Regrets

Had a visit from an old acquaintance last night when I wasn't quite sleeping.

As always, unbidden, uninvited, but not unexpected.

My unwanted nocturnal visitor?

Remorse, contrition, mortification, chagrin - call it what you will - once again it was standing there in front of me wrapped in a sturdy coat of regret with highlights of shame. (For some reason it’s an old-fashioned oiled canvas duster. I don’t know why.)

You see, one dark night in the early 70’s, when I was still a boy playing grownup, and not doing a very good job of it either, the headlights of my car briefly picked out a solitary hitchhiker on the shoulder. In that split second of bad decisions and malice I jinked the car towards that nameless - blameless - traveler enough to make him leap from shoulder to ditch as I passed on by.

I laughed - one short bark - before the import of what I had just done clamped its clammy hand over my mouth and shoved the remains of that laugh back down my throat.

I have no idea why I did it, and I’m sure that startled wanderer has long since forgotten the incident - just one more asshole in a world full of assholes - but for me it’s another eternal arrow in my quiver of regrets that continues to haunt me 50+ years later.

If anything good came of that night it’s the realization that the shine of good deeds fades fast.  The gleam begins to dull as soon as the next vehicle goes by kicking up the first of many layers of time’s dust. But no amount of Clorox can completely remove the stain of regret, no amount of time will eliminate the shame from the comet-trail of a life. So I strive to keep my trajectory as clean and stain-free as possible, because I know there’s a cost to those stains.

Freeze!

 It's OK

             It's OK

As long as I don't move I'm invisible.

            Freeeeze

                              Hooold it

                                            Holllld

                                      

Awww Damnit!

                                 I blinked!

Now I Just Have To Get Back Down!

 

Unless your plan is to become a mountain-top hermit, an irrefutable fact about climbing a mountain is that once you're up there you have to get back down again, aching knees, bleeding toenails and all.

So I cinched up the laces on my boots to minimize the blood in my socks, made sure my hiking poles were latched tight (One of those collapses when you're climbing down a ledge and you might have a problem!), and started down.

But I think maybe I was cursed by a wizard at some point in the long distant past. Maybe it was when us boys poked our tiny little noses into that forbiden and haunted tower out in the woods behind my cousins' house. The reason I think I maybe cursed is because it's an all too frequent theme in my life that when it comes time to do the smart thing - - I don't.

Like hanging a right, when I reach the saddle, in order to take the direct way back down to the Pecan Grove camping area and trailhead.

I hang a left instead

and am faced almost immediately with another one of those vertical yellow footprint trail markers on the other side of the saddle where the trail, the Foshee Trail this time, climbs rather abruptly again.

So back up I go.

Not as far up as Old Baldy, but I'm  fully aware that every upward step means that many more downward steps in order to ultimately get me back to the trailhead.

This second climb puts me up on top of a ridgeline, and partway along that ridge

I start seeing the remnants of a stone fence,

and the farther I went the more prominent the ruins became. (The ruins run for about 3/4 of a mile)

This land was handed to the park system about a hundred years ago so this fence is older than that. Unfortunately, just who built it and why seems to be lost to history. 

Since this is goat country and goats use rock walls as playthings it's not likely that it was for controlling livestock, and as far as delineating a border between properties or grazing areas,  there's plenty of barbed-wire fences across the park and those were a lot simpler to build.

So, as happens all too often, once again this appears to be just one more of the countless bits of the past that we've let be lost behind us in our rush to tomorrow.

The ridge I was on, the one in the lower right above, intersects with an abstract colection of ridges that pretty much form the odd-shaped roof of the park, and at that intersection, along the ridge running to the southwest,

is the out-n-back Old CCC Trail which runs a half mile out to an overlook at the end of the ridge.

Mindful of the fact that everyime I go somewhere any more it may very well be the last time I'm there, even though it wasn't a destination high on my list of things to do, I resisted the "maybe next time" excuse, and made the detour.

It was underwhelming.

So underwhelming I didn't even bother taking a photo even though I had two cameras with me.

The trail kinda just petered out against one of the old fence lines with a narrow, partially obstructed view down one side of the ridge. In a place with several better viewpoints the CCC Overlook just doesn't cut it.

With nothing left to do I turned around and retraced my steps.

So - been there done that, certainly don't need to do it again.

One of those better viewpoints is a high spot on that complex of ridges from where you can look south and have a good view of Old Baldy from a different perspective.

