This is a quote from a woman whose path crossed mine long ago. we walked together for a while.

I thought it rang a bell that cuts across all lines...

"I feel when the ageing [sic] process becomes more evident, and our expiration date nudges us closer to the front of the line, like rotating yogurt in the fridge, we have a couple of choices. Fast red cars, heavy medication, complaining nonstop, or embracing life and remembering where true and spontaneous laughter comes from. I'm happy to see so many take the living one."


Your thoughts?
 

September 6, 2011 

  An acquaintance said this about him self on Facebook.

 I identify. 

 “Not mainstream.
“Committed to the following; truth/honesty, respect, transparency, treating others as I would like to be treated, commitment to quality in all ways, joy of giving and receiving unconditional love, gratitude for all the above.

 “Primary passions include wilderness hiking (multiple weeks/months) and technical troubleshooting.”



                                  ―Mark Purgett―

                      He was beginning a months long back pack trip this day,
   

Good way to be― as you can imagine it takes years of internal practice to get to where he describes.

Serendipitous was our meeting this day on the BA, So. Rim- GRCA, when Mark allowed me to take this shot of him.

On a deeper note-- I've been having an interesting time internally. Spiritually, I am in full knowledge of my condition. My troubles stem from my own making and trying to manage events, circumstances and romances and the outcomes are always in God's hands. When will I remember to let go and let God?

After all God's is soo big-- He spins the planet and grows all the trees, Right?  I need to give up my managing to Him.

Should you have been hired to run my life and it looked like this today, I'd fire you!!.. My heartache is my own  and in cleaning up my side I find this full knowlege bittersweet. The problem is this-- as clearly as I can tell-- When the shit hits the fan, what happens is that the shit gets all over everyone close to me.

July 1, 2011, Lakewood, CO

10:08:12, hours MDT

...continued hiker’s journal…

July 1st… Remember that day last year?


July 4th, last year I took down the wreath at Kyle’s place in G-town and placed it on the free table over at the Arid Club.

One year- on the 4th-  I was hosed down with others during the heat on NRIM. The wildland fire team did the spraying as the parade of employees wound their way through NRIM village center.

I want to; do I need to go to NRIM this month? I believe this place makes me come alive. We all have places RIGHT? What is your place? The place, which after you take the time to arrive and lose some of the rural/ city/ suburbanite viewpoint, that makes your heart sing. I’m interested in your viewpoint here.


Reminds me of the time in my living whereby I became aware of the joggers and runners over in Boulder, during the ‘70s.

I remember a stand-out performance.

A jogger was jogging on the median during the afternoon rush hour with three congested commuter lanes each way nearly bumper- to- bumper. I wasn’t incredulous, disbelieving or skeptical. Although not persuaded to join and jog in the exhaust of these 60’s and 70’s era cars and trucks- I was given to many careful thoughts over a long period of time. This incident heightened my awareness regarding people and their egos and their apparent need to show- off their prowess, ability and skill.

This event that I experienced is comparable to showing off your talent in the reading of a newspaper, in my mind. I could not see the benefit in the inhalation of the exhaust, working his body that hard. Some require recognition for their efforts, RIGHT? When was the most recent instance in which you were recognized for reading a magazine out loud in public? SEE?—same thing in my mind.
From the foreword of Of Men and Mountains, William O. Douglas, 1950


“I learned early that the richness of life is found in adventure. Adventure calls on all the faculties of mind and spirit. It develops self- reliance and independence. Life then teems with excitement. But man is not ready for adventure unless he is rid of fear. For fear confines him and limits his scope. He stays tethered by strings of doubt and indecision and has only a small and narrow world to explore….”


Finding the manner, method and technique to solidify a philosophy has been my recent life’s work. Get it that fear is the manner or way if you will, that tends to wear us down from life-giving attempts to become part of the great adventure called human living. We become isolated and our worldview shrinks not unlike that of the addict, whose existence closes around her. Some [worldviews] close into less than 5 square miles and psychologically even more so- she is constricted. Not unlike symptoms of depression. Not unlike the new- wave republicans who pontificate, go on and on and then preach to us about how they are not swayed by this or that. What a mess the last presidential administration left in its wake of “making us safe.” Where is the adventure or richness in life, in the above? Were we asleep at the switch using the proffered- up means to the end or were we fearful and dropped the ball?


