Learning to be Patient

Chasm, BC, Canada


Staying in hospital can be a bit like camping, minus the scenery and fresh air. People will suddenly appear next to you, and for a day or so you practice forebearance. Then you begin to either get friendly or annoyed. Perhaps both. In the impromptu intimacy of boredom, or shared discomfort, you may even find yourself blurting out precipitous confessions on matters which other neighbors, of 30 years standing back home, have never heard about. Then, as quickly as they came, they're gone. Perhaps without goodbyes. By the end of the week you struggle to remember their names.

So it goes. The social habits of campers and patients may require a special dispensation, like those of relatives.

When I arrived at University Hospital in Edmonton, I was paired with ... let's call him Gary. He's a 54 year old contractor. He had his first heart attack in September, 2002. He had another that October, and another in December. In March he was dead on the table for several minutes, while a surgeon cut open his chest and massaged his heart by hand. By April of 2003, he was living full time in hospital, waiting for a heart transplant. At some point his feet curled up and swelled, so that he had to wear corrective orthotics. He moves painfully around the ward, sometimes twice a day, pushing ahead of him, like a Mexican Penetente, a peculiar metal double cross on wheels, hung with IV bags.

There's these facts about transplants: There are none new. Every heart is used. Each has a history. All have to be matched to your blood type and size. Gary is type O, as I am. Only type O can match type O, which makes it harder to find a suitable replacement. While I was there, Gary's phone rang. He was offered a heart from Saskatoon. The previous owner died in a car wreck, but not before acquiring a case of Hepatitis C. Accepting it would probably mean an eventual liver transplant. After an agonizing hour with his family, the phone rang again. Seems the fellow also had the West Nile Virus.

At that point, Gary's doctor took the proposal off the table.

Next day, he went into CCU, to be treated for excessive fluid in his swollen legs. I got a welcome night of rest. Gary has the irritating habit of waking at 3 am and commencing to swallow air and belch loudly for an hour or more. It echoed in the room. Over and over. Many a heart symptom parades as indigestion, and vice versa.

I spent most of my time in the 5th floor library. The telemetry allowed that long a leash. University Hospital is a fine imposing facility, built around 2 huge glassed in atriums as long and high as the building. Throughout the year, patients can sit in the sunshine, which must be especially welcome when it's -30 F out and a blizzard blowing.

The weekend Edmonton papers are full of the disaster in Kelowna, BC. But someone has a macabre sense of humor. Twenty thousand people evacuated, 220 homes consumed by fire, and out of all that, who do they choose to interview? A family named Ash.

I got here on a Friday, around noon. As in hospitals the world round, nothing much in the way of progress could be made over the weekend. On Monday I took a stress test. Until then, no damage had shown up, but when Dr Choy saw the results he scheduled a heart catheterization for the next morning. I was surprised, as I had no pain or difficulty with the treadmill, and barely broke a sweat. It did seem they ended it early, at 9 1/2 minutes.

During the catheterization they found the source of my discomfort, and it was scary looking booger. For those unfamiliar to the procedure, in the first stage they release a sort of ink that outlines the interior of the artery as it passes through. The patient is awake during the whole thing, and gets to see the same computer screen the surgeon is looking at. The patient is supposed to monitor his own condition, and report pain on a scale of 1 to 10. 10 being the worst pain you've ever had. It's an interesting experience, but not one I'd recommend you undertake merely for the novelty. Have a nice day on the beach instead.

It turns out that the leading edge of my previous stent, done two years ago, had collected a pile of debris, and was almost totally closed. All that was wanting was something to come along and occlude that last 5 per cent. Goombye. By such a slender thread we hang, unknowing.

It seems Maynard was not far wrong.

The plan, as explained to me on the spot, was to place another stent inside the first, overlapping the area, and inflate it. No problemas.

Well, a few. First the computer crashed. I started to ask if they were using Windows, but the moment didn't seem right. Surgeon and assistant stood around with gloved hands in the air for 10 minutes while some dulcet toned geek in the back room rebooted.

"Stop. Doctor, we will not have double plane."

A moment. "That's okay. Single plane will do. We are already at the site." He turned to an assistant behind me. I think he said, "Administer 1cc Heparin per kilo."

A woman's voice: "Er, Doctor, he gave his weight as 250 pounds. How do I make that conversion?"

O God. I'm in Canada. I started doing the math. Visions of the last mars mission flashed through my head, when some very smart people forgot to convert inches to meters. Thunk. No thank you.

They all talked it over, and came to a consensus weight in kilos that was close to what I came up with. I never said a word. Perhaps I groaned a little.

Computer up. Blood thinner administered. The Pain started. Let me explain. The surgeon has inserted a thin flexible cable perhaps 3 feet long in my groin, and worked it up through smaller and smaller arteries to the blockage in my heart. His job now is to place a tiny collapsed springlike metal coil attached to the end of that cable precisely into the gap left by the clot, and expand it with a small balloon until the clot is crushed between spring and artery wall.

This takes time, and while it is going on, NO BLOOD IS BEING DELIVERED TO THAT AREA OF MY HEART. It burns like the devil.

If it goes on too long, the deprived heart muscle dies, and those little cells do not go quietly into that good night. They rage and scream at you: "HEY, BOZO! YEAH, YOU! IF WE DIE, YOU DIE! DO SOMETHING, IDIOT!!! DO IT QUICK! DO IT NOW!"

That's right, dear friends, they are giving me a heart attack, right there on the table, and I'm not supposed to bother the surgeon by thrashing about and moaning. He is trying to manipulate something tiny at the end of a bit of fishing line. Doesn't pay to distract the fisherman at this juncture.

It did not go well. The surgeon asked his colleague standing by to help. Apparently this is a teaching hospital. I lay there puffing, listening while they discussed the problem in polite measured tones.

"I tried approaching from above. It won't go through."

"No, you have to come from below, like this, then let it turn up..."

Various things were tried, but no go. The lip of that old stent was just caked with stuff. Finally they backed off a bit, and let some blood through. Immediate relief. Then they talked about using a different stent, apparently stiffer or harder, that wouldn't double up on them when it met resistance.

Lots of activity at my deadened groin, removing, reinserting.

"Now Mumble Mumble at Winnipeg has been using these for years with good results, but there's always the danger.... I don't usually like to .....blah, blah, blah." They are discussing me as though I'm not there. I know that similar calm discussions probably go on during any surgical procedure, and perhaps at times ought to, but the patient is usually out and not privy to it.

I want the guy calm. Truly. I am enjoying the lecture, but could he GET ON WITH IT?

I managed to croak out in a somewhat controlled voice: "Doc, I think you should know I'm in a lot of pain, maybe 8 or 9. I feel like I'm dying here." He assured me I was not dying. He ordered more Sentinel, then changed that to morphine. It would take only a little longer.

It still hurt like hell, but with a somewhat duller edge to it. Hell lite.

Finally they got the thing in place, and started the first of three inflations. Each one was a heart attack worse than the one that brought me here. Worse than any I've had to date.

Dr. Choy showed up when it was over. He turned the screen so I could see better, and showed me a short movie of the procedure and result. A big round artery. From 5 percent open to 100 percent. Good.

When I got back to my room they took some blood. Next morning the good doctor told me that tests showed I'd suffered a little heart damage on the table, but nothing to worry about. I'm to be sure and have another stress test in a couple of months.

That very day, Wednesday the 27th, I was released. No one asked for my poor wilted credit card, though they did take insurance information. I caught a cab to Greyhound, took a 5 hour ride by bus to Jasper ($51). It was a lot more comfortable than the ambulance. I checked in at the hospital, where I had left my key, and found my truck and trailer had been safely towed to the police barracks nearby. There was no official charge for that, and it probably kept everything I had from being stolen while out at the campground. I left a hundred dollar donation for the local Crisis Team volunteers, the ones who actually did the moving.

