floating through a high country day. mountain bike ride after breakfast. up to the trailhead into the West Elk Wilderness. back out, Sage keeping pace even on the downhills. pack up and make the circle around the north rim of the Black Canyon, and down through Delta. saw a gal parked having a picnic. single bike on the rear rack, like me. wondered about how one crosses paths. make a stop at the Ute Indian Museum.



it's far from present Ute lands, and most of Colorado was once populated by one or another bands of Utes who are now reduced to three small reservations in Colorado and Utah. another dreadful history of crimes against humanity. are we really better than that now?

seek wisdom, not knowledge. knowledge is of the past, wisdom is of the future.

to go on a vision quest is to go into the presence of the Great Mystery.

the soul will have no rainbow if the eye has no tear.

another stop at the Gunnison National Forest main office to check out any information they might have, as well as inquiring about jobs. looks like everything is through the JobsUSA website. one path to travel. have to look into that again when online next. Ridgeway seems interesting again, with some commercial buildings for sale. question is, what to do in these small towns to survive? could computer consulting work? construction is no longer an option with the L5 disk acting up, could be major trouble in the near future. website construction? teaching high school? vocational tech? uff. re-forming trajectories seems at the same time daunting and full of possibility. how can it be problematic when so many others are employed? and so many have managed to gather so much capital in this country. but the path between scraping poor-ness and abundant wealth seems so ... arbitrary. there is no clear specifications except for self-confidence.

end the day almost at tree line, up Bailey Creek, off Lizard Head Pass in the San Juan National Forest. the luxury of dispersed camping (finding places up 4x4 roads that are not developed, but make excellent camp sites) is appreciated. no cost, only fuel to get there, and that expense suggested that instead of an immediate return to Prescott, that I take several days and enjoy being back in Colorado and check out several new places. in Curecanti Creek, I saw only one car in two days, and up this rugged route, I doubt to see anyone until I head out and down and south west tomorrow. feeling a little guilty being out of phone range, but have no messages except one from Gary, so, figure all is well in the greater telecom world. make a short video of sunset on a nearby peak. and in the process of reviewing the tape after finishing it, I discover that all the footage that I shot of Kevin's memorial in NYC in March had that effing bad audio. really disgusting -- Bill, Stefan, Martha, Rosemary, and others talking about their memories of Kevin. the glitch seems due to bad mike contacts, or a dirty record head. it pops up randomly, and has affected some other critical footage previously. and the pondering on the idea of getting a 3-ccd hd prosumer cam comes back up and/or a Nikon prosumer digital still camera. what else to do with capital? shopping is a dumb way to make a cash flow (negatively). better to keep the investments growing and multiplying. and purchase only items that can definitely be positive cash generators.

whatever the end result, work is the next necessary step to confront. that and the June 18th Month of Sundays performance. finishing up with the house, packing things in a way that maintains some viability to several pathways of action. but meanwhile, watch the sky and the land.

close to the end of the month. another one come by the time anything is uploaded. what would it require to upload from here? military support would allow it, or a significant chunk of cash. $20K? subscription to a satellite data connection in addition to the base unit. satellite might be limited by available sky in this narrow canyon. and data speeds are probably still at modem pace without elite service levels.

observing the sky, rocks, soil, flowers, other plants, beaver ponds, creek, what else. clean up the camping space. people sometimes seem so piggish. Winchester 30-30 shells, new silver brass, litter one spot. hard to imagine folks just reeling off rounds at such a rate there, what are they shooting at? I pretend I am a child, and play in the creek, re-routing a branch of it to pass directly below the campsite. drain another area which is swampy, and remove several contiguous rock fire-rings. make a nice fire -- using some of the large logs that are left from the previous campers. in the tradition that Loki and I started in Crestone one year -- a single large log makes a swell fire which will keep legs warm through a long and late evening.



and, in a special action, spent boots and half-gloves are sacrificed to the air via fire. last time was in Tornio, Finland, when boots were set adrift in the spring melt-water swollen Tornionjoki back in 2000 or so. time to retire this pair, though they were slightly useable, soles were worn through on the right side and the standard tear along the left inside of the right ball was in full display, and good for mountain-biking in that the smooth soles slipped in and out of the toe-clips compared to my remaining foot-coverings. the boots were bought in Flagstaff back in 1993(?) on a return drive from Colorado around the holidays, and when Loki was a tiny tyke.

