Call Things by Their Real Name – Be What You Are.

 

When Elder Parley Pratt came up and over his namesake canyon toll-road in the late 1840’s, he named the giant meadow he found – Parley’s Park.  A ‘Park’ was a mountain man term for a high mountain meadow, like Park Meadows, Winter Park or South Park, and not a place to play, live or put your car. 

“We don’t get up ta ‘Park’ too much anymore” said the Summit County ranchers years ago, “too many Mc Mansions and rich hippies”. The old timers called this place ‘Park’, like we call it Heber, and dropped the City part.  Deer Valley’s Snow Park was called Frog Valley before it was drained for lakes, lodges and Parking lots.  That ‘Park’ was the place with the meadows, streams and wetlands.  The city, mines and ski resorts would come later.  This place would grow and change but the name would remain the same.  Park City, paradise paved and a place where winter is now shorter than summer used to be, Can we let it become No-Snow Park or No-Park City?

Personally, when I was small, they called me Ginty, a name my Irish nanny gave me.  When I was in grammar school, they called me Little Lindon following in my big brothers’ footsteps.  In High School I was the philosopher Lindonian and in College I added Rex as the king of Lindonian, but you don’t get to pick your own nick names.  When I got out of school I was called an Engineer on my business card, even though I didn’t know squat.  I was a very Civil Engineer building ski resorts where the slopes face north, and the condos face south.  Then I was called a Dam Inspector, but that sounded too pedantic.  

Getting more involved in the dam design business I called myself a Dam Safety Engineer.  In the winters. I got more involved with weather modeling and called myself a Hydro-Meteorological Engineer even though I couldn’t say it, let alone spell it. Then I became an Assistant State Engineer, of what I wasn’t sure, but it was a nice Title. Finally, focusing on water and admitting that’s what I liked and was good at, I just called myself simply a Hydrologist and owned it. 

It took me a long time to figure out what I was and what I wanted to be, gaining wisdom by experience, no just osmosis.  People and places make us what we are.  You are what you read.  You ‘are’ your soul, and you just ‘have’ your body for a short while.  We become what we are, deliberately and accidentally, but admitting what that is can be the hardest part.  We’ve heard of ‘be where you are’ to be present, or ‘be who you are’ to be self-accepting, and finally ‘be what you are’ to admit to what you have become.  Decide what to be and go be it.

Historically we obscure  what we do with names and titles downplaying what we really are.  Remember they started calling Garbage Men, Sanitation Engineers.  Killer air quality is called fog or smog, haze or PM10 by fake weather readers.  Climate change is called natural chaos by big oil to help deny, diffuse, delay, deflect or diminish it.   Sweatshop delivery warehouses are idealistically called Dream Fulfillment Centers, and your eventual last bed is prosaically called Hospice Care. 

Now instead of being a pedophile, they can call you a Congressman and Cabinet Member or even President if you are a sex offender. It is even more essential during these trying times to call things by their real name. Titles, names and respect are earned and not just bestowed.  You are what you do, not what you say you will do.  We shouldn’t call a narcissistic huckster a King.  You are what you do, not what you say you will do.  WOKE actions are scoffed at but it is still essential to call these designations what that are: civility, kindness, politeness and inclusiveness. 

It doesn’t matter if you are a Vegetarian, Transsexual, Republican or a Buddhist, what matters is that we are more honest and self-accepting of what we really are, and that we call things by their real name.  I’m a Hydrologist, smog is pollution, climate is changing, and our con-man is a clown.  A Park is a beautiful mountain meadow and not a Disney Land destination, cash register megalopolis.  Let’s realize what we are and where we come from and try to incentivize what we realize.  Be what you are.

Inconvenient Science, Politics, Economics and Time

 

It’s been a busy few weeks with an assassination attempt, an abdication, a national election victory of Crazy over Kumbaya, the collapse of the New York Yankees, huge hurricanes worldwide, a comet too close for comfort and Daylight Savings TIME.  Not only are the changes a surprise, but it’s the change in the changes that are unpredictable, the acceleration of change, with respect to TIME.  Where is the comfort in all of this, the convenience of truth and TIME.  

 

Science, engineering and hydrology are under attack these days with conspiracy theories and climate deniers because some of the mad men at the top are not very good at science or don’t believe in it.  Science is not a matter of faith but a matter of fact and is not open to debate.  Science is run by the unequivocal rules and laws of the universe that make the legal and political system seem whimsical and capricious.  Science is our best explanation of how things really work, at this point in TIME.   