They had been playing my Red Hot Chili Peppers album, By The Way, at volume. A little traveling music. After my hearing came back, I found a Korean restaurant and ate a bunch of things I can't pronounce. Both by way of supper, and of celebration.

Jasper seems a particularly fine place to be this evening.


Interregnum......


It is now 7 am on a Friday morning. Perhaps 48 hours ago I was sitting in a hospital in Edmonton, a wound in my groin, a needle in my arm, and apprehension in my heart.

Today I am in British Columbia, at a place called Painted Chasm. I am alone here. It is 34 degrees. When I walked out into the cold this morning, a cup of coffee in my hand, the sun was just rising.

I sat on the cliff for a while, watching shadows melt away. Gray clumps of needleleaves on pine and spruce turned gradually green, then brown and golden at the tips. Even rocks seemed to swell in the sun.

It is so quiet here. I can hear grass whisper when the wind bends it. I can hear the pop and snap of vertebra as my neck turns, and equally the high chitter and soft flap of hidden birds above. I can hear myself thinking.

I can see my breath, a soft fog curling out into sunlight. Proof that I am alive, on a day when I need no proof.


Bob


My thanks to Dr. Choy, and to Maricel, Brian, and all the team at 5G4, who conspired to keep me alive, that I might have mornings like this.

A Hike and A Ride

Chasm, BC, Canada

On August 19th, I pulled into Wilcox Creek Campground on the Icefields Parkway, near the Athabasca Glacier. On the 20th, I took a 7 mile hike up over Wilcox Pass, behind the Icefields Centre. It started out as a simple walk up the bluff behind the Centre, to get a few pictures of Dome and Athabasca glaciers. But what a hike! I got to talking to some fellow travelers up there, and we all agreed that we had never taken a walk that was so soon or so well rewarded, and cost us so little effort. The skies were clear and sunny, with a crisp intermittent breeze.

Like every hike I've taken since Glacier Park, this one started off entirely vertical, but once I attained the clifftop, it evened out into a gradual rise to the pass through an alpine meadow. I found it so agreeable that after a light lunch I walked on through the Pass and down the other side to the highway. Then I easily hitched a ride back 5 or 6 kilometers to the campground.

The 21st was spent lazing around, enjoying the unusually smoke-free sky, reading various guidebooks, and writing letters. Around 3 pm I started yawning a lot, and by 3:30 I was having trouble getting enough air. I had a headache. I tried lying down for a while, but couldn't go to sleep. Then a little after 4 the left side of my chest started hurting. I got up and took some nitro and aspirin, but it didn't seem to help. Instead it soon got worse, traveling up into my throat. I tried the nitro again. Couldn't tell the difference. I began to sweat in the cool air.

Uh oh. What does all this remind me of?

I got myself up from there and managed to quickly gather medicine, close up the trailer, and start driving on down to the Icefields Centre in the truck, one hand on the wheel and one on my chest. When I got to the parking lot, I saw the stairs. No way I'm getting up those, so I did a quick U in the middle of the highway. I knew I was getting erratic, but somehow I managed not to hit anybody. I went up the bus ramp, parked under a "no parking" sign, and staggered to a ticket window.

"Is there medical help to be had here?"

There was. Five minutes after I was on oxygen, I was feeling fine again. The pain went away. The Park Wardens called for an ambulance from Jasper, then bundled me into a van and drove to meet it. I was sucking down plenty of o2 all the while. On the way, they asked me if I had Travel Insurance. Nope, just the regular kind.

Seton Hospital in Jasper, I'm told, has suffered many budget cuts in recent years. Nowadays, it's an emergency room attached to an ever-growing nursing home. I was a little unnerved by the arrival of the doctor. Except for being blond, he was a ringer for Maynard G. Krebs. With a Dutch accent. He was wearing a wrinkled pair of too-large shorts and a loose Hawaiian shirt, a la Hawkeye. Maybe they called him from home, or something. He kept rubbing his nose.

He had brilliant blue eyes, with pinpoint pupils. I couldn't help it. The thought raced through my head: "Have I got a junky for a doctor?" The lights were bright. That might explain it. Paranoia often accompanies a heart attack.

While I was being hooked up for an electrocardiogram, the ambulance driver saw a slight gap and sidled up to the table.

"uh, hate to do this, but I've got your bill here. Got a credit card?"

"How much is it?"

"$483....uh, no, that's $843."

I blinked. "Want to try again?"

"No, that's it." Well, I was having a heart attack. I gave it to him. The electrocardiogram showed nothing abnormal. A few minutes passed. A tech came in to draw blood. I had been waiting for this, because I knew the enzyme test was pretty dependable.

"Uh, I need to see your credit card..." Good grief. Okay, $108 and a few hours later, blood work shows no heart damage. I'm feeling a little better. Doctor wants to admit me overnight, talks on the phone to Edmonton, decides to recommend seeing a cardiologist there.

Okay.

A nurse rolled me off to an empty ward, hooked me up to an IV. Then she said, "I hate to do this, but I need to get an imprint of your card..." I laughed with only a touch of hysteria, and handed it over.

I was exhausted. I lay back and tried to sleep. Just as I was drifting off, though, I sensed something looming over me. It was the ambulance driver.

"Forget something?"

"Uh, doctor's sending you to Edmonton tomorrow. I'm driving you, so I need to see your credit card again?"

"How much?"

"Well, it's a long way, so it's kinda steep. $2365."

Like hell. "That's okay. I'm feeling better. I'll drive myself."

He seemed stunned. "Uh, uh, uh, maybe you'd like to see doctor."

"Why?"

He went away. After a bit here comes Maynard G. Krebs, baggy shorts, goatee, and all. He made his case. "You've got insurance. You are alone. You may have a ticking bomb in your chest. I think, from what you've told me, that a piece of the lining in your artery is trying to let go. Periodically it comes up like a little flap and partially blocks blood flow. If it turns loose altogether, which it may at any moment, and you are alone.... you can die pretty quickly. And if you are driving, you may take someone with you."

Maynard was making sense. I thought about it a moment, and said, "Okay, send in the vulture." I gave the boy my card. He said, "Of course, if you were Canadian, none of this would cost you a cent."

I was to hear that a lot over the next few days.

Though I paid first class, the ride to Edmonton wasn't in the shiny new thing they were driving the day before. It was having a radio installed. At 7 am they brought round a 10 year old rattletrap that bounced me ragged all the way into Edmonton. A bit like being thrown in the back of a pickup. And there were fumes coming in from somewhere. I don't think the back doors sealed properly.

So, dear friends, here is one day's special price for camping semi-remotely and having angina: Ambulance, $3218. Overnight hospital stay, $2464. Doctor's fee, $400. All totaled: $6082, Canadian currency. And this only delivered me to the doors of University Hospital in Edmonton, where I was to spend nearly a week.

I know, I know. I'm not ungrateful. And I'm alive to tell the tale. But it's enough to give a guy a heart attack.


Bob

Their Country, Tis of Them

Wilcox Creek Campground, #7
Jasper National Park
Alberta, Canada


I've been thinking about Canada. It's a big place, and anything you can say about it will have more exceptions than you can shake a stick at. Perhaps it is too large a place for the jumped up conjectures of a foreign tourist to capture. But nonetheless each tourist will have his impressions. These are mine. Perhaps they may interest someone along this road, somewhere.

The thing about being a tourist abroad, is that it makes you a tourist at home. You start out thinking about foreigners, and end up thinking about your own country. Thinking about Canada helps us think about ourselves.

