Early Life - Part 1, Learning to Read

Learning to Read
1/25/08
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While I was home during Christmas, it was great to spend so much time with my family. Although home is mostly the same when I go home, I witnessed subtle changes, one of which returned me to my childhood momentarily.

I was leaving to meet up with my friends, and my mom was sitting at the computer with my niece on her lap. Mackenzie was pounding on the keys, and my mom was urging her not to be so hard on them.

“What’s that,” Mackenzie would demand with a smile as she pushed her finger to the computer screen. My mom would try to sound out a word if there was a semblance of one, sometimes she would tell her to keep typing.

My mother used to do this with me. She would feed a sheet of paper into the typewriter, and allow me to lay waste to the sheet as my hands danced across the keys as though it were a piano of innumerable notes. At first, I remember seeing if I could type too fast for the machine. I felt joy in managing to stop its keys. I liked looking at the sweeping sinuous designs the hammer arms made as they overlapped each other in a rushed tangle instead of meeting the paper and recoiling in a blink as they were supposed to.

I remember one of these days only clearly enough to know it wasn’t long after my family moved across the Susquehanna River in Pennsylvania, from Lancaster county, home of the Amish, to York county, home of the racists. I was somewhere between three and four years old, old enough that I was speaking often, and beginning to only vaguely understand the symbolic relationship of all the signs my parents reacted to as if someone was speaking to them while driving me around in the car. I slowly began to understand that words were made up of these symbols called letters, and that all these letters could be arranged by my fingers dancing across the keyboard of a type writer, and from this came words, the same words I could speak!

After I was done, I would get up from the cold spare bedroom floor, and take the sheet of my writing to my mother to inspect for words. On this day I remember becoming particularly interested in what I later learned to be the letter q, and it covered the majority of my page, sometimes for several unwavering lines at once. My mom sat in her chair, tracing each line with her finger, as if feeling for a word. I eagerly watched the reflection of the paper in her glasses, her eyes rolling back and forth as though she might be dizzy.

“Well, here’s the word saw,” she said pointing to an amorphous jumble of letters on the page, “you know, like sawing a tree down?”

She made a motion with her arm, swinging back and forth, and I could see her arm sawing into a tree.

“Ohh,” I said slowly, taking the paper from her hands and walking out of the room. I sat in the spare bedroom, and stared at the word, wondering what made those letters mean the same thing as what we called a saw. A few minutes later I had come to no conclusions, and returned to my mom, asking her to find more words.

“That’s it,” she said resolutely, “that is the only word on the page.”

“What?”

“That’s it beej,” she said again a little softer this time as she handed the paper back to me. I walked back into the room, and soon took to making more pages of typing. I don’t clearly remember how often I did this, but I can remember repeating these actions with my mom many times, and from this I began to recognize street signs, and understand worlds flying across the TV screen.

This type of learning was much different from what I was soon to be subject to. Everyone was so excited about learning how to read. Everyone was to begin learning how to read formally in school in first grade. I remember beginning first grade already after two years of school. I approached the air of importance that seemed to float about learning how to read a bit skeptically, yet I was excited to feel the same pleasure and satisfaction that my parents shared with my older sisters when they displayed their new talents at reading during school. This was a period of time in my life when being held by my parents was still simply the most pleasurable aspect of life, and learning to read seemed to provide another method to get them to hold me. I quickly found that I could get my parents to hold me in their arms a few more times a week if I could read a few sentences from a book we had spent weeks on at school.

"Yeah, it's so great that it is a bluebird day, maybe we will get up there clear of clouds and wind," I said confidently looking towards the divide, "it would be great if the kids could get a close view of the divide." Mary nods in agreement, as we drive eagerly out of lyons and into the foothills, heading towards Rocky Mountain National Park.

However, forty minutes later, as we rounded one of the final corners approaching the Park in Estes, a tell-tale Chinook wall hovers above the Divide, periodically dropping between exposing movements, lifting to reveal a coating of fresh white powder. Mary and I smirk at each other with lips taught, both of us realizing we will not be greeted by glistening snow; rather a different world awaited us, only twenty minutes further into the mountains.

