Even when I was a relatively strong and healthy whippersnapper, tire-changing wasn't my strong suit.
Now as a geezer recovering from hip replacement surgery, it seemed like an impossible task. I'd have called for road service assistance but my cell phone was dead and the charger was in another vehicle.
So I took a deep breath, rummaged around for the jack and tire wrench, and set about loosening the lug nuts on the wheel with the damaged tire. This was not on the list of recommended activities for new hip rehab.
And so when a big rig stopped in front of me on the shoulder of the Interstate, and the driver approached me with a big smile and "Need help?" I was ready to believe in Santa Claus and guardian angels.
He was husky, happy and obviously foreign-born: his limited English was heavily accented with what sounded to me like Eastern European overtones.
He finished the task at hand in no more than 10 minutes. I proffered a thank-you payment. He recoiled from it. "No! No!" he said. I thanked him profusely and asked his name. I could not repeat, let alone spell, what he said.
For some reason I cannot articulate I'll always think of him as "Vladimir." But the name he said didn't sound like that, either.
Saved by an immigrant. I hope he's legal. In this part of the country, that's no better than a 50-50 hope.
I got to thinking about the fierce anti-immigrant sentiment around here, especially during this electioneering season.
I've been close to some of the Tea Party ugliness about immigrants, particularly in the wake of the infamous new Arizona law.
It occurred to me that one"Vladimir" is worth more to this country in terms of human values than 20 or 30 of the placard-carrying bigots in the Tea Party Crowds.
But that's a hasty judgment. After review in the replay booth, make that read 50 or 60 bigots.
"Don't tell Momma I'm a journalist; say I play the piano in a whorehouse."
Friday, October 29, 2010
Wednesday, October 27, 2010
Real Life in the U.S.A.: One Big Tea Party
Let's talk about numbers:
Rank of the United States among nations of the world: No. 6 in "innovation-based competetiveness," but 40th in rate of change in the last ten years. Eleventh among industrialized nations in high school graduation rate. Sixteenth in college completion rate. Twenty-second in broadband internet access. Twenty-fourth in life expectancy at birth. Twenty-seventh in college degrees in science or engineering. Forty-eighth in quality of K-12 science and math educational achievement.
More numbers:
One of every 34 Americans who earned wages in 2008 earned NOTHING in 2009.
In that same period, 74 Americans earned more than $50 million; their total income increased from $91 million in 2008 to $519 million in 2009. These 74 Americans earned $10 million a week; their total earnings alone equaled the total earnings of the lowest-paid 19 million Americans -- one in eight of us.
At least 22 million healthy, employable Americans are without work. Unemployment benefits for more than half of them have run out. Republicans refused to allow a vote on extending their benefits before the congressional recess.
Write these numbers down. Take them into the voting booth with you next Tuesday.
Now consider some real people.
B., the son of a disabled worker without a job, worked two jobs and took out loans to get his college degree. He graduated cum laude in 2009 with two majors. He has been unable to get a job in either of his major fields. He's selling paint. His student loan promissory notes have been "turned over" twice and are now in the hands of one of the leading contributors to the economic meltdown of 2008-2009. Each time he's late with a payment he's socked with a17% late fee.
J. who made a decent living for 30 years operating a little motel on the waterfront in a resort area sold out to a big-time developer. He received $40,000 cash and three units in the new high rise the developer was putting up on his valuable oceanfront property. He moved into one and took out mortgages on the other two, which he intended to sell to help meet his obligations as sole support of a widowed daughter and two toddler grandchildren. The units didn't sell. He's been foreclosed. He's penniless and so are the daughter and grandkids.
M. quit the corporate rat race five years ago to start his own small business. There was no credit available for his venture; he raised capital by mortgaging his home and borrowing his 401(k). Working night and day, seven days a week, he and his wife gradually built the business. He had 27 employees and a good lifestyle when the Bush bust hit. He has lost his business and his home; his 27 employees are long gone. He and his wife and stepchild were healthy when business was good and he had health insurance for himself and his workers. After the crash his wife required surgery and costly aftercare; his stepson was hit by a drunk driver with good lawyers, who are successfully warding off a trial in his lawsuit to recover medical expenses and lost time from work.
These are real people. I know them personally. They are good people.
Better people than, say, Lloyd Blankfein, the CEO of Goldman Sachs, or any other multi-millionaire genius on Wall Street, or the fool CEO of BP who was given a golden parachute after his monumental display of incompetence during the Great Oil Spill.
