Desert Traveler

     My flight from Philadelphia to Las Vegas on Wednesday night was delayed three hours while we waited for a storm to pass through Las Vegas. We arrived at McCarran a little after midnight. I tried sleeping in the airport. Wasn't very successful. Dawn through the large airport Windows revealed fresh snow on surrounding mountains almost as low as the valley.    
      Only three goals for Thursday;  get bike out of storage unit, obtain food for the following week, and get bike, myself, and food past the edge of town, into the desert for a place to sleep in seclusion. I was asleep by six and didn't rise from bed till dawn, which came at six.
    Seven weeks out of the saddle is long enough for a body to grow fat and soft. When I returned to Las Vegas last week to be reunited with my bicycle and return to this winter's tour I was in less than ideal shape. No matter , the best way to get back in touring shape is to go out and tour, the rest will take care of itself. Fortunately, Las Vegas provides the westbound toured with the perfect opportunity to get back into shape in a hurry. First you have to climb over Mountain Spring Pass with its elevation gain of 3500 feet. If that seems too easy then add a weeks worth of food to your bike trailer. It's a long way from Vegas to the next super market.
       On the climb I met a cyclist heading the other way, going from California to Colorado and another at the summit going my way to the coast but much faster and without all the camping. Over many years of desert travel I've run into only a handful of winter desert touring enthusiasts. Here were two on the same day, an auspicious start.
        Camped that night in the dunes near stump spring , a stop on the old Spanish trail in the early nineteenth century. From this vantage point I could see the lights of Pahrump to the north as well as the sweep of headlights coming down mountain springs pass about fifteen or twenty miles to the east. Sunset was spectacular that evening due to the dramatic clouds being torn from the Springs range and mt. Charleston by the wind.
          The old Spanish Trail connected the former Spanish colony of New Mexico with the towns, missions and ranches of California between 1826 and the Mexican war of 1848. In its earliest years it was an honest, if grueling trade route. In later years it devolved into an outlaw trail for moving Piute slaves and stolen California horses to New Mexico. Kitt Carson famously used it to transfer some of the first samples of ft. Sutter gold to Washington D.C. sparking the California gold rush. It passes through Vegas as well as Moab Utah and San Bernardino California, though most communities along its path are little aware of its significance, it's history, or even of its existence. On many of my desert rides I've enjoyed following its several paths. It's fabulous story adds dimension and depth to otherwise aimless wandering.
        The next day I leave the Spanish Trail at Tecopa hot spring to head north to Shoshone and the the trickle of the Amorgossa river. At Shoshone there are a large number of cars parked, something I've never seen there. As I get closer I see the reason why. An enormous line of people have lined up to enter its only store to by lottery tickets. The line appears to stretch for a quarter mile. These are Las Vegans who have come to this outpost of California to try their luck at the power ball lottery which has entered historic proportions. All will fail to win. Several days later it will roll over to amount to over a billion and a half dollars. Unless the traveled further to buy their lottery tickets at Chino Hills, or Tennessee or Florida the will have purchased them in vain again, at least for that grand jackpot to be split three ways.
           I camped north of Shoshone along the Amorgossa a little south of Death Valley junction. I found a coconut stuck in the mud there and broke it open . It fed me for days. Why a coconut would fall so far from any tree I didn't ask. You take what you can get when it's offered to you. Why question?
          From Death Valley junction where there is an improbably situated hotel with an improbable story of a ballerina willing a once decrepit motel back to life through her art the trail sets west again to Death Valley itself. The pass is easy to reach, with minimal grade, rewarded with eighteen miles of steady, exhilarating descent to Furnace Creek ,the headquarters of the national monument. From there, armed with new maps, I head to Stovepipe Wells and a night in the dunes. The National Monument is a difficult place for free camping. It's part of the National Park service, which frowns on such behavior, and it's mostly open desert land, which doesn't allow itself to easy concealment. You've got to know the territory pretty well, or be extraordinarily lucky to make it happen. It's part of my religion to never pay for a campsite and avoid campgrounds altogether. This is not a religion recognized by the Federal government or any of its branches.
         The next day finds me on the very long ascent to Towne Pass, then veering southward for the still longer ascent of Emigrant Pass. It takes me all day. I begin the descent near sundown, passing a herd of wild burros along the way, as I drop into Wildrose Canyon, which is blessedly wet, fed by a small spring, at its head. A little picnic ground, two or three miles further down, provides a place to sleep conveniently out of the rising wind. Not much chance of being discovered here, the park has closed the road due to washouts.  I have the Panamint mountains all to myself, and the delicious sound of wind of Palm fronds being shaken by the wind to lure me into sleep.
          Wednesday it was south through Panamint valley to Trona. Trina is an odd town of tar paper shacks and unpaved streets like something out of the third world. The major industry is the extraction and processing of minerals from Searles Lake, an enormous dry lake about fifteen miles east of Ridgecrest. As I passed through town I went by the only other cyclist in town at that moment, a black man, who looked up and declared " a desert traveler". I guess I look it. Ill own it.

