A TRAIN THING

  I am hung up on a ‘Train-Thing’, a steam engine powered train thing to be precise. I took the Cumbres-Toltec steam train two days ago; a full day with a buffet lunch that goes down into New Mexico and it was a very good day. Fall colors were at their peak and the money was well spent. Today (right now) I’m waiting for the ticket office to open on the Georgetown Loop RR, at a coffee shop in Georgetown, CO. There is a very good chance I’ll have to stop writing before I’m finished here; not that I write slow but I think slow and then I rethink that. 
Today’s ride is only a short loop that runs along I-70 as far as Silver Plume, a short stop and back down the same way we came up. The whole trip takes just under two hours. I’ll have my camera but don’t know what the views will be like. I’ll pass on snapshots (to prove that I was here) and hope for something worthy of a photograph.
I’m staying with an old friend, classmate from high school so the friendship is long lived as are we. we are. After high school we lost track of Martin, rediscovered at our 50 year reunion in 2007. He spent those years in California and Colorado as an emergency room surgeon. He does’t come back to the K.C. area anymore but since then I’ve enjoyed a standing invitation to crash at their house just down the hill a dozen miles from Georgetown. We will hang out this afternoon and winterize his daughter’s camper; I’ll hold the light and nod when I approve. 
It’s about time to move on up to the rail head and get my ticket. I’ll put the computer away and pick up again when I have a good story to finish. 

                                        Later . .  .

The Georgetown Loop Rail Road was a nice little ride up the mountain and I’m glad I went. It was less than two hours and more of a tourist tourist thing than an adventure. Just two days after the all day, rockin’-rollin’ ride on Cumbres-Toltec it was a bit of a letdown but understood, that was a hard act to follow. Seating was a bench against the wall on both sides of the car, back to the scenery but big, open air windows. Standing up and moving around was against the rules. The ride itself was nice and the views likewise but trees along the way were so close to the tracks you couldn’t see out. Not complaining; everybody else seemed pleased and the whole thing was just too affordable to pass up. 
Everything in the gift shop was over priced so I went back into Georgetown, walked the main street and visited shops and stores I’ve learned to appreciate over the years. Bought a nice little pocket knife and at my favorite market I picked up a jar of cherry/jalapeño jelly. If not for the steam train I would have missed hanging out for an extra hour in one of my favorite towns anywhere.
I’ll be moving on tomorrow; have a reservation through my travel club to stay in Colorado Springs again. I’ll hang here with my friends until noon or so and then head down to the Springs. Day after tomorrow it will be all over but the long ride across the flat-land. I’ve learned that excitement is unsustainable and disappointment is relative to one’s expectations. So I look for the best and make do when it disappoints. It’s bedtime and I just finished a shot of peach brandy; nothing remarkable just prepping the eyelids. 