American exceptionalism. Ain't it wonderful?
Rank of the United States among nations of the world: No. 6 in "innovation-based competetiveness," but 40th in rate of change in the last ten years. Eleventh among industrialized nations in high school graduation rate. Sixteenth in college completion rate. Twenty-second in broadband internet access. Twenty-fourth in life expectancy at birth. Twenty-seventh in college degrees in science or engineering. Forty-eighth in quality of K-12 science and math educational achievement.
More numbers:
One of every 34 Americans who earned wages in 2008 earned NOTHING in 2009.
In that same period, 74 Americans earned more than $50 million; their total income increased from $91 million in 2008 to $519 million in 2009. These 74 Americans earned $10 million a week; their total earnings alone equaled the total earnings of the lowest-paid 19 million Americans -- one in eight of us.
At least 22 million healthy, employable Americans are without work. Unemployment benefits for more than half of them have run out. Republicans refused to allow a vote on extending their benefits before the congressional recess.
Write these numbers down. Take them into the voting booth with you next Tuesday.
Now consider some real people.
B., the son of a disabled worker without a job, worked two jobs and took out loans to get his college degree. He graduated cum laude in 2009 with two majors. He has been unable to get a job in either of his major fields. He's selling paint. His student loan promissory notes have been "turned over" twice and are now in the hands of one of the leading contributors to the economic meltdown of 2008-2009. Each time he's late with a payment he's socked with a17% late fee.
J. who made a decent living for 30 years operating a little motel on the waterfront in a resort area sold out to a big-time developer. He received $40,000 cash and three units in the new high rise the developer was putting up on his valuable oceanfront property. He moved into one and took out mortgages on the other two, which he intended to sell to help meet his obligations as sole support of a widowed daughter and two toddler grandchildren. The units didn't sell. He's been foreclosed. He's penniless and so are the daughter and grandkids.
M. quit the corporate rat race five years ago to start his own small business. There was no credit available for his venture; he raised capital by mortgaging his home and borrowing his 401(k). Working night and day, seven days a week, he and his wife gradually built the business. He had 27 employees and a good lifestyle when the Bush bust hit. He has lost his business and his home; his 27 employees are long gone. He and his wife and stepchild were healthy when business was good and he had health insurance for himself and his workers. After the crash his wife required surgery and costly aftercare; his stepson was hit by a drunk driver with good lawyers, who are successfully warding off a trial in his lawsuit to recover medical expenses and lost time from work.
These are real people. I know them personally. They are good people.
Better people than, say, Lloyd Blankfein, the CEO of Goldman Sachs, or any other multi-millionaire genius on Wall Street, or the fool CEO of BP who was given a golden parachute after his monumental display of incompetence during the Great Oil Spill.
American exceptionalism. Ain't it wonderful?
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
Read This! Read This! Read This! Re. . . . .
As election day nears, many Democrats are chiding liberals for their "pox on both houses" attitude.
They should read this:
http://www.propublica.org/article/new-democrat-coalition
They should read this:
http://www.propublica.org/article/new-democrat-coalition
Monday, October 25, 2010
When Dirt Is Dug Up, Muddy the Waters
Julian Assange is what he is because the American media are not what they should be.
Rather than cleaning up their own act, however, American journalists have become willing accomplices in the establishment's predictable response to Assange's WikiLeaks revelations. They are attacking his character.
CNN arranged an interview with Assange ostensibly to talk about the content of the thousands of secret documents WikiLeaks acquired and made public about the Iraq war. But the questioning prompted Assange to ask, "Do you want to talk about deaths of 104,000 people or my personal life?" When the personal questions persisted, he walked out of the interview. This act, declared Howard Kurtz, the media's foremost apologist from his pulpits at the Washington Post and CNN, proved that Assange is "delusional."
Indeed, "delusional" seems to be the adjective of choice in the orchestrated attacks on Assange. John Burns, a darling of the Pentagon, gave it a workout in his hatchet job on Assange that the New York Times felt compelled to give equal prominence with its report on the actual content of the leaked documents. This is what the media today call "balance."
I worked with the Times's late Tad Szulc when he obtained a series of secret documents revealing illegal arms shipments by the U.S. government to countries to which such shipments were banned by law. The newspaper did not feel compelled at that time to publish side-by-side with Tad's disclosures an innuendo-packed account of his sex life or his racetrack associates.