Sharmin will hopefully augment this shot of Sonya with some of her ample photographic records of the long weekend's adventures. later in the evening...

turns out that the Search By Extraterristrial Intelligence (SETI) project -- is a globally-deployed effort by an extraterristrial intelligence to keep tabs on the human race...

long conversation with Chris and Scharmin. well, Scharmin dozes off in front of the fire part of the time. the cabin is such a comfortable space for hanging out with friends. Sonya and Alex have stored up magic memories of the place, the surroundings, and the magnificent physical environment it is nestled into. I wish Loki was here with us. somehow I am not completely convinced that his absence from the US this summer is simply due to the need for teenage companionship. but that cannot be substantiated.

no chance to use the telescope productively. there is enough overcast so that the sun cannot be seen well enough to make it worth it, and it is cloudy all three nights. not to mention too cold to be hanging out of doors for long periods when there is a warm bed to fill later after the stiff margarita to sip!

Jeb Bush as a politico-in-the-making left his mark on the world during a debaucherous elk-hunting trip near Gunnison, Colorado in the fall of 1974. "Fools names and not their faces are always seen in public places"?

what else to say about that. it didn't kill the aspen tree, but it leaves the unsightly human detritus and hints at the depth of the sleaze that dominates the family in power. The moral system that allows a man to vainly scar a living tree in a delineated Wilderness area is not only corrupt, but shows a contempt for natural systems that is fortified by the family's exploitative nature in the extractive minerals business.

the scale of impact may be described using a material framework in a cartesian coordinate system. for example. bringing by car a plastic container full of toxic chemicals -- better yet, a bottle of water. leaving this container behind, we have effectively inserted a certain amount of energy into the local system (as defined by a scalar coordinate) in the form of an abundance of liquid water and the hydrocarbon container itself -- a very concentrated form of hydrocarbon energy with a certain threshold value for the liberation of that energy. the threshold value changes over time as the container is slowly decomposed (to compose and decompose) through the availability of UV energy which, at peak dayLight hours, is high enough to just barely exceed the threshold. whether or not the bottle appears to alter the local environment depends on the speed of liberation of the energy. or perhaps it doesn't depend of the speed of liberation. the change in the environment takes place upon the introduction of the object (material energy system) into that particular location. the liberation of energy from the introduced material energy system begins immediately. plastics release free radical organics all the time (smell nalgene vs pvc vs polyethylene, for example). temporal rates merely scale the release to the casual observer. the intent observer, aside from changing the energy state of the system through the act of observation, notices smaller and smaller changes. (question: in Quantum, (how) does the observer affect the total energy state of the observer/observed system? -- another words, does the observer actually introduce an extra energy (source) into the system, or what). global warming will evidence itself in an accumulation of relatively small scale observations which will need to be corellated to indicate a larger scale shift in the global system to the casual observer. With observing as a rapidly diminishing individual function, (being replaced largely by collective observing), it will be difficult to make the connection of small to large. although technically there are large numbers of detail-observers (in the form of specialist scientists), the structure of the social system effectively keeps these observers and their consequent observations separated (by the rigidity of specialty vs trans-disciplinarity). it will take a trans-disciplinary visionary to draw many isolated threads together to make the change in the global system obvious for the mediated-reality pseudo-observer.

wha'? who cares? you're speaking obsequious drivel!

nawp, just fishing for basic principles of human presence in the world. impact.

so far only one other vehicle seen on the national forest road today. a 4x4 that went in and came back out from the trailhead in about an hour. otherwise, watching ravens catch thermals and play about the welded-tuff-over-breccia hoodoos across the valley formed by Soap Creek.

embarking on the traditional trek across Indian Lands, Four Corners, to Gunnison to meet Chris and Scharmin at their cabin. solo in the car, though, without Loki it is sad, but with Sage, the mild-mannered and warm Aussie. the raw earth, though, impinging on sky, fills many gaps in being. to fullness not paralleled under any circumstances. more about that later.