I’m a water scientist, a civil engineer, a hydrologist, dam it.  I am a hobby economist, part TIME geologist and amateur cosmologist.  It’ who I am and what I do.  I consider it my obligation to share what I know and love with others, in a format that is fun and fathomable.  I believe we need science now more than ever, for us and for our children.  It’s about TIME and that is not a constant in this ever-changing world, but a commodity that cannot be bought or sold, and we are running out of it. 

Objective scientists like Hawking and Feynman say that our biggest issues today are that our population growth is unsustainable for food, water, natural resources and human industry – the basics of our market economy.  The Earth is already over capacity.  Our climate is on a downhill trend that could flip or accelerate and make the earth hotter than Venus (451° F).  Our technology is becoming so advanced that soon computers will be smarter than we are and may take over.  We can’t even turn off our Smart Phones let alone Artificial Intelligence.  The rich and smart guys are trying to find other planets and a way to relocate or TIME travel amongst our 11M dimensional universes.  That’s not a good sign. 

Water is a good, visible metaphor for our natural resources and how we conserve and distribute them or use them up until they are gone.  The Tragedy of the Commons and human nature dictate that we take more than our share, for fear of getting cheated. The devil may take the rest.  We divide and distribute our lakes and rivers perpetually on paper and wonder why there is no wet water remaining.  We pump our groundwater until it is gone and wonder why the aquifers collapse and the ground subsides.  Out of sight out of mind.  We subsidize waste and encourage overuse that does not support the general welfare and the public good.  This is not conservation or communism, but historic and accepted western water law and economics in practice.   Use it or lose it, waste it or taste it.  First in TIME, first in right, first at the bank.

There is our infinite thirst and exponential growth spurring boundless water demand, as opposed to our diminishing supply, exacerbated by climate change and long-term drought. Our answers are technologically bent, resorting to Apps and accounting, metering and monitoring, smoke and mirrors, deeper wells and longer diversions, water banks and bigger dams.  Or we look for other places to steal water from, like the oceans and icebergs, the Moon and Mars, exoplanets and an alternative universe.  The first thing we always look for is water, in the name of life, and in the name of TIME. 

But if something is free, like water and pollution, inner climate and outer space, free TIME or spare change, people will not value it.  Is it ironic to rely on the fair market to conserve water and clean air, save our climate and preserve outer space, or is it our last, best chance?  People don’t do anything without incentives or disincentives, the carrot and the stick, market forces.  So how do we make wasting water economically expensive, clean air truly valuable, climate and outer space the dominion and responsibility of the masses.  Ask a politician, a businessman, or an economist in these crazy TIMES where it is money that changes everything, and change is the only thing that matters.  Just don’t ask a scientist.  You might not like the inconvenient truth or urgent TIMING. 

A Walk in the Park - Kevin Fedarko

    When we last left Kevin Fedarko, he was describing the great Colorado River - Grand Canyon flood of 1983 in his best seller, award winning book “The Emerald Mile”.  With river runner Kenton Grua’s record run and the nervous Bureau of Reclamation putting plywood up in the spillway of the Glen Canyon Dam to save Lake Powell, it was a rollicking ride down the river.  In his latest effort “A Walk in the Park” Kevin takes us, with his friend – photographer Pete McBride, through a more focused, detailed and methodical exploration of the canyon on foot, with backpacks and boots, blood and blisters, heat and hieroglyphics, searing sunshine and epic storms.  (I would have loved to see more of McBride’s photo’s but they are for another book, I assume.)

    The only way to see big country is on foot, where you smell and taste, feel and hear every detail, including the distances and the silence.  The story is a combination of self-flagellation and hubris, as it arcs from the painful lessons of the Tenderfoot to the triumph of will and wisdom of experience, eventually finishing as a mindless march to an existential finish. 

    First let me say that I loved this book.  Some of the best parts are his descriptions of the geology and geomorphology of the canyon, from the multi-layer birthday cake litany of the aged aeolian stratigraphy to the alluvial formation of the fluted slot canyons and tributaries.  Details like the billon year gap in the Great Unconformity layer, to the oldest exposed rocks in the world.  This brings to light the relative newness of the canyon in the big picture of the earth at this location, with multiple mountains and seas, sand dunes and swamps occurring at this place.  There could have been 100 Grand Canyons before our time, maybe even a million, but we can only appreciate this one, this time. 

