The Smell of Cordite and Flash Flood Fears

After yesterday's 7-mile ran (at 8000 ft above sea level, and heart rate between 175-190 bpm for one hour) I decided to slack a little and go on a leisurely hike, to give my body a chance to recover a bit.

The Cliffs at Corkins Lodge

The route started below the lake, then wound its way up to the top of the cleft, center-right. It's not a lark in the park, but nothing to write home about, not much more than 2000 feet of climb.

I'd climbed the thing in 45 minutes during a visit in 1998 - back when I could claim to be a passable imposter for a "young...well...nicely-aging middle-aged man," and I wanted to see to what extent accelerated decrepitude had set in over the 14 years since. 

Tree serving homage to Theodor Seuss Geisel at 9200 ft.

I went higher...

The Corkins Cliffs are approximately 2 billion years old. 

[View animation demonstrating the superiority of 'merican technology in creating geological formations].

...and higher! Got-dandruff-some-of-it-itches!!! This time it took 47 minutes. I lay down and wept, saddened at the bloated, decrepit carcass I'd become in such a short span of time - at least within a geological context.

 The corpses of 192 climbers - killed 1921-2006 - litter the slopes of Mt Everest. [source]

The Earth faded from view. The moon swept past, then Mars, Jupiter and all the outer planets. I smelt the willful ways of gas...wait...I am subconsciously plagiarizing a Brit-pop spoken word performance artist from circa 1986! Truly: my feet were solidly, achingly on the ground. Of the fundamental forces in the universe, gravity was front and center in mine.

Over and over I heard bull elk, imitating elk mating sounds they'd learned from YouTube. For a few moments I regretted my bleeding-heart liberal anti-gun bias. It was a little scary - especially for a man who's a little too much in touch with his feminine side. Remembering the Boy Scout training I never had, I settled on a testosterone-induced ruse to hold them at bay - the plunging of rocks over the cliff edge:

Surprisingly the Republicans have not fallen completely over the cliff with their selection of the Romney-Ryan ticket. 

Extraterrestrials attribute this phenomenon to the "Perfect Storm" of (1) the power of denial, (2) the failure of the 

Obama-Biden ticket to deliver on its promises and (3) the human proclivity toward gratuitous self-destruction. 

[Source: Reuters]

While I do not love the smell of napalm in the morning, that burst of cordite awoke the true-blue American in me ... until I realized I had to climb all the way back down. Shucks.

Teddy Roosevelt - a Republican - was instrumental in creating the park system we take for granted more than a century later. 

While many of us wake up in the morning with the feeling of a rat chewing on our stomach as we think about our 

gratuitous consumption - to an extent that we're leaving a Cesspool of a World to our children (much less 7 generations out) -

 few of us really do anything about it. Romney's worldview imagines expanding exploration for oil, gas, minerals and timber 

into these preserves which had largely been kept off-limits (until the Bush-Cheney administration's policies, 

thankfully overturned in the early days of the Obama administration.)

I donned the emergency kilt I always carry with me on treks in the wilderness, and made my way for Scotland.

But Scotland was nowhere to be found. 

Like Colonel Kurtz in reverse, I descended down to the Brazos River. I shed the kilt - then adorned myself in a wreath of Fear. Why? Well...all hell broke loose in the form of a Biblical Deluge, a Category 4 hurricane, the onset of monsoon season - aka "torrential downpour!" Imagine yourself near the mouth of a 20-mile long, 2000-foot deep canyon then - as you look back 15 minutes later - and only 3 of the 9 river crossings that have to be accomplished before an exit from the canyon onto a safe elevation - you spot multiple streams of water roaring into the canyon! Flash floods are mean and nasty events!

The Burmese Python kills its prey by constriction, rather than by venom, as does the 

Western Diamondback Rattlesnake, which combines toxicity with the element of surprise. 

[Source: the 2012 Election Playbook, by Karl Rove]

Long story short - this story has a happy ending. In the midst of a cascade of rain-turned-to-hail at the mouth of the canyon, I turned back east and shot the boiling cauldron of right-wing forces laying siege to The American Way, and thanked my lucky stars that I live in Amsterdam.

The Dodo (Raphus cucullatus) is an extinct flightless bird that was endemic to the island of 

Mauritius, east of Madagascar in the Indian Ocean.

Today's tally: 6.51 miles, 2400 feet mean elevation change, 5 hours. T-minus 22 days until the Amsterdam Marathon