Tannhäuser Overture

Everyone's interest in classical music had to begin somewhere, and at some time.  While I remember checking out scratchy 78 rpm records in high school from my town's public library -- the William Tell Overture comes to mind -- my interest didn't really gel until college. 

I can't honestly recall the first piece that really caught my fancy, but during my junior year I had a roommate with an excellent "hi-fi," and a fairly extensive collection of LPs.  I remember specifically an album of Wagner's orchestral music entitled "Magic Fire Music."  I played it, repeatedly, and the piece I liked the best was the overture to Tannhäuser.  It's eminently hummable, right?  You play it early in the day, and it goes through your mind until nightfall.

As a bit of a gift to those of us who still consider Stravinsky's Rite of Spring to be pretty avant-garde stuff, the Seattle Symphony this week, as part of its regular season, presented a program that I attended last night of three pieces from the Romantic era.  The first, not surprisingly, was the  Tannhäuser Overture.  (The other two, equally well-loved or hackneyed, depending on your disposition, were Dvořák's Cello Concerto in B minor, and Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition.)

I doubt that I was the first lad to cut his musical teeth on the Tannhäuser overture, or on Wagner in general.  Wagner has an appeal to young males that is, while not exactly sexual, at least hormonal.  Somewhat similar to the appeal of race car accidents and hard tackling in football, but combined with the spiritual transcendence you find in certain Church of England hymns.  Wagner appealed to the Nazis; his music is also used at weddings. . 

When I was twenty, the recordings of Wagner's music that I played repeatedly, performed as scored by a full orchestra, might as well have been performed on a pipe organ.  The sound was a single wave that washed over me and receded, over and over.  The appeal was all loudness and emotion and confrontation with overwhelming force.

Listening to Tannhäuser's overture last night -- and especially watching it played by the orchestra -- was my first experience with its live performance, other than as played by a darkened orchestra in the pit before the full opera.  It was enjoyable watching how various themes worked together, and how various instruments contributed, each in its own way, to the overall effect.  A classmate back in college pointed out to me how, in Wagner, the strings build up tension and the horns resolve that tension, but that was pretty much the extent of my musical analysis.

I've never played an instrument in an orchestra.  For me it's often difficult to perceive how various instruments are working together, and off each other, when listening to a recording.  Which suggests one good reason to attend a live performance -- you can watch the sections of the orchestra at work.  You can see how the various pulleys and gears of the orchestral machine act together to produce the overall effect -- an effect that would still be enjoyable, but different, were the piece to be transcribed for organ, or any other solo instrument.

And yes.  The major theme of the Tannhäuser Overture still rings in my head today.  I quietly hum it to myself.

Toadstools

You chase them out the door, and they come in through the window.  This has to serve as my inexact metaphor for chasing rats and mice out of your walls, and the next day discovering hideous toadstools flourishing in your back yard.

Let me pause.  I've pointed out that my horror of rats, and to a lesser degree mice, has no logical basis.  Pet rats, in fact, such as are owned in great quantity by my nephew, are cuddly and affectionate and reputedly as intelligent as dogs.  (But not, I suspect, as intelligent as cats.)  Toadstools -- which is really just a pejorative term for mushrooms, supposedly mushrooms that are harmful but in reality a pejorative applied to mushrooms that have, subjectively, an "ick" factor -- are similar.

I eat mushrooms on my pizza.  As a kid, I loved mushrooms in my mom's meat loaf.  Cream of mushroom soup?  Sure.  Small, button mushrooms, like small furry mice, are cute. 

But enough of apologizing for my distaste.  The fungi (to be linguistically neutral) in my back yard -- whether poisonous or merely visually obnoxious --  are, in my opinion, toadstools.  They are huge and ugly (rat-like, to continue my analogy).  And I regard them with horror.  And they proliferate, just as do their animal cousins in the family rodentia.

I took a photo of the prime offender, and posted it on Facebook, a couple of days ago.  I announced that I had seven toadstools in my yard, of which this was the granddaddy.  The next day, I discovered I had twice that number, many now in a diffeent area of the yard.  Today, I began extermination procedures, plucking them up with my bare hands, dropping them into a bag, and depositing them in my yard waste bin.  (They are solid and meaty, fortunately, not the pustules of all that's impure, about to burst upon my hands, as they at first appeared.)

What are these things?  Well, they are the final (or perhaps penultimate) stage of mushroom development, the stage analogous to a dandelion when it gets all fuzzy and prepares to send its seeds parachuting into the air.  However, the mushroom sends forth spores, not seeds.  Same essential effect, from my point of view.  What are the stages of a mushroom's life, you ask?  I shall answer.