Justice Douglas has it right on the beam where he remarked, “…But man is not ready for adventure unless he is rid of fear. For fear confines him and limits his scope. He stays tethered by strings of doubt and indecision and has only a small and narrow world to explore….”


Some contend that financial insecurities will leave us. Some others assert that feelings will no longer become emotional emergencies. Some may argue that jogging inside is the ticket. However you arrive whereby you no longer give pause to putting off the adventure, no longer place bargain hunting, latte-sipping or on- line dating ahead of the call of the wild― the new day in life will arrive. The straight- forward unwavering noisy solitude that place gives to our soul. We all have that place. The jogger from long ago disappeared into the bric a brac of my experiencing and I doubt― I doubt that the jogger’s place was ever really on that automobile-congested and smoky median to begin with. It was just the means to an end.


Becoming confused with the means to the end is like the trap some have fallen for, like becoming tethered to the digital- hand held device the advertisers tell us we need. Ever notice how the slickness of the marketeering goes? Consumers are as well called “early or late adopters.”


Apparently according to their research and development teams marketing this stuff to us, it isbetter to be an early adopter, to get a leg up and get ahead of the crowd. Ever notice this mentality on the shopping day afterThanksgiving?

The stampeding, in efforts to give those in the front of the early morning lines a leg up for yet another widget, thingamajig or some must have electronic device?


The late adopters get the bargain priced goods. Some will say that bargain hunting is worth it. Worth what?


Some apparently believe that television watching is the means to the end. Some of the same may believe that texting in public is the means to the end. Tell me, what do these folks gain by distracting themselves from the present moment anyhow? Did not Tolle remark that the present moment is all we have and that is crazy to rush through it in an attempt to get somewhere else emotionally?


Thank God, Douglas wrote this― “I learned early that the richness of life is found in adventure….” How rich is your living today? Did you give yourself the time it takes to arrive today?




Thanks again for your thoughtful comments.

Last day of June 2011

June 30, 2011, Lakewood, CO
08:51:29, hours MDT
...continued hiker’s journal…

http://supreme.justia.com/us/405/727/case.html

U.S. Supreme Court
Sierra Club v. Morton, 405 U.S. 727 (1972)
Sierra Club v. Morton
No. 70-34
Argued November 17, 1971
Decided April 19, 1972
405 U.S. 727
CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT Syllabus


Petitioner, a membership corporation with "a special interest in the conservation and sound maintenance of the national parks, game refuges, and forests of the country," brought this suit for a declaratory judgment and an injunction to restrain federal officials from approving an extensive skiing development in the Mineral King Valley in the Sequoia National Forest. Petitioner relies on § 10 of the Administrative Procedure Act, which accords judicial review to a
"person suffering legal wrong because of agency action, or [who is] adversely affected or aggrieved by agency action within the meaning of a relevant statute."


On the theory that this was a "public" action involving questions as to the use of natural resources, petitioner did not allege that the challenged development would affect the club or its members in their activities, or that they used Mineral King, but maintained that the project would adversely change the area's aesthetics and ecology. The District Court granted a preliminary injunction. The Court of Appeals reversed, holding that the club lacked standing, and had not shown irreparable injury.


Held: A person has standing to seek judicial review under the Administrative Procedure Act only if he can show that he himself has suffered or will suffer injury, whether economic or otherwise. In this case, where petitioner asserted no individualized harm to itself or its members, it lacked standing to maintain the action. Pp.
405 U. S. 731-741. 433 F.2d 24, affirmed.
STEWART, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which BURGER, C.J., and WHITE and MARSHALL, JJ., joined.


DOUGLAS, J., post, p. 405 U. S. 741, BRENNAN, J., post, p. 405 U. S. 755, and BLACKMUN, J., post, p. 405 U. S. 755, filed dissenting opinions. POWELL and REHNQUIST, JJ., took no part in the consideration or decision of the case. Page 405 U. S. 728

MR. JUSTICE DOUGLAS, dissenting. I share the views of my Brother BLACKMUN, and would reverse the judgment below.
The critical question of "standing" [Footnote 2/1] would be simplified and also put neatly in focus if we fashioned a federal rule that allowed environmental issues to be litigated before federal agencies or federal courts in the name of the inanimate object about to be despoiled, defaced, or invaded by roads and bulldozers, and where injury is the subject of public outrage. Contemporary public concern


Page 405 U. S. 742
for protecting nature's ecological equilibrium should lead to the conferral of standing upon environmental objects to sue for their own preservation. See Stone, Should Trees Have Standing?