Living a normal life

    Do you remember Heaven's Gate, that sci-fi cult founded in the 1970s by a nut-job named Marshall Applewhite? The group achieved national attention in 1997 when they ingested poison together in their San Diego compound in hopes of being translated to an alien spaceship believed to be following in the wake of the Hale Bopp comet. When their thirty-nine bodies were found a few days later by police they were dressed in matching black track suits, wearing identical purple sneakers and purple hankies over their faces. Conformity was an important aspect of their religion. Dressing alike, thinking alike, speaking alike, and even sharing a taste for the same foods were markers of their superiority. They were plainly too good to remain among us so they  separated themselves entirely from mankind through mass suicide. Conformity alone does not guaranty normality. If it did then ultra-conformists like the Heaven's Gate members would be considered paragons of normalcy. If they were normal, the word is meaningless.
      For most of my life I've stuck to a personal conception of normal living. It may not look like anyone else's idea of how to get by. That doesn't matter. If others judge normal by how their neighbors are doing, then I wish them well. Good luck with that. Hope you don't end up wearing a purple hanky over your face. For me conformity never seemed attractive.  Conformity never even crossed my mind.
     Einstein may not have come up with the idea that every object contains energy, but he determined the extent of that energy with his well known formula E= mc2. Multiply the amount of mass of something by the speed of light squared and you know exactly how much energy it contains. There is not much in that formula for me to put to any practicable use. Those with a better grasp of the physics and the mechanics of the principle are able to unleash the hidden potential of a single atom and destroy half a medium sized city, or blow holes in the Mojave desert. The sun creates energy in the form of heat and light through a similar process, demonstrating that you don't have to be a nuclear scientist to split atoms. Put all the atoms of my body to good use and you may be able to create a blast of energy that could be seen from Andromeda and send planets out of their accustomed orbits. I don't really know. There's the energy of mass and then there's life energy. Unlike nuclear energy, it's easily understood, and readily available. It surrounds you and courses through you. How much of it will be used and how much let slip away?  When all is said and done, I will doubtless look back at enormous potential wasted,  never developed, poorly managed, and seldom sustained. The same can be said for us all. I have to agree with Thoreau who said that he had never met a man who was fully alive, and if he did, he wouldn't be able to look him in the face.
      Naturally, I value most the parts of my life where I invest the most energy, or is it the other way round?  On the higher energy side there is painting scenes. I can live off the money it brings in, but what it brings in wouldn't sustain anyone else I can think of. Being homeless has its benefits. Painting is superb for letting off steam. It's also a means for exploring. Painting is the soul of adventure. There is also adventure of the more traditional sort. When I take to the back roads on a bicycle loaded with camping gear, or to some hidden piece of shoreline in a similarly loaded sea kayak, I feel fully engaged in with life in a way that not even painting can touch.
      That is living for me. That is normal. Most everything else is purposed to get me back on the saddle or in the cockpit. For twenty-two years free wheeling travel ruled, but over the last ten it's enjoyed a little less than equal time. That maybe the new normal, but not in my mind.
        Tomorrow I'll be back on the trail. My bike is packed and ready to be freed from its storage locker in Las Vegas. I'm flying there tonight. Soon it will be back to sleeping inside a tent, and outside the law. Ill be free and breathing again. Ill be surrounded by beauty. Ill be wet when it rains, and cursing when it blows. Ill be satisfied at the end of the day, and the next morning ready to do it all again. Ill be normal.

