The Lakewood Water and Power guys caught me hose in hand. It was 10:04 A.M. on a Tuesday.
Denver Water District customers with odd numbered addresses like ours can only water freely twice a week on Wednesdays and Saturdays before 10 A.M. and after 6 P.M. No outdoor use of water of any kind is permitted regardless of address on Mondays.
On other days we can water flowers and vegetables--but no lawns, trees or shrubbery-- before 10 and after 6.
Washing your car is strictly forbidden except on Wednesdays and Saturdays before 10 and after 6. Hosing down your sidewalks and driveway, well, let’s just say decent people here don’t talk about things of that nature.
But I caught a break. The Nozzle Squad was in a generous mood. They decided my use of water on a sick locust tree only warranted a warning.
One of the two officers, a neo-shaver who’d probably seen too many Clint Eastwood movies, told me with a faint hint of a threat in his voice and a narrowing of his eyes that they’d slap me with a $250 fine if they ever caught me hose up and outside of acceptable hours again.
Due to water agreements imposed on the region 80 years ago when about 157 people lived here, Colorado and the rest of the Rocky Mountain states produce and “share” most of the huge volumes of melt water that make cities like LA and Phoenix possible.
We’re in the midst of a severe 6 year drought which has reduced Colorado River reservoirs like Lake Powell to dangerously low levels.
I flew out to LA this past June for work and to see good friends and for the first time in my life I really thought seriously about the irresponsible use of water in Southern California.
A few years ago I met a guy in L.A. who installed a small lap pool so his arthritic dog could get some exercise and presumably participate in doggie water aerobics. Of course, that’s an eccentric situation, but the examples in So Cal of people wasting water are so common that you don’t even notice them after you’ve lived there a while. The fact that a town like Pasadena, which is plopped down on a semi-arid mountainside, looks like a lush forest dotted with pools from the air is really all you need to know about water politics in the west.
It’s interesting how much your perception of the same set of behaviors changes depending on whether you’re part of the group that’s wielding most of the power or whether you’re not.
If the Lower Left Coast adopted the same kind of restrictive water policies we have here along the Front Range it would probably create a statewide temper tantrum. It might even lead to the recall of The Manly-Man and to the election of a 135 pound Girlie-Man with marshmallow buttocks, assuming for a moment that a guy who weighs 135 pounds could ever have marshmallow buttocks.
Some environmentalists and many economists argue that the best way to preserve the environment is to put a realistic market price on environmental resources and charge the consumers of those resources accordingly.
The idea that everything in the created world needs a market price to survive is disturbing to some of us. But many of the brightest men and women—including most Christians—seem to think that way now, so maybe that’s the best choice. It’s certainly the realistic way to go. There’s a lot to be said for making people pay a premium when they insist on using resources with little sense of self-discipline.
I’d welcome it from the standpoint of economic fairness. Water is the most precious natural resource in the western U.S. If the will of God requires punitive lawn militias I’d prefer to see them deployed in the deserts of Phoenix and Las Vegas and the semi-arid desert of LA where they belong, and water dividends that reflect the real economic value of water paid to the economies in the Rockies.
To get off subject for a moment, this may be the first time in recorded history that anybody has uttered the phrase “If the will of God requires punitive lawn militias.” Language is definitely a creative pre-school playground.
Buskerfest
We recently headed down the hill to see the Denver International Buskerfest. Front Range folks try to pack in as many festivals and celebrations as possible during the warm weather months here.
I’ve never run across the term “Buskerfest” before. Even as I type the word, the Microsoft Word program I’m using underlines it with a squiggly red line to show that it’s an unusual word that may threaten balanced living.
According to the sources I’ve checked, “buskers” entertain people on the street with a view to cash contributions placed in their hats, buckets or boxes.
It seems a “Buskerfest” is a celebration of talented beggars who perform according to their gifts and callings in the hope that folks with a more comfortable profit margin will approve by dropping bill and coin.
This sounded a little like fundraising for Christian missionary work, so I thought it would be worth checking out.
I also really like jugglers and magicians and contortionists and I rarely miss an opportunity to see them do that voodoo that they do so well and faithfully.
Denver city officials blocked off about 6 blocks of downtown streets along 16th Street to provide a stage. Over the course of three or four hours we got a chance to see about a half-dozen performers.
Rasta Yoga led off on the corner of Glenarm and 16th.
He was an exceptionally skinny and dreadlocked Jamaican with a gift for Indian yoga. For the conventionally conservative and middle class folks in the crowd, he was exotic and therefore interesting. For the more educated and discerning, he was just another double-jointed product of globalization.
Mr. Yoga passed his entire body through a number of improbably narrow shapes including a tennis racket. He was like a camel that passes through the eye of a needle, or perhaps even more metaphorically, the very rare rich man in Jesus’ teaching that enters the Kingdom of Heaven.