Squinting into the morning sun as we continued down the main street of Estes, I smirked at hearing the kids comment over all of the stores lining the road, knowing how different this quaint-looking road would look just several months later, clouded with hundreds of tourists, searching to buy their knick-knack, whose soul meaning it was to prove their momentary existence in Estes Park, Colorado; Grand Gateway to the Rockies.

I showed the park entrance attendant our papers, and rolled on as the kids excitedly pounded on their legs for one of our adult volunteers, celebrating his first entrance into RMNP.

"Gee! There's not much snow," A few of them commented at the lack of snow here at almost 8000 feet elevation.
"Yeah," I mumbled back to them in agreement, worrying over the spectacle of 10 kids' disappointment, excited to go snowshoeing in the National Park only to arrive to dry, wind-blown trails void of snow.

I glared at the snow hopefully after every turn as we wound higher into the Park. After several miles, my hope began to wane as I stared at continuous patches of open forest floor, until finally the sun went gray as we passed into pencil-thin subalpine forests thrashing wildly in the wind. Droves of snow flew past us, the sky grew whiter as the sun disappeared, and the kids began to remark over the 4 foot banks of snow flanking the winding road.

"Alright, it's gonna be really windy out there, and it's probably gonna be uncomfortably cold, we need to get ready in the van, so when we get out into that wind, we can get our snowshoes on and get on the trail quickly, where the wind isn't as crazy," as I spoke a few kids dazed out, turning their heads to watch a family leaning against the freezing wind, grimacing as they donned their skis and backpacks.

Snow and freezing wind blasted into the van as the first kids threw open the doors to hop out. Snow swirled, and quickly began piling atop the van seats. Quickly we pulled snowshoes from the back of the van, and helped the kids attach them to their feet. Snow undulated in dancing tendrils around us and down the road. Cold wind and snow found the crevices between our hats and coats, chilling our neck. Slowly, each kid successfully attached their snowshoes and migrated to the relative shelter of a pavilion next to the forest, waiting for everyone to get ready.

Twenty minutes later, I tightened the final straps to the last kid. We hurried into the forest, and around the corner to the edge of the lake for a picture, and here the kids felt the true depth of Winter breathe into every exposing crevice of their clothing, making them shiver, wide-eyed in the realization of real Rocky Mountain winter cold. The group feigned masculine poses of triumph over the winter while I snapped a few shots with my camera, before running off of the frozen lake back into the shelter of the dense trees.


Hiking into the woods, Mary and I giggled, realizing quickly how little distance the group would cover together. In just a few hundred yards, we had to stop once to reattach a snowshoe, and again to change wet cotton socks. While waiting, we played a game of Lynx and Hare. I took off my snowshoes to become the lynx, while everyone else ran from me, as though they were snowshoe hares. Having never played this game, I thought it might be possible, or even easy to chase down each hare, encumbered by their large and buoyant feet. This was not the case. Two steps off the trail, my right foot disappeared up to my hip into the snow, and I felt no ground beneath it. Struggling free and standing upright again, I made it two more steps until my left foot disappeared as well, and this is how the game ensued until the socks were changed, and we continued.

Half a mile from the trailhead, we stumbled against the wind onto the frozen surface of small Nymph Lake. As the kids slowly filed out of the forest towards us, Mary and I decided this was a good place for lunch, as well as a turn around point. The temperature was hovering just above the 0 degree mark, and with a constant driving wind stinging snow into our faces, this was much, much colder than I had felt in a very long time, perhaps ever.

"Alright! Let's go into the trees and get some lunch," I yelled into the wind around the circle of kids. We lumbered into the trees, and fell back in delight, as the snow welcomed us with a cushioned hand, creating makeshift lazy-boys as our butts created perfect-fitting depressions to sit in. I inspected the kids as they sat down, finding all of them ecstatic with the day so far. Even the cold and shivering ones seemed to be glibly restraining their discomfort for the better enjoyment of the group. I pulled a frozen raspberry jam and almond butter tortilla out of my backpack and ate, watching to see what interesting lunches the kids had brought from home. My tortilla was gone far too quickly, and I felt too cold to dig the rest of my many grain oatmeal from my backpack, so I watched the kids eagerly, secretly hoping some of them had brought too much food to eat alone.