To this Texan, Canada seems just like Texas. Fifty years ago. Back then, it was not uncommon to walk around the Courthouse square in Georgetown and hear people casually speaking Swedish, or German. No more. You hear someone speaking German now in Georgetown, he learned it in college, and he's showing off. Probably talking to himself.

Spanish is another matter. Complete assimilation is a generational process. But in Canada it hardly occurs at all.

People in Canada tend to keep their foreignness, even after generations. Perhaps it offers a touchstone of identity that the Confederation does not. I am told that Canada did not even have a flag of its own until 1965 or so. "Radical idea, that. Could be trouble, ay? Maybe we should wait a bit more."

Occasionally, in back country BC, you will find a monument extolling the adventures and hardships of the "Pioneers".

In 1907.

Late, very late. To an American, Canada as a country seems sluggish. Tentative. Extremely nice, of course. But that's about the only thing extreme about them.

Even now, large parts of Canada are empty. They are much closer to the frontier than we are. It is not yet lost to them. It's right there, the place where the roads quit, 200 miles north of Montreal. Or Thunder Bay. On the map, that area has a tentative look, like the places where ancient mapmakers used to scrawl "Here be dragons."

In contrast, there's hardly a part of the American West that isn't being bid up and bought up by hordes of desperate Californians looking for a "quiet" retirement spot. They ought to come to Canada.

Wait. I didn't mean it. Stop. Oof.

Canada strikes this tourist as a profoundly conservative place. Conservative by nature, in a sense that the radical ideologues down south, who call themselves conservatives, can't begin to understand. Canada is careful. If they find something good up here, they are loath to let go of it, and certainly not just because it doesn't jibe with some Idea or Theory.

Perish the thought.

For good or bad, America has always been in a ferment of fashion and ideas, and devil take the hindmost. America is the natural home of the radical. We always want the latest thing, and are perfectly happy, most of the time, to throw the baby out with the bathwater just to make way for it. We will destroy happiness in order to pursue it. American conservatives and liberals are fundamentally more like each other than either is like the moderate they both despise. Out with the old, in with the new. Ain't it shiny, though? We live to shop.

Pity the poor reluctant American moderate. Wimp. He's way too Canadian.

It is tempting, though far too facile, to blame the character of both nations on the American Revolution. Politics as biology, how clever. The naturally conservative, the truly conservative people, mostly all fled north, leaving behind naught but radicals of various stripes, all bickering over who had the biggest idea, and who could legislate higher up a tree. We're still that way. It's in the blood.

Canadians are different. They are cautious. Their independence, their sense of freedom and consensus, their tolerance and good manners - all these seem sprung from a reservoir of caution imbibed with mother's milk.

Sometimes I get the impression, from their historical displays, that many would still rather be part of the British Empire. That was something grand, wasn't it? More than mere nationhood. Thus the inclination to an international spirit.

Which brings us to the national tic, the ubiquity of the national interjection. You know, "Eh", or "Ay?" What's up with that? You hear it everywhere.

The other night I heard Garrison Keillor say that "New Yorkers expect you to interrupt them. Otherwise they don't think you are paying attention."

In the same vein, Canadians interrupt themselves, constantly, ay? It is a way of testing whether the listener is paying attention. It is a way of asking, "Are you with me?", because something in the national character is never sure of that. Canadians are always checking.

Most Americans will assume you are with them, and move right along, talking mostly to themselves, until you decide to step in and pick a fight, just to improve their manners. Then they act surprised.

Canadians seem painfully polite. They want to go slow, build consensus in conversation, come back and reinforce the point if necessary, maybe even (the horror!) change their minds, if necessary, in order to get along better. Of course, much of this is genuflection to the national character. Beneath that, they fight as much as anyone.

I tried a few of these ideas out on a new-found Canadian friend. He looked at me, and laughed, and said, "You're a reacher, aren'tcha? That's very American."

Exactly. And that's a very Canadian reply.

So what is an American to make of a nation which looks like a rural version of us? Whose national highway, for much of it's length, is a two lane road? How 1950! Think about this: There's just not enough Canadians yet. Population pressure isn't what it was down South, half a century ago. Give them time. They are likely to screw, and screw, and screw things up just like us.

Meanwhile, if you want to find something like the robust, mostly empty, pluralistic, and somewhat less confident land you grew up in, try coming North and squint your eyes a little. The money's funny, and you have to buy your gas in liters, but you can almost taste home. It's like a time machine, or maybe a slightly tangential universe.

Canada is like the second verse of a old familiar tune, which we can't quite remember as we try to sing along.

We are all immigrants, you know. Tomorrow is a foreign country, and yesterday the distant land of our birth. But maybe you can go home again. Sort of. Head north.

On the downside, it gets rather cold up here. Nostalgia may be a fruit that ripens only in summer. But it travels well.

The scary thing for Canadians is that to visit the future they have only to turn south. Eeek.

I know, I know. "Keep thinking, Butch. That's what you're good at."


Bob

Onward Through the Fog

Wilcox Creek Campground
near Jasper, Alberta

Today I woke to a new and glorious Morn! The sun is shining, the peaks are layered and hung with dazzling white, and the sky is a deep and improbable blue. Ah, Canada at last. Time for another walk in the woods.

I need one. My first up here, a hike up to Glacier Crest in Glacier Park last Sunday, was something of a failure, other than to prove that whatever was wrong with my back has gone away. Only 4.7 kilometers. Sounds ridiculously easy. I walked 6 miles a day back home. But 3.5 miles of this was like a ladder. Jacob's Ladder, perhaps. I had thought my shoes were broken in, but broken in on the flats is not broken in for a climb, and my toes got a bit toasty after a while. I only took a liter of water, and that's not enough. I drank it all on the way up. Later, my mouth dry as cotton, I began to hear faint voices in the wind, and in the squeaking of my boots. Women's voices.

Then I heard the sound of water where there was none.

I left at noon, and, with many stops to gasp for breath and hallucinate, arrived at the top a little after 4 pm. The cirque below was filled with smoke and mist. The shadows were indistinct, and where the dim sun shone down it was refracted, hiding even more. It was like looking down into a gigantic bowl of thin grey luminescent soup. The auto focus on my Olympus immediately went crazy, and the manual focus showed no more. Even to my eyes, there was only a thin white thread of river down there. The peaks above merged with the smoky sky, all greyscale. I took 30 pictures, all of which had to be thrown out.

Back in the woods things were different, but no better. Detail was okay. But what appeared to my eyes was deep gloom and damp mystery, thin shafts of sunlight, mould and moss and figured bark and subtle silent movements among heavy needled branches hanging low.

What the camera gave me was pictures of trees.

I survived the climb, though. That's good. Lots of stops. I was a tired puppy when I got back, with not all my parts working happily together, but nothing amiss that would not be settled by a sound night's sleep.

Next day I headed east into Golden, with shopping and laundry to be done. At the laundromat I spoke with a farmer's wife from Saskatchewan. She was there because her baby son had thrown up all over everything they had with them. Smoke and strep throat had shortened their vacation, but all in all she did not seem sorry to leave.

"Lots to do back home," she said wistfully.

The local IGA grocery gave me a chance to try out Canadian junk food: Jacob's Creme Biscuits, Ritz crackers "with real Cheddar", Miss Vickie's Sea Salt and Malt Vinegar Potato Chips, Napoli Pepperettes, Feta Vinagrette, peppered jerky. Some disappointing Brie. Fresh fruit that looked worse but tasted better than what I usually get back home.

A young French girl with cheeks chewed by acne served up the Garlic Roast Beef and Pastrami with a snarl. "Is that all?.... Is THAT all?" I was having trouble figuring out what half a pound was in kilos, and she obviously had better things to do.