    Second, let me say that I love this hike but being unprepared does not make you an adventure writer, it makes you a rube.  I have been on extended backpack trips in the Canyons, with Ultra-Hiker John Demkowitz, and I realize the razor sharp risk assessment you make every day for sun, safety and shortcuts, water, direction and distance, calories expended and calories gained.  Kevin’s amateur antics on his first hike did not make me energized or empowered but enervated and exhausted, an accident waiting to happen.   As a hydrologist, I was equally unimpressed with the river descriptions in the “Emerald Mile” but disappointed in the sensationalism and melodrama.  It is great that he can tell these stories to the general public, in a palatable format, but does it have to be so slapdash?    I prefer a good didactic story, well told, without the window dressing and embellishment. 

    Fedarko is a great writer with a zinger on every page, incredible descriptions and metaphors, but does he have to use so many words.  There are only so many ways you can try to describe the Grand Canyon, your effort or misery, ambition and determination, and he tries everyone.  Just tell the story, in 100 pages, and be done with it.  Like his mentor and inspiration, Colin Flecher, “The Man who Walked Through Time,” the book does not have to be a slog that duplicates the hike.  Like his hero Grua’s subsequent through-walk, do it and be quite about it.  Be more, appear less.  Still, besides its pretentiousness, it is a fun and funny story, like a family hike or a fraternity road trip, complete with mishaps and miscalculations, tragedy and triumph and in the end, we do find meaning in the journey, if not the destination, in the coda of comfort and it’s completion.

    His unrivaled description of the Celestial Vault of their three-dimensional desert stargazing, solidifying their insignificance, is a powerful portion of the narrative as is the apparent movement of the Anthropomorphs painted on the rocks nearly 4000 years ago, where the canyon is alive and speaking to them.  In between is the sad story of the Havasupai and Hualapai tribe’s struggle for relevance and recognition with their familiar bargaining for ownership and development of their birthright natural resources.  The rampant Eco-tourism depicted by air traffic in Helicopter Alley and the Volun-tourism expressed by those who want to help the natives is clouded by the hikers self-absorption and importance.  This was an self-absorbed  search for meaning in their narcistic struggle for fulfillment in a brutal, living and moving natural environment that cares not for them, or their quest. 

    Wilderness is where man is just a visitor who leaves, where a tree that falls in the forest makes a noise, weather we are there to hear it or not. It is about exploration and enjoyment, not conquest and accounting for the record books.  The Wild reveals itself to us in its own time, to those who are curious and equipped, resilient and ready.  Despite his caution, Fedarko’s book will spur a new horde of cross-canyon adventurers, seeking out the inner canyons’ myths and legends, records and experiences.  They will flood the area with novice and expert hikers, all taking their little piece of heaven or hell with them.  In some cases, it is better to let the wilderness be.  Some things are better left unsaid.

The World Series

     The Yankees gave one away last night with 5 unearned runs in the middle of a pitching masterpiece by Gerrit Cole.  Forget the offender’s names because it was a team letdown to a systemic arrogance that focuses on the home runs and forgets the details that are so important in baseball, like covering first base or tagging up.  They had grabbed the gusto, the mojo and the momentum of the series only to let it slip through their fingers, literally.

     I was so looking forward to Game 6 and Mr. November to start an important month off right.  The same swagger, Yankee hubris, that propelled them to victory, shut them down in the end.  They are good at coming from behind but not very good at holding the lead.  Their defense was lackadaisical all series as they chose usually not to crash the wall and save a home run or dive for that double play and counted on unruly fans to undo the efforts of the Dodger fielders.  Judge had moved his foot in 3 inches and was hitting again and they stopped throwing heaters to Freddy who was reduced to reaching low and outside for flare doubles to left center.  Such are the vagaries of baseball and the post season.

    The Yanks had won 25 Rings in the 1900’s but only two in the 2000s.  Along with the Mets, they have the highest payroll in the Bigs, combined at ¾ of a billion dollars, but could not beat the lowly Dodgers, with their half a billion-dollar man.  I don’t watch much baseball but boy it was fun watching the high production drama where at times both teams appeared infallible and unpitchable, only to finish with bullpens that could not find the strike zone.  Schmoltz ‘s commentary on stress and pitching psychology was outstanding, but even he could not hide his disappointment with how the team let down their star franchise pitcher.  It was a collective Bill Buchner moment we won’t soon forget.  The Dodgers deserved it and probably would have won the series anyhow, but the sum total of the joy created by a Yankee win would have been infinitely more if they got to dance one more night in the Bronx.  There is no joy in Mudville.