A plump doug squirrel hopped through the snow from tree to tree, until it was an arm's length away peering nervously from behind the tree, searching for an outstretched hand offering food. I knocked on the other side of tree, and the squirrel quickly ran up the tree, flinging itself through trees, and quickly descending next to others in the group, seeking help in this bitter winter forest it calls home. After only a minute or two of no luck, it returned to the treetops, and glided away from us like a bird, towards another group of people up the hill. For a few moments, I felt the plight of the squirrel as it stared at me from the other side of the tree, momentarily exposing itself to inspect my outstretched hand, in hoped of salvation. It lingered only for a moment, anchored to faith in our good nature.

There was only wind. The trees danced above us, swaying to a rhythm that will seldom lapse for another three months. The kids smiled at each other as they hurriedly ate their lunches, some still staring into the treetops, hoping the squirrel would return.


As we made a shortcut across the lake, thw wind blew so fiercely that I could not see others only twenty feet in front of me. As we emerged from the trail, we made straight for the shelter of the van. Not one of us turned to give a glimpse back at what we had just experienced. Barely an hour we explored the haunts of the subalpine winter forest, yet it sent all of us reeling back to the comfort of a steel cage and engine that would carry us back into Estes Park, where we peered back into the mountains out a sunny window, slowly sipping peppermint-cocoa warmth back into our body.

Waiting for the Solstice

The snow hardens the tough rubber of my boots as I hike through the snow, and unless I am hiking rather vigorously with my thickest socks on, the chill seeps into my feet, residing for hours. As the sun slowly washes the snow away over days, shovels work on by piling heaps of snow at the base of sleeping trees on the Pearl St. Mall. On overcast days, cold blue light saturates, and photos carry the indelible signature of the season. Grainy and blue, I become frustrated with the results of freezing fingers and stinging winds.

This is the season I find myself sitting on a hassock in the corner of my apartment for an extra thirty minutes after lunch, soaking in the midday sun as I inspect my plants doing the same. Hugging my guitar to my chest, I rest my cheek on the curved body, closing my eyes toward the sun, tapping soft rhythms of snow melting from the roof, and rhythms of my restlessness.

Songs that come from lunch return some content to my chest, and I open the window halfway to let some sound out to my neighbors, in hopes there is one walking about who may find one of these songs resonate with a similar sentiment in which it was created.

Between songs I rest my cheek back on the side of my guitar, waiting for a new rhythm to move my fingers into song. I sing and shout for awhile, and finally when I rest my cheek on my guitar and hear nothing, just black silence, I return my guitar to its black velvet case, and ride my bike back to work.

While the fall broke me down, the coming of Winter has built me back up. As I finally feel rare instances of consistence in my work, my emotions, etc, I feel restless all the same. Every night I awake looking into the darkness, hoping to find faint hints of light whispering the coming day into my eyes. I laid in bed last night thinking how nice it would be to return home on the shortest day of the year - a homecoming in the quiet night of the year. A week later, I will return to Boulder, prepared to celebrate the coming of a new calendar year, awakening every day to new light, greeting the waxing sun, each day bringing us closer to the awakening of Spring.

Lavender

I was reading a college friend's blog this morning while watching others pass around me in Book End Cafe on Pearl St. Mall, and he used a quote that has landed me found several times in my life:

Not till we are lost, in other words not till we have lost the world, do we begin to find ourselves, and realize where we are and the infinite extent of our relations.
— Henry Thoreau

Pat moved on to talk about his realization of need for his prose and writing to be a celebration of his connections to others, not himself as an island . This thought immediately crumbled and washed away many thoughts of mine behind my blog as well. While I seek to find the truth, beauty, and clarity in this world, I often draw on self-realization, which normally have to do with the natural world surrounding me, and while I hope that my reflections and observations will encourage others seek out similar observations, I am somehow failing to truly encourage others to seek out such beauty, truth and clarity for themselves.

No one's writing is an island, for we all are a product of our environment. We are continually being reinvented, replenished, redefined by everyone that surrounds us, and it is wrong for me to treat my writing with such ownership. It has indeed remained my Ego Island for the past months.

And while I read Pat's journal and distractedly looked around to observe the masses swirling around me, the aroma of lavender invaded. I am obsessed with this smell. I have not yet figured out if this obsession has a deep seed in my childhood, for this scent never wafted the forests of Pennsylvania, yet out here in Boulder it is common for someone to pass by leaving an organically fragrant plume of lavender in their wake.