Gene Roberts, editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer, hailed his multiple Pulitzer Prize winning reporters, Don Barlett and Jim Steele, as "document reporters." Their work was never accompanied, with equal prominence, by sidebars quoting unnamed sources about shady allegations of Barlett's personal life in Akron or Steele's college romances.
I don't know if Assange was set up by his enemies for the rape allegations against him that are still under investigation in Sweden, but I do know that such tactics are almost as old as the sex act itself. More than half a century ago an upstart coach in another state snatched three prized football recruits from Ohio, where the imperious Woodrow Wilson Hayes was the supreme dictator of the Ohio State University football program. Not only that, but the upstart coach, with all three of his Ohio recruits playing prime roles, upset a heavily favored Ohio State team. The very next year, three of the upstart's best players were suspended on charges of rape and sexual assault brought by two young women. Only later was it revealed -- by a "document reporter" -- that the women who filed the charges had themselves been accused of prostitution in, of all places, Columbus, OH, home of the Buckeyes.
The last really big release of war documents the government didn't want us to see was the Pentagon Papers, given to my friend and colleague Neil Sheehan by the whistle-blower, Dan Ellsberg. Neil made the Nixon enemies list; Nixon sent the plumbers after Ellsberg, raiding his psychiatrists' office to dig up dirt. Ellsberg offered the documents to Sheehan not because of Neil's exemplary personal life, but because he had demonstrated the highest integrity in his reporting from Vietnam. Would that, say, Burns had demonstrated such independence from the generals' handouts in his reporting on Iraq.
I know of no law that requires a digger after important documents to be a candidate for canonization. In fact, one of the first, best "document reporters" I ever worked with would have had great difficulty trying to defend his personal life in light of the conventional mores of those times. But his documents were real and their disclosure put some criminals in jail.
The important side issue about Julian Assange isn't who went to bed with him, under what circumstances, or whether he's a pleasant fellow to work with. The main issue is the content of the documents he makes public; the important side issue is why in the hell the media aren't digging them up themselves.
These things are documents, not delusions.
Rather than cleaning up their own act, however, American journalists have become willing accomplices in the establishment's predictable response to Assange's WikiLeaks revelations. They are attacking his character.
CNN arranged an interview with Assange ostensibly to talk about the content of the thousands of secret documents WikiLeaks acquired and made public about the Iraq war. But the questioning prompted Assange to ask, "Do you want to talk about deaths of 104,000 people or my personal life?" When the personal questions persisted, he walked out of the interview. This act, declared Howard Kurtz, the media's foremost apologist from his pulpits at the Washington Post and CNN, proved that Assange is "delusional."
Indeed, "delusional" seems to be the adjective of choice in the orchestrated attacks on Assange. John Burns, a darling of the Pentagon, gave it a workout in his hatchet job on Assange that the New York Times felt compelled to give equal prominence with its report on the actual content of the leaked documents. This is what the media today call "balance."
I worked with the Times's late Tad Szulc when he obtained a series of secret documents revealing illegal arms shipments by the U.S. government to countries to which such shipments were banned by law. The newspaper did not feel compelled at that time to publish side-by-side with Tad's disclosures an innuendo-packed account of his sex life or his racetrack associates.
Gene Roberts, editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer, hailed his multiple Pulitzer Prize winning reporters, Don Barlett and Jim Steele, as "document reporters." Their work was never accompanied, with equal prominence, by sidebars quoting unnamed sources about shady allegations of Barlett's personal life in Akron or Steele's college romances.
I don't know if Assange was set up by his enemies for the rape allegations against him that are still under investigation in Sweden, but I do know that such tactics are almost as old as the sex act itself. More than half a century ago an upstart coach in another state snatched three prized football recruits from Ohio, where the imperious Woodrow Wilson Hayes was the supreme dictator of the Ohio State University football program. Not only that, but the upstart coach, with all three of his Ohio recruits playing prime roles, upset a heavily favored Ohio State team. The very next year, three of the upstart's best players were suspended on charges of rape and sexual assault brought by two young women. Only later was it revealed -- by a "document reporter" -- that the women who filed the charges had themselves been accused of prostitution in, of all places, Columbus, OH, home of the Buckeyes.