Follow the Trees

 

On an unbelievable blue-bird day, we took the free Mercedes shuttle bus up to the sprawling Bonanza open-space to ride some new trails.  How lucky are we, the first world of the first world.  The colors were peeking and popping in the Orange Grove of Aspens and the leaves were flying in the wind like multi-color ticker-tape and landing on the conifers like glowing Christmas bulbs or on the ground like a 1975 shag carpet.   August had been the only wet month in a hot and dry summer with only one soft freeze in July, so the colors were vibrant and on time, but the leaves were brittle and detached easily in the soft, cool breeze.  It was October and we still hadn’t had a deep freeze despite some flurries up high one evening.  We get 60 days frost freeze here, but not consecutive.  The diminishing temperature inversions in the valleys had been notable but not extreme as the humidity hung at normal dry levels.  Smoke filled the sky from late fires, when the wind did not cooperate.  The water year turned out to be below average even with a few stellar, mid-winter, powder months and the soil moisture and the ground water were below normal, but who knows what average or normal is anymore.

Autumn energizes me because it portends change, not the static heat of July or the deep freeze of January.  It does not have the newborn crisp freshness of spring but the fragrant maturity of wisdom, age and experience.  I get out and ride as much as I can on trails carpeted in color and texture.  I know why they call it Fall, since I am looking around so much that I tend to fall more in the autumn.  I take more breaks and more pictures and more friends with me, since most things are better when shared.  I tend to go for quality miles and not so much quantity and choose to go slower, starting high or north in September and finishing lower and further south by the end of October.  Hockey and football are in the air, so It is my favorite time of year.

I visited back-east this fall but it had been a hot and dry summer there and most of the leaves were turning brown and giving up the ghost early.  It can be a tapestry of multicolor, back there, that exceeds our typical colors of green and yellow.  The northeast woods are more diverse and different with thick undergrowth and a large variety of trees that have their own timing and colors in the fall.  The forest and the sky of New England are closer and grey and not the sunny-blue, big-sky, contrast that we have out west.   It certainly is beautiful and historic there, sparsely populated with ancient old growth, compared to our modern quilt of new growth forest with our supplementary succession species on north and south faces.   It is older and wetter in the east and their botanical forests feel more primeval, drippy and spooky although much of it has been used and abused longer than our lands have.  A meadow or pasture can regenerate into a full forest in half a generation and a timber scar can heal right before your very eyes.    

We had ten big old-growth trees behind my house, growing up on Walt Whitman’s Long Island, that we called The Woods, where we played mysteriously and endlessly, waking up one morning to a magical circus set up and disgruntled elephants tied to the trees.  To us it was the end of the world, until we traveled to up-East for ‘leaf peeping’ of the ‘flora and the fauna’ and the real Thoreauvian wilderness.  I graduated next to Lincoln’s Indianna’s colorful, agricultural ‘wilderness’, Michigan the Vermont of the Midwest and Ohio which is like Connecticut.  I never made it down south but imagine Falkner’s Kudzu everywhere.  I finally moved to Wallace Stegner’s wild west where wilderness is classified, and Aspens rule the land as one gigantic organism.  Dropping southwest next to where Cacti are the tree of choice among Woody Guthrie’s diamond deserts, but the interlaced golden riparian Cottonwoods and Willows can astound even Cactus Ed Abbey.  Further, finally to California, brought me to John Muir’s towering Redwoods and girthy Sequoia trees before I descend to the gentrified, sepia-brown, oak arboretums of John Steinbeck’s coastal hills.  The national range of light and color is extraordinarily diverse and our favorite writers’ historical perspectives incredibly varied. 

I’ve traveled to, and lived in, many places but when I come back to Park City, I feel like I have found what I have been looking for, home.  Nothing beats the Pando sized patch of Aspens on Iron Mountain or the Cottonwood/Willow corridor of McLeod Creek, the early Maples below Mayflower or the variety of Oak on the trail we call Little Vermont above old town.   It’s our home court advantage.  It is what we know, it is what we like, it is what we are used to.  It is funny how much time, energy and money we spend going out looking for trees, like we have back home, when they are usually right in front of us.  The famous bumper sticker reads, “Trees are the Answer”, and I agree, but what was the question?

