Lighthouse

I've already taken crap here for admitting that I like James Taylor music,* and this is probably going to lead to more of the same. But I've had a stanza of a song rattling around in my head intermittently for a few months now, and I need to try to get it out.

I'm a lonely lighthouse, not a ship out in the night 

I'm watching the sea 

She's come half-way round the world to see the light 

and to stay away from me 

I was in Naval Junior ROTC in high school, during the closing years of the Viet Nam war. We marched, polished our shoes and belt buckles, and learned to do all that "right shoulder arms" stuff with fake rifles. I was second in command, so I got a sword. And yes, it was exactly as cool as you think to carry a sword.

We also learned to navigate, which was my favorite thing. I was the best in class at navigation, probably because my father was both an architect and a lover of maps, so most of the tools were very familiar to me. Before there was GPS, navigation involved occasionally figuring out where you were, comparing that with where you thought you were, and then determining what direction you needed to go to get back on course. You would repeat this process until you tied up at the dock.

The "figuring out where you were" part often involved sighting two or three landmarks and triangulating your position from the angle to them. Lighthouses were built specifically to be these kinds of landmarks for navigation. Mistaking  the distance to these landmarks often caused ships to run aground. So in the end, maritime navigation really is (or was) a process of finding something and staying away from it.

There's a metaphor here somewhere. We all need fixed points in our lives to help us find our way.  Without them, we are just sailing around with no direction or purpose. Religion, politics, adventure, love, sex, and career can all serve this purpose to some degree, and at different times. But if we become too attached to one or another and fix our gaze on it, we risk crashing at the feet of the very thing that was supposed to save us.

How do we find the right balance? How the hell should I know? To paraphrase a line later in the song, just because I'm standing here doesn't mean I won't be wrong this time.

Happy sailing!

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* The early stuff, before he went commercial.**

** That's a joke from on my former self. You know, the one that bought the Flying Machine album and pretended it was as good as those that came later. But I really haven't bought anything he's done since 1980.

Mississippi Kites

There is a family of Mississippi Kites that has been nesting in the next-door neighbor's tree almost as long as we have lived in this house. I like these particular birds for three reasons:

1. They eat bugs.

2. The make that Northern Exposure noise.

3. They look cool sailing around the neighborhood and staring down from the treetops.

The family has been pretty successful over the years, and now we have the silly things all over the neighborhood. Yesterday, one of the juveniles was learning to swoop, dive-gliding from altitude and swooping down between the trees in the neighbor's yard. It looked like great fun. If it hadn't been 94 degrees (F) outside, and me late for work, I would have stayed longer to watch.

I've written a couple of fairly depressing posts lately, so this was going to be an upbeat post about youthful enthusiasm and the joy of learning new things. Then, yesterday I came home to this:

Yep, my neighbor cut down their tree. Seriously? This is how it's going to be this summer? Oh, well. Maybe next year they will nest in our yard.

How to Build a Perfect Day

Start with one of these:




Then a nap.

Then this:



Best of all is enjoying it all with special people.

More later, after more sleeping.

Into Thin Air

I have loved the outdoors all of my life, and have done my share of hiking. As much as I enjoy the beauty of desert landscapes, I've never really felt the need to spend a lot of time walking in the red and brown country. For me, hiking has always been synonymous with woods and water, and my favorite trails look something like this:



But last week I spent a day in Arches National Park in Utah, and it may be the single most beautiful place I have ever been. Around every corner there was something else spectacular, impossible and breathtaking that managed to be different from everything else we had seen. I was reminded more than once of the landscapes described in Lord of the Rings.*



The highlight of the park is definitely the Delicate Arch, a precarious rock formation perched on the edge of a sort of large stone bowl at the crest of an inaccessible and formidable hill. The image of this formation is featured in virtually all of the park's literature, and adorns many of Utah's license plates.



I'm not sure how much the difficulty of getting to the base of the arch contributes to its popularity and mystique, but I'm sure it does. Granted, most of my hiking days were when I was less than half my current age -- and a somewhat larger fraction of my current weight -- but I still manage to get out every so often, and I can generally hold my own trudging up and down the hills. The hike to Delicate Arch was the hardest mile and a half I think I have ever covered.