QUAKING ASPEN

I like to start a written piece with an interesting but trivial tidbit then segue into the idea that I want to examine. But it’s getting late, tomorrow will be busy and I need some good sleep. Getting to it: The last four days have been like falling down stairs but today has been worth all the bumps. Today I took a ride on the Cumbres & Toltec Scenic Railroad. It runs 64 miles between Antonito, Colorado and Chama, New Mexico, a narrow gauge system established in the 1880’s between Durango Colorado and Alamosa, Colorado. Antonito and Chama are both situated at about 8,000 ft. elevation and the train ride goes up and over Cumbres Pass at just over 10,000 ft. so you’re in high country all the way. 
The ride takes about seven hours altogether. The steam engine was built in 1925 and by steam engine standards it is relatively small. With a coal tender (it burns coal) and nine passenger cars in tow the ride is slow. The views are grand in scope and the constant clickity-clack belies a ride that is neither smooth nor measured. Moving car to car requires one hand on the back of the next seat every step or guaranteed you land in someone’s lap before you get to the end of the car. The seating ranges from plush chairs at period correct tables in the expensive cars to comfortable school-bus-like seats in the more affordable cars. Big windows slide up and down like a school bus. 
The train ride was nice and the throw-back technology to the 1800’s gave us a historic if not adventuresome sense of place in time. But the star of the day was not the hardware. There were 150 passengers, maybe more and there was no question about why we were there, especially today. At altitude the forest is mainly spruce and fir but as the terrain gets more vertical the Aspen show up on the mountain sides in clusters and groves that can reach for miles it would seem. The locals call the Aspen “Quakies” as they make a quaking sound in the wind. I lived out here just a hundred miles Northwest of here and since I moved away 50 years ago it’s always a sort of ‘home coming’ and I feel like I belong. 
Those Quakies, their leaves shimmer in a breeze with a shiny surface and a dull, flat green underside. It is a sight that defies description and the sound is equally indescribable. But that’s not the part that we came for. In early October those shimmering green leaves start to pale and then turn the richest, most dazzling yellow. You have to see it to believe and that is why we all chose this day to make this slow, patient, unencumbered odyssey. I can only speak for myself but I trust that many others would agree; Fall colors are more than just yellow quakies against a verdant green mountain side. But little white clouds in a cerulean blue sky, they grace the mountain and it’s golden dusting like only nature can. I’m not good with flowery prose but saying something like, “the blue and white and green and yellow are so cool.” it just doesn’t meet the need. 
We rode a charter bus from Chama back to Antonito where I said thank’s and best wishes to friends I hadn’t met before today. On the train I sat beside an old man with a Canon camera like mine. We were taking photographs out the same open window. He was a retired biology teacher and his wife had taught 5th grade in San Antonio, Texas. Small world; we had lunch together at 9,000 ft. at a mid-way stop. The building reminded me of the ski lodge at Arapaho Basin only the crowd was too old and they didn’t have on ski pants. An awesome, all you could eat buffet. I had spinach salad, BBQ pork and a scoop of green chili casserole. 
I’m about done here. Sometimes when I’m tired I make a blog post without the necessary edit and revision. I can blame it on exhaustion or sleepy eyes or any number of made up reasons and give it wings with a clear conscience. This is one of those times. 

CHUCH-A-CHUCH-A-CHUCH

  Driving I-70 across 424 miles of Kansas is not the worst duty you can pull but Colorado has another 2 hours of flat, treeless prairie before you shake the ‘Kansas’ off your shoes. I am out on the road again so soon. Michigan/Minnesota in August went so well and the weather is still good so no reason to stay home and watch the leaves fall. I’ll be taking in fall colors in the mountains this week. Stayed with a Travel Club host last night in Colorado Springs. She rents this little house out as an air-B&B but also, if it isn’t spoken for and a travel club member needs shelter for a night or two she takes them in for the club gratuity. In that case my overnight cost is $20. Usually you stay in the house with the host like ‘long lost family’ and you meet the nicest people that way. But I spent the late afternoon and night by myself in the B&B house. Very small but nice 3BR in a pleasant old, well kept neighborhood. The street looks like a two-track gravel driveway that disappears between and behind two houses. Narrow with no room to pass and lots of trees it’s easy to miss. My GPS told me to turn right and I went to the next corner several times before I figured it out. 
Today I’m on my way south of Alamosa to a little (pop. 900) town Antonito, CO. Tomorrow I’ll ride the narrow gauge, steam powered excursion train (65 miles) down to Chama, NM and take in the fall colors. I brought my Canon SLR camera. I know, I know; my phone takes great pictures but I want photographs. My experience leaves me to believe, the only way to get great photographs is with a precision glass lens and a mechanical shutter. If that makes me a photo-snob then I’ll take it. People who buy my framed photographs want to know how I get such great photographs and I say, “Thank you.” I’m hoping for good light tomorrow. It can get cold at altitude this time of year on the Colorado-New Mexico border still, weather permitting I’ll spend most of the ride outside in the open-air excursion car. But coffee and doughnuts do wonders.
I’ll be hanging out with old friends from high school later in the week and maybe another steam train ride up in Georgetown, CO.It’s just a loop of a dozen or so miles but it goes Chuch-a-chuch-a-chucch with steam shooting out between the driver wheels and they don’t make-em like that anymore. 

