Geology Confidential I

Rocks.

You can tell a lot about a person, or a geologist anyway, by the rocks they keep. You can find them, usually cluttering shelves and porches, collecting dust and spider webs, or used as book ends, garden bed borders and paperweights throughout the house. There is, no doubt, more of them in boxes, drawers and closets, tucked away, and carried from house to house. They serve as true a record of the person, the ground that they have walked over, their work and passions, as they do of orogenies, ancient sea floors and catastrophic eruptions. A sample:

Thousands of bags of pumice, weighed, wrapped in wax, labeled in green permanent marker.

A volcanic bomb, fourteen pounds, hiked out of the Arizona volcanic field cradled in my arms.

Iron-rich basalt, encased in calcite and weathered to a bright pink. Hauled home from Costa Rica by a friend.

Sandwich bag, filled with black primordial ooze, gifted from a friend visiting the tar pits.

Small bottle of ash from the 1980 eruption of Mt. St. Helens.

Geodes, 22, gifted from a student's grandfather's collection after he passed away.

Salt block, hounded in Nevada, evaporated to less than half it's original size in the Oregon humidity.

Obsidian, with flow lines, from the Newberry flows.

Fossiliferous limestone, collected in Montana, that has graced the front porch of every house I've lived in since 2001.

Hardened clay, formed into a cube during a long day of drilling.

Dust, from a thousand day hikes and field areas, caked into the seams of a too-old day pack. 

Sun City

Heat.

I never grow tired of the desert, even though I am a daughter of the rain. I do not crave the heat, or love to lay out in the sun, but there is something about the desert calls out to me. Perhaps it is the contrast, that no trees obscure the view, no sinking into mud with every step, no dense clutches of vegetation or low-hanging clouds. Instead, there are coyote, saguaro, and scrappy stands of tiny trees that though smaller in stature are no less impressively old than even the tallest of Northwest Douglas firs. I enjoy the resilience of desert life, the necessary lengthening of timescales. In the desert, water will not come to you daily, or even by the month, best to savor thirst, celebrate it, and turn your mind from longing. The desert reminds me to accept the life I have been given, to make do. It illuminates the struggle of ordinary things and the value of simple things. There is great joy and beauty in the procurement of the necessities of life. It is, after all, a wonder. Try not to take it for granted.

Bright Lights, Big City

Urban.

Yesterday, after weeks of dusty trails, dense forests, quiet lake swims, and hot springs, I hit the city.  Not just any city, mind you, but a real, honest to goodness tall buildings, stand-still traffic, sidewalks that smell like pee, big city. And after all that time in the wilderness, it made me break out into a white-knuckled sweat. I couldn't think fast enough to make decisions in traffic, I balked at prices, and I nervously yanked at my now-uncomfortable city clothes. I wandered like a refugee, a displaced person of some kind, dropped into an alien world where the women are all ten feet tall, the men are always speaking into a cell phone, and all the surfaces are reflective. I felt like an outsider, a yokel, a gawker, and a little sick to my stomach. This panicked anxiety surprised me. I hadn't realized how drastically my context had shifted from the urban jungle to the, well, jungle jungle. It made me acutely aware of just how much I thrive on the calm and quiet of the outdoors, the ability to hear myself think, and the lack of over-stimulation. I wonder about living in these places, how people find time to themselves, where their quiet moments happen, and how they ground themselves. I wonder what it means to 'get used to it', if you lose the longing for the wild after a time, or if the call of it is simply drowned out by the urban din. I was glad for the trip, for the afternoon of playing tourist, and the necessary business that got done. But I was also glad to head back out, to smaller buildings, empty streets, tall trees, and the great outside.

Out of Towner

Away.

It's been a long summer. The trees are browning, the ferns are fading from the thirst, and everything, everything, is covered in dust. My long ago tomato starts and I have faithfully stood in our pots, and even produced some fruit. But mostly, I have been away. Of the last twelve weeks, I have spent most of ten of them adventuring, visiting friends, working away, and on the road. This week, I arrived half an hour before turning around and heading to work, and will leave again today as soon as I get off. My cat is pissed at me. My luggage is never unpacked. I have not see 'that' YouTube video. I have not seen anything you, or anyone else has posted on Facebook. People greet me like a long-lost friend. There is something to be said for stepping away, trusting that the things you need the most will be there when you return, and the things that fade were going to anyway. Being gone does a lot of good for sorting your priorities, forcing you to make choices, and teaching you to let things slide. 