Christmas is for the imperfect

     There is nothing overtly religious in Dicken's little book, A Christmas Carol. It is a tale with a theme of redemption. It's a story that recommends human values like brotherhood, love, and charity over crass materialism. These values are universal. They are found in many faiths ,and practiced by many people who practice no particular faith at all. I don't think Dickens slighted the holiday at all when writing his story about the true spirit of Christmas without anything but passing reference to the birth of the figure at the center of the Christian religion. Delving into theology wasn't his intention. For old Scroodge redemption was not about securing a place in heaven, but  realigning his attitude to those around him, making their lives better where he could, opening his heart to their needs, and finding happiness in affection, understanding, and a generous spirit.
    In so many ways the story of Scroodge is even better than the story of the first Christmas as recited by Linus when Charlie Brown asks if anyone knows the true reason for Christmas. Linus quotes movingly from the second chapter of the gospel of Luke. That's a great story, but it leaves out the point Dickens makes; how does one miracle inspire a still greater miracle, the refining of a human heart.
     The story of the birth of Christ as told by Luke is unique and charming. The Christian God is born in a stable, homeless at birth, to a humble family far from the centers of power .He would grow to manhood, but according to Christian theology, he was just as much God then as later in life. That's a remarkable proposal. Only the Christian God of all the gods, of all the pantheons ever imagined appears in this lowliest of forms, appears ,and is worshipped wherever there are Christians, as a helpless baby, the child of impoverished parents, in a dusty Roman backwater.
      Christianity wasn't the first faith to enshrine humility as a virtue. Over the centuries it wasn't always noted for practicing it either. That we in the Western world value humility comes down to the simple story of a baby born in a manger. Our understanding of humility also owes a lot to the religion  Jesus practiced while he lived on Earth, the Jewish religion of his parents. One of the best insights regarding the nature of humility comes from Brazilian Rabbi, Rabino Nilton Bonder, " Many people believe that humility is the opposite of pride, when, in fact it is a point of equilibrium. The opposite of pride is actually a lack of self esteem. A humble person is totally different from a person who cannot recognize and appreciate himself as a part of the world's marvels.".
     I've never admired the level of debasement that some Christians seem to think is required of them and is taught in many of their churches. I get it that you acknowledge your distance from the deity. I understand that all of us are imperfect, and frequently fall short of the mark. I have trouble with people getting stuck on this realization and fetishizing it rather than moving on from there in a more positive direction. The tendency reminds me of the roving bands of penitents of the Middle Ages, wearing sack cloth and whipping their own backs till bleeding. Demonstrations of outlandish humility can only seem impressive to an audience that miss the point of humility in the first place.
     I offer my own definition of humility. I recognize that it lacks both nuance and profundity, but it makes up for all that by being succinct. Humility is the ability to say, I screwed up. This approach  affirms reality. We all screw up. We screw up all the time, and we're wrong about almost everything. Humans are the animal that assumes. We go so far as assuming that assumptions are knowledge itself. That's the worst assumption of all.
        Merry Christmas Telluride. Hope it's not a humble one. There's no reason that a talent for reassessment should stop you from eating a tray of Christmas cookies, a mound of mash potatoes covered in gravy, or spending too much on presents while receiving more than you need. Glut and gluttony are part of the holiday. Some traditions are just too important to be ignored. Excess is America's contribution to the Christmas holiday. Refraining from that is un-American. Anyhow, we already have a holiday for shinning a bright light on our flaws and resolving to get all that taken care of, and it's only a week away. If you're not perfect yet, what can one more week of imperfection hurt? Tomorrow is always the best day for reformation. That's in the bible, or maybe it's in Dickens. You can Google that. My resolution for 2016, is to save you the trouble and do my own fact checking for a change.