-- Toward Legal Rights for Natural Objects, 45 S.Cal.L.Rev. 450 (1972). This suit would therefore be more properly labeled as Mineral King v. Morton.
Inanimate objects are sometimes parties in litigation. A ship has a legal personality, a fiction found useful for maritime purposes. [Footnote 2/2] The corporation sole -- a creature of ecclesiastical law -- is an acceptable adversary, and large fortunes ride on its cases. [Footnote 2/3] The ordinary corporation is a "person" for purposes of the adjudicatory processes,

Page 405 U. S. 743

whether it represents proprietary, spiritual, aesthetic, or charitable causes. [Footnote 2/4]
So it should be as respects valleys, alpine meadows, rivers, lakes, estuaries, beaches, ridges, groves of trees, swampland, or even air that feels the destructive pressures of modern technology and modern life. The river, for example, is the living symbol of all the life it sustains or nourishes -- fish, aquatic insects, water ouzels, otter, fisher, deer, elk, bear, and all other animals, including man, who are dependent on it or who enjoy it for its sight, its sound, or its life. The river as plaintiff speaks for the ecological unit of life that is part of it. Those people who have a meaningful relation to that body of water -- whether it be a fisherman, a canoeist, a zoologist, or a logger -- must be able to speak for the values which the river represents, and which are threatened with destruction.
I do not know Mineral King. I have never seen it, nor traveled it, though I have seen articles describing its proposed "development" [Footnote 2/5] notably Hano, Protectionists vs. recreationists -- The Battle of Mineral King



                                                                Justice Douglas

Thank God, this man Douglas made his way into the world whereby his actions did some good.

Thank God for all those naturalists before, during and after his time. The more I read and become informed about the wilderness the more I understand that my philosophy is not so different than these men and women. I am of similar mind in that I have on occasion found the place in which the spirit comes alive and society’s clutch on my wallet and the so called “owned” things are just the trappings of those that are under- initiated.

I found one year on the Kaibab Forest― the elk in rutting season being moved by the coyotes at just about day break. I’ve written about this experience before. Some of you may be familiar.

The long and short was that I heard and listened most of the morning, after midnight, to the bugling and ruffling on the pine needle strewn floor. The floor was hard packed sandy on top of Kaibab limestone, in the ponderosa forest. When the elk sensed me, there was I newly awake and staring, gaping at them. Maybe 25 to 30 of them, sows, yearlings, new borns and a male staring back motionless from approximately 200 yards on the other side of a fire line in those trees alike as the tree stand I awoke from.

They appeared single-file with bodies facing east and all heads turned south toward me. They may have been aware of this tent with me in it and certainly heard my noise as I made my way to my feet. It was one of those moments which some of you are altogether familiar with.

A coyote barked and they set in motion at a full- gallop after maybe 5 seemingly endless minutes. Single file; I could feel the reverberation of their hoof beats on the forest floor, the birds stilled from their raucousness and it seemed as though the sun- up waited in this moment.

I observed the spectacle that the tourists, just 15 miles away sleeping in their over- night accommodations, had no idea was unfolding. I was awed by the resoluteness of the solitude and the noisy silence of the thumping of their legs on the ground. I could feel the resonance up in my chest cavity.

This experience along with others similar has solidified, deep inside me, the draw to those unpredictable experiences such as this.
No amount of Whole Food advertised gluten- free bargains can fill this God- like spiritual moment. Some of you know the feeling, know this sentiment, Right?

Solstice Tomorrow June 2011

June 20, 2011, Lakewood, CO
08:51:54, hours MDT
...continued hiker’s journal…

SUMMER SOLSTICE June 21, 1:16 P.M. EDT― this is tomorrow, my how much change this springtime 2011 has brought on. Have you been changing? I certainly have welcomed the change in attitude and in physical living. Both― with the practice, have assisted me physically and internally.