What the dickens? "A little more, Miss, please. Can I have some more?" A heavy sigh. Americains! Have they no schools? Have they no prisons?

Towards 4 pm I set off uphill and east for Yoho National Park, newly provisioned and in a good frame of mind. I found myself belting out the refrain from an old song: "Yoho! Yoho! A Pirate's life for me!" Fortunately I was alone, and nobody can prove a thing.

I stopped at Monarch Campground, near Field. It was spread along the foot of a massive rock wall, which an accompanying sign suggested was the home of mountain goats.

It lied.

I wasted half an hour with binoculars, scanning for them, then took the truck up to Takkakaw Falls. This glacier-fed torrent plunges from a great height, hits a ledge, then roars and rooster-tails up and away from the wall. It's hard to take a picture anywhere nearby because you are being drowned. A couple of rock climbers were waaay up there, right beside it, making their way down from rope to rope. They must have been cold and soaking wet all day.

I stopped for dessert and coffee on the deck at the Lodge on the way back. A tall glass of strawberries in whipped cream, dribbled with Marnier. Entirely pleasant, civilized, calm, and overpriced.

My neighbor back at the campground had a motorhome with Texas license plates. He turned out to be an Escapee from California, delivering his Canadian girlfriend back to her home in Manitoba.

Around 8 pm, one of those huge red German tour buses arrived, the sort with coach seats up front and a stacked warren of porthole sleepers in the back, each maybe a meter square. It stopped in the parking lot. Perhaps 20 passengers boiled out of the front door and immediately began setting up tables, chairs, silverware, carrying buckets of water, slicing melon. Very little looking up at the mountain. And little in the way of talk, except for the surly driver, who was "sheissing" the world in general while organizing a complete kitchen and pantry, which slid out on rollers from compartments within the bowels of the bus.

We grabbed a beer and lined up our lawn chairs. It was like watching ants at work.

In short order they were all vigorously eating some sort of boiled supper. The moment it really began getting dark, up they jumped and packed away everything and queued up to get back on the bus. I thought maybe they were leaving, but no. Silence descended. By 9:30 only one cubicle remained lit, third from the bottom, fourth from the front. No doubt a rebellious nightowl, reading herself to sleep.

At 7 am next morning I heard their diesel crank up. By the time I got up groggily and peered out, they were gone.

What a teutonic way to travel.


Bob


PS: Right after writing the above, I started having chest pains. I drove down to the Icefields Centre, and thence to Jasper by ambulance. The next morning I was in Edmonton at University Hospital. I got another angioplasty. I'm fine now, it's the 27th, I'm parked in front of the Police Barracks in Jasper, and about to resume my trip. More on this later.

Can't get on the Internet to deliver this. Verizon is "updating the computers", whatever that means. Well, I'm not going to have a heart attack over it. :o)

Good night Nurse!

"It's a Problem, Eh?"

Well, here I am, happy as a smoked clam, smack in the middle of Canada's Glacier Park.

When I crossed the border at Roosberg yesterday, I told the young lady at Customs I was a Refugee from the smoke around Flathead Lake, seeking succor, imposing on the undoubted kindness of Canada. She laughed, threw her eyes to Heaven, and said "Good Luck". The smile that lit up her face came and went like dry summer lightning, followed by a slightly stormy and uncertain look of official irritation. It made a little wrinkle right above and between her lovely eyes. I don't know if it was directed at the surrounding smoke, at me for unlicensed levity, or at herself for having laughed at it.

Either which way, it threw her off her game. She retreated to the comfort of litany.

Turned out I was a mite over on alcohol. Shoulda drank more as I approached the border, I guess. What was I thinking? But she waved me through anyway, with a casual gesture of dispensation.

"Have a good trip, Mr. Giddings."

I think she was a bit nervous about delaying me further. On the road I was most likely a harmless old dodger. But if I should make her laugh again, well. There goes the pension.

It's been several long, frustrating days. Missoula was choking with smoke. From shortly after Butte to Flathead Lake, I could barely tell there were mountains around me. The Lake itself, though, by some freak of wind, was clear from shore to shore. I took the east or "Indian" road around it, coming down into Finley Point State Park about 6 pm.

At first I thought I'd really screwed up. The sites are just stripes on a parking lot, the space between about 40 foot long and 12 feet wide. If someone with slides came in, I might not be able to get my door open.

Ah, the fabled Prisoners of Finley Point, slipping twenties from window to window along the line to the Warden, er, Park Ranger, tapping her foot down there at the end. At the foot of this parking lot there's another 40 feet or so of trees and scattered tables, a few abandoned fire rings, a low concrete wall, a sliver of rocky beach, and the lake. There is electricity and water, but no dump. I was aghast at how crowded things were for twenty bucks. And the place wasn't completely full.

Then came the sunset. All was forgiven. Everyone lined their chairs up at the retaining wall, and the light show commenced. It is hard to say anything good about this smoke, but it just may have improved the sunset. The dusky hills across the lake glowed with an outline of brilliant orange, then red, then blue, then purple. At 10:15, there was still a faint frisson of light above the far horizon. Who needs a campfire, anyway?

It was warm, about 75 degrees. I jumped in the lake. That took care of that. Lying back in the water, I saw stars for the first time since Bozeman. This wasn't so bad. I could spend a week here, kayaking around, reading.

Eight o'clock next morning I was wakened by people 12 feet either side of me hooking up, the usual diesel rattle. I peeked out the window. We were completely socked in. What lake? O well.

I had a choice. I could try to push through the smoke into BC, or turn 90 degrees and light out for the Olympic peninsula. Someone on the newsgroup sent me a URL for the BC fire situation map, and it indicated the fires were mostly at the border or around Kamloops.

It lied.

I drove a little more than 400 miles north today through a grey tunnel of smoke, which widened only occasionally, just enough to give me a looming hint of what I was missing. I stopped at a roadside farm and bought some fresh tomatoes, garlic, roasted almonds, and a pie. I drove by a number of golf resorts, and the hot springs at Fairmont and Radium. Those who have followed these adventures will know that I do not lightly pass up a hot spring.

The road from Radium to Banff was closed.

As irritating as the smoke was the fact that I couldn't get wound up complaining about it much. The people around me didn't like it any more than I did, and they didn't have the ready option of driving on. In a turnout near Inverness, I struck up a conversation with a couple I took to be European tourists, from their speech. Turns out they were locals.

Canada is like that, a stubbornly polyglot place.

He said that some Official Government Weenie on the TV had announced that there were over 300 fires just locally, and 1000 firefighters to control them.

"That's 3 per fire." He shook his head.

"Not quite," I replied. "One of them will be carrying a clipboard."

He thought about this a second, and decided to laugh. I decided to move on. He was a big fella, a little younger than me, and for all I know he had a clipboard in his car.

Across from Quinn Creek, near Radium, I stopped for half an hour and watched the entire top of a mountain explode in an red-orange ball, and above that a towering column of smoke and ash. Buzzing round up there you could barely see the tiny pointless figure of a helicopter hauling a bucket, like a dragonfly dangling a spider egg on a bit of silk.

There's not enough buckets in the world. Nothing to be done but watch it burn, stay out of the way, and pray for rain. Lots of rain.

I finally drove out of the smoke as I gained altitude north of Golden at twilight, almost at the entrance to Glacier Park. I rolled down the window. I could breathe without choking. That's new. That's good. My headache started to lighten up. Okaay.

Then I came around a corner, and quite innocently and without premeditation heard these words come rolling right out of my mouth: "Now THAT'S a f*ing mountain, and no sh*t!"