IF IT QUACKS LIKE A DUCK

  “In every life you have some trouble, but if you worry you make it double. Don’t worry, be happy.” Bobby McFerrin wrote that song thirty seven years ago and I still turn to it for a breath of fresh air. In sync with that is the clever axiom, “The only two things you should never worry about are the things you control and the things you can't control.” Don’t worry, be happy. 
The only problem I see is that our primitive forebearers evolved through a time when there was good reason to feel anxiety and uncertainty and whether we agree or not, the way our brain works now has not evolved from our Hunter-Gatherer ancestor’s. We don’t get to pick and choose which underlying fears we can disregard. Still I catch myself mouthing the words; “. . . if you worry you make it double; don’t worry, be happy.” Often it helps for a few minutes or a few hours, like a Tylenol with a tooth ache. So when fears come back I am preconditioned to accept, even if just for a while, the fate I cannot prevent. 
I can’t remember a time when Americans were so divided. Both sides worry the other will gain ground and the dispute falls just short of organized violence, and that’s on a good day. Our Civil War came on a bad day. Southern conservatives defended their God given right to buy and sell human beings, to use and abuse them as slaves. After General Lee surrender the country was tired of killing each other and turned to the west. Manifest Destiny would drive the next ideological purge. It was a national movement to conquer, exploit and rule over all the lands west of America’s existing borders. Ironic that we had just fought a six year war to undo slavery only to follow up with a campaign of genocide and ethnic cleansing against indigenous nations that had sustained their culture in those contested lands for thousands of years. It seems when God is on your side then war is a righteous instrument and killing is how we keep score. 
Again in the early 1900’s it was conservative ideology that resisted and fought fiercely against Women’s Suffrage. It was considered necessary to keep women ‘Bare-foot and pregnant at home where they belong’. The struggle to give women voting rights and move toward gender equality was a very big deal. They got the vote but gender equality still moves two steps forward and one step back.
Then, just when the slavery issue had been put to bed the 1960’s unraveled with Civil Rights legislation. The laws changed but the culture did not and we looked the other way rather than address prejudicial practice and ‘Jim Crow’ injustice. Historically the South has been deeply conservative socially but their economy was based on agriculture and they favored the Democratic Party as a hedge against big banks and industry in the North. But that changed dramatically with Civil Rights in the LBJ years. With the stroke of a pen LBJ flipped the South into the conservative Republican camp.
Currently there is a political ideology gaining support that comes right out of the 1800’s. White Christian Nationalism asserts that American identity and institutions should be explicitly Christian, primarily white, and patriarchal. It is a political construct, not a theological one. What could be more conservative than guaranteeing white male privilege by marrying it to centuries old Christian tradition? Resisting change & preserving tradition are the pillars of conservative ideology; the powerful stay rich and the weak stay poor. 
‘Ain’t no place to lay your head; Somebody came and took your bed. Don’t worry, be happy.’  That’s about all I can do. I’m too old to make a fight of it but I refuse to let the bigots spoil my old age. Our rulers rule as if the country was a corporation. They are the CEO’s and Board of Directors who can hire and fire whoever you please for any reason, any time and as long as the privileged white men profit and nobody else matters. 