Narcissist apocalypse

   Lately I've been intrigued with the topic of narcissism. Maybe it's the current election cycle with its clash of giant egos, the sparring of would be megalomaniacs.? Maybe it's the book I'm reading, Narcissistic Supply, the Drug of Narcissists by Sam Vaknin?  Turns out its author is no psychologist, but his leading credential is that he is himself a narcissist, twice diagnosed by experts. Nevertheless, this book seems rich with insight into the condition, containing plenty of food for thought.
    Narcissism is not a single phenomenon. There is the clinical form, recognized generally as a personality disorder referred to as NPD.  Even that takes many forms. I wish I had the space here to describe them. They are all fascinating. Instead let me offer a simple definition. NPD is extreme self centeredness. It's characterized by an inflated sense of self importance and a deep and overwhelming need for admiration. Lack of empathy is also present. The confident exterior of the narcissist is a false mask. Underlying it is a very fragile sense of self worth that is vulnerable to the slightest criticism. There is also a more general ,less extreme form of narcissism; some call it societal narcissism.
      Narcissists can be found in many settings, but they often gravitate to professions and interests with high attention grabbing potential and access to power. Politics is rife with them, and so are the arts, including show business. Donald Trump fits the profile pretty well. The crucial question to determine if he meets the clinical definition for NPD would be this; does he lack empathy for others? Is he racist, and a misogynist? Does he mock the handicapped for their deformities? All that is helpful but not determinative. It's more important to ask how does he regard those closest to him ? If he uses them as tools, primarily existing to meet his needs, both physical and psychological, then it's a pretty sure bet he is a classic narcissist. I don't know the answer to that question. Others in politics may be equal in scale to his supposed degree of narcissism but are better at hiding it. Trump only differs from this group in his almost complete lack of self awareness and filter, though in fact many will out-perform him in arrogance and lack of empathy.
      A really skilled narcissist may take an entirely different tack and impress others by practicing extreme humility and apparent compassion and altruism, demonstrating willingness to suffer for some higher cause. This is where diagnosing NPD from afar gets really tricky, and also fun. Was St. Francis of Assisi one of the holiest men to ever walk the planet or a charlatan looking for approval and secretly coveting veneration? Was Vincent Van Gogh motivated by his love for beauty ,or a martyr to his own peculiar love for himself and disappointment over rejection? In the end it really doesn't matter. Their achievements were great and long lasting. What should we care if they managed to poison all their closest relationships out of self loathing and the twisted egotism that it spawned.
      Determining societal narcissism is much easier. When a society turns narcissistic it devalues then replaces long held standards for newer ones. Free spending replaces thrift. Modesty is overthrown for conspicuous consumption. Accomplishments are meaningless and empty if they lack the pizzazz to spark envy in others. Building character is replaced by building an impressive reputation. Wisdom takes a back seat to academic credentials. Good looks count for more than a good heart. Aging is associated with decay, and youth is everything. Hedonism is celebrated. Personal responsibility is evaded, and once purely personal prerogatives transferred to an all consuming state. You get the picture.
       When a society turns narcissistic it's often the last to know. Just like a narcissistic individual, part of their condition is that they are incapable of self diagnoses, and will resist the diagnoses when confronted. The narcissist is a master at building defenses around that fragile ego. The narcissistic society is likewise ruthless in suppressing reminders of its own inadequacies. Standard bearers of the old order must not be tolerated. They are not just wrong, they must be evil. They are not just ignorant, they are stupid. They are deniers. They are hateful reactionaries.
        The problem with narcissistic societies is that they are not self sustaining. They are a sure sign of a society or a civilisation on its way downward. The societal values that they place the greatest store in ,when antithetical to established values, undermine them. The values essential to building and sustaining a working society are extinguished and forgotten. The question is, when do we reach that tipping point?