make it across the reservation, across the heated spaces, rapidly. 60-70 mph. but stopping more frequently to check on Sage -- to see how she is handling the heat in the back of the truck in a crate. she seems unfazed, and completely carried away by the smells at each stop. so much so that she can hardly go potty. too many good odors to follow up on. the landscape is as always stretched taut between earthliness and heavenliness. Light traffic, few tourists. Shiprock shows on that stretch past Four Corners. and I try to make the connection between that apparition and the video I shot of it five years ago from the same vantage. all is apparition. all is unrevealed by Light shimmering from the sky. see people far off. and now that all gas stations are direct credit-pay, there need be no interaction between self and other. not even exchanging money. it's a change in the social fabric, a deep change. another alien-nation manifestation. the Ute Mountain Reservation, Cortez, the Dolores River, Lizard Head Pass, Telluride, Montrose, the Black Canyon, Curecanti, West Elk, and finally here to Soap Creek. the main decision, whether or not to sleep on the ground. the choice bounded by limited knowledge on the local wildlife, but south 30 miles into the Uncompaghre wilderness there are definitely large carnivores, must be here as well. the thought of being wrapped in bivvy sack, sleeping bag, liner, and clothes, zipped up, and becoming a meal. uff. but the desire to be prone, between earth and stars, with ponderosa silhouetted, black on black is of opposite attraction. no moon. no moon.

Woodstock

Well I came across a child of God, he was walking along the road
and I asked him tell where are you going, this he told me:
Well, I'm going down to Yasgur's farm,
going to join in a rock and roll band.
Got to get back to the land, set my soul free.
We are stardust, we are golden, we are billion year old carbon,
and we got to get ourselves back to the garden.

Well, then can I walk beside you? I have come to lose the smog.
And I feel like I'm a cog in something turning.
And maybe it's the time of year, yes, and maybe it's the time of man.
And I don't know who I am but life is for learning.
We are stardust, we are golden, we are billion year old carbon,
and we got to get ourselves back to the garden.

By the time we got to Woodstock, we were half a million strong,
and everywhere there was song and celebration.
And I dreamed I saw the bombers riding shotgun in the sky,
turning into butterflies above our nation.
We are stardust, we are golden, we caught in the devil's bargain,
and we got to get ourselves back to the garden.
-- Joni Mitchell

another streaming radio festival -- epsilonia -- looks pretty interesting...
Nuit blanche au poste, l'oreille collée au transistor ou connectée au streaming web. Epsilonia, la vaillante émission de Radio Libertaire, fête ses 20 ans et propose un festival radiophonique marathon tous les jeudis de mai, de 22 heures à pas d'heure. Fondée en 1986 par Jacques Perdereau, disparu prématurément, Epsilonia explore toutes les déviances des territoires pop : musiques industrielles, électro-acoustiques, bruitistes, improvisées, free-jazz, poésie sonore...

Le festival est éclectique et exigeant, avec des diffusions de raretés et d'oeuvres créées pour l'occasion, et des concerts en direct de la radio. «Comme on est les derniers sur la grille, on est libres de faire durer tant qu'on veut», s'amuse Nicolas, un des dix activistes aux manettes de l'émission. Ce soir, l'agitateur bruitiste Evil Moisture, le platiniste erikM, l'ambient core de Pigot, un live de Jérôme Noetinger, patron du label Metamkine, avec Fabrice Eglin, ou encore un relais musical exécuté par sept musiciens (Boghossian, Saladdin, Rivière, Madiot, Black Sifichi, Igor & Grischka).

Grâce au web, la radio parisienne émet jusqu'à Limoges, Bilbao, Tallin et Séoul, où des lieux alternatifs diffusent les sessions du festival, relayées par des radios hertziennes et des webradios. L'occasion de convertir de nouvelles oreilles à ces fourmillantes musiques de traverse. -- LIBERATION

learn sorrowfully from the network (from Karen (T.)) of another passing. John Wester was a great friend from junior and senior high days. we maintained contact after the college diaspora and when we were both living in Los Angeles after college (he doing his law degree, me finishing my tenure with corporate oil) and later through email, thinking that at one point we would cross paths. an obituary is a terse framework that little shows the life, only the social situation. I'll add some words and, if I can find some, photos soon. Karen calls -- the first time we have spoken in, what, maybe 30 years? nah, a few less than that. it is strange and nice to hear a voice that slowly stirs older memories -- of those humid summer days down at the North Shore dock of what was a not very large lake in one of the first planned communities of the 1970's, Montgomery Village. I would cycle down Brink Road from home to the Village on occasional summer days before a drivers license made more of the world available. At the dock, Richard, Taryn, Karen, Mark, Gary, Bruce, Sharon, and others would hang out -- some of them working (boat rentals), some like myself, just hunting for summer friendship.