The last really big release of war documents the government didn't want us to see was the Pentagon Papers, given to my friend and colleague Neil Sheehan by the whistle-blower, Dan Ellsberg. Neil made the Nixon enemies list; Nixon sent the plumbers after Ellsberg, raiding his psychiatrists' office to dig up dirt. Ellsberg offered the documents to Sheehan not because of Neil's exemplary personal life, but because he had demonstrated the highest integrity in his reporting from Vietnam. Would that, say, Burns had demonstrated such independence from the generals' handouts in his reporting on Iraq.
I know of no law that requires a digger after important documents to be a candidate for canonization. In fact, one of the first, best "document reporters" I ever worked with would have had great difficulty trying to defend his personal life in light of the conventional mores of those times. But his documents were real and their disclosure put some criminals in jail.
The important side issue about Julian Assange isn't who went to bed with him, under what circumstances, or whether he's a pleasant fellow to work with. The main issue is the content of the documents he makes public; the important side issue is why in the hell the media aren't digging them up themselves.
These things are documents, not delusions.
Walking Slowly Among All the False Gods
IN A CANYON IN SOUTHERN UTAH -- A massive storm system that washed out unpaved roads extends our camping vacation here longer than we intended. But satellites fly even above these desolate and ruggedly beautiful places, so that our electronic umbilical to the real world remains intact.
We who spent our working lifetimes collecting and purveying news tend to develop an addiction to it. Our new age enablers, the cybergods, sate our ravenous needs. Little has changed Out There. The fragile vestiges of the Great American Experiment continue to unravel. Can a democratic republic formed of the people, by the people and for the people actually work, can it endure, can it thrive? Two hundred thirty-four years after the experiment began, the answer is becoming clear: Nope.
Round up the usual suspects: greed, corruption, ignorance, hubris . . . the entire dark side of human nature. Round and round we go, down and down we go. But then, what else is madness but to repeat the same actions over and over and expect different results?
Many of us -- yet far too few to sustain a semblance of democracy -- will go to the polls in about three weeks to perform our duty as citizens, to vote. We repeat this process of electing leaders periodically, irrationally thinking that this time we will actually put someone into office somewhere who will effectively serve the needs of The People.
The corporate overlords, the war makers and the oligarchs of Wall Street have already decided the election -- $14 million here, $10 million there, small fortunes from foreign billionaires with a financial stake in our lives through the so-called U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The candidates they have purchased and will put into office know what they are expected to do -- speed up the erasure of the last vestiges of democracy -- and they will do so even as they prattle tribute to the great American "values."
In most of the election contests for which we will cast our meaningless votes, we have but two choices: a corporate-owned Democrat or a corporate-owned Republican. The candidates with the most lavish corporate financial support will almost invariably win. The propagandists of the corporate media tell us that the pollsters expect a net gain of up to 50 seats in the House of representatives for the Republicans.
Not much has changed since we camped out here in the semi-wilderness. We are nested on a hillock from which we can gaze miles in any direction without seeing a fellow human. Our nest is in one of the diminishing number of places in this country that are not "owned" by anyone, because they are owned by everyone. Public land. Protected by the government on behalf of all the people because of its esthetic, cultural or historical significance.
We come to such places as often as we can because we know they will not always be here. Corporations covet the riches to be made by destroying them to extract their minerals, or trees, or what lies beneath their surface, or on it. Whatever can serve their gods of greed.
Gods are everywhere around us: the cybergods who bring us the news we crave even if it's bad, the gods of greed who covet whatever wealth this land promises, the gods of power derived from wealth who are our real government. So too are the gods of the ancient ones who once occupied this land. Images of their gods can still be found carved on cliff faces and rock outcroppings a short walk from our campsite. Their gods were powerless against famine, drought and the guns of the pale invaders who drove them out -- to extract wealth from their homeland.
Nothing changes.
There is a dark side to human nature. There always will be.
It is almost time to go back and live with it again.
We who spent our working lifetimes collecting and purveying news tend to develop an addiction to it. Our new age enablers, the cybergods, sate our ravenous needs. Little has changed Out There. The fragile vestiges of the Great American Experiment continue to unravel. Can a democratic republic formed of the people, by the people and for the people actually work, can it endure, can it thrive? Two hundred thirty-four years after the experiment began, the answer is becoming clear: Nope.
