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.