Well, it was. It filled the windshield. It is hard to imagine anything more massive and abruptly vertical. It was enormous. It was vertiginous. I was delirious. And it was still 20 miles away.

Is that a glacier up there? Well, it sure ain't an ice cube.

I drove, and drove, and drove, looking round for a campground, gawking up like a child in a toy store. Passed a filling station and hotel. Finally: "Illecillewaet Campground", and beneath that a note in red. Oops. "Complet". Okay, so it's full, there'll be another. This park is something like 50 miles across, there's bound to be more than one campground.

Nope. I finally gave up when I started down into Revelstoke, and smelled smoke again. Nope, notgonnahappenjesus. Just give me forty acres to turn this rig around.

I found the functional equivalent in a chain up area, and drove back up the hill, determined to find a turnout for the night. There's one on the right, that'll do. "Sir Donald". Okay, Donnie boy, you're about to have company. I got over as far from the road as I could, crawling forward to find a level place, then noticed an odd unlabeled narrow dark entrance into the trees. Forward a little more.

Wonder of wonders, from the corner of my eye I just caught a white reflection from the top of a trailer. What the hey? There's a bunch of campsites hidden in there, maybe some of them empty! I made the circuit in the dark, catching people staring up dazed and wide-eyed like startled deer, sitting at tables, brushing their teeth, eating out of cookpots.

Graded gravel sites, a toilet hut, trash containers - it's all here, an entire unlabeled stealth campground, back in the trees. Half expecting UFOs or Children of the Corn, I went round again, dived headfirst into the first unoccupied place I came to. I locked the truck, let down the blinds, ate a big piece of peach pie, and went to bed.

Morning sorted things out, of course. Sort of. Turns out "Sir Donald" is an unmarked overflow site for the unpronounceable campground, and also for nearby "Loop Brook" campground, which so helpfully had no sign for westbound travelers such as I. I took a look at both these "regular" campgrounds, and they were the sort of thing you often see at US National Parks, narrow and twisty roads, low overheads, and barely separated, shallow sites. Designed and built a couple of generations ago, before large RVs.

A nightmare to negotiate in the dark.

I'm sticking with Sir Donald. There's a dozen sites, easy to get into and out of. No fire rings, but in the current environment that hardly matters. It's $3 cheaper. And it backs right up to the Illy-Silly-Wait River, or however you say that.

It is a tad too close to the road, but that's true of the others also.

Somehow, near 10 pm on a Friday night in August, bleary-eyed, in the dark, I stumbled onto the best campground available round here for RVs, and at a lower price.

I really ought to go buy a lottery ticket. If you are lucky enough, long enough, you don't need to be smart. Come to think of it, I've always depended on that.

I hear that luck can quickly disappear, like smoke. If it disappears as quickly as the smoke I've been driving through, I need to quit running around and settle into a casino.

When the "ranger" came by to collect this evening, I asked him what gives with the unlabeled campgrounds.

"Yah, that's right. It's a problem, eh? But it's way above my level. It has to do... I hear it has to do with not having any paint that's the right shade of brown. There's got to be uniformity, y'know."

"Did someone run over the old sign? What happened?"

"I really don't know. It was before my time."

"How long have you been here?"

"Four years."

Eh. I see. There is no brown paint in Canada. For the last four years. At least. No plywood either, I suppose. No crayons.

Nightly arrivals from the East must depend on Divine Guidance, like the Wise Men of Old.

Tomorrow I'm taking a hike up to Glacier Crest. I've bought a map. I'm going to study it very carefully. I daren't hope for signs.


Bob, who despite choking on the smoke and stumbling around in the dark, is having a pretty darn good time.

BC IS on Fire

I am in Radium Hot Springs, BC. I have not been out of thick smoke, except briefly, since shortly after I left Butte, Montana, several days ago. Fellow here says there's 315 fires in just this little corner of BC.

I have made a mistake, coming north. I have been driving for over 200 miles, and there is no end in sight. It is like driving through a grey tunnel. I know there are mountains to the left and right, because bits of the tunnel are greyer than others. If I'd driven south from Flathead, maybe I'd be out of the smoke by now.

But it's too late. I'm committed. So it's north to Golden, or to Jasper, or maybe Prince George. Anywhere it's not burning.

The road from here to Banff is closed. More fires. Calgary is getting quite a lot of smoke too, according to CBC.

A new slogan: "Come Visit: Watch BC make an Ash of Itself".

But am I bitter? O Noooooo....

My advice to all. If you find a nice place, such as I had in Cody or Red Lodge, stay there. As you go north, you go downhill.

Bob

Fires Still Make Me Jumpy

Near Lolo Springs
Montana


When I came down close to Red Lodge, I stopped short at Parkside Campground in the Gallatin National Forest. While I made out the reservation slip, the host, who was from Cut n' Shoot, Texas, and proud of it, made sure I understood there were no campfires allowed. I paused, and allowed back as how that didn't please me, and where could I camp and have a fire?

"Not in Montana," he said.

Driving down into Red Lodge, I immediately saw why. On the west side of the highway, the whole side of a mountain had been burned off. Nothing but black snags, all the way to the top. I stopped and looked up at that slanting stretch of rocky ground. Not too bad. You could get up there in a couple of hours. But what if you had a growling fire snaking up behind you, and behind it a 30 mph wind? You better not hesitate.

Smokejumpers are a bunch of damn fools. That said, you've got to admire their balls.

I saw my first working fires on the way to Bozeman. Tall plumes of smoke rose on the north side of the interstate, both at Big Timber and near Livingston. Bozeman was clear, and I spent the night there. From Butte all the was into Missoula, though, the haze got thicker and thicker. First the blue sky disappeared, then the sun, then the farther mountains. Finally the traffic got hard to make out, in the near distance, and my throat was beginning to get scratchy.

I stopped for gas in Missoula at 6 pm. The guy next to me had Montana plates. I asked him where I had to go to get away from the smoke. He grinned.

"South," he said.

"What about Flathead Lake?"

"My mom lives up there. She came down day before yesterday, and said it was ten times worse up there."

Great. Maybe I could drive clear up to Canada.

"Canada's got their own fire. You don't want to drive in the smoke after dark. Too many scared deer on the road."

Great again. I looked on the map. Maybe 20 miles south on 12, there was a place called Lolo Hot Springs. If I'm gonna asphyxiate, it might as well be in a spa.

On the way down, I passed a big encampment of firefighters in a field along the road. Past that, I gradually began to see a little blue sky, and then a campground on the left.

Tomorrow I'll get an early start. I'll check out the springs since I'm almost there, and then back to Missoula and Flathead Lake. My neighbors here say they were at the Lake this morning, and it was clear and beautiful. Apparently the winds are completely unpredictable. If Flathead Lake turns out to be invisible, then on to Kalispell, and Canada, and on and on and on until either light or smoke gives out.

That's why this house has wheels.


Bob, who is some pissed at Mother Nature.

"That's What They Say, Sonny"

Near Lolo Springs
Montana

Welll, let's see. It's been near a week since we last spoke. A work week, anyway. (Shudder. Sorry about that.) At that time, I'd just settled into a beautiful lakeside spot on the Buffalo Bill Reservoir, west of Cody, Wyoming.

I got a lot of mundane necessities taken care of in Cody. Changed my oil at Walmart, washed some clothes and the truck, cashed a large check, bought groceries. On the 2nd day, I went to the Buffalo Bill Museum complex. ($15, good for 2 days.)

Did it in one afternoon. Wore me out. Something like 4000 rifles and pistols, displayed on two floors, and another large wing of western art and sculpture. A fair selection of Remington sculpture, and some modern paintings of a similar theme. I particularly liked the illustrated letters Remington sent to friends, little quick miniature drawings and paintings of what he was doing. Some only a couple of inches across, on a corner of a page.