Round up the usual suspects: greed, corruption, ignorance, hubris . . . the entire dark side of human nature. Round and round we go, down and down we go. But then, what else is madness but to repeat the same actions over and over and expect different results?
Many of us -- yet far too few to sustain a semblance of democracy -- will go to the polls in about three weeks to perform our duty as citizens, to vote. We repeat this process of electing leaders periodically, irrationally thinking that this time we will actually put someone into office somewhere who will effectively serve the needs of The People.
The corporate overlords, the war makers and the oligarchs of Wall Street have already decided the election -- $14 million here, $10 million there, small fortunes from foreign billionaires with a financial stake in our lives through the so-called U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The candidates they have purchased and will put into office know what they are expected to do -- speed up the erasure of the last vestiges of democracy -- and they will do so even as they prattle tribute to the great American "values."
In most of the election contests for which we will cast our meaningless votes, we have but two choices: a corporate-owned Democrat or a corporate-owned Republican. The candidates with the most lavish corporate financial support will almost invariably win. The propagandists of the corporate media tell us that the pollsters expect a net gain of up to 50 seats in the House of representatives for the Republicans.
Not much has changed since we camped out here in the semi-wilderness. We are nested on a hillock from which we can gaze miles in any direction without seeing a fellow human. Our nest is in one of the diminishing number of places in this country that are not "owned" by anyone, because they are owned by everyone. Public land. Protected by the government on behalf of all the people because of its esthetic, cultural or historical significance.
We come to such places as often as we can because we know they will not always be here. Corporations covet the riches to be made by destroying them to extract their minerals, or trees, or what lies beneath their surface, or on it. Whatever can serve their gods of greed.
Gods are everywhere around us: the cybergods who bring us the news we crave even if it's bad, the gods of greed who covet whatever wealth this land promises, the gods of power derived from wealth who are our real government. So too are the gods of the ancient ones who once occupied this land. Images of their gods can still be found carved on cliff faces and rock outcroppings a short walk from our campsite. Their gods were powerless against famine, drought and the guns of the pale invaders who drove them out -- to extract wealth from their homeland.
Nothing changes.
There is a dark side to human nature. There always will be.
It is almost time to go back and live with it again.
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
The World Has Become a Satire of Itself
I miss Art Buchwald. Not just because he was the only man whose tennis fantasies were wilder than mine. (He imagined himself playing against Andre Agassi -- who couldn't handle his serve!)
I miss him because he understood that even though he was paid handsomely to satirize politics and government, "You can't make up anything anymore. The world itself is a satire. All you're doing is recording it.”
He understood this back when there were still one or two sane people to be found in government, even in Washington. Now that the last vestige of sanity has vanished from our public affairs, we need Art more than ever.
Consider:
--Virginia Thomas, whose husband is a justice of the Supreme Court, recently called Anita Hill, who is a professor at Brandeis, leaving a message that Prof. Hill should "pray about" and apologize for her testimony at the confirmation hearings for Justice Thomas -- nearly 20 years ago. Hill told the Senate under oath that Thomas had sexually harassed her. She said she wouldn't apologize now for testifying truthfully then.
--A memo recently surfaced about the days in June when hell must have been empty, and all the devils were at a meeting called by the Koch brothers, whose wealth probably exceeds the combined wealth of the entire Third World and whose goal is to repeal all laws that inhibit the "culture of prosperity." The 210 attendees included Glenn Beck, David Chavern, No. 2 guy at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Fred Malek, Karl Rove's master of mischief, and a gaggle of top executives from health insurance companies, oil companies, Wall Street and big time real estate developers. They discussed ways to use money to make certain that all the right people won the 2010 elections.
--San Francisco police arrested an armed man who intended to kill a bunch of liberals. He said he got the "evidence" against his intended victims from the aforementioned Mr. Beck.
--Sharron Angle, who wants to be elected U.S. Senator from Nevada, told a bunch of Latina students that she couldn't possibly be an anti-Mexican racist because the kids in her audience all "looked like Asians."
--A republican legislator in Florida introduced an anti-immigration bill patterned after Arizona's -- except that it exempts white immigrants from its harsh provisions. The Republican candidate for governor immediately supported it.
--Christine O'Donnell, who is not a witch but the Republican candidate for a U.S. Senate seat from Delaware, was shocked, shocked to learn (from her opponent, during a debate) that the First Amendment prohibits "an establishment of religion" in the United States.
