Be your own advocate.

I hate to make a habit of this but another friend from our community and culture passed away this month. Rip Kevin Griffith was an elite athlete, a consummate outdoorsman, wickedly literate with a limitless curiosity, a fierce intelligence and a humor full of Infinite Jest .   He suffered from too many injuries and too much medication.  He wore out.   RIP.

A few months ago, I swung by my friendly physician for some chronic concussion headaches I still had from a bike crash last year.  He quickly saw a standing pulse rate of 35, freaked out and handed me off to a great cardio Nurse Practitioner who took the time to accurately evaluate and explain my situation.  She gave me an EKG and three days and $80,000 later a phantom super surgeon gave me a Pacemaker.  I asked why.  They said my heart ‘wore out’. 

The headaches remained however and so I saw a very funny, local PhD – Physical Therapist and she tested my eyesight and balance and found I couldn’t see Shine-Ola.  I had Exercised Induced Dysautonomia, caused by multiple concussions from my carelessly active lifestyle.  It’s on the internet.  It can affect heart, head, sight, balance, emotions, and mental health.  A local Neurologist woman urged me to rest when tired; physically, mentally, and emotionally.  The good news is that they can stimulate my infant brain with PT, and it might get reborn.

Then I was playing in a Pickle Ball tournament in Arizona when my Achilles snapped like a piano string.  I knew what it was before I hit the ground.  After a quick erroneous diagnose at a doc-in-the-box, I got a second opinion and had repair surgery by a strange doctor in a strange hospital.  I asked him why it snapped and he said it ‘wore out’. 

My insurance company refused to cover much of the cost until I told them that I was not ‘vacationing’ in Arizona but was ‘living’ there temporarily.  Semantics, but it made a $60,000 difference.  Words matter. I started slow PT in Arizona but it was a month before they let me get out to swim and ride a bike, for fear of falling.  In aging Arizona I was an athlete, a superstar, a stud pushing the limits.  Back In Olympic Park City I am just another worn out, old local schmuck puttering at PT.  It’s all relative.   

A month later I got my Covid shot in a parking lot and my old rotator shoulder injuries flared up with pain and limited range of motion.  Three local trophy-docs, at our oak and brass hospital, took a quick look and recommend more tests or perhaps reverse shoulder replacement.  A Neurologist healer lady, in a strip mall in Murry, did her research and spent 2 hours with me and figured it out.  It turns out a bad vaccine shot, high and deep, can flare up an old shoulder injury. It’s a thing - SIRVA.  With a little PT and some steroids, it might heal in a year or two.  It’s worn out.

The moral of this sad story is that the practice of medicine is not what it was.  Unfortunately, we no longer have a personal relationship with our physician.  Regrettably, doctors are rushed and hassled by administrators, insurance companies and lawyers.  They don’t have the time to look you in the eye and talk or touch you much more than they touch their computers.  You must be your own advocate, do your own research and manage your own care and finances.  Trust but verify.

Find the healers and nurturers who will spend time and latch on to them.  They are often Nurses and usually women and they are priceless.  Find the people good at their specialties who can look at your health holistically or comprehensively and see or solve the big picture.  Granted I had a bad year, but all these things are related or connected, with an iterative solution. 

An old Irish woman once told me, on an Irish bike ride, ‘you only get so many beats in your heart and if you waste them riding around Ireland you will die young’.  Maybe, but we don’t exactly see it that way.  Nonetheless, practice moderation in all things, including moderation.   Pace yourself while you are young and back off as you get older.   Really listen to your body.  Heed your head.  Things wear out.

Santa Fe, New Mexico

With the extended mud season this year, we decided to head south.  Moab was a mob scene and Colorado was a relief from Utah, but too groovy.  The roads got rough when we crossed into New Mexico and the Green Chilly in Chama got hotter, but our dog was allowed in the bars where they rewarded us with a healthy, unmetered pour.  Abiquiu was too O'Keeffe artsy and authentic and Ansel Adams's Hernandez was long gone to strip malls, so we wound up in one of our favorite towns - Santa Fe. 