1.  Inoculation

2.  Spore germination

3.  Mycelial expansion

4.  Hyphal knot

5.  Primordia formation

6.  Fruitbody selection

7.  Mature fruitbody

8.  Spore release



Remember, the test is tomorrow, so study hard.

 

All you need to know -- or rather, all I need to know -- is that the mushroom fruits that I plucked from my yard today were merely the more successful of the fruits that were produced by a fungus that apparently permeates invisibly a wide portion of my backyard, especially those portions that are rich in moss.  Which at the moment, means much of my yard.

 

The little buggers will keep popping up, and I'll keep hacking them down.  Sooner or later, the fungus will give up and slink off to more salubrious backyards.  Or, more realistically, you'll find me blogging about research I've done on how one eliminates mushroom fungi from his lawn, when harvesting the fruit seems only to encourage it to greater efforts.

 

Couging it. Redux. All over again.

Your assignment, should you choose to accept it, is to re-read my post from 2013 entitled "Couging It."   A post, describing with awe and wonder, the miraculous ability of the Washington State Cougars to lose games that they have in the bag.

Times change and teams evolve.  So we thought.  The Cougars, after their 2013 debacle, became a more predictably good team.  They seemed to have an excellent chance of winning the Pac-12 title this year.  As of this time, yesterday, they were 3-0, and ranked No. 19 nationally.

They had a late night game scheduled, a home game against hapless 0-3 UCLA.  They went into the game 18½-point favorites.  Part way through the third quarter, they had pulled to a 49-17 point lead. 

And then the hex went into effect.  By the end of the third quarter, the Bruins had cut the Cougars' lead to 49-38.  It got worse. Down four points with possession of the ball and about a minute left to play, the WSU quarterback -- who otherwise played an excellent game -- fumbled the ball while in the process of being sacked.  UCLA won 67-63.

According to Cougar Coach Mike Leach, "Our guys got frantic and panicked. We collapsed in every phase of the game."  Yeah, well that's the hex.  That's not normal.  That's couging it.

The Cougs dropped out of the Top 25.  UCLA, at 1-3, didn't receive even a single vote, despite their "amazing" comeback.  Well, it would be "amazing" if you weren't playing against the team that has spawned a term that describes the supernatural ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

"Couging it."

Nice game, Cougs.  It was fascinating enough to keep me watching until its stunning conclusion at 11:30 p.m. (on the West Coast).

New York, again revisited

As I've mentioned, I returned Tuesday from a four day visit to New York.  Just a quick visit, one I make every two or three years, to make sure the Big Apple is still a town that I feel appealing.  (Yes.)  And one in which I wish that I owned a three or four story town house on the Upper West Side.  (Yes!!)

This year, I didn't really visit any place I hadn't seen before.  My viewing of the Broadway show Dear Evan Hansen (see Wednesday's discussion) was my only pre-planned activity.  My iPhone app shows that in four days I walked 38.4 miles, which suggests my major activity. 

I also spent a number of hours wandering the Metropolitan Museum.  The Met's displays have been shuffled around during renovation work.  As a result, I spent quite some time viewing its displays of medieval armor and armaments, which I don't recall ever having noticed in the past.

I once more stayed at a hotel on the Upper West Side -- on W. 87th, just off Broadway.  I'm impressed by all the kids in that part of town -- walking to school with or without parents, biking around, zooming around on push scooters, running in school cross-country groups in Central Park.  New York parents seem refreshingly willing to let their children gambol about on their own.  In my Seattle neighborhood, the stern oversight of helicopter parents is just now beginning to ease off from what we've seen over the last couple of decades.  

Anyway, rather than describe places I walked, which I've really already described after past visits, I thought I'd just post a few representative photos.  And here they are. 

Lincoln Center at twilight

Night people, silhouetted against Lincoln Center fountain

Music Box, W. 45th St., 

Dinner at "Fred's"
Amsterdam at W. 83rd

Columbia University, at W. 116th
An easy walk from my hotel 

Dakota Apartments, viewed from
the Reservoir in Central Park

World Trade Center, Building 1
 

Weird new NY skyline
Looking south from the Central Park Big Meadow

Source Lake and Franklin Falls

Avid hikers
and Franklin Falls

On September 8, I lamented on this blog that so far this summer I had failed to do any mountain hiking, but expressed the hope that I'd get in one hike with Pat M. before it was too late.  This entry, therefor, is not an essay but simply a reassurance -- to you, and to myself in future readings -- that we succeeded.