My ties to this scent may have developed recently from a massage oil Sara and I have, but I do not yet know. All I know is that when I smell this scent, I am completely distracted as though this scent is a song from the sirens to my sinuses. There is a carnal depth within this scent that hints at a certain closeness to all my surroundings, as if I was at once lying in bed with all of my surroundings. My eyes dart around as my nose tests the air like some bird dog seeking out the source, and I am drawn to that person, plant, or listless room decoration as though under a psychedelic haze, I believe there is some distant connection I must come to understand between us. Yet, just as the scent dissipates I return to awareness of my surroundings, no longer feeling the unity within the previous moment.

Perhaps this helps me realize why Sara and I recently bought a lavender oil to put on ourselves each day. I want to constantly smell this oil, if only to continually flirt within these feelings of deeper connection to my surroundings, and hopefully some way which I have yet to realize, this will help what I write to become more inclusive.

Building Bikes

My new fixed gear bike that I made at Community Cycles:

This was built from an old Nishiki frame I picked up in the planning process. Everything else for this project, excepting the bar end brake, was obtained from and assembled at Community Cycles.

I ground down the red frame using a hand grinder, first with a wire brush, then with a polishing disk, and the way it finally shined made me sing through my dust mask.


I used a dremel tool to draw in a mountain range across the top tube. After all, they are at the heart of the reason I am living here in the first place.


After that, I taped off the tubes, so I could paint the lugwork. After the lugwork was painted green, I clear coated the whole frame several times before assembling the whole bike.

Like Dominoes

Here are the notes from a hike this past weekend up in Allenspark, on the edge of the Rocky Mountain National Park, less than a mile through the woods from where Sara and I used to live last year. Hopefully, I will be able to upload some images to it in the coming week or so.