That green line marks the saddle between Old Baldy and the ridge complex I'm standing on and at the low point of that saddle is where the Old Baldy trail drops down to the left, back to the camping area. 

That white line that looks like a trail is not. It's exposed and crumbly limestone (that's why it's white. It doesn't have enough time to weather to a faded grey before the surface sluffs off again, exposing fresh rock.), with unpredictable footing and a dangerous dropoff to the east. Not a route I'm  willing to try, but we humans aren't always the smartest creatures around and enough of us do try to use that route that the park service has posted warning signs at the top and bottom. (I think maybe it's time we stop trying to save the stupid! It just dilutes the gene-pool!)

From this same viewpoint you also have an almost aerial view of a section of the Frio River.

It hasn't been a good color year, the fall has been too warm for that, but this late in the season you can still trace the sweeping S-bend of the river by the rusty tops of the cottonwoods.

But now it's time to take the switchbacks down the hollow below Crystal Cave back to flatter terrain and the waiting Ranger,

and leave these slopes to the rightful, if sometimes rather demanding (when you're trying to have a peaceful snack out on the trail) inhabitants.

Weird or Worrisome?

OK, this needs a little setup.

Today The Wife and I made a supply run to the city. 

Because The Wife is decidedly food oriented we plan these events around eating.

Because both of us avoid mingling with people as much as posible, we do drive-thru and eat in the truck.

Because The Wife can't stand hearing someone chew, when we're parked and eating is one of the few times we have music on in the truck. (When we first started going out I thought this whole chewing thing was bullshit, but it turns out it's real. A common symptom of misophonia, which affects somewhere between 5 and 20 percent of the population!), 

Today, while she's sorting out the pickin's from Taco Bell, I'm  moving my seat back for more belly room behind the stearing wheel. In the process I glance up and right there between the tachometer and speedometer it says:

《 It's Too Late 》

After a bit that changed to:

《 The End Of Everything 》

Followed by:

《 Traveling Prayer 》

Then:

《 Misunderstanding 》

I shit you not! If "Stairway to Heaven" came up next I was going to freak out!

Old Baldy - A Veteran's Day Rematch

You know how as you get older you grow out of doing foolish things?

OK - Yeah - Me neither.

Which might explain why I'm standing here on top of Old Baldy again barely a month after it royally kicked my ass.

This wasn't really my plan, but when trying to land a spot for another short mental-health trip I got pretty frustrated at all the park-closures for permitted hunts, trail and road closures for repair work, and overly booked sites at the remainder, so I just threw my hands up and grabbed an available spot right back here at Garner State park. Probably not the first time I've hit the same spot on two consecutive trips, but not something I do all that often.

And since, at heart, men are always going to be boys that never grow up, and I'm one of that proud fraternity; because I was here it was incumbent on me to, foolish or not, brace the mountain again and find out if this punk bitch has what it takes or if it's really time to step it down a notch or two. (In case it wasn't clear, the punk bitch is me, not the mountain. The mountain doesn't care, never has, never will.)

It was a bit on the cooler side when I got up this morning, but a clear, sunny day.

This was the view from my campsite (That’s  Old Baldy on the left.)

as I warmed myself with a cup of tea and ate my morning yogurt - with honey this time. - I wanted conditions to be pretty much the same as they were a month ago when I got my ass whipped by this mountain, but I remembered to bring the honey this time and plain Greek yogurt without honey is one of the many lines I've drawn -

But the mountain is waiting, so enough lolly-gaging.

I parked in almost the same spot as last time. The cabins at the base of the mountain were just as full as last time I was here. Fewer kids but just as crowded and obnoxiously loud. (This is what passes for "getting away"? More proof that I don't belong to the human race!)

The trailhead was right were I left it. Old Baldy to the left, White Rock Cave to the right.

And from pretty much the first step

it was just as steep as I remembered. (The yellow footprint is a trail marker, and yes, it's on a vertical face here.)

Start at the Pecan Grove Camping Area, climb to the saddle, and with no break at all in terms of elevation gain, bear left and start up the mountain.