    "And, you know, if you look at world history, whenever people are desperate, when people are lacking food, when people are not able to take care of their families- that's when ideologies arise that are dangerous."   President Obama in interview shown on CBS show This Morning ,Friday, December 4th 2015.
     The president was talking about the relationship between the rise of radical Islam and climate change. I have no doubt he believes this and most of those who have voted for him will shake their heads in ascent at this pearl of wisdom, but it would have been nice to hear a follow up question from Norah O'Donnell when he said it. I don't think that it's asking too much to have heard from Norah something like- " Can you site an example?"
     For the life of me ,I can't think of any. I doubt if he could either. Doubtless there are many examples of famines due to droughts and other unfortunate weather related phenomena causing mass migrations, riots, and other upheavals, but what dangerous ideologies have sprung from hunger? Again, I just can't come up with anything. I challenge anyone to justify his statement.
     What is supremely dangerous is having a president in times like this who doesn't understand the enemy. He's proven in every pronouncement he's made on the subject that he doesn't understand them, is unaware of what motivates them, and doesn't know how to fight them. He'd rather battle domestic foes, namely Republicans in congress. He'd rather make grand gestures and grand speeches in opposition to global warming. Meanwhile the actions he proposes to fight it would be as ineffective and futile as his efforts to " contain " ISIS. If there is any relationship between the battle against Islamic terrorism and climate change it is that alone. 

        Less than a week after the 9/11 attacks, Bill Maher got in considerable hot water for his remarks on his former show , Politically Incorrect, "We have been the cowards. Lobbing cruise missiles from 2000 miles away, that's cowardly. Staying in the airplane when it hits the building, say what you want about it, not cowardly! " Say what you want about Maher, or the wisdom of speaking disparagingly of our soldiers and airmen at that sensitive time, you've got to admit he kind of had a point there somewhere. If sacrificing your life for the sake of a chosen cause isn't courage then what do we call it? How does that type of courage compare to the valor and self sacrifice of those who are injured and killed trying to thwart another's fanaticism?
       Soon after the events of Septmber 11 2001 many have speculated over the motivations of the terrorists. For westerners, especially those of us who are not religious, it's especially hard to wrap your head around it. Learning that many the terrorists were not particularly religious themselves, further muddies the water. Why would people who can't be bothered to live their religion be so happy to kill for it?
        I believe that a better explanation for their behavior is found in the premise of Eric Hoffer's 1951 book the True Believer.. Hoffer saw a common thread leading to fanatical identification with extreamist religious cults and political crusades, even those that vary considerably in their dogma. The people they attract are often life's loosers. They share a need to dissolve their own miserable selves by immersion into some great cause. Some who appear otherwise successful also give themselves over to  powerful mass movements in order to feel whole and justified at last. Once inside, they find meaning to their lives where they felt none before.
        ISIS is a that sort of cult. It branched off from Al Qaida in Iraq after the death of its founder. Under the leadership of its former second in command, Abu Bakr Al- Baghdadi it soon spread to Syria and co-opted Al Qaida forces waging war there. In 2014  Al-Baghdadi proclaimed himself caliph of the entire Muslim world and changed the organization's name to the Islamic State. They now hold territory in Syria and Iraq with affiliates and operatives worldwide. Through greater success on the battlefield, and a keen appetite for atrocity it has surpassed all rival jihadist movements in recruitment, wealth, arms ,and notoriety. The beheading of captives, rape, and the sale of captive women, terrorist attacks in Africa, Lebanon, Turkey, and now Europe ,are not ends in themselves . The underlying motive is to so horrify and anger infidel nations that they will commit their military strength to destroying them. We are being set up for Armageddon. Their ace in the hole is that God is with them and hates infidels just as much as they do. From their perspective it's a battle they cannot possibly lose. Sounds like the crazy premise for a second rate movie, but that's really what they are all about. Once the infidel is vanquished the Caliphate will rule the world. It may seem ridiculous to most of us, but to ISIS this is deadly serious stuff. Emphasis on deadly.
        So that in a nut shell is the cause. Is it a cause worth dying for? Absolutely, if you're into that sort of thing. Will your dying for this cause mean that you are more courageous than your enemies? I don't think so. There is, you may have noticed, a certain nihilism to these beliefs, and an utter denial of humanity to those outside the cult, also an utter lack of humanity in their values from start to finish. True courage is not a stand alone virtue. It must be in support of other virtues or it is not virtue at all. Courage in behalf of evil is itself evil. It is counterfeit. You can call it audacity, recklessness, a pathology ,or nerve., but not courage. If I find myself depressed and self loathing, in a pretty awful state of mind, taking my own life, you wouldn't call me a hero. Neither should we consider martyrs in behalf of an evil cult courageous. Desperate, deluded, and miserable wretches is a better description. I can think of a few other adjectives but I'll spare you.
     I hasten to add that the cult in question is not Islam but a spin-off perversion of that faith. Jim Jones, founder of the Peoples Temple movement of the 1960s and 1970s considered himself  Christian as did his followers ,but that didn't make them so. When 900 of them took their own lives in the jungles of Guyana on a single afternoon, they did it without honor, courage or any sense of Christian values. They acted in a state of depravity ,under the influence of a depraved lunatic. ISIS is to modern Islam what the People's Temple was to Christianity.