The New Mexico capital city at 7000 feet and 35 degrees latitude at the eastern edge of the Mountain Time Zone, for those who like morning light and less of that midnight sun stuff.    With only 50,000 residents in town, 100,000 including the suburbs it is human size city like Helena or Boise.  Founded in 1610, ten years before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock, this place is old and has some history. 

Today Spanish, Mexican, Native and White Legacy Americans round out a diverse population that is unpretentious and somewhat inclusive.  The diverse but blue legislature is mostly women and so is the governor.  NM is a little bit like Old Mexico but somewhat cleaner, ostensibly safer, and not as cheap.  The bad thing about NM is that it is part of the USA but the good thing about NM is that it is part of the USA.  You can go out to eat for $20, gas is less than $4 and you can buy a nice house for less than half a million dollars. 

There are empty hiking/biking trails right from town and up on the surrounding forest and leash free dogs are welcome.  The mountains out of town rise up to 12,000 feet and there is a clean little ma and pa resort 15 miles up there for some fine skiing and touring.  Santa Fe has four seasons but winter is mild in the valley, being this high and this far south.  Snow comes and goes quickly with all this enchanted sunlight.  I’d say the climate is a cross between Park City, Salt Lake and Tucson.  Just right.

Spring had sprung in early May with the trees leafing out and spreading seed.  The Ravens seemed to be pairing up loudly in the mornings for mating season, but the town was empty of tourists and tramps.  It’s chill.  The temp was in the 40-70s but the Relative Humidity was 2-5% and the Dew Point was -25 F!  And we thought Utah was dry where it is 5 – 10 times as moist this time of year.  With the winds gusting to 60 it is no wonder that half of this state is on fire!

New Mexico seems to be off the radar, like Utah used to be, and Santa Fe seems to be the city-that-time-forgot, like Salt Lake used to be.  In these days of reservations at National Parks and Paid Parking at trailheads and ski resorts, there are too many people – everywhere.  Where did all these people come from?  I realize that there were 3 billion people on this planet when I was born and there will be 10 billion when I die, but this is getting ridiculous.  Is it that so many Boomers or Millennials are looking for that post-Covid quality of life thing?  Whatever it is, we have been out to beat it, camping down old Forest Service Roads, eating at Taco Trucks or just zigging when they are zagging.  We are on a mission to get away.  We are searching for the next great undiscovered American city, like BozeAngeles or ToHellYouRide, were at one time.  I think we may have found it.

Socks and Civility Theorem - Funny seeing you here...

Have you ever noticed, anecdotally, that when you do a load of laundry, pull it out of the dryer and put it in the laundry basket for placement in your drawers, certain elements are often, if not usually, contingent if not close to each other.  Matching socks will be as close as brothers, similar underwear will be entwined like young lovers and t-shirts will be hiding together in the corner.  This seems to be more than coincidental so from my pseudo-scientific observations I postulate that: similar, identical or like bodies of laundry, subject to the same forces of fluid, forced air, friction, spin and rotation turbulence as well as electrostatic attraction centripetal and centrifugal force and Coriolis motion, will wind up in the same general area? (Pardon the exhaustive lists of variables but they all matter.)

Then I noticed that people of the same ilk or persuasion will wind up in the same place, more often than not or more often than the randomness of the universe should dictate, and say “funny meeting you here”. How many times have you run into a friend or compatriot at a store, isle, restaurant, trail head, lift, run, chute or cornice? 

There is primarily a similarity to the supply of people concerning; age, lifestyle, health, time, economy, experience, decision matrix and desires.  There is also a similarity of the attraction that brings us together; stores, products, prices, a sale, passes, powder, snow, sun, shade, season, schedule, weather, climate, heat, mud, moguls, crud, corn, corduroy, angle, aspect, fall line, food source, bathroom, water or beer.  This is not an accident or pure coincident either.  If we are similar humans subject to similar forces and attractions, we will wind up close to the same place.