Not sure what was different this time, after all, it's only been a month, not enough time to significantly improve my conditioning and stamina - maybe it was the honey - but this time I made it to the summit right on schedule. Half a mile of climbing in half an hour. (OK, I'm exagerating there to put myself in a better light. It actually took 33 minutes to cover the 2600 horizontal feet while climbing the 500 vertical feet of limestone ledges. And to save you from doing the math yourself, that's an average grade of 19%.) And I got there with no wonkieness, no nausea, no wobblies, just the typical heavy breathing and leg-fatigue from the equivalent of a 30 minute stair-step session directed by the personal trainer from hell.

I'm back!

OK. This pile on top of Old Baldy has always bothered me. I don't know why humans have to do this kind of useless crap.

Build a rock wall to keep animals in place or as a defense, yes. Those have practical uses. But pile rocks to make a mountain taller? Where's the frigin' sense in that?! Humans are the only living thing that terriforms not for practical reason, but just for the hell of it. The only one so insecure about its place in the universe that it has to do crap like this as a kind of futile "look at me" scream.

Anyway - today is Veteran's Day, and as someone who knows first hand what it's like to bear the scars of service without support,

I made sure to wear the only bit of camo I own, this skull-cap, just barely visible at the bottom of the photo because - well, its camouflaged (I keep my hair trimmed down to a stubble so I need the extra protection on cool days!), in suport of veterans. Specificly, in the case of camo, support for homeless vets. (You can donate here)

That flag on the pole up there reminded me of something I had written 40 years ago during a, well let's call it a transitional period when I was climbing out of a pretty dark hole. When I got back home I went looking for that essay. Unfortunately for y'all, crap or not, I found it.

_______

Fall of 1985

This flag

I remember, as a kid, standing before the flag of the United States of America every school morning and reciting the pledge of alliance. I remember, as a scout, saluting that flag at weekly meetings and monthly campouts and being glad to do it. I remember being proud to be an American.

But by the end of my stint as a solder I was making an effort to not be anywhere outside when that first note of taps sounded, because then I would be required to stop and salute the flag until that haunting tune was finished and the flag lowered. And by then doing so just made me feel silly, impatient, and more tellingly, annoyed and disdainful.

At first I didn’t bother to think about why this had happened, I already had enough going on in my life at that point. If I thought about it at all I just put it down to growing up and loosing that initial wonder. Eventually I came to realize that somewhere between those mornings of dashing though the old apple orchard to class at Decker Elementary School and coming out the other end of a long, convoluted trip though the US military and its aftermath, I just plain lost respect for that flag. Along the twists and bends of that journey I found out first hand that there was a great deal of tarnish behind those glowing ideals and promises I had been “taught” (taught is in quotes because I now see it more as brainwashing propoganda) in school. I felt betrayed. I had believed in that flag and all I had been told it stood for. An illution now shattered.

I was pretty bitter.

Then, the first year of Farm Aid when it was still news-worthy, I saw a two second clip of a farmer holding his hand over his heart and looking up at that same flag. This was at a time when farms were failing at a record pace, a time when farmers in this country were being driven off their family lands faster than anytime since the dust-bowl days. But still, in those two short seconds I could see that this battered, weathered old man who has been around long enough to see more of life than I have, really meant it. He was saluting the flag of the United States of America, and he meant it.

At that moment I realized that this flag, the one that farmer was looking up at so reverently, is not about the government of the United States of America, it is about the people of the United States of America. It was never about miss-guided government policies that resulted in the kinds of horrific atrocities us kids of the 60’s had been propagandized into thinking could only come from the evil likes of Stalin and Hitler. It is about the people that drove miles to fill sandbags hour after hour to protect their neighbors’ homes from the Mississippi floods. It wasn’t about foreign aid going into the pockets of abusive dictators for the “protection” of capitalism. It is about the women hanging new curtains in the church basement while their men paint the sanctuary on a Saturday. It was never about genocidal policies to drive indigenous people from their ancestral lands. It is about truck drivers using their CB’s to get help for a stranded woman and her children. It was never about politically motivated wars. It is about nineteen year old boys risking their lives for those of the boys fighting in the mud next to them.

This flag is not about the latest, fleeting administration trying to herd the people into neat little slots as they attempt to twist and pervert the founder’s vision to their own ends. As imperfect as it sometimes is it's not about the politicians sucking on our colective teats, this flag is about the people that are the true heart of this country.

Another Silly Little Project

 

Many, many, - many - years ago the Wife collected a whole mess of these gumball machine monkeys, which are now listed on sites like Etsy and Ebay as vintage.  - Hey! Vintage just like us!