I think I first got to know John in Mr. Mordensky's Earth Science class in 8th grade when I transferred back to MVJHS from Baker JHS. Mr. Mordensky (aka Stan the Man) was all of 23 years old, maybe, he was renown forever after he threw an eraser at a bunch of us who were cutting up in class -- I distinctly recall it was John and myself, Gary, and Bruce. so much for becoming a geophysicist. I think he was in my French class with lovely Miss Sears, je pense que... And in that English class, what was her name, can't recall. We had to do a reading of Romeo and Juliet in class. then on to Gaithersburg High School. often going to John's house after school, hanging out with his sister and mom, always lively conversation and laughing. John was very sensitive, very smart, and a concentrated student it seems from this vantage. and actually, it is interesting to be recalling those times. how unaware I was -- that I can't answer basic questions about people that I spent plenty of time with.

driving around with my old 1966 Beetle with some of those same people stuffed into the back of the car.

and I can't find a picture of John in my archive. he was painfully shy about his appearance. and was prone to flush brilliant red if any special public attention was paid to him.

the news of his passing revives for at least a few moments a nascent network of people who were heavily involved in each other's lives in Gaithersburg, Maryland, between 30 and 40 years ago. having conversations with some of these people, across that expanse of days seems easy but short on depth. missing the complete face-to-face of being a teen-ager in the 1970's. no cell phones, no telecom networks. telephone, but very much fixed line. otherwise, plans were made between classes or at someone's house after school. where do the days go?

this in the Washington Post:

John Francis Wester Jr., 47, a specialist in health-care law at the law firm of Sidley Austin in Washington who defended companies accused of Medicare fraud and abuse, died March 7 at Inova Fairfax Hospital. He lived in Fairfax County.

A spokeswoman for the Fairfax County medical examiner's office said the cause of death is pending further tests.

The son of a Navy officer, Mr. Wester was born in Oak Harbor, Wash., and graduated from Gaithersburg High School in 1976. He was a 1980 graduate of the University of Virginia and a 1986 graduate of the University of California at Los Angeles law school.

In 1987, he joined Sidley Austin as a tax-law specialist. In recent years, he held the position of counsel at the firm, a rank between associate and partner, and became a leading legal expert on durable medical equipment, such as wheelchairs and oxygen tanks.

He did volunteer work for the Odyssey of the Mind youth program, the Boy Scouts of America and the McKenna's Wagon soup kitchen. At the Spina Bifida Association, he served on the board of directors and acted as its counsel.

Survivors include his wife, Sharon Henne Wester, whom he married in 1985, and three children, Lauren Wester, Amy Wester and Zachary Wester, all of Fairfax County; his father, retired Navy Lt. Cmdr. John F. Wester Sr. of San Juan Cosala, Mexico; his mother, Polly Wester of Richmond; a brother, James W. Wester of Richmond; and two sisters, Robin W. Jorgensen of Malden, Mass., and Karen W. Newton of Rockville.

and this at the Spina Bifida Association web site:

The Spina Bifida Community lost a friend and advocate on Tuesday, March 7 when John F. Wester, Jr., Esq. passed away suddenly at the age of 47. John leaves behind his wife Sharon and three children Lauren, Zachary, and Amy.

John served as SBA's legal counsel, but above all, he was a valued mentor and supporter. Doug Sorocco, SBA's Chair, said, "John was a tremendous friend to all of us on the Board and he was an enthusiastic advocate for our Spina Bifida Community. John truly believed in what we are accomplishing and gave freely of his time, skills, and resources."