So here we are living in Park City, for the last five or fifty years, similar, active, athletic skiing-biking people with a recreational bent in search of that ‘quality of life’ thing, keeping score by the number of days spent out and about, not the number of dollars in our pockets and bank accounts.  We have not been randomly lumped in this place but have been drawn here by who we are and what we want and attracted by what this place has to offer

So it is not a coincidence that we are all kindred spirits in our selected nirvana.  We are not forced to be here by family ties, job necessity or spousal demands for hometown martial bliss.  As Stegnar might have said, it is the geography of choice.  We mostly choose to be here.  So as distinct as we are, as different as socks and shirts, we share a commonality of choice and a convergence of coincidence.  We are therefore related, a tribe, a family, tied by our sense of place, this place.  That is why we say ‘hey’ to people we don’t recognize and lend a helping hand to people we don’t know. We are all connected by fate and physics.

That’s what makes this hometown special where we can forget our differences and coalesce our compatibility for the basic things we want; an inclusive, simple, small town, a recreational, family friendly resort with good schools and transportation with a sustainable ski industry, resilient support economy that is attractive and approachable to locals and visitors alike.  Give or take.  The only difference is how do we get there.  Let’s celebrate with civility our similarities in this time of fractured polarities and schisms.  We have more in common than you think.  Like Forest Gump and Jenny, peas and carrots, socks and shirts, we should stick together.

 Inspired by Richard Feynman  

Water - For What It's Worth

Colorado River - Glen Canyon - 1963

Spring has sprung; when an old hydrologist’s fancy turns to runoff and water supply.  We have a 70% snowpack and if it is anything like last year we can expect 35% of an  average runoff.  This is because of long and short term drought, climate change, decreased supply, increased demand and our inability to accurately model or manage groundwater and surface water conjunction.  No matter the snowpack, it mostly depends on the melt weather in May and June, unfortunately now in April too, but with only half of the reservoir carryover storage and groundwater surcharge we had last year, we are hosed.  No pun intended.

Water doesn’t flow downhill, it flows towards money, and we have money in Park City.  Most of our water is pumped from the Weber River, over Promontory and down to our faucets.  If that keeps happening, why should we worry?  Forty years ago when my mentor Fred Duberow suggested we get our future water from the Smith Morehouse ‘Rese-voie’ on the Weber River, we thought he was crazy, but he was a visionary like William Mulholland and Floyd Dominy, bringing water to the people. 

The Colorado River, which along with the Klamath River, is the poster child for western water and is showing the strain.  While it purportedly flows enough to supply 10 – 20 million acre-feet a year, it now sustains 3-5 million (an acre foot covers a football field one foot deep and is enough for 1-4 families depending on the family).  Lake Powell is 1/4 full and dropping like a stone and may be too low to make power later next year or control flows in the Grand Canyon soon after.  Lake Mead isn't much better.  Neither are Jordenelle, Deer Creek, Rockport or Echo reservoirs.  Yet we are still growing alfalfa and cows up high in the great white north, and cotton and rice down in the desert. 

But we don’t grow much alfalfa, wear much cotton or eat much rice in Park City so why should we care?  We have plenty of water, it is just going to the wrong uses, and we all pay for that to happen.  We are still considering the Lake Powell Pipeline (LPP) to send phantom Colorado water to St George, the worst water wasters in the west, and all of Utah will pay for it.  With inevitable delays, inflation, supply side issues and a pessimistic cost estimate it will cost 5-10 billion dollars, not 2-4.  If Saint George had to pay for it, they would never do it.  If we all had to pay the true cost and worth of water, we might be a little more conscientious and conservative. 

With push coming to shove, the State of Utah is taking $200 million of Federal Infrastructure money to buy meters for secondary water systems to monitor the rampant misuse.  'If you don’t measure it, you can’t manage it,' a wise man once said.  And with agriculture using 80% of the water in the west, with much of it coming from groundwater, we are only beginning to monitor those systems.  Use it or lose it, but please don’t abuse it.