I realize that an articulate conservative could present an equally biased observation in the other direction. But ideologies tend to remain static and fixed while politics and practice change when it serves the purpose. They can change their names and pledge allegiance to whose ever star is rising but conservative ideology doesn't change. I’ll keep asking the question: Who exactly: Who profits from what you would have us do? If it looks like a duck, if it waddles and quacks like a duck then I’m going to presume that it is in fact a duck. All I can do is vote and I do vote, even though the bastards are scheming to gerrymander congressional districts to their advantage. What I truly believe is that nobody is in control, no one to save us from ourselves and God doesn’t give a damn, why should she? What is certain is; the rule of unintended consequence is timeless and proves itself every day. In every human undertaking there has been unintended, unexpected consequences that may be either a blessing or a curse. All things being equal that suggests that half of the time our best efforts yield damaging, costrly, unintended consequences. So I do worry, feel uneasy and suffer anxiey with feral humans and their nuclear weapons. Short sighted and self obsessed, their only constant is to win at any cost. But if you want to sleep easy, Don’t worry, be happy. 

MAKING LEMONADE

  My life evolved overnight in 2020 with the Covid pandemic. I’m not even a blip in my culture but I’m all I’ve got. So in April of ’20 I was well adapted to retirement and the self inflicted quarantine seemed easy enough. After five years it may seem like a small bump in the road but I’m still wrestling with the aftermath. Avoiding human contact when you live alone is like wearing shoes that don't fit. You push on through it but you walk funny and you never really get used to it. The President told us it was a liberal scheme to undermine his MAGA plans and that sick old people were going to die anyway. His shills are still bought into all the ‘Trumpfuckery’. The Urban Dictionary definition is; “any actions involving racism, misogyny and hate speech masquerading as patriotism.” But I don’t want to go there. Been there, done that. At my age I’m not going to let the narcissist bigot spoil the years I have left. When you get lemons, make lemonade.
Some people collect stamps or play golf or any number of hobbies to stay busy while navigating retirement. Neither stamps nor golf work for me, the house and yard require some attention and I have family I like to family with. But I live with a case of wanderlust, I love moving through time and space, moving my feet; don’t need a destination just need to be in motion. I’ve shared this often, what should I call it, (personality quirk) with whoever is listening. Like anything else, wanderlust is an ultimate freedom and sometimes it goes up in smoke with crash & burn. It’s not for everyone. All I can do is speak for myself and I’ve no regrets over any of it. 
There were a couple of health issues in the spring that I worked through but it was well into summer before I got all of my ducks lined up for a road trip. I put a couple of thousand miles on my truck, did my August 4 birthday on Lake Michigan's coast, made a concert in Grand Rapids with friends, a ferry ride across the big lake to visit with my kids in St. Paul, Minnesota. On return I felt so good I started thinking about my nest road trip. Fall is the perfect season to go exploring. It took a couple of days to hatch an idea (New Mexico) but I’ll be going out again 1st week of October. I write more and better I think when I’m on the road so there’s that to look forward to. Going alone I meet more people; I like that as well. 
Sitting here writing I’m listening to a play-list from my I-Tunes library. It’s not easy, do one or the other but both together I listen more and write less. Just listened to Helen Reddy sing Don McClean’s ‘And I Love You So’. I’m a sucker for good love songs and this one is about as good as it gets. I really identify with the 4th verse; “The book of life is brief, And once the page is read, All but love is dead, That is my belief.”
Just now as I write, the music bumps up to Kate Wolf singing; “Here In California.” Maybe not a standard but she died early in her career (1980’s) and this one is too good to skip over. In the 1st verse and the chorus a mother cautions her daughter; “She held me ‘round the shoulders, In a voice so soft and kind, She said love can make you happy, And love can rob you blind.” The chorus follows with a cautionary metaphor; “Here in California, Fruit hangs heavy on the vine, But there ain’t no gold, I thought I’d warn you, And the hills turn brown in the summertime.”  In 3 verses and a chorus she spins a story it would take an accomplished writer several chapters to write.

    They say that money is the root of all evil but money and power are interchangeable and I think it's the power part that goes sour first. So the shills have power now and I'm making lemonade. 