 Where are you going?

The Great Wide Open V- Tunnel Vision

Freeze.

Lava tubes are one of my favorite things. Formed as a result of cooling during an active flow, lave tunnels are a testament to the inherent lazy nature of the world. Even lava, if given a chance with take the easiest route, sometimes not even bothering to craft a new tunnel, instead flowing through a tunnel formed by a previous flow, using it as a means of easy travel and transport. When cooled, these caves become underground conduits that lead directly into the belly of the volcano. Cool.

Literally. Basalt is an amazingly efficient insulator and most caves stay close to freezing all year long, even in the desert. In eastern Oregon these caves were the first source of refrigeration for settlers eager to beat the heat. Early entrepreneurs made good money harvesting the ice from these caves and hauling it back to town in blocks for sale. Now, the caves are overrun with tourists, largely unprepared for the experience. Although it may seem to go without saying, these caves, like an others, are really dark, really cold, and offer questionable footing. Most people forget these things and find themselves shivering along in the dark with frozen toes. But it's worth it, even if it's just for the Lord of the Rings style ambiance. 

There's a whole world down there... 

It Doesn't Have to Be a Circus

Kids.

We've all seen it. The family outdoor adventure gone terribly wrong. Exhausted, crabby parents dragging kids, sometimes in complete meltdown mode, down trails, coaxing them, in vain, to come out of tents, or generally having to pander to them to get them to go outside at all. I know a lot of parents that fear these scenarios, a lot that have lived through them, and a couple that pretty much have no idea what I'm talking about. Michael Lanza and his wife Penny fall into the latter category.

Ask the elder Lanza's about hiking or backpacking with kids, even with infants, and they pretty much shrug and say, "Yeah, what's the big deal?" Talk to them about taking their kids backpacking in some of the most spectacular parts of the National Parks, and rather than recount mishaps, tantrums, and parenting fails, they talk about how proud they are of their kids, how they are always exceeding expectations. Michael even wrote a book about it, using his year of backpacking with his kids in the National Parks to highlight climate change and the urgent need to show our children the best of these wild lands before they disappear.  

Along the way he does a pretty great job of demonstrating that kids can be treated just like anyone else outside, as long as you are willing to accommodate them. Kids need more sleep and more stimulation than us. They can't carry as much and they aren't as good at catching dehydration or hunger before it takes a turn towards grumpy. But they are game, resilient, and have a lot to teach us about ourselves and the world around us.

It IS possible to get outside with your kids, minus the meltdowns. And it's important that you do if we want them to be stewards in the future. So be brave, plan well, keep a positive attitude, load up the clown car, and get yourselves outside.

To read some of Michael's blog or buy his book:

 http://thebigoutside.com/

The Great Wide Open IV- Some Like it Wet

Rain.

It doesn't matter how many people tell you about it, or how emphatic or dramatic their telling of it may be, until you witness half an inch of rain in less than an hour in what is usually a dry-as-bone desert, you can't really believe it.

Observations:

There are more low areas on a seemingly flat property than one may think. 

The low areas can hold more than four inches of standing water.

This is important as the door starts at 4.5 inches.

Metal roofs make lightning more exciting.

Continuous lightning and thunder really do mean the storm is centered above you.

The neighbors house is the same color as rain, or close enough to disappear into it.

Frogs, like humans, think the carport is a great place to stay dry. 

The Thru Hiker

Appalachia.

In case you have been away from media in the past year or so, Cheryl Strayed wrote a book about hiking the Pacific Crest Trail. The short version is that she goes out unprepared, with no previous experience, in part to detox from a heroin habit and in part to get over a breakup and find herself. She eventually triumphs, after facing cold weather, blisters, and the consequences of her lack of preparation. And there's a lot of men, nice guys that repack her pack for her, pass along tips and gear, and generally make things go more smoothly for her. And love interests. They're making it into a movie starring Reese Witherspoon. 

Wild is a great story about personal transformation. It's well written and compelling. But it's a terrible example for anyone considering taking on a thru hike. It makes the PCT seem pretty scary and inaccessible. It also makes it seem like maybe men are better suited to such thing or that maybe women can't do it without the help of men. But there are plenty of hiking memoirs and guides that are good examples while still being compelling stories. And some of them are written by women. The one I am reading these days is “The Appalachian Trail Girl’s Guide: Part Memoir, Part Manifesto”.  