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: All's fair
From: David Brankley <kleybran@gmail.com>
Sent: Monday, November 9, 2015, 8:37 AM
To: "mary@telluridenews com" <mary@telluridenews.com>
CC:


    Dorothy Bland is Dean of the Mayburn school of Journalism at North Texas University. On October 24 Bland, who is black, was walking in her  neighborhood in Corinth, a suburb of Dallas , she was stopped by white police officers while walking for exercise. Her encounter was so upsetting that she wrote a piece that appeared in the the Dallas Morning News as an op-ed a few days later. In the piece she described what it was like to be racially profiled. "Knowing that police officers are armed with guns and are a lot bigger than my 5 foot 4 inches, I had no interest in my life's story playing out like Trayvon Martin's death. I stopped and asked the officers if there was a problem; I don't remember getting a decent answer before one of the officers asked where I lived and for identification.", she wrote." I guess I was simply a brown face in an affluent neighborhood. I told the police I didn't like to walk in the rain, and one of them told me, '  My dog doesn't like to walk in the rain.' Ouch!" She went on to say ," Walking while black is a crime in many jurisdictions. May God have mercy on our nation."
      Dr. Ben Carson, as you may know is also black. He is running for president, and in this strangest of all races, his is currently running ahead of all contenders among Republicans. Whenever there is a new front runner there will always follow increased scrutiny. Past speeches will be sifted through for errors and contradictions, and flip flops noted. That's only as it should be. We shouldn't decide on the best man or woman strictly by what their campaign says about them. The problem with Carson is how little track record he has left behind for our scrutiny. He's new to politics and has never held, or even run for office before. Do we judge him as a neurosurgeon instead? You see the problem.
      The one area that he has cornered in this race is a reputation for honesty and trustworthiness. On this attribute he stands alone in the poles, far ahead of others. You might say he has a natural advantage going for him that mere politicians and reality show stars cannot hope to gain. Over the last week some in the press have sought to turn this advantage into his downfall. CNN and Politco have been pouring through his autobiography, the subject of a film starring Cuba Gooding Jr., looking for possible falsehoods and misrepresentations. CNN has tried to verify a story he tells about his fourteen year old self attempting to stab a friend in a fit of rage. Not able to track down the unnamed friend, they've judged the story false and play up this dubious supposition unmercifully throughout the network. Politico has gone even further from the path of responsible journalism ,accusing him of making up a story about being accepted to West Point on scholarship, a claim he didn't actually make. They compounded their mistreatment of the facts by claiming that the campaign had admitted to their reporter that Carson had lied about the incident, a claim they soon retracted. The retraction followed the false story being picked up and repeated by almost every major news source in the country.
       All's fair in love and politics, the saying goes. Wrong on both counts. If anyone looses credibility over these incidents it ought to be the reporters involved ,as well as the agencies they represent, and not Dr. Carson. If there is any justice left in this sad tawdry world of politics and journalism then that is how this affair will play out. I've given up hoping for fairness, but I'm still holding out for justice.
       Meanwhile, will there be justice for poor Dorothy Bland? Maybe. After her op-ed appeared the Corinth police department released dash-cam video of the incident she spoke of. It seems it did not go down quite the way she described. In the unedited three minute video the police were as polite and professional as we would wish all police to be. She was not stopped because of her race. The chip on her shoulder ,evident in the video ,may have got her into exactly the sort of ugly situation she dreaded. As it is, thousands who have seen it are asking for her dismissal from NTU.