In my defense, my house is somewhere around fifty feet above sea level, and this was about a mile above that. I discovered that we really take air for granted. It was also ninety-four degrees and we didn't have as much water with us as we should have. But the water thing was our own fault.

After a few hundred yards meandering through the sand and scrub, and a couple of modest hills, visitors are confronted with what appears to be a single slab of rock, sloping up at a moderate angle. Definitely uphill, but doesn't seem particularly steep.



Doesn't really look like much of an obstacle, does it? What isn't immediately apparent is that this rock slab covers the better part of a mile. Think of the tiny bumps at the top of the photo as three or four story office buildings and you will get some idea of the scale. Everyone we passed who was coming down gave us a knowing and sympathetic greeting. More than once I was reminded of Jon Krakauer's description of climbing Everest**. Of course, just as I was feeling courageous and intrepid for persevering, a Bavarian family cruised by laughing and joking, small children, grandparents and all. I'm sure they were laughing at us.

The trip got a little easier once we cleared what I came to think of as the south face, and the terrain became more reminiscent of Land of the Lost. I really would not have been surprised to see a T. Rex at any moment.

The area around the arch itself is very difficult to describe, and pictures don't even begin to do it justice. You will just have to go see it. There were twenty people or so scattered around when we arrived, and no one was speaking above a whisper. It felt like we were in a cathedral. We wondered whether this was a universal reaction, or whether it was just the people who visited that day. Perhaps on other days there is more of a party atmosphere, though I doubt it.

This is my proof that I made it. That tiny speck under the arch is me.



The trip down was much, much easier, and we truly came to understood the grins and waves that had been directed at us during our ascent. As we made our own descent past the small groups of miserable men, women and children struggling up the rock face, we wanted to encourage them, but knew that all that lay ahead was more hardship and less oxygen, at least until they cleared the slope.

I stopped to snap a picture at the crest of the hill. This is about a third of the way back from the arch. You can just make out the parking lot far below.



I know it probably doesn't sound like it from my description, but we had a great time at the park, and in Moab, the neigboring town. In its own way, Arches National Park is every bit as spectacular as the Grand Canyon or Yellowstone, and considerably less crowded. Don't miss it if you ever get the chance to visit.
________________________________
* Nerd alert!
** If you haven't read Krakauer's book, Into Thin Air, I highly recommend it. It is one of the most compelling stories I have ever read.

An Inconvenient Truth

You know what sucks about the Universe? It's the whole "arrow of time, events have to happen in a particular order" thing. I mean, I can't tell you how many times I have woken up frustrated that I am not a trans-dimensional being.

For example, there's this research paper that I'm currently writing on such a short deadline that I'm embarrassed to tell anyone the due date. And I don't embarrass easily, believe me. If you have doubts, keep reading. Anyway, the thing about research papers is that they are usually written to report the results of work that has already been performed. At least that's the theory. The inconvenient thing about this one is that I haven't done the work yet. At least not all of it. But I know what I'm going to do -- more or less -- and I know that it's going to work -- more or less -- and what more do you need, really? I mean, these things always work out, right?

Why don't I just do the work, you ask? Well, I need to get a draft of the paper to my co-author to review, which is probably going to take as long as it would take to do the work. So if I could just finish the paper and then do the research then I could maximize efficiency and minimize wasted time and have a chance in Hell of making the deadline. But alas, stupid spacetime has to be four-dimensional, like that's going to get anything done.

You know what else sucks about the Universe? Gravity. Gravity is a harsh mistress. I walked out of my lab yesterday and someone had just mopped the floor, so I thought it would be appropriate to fall down. And I don't mean "tripped and stumbled against the desk" fall down. I mean "lost your balance ice skating, high kicking and windmilling arms" fall down. The most amusing part was seeing the "Caution: Wet Floor" sign at the end of the hallway as I lay there trying to decide if I was hurt. I wasn't. I just ended up with one of those face of the Virgin Mary stains on my pants.

So don't talk to me about the Universe this week. The Universe is on my shit list.