We did two hikes today, actually. 

The first was to Source Lake, near Snoqualmie Pass.  The hike takes off using the trail to Snow Lake, departing from the Alpental ski area parking lot.  We did the hike to Snow Lake last year,  and I commented on it herein.  A little over half way to Snow Lake, the trail to Source Lake branches off to the west.  The trail is not steep, but it is quite rugged underfoot, as it crosses a large number of avalanche chutes.  The trail through these chutes has been smoothed out nicely on the Snow Lake portion of the trail, but requires careful attention and balance once you're on the spur to Source Lake.

The trail became faint on a ridge high above the lake, and we didn't try to descend to the water.  The views were magnificent, made only more beautiful by layers of fog.  We had lunch, and then returned to the trailhead.  Round trip is reportedly 4.1 miles; elevation gain 1,013 feet.

We then drove to the Denny Creek trailhead, and did an easy hike to Franklin Falls.  Mainly because  Pat likes to check off hikes on a list he keeps!  The trail is extremely well maintained, with fencing wherever there is any drop-off exposure -- until the last descent to the bottom of the falls, which is over steep and potentially slippery rocks with no hand holds. 

But the falls were impressive.  Not Yosemite impressive, but more so than I expected.  The view was marred only slightly by what appeared to be an overpass for I-90 high above and off to one side of the falls, but I didn't really even notice it until we were about to leave.  The trail was much less frequented than the earlier Snow Lake trail, but it would be an excellent trail for beginners -- both nice scenery en route, and an impressive destination.

The trail is signed at one mile (two miles round trip), but it seemed a bit farther.  Together with the Source Lake hike, we allegedly hiked 6.1 miles, but my iPhone told me we had actually hiked 7.5 miles.  Some of that extra mileage consisted of some hiking, especially on the Franklin Falls hike, from the parking lot to the formal beginning of the trail.  Elevation gain was minimal.

Good day for hiking in mid-September, when the temperatures were cool, but not yet cold.  Pat and I hope to get in one more hike this year, probably in early November, after we have both returned from our respective travels.     

"Dear Evan Hansen"

I've learned to slam on the brake
Before I even turn the key
Before I make the mistake
Before I lead with the worst of me

***
We start with stars in our eyes
We start believing that we belong
But every sun doesn't rise
And no one tells you where you went wrong.

I returned last night from a four-day weekend in New York, where I'd decided to see a Broadway musical.  You know, a Broadway musical, like Oklahoma! or The King and I ?  But instead, I dropped by the Music Box Theatre and saw the hit show Dear Evan Hansen.

A musical about a friendless high school senior who suffers from a severe social anxiety disorder.

I knew what I was getting into, obviously.  I did read some reviews and a synopsis before buying my ticket.  And I've seen shows about disturbed kids before -- notably the excellent Broadway play about an autistic boy, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.  But none, perhaps, with the same emotional impact.

Evan Hansen is a boy who is incapable of reaching out to anyone.  A continuing gag, which symbolizes his entire personality, is his fear of shaking hands with people because of his sweaty palms.  (Hey Evan -- son -- lots of teenage boys have sweaty hands -- it's like acne!)  As his song "Waving Through a Window," quoted above, suggests, he is paralyzed in his ability to interact socially, because his mind is constantly spinning -- as his monologues reveal -- with all the things that might go wrong.

A classmate -- a totally unlikeable fellow named Connor -- commits suicide, and Connor's parents are led to believe, through a number of mistakes, that Evan and Connor were secretly best friends.  The parents are overjoyed, not wanting to believe that their son had gone through his short life hated by everyone. 

Evan goes along with the mistake, at first out of sympathy for the parents and feeling that a little white lie or so could do no harm.  Classmates are moved by the story. Evan's devotion to his friend goes viral on the internet, and he ends up chairing a drive to collect $50,000 for an apple orchard to be planted in Connor's memory.

Evan discovers he's suddenly popular, and Connor's sister -- on whom he's long had a secret crush -- falls in love with him.  At the end of the first act, he sings the show's rousing anthem "You Will Be Found," and the curtain closes on an ode to friendship .

Even when the dark comes crashing through
When you need a friend to carry you
And when you're broken on the ground
You will be found.

In the second act, some people begin realizing that Evan's story is contradictory in places, that it doesn't hold together.  Panicked, he eventually confesses to Connor's parents.  They turn against him, his classmates turn against him, the internet turns against him.  Even his mother, whom he had criticized for not always being there for him, is alienated.  Evan stands alone -- deserted by everyone -- seemingly in worse shape than when the play began.  Dramatically, but maybe not commercially, a fine point at which the show might have ended. 