Alaska. (Stop laughing already.) Joe Miller, the Republican and Tea Party candidate for the United States Senate held a town hall meeting recently. When a reporter pressed for answers to questions Miller didn't like, private security guards hired by his campaign - two of whom were moonlighting, active duty military - seized the journalist, placed him under citizen's arrest and handcuffed him, then threatened to do the same to two other reporters who were taking pictures and asking what was going on.
Buchwald nailed it. You couldn't possibly make this stuff up.
I miss him because he understood that even though he was paid handsomely to satirize politics and government, "You can't make up anything anymore. The world itself is a satire. All you're doing is recording it.”
He understood this back when there were still one or two sane people to be found in government, even in Washington. Now that the last vestige of sanity has vanished from our public affairs, we need Art more than ever.
Consider:
--Virginia Thomas, whose husband is a justice of the Supreme Court, recently called Anita Hill, who is a professor at Brandeis, leaving a message that Prof. Hill should "pray about" and apologize for her testimony at the confirmation hearings for Justice Thomas -- nearly 20 years ago. Hill told the Senate under oath that Thomas had sexually harassed her. She said she wouldn't apologize now for testifying truthfully then.
--A memo recently surfaced about the days in June when hell must have been empty, and all the devils were at a meeting called by the Koch brothers, whose wealth probably exceeds the combined wealth of the entire Third World and whose goal is to repeal all laws that inhibit the "culture of prosperity." The 210 attendees included Glenn Beck, David Chavern, No. 2 guy at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Fred Malek, Karl Rove's master of mischief, and a gaggle of top executives from health insurance companies, oil companies, Wall Street and big time real estate developers. They discussed ways to use money to make certain that all the right people won the 2010 elections.
--San Francisco police arrested an armed man who intended to kill a bunch of liberals. He said he got the "evidence" against his intended victims from the aforementioned Mr. Beck.
--Sharron Angle, who wants to be elected U.S. Senator from Nevada, told a bunch of Latina students that she couldn't possibly be an anti-Mexican racist because the kids in her audience all "looked like Asians."
--A republican legislator in Florida introduced an anti-immigration bill patterned after Arizona's -- except that it exempts white immigrants from its harsh provisions. The Republican candidate for governor immediately supported it.
--Christine O'Donnell, who is not a witch but the Republican candidate for a U.S. Senate seat from Delaware, was shocked, shocked to learn (from her opponent, during a debate) that the First Amendment prohibits "an establishment of religion" in the United States.
Alaska. (Stop laughing already.) Joe Miller, the Republican and Tea Party candidate for the United States Senate held a town hall meeting recently. When a reporter pressed for answers to questions Miller didn't like, private security guards hired by his campaign - two of whom were moonlighting, active duty military - seized the journalist, placed him under citizen's arrest and handcuffed him, then threatened to do the same to two other reporters who were taking pictures and asking what was going on.
Buchwald nailed it. You couldn't possibly make this stuff up.
Saturday, October 16, 2010
A Timeless Highway, an Old Campsite, a New Adventure
ON THE BANKS OF THE SAN JUAN -- Before there were wagon roads or cattle trails, the rivers were super highways for indigenous people. The San Juan was one. An enormous history of its early users is inscribed on a cliff face not far from our campsite, if only we could translate it.
Many of our fellow campers are travelers on the early Americans' water highway, river rafters setting out from Sand Island to explore what's left of Glen Canyon on the way to Lake Powell. A visitor from Oregon is fishing but catching nothing. It is a leisurely, lazy Fall day, even for the trout.
Higher up on Boulder Mountain, the aspen have already turned golden. Now, along the river, the cottonwoods are beginning to follow.
To me, the most striking petroglyph on the nearby cliff is the top to bottom squiggle depicting Comb Ridge, our destination for today. This saw-toothed, 80-mile-long, north-south monocline is one of the most dominant and mystical landmarks in the southwest.
As we study the terrain from an overlook on Butler Wash, an Arizona man and his two sons join us. "We want to climb to the top of the ridge," he tells us. "But it's been years since I've been here and I've forgotten the route across Butler Wash."
"I think there are several," I answer. "You just have to scout 'em out."