Tell me something about the media and the brains that want us to consume ever more, okay? What is up with all the targeted advertising to the so- called middle classes and the affluent “shopper?” Advertising ad nauseum so-called “gluten- free solutions?”

And the nuanced newer advertising is all about some new buzz- word called “probiotics.” This includes fermented foods, for instance, sauerkraut, tempeh, miso and brewers yeast. Additionally, dairy products, for example, some cottage cheeses, some unadulterated yoghurts- read without high fructose syrups and sugars- and the kefirs. Apparently these foods help with the body’s inflammatory responses.

Our local Whole Foods retail outlet for one week during their Christmas Season Shopping Rush (CSSR) actually had a cardboard display set up with products showcased as their Gluten- Free Solution line.

Are you being helped by your local grocery store helpers to buy, buy and buy gluten- free? Last year a friend of the family was browsing along inside one of Whole Foods’ stores and I showed her a whole shelf of liquids that the store was self- promoting as gluten- free. This was her 1st apparent notice of this buzz- word marketeering.

A liquid and at that― a so- called Whole Foods store brand― all for $5.99 the pint. A PINT of liquid! Give me a break!
I suppose that the “health- conscious” can be pulled into this slick scheme. On the other hand, the probiotic message has some merit to it, in my opinion.

I hope should hope that should Aldo Leopold, Bob Marshall and the three Muries be alive today that they wouldn’t give more than a fleeting notice to the slick- town marketers. Their diet consisted of foods closer to the weeds after all. Theirs was the day before the slick packaging of ideas, foods we don’t really require and thinly veiled attempts to separate us from the greater eco- systems that have sustained all of us here co- existing on the planet.

There are so many seemingly unlimited cash- cows for the marketed-to amenities economy crowd. With so many more- seemingly wanting, desiring, craving and thirsting in an unhealthy way to acquire the ganglia or cysts of yet more amenities to consume and forsake and then take for granted.

June 16, 2011Lakewood, CO
09:01:11, hours MDT
...continued hiker’s journal…

The more I read, listen to and understand the naturalists that have preceded us here in America, the more I want to shit- can this self- centered social environment called the Front Range of Colorado. I want to flee to the wilderness and find remnants still without the motorized machinations of the mortgaged- to- the- hilt crowd.

More than this, I want to hear the evening birdsong without the ever- present din of motorized traffic in the near or far distance. I want to hear and experience again the rustle of the breeze on the grasses and the pitter- pattering (and galloping) of the mammals on the forest floor without uninvited intrusion of some other not- on the same wave length variety [humans] consuming the experience and bagging yet another day away from the job and home address.

Seems to me from this vantage point in the career of being, becoming and evolving in lifestyle and living in general that being prepared to sleep out is the pre- requisite to observing the asana of the world with the lens of acculturation in this society, the consumer society, characterized by self- indulgence and decadence along with over spending on needless devices and sundries, that has a life of its own. Solace and solitude are not silent qualities explained by therapists in offices in the suburbs… it is the birdsong and rustling unfettered by the noisiness and busyness of the device laden Americans in the back- country…. May take a few days of foot travel to reach but there you are… and when you arrive― poof there you are again. The unfettered naturalness to the world of insects and living organisms observed through our senses gives rise to this― don’t you think? The esthetic beauty of land forms and coursing waterways are included along with local climates and weather. How much value is placed on the pit left after the gold mine is played out? Where do the minerals go? Into your pocket? Into whose pocket?

Remember the three days here after the plane attacks in NY? Remember how the skies were quiet- in between the military jets over flying us? I do. I want to again; while health is with me- to rely on wit, vim, vigor and abilities to hear and experience another time- to live outside all over again and regain the inner solace that the forests and canyons have a knack for delivering. The ever- present distraction of the texting- in public enthusiasts; the overfed and frantic inhabitants of this region as well as frenetic paced shopping and buying spree of what they call the good- life is frankly a bore to me.