What's great about the Girl's Guide is that she keeps it real and practical. You get an easy read with some great stories from her more than six month long hike of the Appalachian trail but you also get a ton of great advice from what kind of tent to use to how (and when) to swap out your winter clothes. And if you are thinking of taking on the AT, she lists some of the prettiest places and best section hikes of the trail to get you started. Books like these are great escapes and good fuel for our creative wanderlust. Check it out. 

To Read Megan's Blog, Appalachian Trail Girl:

 http://appalachiantrailgirl.com/

The Burning Of the West

Smoke.

It is easy, I think, to forget that the west is burning. It has been for some time now. California never closed last years fire season and Washington has lost more houses and seen more fire, still early in the typical season, than it ever has. Oregon too, is burning. 

But there are barbecues and fireworks and concerts and long lazy days swimming in the now warm waters of our abundant lakes and rivers. It is easy to pay no mind to the helicopters practicing their low passes over the lakes, readying to bring water if the fires get too close. And the sunsets are lovely.

For the first few days, it is easy to relish those sunsets, take pictures, and share a glass of wine with friends. But then the days turn hazy, a false layer of clouds holds the heat into the valley. It is smoke, we are reminded. The cost of those sunsets is the burning of the west.

The Great Wide Open III - Hot Stuff

Soak.

Some days go as planned, others, not so much. On this day, we decided to take the scenic route from our campsite in the foothills of the Jefferson Wilderness to the high lava lands east of the Cascades. The mission was to scout hikes for an upcoming field trip, most of which I had already seen. The only new hike looked and sounded from the description pretty easy. No big deal we thought. Yeah.

First, we decided to make an extra stop at an old-growth grove, which turned out to be neither a .25 mile loop nor particularly packed with old growth. A couple of miles later we emerge scratching our heads, wondering how such a nice trail got put in such a strange and remote place.

Two hours and one delicious roadside lunch later, we reach our real destination, get out, and start to hike. Uphill. Like really, really uphill. It's one of the few downsides to studying volcanoes, the hikes are almost always brutal climbs. So up we go to the beautiful viewpoint, planning to continue down and around the lake. But we miss the trail marker and an hour of hard hiking later, land right back at the car. 

Take two. We skip the cinder cone the second time instead walking through one of the largest and longest campgrounds either of us have ever seen. Eventually, we reach the juncture we should have been at almost two hours ago. We hike on past, towards the promise of an obsidian flow and hot springs. The sign at the trail head states that the hot springs will be about 1.25 miles past the flow, on a WELL MARKED spur trail (their emphasis, not mine). We find the flow. It is, in fact, obsidian. We hike on. And on. And on. We turn back at the halfway point, obviously having gone miles too far. Less than a mile beyond the flow, there is a side trail, entirely unlabeled, that leads to the hot springs.

Oh joy, oh rapture, hot springs! We are tired, dusty, and about four miles past what we were prepared to hike. We are ready for a soak. But. But the springs, being natural as they are, are blazing-lava hot. And also about five inches deep. Apparently, the winter snows and high lake levels are what locals use to fill the dug out tubs and cool the water. In midsummer, the best you can hope for is some dangerously hot splashing in muddy puddles. Which we do. For about four minutes. And then we start the long hike back.

Finally, after an accidental eight mile day, we load up and out, finding a cool place with a view to drink a somewhat cold beer dug from the bottom of our cooler. 

And so it goes.   

The Great Wide Open I - Hole In The Ground

Lake.

It has been at least five years since I have been to Crater Lake, and on that occasion I was so out of season that I was the only person at the one open lookout and didn't get to see the lake because of the dense clouds. Not so this weekend. This time, I took the opposite approach and joined the crowds on the park's busiest weekend of the year,the 4th of July. Used to the crush of the more than ten million visitors the Grand Canyon gets annually, I was bracing myself for long lines, tube socks, and RV's trying to see four parks in one week. 

But that wasn't the case. It turns out that due to its remote location Crater Lake only receives about 500,000 visitors a year so even their busiest weekends are mellow in comparison to many of the other National Parks. Sure, the lodge was busy with the usual assortment of tourists, mostly from West Indian,a fact for which I have no explanation, the trails and view points were fairly mellow. 

