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August, 2025
August 16 Aug 16, 2025: Notes from the Decalibron
- I camped her last night, right on the bank of Kite Lake, beneath the ridge line that accounted for three of the four peaks I would climb the next morning.
- Everyone was out before sunrise.
- So many baby marmots, all coo-ing. They move across the screen like they’re surging waves. Their cries echo through the bowl.
- Light(s): from blue-only, with specs of wobbling white on the switchbacks, then to a pure yellow bouncing off the white granite (6:28 a.m., 2 mins before sunrise)
- I can hear but can’t see the water flowing down every groove of the mountain that’s miles away, filling a high-alpine lake
- The furthest mountains you can see from the summit could be painted in watercolor with one pigment: a hazy blue.
- Marmots, especially the babies, sound like birds; they chirp.
- I retrieved a cardboard sign from a couloir using a stranger’s hiking pole. It looked sketchy; it was sketchy. If I had tired to descend without the ledge, I could have fallen a long way. Everyone around me was freaking out silently, as to not pass their worry onto me. It doesn't seem like it was worth it to risk my life to retrieve trash, but I weighed the risk and decided that it was less risky than the imperative of my principle of picking up trash when I see it in Nature. The stranger who lent me his pole called me a good Samaritan.
- These bulbous, green-and-purple succulents are thriving up here above 14k’
- The headlamps this morning were like seeing CATs at Breck.
- Most of Mt. Bross, including its summit is privately owned. You have to technically trespass to reach the peak (and that's why you have to sign a waiver to even drive up that dirt road).
- From Kite Lake, you can see every peak on the loop (all along the ridge line) except Lincoln, which is tucked behind Cameron and is the most dramatic of these peaks.
- Kite Lake's name is apparent when viewed from 14,000 feet. It's a perfect, kite-like rhombus and looks like one that's been abandoned in the grass. The kite is even complete with a long string, which is the dirt road that leads to the campsite.
- Everybody’s got a cardboard sign with the name of the mountain and its peak elevation. On this route, people have two signs, with a label on each side totaling the four peaks. And if a group doesn’t have a sign, they ask to borrow someone else’s for a picture.
Aug 12, 2025: Notes from Mt. Bierstadt
- Perfect weather, best views, and my favorite 14er so far — the ridge line is beautiful from below
- Back east on I-70, toward Denver from Silverthorne, just south of
- Group of 70-year-olds who complimented us young ones on our pace but who also were on their way to do the Class 3 ridge to Mt. Blue Sky after submitting Bierstadt. I told them, What do you mean? You're harder than we are.
- I loved the rock-scramble section toward the top. It was not hard but totally fun. All the boulders were huge—mostly pink granite.
- At the summit, we saw a marmot, who was hanging out right near the Forest Service's metal medallion. There wasn't much for it to graze up there.
- We could also see Grays and Torreys, the outskirts of Denver, and the abandoned observatory atop Mt. Blue Sky
- On the descent, we followed a handsome white goat down the trail, giving him space. He stayed on the trail for a while and, at one point, trotted like a horse. He was an elder male. At one point, he stopped to graze for a while, the two of us and a group of two behind us went off the trail a bit and around him, as not to spook him.
- Gantt and I went to Beau Jo's in Idaho Springs afterwards and housed a large Mountain Pie (their signature style with the thick crust that you dip in honey as a "built-in dessert").
August 16 Aug 10, 2025: Notes from Mt. Sherman
- 11 miles of unpaved road
- Ruined mine
- Marmot early on, in the distance (heard it’s squeal/cry)
- The first half hour (acclimating to the ascent) is always the hardest part, even if it’s not the steepest pitch.
- Sound of the snow pellets landing on the scree, percussion with melody. It started snowing/sleeting while a group of us were on the summit. I was the last one to leave, because I was still trying to finish my rock balance.
- I found a cool-shaped rock near the bottom and started to carry and fidget with it, twirling it between my thumb and index finger. It was the size and shape of my palm-pad (sans nuckles). I decide that I would carry it to the top and incorporate it into my rock balance—effectively undoing what millennia (at least) had done to make that tiny stone crack and shave and tumble all the way down the mountain.
- Beams that remind me of the tesseract, inside the black hole, at the climax of Interstellar, the light/love/gravity beams that Nolan (Matthew McCanahey) manipulates with his fingertips.