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Standing on the edge of a dry streambed only two feet wide, my eyes followed dusty elk and moose prints along a heavily used trail from dry yellow aspen and grass fields across the streambed, into the darker conifer forest. Fir trees had long ago taken over the lower land adjoining the perennial spring, leaving the drier Ponderosa stands to take over the slopes uphill from the stream.
As I followed each print along the trail into the forest, the brighter straw color of a freshly snapped aspen trunk caught my eye. Some storm had snapped the twenty, maybe thirty year old off at chest level, just above a large woodpecker hole. After learning how to find flying squirrels in the woods of Pennsylvania during wandering sessions with friends in college, I have since been unable to resist the urge to tap on every tree I see that has a cavity hole along its trunk. Approaching the tree, I noticed brown lumps in the large cavity that looked like oversized elk droppings. Fishing one out of the hole, I was clueless as to what this wrinkly walnut sized brown sponge was until I thought of all the squirrels I noticed carrying mushrooms around this fall. As truffle flashed through my mind, I held the little brown knuckle up to my stuffy nose and took a whiff. It smelled like almond syrup. I looked for bite marks, and bit a spot where there were none. It was dry and spongy, but had a barely noticeable pleasant taste. Thinking of all of the squirrels I saw carrying poisonous Amanitas this fall, I spit it out.
Giggling over my find, I reached back into the cavity; sounding for the depth of this squirrels cache. I couldn’t feel the bottom, but based on the volume of most larger woodpecker’s nests, I guess there was about three quarters of a gallon of truffles in this single dead aspen. I looked around for a minute, as if something else amazing might pop out of the woods, and walked on resuming my search for a well-used elk crossing close to water where I might be able to hunt this winter.
I followed several elk and moose trails into the woods, trying to stick to prints that were only a day old. However, I kept returning to the streambed, unhappy with the amount of travel any of the crossings were getting. I finally arrived downstream to where the spring consistently flowed year round, and pausing at the bottom of one steep embankment to admire a larger fir whose large roots were dipping into the spring, I noticed a basketball size grass nest perched atop the end of one branch some fifteen feet above the ground. Having been spoiled by the aesthetic oak and maple trees of the east, I rarely climb conifer trees, but decided it was time. And I needed a break from searching for a reliable creek crossing. I reached up into the tree, and stepping upon branches an inch or two thick, I began to wriggle my way through the branches.
Taking a break to wipe some bark from my eyes, I noticed a large, white mushroom, with a whitish yellow cap nestled amidst a tuft of needle next to me. A foot away I noticed a smaller, black and yellow mushroom in the next tuft of needles. I followed the branch to its terminal bud, and looked around me to see almost every tuft of needles had at least one mushroom laying within it, bobbing in the cold, dry wind from the divide, which was maybe four miles away. I climbed further, finding that I was surrounded by hundreds of mushrooms. Taking a quick survey, I could count at least five different species of mushrooms, most of which I later found to be Russula,, many of which are edible to humans as well.
By the time I had arrived at the nest it seemed moot to inspect it, since it was apparent this was one of the nests of the squirrel, or family of squirrels, who inhabited this tree, and covered it with their winter stash of dried mushrooms. I gave the branch a shake, hoping a disgruntled squirrel may take a look from inside. After a second uneventful shake, I climbed further up the tree to a few very large masses of mistletoe coming from the trunk of this fir, perhaps almost 20 feet above the ground. There seemed to be many more mushrooms on the branches closer to the mistletoe, and as I climbed closer I noticed this dense tangle of branches were lined with grass. It was full of mushrooms. From the largest cavity, I could have filled a five-gallon bucket. I grabbed a representative of the two most common mushrooms, and dropped them down to the ground by my pack to id them later at home. I inspected a few more nests within the mistletoe, and clung to the swaying tree for a minute, listening to the wind rippling down through the valley, and smirked as it all came together; from the arrangement of the needles on the branch, to the parasitic mistletoe that sprouted like a preeminent tombstone from its host’s trunk, everything in the near silence of the wind whispered perfection through the trees.
The needles themselves, arranged in a spiral along three-inch twigs that reach up like a supplicant’s hand, perfectly cradle the delicate mushrooms. Arranged about every foot or so, these tufts provide a diligent pine squirrel with the pre-organized matrix along which they can meticulously fill the branches with mushrooms. Larger fungi seemed to be placed closer to the trunk of the tree, while smaller, less valuable pieces of fungi were placed closer to the ends of the branches, closer to the wind.
Mistletoe is a parasite. Once it has infiltrated the bark of a tree, death for the tree begins. While many forest managers seek to remove this pest from valuable stands of wood, this organism naturally selects weaker individuals who are more susceptible to its sticky seeds. Thus, the oldest trees in the forest exemplify those with the greatest tolerance to such parasites. This old fir I was perched within, was one of these such trees. The oldest water loving fir along the whole stretch of stream I had found, and here above me were the largest bunches of mistletoe I had ever seen. The fir showed no signs of distress to me, and I would assume many of its progeny stood solidly below prepared to take its place when the mistletoe exacted its toll.
While we classify mistletoe as a pest, and our human emotions and logic lead us to believe it as a bad thing, without the mistletoe’s presence, one harsh winter could, years down the road, mean a sooner death for this fir tree than the mistletoe promises. Let me explain.
Squirrels depend on the mistletoe to hold their winter’s cache of mushrooms. Just as the fir needles provide the perfect drying rack for a portion of the pine squirrel’s booty, these large tangles of mistletoe are essentially large drying baskets, which allow all of the mushrooms cached here to dry quickly before molding of decomposing. Having such a huge supply of mushrooms at the structural center of the tree ensures that even amidst the roughest winter storms, which may strip all of the mushrooms from the fir branches, these squirrels will still have a hardy supply of fungi just a few branches away. Ok, so what part do the mushrooms play?
Scientists are continually learning that the symbiosis existing between fungus and trees is not just a helping hand to each of these organisms’ well being. It is vital to their existence. The thread-like hyphae of fungus, which are similar to plant roots, spread through the soil, and attach to tree roots when they encounter them. At these sites, a partnership is formed in which the trees provide carbon to the fungus, while the fungus provides water, minerals, and protection against disease pathogens. This symbiosis in effect extends their own resource network exponentially, while helping out their neighbor by sharing excess goods. So, back to the mistletoe.
In the late summer and fall months when squirrels hurriedly collect and dry their winter food stores of fungus, the open gills of the mushrooms dangling from the squirrel’s mouth spread millions of spores across the forest floor, some of which will slowly found new colonies of fungus throughout the forest, which will go on to help ensure the health of the trees creating the forest. Remove one piece of the puzzle and a trophic cascade begins.
Without the mistletoe to maintain the most important mass of the squirrel’s winter diet, the squirrels would not make it through the winter. Where squirrels disappear from patches of the forest, the mushrooms no longer have their “bees” to sew their seeds. A few seasons later, the soils slowly become depleted of hyphae, and suddenly the trees have a tougher time receiving their most important nutrients and water from the soil. So, during the most important time of the summer when they usually focus on creating sugars to bide them through the winter, these trees must allot their energies to growing more extensive root systems to seek out these nutrients. Come wintertime, these trees are often more at risk of succumbing to a rough or longer winter. Finally, a dead conifer tree cannot continue to feed its parasitic mistletoe. In this way, nature exhibits a perfect give and take method of existence in which one organism depends on others to fulfill their weaknesses, while they fulfill another’s.

