Against the Tide

Things are getting even more haywire.

Our sitting president just received the Nobel Peace Prize while escalating the Afghan war and refusing to sign the international land mine treaty, despite the fact that 156 countries have.

This same president is being vilified as a muddled blend of three extremely disparate ideologies -- socialism, communism, and fascism, while in a large part continuing the Bush Doctrine and the corporate status quo.



With all the legitimate work and research over the last dozen (and more) years to help prepare for the Climate Summit in Copenhagen, gullible Americans are believing a well-timed leak repeated by Fox News and the other cable news outlets to discredit global warming and thus weaken the accords.

Catholic bishops are banning the practice of yoga and reiki massage by nuns and lay people because its effectiveness is deemed a threat to the establishment.


A person with obvious sex appeal and little grasp of international or domestic affairs, who quit her job as governor because of a lucrative book contract, is considered a qualified presidential candidate.

Women are made famous and offered lucrative television spots for laying on their backs for a philandering rich man. He will be forgiven because he can swing a club well, while many well-intensioned, community building small business people struggle to make ends meet.

People are scared to support an improvement of our ailing health care system because it could possibly increase taxes and be too socialistic, meanwhile they welcome near unlimited military spending and continue to guzzle gas and cheap food along those same transport-choked highways paid for by those tax dollars.

The nation's leaders are adopting a corporate model to fix the faltering education system, the same model that leaches money from the government to band aide its self-induced cyclical bursting bubbles. To appear successful, mandated tests are made easier and credit recovery programs are offered where the sole criterion for gaining credit is a student's physical presence. The teachers, the one resource that has an intimate day-to-day knowledge of what is needed to improve schools, are shut out of the equation.


Welcome to the world and I offer my sincere apologies for the state of affairs. I will do my part to improve this community and pass on a different and more inclusive message.

Tropic Cities and Hill Towns

Immediately, you know which part of the city wins that race for things. The "have's" live in lofty condominuims and the "nots" live in squalor. This city is clearly divided into three distinct areas: the old city, "little Miami", and the slums. As I look out over the city from a monestary in the midday sun, scant attention seems to have been given to sanitation, cleanliness, and basic infrastructure. Simple creature comforts are absent except, from my experience, a TV in every home! So much of the wealth of this potentially beautiful city is concentrated in the hands of the elite that the rest have difficulty wrestling any of a share. I haven't looked at the statistics of any of these things in Cartegena, Colombia, but through the casual eye of my brief visit, the extreme wealth disparities of this part of Latin America persists.
The old city has the makings and the architecture to rival Dubruvnik in Croatia, Venice and Amsterdam in its latent beauty and its context in history. I realize that this is a big statement, though I think Colombia could do amazing things with this spot if only they could shed its white powdery image, and shake off the pesky "Big Stick" from the guys to their North. If only it was that easy. They got a strong man right now, but he needs to be willing to help the country stand on its own and then build alliances with its neighbors.

For the momentary visitor, some of the old streets are cleaned up nicely. The police keep out the riff-raff (Colombians not invited to the game of have's) to make for some lovely strolling while bathed in the evening ocean breeze. The gorgeous, big hotels that I venture in were unfortunately not Colombian owned, but stunning in their inner courtyard architecture. Then there is the thin stretch of barrier penninsula that is saturated with Miami style, white-washed highrise condos for the few with some cash to zip up an elevator and lavish themselves in pesos. The streets below are not clean and the beaches are vast but leave much to be desired. There is a telling area photo that shows the extent of pollution reaching into the Carribean Sea all the way to the country's crown jewel. Those same beaches get some of the afterthoughts from the Magdelena River, the main artery through the country.
In a city with a population well into 7 digits, the rest live spralled in dusty cement cubes with electric wires running in all directions. At sea level and about 10 degrees north of the equator, it is scorching hot all day, and the cement has the lovely quality of absorbing the heat and radiating it throughout the night making it seem somewhat hotter. This hazy and oppressive visual, reoccurring throughout much of Latin America, depresses the most ardent and hopeful traveler. I hate the fleeting thoughts that venture in my head as sweat is pouring down my chin. I generally side with the oppressed having spent much time reading and studying on the subject, but in that moment my "gut" says that they are expendable.After Cartegena, we hop on a super air-conditioned night bus to Bucaramonga, then on to the small town of Barichara. We endure a horrific death match movie where inmates have cool cars loaded with ammunition and kill eachother all on live reality television. English subtitles are not necessary. I assumed, or maybe hoped, that this was a one-of-a-kind cinema event, but on the return trip am graced with a nearly identical movie save the inmates are on an island with ammunition caches and wired with cameras for the dedicated television viewers. Apparently, female inmates are all exceptionally beautiful. I didn't realize. There is a good chance that implants are offered within the prisons.