Can you believe that up until the mid 70's women were banned from running the Boston marathon because "people" said they were too fragile?! I'll bet everyone of those "people" had dangly bits between thier legs and I hope they finish(ed) thier days ashamed of the misogynistic nonsense coming out of thier mouths! I know, I know. I've run off on a tangent again but when I wrote 'vintage' up above it flashed into my mind that not all vintage is good.

Why did the Wife collect these things? Who knows. I don't keep track of everything she's doing. She'll probably tell you something like "because they're cute". But in the end the why doesn't matter.

What matters is that she recently found an interesting little stick laying around and thought "That'll look cool with some monkeys perched on it!"

As is often the case with things like this around here, I'm the one that ended up using the belt-sander to flatten one side of the "interesting little stick" so it will sit flat, adding a little shelf made out of the same wood for some monkeys to sit on while others will cavort above on the contours of the stick, hitting the whole thing with a hint of transparent purple sparkly paint (which doesn't show in the photo but sparks it up in real life.), and sealing it with a clearcoat. But I don't mind. In fact we both prefer that she keeps away from any and all power tools!

You see, The Wife comes from a long line of remarkably clumsy people. So much so it's amazing that her lineage has managed to survive for generations of "beleive it or not" style stories. (The number of males in this lineage who have managed to shoot themselves is astonishing and two of The Wife's siblings had more broken bones before they graduated from elementry school than three generations of my family have had, ever')

So we deal with enough injuries around here as it is without adding power tools to the mix. (I once witnessed her standing in front of the washing machine minding her own business with both feet planted firmly on the concrete floor when suddenly, for no discernable or logical reason that either one of us can figure out, she stumbled backwards, arms pin wheeling, feet kicking higher than any person of her build can tolerate, into some shelving, and crashed to the floor with a busted rib.) 

But, back to the stick that I'm working on in order to protect my spatially-challenged partner.

Before we got any further down the 'cute little stick' track, while working on a completely different project, I trimmed the busted end off a fallen oak branch

as I turned the rest of the branch into firewood

for my tiny little firepit-in-a-bin and the Wife fell in love with that discarded stub.

So - change of direction.

With a collection of bits-n-pieces from our various stashes, I went to work - under The Wife’s carefull supervision.

A healthy coat of clear-seal on the 'stub' to slow down the natural processes, a little paint and intricate brushwork to 'dress' the monkeys, some model scenery stuff to bring the oak-stub 'mountain' to life, some thread and a couple scraps of cloth for effect, and a bit of hot-glue to keep everyone in place, and this is the result.

First up are the Goodall brothers in thier classic hear, see, and speak no evil poses.

Then we have Beauregard, all gussied up in an elegant tux but screaming maniacally from the top of the mountain because he's the quintessential middle child desperate to be seen and heard.

And finally we have Madeline, known to all as Maddie. Kind of appropriate since you never know

what sort scandalous shenanigans Maddie

is going to get up to next!

Add a few trees

a few patches of ground-cover

and there you have it.

Well -

except for the bell-jar

to keep dust off the gang.

Not sure what it cost to get the monkeys out of the gumball machine, but at $30 that bell-jar probably cost about ten times the cost of all the other stuff that went into making this little diorama put together!

Testing video options

 Since loading videos directly into blogger posts isn't working for me any longer (I probably just forgot how to do it),

this is an experiment in using Youtube instead.

Just a crude (a videographer I'm not!) 30 second clip of the fountain and  bird-feeders just outside our back door to see if I can get this whole video through Youtube thing to work.

OK, now I've learned that if you film in landscape mode, Youtube shorts trims all the excess off the edges and only keeps the center, so trying to fill the screen with the area of interest while filming just ends up cutting off some important stuff, such as the feeders hanging off that first pole.

Of course I could just get my head out of my ass and film in portrait mode like this. (i.e. just turn the phone upright instead of horizontal dummy!)

Interesting observation:

I started that first video uploading (over the speed chalanged, one or two bar, 4g cell network which is all we have out here) to my just created specificly for this, bare minimum Youtube channel and walked away to do other things. By the time I got back to it, I was shocked to find it not only uploaded, but after 4 hours of sitting there in the chaotic and crouded anonomity of the Youtube-verse, it already had 19 views! What the hell! That's more than I get on most blog posts in a week!

So far this whole video thing seems to be working. Now I just need to publish the post and see if it still works  or if the "video not available" screen of doom comes up instead.