Lip service and baby steps are finally being taken to promote conservation, water banking and marketing where you can get paid out of a new $40 million State fund if you save, conserve, or dedicate your water to send to the dying drying Great Salt Lake.  Finally, rivers and lakes, fish and riparian ecosystems are getting the respect they deserve.  

The water laws are also being reinforced to assure that if and when it hits the fan, water will go to people first and agriculture and industry second.  With billions of dollars being spent on infrastructure with bad Priority Dates, such as the Central Utah Project or Lake Powell Pipeline; Priorities have more to do with water value than filing dates.  First in time does not necessarily mean first in line, anymore.

So don’t complain the next time it costs you $100 a month to keep your lawn brown.  Water is a priceless, social-welfare, natural resource and a public right, but it is also becoming a market-based capitalistic commodity to be bought and sold by the highest bidder for the best use, promoting conservation and wise use.  The Colorado River is the poster-boy and water is just the metaphor for how we treat all of our natural resources.  The environment, climate and natural resources are just the externalities of this market based economy.  Unfortunately we socialize the costs and capitalize the profits.  The tragedy of the masses is that we all slake our personal needs without much regard for the common good. 

Water is just the metaphor for how we mistreat all our natural resources.  The environment, climate and the underprivileged are just the unfortunate externalities of this new supply side, water economy.  As usual, we socialize the costs and capitalize the profits.  The Tragedy of the Commons is that we all slake our personal thirst without much regard for the public welfare.  It is time to manage this new trickle-down, water economy - including all of the externalities, with practical public benefit regulation, to promote wise use, conservation and the common good.  

Vail Post Mortem

 

Well, another ski season has come and gone.  This one had its challenges with below average snow, supply chain difficulties, and employment issues not to mention Covid, a weird economy, local traffic and tourist reluctance.  The results were lack of open terrain and closed lift access, reduced grooming efforts and overcrowding caused by the limited terrain and increased skier days.  Restaurants were restricted if not closed and the on -site amenities were anemic and undistinguished.  Consequentially I would rate this season uninspiring and insipid, at best.  Deer Valley did better but there was no buzz, vibe or there, there at PCMR.

But maybe its me.  After two years of Covid weirdness my heart was not in it.  After going up a few times after New Years , I could bot be bothered, even in the brilliant blue sunshine of January and February.  By March and April we had move on to spring time occupations and forgot about the icy bumps on the mountain under warm but steal grey skies.  The City put out a Sadness Survey and as I took it I realized that although I am not technically sad or mad about this, things are deteriorating and not necessarily getting better or more happy around here.  So it goes, all things must pass.

Obviously, skiing has changed over the years, getting locally more popular and crowded, feeling like a Visa commercial.  There are times now when I feared for my life skiing shoulder to shoulder with von-traversers or wild men schussing from the back seat with their hands down and their coats open.  Yahoo.  There is no courtesy or civility but it feels like dog eat dog out there and I can’t go fast enough to leave it all behind me anymore.  People are getting hit and diverted in bounds while ropes are being cut and people are skiing above and on top of you in the backcountry, in mass and not safely, one at a time.

We get a few 1-2 foot powder days these days but not the 3-4 foot ones from days gone by.  Even if you get up there at 8 am and find a place to park, you don’t get on the mountain until 10-11 and it is mysteriously skied out already by people with Fast Trax or Trophy Homes.  The climate has changed and the season is shorter and warmer on both ends.  It rains in Janualry, up to 10,000 feet.  We didn’t have appreciable snow this year for almost two months and things got a little hard and scrapy. 

Traffic clogs the resort entrances and exits with grid lock on 248 and 224 on big days.  The line to get off the freeway backs up to Jeremy Ranch and the side roads are packed or policed.  Parking is gone by 10 am, cutting down our flexibility for unscheduled or impulsive visits and it is hard to break or meet for coffee on the hill without reservations or repercussions.  Lift lines are Vailien in scale and bigger than ever, especially at pinch points and it sometimes takes hours to get off the mountains with lift and run closures, mechanical breakdown or moose jams.