The odd thing about visiting Crater Lake is how inaccessible the lake itself actually is. The only access to the lake itself is via the Cleetwood trail, which loses more than 700 feet in elevation in just over a mile of trail. It's steep, packed, and on this weekend, stupid hot as well. But the best parts of the park, away from the spectacular blue of the lake, are in side canyons cut through great stacks of volcanic airfall where hoo doos stand as sentries and clear lake water runs its course out to the Klamath Basin. In these parts of the park there is solitude, spectacular views of Oregon country, and a true sense being squarely set in the middle of no where. It is a wonderful reminder of just how big the world really is. So, if you haven't made it out to Crater Lake in a while or ever, put it back on your list.

Picture:

www.RubyGoneWild.com

It's A Jungle Out There

Wilderness

This year the the Wilderness Act turns fifty years old. Created in 1964 by Congress the act established massive tracts of wild areas across the country as protected lands. The Wilderness act was designed to preserve the nations wild areas for recreation and habitat, rather than for resource extraction, an important distinction between public lands today.  Across the country more than 100 million acres of land are protected under the act. In Oregon, less than four percent of our roadless areas are included in this protection. In fact, Oregon ranks behind both Washington and Idaho in the designation of wilderness lands, a fact that stands in stark contrast to our "green" image and con only bring trouble for a state betting it's economy on a newly minted ecotourism industry. 

Now, in the good weather, as we all step outside, is as good a time as any to reevaluate our commitment to the conscious preservation of wild areas. What is your favorite unprotected wilderness area? Why should it be a part of the wilderness act?

Photograph of the Eagle Cap wilderness area, Oregon courtesy of the National Forest Service 

Fresh Starts

Seeds.

The garden starts are in. Even though the fog still wraps around the house and and the sun is still too low in the sky to quite reach through the trees, what little sun there is, the starts are in the ground. They stand at weary attention in their too-large pots, waiting for the sun, for rain, for the long light of summer days. I too, stand rooted in my pot, waiting to break through.

Do not be fooled by our apparent stillness. From the inside there is great movement occurring, a minute and constant dance. Roots reach, stalks thicken, leaves inexorably unfurl. With time, there will be a bloom and a harvest. Just wait.

And this, from Girl Gone Wild, the proposal for which is going out this week. So please, if you read, share, repost, or retweet. Be a root.

Weight.

It is 6 am and I am sitting on the front stoop of my apartment with my hiking boots on waiting for a a guy I met at a bicycle event in a local brewery two days earlier. I am newly single, in my late twenties, and living in Portland, This means that I am accustomed to brew pubs, bicycle boys, and first dates that involve hiking. The six am is new. But this man seems nice, and has a long history of mountaineering and rock climbing, and wants to get an early start. In my mind I have chalked this up to being “hard core”. I also want to be “hard core” and also prove to my ex that I can still have outdoor adventures without him. Especially with men more hard core than himself. I figured that mountain climber beat kayaker and hiker any day. Besides, its going to be a beautiful sunny Saturday in late summer, the trails will be packed if we don’t get an early start, I quietly reason with myself, he’s just being practical.

We have chosen a hike called Angels Rest, aptly named for the spectacular view of the Columbia River Gorge from the rocky crag at the top of the trail. It is a moderate day hike, five miles with a steep climb over the loose rock of a crumbling basalt flow. When we arrive at the trail head we grab our mostly empty backpacks, containing little more than water and a light lunch and head out of the parking area. At the trail head he stops saying, “Hold on, I need to grab some weight.” And he reaches down and starts loading softball sized chunks of basalt into his pack. “I really want to stay in shape for my next ascent.” He says, barely looking up as he continues to shove rocks into his pack. Great, I think. This guy is nuts.

A Walk In The Woods

Saunterer.

***From a 2009 post that has become the basis for a new essay on walking and the wilderness***

A long weekend and the beginning of summer do a lot to remind us to go outside, breath the fresh air, listen to the birds, stretch our legs, and experience wildness. I think it’s important, amid the beer, fireworks, weenie roasts, and recreational vehicles that mark the American camping experience, to make sure that we do just that, stretch our legs and experience wildness. It’s not often anymore that the majority of us find ourselves away from the crush of noise, information, and development that comes with “civilized society”, and I think our distance from the wild plays a key role in our health and well-being, and our decision making as a people. Distancing ourselves from the wild is part of why we are able to devalue the environment, and that devaluation reveals itself in our politics, policies, and way of life. It allows us to waste resources, diminish habitat, allow entire species to go extinct, and engineer our bodies and our food.