It is, I tell myself, a forgivable evasion. I know that we are not far from a long-ago campsite, from which we crossed the big wash to a slickrock plateau, which we traversed in the hope of finding one of the many ancient Anasazi ruins in this canyon-entwined wilderness. The Anasazi, whose cultural center was Chaco Canyon in New Mexico, were superb builders with rock, and many of their structures still stand not only at Chaco and Mesa Verde but in countless outposts in the canyons of southeast Utah, northeast Arizona, southwest Colorado and northwest New Mexico -- the Four Corners region.
Today we mean to explore our slickrock plateau in another direction, looking for side canyons that promise to divulge another ruin like the one whose discovery thrilled us many years ago. We don't want company; the stillness and serenity are the primary rewards of braving this rough country. (I'm still being defensive about my evasiveness with the Arizonan.)
Never mind. As we crest one escarpment, we can see for miles around us; the Arizonans' SUV is parking near our truck. They will find our "secret" route across the wash, and make way for the ridge. Their path will be far enough south of ours to preserve our tranquility. It's a big place. I hope they reach the top of the ridge. It would be a fine experience for a man and his two sons.
We find a promising side canyon. During a water and trail-mix break, we study it through the binoculars. We think we see a ruin in an alcove half a mile up-canyon. Even with the binoculars, we can't be certain. Natural rock and the shadows of the Autumn-angled sun can deceive you into thinking you're seeing a ruin, because you so want to see one. We'll explore further another time.
We haven't taken a GPS device on our little walk, so we can't record coordinates, but we mark the approximate site on a topo map. We'll come back another day and walk up this canyon from Butler Wash road. Perhaps we'll be rewarded by finding a ruin. Perhaps not. There are other rewards for coming to this place, spiritual ones, if you will: you can feel the sacredness of its antiquity and its rugged beauty.
We will come back another day. We must come back another day.
Many of our fellow campers are travelers on the early Americans' water highway, river rafters setting out from Sand Island to explore what's left of Glen Canyon on the way to Lake Powell. A visitor from Oregon is fishing but catching nothing. It is a leisurely, lazy Fall day, even for the trout.
Higher up on Boulder Mountain, the aspen have already turned golden. Now, along the river, the cottonwoods are beginning to follow.
To me, the most striking petroglyph on the nearby cliff is the top to bottom squiggle depicting Comb Ridge, our destination for today. This saw-toothed, 80-mile-long, north-south monocline is one of the most dominant and mystical landmarks in the southwest.
As we study the terrain from an overlook on Butler Wash, an Arizona man and his two sons join us. "We want to climb to the top of the ridge," he tells us. "But it's been years since I've been here and I've forgotten the route across Butler Wash."
"I think there are several," I answer. "You just have to scout 'em out."
It is, I tell myself, a forgivable evasion. I know that we are not far from a long-ago campsite, from which we crossed the big wash to a slickrock plateau, which we traversed in the hope of finding one of the many ancient Anasazi ruins in this canyon-entwined wilderness. The Anasazi, whose cultural center was Chaco Canyon in New Mexico, were superb builders with rock, and many of their structures still stand not only at Chaco and Mesa Verde but in countless outposts in the canyons of southeast Utah, northeast Arizona, southwest Colorado and northwest New Mexico -- the Four Corners region.
Today we mean to explore our slickrock plateau in another direction, looking for side canyons that promise to divulge another ruin like the one whose discovery thrilled us many years ago. We don't want company; the stillness and serenity are the primary rewards of braving this rough country. (I'm still being defensive about my evasiveness with the Arizonan.)
Never mind. As we crest one escarpment, we can see for miles around us; the Arizonans' SUV is parking near our truck. They will find our "secret" route across the wash, and make way for the ridge. Their path will be far enough south of ours to preserve our tranquility. It's a big place. I hope they reach the top of the ridge. It would be a fine experience for a man and his two sons.
We find a promising side canyon. During a water and trail-mix break, we study it through the binoculars. We think we see a ruin in an alcove half a mile up-canyon. Even with the binoculars, we can't be certain. Natural rock and the shadows of the Autumn-angled sun can deceive you into thinking you're seeing a ruin, because you so want to see one. We'll explore further another time.
We haven't taken a GPS device on our little walk, so we can't record coordinates, but we mark the approximate site on a topo map. We'll come back another day and walk up this canyon from Butler Wash road. Perhaps we'll be rewarded by finding a ruin. Perhaps not. There are other rewards for coming to this place, spiritual ones, if you will: you can feel the sacredness of its antiquity and its rugged beauty.
We will come back another day. We must come back another day.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)