 

Matthew Lindon, ’79, Snyderville,

waterandwhatever@blogspot.com

The Bride's Eyes

 

She was an old friend from High School, and I had come back to New York for her wedding.  She had stayed home while the rest of us had escaped to the four corners.  The walk down the aisles, the wedding day smiles, the flowers, the wedding dress, were perfect but something was off. He was fun and nice to her but a bit controlling and self-righteous.  I thought she could do better.  She was the kindest, most honest person I knew.    They had history already, dark and light, but they were going for it that day. 

At the reception I distracted the brides’ maids with stories and adventures from the west and Europe, where I was headed the next day.  I was searching but still hadn’t found what I was looking for.  My only job that day was to turn on the music for their first dance, “Stay With Me” by Genisis.  It’s a slow starter and they wondered if It was ‘on’ at first but then they began to dance tentatively.  I’m not sure they heard all the words.  We all systematically joined in dancing, fathers, mothers, family and friends.  By the time I got to the bride we were swinging raucously and we slipped into some kind of Virgina Reel with do-se-dos and Alabama twists, just like we used to do at the Bluegrass at the Beach shows.  As she flew away from me in the afternoon light and then returned, I realized that she had the bluest eyes I had ever seen.  I had noticed them before, for sure, but today they were bright and shining, full of life and promise, potential and hope.  The moment was fleeting as she spun away from me to another guest beau, but it stuck in my soul. 

Twenty years and three beautiful daughters later, he found what he was looking for at work and told her he never loved her in a messy divorce.  He was nasty.  She was devastated.  Still is.  Now she sits at home and wonders what she could have done better. She was the perfect wife, picking him up at the station on rainy days and having a beer and dinner ready when he got home.  Devoted to the kids as well, she forgot about herself and lost her mojo and confidence but not her verve and empathy.   Going into the City through Brooklyn one day she said, ‘this was the train that he took every day’, and we walked across the Brooklyn Bridge like he did on 9-11.  She had never taken the trip with him and marveled at how hard it must have been for that poor bastard she still loved.  Let it go.

She tried dating but it was no use trying to reboot, so she lives alone and watches life passing by, made for pair bonding and double occupancy.  She doesn’t mind being alone as much as being lonely.  I wonder what I could have done, could have said, now and then.  ‘Run’.  ‘Come to Europe’.  Just say ‘no’.  But it was too late.  Time had come and gone, and we both became who we were destined to be.  As we walked down the boardwalk at Brighton Beach recently, the clouds parted and as the sun and sea reflected, I briefly saw the glint of that most unbelievable blue in her eyes that had faded slightly, but not extinguished.  She is going to be all right.

 

Megan 2

 

After this Summer of Joy found Megan McKenna winning the local primary and Kamala Harris taking over for Joe Biden, it is not surprising that Affordable Housing has taken center stage on our national and local tickets.  It’s the economy people, and nothing affects our personal economy as much as housing, in America and Summit County.  Ever since housing became a commodity to buy and sell and flip and split has the price of owning a home become so relatively expensive, especially here.   

It is no wonder that Megan has embraced this battle as her avocation, advocation and occupation.  She is working with the Housing Advocate at Mountainlands Housing Trust after spending a decade teaching Science in the high school and another decade throwing bombs and running sleds for the ski patrol at The Canyons.  She knows how valuable a home is after growing up here in the middle class and struggling to buy her own home in her own hometown.  Even with an advanced education and highly honed skills like Megan’s, this is something many of our families are struggling with, bridging the precarious gap between earning a living wage and flirting with homelessness.  As our wealthy country tries to save the middle class and their respective housing options, Megan knows first-hand about this strain in a wealthy county with a vibrant and diverse work force.  Our housing crisis affects employment and wages, traffic and growth, climate and environment, education and economics, affordability and sustainability.  Home is the epicenter of our relations and religions, our love and libido, our reproductive choices and our American voices.  Everything starts with a home: families, culture, career and life.

This election is a new opportunity to reboot our leadership with young but experienced, active and involved, wise women.  We need down home, salt of the earth, empathetic representatives to advocate for what is important now, and in the future, for this country and this county.  Consider Kamala and Megan in November as leaders who know the price of progress, the cost of community and the worth of home.