The wing dedicated to the personal history of Bill Cody was moderately interesting. This guy was a movie star before there were movies. He has no modern equivalent. Suppose, for the moment, that before John Wayne made movies about WWII, he actually led marines onto the beach at Iwo Jima. Something like that. Like Audie Murphy, maybe, if he'd been a more convincing actor.

Bill Cody was the real thing when he was young, a hunter and killer of many, many buffalo and a moderate number of Indians in his decade or so of service as an Army scout and forager after the Civil War. Instead of diminishing as he grew older, as most of us do, he became something more than real. Taking his cue from a couple of fanciful tales by the dime novelist Ned Buntline, he created a pageant called the Wild West Show, and thus became as responsible as anyone for spreading throughout the country, and later the world, a certain manly and romantic vision of the Old West. He became his own legend, and made a good living at it. The last generation of the 19th century, and the first of the 20th, came to see him as the embodiment of a stillborn West, buried alive beneath a tide of immigration and barbed wire fencing, most all of which was bought, brought, and sold by the railroads.

As such, he dined with Presidents and Kings.

My own impression is that the Wild West existed, but never for long in any one place. It was like a self-limiting low fire that flickered through the land and then moved on, following the transient fuel of volatile lawless men and hardnosed fortune hunters. It was said of Liver-Eatin' Johnston, for instance, that "he never betrayed a friend nor gave quarter to a foe." Which he perceived you to be, however, may have depended heavily on how much he had to drink that day, or that week.

Johnston got his notorious nickname early on, when he was observed hacking the liver out of an Indian he had killed, and eating it raw. Later he denied the incident. I read all about this in the county museum in Red Lodge. There's several photographs of him there, all showing a sturdy-looking older man with a full beard covering up his features, often holding a rifle in a careless, familiar way. Johnston lived a lot longer than he had any right to expect, given his diet and proclivity for violence. The last word on the matter went something like this: A recently deceased resident of Red Lodge, as a small boy, saw the aged Johnston on the street. As small boys will, he just went up and asked him, "Did you really kill Indians and eat their livers?" The rough old man looked down at him, unsmiling. "That's what they say, sonny."

Perhaps it was a good career move, given the environment. For a while Johnston was a deputy sheriff of Coal County, Montana, with responsibility for Red Lodge, and after a bit the sheriff noticed he seldom arrested anyone. When questioned, he claimed that he never had to arrest a man twice. After the first encounter they either left the area or decided to quit annoying him.

If you come through Cody, go to the museum and see what's left of all that. It's worth the 15 bucks.

Morning of the 3rd day, I took 120 north out of Cody, then turned west into Sunlight Basin, following the Chief Joseph Highway. This is where the Nez Perce briefly outsmarted and shook the 7th Cavalry, which was trying to pin them in and slaughter them, during the revenge frenzy following Little Big Horn. The road connects to the Top of the World Highway, coming northeast out of Yellowstone, over Beartooth Pass, and down into Red Lodge. This last road is aptly named, but it is not such an onerous climb as I had been given to believe. Plenty of 35 foot motorhomes up there in the passes, and I never had to engage 4WD. It is narrow, like many a park road. It is a really great way to enter Montana.

A couple of motorhomes were carrying Vespa-like Honda scooters on their back bumpers. These looked interesting, for quiet local travel. I'll have to find a dealer and try one out.

I camped in Parkside CG in the Gallatin NF, 16 miles up from Red Lodge, along a roaring creek. That's plenty good sleeping. Temps in the 40s at night. I have yet, though, to pull out the down comforter. Maybe up in Canada.

In Red Lodge, I ate lunch at the Pollard Hotel, once the Stafford, an elegant old building where the likes of Cody and Liver Eatin' Johnston used to knock back the cheap whiskey. The chicken salad sandwich was good but pricy. I asked the young waiter what was the best thing on the dinner menu.

He sighed.

"Well, used to be the rib-eye, with the stilton cheese dressing, but.... well, y'see, there's new management, and the old chef left in November....tourists would rather have a 5 dollar hamburger....we...we used to be 4 star here...." He trailed off.

"Used to be." A word to the wise. I took the hint anyway. It is a fine old building, though.

In great things and small, history moves right along. You can move along with it, or attend the elaborate funeral. It's usually a good show.

Closed casket, of course.


Bob

Picture That

Near Lolo Springs

Montana


I guess it's about time to sit down and consider what I am up to with these reports. One person complained that I'd turned email into monologue, and I guess that's true. It's an artifact of travel and the dearth of Verison towers back in the woods. Halfway through this month, I've already used up all 800 minutes on my phones. In the evenings, when it's free, I'm always beyond reach of a tower. It would be extremely easy to consider the whole enterprise a chore, and let it slide.

Decisions, decisions.

It's like I've left the cocktail party and gone out under the stars. Aside from muffled moans from bodies moving rhythmically in the bushes, I can hear only the occasional drollery from an open window. Shall I go back in?

Nah. Not gonna happen.

So I'm left with doing the occasional monologue, and with less repartee than would be my wont. I'll keep it up as long as it amuses me, and perhaps one other person, and hope to be forgiven the unavoidable silences, the inevitable delays. It's nothing personal. By the time I get feedback, days have gone by.

I am also still trying to make my peace with photography. Once I mentioned my impatience with the paraphernalia of batteries, film, settings, and the psychology of sticking a machine between you and what you are trying to see, as though you didn't trust your eyes.

Someone - I think it was Bob Hatch - took exception, saying photos were an aid to memory for him.

I know what he means. I wonder if I can explain what I mean. There is a gestalt of memory and imagination that arises when you simply stand still before the remarkable and take it in. It is a combination of remembering what was here before, imagining what it may become (as in winter), and participating in the parallels of the present.

Surely I am not the only one to ever notice that what seems alive to the eyes looks dead through the lens.

But don't it look natural?

Yet I know it works the other way, sometimes. Recently, I walked right by a field of alpine flora, oblivious. On the way back down the mountain, I stopped briefly to take an obligatory picture, and got wrapped up in a particular flower, a small intricate loveliness that would have been lost to me had I not been wearing that camera like an albatross around my neck.

A camera can only capture what is in front of it, shorn of context. It is a machine. Memory is so much more than that, and imagination yet more. But it is true that photos can trip our memory years later, bring back feelings, words, connections that are not to be found in the photo itself at all.

I admit that photos have reanimated things that would otherwise have been wholly lost in the dustbin of my brain.

So I guess I'll keep taking them. But I try not to get too carried away with it. One curb is the cost. Today I sent out a dozen, attached to email. It took 16 minutes on my Verison connection in Bozeman, which set me back 6 or 7 dollars. Once was no big deal, but how long do I want to keep that up?

I know, I should have made a web page for this stuff back in the winter, during the extended leisure of living in my own driveway. But noooo.

Me, provident? Me, efficient?

Picture that.


Bob

No Flies on Me

Cody, Wyoming


Saratoga Springs is a little town with everything a camper needs: a $2 municipal dump and a 24 hour hot spring.

The dump is north of town. The opening is 2 feet across. This is the first time I've dumped without a slinky. Just position over the hole and let'er rip. You can't miss. All you have to worry about is losing a tire in the thing on the way out.

The hot spring is down on a lazy curve of the North Platte River, as you might expect, next to the municipal swimming pool. The swimming area itself is fenced in, apparently for the purpose of charging admission, but the hot pool next to it is open and free, and empty in the middle of the day.