Perhaps many comfortable and religious Americans should hire him as a salvation consultant. Lots of us could probably use the help of a contortionist to help us squeeze through. We could think of the whole thing as hiring a personal trainer.
He climaxed his act by stuffing himself into a very small and transparent plastic box and then closing the lid. I took this as a kind of artistic statement about the way some people choose to live their lives, but after watching him stare out vacantly at the crowd through his tangled body parts I had second thoughts about that interpretation.
The other busker who really stood out was a young man with the stage name “Aidan Orange.”
A few years ago he did a “stupid human tricks” segment on the David Letterman Show, so the buzz commanded us to check him out.
I can only make a guess, but I believe he chose his name so that some people would think of “Agent Orange” and perhaps associate his craziness with the effects of the toxic Vietnam era defoliant, and maybe more importantly, so that everybody would know that he was one of those people who “get it.” I thought he demonstrated his essentially good manners by throwing a bone to those of us in the over 40 demographic.
Aidan wore orange pants. He seemed like somebody with tons of attitude and maybe only pounds of ability. That’s the kind of thing that can lead to the presidency these days, so we all took him seriously.
Mr. Orange rode a 15 foot tall unicycle while trying to juggle knives and play “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction” by the Rolling Stones on the harmonica.
He wasn’t as successful as he may have hoped. The unicycle and Stones parts worked fine, but the knives part didn’t go according to plan. Some of the people sitting below him scrambled out of the way as the machetes rained down.
For his next trick he attempted to eat a flaming sword passed all the way down his throat.
Unfortunately, before he could get the blade lit he spilled some of the lighter fluid on the carrying case for the swords and on some of the other props. Somehow he ignited the case and the props and he was soon flailing around wildly trying to put out the fire.
His panic seemed genuine to me. I thought the whole thing was a spontaneous street satire about current international political events.
Others thought this was all part of the act and applauded loudly. Perhaps it was actually an intentional and sophisticated street satire about those same events.
Or maybe a lot of people just enjoy seeing things blow up and burn and go badly.
Sometimes there is no accounting for taste or for the way people can judge the same set of observed facts so differently.
So Political
Some of you have asked why I’ve become so political recently. One old friend even asked me in an email a couple of weeks ago why I’d “waste” my “wonderful soul and gifts thinking too much about politics.” She lovingly wanted to correct me for aligning myself with “tawdry liberal solutions.” American evangelicals can be so sweet when they’re giving you a swift kick in the sitter with the right foot of fellowship.
As a result, I thought it might be good to explain how I view biblical teaching on politics and why I think it’s an especially important time for more reasonable and balanced Christians to be politically involved. I’m not sure I qualify for that club, but maybe it will help some of you who are sorting out your own thoughts and feelings about political involvement.
I’ll put together an explanation of “Christian Anarchy,” which is how I’d identify my political thinking and which I believe is an honest and compelling attempt at grasping the political teaching of the Bible, in an essay in the next month or so. I’ll try to get it out early enough that people can use it before the upcoming elections.
And besides, I’d hate to have anybody label me as a “raving liberal,” though I do admit that the “raving” part is normally pretty accurate.
--Hey, why is it only liberals are said to “rave?”
I guess the nature of the “performances” on right wing television outlets like Fox News and especially conservative radio have yet to catch up in the popular imagination with the memories of some of the worst of 60’s far left lunacy, but from my point of view it’s only a matter of time.
I occasionally watch and listen to these sources, and when I do its always hard to tell whether some of these “balanced and fair” folks act like World Wrestling Federation types simply for ratings or whether they’re serious. When I do watch or listen I’ve rarely come across even a half-hearted attempt at objectivity.
I recently saw Robert Rubin, a respected economist, interviewed on Fox TV News while I was at the gym. It’s the place I do virtually all my TV viewing since you can’t easily hit the off button in the midst of that sweating fellowship.
It’s also the place I do most of my magazine reading in order to distract me from the effort of climbing to nowhere on a stair step machine for the promise of better health and the ability to do the kinds of sports I enjoy.
Anyway, I think the Fox “anchorperson” made three comments for every one he allowed Rubin to make. Makes you wonder why they even bother to bring people in to interview them.
I have a hunch many of the people on these kinds of stations and outlets are reasonable and thoughtful people “in the closet” who offer up transparent manipulation in order to make a nice living. But I like to think the best of people, so who knows.