OUT OF SIGHT OUT OF MIND

  By definition a ‘Peeve’ is something that you find annoying. A ‘Pet Peeve’ would be something most annoying. But there are some peeves that are so benign that they barely register on the ‘Annoyance’ scale, still you notice and process with a level of disbelief. I can think of three, one is for real, one I forgive and one that’s just a distraction. In high school I took Drivers Education class, a 17 year-old senior who already had a drivers license. It was an easy A grade and you got a discount on insurance if you passed a Drivers Ed. class. 
My pet peeve is drivers who switch lanes in heavy traffic while driving way-way too fast. Defensive driving was a big deal in the class. Our teacher reduced the idea to a simple rule; “You must believe that every car on the road is being driven by someone who is trying to kill you, so drive accordingly.” It’s like playing dodgeball with cars. Offensive (aggressive) driving belongs on a race track where getting there is not enough, you have to get there first and it doesn’t matter how you do it. But on streets and highways going twice the speed limit and cutting others off to meet your need for speed is extreme and not a good thing. I know I’m old and maybe that’s why I still pay attention to those defensive driving rules; observe the speed limit, keep close track of the traffic behind you, keep a safe cushion between cars. Yes, I get annoyed by aggressive, speeding, lane changing drivers.
The 2nd peeve is not a serious peeve but it can be annoying. As much as I appreciate my I-phone sometimes I hate it. I see well enough to keep my drivers license but reading fine print, I don’t even try anymore. My I-phone has a (zoom) app with a sliding zoom feature but it’s like a camera, it can’t take pictures of itself. Many texts have fine print and I might as well call the person and ask them to read it back to me. I can try the ‘pinch-in’ move to zoom in but a mild case of arthritis is enough to lose that fine touch. I bump too hard and it’s like the phone sneezes and goes someplace I don’t want to go. All it takes is once and I am annoyed. I’m better with other apps like my Spanish/English translator but the ‘pinch-in-pinch-out’ is a challenge. The annoyance gets my attention still I remember to be thankful for all the other good stuff I can do with my I-phone like texting photos and blocking spam numbers. 
The 3rd peeve is not annoying so much as distracting. My dad had eight tattoos, three on one arm, four on the other and one on his chest. As a kid I was fascinated with pictures on flesh and the fascination never went away. In the military tattoos are common, so common they don’t raise an eyebrow. I remember guys who woke up with a dreadful hangover and a new tattoo that they didn’t remember getting. My ‘Tat’ was more about identifying with my dad than an alcohol induced act of ‘crazy’. What I wanted was a small, inexpensive, animal located in a suitable location. I accepted that it would be with me for the rest of my life and hoping for a long life the idea of a faded, washed out image on flabby, wrinkled flesh was a turn-off. So the small gorilla landed on my right buttox. It was high enough I couldn’t sit on it and the recovery was amazingly easy. Some of my amigos thought it was cool and copied with their own, better tattoos. One got a mountain climber climbing up and out of the crack of his ass, another had a target with an arrow stuck in the bullseye. 
For the past 66 years ‘Kong’ has been living in obscurity under my jeans’ hip pocket. Only a few friends and family have seen him and nobody wants to bend over for a closer look. It’s never been big deal but it is a link back to my dad. But I like body art and often score it mentally like judges score gymnastics. To get a high score it has to look like it belongs there; I like leafy vines and flowers growing off the shoulder and down the arm, like it grew there. Don’t care much for flags, knives, names, symbols, anything that doesn’t fit the moment or needs an explanation. After many years of informal judging I consider myself a qualified expert. When I see half a dozen bad tattoos splattered up and down arms and legs I might roll my eyes and muse, “What were they thinking?” but I let it go without much thought.

        ‘Kong’ my gorilla is a bad tattoo. But nobody’s going to see it at Walmart or anywhere for that matter, not even on a shorts & T-shirt day. My dad smiled and that was good enough for me. On a 1-10 scale I would give ‘Kong’ a 3 for its location. The gorilla on my butt is not news, looks more like a bruise than a tattoo and hasn’t come up in conversation in a very long time. A better name for him might be; ‘’Out of Sight, Out of Mind.’