Prickly Pear

10/10/07

Despite all of the second hand stories and writings of Abbey-esque desert rats, I needed to discover for myself the annoyance of prickly pear. I was tired of hiking around the dry grass foothill fields, dodging prickly pear with every step, avoiding its sting based just on other’s stories. The purplish pink “pears” looked like some drug-induced cartoon of a cactus creature’s foot; some cheap pun for the phrase, “don’t tread on me.” I had heard of their sweet taste, and of the spiny tines left in the mouths of the unwary, but I was a little thirsty, and figured I needed to know now that if I was out here and lost, could I eat this thing to live or not?
I crouched down over one looking closely at the white spines whirling around below the pears, and then noticed the tufts of minute spines spiraling the pear itself like a staircase. They looked soft and fuzzy, with red points sticking out. I brushed my finger over one, and looked closely at my calloused fingerprint to see more than fifteen spines stuck in my skin. I tried to imagine the fiberglass feel of them sticking into my gums.
Thinking that there was some chance of my fingers avoiding these spines, I twisted one of the cartoon toes off the flattened foot, and held it close. It would be completely stupid to pop it in my mouth, so I squeezed it, hoping some sweet juice would come out. A greenish brown mix between guts and snot oozed copiously from the opening at the base of the pear, and I sucked it into my mouth after inspecting it for spines. I rolled it around in my mouth, separating the hard pebble-seeds from the slimy pulp. They were pleasing. I kept squeezing the pear until more than thirty seeds oozed from it, and until my efforts became less valuable than the slimy ooze coating my mouth. I bit off a piece of the flesh and spit it out. Rolling my tongue around in my mouth, I was amazed to find no pain. I bit another piece of the flesh off and chewed it. It reminded me of a sun-warmed strawberry, but I still spit it out, worrying about minute spines. I squeezed the pear one last time for one more taste of its guts, and the telling sting of cactus spines rang through my index finger. I guess that extra squeeze was all those little spines needed to weasel their way through my calloused fingers into softer flesh below. I tried to pull them out, but it was too late, the spines were sunken and hooked, stationary and painful.
I threw the pear away, and continued walking down the hill, wondering how to get the spines out of my finger. As I was thinking that I would always go hiking in cactus country with tweezers from now on, I felt them, in my mouth. The soft skin around these intruders of my lips and gums began to harden in rejection, and that is how I found the tiny points sticking in my mouth. The few I found sticking out of my lips, I was lucky enough to maneuver with my tongue and teeth to pull them out. The rest in my tongue and gums next to my teeth had to wait. Hiking down the trail, I was considering chewing on a stick to try and take my mind off the pain, as though that perhaps it would break up the evil spines scattered all over my mouth, but the grasshoppers popping back and forth across the trail distracted me. When I got home I pulled my tongue out and inspected the lumps on it. Only one still had the spine attached, but as soon as I grabbed it, the top snapped off. Well, what now?
If I was hungry and lost in the desert, I would probably be stupid enough to try it again. Someone would probably find my stinking and bloated body lying under a tree with a gnawed piece of dead, sun-bleached juniper stick lying next to me, and a mouthful of soggy wood splinters. The best part of the experience was spitting the seeds like a gun at objects off the trail as I walked home. I felt pleasantly content in spreading hopes for the future of such a well-evolved plant. Even as I write this, I am trying to pull another spine I just found from the inside wall of my mouth.