John was counsel in the Washington, DC law firm of Sidley & Austin, LLP and his expertise in health care was invaluable to SBA. But it was John's compassion, and especially his affection for children with spina bifida that will be best remembered.

The words of Alex Brodrick, Past Chair of the SBA Board echo our feelings of loss.

"My friends, I share with all of you the pain over the tragic loss of our dear friend and fellow Board Member John Wester. He has been a quiet warrior for our movement for years who worked behind the scenes relentlessly to help us achieve our mission of reaching and helping all who are affected by spina bifida.

"He was always available for counsel and support and assisted us in ways most will never fully understand and appreciate. We have lost an incredible advocate.

"I pray with you for his family, loved ones, and friends, and for all of us who while in pain are much richer for the life he shared with us. For the many gifts he gave to us, and for his gentle way of touching so many lives."

The Spina Bifida Association is most grateful to his family, who requested that donations be made to SBA in lieu of flowers. A special fund is being created to benefit children as a lasting tribute to John.

Donations may be sent to SBA, 4590 MacArthur Blvd, NW, Ste. 250, Washington, DC 20007 or may be made online. Please note that your contribution is being made in the name of John F. Wester, Jr.

gathering impressions from Barry Lopez from his collection of essays "Crossing Open Ground" and recalling the desires to aid the imprinting of the natural world on the child's sensitive nature. in order for those impressions to guide the evolution and understanding of the inter-connectedness of human life and all that which is beyond the power of humans to erase or destroy completely.

The most moving look I ever saw from a child in the woods was on a mud bar by the footprints of a heron. We were on our knees, making handprints beside the footprints. You could feel the creek vibrating in the silt and sand. The sun beat down heavily on our hair. Our shoes were soaking wet. The look said: I did not know until now that I needed someone much older to confirm this, the feeling I have of life here. I can now grow older, knowing it need never be lost.

The quickest door to open in the woods for a child is the one that leads to the smallest room, by knowing the name each thing is called. The door that leads to the cathedral is marked by a hesitancy to speak at all, rather to encourage by example a sharpness of the senses. If one speaks it should only be to say, as well as one can, how wonderfully all this fits in together, to indicate what a long, fierce peace can derive from this knowledge. -- Barry Lopez, from "Children in the Woods"

Loki has decided not to come to the US this coming summer. it will be the first time I have had a summer off, and the first time he hasn't been with me for the summer since he was 2 years old. it will make for a long short summer. he feels the gravity of teen-age friendships drawing him away from prospects of hours in heat-filled places, driving, walking, hanging out. looking at clouds, thunderstorms, rocks, and wind devils.

worldly remains floating through networks. shut down most incoming stuff several weeks ago. mailing lists, discussion lists. too much input. material purging via ebay. helping Uncle Al get rid of all his sci-fi 'zines from the 40's and 50's -- he was expecting to get a dime for each copy. so far, I'm averaging $5 for each one. seems to be a market. we'll split the profits. it's a hell of a lot of work, scanning in the (often VERY interesting) covers, and getting it all ready for auction, but fascinating as well. wishing to have all the stories as digital pdf's but that would require the destruction of the volume (staple bindings and fragile paper). Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein, Poul Anderson, John Brunner, Damon Knight, Lester del Rey, John Christopher, Clifford Simak, Fritz Leiber, Cyril Judd, Willie Ley, and on and on. each volume with several of these and other luminaries, cranking out their visions of the future of the burgeoning post-war science-driven society. strange planets, but familiar problems. heroes and half-naked (or half-space-suited) ladies. but always a clean future with simple solvable problems, that is, if science is brought to bear as a passive-but-dominant element of the social situation. the stories are less timeless than some works of fiction because of this expansive naivete of that time and its specific vision, but reading deeper than that, some have substance that holds up to the 60 years fallen away from Imperial beginnings.

He had no way of knowing that just as there are winds that blow through space, so there are winds that blow through time. Such winds may be strong or weak. The strong ones are rare and seldom blow for short distances, or more of us would know about them. What they pick up is almost always whirled far into the future or the past. ...

... Sometimes we may be blown about by whimsical time winds without realizing it. Memory, for example, is a tiny time breeze, so weak that it can ripple only the mind. ... -- Fritz Leiber