mascarillas

 "They were days fording that cauterized terrain. The boy had found some crayons and painted his facemask with fangs and he trudged on uncomplaining."

Cormac McCarthy's The Road (2006)

(nostalgia for 2008, mascaras del Mueso Rafael Coronel)

dialogues with Finn

Finn (walking home from the corner mailbox with me): “What do banks do?”
Me: (sigh. good question.) "Um, what do you mean?"

Finn: “You know banks? What do they do?”

Me: “Um. I don’t know, exactly. But basically they’re supposed to keep people’s money safe. Sometimes they find fancy things to do with it.”

Finn: “Like make a sculpture out of it?”

Finn (sitting down on the toilet): “Hi, Dad!”

Me: (on the other side of the curtain, showering): “What’s up, kid?”

Finn: “You know what a birthday shower is?”

Me: “A birthday shower?”

Finn: “Yeah, do you know?”

Me: “Nope. What’s a birthday shower?”

Finn: “It’s when you take a shower on your birthday and you get to fill the bathtub too, and you also get a nice bath.”
Me: “That sounds great. Is that what you did on your birthday?”

Finn: “No. But maybe on my next birthday.”

Me: “That’s a good idea. Will that be fun?

Finn: “Yeah.”

Me: “Was that your idea?”

Finn: “Yeah.”

Finn (after a nap, walking to church with me, and having noticed and named the clouds: a hippo, an open mouth, a gun--of course): “Dad, how big is the world?”

Me: “the… um… bigger than the moon but smaller than the sun?”

Finn: “We can’t see the world while we’re on the world.”

Me: “Right, but we can see parts of it.”

Finn: “Yeah, like trees and clouds. And bugs.”

Me: “I can see you.”

Finn: “And I can see you.”

Me: “When your grandma and grandpa were your age, nobody had seen the earth from space, but now hundreds of people have been up there, and we have some pictures.”

Finn: “Oh.”

40

https://globalclimatestrike.net/

https://globalclimatestrike.net/

9/21 - another run in the sky

Aright, sportsfans. I’d meant to get this posted earlier, but here it is now, all the same. (As though there were anyone reading this blog to get the word out to.)

Anyways.

Once again, it’s time for another wonderful long-ass run across the Skyline Drive. This year we’re looking at 40 miles. Here are the details.

Saturday, September 21 (officially still summer, fools!)

Start time: ~8 am

Course: Beginning at the top of Fairview Canyon, across the Skyline Drive (30 miles), and then down Ephraim Canyon (last 10 or so miles). This is level overall with some rolling hills and then down the canyon, mostly on improved dirt road at around 10,000 feet elevation.

Cost: None; free.

Also: There will be a couple food/drink caches, as well as some mobile support, along the way.

Also, also: You’re welcome to run, walk, bike, relay, whatever, all or any part of it as you like. No hurry. We can take all day. Hit me up here with any questions.

And here’s a link to a map where you can really zoom in on the course. Hope you can join us.

Birch Creek Service Ranch & beatitudes for a new generation

After about 10 years of mostly responsible adulting, I can only begin to describe how good it has been this summer to check back in with Birch Creek Ranch.

The Ranch has no creed, but its philosophy is essentially summed up in this poem, written by Lowell Bennion in 1962:

“Learn to like what doesn't cost much.

Learn to like reading, conversation, music.

Learn to like plain food, plain service, plain cooking.

Learn to like fields, trees, brooks, hiking, rowing, climbing hills.

Learn to like people, even though some of them may be different, different from you.

Learn to like to work and enjoy the satisfaction doing your job as well as it can be done.

Learn to like the song of birds, the companionship of dogs.

Learn to like gardening, going around the house fixing things.

Learn to like the sunrise and sunset, the beating of rain on the roof and windows, and the gentle fall of snow on a winter day.

Learn to keep your wants simple and refuse to be controlled by the likes and dislikes of others.”

Simplicity and contemplation; hard work and creativity; personal growth and community awareness; resourcefulness and independent thought; and an appreciation for life, nature, and difference. This is the basis on which Dr. Bennion ran his summer ranch in Tenon Valley, Idaho for over 40 years. And it has continued as a kind of beatific ethos for Birch Creek for the past 15 years. That is, from the days when it was a few yurts, a couple porta-potties, an outdoor kitchen with a French drain, and an old, heavy, hot-as-hell canvas army tent in the cheat grass of Pigeon Hollow, to now, running things out of a straw-bale lodge, properly wired and plumbed, a fine “chapel in the junipers,” and even reliable (and mostly air-conditioned!) vehicles.

Here’s some of that that looked like this summer.

A descent into Dark Canyon starts with a quick sermon on cryptobiotic crust. (“Like desert coral reefs,” one of the boys says. OK, looks like we get it; let’s go!) Over the next few hours we will see what rubbish snacks some of them chose to buy at the gas station by the colors and consistency of their barf in the sand: Corn Nuts, Frito Lay, neon red Slurpee, and so on. Embodied learning.

Sunrise on the dirtmonsters.

On the loooong walk back up the “Devil’s Stairway,” I admire and comment on one boy’s daypack, how it’s probably older than he is. He explains that it is the pack his father took when he came to his home country to adopt him. And that his father had now lent it to him for the summer. We talk and he goes on to tell me about how he ended up losing some of his best friends on the last day of school before heading off into the summer. Some misunderstanding and teen drama at Lagoon Day. Middle school is hard, but life tends to only get better from there; we talk for a while about that.

Some of the boys talk about all the world travels their wealthy families have taken them on. Others from more modest circumstances have never really left their home state. One of the other boys has two seemingly permanent boogers oozing from both of his nostrils day after day of the trip, like a sort of Garbage Pail Kid. His mouth breathing is loud and labored the whole way up the climb. But he sets his own steady if slow pace and makes it all the way.

When people sometimes ask whether we’re working with “at risk youth,” the response is usually something like: “Are there any teenagers in 21^st century America who aren’t at risk for so much?”

View of the Tetons from Bennion Teton Ranch.

Nebo from Birch Creek.