Once in the mountains, the northeast fork of the lengthy Andes mountain range, the landscape plateaus at a seemingly idealic climate with fertile farmlands abound. This small cobbled town has identity, a sense of history, that felt pristine to a visitor's eye. Their industry is tourism and managed within the community and scale of their environment. The townspeople take care of their town. Yes, they do not have to deal with an overwhelming population problem and they were designated a national heritage site. Things change, soils lose fertility, trends in tourism fluxuate. This towns seems at a scale to adapt.

Colombia is stunning, large, ecologically and geographically diverse. As a outdoor enthusiast, I find wonderful places to explore. I get a sample of something that works and something that marks unchecked corruption and a horrible allocation of resources.

We head back to our big neighborhood in the vast metropolis of New York City, where main streets are being reinvented, community reinvigorated, and economies of scale are being reintroduced.

Algonquin Mountain

The Adirondack Mountains are becoming a reoccurring retreat from the norm. As in most backcountry activities, it provides a chance to stop the march of the clock, turn everything off and slow to the rhythms of nature. There was no snow in Keene Valley, but within a few minutes of the trailhead snowshoes became a necessity. We headed up over a pass on a well-marked trail that had obviously not been used much throughout the season. We made some fresh tracks through a frozen top layer of snow. It always takes a few miles before my body comes into agreement with what I have endeavored upon, whether a run, hike, or bike ride. That visceral rebellion probably stops a lot of people from doing a lot of things.

This lean-to sits on the frozen Lake Colden about six miles from the road head. Tents would be a warmer option, but this provides some space to cook and hang out. The temperature dropped to sub-zero during the nights. Our water froze immediately after it was poured forming interesting lattice structures in the bottles. I doubled up on the sleeping bag putting my 15 degree bag inside the 30 degree bag. In the morning, the water bottle that was left out froze solid and we had a fresh layer of snow.

Algonquin is the second highest in New York. The trail winds up a stream valley from the lake. Just as it gets above the tree line the the trail reaches a saddle in the range and the west winds blistered through our peeled layers of clothing. The last 500 feet are up a rocky face marked by cairns and completed with the official National Geologic survey medal stamp indicating the height of the peak. We sat behind a rock outcrop to shelter from the wind and eat some lunch.

On the return, we glissaded down the trail, winding through trees, yelping like ten year-olds, guiding ourselves with our hands and the back tips of our snowshoes. Glissading in this way is basically a butt slide with speeds similar to the epic gradeschool snowdays where half the neighborhood dragged their sleds to the hill in the local golf course. Rather than the 30 feet of elevation in those days, each of the slides were a hundred feet or more.

Dogsledding

With the start of this year's Iditarod in Alaska and some of Jack London's stories resonating in my distant memory, we set off on a blistering winter day in Leadville, CO for a mini-dogsled adventure. We wanted to get a tiny taste of that 1150 mile adventure. At the very least, we would see the dogs up close and feel their pull on the sled.

At 10,000 feet in a valley, the piled winter's snow covered everything, and the cloud cover changed from moment to moment. A haloed sun peaked through near whiteout conditions. Our rented car was only two-wheel drive, much to the shagrin of the upgrade happy saleswoman at the Denver International Airport, but we made it on the well-paved state highways winding through the central Rockies. Anyway, the ranch was only a few miles outside of town.

There are ninety-five dogs at this particular ranch all with their own little dog houses. We were introduced to each individual that would pull our sled.

There were three vantage points provided during this couple hour ride. The coziest, of course, was being nestled in the sled, wrapped in a blanket with only your face exposed to the elements. The second was the person at the helm, in charge of the brake, yelling "mush" to the ten dog team. And because we really didn't know what we were doing, there was the seat on the sled being pulled by a snowmobile about thirty yards in front of the dogs.

We finished up the couple hours with a drive back to town, and some local brews with the welcoming folks at Rosie's BrewPub.