I feel at my most engaged in the environment when walking through it. A walk in the wilderness does more to ease my mind, body, and soul than almost anything else. And it reminds me, in a tangible and profound way, that I am connected to this place, this world, this land, that it sustains me. Thoreau, in his 1862 essay, Walking, had this to say about the value of a walk in the woods, “I have met with but one or two persons in the course of my life who understood the art of Walking, that is, of taking walks, who had a genius, so to speak, for sauntering; which word is beautifully derived "from idle people who roved about the country, in the middle ages, and asked charity, under pretence of going à la sainteterre" — to the holy land… They who never go to the holy land in their walks, as they pretend, are indeed mere idlers and vagabonds, but they who do go there are saunterers in the good sense, such as I mean. Some, however, would derive the word from sans terre, without land or a home, which, therefore, in the good sense, will mean, having no particular home, but equally at home everywhere. For this is the secret of successful sauntering.”

We can make no progress in the improvement of our daily lives, in the fostering of health, community, sustainability, or peace, until we acknowledge and embrace our connection to the wilderness. Take a first step, take a walk.

To read the full text of Thoreau’s Walking:

http://thoreau.eserver.org/walking.html

To Read Emerson’s Nature:

http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/phl302/texts/emerson/nature-emerson-a.html#Chapter%20I

Less Than A Foot

Snow.

The Mt. Ashland ski area in Southern Oregon , in spite of it's plans to celebrate their 50th year anniversary, has canceled the entire 2013-2014 ski season for the very first time. They made this decision after arriving to mid-March with less than a foot of snow on their usually busy slopes. No one really knows what the economic impacts of this will be. But it can't be good. Worse than that, everyone is trying not to think about what happens if there is no snow next year. Is this climate change? An aberration? Normal fluctuation? If you own a small business or depend on the ski resort for your income it probably doesn't really matter. Change is coming, one way or another. How will it come to you?

Show Me

Snap.

Sometimes being a writer gets you unexpected opportunities. This month, www.sunnyscope.com asked me to judge their outdoor photo contest. I jumped at it. Who wouldn't want to spend some time looking at pictures of spectacular landscapes and great adventures? It seems to me a great source of escapism, a kind of travel voyeurism that is just the kind of thing you need at the end of winter. Check out last months winner and judge here:

http://sunnyscope.com/february-photo-contest-winner-marchs-judge/

Now go outside and take some pictures.

Getting It Done

Write.

Sometimes we take on tasks that bog us down, taking far longer or far more energy and resources than we could eve have imagined. They drag. It begins to feel like you are treading water. Then it feels like drowning. And then, like magic, it starts to get done. This week, I am in go-mode. There is no room for distraction or laundry or the Ukraine or pretty much anything else. I have things to get done. I love these times of fierce productivity, far removed from the stress of working under deadline, these times that seem to stem from an internal impetus. I have things I want to get done. I can see the path. There is no procrastination, no sorting of the mail or house work that seems pressing, because, you see, I am getting things done.

From the newly completed Girl Gone Wild, on safety:

I feel safe outside. But, I know that a lot of women do not. And to be fair, I have not and do not always feel safe. I can sometimes get spooked when I am hiking by myself and a man is a little too friendly or hiking too closely to me. Sometimes I worry for a moment if I feel turned around or feel like I have been too long to not be able to see the car on the way back. Sometimes I get terrible vertigo, a lasting present from my days in Grand Canyon. These all seem to me like reasonable fears to have, but not reasons to not be outside.


Most of the things that make us fearful about being outside have to do with preparation. Fear of getting lost subsides with gaining navigational skills and choosing well-marked trails. Fear of dirt and bugs and small injuries start to disappear with experience and time. Other fear though, fear of the dark, fear of animals, fear of aloneness, these are the challenges and opportunities that the wilderness presents us. Ultimately, there is no way to eliminate all risk, either in the wilderness or in our day to day lives. What is important is the choice. Do you let your fears hold you back, inside and away from the world, or do you step out? 

***Girl Gone Wild is seeking representation and publication! You can help by sharing this blog on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and all kinds of social media. Thanks for your support!

Picture:
www.rubygonewild.com

Lost In Space- An Excerpt From Girl Gone Wild

Found.