This is the hottest pool I've ever dared enter. The warning sign states that it is at LEAST 104 degrees. It is a pool within a pool. The small one at the bathhouse end, where the spring bubbles up, seems just short of boiling. I asked the attendant if anyone ever gets in there, and she said it might happen, but she'd never seen it. The outer pool is about 30' by 40', maybe 3-4 feet deep, and every bit of it poses a threat of scalding.

I wish I'd thought to bring along a dozen eggs, just as an experiment.

People must get used to it, sort of. There's one tough little 6 year old girl here jumping in and out unconcerned, making fun of her scaredy-cat older brother.

I am up to my knees, and wondering whether my will is current.

For rational folks, there's the "hobo pool" out in the river. It's the usual collection of rocks enclosing the outflow from the formal pool. Here you can get any temperature you want. If you just happen to blow through this burg about 11 o'clock of a January night, with snow deep on the ground and a million stars crackling in the black sky, this would be a great place for a significant pause.

From Saratoga I made my way to Lander, just as the sun was going down. South of town on 131 is Sinks Canyon State Park, along the Popo Agie River. The campsites here seemed designed to accommodate Model Ts, and maybe they were. Many are much too shallow for the average Subaru, let alone a behemoth like mine. For a while I wasn't sure I was going to be able to get out of there without bringing a tree or two with me.

Finally I extricated myself and moved on up into the forest, where I found a suitable flat spot along the river. The temperature at 10 pm was about 70 degrees, much warmer than I've been used to lately, so I turned on the fan to cool things off. Later I turned it off and went to bed. About 3 am I woke to the subdued low roar of a fan. Crap. Forgot it. I'd better get up and turn it off before I drain the batteries.

This conversation went on for some time in the dark, until finally I did raise up, stagger to the closet, and flip the switch to the inverter.

WAITaminit. What's that sound? I just turned the inverter ON.

That's right, folks. Bob Giddings woke up in the middle of the night, muttered a low curse, roused himself heroically, and tried to turn off the Popo Agie River from a remote switch in his closet.

No doubt the Nobel Committee will soon hear of this.

On the way up to Cody next morning, I stopped at a Radio Shack/Verizon Office and inquired about enabling my phones up in Canada. No problem. Just $10 a month per phone. The National Singlerate phone service is unaffected. The America's Choice phone is actually improved, as there is no roaming in Canada. All I have to worry about is roaming from some sneaky American tower near the border. Maybe in Vancouver.

I am now near Cody, in the State Park on the Buffalo Bill Reservoir, and it is magnificent, right on the water, across from a mesa on the other shore that makes you want to curl up with a couple of Louis Lamour westerns. Every now and then you could look up and people that promontory with his characters. $12 a night. I could get used to this.

Last night was cold. It is nearly noon now, and 89 degrees. But you know, it isn't bad. As they say, it's a dry heat.

I've been methodically assassinating insects all morning. This might be a good time to note certain native peculiarities of the flies up here. They are big, dumb, and slow. They have in miniature all the qualities of an average University of Oklahoma backfield. The slightest breeze knocks them down.

They mass, though, in their myriads, apparently for the purpose of reminding me to close the screen when I go out. They possess strength in numbers, but as individuals they are pathetic. You can grab them out of the air. I've killed a couple by STEPPING on them. No respectable Texas fly would stand for that.

Even the mosquitoes here are barely able to annoy. If it weren't for the West Nile virus, I'd pay them no mind at all. They are tiny, feeble, and tentative. I'd heard much guff about the formidable Minnesota mosquito, but I am on a latitudinal level with that particular Canadian Province even as I write, and I am unimpressed.

Perhaps altitude innervates, if you're an insect.

Back in Texas, you can hear the bloodsuckers boring in from 4 or 5 yards away, an unnerving whine that rises to fever pitch as they begin their final approach. They seem particularly to like the taste of ears.

Bad enough when it's just one. Combine this terrifying psychological tactic with the myopic coordinated intelligence of a whole cloud of the murdering bastards, and you may have some notion of a mild Texas summer evening.

In Houston, I have heard, there are brownouts caused entirely by bug zappers. In Elgin, Texas, once, I myself witnessed a strapping young bull of a fullback carried off the gridiron, feet dragging, delirious from loss of blood. The poor lad never got off the bench. Ah, Memory.

Whap! Well, that about does it for now. I'm headed into Cody to wash some clothes. Last evening I thought about going to the nightly rodeo in town, but it was so beautiful along the lake I couldn't imagine anything I could see that would suit me better. There are yet colors related to red that I have no name for.

Besides, a "nightly rodeo" sounds more like a pageant a la Disney than a blood and guts affair. Same horses every night, same riders, same stale peanuts. Even the flies are more fun.

Maybe, though, before I leave. I'll be here at least a couple of days.


Bob

The Mountain Diet

Silver Lake Campground, Snowy Mountains, Wyoming

I walked today, for 4 or 5 miles, up into the high country near Snowy Mountain Pass. The trail led from a parking lot on Hwy 130, around Lake Marie, and then up to lakes whose names I do not know, through a jumble of granite boulders big as automobiles. They were tossed up here long ago by the glaciers, whose remnants still loom visibly in the folds of the peaks.

I did not go all the way up. It was late afternoon, and all I had on was a short sleeved shirt. I'm not prepared for that last thousand feet, just yet. But as I climbed, there it was: underneath my wheezing inadequacy, the shadow of what I remembered, what I had been looking for. A second wind.

It is a simple feeling, a sort of sureness. I began to breathe easier, to walk with a lighter step. It was good to know that underneath this bag of blubber and complaints there are still bones, and the will and means to make them move, one step at a time.

I think I must be losing weight. Or shifting it around. These jeans, which barely fit back home, are beginning to bag and slip, crinkling when I cinch up my belt. I may have lost a couple of inches there, these last 3 weeks.

Mountains do that to me. I ought to write The Mountain Diet Book, and make my fortune. Lessee, what's to write? Go up to the mountains, eat what you want, lose weight. How many chapters is that?

It's true enough, though. Above 9000 feet, things start to change. Nothing feels right at first, and that discomfort is all that some people ever learn about it. Gas, nosebleed, sneezing, sinus, headaches, dry skin, sunburn, gasping for breath, aches and weariness. That's a partial list. You are getting rid of baggage. Naps come on like someone hit you on the head. You feel under attack, and you are.

If I could remember back that far, I might compare it to working your way through the birth canal. Welcome to the Mountains.

But that's just the start. Defining the problems, so to speak. Pretty quickly you get through all that, or else go back where you came from. Then the good stuff. You are outside more. You walk indifferently in rain or sunshine, breathe deeply, feel lighter and stronger. It's challenge and response. It's the mountains, making you simpler, making you over into something fit to be here.

Like the lichen on this rock. Reduced to essentials. Like love in the movies, mountains make you want to be a better man.

There's a cold lean sharp lonely smell, sometimes, of ice and rock and ozone, that licks down off these peaks when you least expect it. It flows through you, fills up your lungs and your mind. Later, it fills up your memory.

It stays with you, like the scent of a woman, which lingers as long as she's missed, to the end of the block or the edge of the grave.

Forget the camera. You can't take a picture of that.

It's hard to explain smells in high desert country like this, where there's so little moisture to carry them to your nose. The land is often a lovely open feast for the eyes, but relatively empty of odors, other than pine. You have to crush the needles to get much of that, and you leave it behind as you climb. Flowers here have no scent at all. What you smell most is a dry absence of smell, and it smells clean.

There's no rushing the mountain diet, the mountain accommodation. First you have to die a little, then you are reborn. The higher you push, the harder you are pushed.

A flatlander who comes to live above 11000 feet will slowly begin to mummify, becoming all bone and cord, big lungs and startled eyes. Compact, glittery. Way out on a limb. Take a good look, sometime, at pictures of those old miners from the century before last. People get as hard as what they butt up against.