Consequently, road trips were in order and places like Alta, Brighton, Powder Mountain, Sno-Basin, Sun Valley and Jackson seemed to be coping with it much better, not to mention the Ma and Pa places in Montana or Canada.  If they can do it then why can't we.  How did we miss the bus and how can we do better.  Perhaps it would help to return control of the resorts to locals who know how to run them and deal with local problems.  Or perhaps we should all find something better to do and move on, counting our blessings for the great years we have had and wishing those that remain good luck with what they have come to accept and appreciate.  

'Don’t it always seem to go that you don’t know what you’ve got till its gone.  They paved paradise and put up paid parking lots.'  Joni.

 

Mountain Meadows Massacre

I went out into the Snyderville Meadow the other day from my billion dollar house is Silver Springs, just to look up at the mountains and remember why we live here.  The day was unbelievably blue and the green and white mountain playground filled the foreground.  I walked on the perfectly groomed ski trail to the new ski track on the Osguthorpe farm and up to the County hockey pond at the Willow Creek Lake.  The only thing missing was outdoor yoga, soccer, frisbee, kids and Pickle Ball but that will start soon.  It was pretty nice.

It reminded me of 33 years ago when I built my little house here, on a song and a prayer, and had the entire meadow to myself.  I would go classic cross-country skiing in the meadow often, in untracked snow and sometime on a smooth tabletop of unbreakable crust that I could skate-ski on.   I would hike around in the summer in grass as tall as a bison’s belly.  It was a great place to be alone.  I had the place to myself. 

Over the years the meadow became choked with Russian Thistle and other foreign-exotic species during the summer but there were also indigenous turkey vultures drying their wings in the morning and foxes howling their ungodly mating screams at night.  Occasionally there would be a moose out there chasing the cows around or a heard of Elk or Deer browsing lazily on my landscape.  Those days are gone.  

Now there are hoards of Goats-for-Hire out there every August eating everything in sight and turning the meadow into a dust bowl or a goat-poop-soup quagmire when it rains, all in the name of weed control or fire suppression.  They spray the weeds adequately annually and this is a groundwater recharge zone where the grasses are green and have not burned in the 40 years I have been watching.  The meadow is a moist green sponge that slowly drains every summer to this groundwater discharge area.   If they must do this can't they move the goats faster or do it in September or October before the first snows.  

The Goat denuded landscape raises the local temperature of the meadow, the Sand Hill Cranes move north and the hummingbirds, crickets and lightning bugs are gone, not to mention other unintended consequences.  My dog doesn't even want to go out there.  I'm sure the County has looked into this Goat plan and there is some good intentions, science and economics involved, but it seems the cure is worse than the sickness, at least for those of us who live on the meadow.  

I lamented the slow entropy of the meadow experience over the years as Ranch Place and then Willow Creek were developed and my unending, wide open spaces became cloistered and confined.   Once an unsavory developer planned 400 units on 100 acres in the meadow and when we asked him about open space, he replied that every ¼ acre lot would have a front AND a back yard.  When asked about Wetland preservation he said they would build a pool and a pond.  The pond would be good for me. 

But the new developments graciously provided trails, open space and connectivity between the undeveloped areas, after a little arm twisting by the county.  Now there is a County maintained trail system that carries more than1000 people and dogs a day around the meadow and connects to trails from Park City to Round Valley, UOP, Kimball Junction and the rest of the 500 miles of trails around here.  Kids and dogs, horses and bikes, skis and sleds, the place is super busy and a great place to meet new and old friends.  Tourists zoom buy on rental electric bikes without helmets, skills, or a care in the world.   The trails are groomed in the winter and graded in the summer, the wetlands are preserved, the old farm is protected and there is the Willow Creek Park on the corner.  We have a win-win situation where everyone gets what they wanted, and the public welfare is promoted.  Well done.