Flicks
Silver City
I’ve been a big John Sayles fan for many years. He’s written and directed a bag-load of flicks including Lone Star, Passion Fish, City of Hope, Matewan, and Brother from Another Planet. You could do a lot worse than renting and watching them. I’d start with Lone Star, though they’re all thoughtful, visually beautiful, and very entertaining. In a somewhat different world Sayles would be as well known as Steven Spielberg. He’d probably be uncomfortable with that outcome, which may be part of the reason I like his work so much.
I got a chance to see an advanced screening of Silver City, Sayles’ latest movie.
Silver City is set in Colorado. If you do a good job with the cinematography in any movie rooted in the towns, landscapes and skies here you’re going to have something visually remarkable. They did a very good job with the cinematography.
I’d guess they filmed it in autumn when Colorado is all cobalt blue skies and a stunning contrast of a dozen tones of evergreen set against the yellow-gold of the shimmering and turning aspens. They got the landscape spot on. Some of the people who see this film are going to move here.
The townscapes of Denver and especially Leadville, the old mining town at 10,000 ft. where I stay as a base-camp for climbs in the highest parts of the Rockies, look a little bit better than they ever do in real life. But I wouldn’t say the images are exaggerated. Like a shot of botox to the foreheads of the well to do, they’re a pleasant and hardly noticeable enhancement.
Silver City is a murder mystery. It’s also a political satire. Chris Cooper, who I think is one of the best American actors right now (he was the corrupt CIA program director who was assassinated at the end of the “Bourne Identity” and the wonderful sheriff in “Lone Star” among a ton of parts), plays the role of Dickie Pilager, a relatively clueless and inadvertently malevolent candidate who is running for the governorship of Colorado. Though I don’t think Sayles intended it to be so topical, it’s pretty relevant.
It’ll come out in U.S. theaters sometime in September or October and its well worth seeing.
Books
Mountains of the Mind
I’ve been climbing mountains and doing high altitude trekking for about 15 years now, and it’s always been hard for me to explain to anyone else, and maybe even to myself, why I do it. I’ll admit that it’s difficult to justify expending a lot of effort and time in sometimes dangerous and nasty environments, particularly when there is no obvious payoff other than reaching the top of a large mass of rock and ice.
Luckily there are often passionate people with remarkable skills of observation and gifts for language and logic that can help make sense of the things we do.
“Mountains of the Mind” is that kind of book. Once in a while you read something that helps explain yourself to yourself.
But it goes way beyond capturing the wonder and allure of mountains or the psychology of climbers.
It’s really a riveting social history of western culture in the past 400 years, and how geology and science and romanticism and modernism have created not only a cult of the mountains but also the way that current westerners think and feel about the world. It might even be fair to say it’s a look at some of the foundations of modern western spirituality. The leading book reviews in the U.S. and the U.K. gave it uniquely positive support, and I’m not even sure how to describe its genre. It’s sort of a new genre of its own.
Robert Macfarlane, who wrote Mountains of the Mind, is an experienced climber and a verbal wizard with a gift for simile and metaphor and a razor sharp eye for even the smallest and most telling details of high altitude environments. Because of his verbal gifts I’m sure he could have written a remarkable book about bathroom plumbing, but the fact that he focuses his skills on one of his life’s passions—maybe even obsessions—makes it truly worth reading. The book delighted me.
Mountain Bike Like a Champion
None of you should ever read this book.
I took up mountain biking when we moved to Denver. If you’re a serious citizen of Colorado you’re probably a mountain biker. As the Apostle Paul once said, when in Rome, ride a piece of metal with fat rubber wheels down a mountainside.
I’ve spent a good bit of my mountain biking time in the past year falling off the bike and crashing into things, sometimes with other people watching my painful failures from an up close and personal vantage point.
This past couple of weeks I finally rode some challenging intermediate trails clean. In mountain biking lingo, that means you rode the whole length of the trail without falling down or stopping. I can now add not humiliating myself on a mountain bike to a growing personal list of useless and satisfying skills.
The author of Mountain Bike Like a Champion is a guy with the improbable and distressing name of “Ned Overend.” Ned was one of the inexplicable pioneers of mountain biking and a champion mountain biker for 20 years.
The worst thing that can happen to you when you’re flying down a very steep and rocky trail on a mountain bike is to suffer, in mountain biking lingo, an “endo.” That means you brake too hard on the front wheel or hit something immovable so that the front wheel stops dead and the back wheel lifts off the ground and you get thrown over the handle bars. I’m now fairly familiar with this maneuver.
“Endo” is shorthand for “end over end.”
The author of this mountain biking bible has the last name “Overend.” Those who have experienced the results of his teaching first hand might slightly modify his name to “Over End.”
His first name is Ned, which with the quick shift west of a single letter becomes “End.”
I love the idea that the Skill Master of mountain biking, with a little imagination, has the name End Over End. Sometimes satisfying truth is embedded in a name.
posted by Wordcat at 11:02 PM
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