Perhaps a few of those old wolves, scratching themselves, pulling their beards aside to spit, began to dream, late in their short sorry lives, of what could have been, of low places, an easy life, and tropical climes.

We all want what we haven't got. What else is there to want?

You have to know when to stop, but it's not the same place for everyone. Eventually, if you go high enough and stay there, the mountains will kill you. This is a game you cannot win.

But it's not about winning, really. It's about feeling alive.

That's good enough for me.


Bob

Down to the Flats and Back

Barber Lake
Snowy Range
Wyoming


Unimportant things have been happening, and I'm sure you guys are dying to catch up. I spent 2 days roaming around Rocky Mountain Park. This is a great place to get lost in, if you don't mind walking about 10 miles or so. Otherwise it qualifies as the World's Most Spectacular Bumper-to-Bumper Commute. No kidding. I drove the road over the passes twice, in good weather and bad, and there seems to be a continuous traffic jam up there.

It took 2 hours to get from the top down to the Falls Creek Road cutoff. From the top I could see the long train of hundreds of cars inching down the mountain, and I was right in the middle of it. Traffic stopped for maybe 10 minutes at a time, went forward 50 yards, then stopped again. I asked a guy in the lane coming up what was the hold up. "Beats me. There's nothing back there but some elk." I could see the elk in the distance. The jam went way past them.

Some people just gave up on progress, got out of their cars, ignored the elk, and took pictures of the traffic jam at 12000 feet. The elk did a pretty good job of ignoring them, too. Most of them were sitting faced away, gazing at the mountains and showing us their butts. Our novelty must have worn off on them long ago. I remember now it was just like this 30 years ago, last time I was here. That's why I never came back. Saturation is saturation. But the mountains are spectacular, viewed between lurches down the road. Maybe in September this would be a great road bike trip.

I met Barbara Allen for lunch in Longmont. I met her at the King-Sooper, and as I was getting out I heard this "beep-beep-beep" faintly, like someone aways off was backing up a truck. Then I realized it was coming from the trailer. It was the LP alarm, and the inside of the trailer smelled like insecticide. I had a can of Off and a can of bug spray below the sink, but they looked okay. I took them out of the trailer and aired out the place, and checked all the connections I could get to. It hasn't happened again, but I'm listening for it. I had just come down from 12000 feet, and my theory is that the seal on the bug spray was affected by the change in pressure.

Barbara's a lurker on RORT, and emailed me offering help with doctors when I thought I was going to have to stop traveling for a while. She also told me where to find a large RV dealer to fix my undersheathing that got torn up when the tire blew. When I went by the place, though, I met with the usual nemesis of full-timers: "Yah, there's a kit. If you order it now, it'll be here in a coupla weeks. But we can't get to it anyhow before September 2nd." Right.

Instead I went to the Home Depot in Loveland and bought some light flashing and some self tapping screws, and headed up 287 to Wyoming. In Fort Collins I saw an Indian motorcycle dealer. They're coming back, I guess. When I was in school a friend of mine owned an ancient one. It was the only motorcycle I ever saw that had a stick shift on the right side. You had to take your hand off the handlebars to shift.

Hwy 287 runs from Ft. Collins to Laramie, for much of the way running down the trough between two pressure ridges hundreds of feet high. If you ever want to see convincing proof that the solid earth can act like a liquid, drive this road. The ridges look exactly like suspended ripples in a pond.

I passed through Centennial, Wyoming, population 100, and drove on up to Barber Lake to camp. Next morning I went to get my drill and fix the trailer, and found I had left it at home. Arrrrgh. I carry that thing around in the truck all year, and when I need it, it ain't there. So, I drove back down to Centennial and asked at the biggest motel there if I could rent a drill from somebody. The girls at the desk said, "O sure, Sheldon 'll be right out."

Sure enough, in 5 minutes or less there he was, toting a drill and a smile. He had the hole patched and caulked in another 10. When I offered to pay him, he said: "Nah, that's all right. Just help somebody else some time." Then he shook my hand and walked away.

Now there's one of Nature's Noblemen. His name was Sheldon Huffner.

Breakfast in that place wasn't bad, either.


Bob

The Spas that Refresh Us

8/3/03

Hot Sulphur Springs, Colorado


Miserable people don't really care for other miserable people, any more than the healthy do. It isn't true that Misery loves company - it actually loves Sympathy. Unfortunately for the relationship, that ardor is often unreciprocated.

Nonetheless, here's a little ditty for you:

"Sorry to be so Unretiring, but I'm here to tell you what
a pain in the ass it is to have this pain in the back I've got.
It would be nice to be able to wash my hands without having to squat
That does sound kinda funny, doesn't it? Really it's not."

So much for the power of poetry.

I wrote that a couple of days ago. Every day my back has gotten better. I've decided to blow off medical care for now. This is not an emergency room problem, it is responding to heat and stretching, and I don't want to spend weeks in the August sun chasing flatland doctors around. I want to get on up towards Jasper. Maybe I'll end up checking out that famous Canadian health system. Maybe write a letter to my congressman about it, whoever he is these days.

Think we ought to have a Congresscritter-at-large, just for us full-timers? One who's not allowed to have a physical address? I can just see the orange cord snaking out of a basement window of the capitol, running off to the old Pace Arrow in the parking lot.

There has been a slight change of plans due to all this fuss. I'm now at the back door of the Rocky Mountain National Park, and I can't resist rolling up and over and down to the Ft. Collins area before scooting on up to Laramie.

For one thing, I need to find some of that under cloth to repair the hole the flat made. I may be falling apart, but by gawd the trailer's got to be repaired.

I'm now at Hot Sulphur Springs, gateway to Granby and the high country. I got up here via the Green Mountain Reservoir. There's plenty of primitive camping along the reservoir, but it seemed hot and windless down there, so I went on up through Kremmling and Troublesome, which was not, arriving here at the Spa late one afternoon. To actually get to the Springs, you have to pass through a pleasant green space called Pioneer Park, and cross the Union Pacific tracks. Pioneer Park is primarily a day site for fishing, with a thicket of signs saying "No Camping". They do have a few spots, though, and it's lovely and quiet here along the limpid Colorado, when the trains aren't passing.

Problem is, last night they passed through at a rate of one an hour, each time blasting their horns repeatedly at the empty crossing into the Spa. Just about one an hour.

Still, the campsite is otherwise idyllic and free. I've had a good time here sitting under the cottonwoods and reading by the river, parboiling in the Spa. I've seen quite a few fish caught on bait, but the flyguys are pretty frustrated.

Time to move on.


Bob


PS: For those that are interested in Spas, here's a few notes.

Cottonwood Springs was outside Buena Vista. Their good point was the 6 large deep pools with sloping sides and built in benches. But if a schoolbus full of kids showed up, you'd have no place to hide.

Sulphur Springs has 22 pools ranged up a hillside, only two or three big enough for more than 4 or 5 people. Some of these are tiny. If you and dear heart fill it up, others have to apply elsewhere. And vice versa.

The sulphur smell is mild. I did hear one 10 year old tell another that he liked the smell 'cause you could fart in the water and nobody could tell.

After due consideration, I moved on up the hill.

$15 a day, no matter when you come. They are somewhat proud of this stinky water. Most of the pools don't have seats, and the flat tile makes sharp edges. It's hard to lean back, stretch out, and relax in these little pools, compared to Cottonwood.

But I believe any spa, just as any campground, can be ruined by too much of a crowd. One solution is to rent a private pool by the hour. Here it's 12 bucks.

I hope to become sort of an expert on this stuff, a collector of spas. As long as it doesn't turn into work.