I thought to myself about the private mountain meadow that I lost and the public playground that replaced it.  While bittersweet, I think in the end I would choose to share the meadow with those who enjoy it so much.  In the big picture, it is something we are all asked to do; share the great place where we live and the good fortune that we have realized by living here.  Maybe the roads are a bit congested, and the slopes are more crowded, and the trails are full of riders from out-of-town but there is still room for everyone, and things are usually better when shared.  It is still pretty nice.

Jim Weaver - A Good Guy

Jim Weaver passed away last month, almost 90 years young, and I went to his funeral.  It was a full house at St Mary’s and a who’s who of old time Park City people, possibly with some old miners and big landowners, natives, and interlopers.  

Jim was born in a small house above Main Street in 1932 and lived there his entire life, except for a stint in the Navy and a few fishing trips in the Uintas.  He worked his early years in the mines at many jobs and shifts and eventually for G.E. for many years. He was the silent Sacristan at St Mary’s for countless years, shoveling more snow than god.  He was a fixture up on Main Street and a pillar in this community.  He was a good guy.

I attended the entire funeral Mass for Jim because he used to bust me for trying to leave church early, back in the day, and would say it was ‘amateur hour’ whenever I did attend.  He would stand away from me, off to the side, holding an imaginary lightning rod, ‘just in case’.  

I liked sitting there at the funeral in the warm February sun looking up at the snow and terrain in White Pine Canyon as his son Clint told a story of Jim getting stuck up there one winter and having to walk home in the dark, uphill, both ways.  It was a long way to Main Street back then and White Pine was the wilderness.

I imagined the Park City that Jim grew up in and told us about while drinking beer with him next door to his house on Peter Marth’s porch above Main Street.  Jim’s aunt and cousins originally lived in Peter’s house, so it was a family affair for them up there for many years.  They visited the old homestead last year and cried when Peter invited them inside for a nostalgic look around.

 I could imagine him walking past the Egyptian Theatre, China Bridge or the Cat houses in Swede alley on his way home from school, or skinny dipping or fishing in the lakes above Gaurdsman’s pass.  He loved to fish and he knew all the names of Uinta lakes and he knew Utah water and who the big irrigators were.  He also loved Utah, BYU and Notre Dame Football and loved to talk about those team’s past and futures.

I imagined how much change Jim had seen in Park City, being born in the second or third Silver Mining boom, only to have silver devalued and the boom turn to bust once again.  Growing up here with barely dependable water or electricity or heat when the town stopped at Squatters Brew Pub and the ride to SLC was an adventure.  Jim said they would only send snow plows up from Salt Lake or the County once a week back then and it piled up higher than a man on a horse.  There was limited skiing in Deer Valley but it was not with Epic Passes or epicurean delights.  There were times when the town was listed in the Ghost Towns of the West and things got pretty bleak. 

But Jim was a sticker and he stayed here to raise his family.  Things started to turn in the 60’s with the new ski resort and the hippies moved in and did battle with the miners for a few years before a truce was reached.  Jim was conservative but loved the new people and he laughed at the hippies and the skiers in their funny clothes.  In the 70s and 80s the yuppies came and started Park West, Deer Valley and bigger development.  The 90s brought the millionaires and 02 brought the Olympics.  Jim welcomed them all with open arms.  By the 10s and 20s the billionaires were pushing out the millionaires but Jim kept his simple house on top of Main Street and watched it all go down, reserving judgement with fascination and humor, enjoying the changes and the new people as they came.

Jim was a good example for us all; to step back and away from our historical, personal perspective and appreciate this place and its people for what it is.    We do what we can to keep it good but welcome new people with different ideas on how to make it great.  Who knows who is right and wrong, the unintended consequences of our decisions or how things will work out in 90 years.  Someone asked me recently, ‘how long have you lived here’, and my reply was, ‘who cares’.  Jim didn’t and that’s what made him unique.  He was a good guy.