EVEN LITTLE BIRDS KNOW

  I don’t remember exactly when but I must have been in Junior High, my grandpa lived with us. He was a cranky old man who kept to himself but we had an unspoken trust, what went on between us stayed between us. One day in the fall I came outside as he was coming around the corner of the house with a shovel and a bucket. I followed him to the middle of the front yard, asked what he was doing. There was some dirt in the bucket and a Maple whip (a small tree in its 1st or 2nd year with a single, unbranched trunk and a few leaves at the tip of its leader.) He was going to plant it.
He had me uncoil the garden hose at the corner of the house and drag it to he spot he had started digging. I asked questions and ran water into the hole then watched him nest the taproot into the mud at the bottom. He held the whip steady while I started back-filling dirt into the hole. We let the water trickle into the loose soil long enough for me to learn; “Planting a tree is always a good thing and the fall is the best time for it.” The house is still there, I don’t know who lives there but after 70 years, when I drive by the old place I see the tree is still making afternoon shade on the front porch. 
In the early 90’s I was a resource teacher at an Environmental Magnet Middle School and read an article that said; “People who have a keen sense of appreciation for nature and the environment can usually trace it back to a childhood experience that was shared with an elder role model.” That Maple whip was the first tree I ever helped plant and my grandpa and I did it together. 

        My job was infusing the environmental theme with plant science. I had a greenhouse and a lab where teachers brought their students for hands-on activities. We did lots of tip cuttings and seed plantings in paper cups with follow up to measure the seedling’s progress and took field trips to identify trees by their leaves. Before I got that assignment my biology had always favored animals. But the more one learns about any aspect of nature the more it draws you in. The chemistry of photosynthesis is complicated but it can be modeled with toothpicks and miniature marshmallows and we did that in small groups of 2 or 3. My plants vs. animals preference adapted considering that waste product of plants is the free oxygen we breathe and animal’s waste is - you know what cats try to bury and birds leave on your windshield. 
In the 1990’s Americans were polluting the environment at a record rate. Right wing politicians and big business knew what was happening but didn’t want to believe it. They stood to profit from irresponsible policy & practice and nothing would jeopardize those profits without a fight. In denial hey mocked and discredited researchers, called it a liberal hoax saying, “The sky is too big and there is too much water for us to do that.” and the threat of pollution had become a running joke. I was dismissed in my own family as a Tree-hugging, hippy, save-the-whales freak. After all, those plastic bottles and coal burning industry create jobs that drive the economy and corporate profit. We are still polluting at a record rate but everybody knows. Human nature is strange, they used to call cigarettes ‘coffin nails’ due to the cancer connection but millions keep on smoking. It’s no surprise that businesses that save money by polluting the air and water and land, they keep on doing it. 
John Muir was a pioneer naturalist in the late 1800’s/early 1900’s and instrumental in the formation of our National Parks system. He was quoted, “When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.” Out of sight-out of mind translates to, “If it ain’t broke don’t fix it.” Yet, that translates to, “Pay me now or pay me later.” Everything is connected, interconnected and the ‘Pay me later’ certainly will come around. When it does it may be too painful to bear. Even little birds know not to sh*t in their nest. 
I don’t know what my grandpa would think. His time was the 20th Century and suffered from the ‘Out of sight’ mentality. But he got the tree planting just right. In the 70+ years since we planted the Maple whip I have planted more trees than I can count. I like to think I would have grown to love and understand the nature of nature without my grandpa’s influence. 
I think about this stuff, I really do. If that makes me an old ‘save-the-whales’ freak then that’s alright. I do care about our Mother planet, especially the thin layer of air, land and sea that supports life. It is fragile, only about four miles thick and it’s the only place on earth where life can flourish. That’s not just human life but all life. Trees were here long before humans climbed down from the trees and started walking upright and trees will still be here when there are no more people. Thanks again Grandpa.