- Two humbling things I saw on Sherman: (1) Near the summit, I saw a man descending, and he was hiking barefoot on the jagged scree, and when I was driving away—five miles down the 11-mile dirt road—the same man was jogging on the side of the road, barefoot. (2) Before I saw the barefoot man, I saw a mother escorting her bundled-up son who could not have been older than four. She was vice-gripping his and was the only reason he wasn't constantly falling. He was pulling her down the mountain and had just summited a 14er on his own two feet.
Aug 09, 2025: Notes from Quandary Peak
- Heavy haze from the fires on the drive out, orange fireball in the sky after sunrise, one the mountain, through the side-view mirror. I looked back at it, and my eyes didn't burn, because the sun's light was more diffuse than a sunset on the ocean.
- Crowded at 7:00 a.m. on a Saturday. Some hikers are already descending, which gives you a sense of the CO culture. People don't stay out until 3 a.m.; they get up at 3 a.m. so that they can catch sunrise from the summit.
- Quandary is just south of Breck on Route 9, and it's a model of trail maintenance and infrastructure. It has to be to handle the volume. Parking passes for the trailhead lot are $55 on the weekends (worth it), so scores of people take the shuttle from Main Street in Breck.
- Everyone greets one another, and people are considerate and aware of whether they're slowing someone down. Without fail, people move aside to pass (which would not happen in New Jersey, because everything seems to be a competition).
- I hadn't planned to do this, but when I reached the summit, I nestled into one of the round rock piles, shielded from the wind, and started making a rock balance. I had the idea that it'd be cool to do that at the summit of every 14er I hike. Most people do all the work to get up there then just take a picture or two and leave. What else is there to do really, except maybe eat and drink and take in the view. What better way to spend my summit time (and spend more time on summits) than with this meditative practice that I cherish? It'd help me connect with the summit itself, too, by studying the rocks and (hopefully) making them into art.
- The haze had slowly cleared up throughout the day, so the visibility kept improving, and some of the best views were on the descent.
- I love the pair of terraced (although damned) lakes that are in the valley to the south.
August 10 No thing can exist as either only yin or yang, for within every thing is the seed of its opposite. The manta ray leaps from the water and glides for a moment like the albatross, as play; the albatross dives beneath the surface and dwells there for a moment like the manta ray, to hunt.
August 6 To behold Nature's majesty is to become aware of my own mortality; to become aware of my own mortality is to feel grateful exist with and witness this majesty.
August 5 The Fall is almost the perfect human-origin myth, except for the context we give it that sin is a curse. Sin is a gift and so our banishment from Eden, for it is the combination of being mortal and having divine knowledge that makes us human. Thank God for Eve, the Mother of Man.
[[Eden Is Hell Too]]
August 4 "The road to Hell is paved with adverbs" (Stephen King, On Writing), but a single apt adverb can be a sentences ticket to heaven.
August 2 Man looks to the creature of the sky and kings to fly, to the creature of the sea and kings to breathe underwater. Then man looks within himself and accepts that he has neither gills nor wings, that he will only ever glide or dive and must return to earth if he is to survive. Man looks within himself and realizes his gift: that he can venture into the sky or the sea, into either side of the dichotomy, and bring the two into harmony.
"Comparison is the thief of joy"—sure, but let's challenge that. When is comparison a virtue? Comparison can be the benefactor, or the vehicle for gratitude and self-forgiveness. Compare your circumstances to someone less fortunate, and you are grateful. Compare your worst deeds to the immoral actions of others, and maybe you can forgive yourself and free yourself of the guilt that would otherwise distract you from future good-doing.
August 1 My current best (most developed) essay ideas:
- "'Casual Sex' Is An Oxymoron"
- "Eden Is Hell Too"
- "Leave the Pupa Alone"
- "Getting Away from What Might Seem to Be The Center of It All"
- "Park Ranger Revision"
An image that describes dichotomous thinking: Imagine how hard it would be to function if you could only see what's in your periphery.
A subtle example of the difference in feel between the active and passive voice, using a playful metaphor inspired by a client's writing about bureaucratic buildings (which I posted within a Google Docs comment):
Passive: "Every time I step into one, I feel like I'm under siege by a battalion whose ranks consist of low ceilings, right angles, and fluorescent lights."
Active: "Every time I step into one, it feels like a battalion of low ceilings, right angles, and fluorescent lights has me under siege."
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