So at some point, it just went wrong.  My folks either made a bad choice at diverging trails, or got turned around, or just walked right passed a juncture, but their demeanor changed.  They slowed.  The tone of their voices got more serious.  My sister and I were hot and tired and getting crabby in a sustained way.  My parents probably were too.  We should have been back to the car by now, it was getting on towards dinner time.  We came to a stop.  And there they were,  lost, with darkness falling and two very very tired girls with them.   They started to discuss.  They could not be that far offtrack, we had not walked very far.  They could still see the ridge we had descended, and the sun was setting in the west, they had a sense of where they were.  They were young and resourceful and figured worst case scenario they would be fine overnight with us if we got caught in the dark, everyone had a warm layer tied around their waste.  It would be an adventure, a story to to tell.  And also quite likely entirely unpleasant.  My Dad thought we could backtrack and either discover where we had gone wrong or return the full length of the way we came before it got too dark.  There was also the possibility that we were only a short distance from a connecting trail, or even the trail head itself, the trail simply being longer than we anticipated.  But we knew how to get back the way we came.  We turned around.

This terrified me.  I was little, I had no sense of time or distance with which to put the problem into perspective.  I was still afraid of the dark and I remembered the view from the top of the trail, it seemed like a really really big place to be lost in.  I was imagining lions and tigers and bears and Yeti and rodents of unusual size.  I was thinking that this very kind of thing was what had happened to those Hobbits.  My sister was fixated on talking about spending the night out there; she may have said something about having to eat me first.   In all, this probably only happened over the course of a couple of hours, but in my memory it feels like we wandered forever, like Lawrence of Arabia, parched for water and slowly weakening with hunger.  Walking with my Dad holding my hand, I started to cry.

Picture:
www.rubygonewild.com

The Beginnings Of A Bat Thing- An Excerpt From Girl Gone Wild

Wings.

We spent the evening watching the sun go down behind the high rocks on the far side of the lake. As dusk sank in around us swarms of bugs appeared above the water, and then, bats. Bats are a threshold animal, somewhere between something harmless like a chipmunk or a bird, but just creepy enough and with enough pop-culture stigma to make us skittish. Bats are mammals; like us, they are warm blooded and have hair, but they also have featherless, skin-covered wings and are mostly blind, instead using echo-location to navigate and hunt. There are thousands of species of bats, and it is estimated that bats make up one-quarter of all mammal species in the world. In the evening, if you see something flying, especially if it seems extra maneuverable or is near open water or a field, it is usually a bat. Bats love insects, and they are a social animal, often living in giant colonies that go out to hunt together in the evenings. On this evening, is seemed we were being visited by a large colony. Far from being scary or gross, these bats were magnificent. They were about the size of a swallow, fast, and fearless. They zipped past our heads diving low to skim across the surface of the water. They twisted and cavorted midair to snatch up dinner and avoid running into one another at the same time. They were acrobatic and mesmerizing and they entirely released me from my worry over sleeping out.

Backpacks, Rocks And Nuts - A Girl Gone Wild Excerpt

Weight.

It is 6 am and I am sitting on the front stoop of my apartment with my hiking boots on waiting for a a guy I met at a bicycle event in a local brewery two days earlier. I am newly single, in my late twenties, and living in Portland, This means that I am accustomed to brew pubs, bicycle boys, and first dates that involve hiking. The six am is new. But this man seems nice, and has a long history of mountaineering and rock climbing, and wants to get an early start. In my mind I have chalked this up to being “hard core”. I also want to be “hard core” and also prove to my ex that I can still have outdoor adventures without him. Especially with men more hard core than himself. I figured that mountain climber beat kayaker and hiker any day. Besides, its going to be a beautiful sunny Saturday in late summer, the trails will be packed if we don’t get an early start, I quietly reason with myself, he’s just being practical. 

We have chosen a hike called Angels Rest, aptly named for the spectacular view of the Columbia River Gorge from the rocky crag at the top of the trail. It is a moderate day hike, five miles with a steep climb over the loose rock of a crumbling basalt flow. When we arrive at the trail head we grab our mostly empty backpacks, containing little more than water and a light lunch and head out of the parking area. At the trail head he stops saying, “Hold on, I need to grab some weight.” And he reaches down and starts loading softball sized chunks of basalt into his pack. “I really want to stay in shape for my next ascent.” He says, barely looking up as he continues to shove rocks into his pack. Great, I think. This guy is nuts.

www.RubyGoneWild.com