This book is making an impression and imprint on my being ness―> “The Quiet World: Saving Alaska’s Wilderness Kingdom, 1879-1960,” by Douglas Brinkley. I recommend it either in print version from library or in CD format to listen to. Am becoming aware of the birthplace of American environmental conservatism and the naturalists involved in shaping the intact wild places left us in our military- industrial complex manner of living. The rampant consumerism and marketeering to the well-heeled crowds along with the distractions of bargain- hunting the current gluten- free solution and continued texting- in- public somehow does not add up when measured against the well- written accounts of the preliminary actions by those with intuitive and scientific knowledge of the forests and wild lands that were inhabited for generations before the White race invaded and began is head long systematic destruction in search for gold, oil, fishes and anything else convertible into coinage. Some things are sacred and some places need be left intact without the lobbyists mandating and directing that we continue to reap the riches of the land and leave pillaged eco-systems in return.

I have been many days in places where there is only the loud roar of a swift tributary to the Colorado River; many days where no- one has approached on foot from the opposite direction and observed only the winds at night in the canyons below. I long for the wilderness that the Muries experienced in the Koyukuk river region of Alaska.

The Wiseman, Alaska experience of Bob Marshall among the locals and as well- the more recent explorations and found solitude in the doing and raftings of Katie Lee, how these writings pique my inner yearning to break the shackles of the deadening roar with the incessant callings to buy this or consume that. Oh how I want to renounce the stifling pretentiousness of this gentrified, sanitized and moneyed crowd here in Denver- metro. Surrendering this for the renewal of spirit from the forests?

― Yes.

June 10, 2011, Lakewood, CO
08:28:38, hours MDT
...continued hiker’s journal…

…Give freely of what you found… <-- seems that this is important… When following a political, religious or biased dictum this may mean doing as the directors deem for one to do; or as one’s handlers reckon, believe or suppose you should do to remain in good stead. Correct?

However things spiritual in nature remain unanswered by the commandments above― this being that giving freely of what you found in the practice means precisely, that you, through the practice [work] become verbally forthright and straightforward irregardless of your desired outcome.

The alternative is simplistic in nature… this being that we go on playing around in a dress rehearsal for maturity

“Give freely of what you found, for surely you will meet some of us on the road to happy destiny.”

“Abandon yourself to God as you understand God. Admit your faults to Him and to your fellows. Clear away the wreckage of your past. Give freely of what you find and join us. We shall be with you in the Fellowship of the Spirit, and you will surely meet some of us as you trudge the Road of Happy Destiny.
May God bless you and keep you - until then.” Alcoholics Anonymous

http://anonpress.org/bb/Page_164.htm

Reminds us all about those who continue to market/ advertise the gluten- free solution. The hucksters that want us to believe that burning more coal and drilling more oil is a good deal for nature. That buying, buying and buying more gluten- free marketing will somehow free us. Free us from what?

Are we not human animals and nature is a part of us? These peddlers be them as they may― the talking heads of Congress, the media “reporters”, the US Chamber of Commerce, the agribusiness profiteers and the so- called callings for global war on drugs would have us agree with their branding of the truth. How many times are we duped into buying a “lifestyle’’ with ever enormous houses packed one against the other in the environs of the gated communities?; into becoming hoodwinked and swindled into a more ‘luxurious’ automobile or for that matter- on the local playing field, seeing the corporate grocery outlets throwing away the produce in the closed containers behind the store? How many times are we led by the nose ring to believe these are some solutions or THEE solution- to our pain and obesity and not being satisfied with the current dangle of the golden riches? What happened to our inner desire to transcend this artificial sense of how we are all doing here on the planet? Did we forget that sharing the planet does mean we are not in it for the profiteering? ― to exploit because we can and have invented the means to do so? -- To take advantage of the others on the planetary journey with us? To abuse our prowesses and skills exemplified through aircraft carrier bombings and pin- pointing one another through cell- phone technologies? The industrial-military complex has drained out the ocean and expansiveness of our practice, don’t you think?

I’ll leave the important aspects of figuring out the practice to those more qualified, but alas for now I sense some inner chatter amongst you all. Do you believe that Aldo Leopold had it right back when he was coming of age? That the naturalist in him is similar to the spirit in you? I believe so, and as we all mature and become stewards rather than blindly consuming our experiences we shall become more involved. The alternative is to spend more money for diminishing returns. And the trinkets we buy i.e. the toys― autos that have ever more gadgetry inside, those “necessities” like the gigantic houses― do nothing for those that share the planet with us elsewhere than the United States of America.

…Give freely of what you found… <-- seems that this is important…
Your thoughts?