But there is an epilogue, a year later, when Evan meets with Connor's sister.  She tells him that what he did probably saved her parents' marriage.  He decides his impact on the world was more good than bad, and accepts himself  for who he is, anxiety and all.  "Today at least you're you and ... that's enough," he sings in the finale.

The epilogue has been criticized as an unrealistic attempt to sugar-coat the ending.  It has also been criticized as glossing over the terrible -- and, in the end, self-serving -- lies that Evan told, and his emotional exploitation of others. That it somehow absolves Evan and gives him a "free pass" to a form of happiness.

I suppose I agree to an extent with both criticisms.  But what is more painful is the realization that, although Evan now accepts his damaged personality, he apparently is doomed to a lifetime of isolation and passivity.  Unless one chooses to believe that his moment in the sun, his experience with friendship and with a girl's love, will ultimately give him the self-confidence to assert himself in the future in ways less potentially harmful to others.  Maybe.

The show won six Tonys in 2017, including Best Musical and Best Lead Actor.  The actor playing 17-year-old Evan -- the fourth to play the part since 2017 -- is Andrew Barth Feldman, a 16-year-old singer/actor who is appearing for the first time on Broadway.  (Previous "Evans" were in their twenties.)  The kid can act, to devastating effect.

I've discussed the musical in this blog, after the fact, in my typically detached and rational manner.  At the time I saw it, I found it emotionally overwhelming.  I had tears in my eyes as the musical neared its end.

Which is to be expected, and not unusual.  But the kid sitting next to me -- a high school student who had been talking gregariously and cheerfully with his friends before the show -- was sobbing loudly and convulsively during the last fifteen minutes or so.  It was that kind of theater experience.

Highly recommended.  But it's not like most musicals you may have seen in the past. Like Oklahoma!--

Oh what a beautiful morning,
Oh what a beautiful day,
I've got a wonderful feeling,
Everything's going my way.

Sheep from the goats; mice from the rats

My house seemed alive with rodents, as I discussed on this blog three weeks ago.  I was then planning to resort to mass executions, by way of rat traps.

My traps, baited with delicious gobs of peanut butter, were haughtily ignored for the first two weeks.  It was summer.  The weather was warm.  The neighborhood was rich with falling nuts and fruits and other tasty rodent food.  Life was good, and the little guys preferred to dine al fresco at dawn and at twilight.   They turned up their rather prominent noses to peanut butter, served on an odd metal tab in the darkness of my basement.

But the seasons change.  The air became cooler.  The outdoor goodies became scarcer as our super-abundant squirrels and rabbits gobbled up everything in sight, with the squirrels also squirreling away provisions for the long winter.  As for an epicure who's missed a few meals and gobbles down a Big Mac, my peanut butter began to have an appeal.

A lethal appeal, as it turned out.

The first two casualties were not the rats I had anticipated.  They were two cute little mice who succumbed several days apart.  The first was still conscious when I discovered him, with the rat trap's powerful spring about his middle, rather than his neck.  The trap had obviously caused severe internal injuries, but he didn't struggle as I approached.  In fact, he seemed to look at me hopefully, as though I had come to rescue him.  I once again anthropomorphize.  In a sense, I did rescue him, by drowning him in the toilet rather than forcing him to die slowly and in pain. 

But I didn't feel good about it.

The second mouse was already dead when I discovered him.

But the scrambling in the walls continued until this morning.  I discovered a dead rat who had barely freed himself from a trap but had bled to death a few feet away.  He was a huge rat, larger than any I'd seen before.  He was quite ugly, a thug among rodents.  He was not a cute rat, like my nephew's pet rats.  I felt little sympathy for him.

And yet, I empathized with the cute mice.  Felt really bad about their deaths.  What had the rat done differently, aside from being larger and uglier and making more noise?  Nothing.  Nothing at all.

And I began thinking about my different feeling between the mice and the rat, and how that plays out in how we judge our fellow man.  When I see a photo in the newspaper of a cute child who has died in an accident I feel much worse than if it were a photo of an ugly adult.  Especially, an unshaved adult with messy hair.  And then I reflect on how studies show that employees who are tall and reasonably good looking succeed more often than those who are short and plain looking -- even when appearance has nothing to do with their job functions.

I try not to be superficial in my feelings about people, and yet I unconsciously judge those I meet that way all the time -- or if not "judge," feel sympathy for.  What about those who are less introspective than I am, and have even less hesitation to judge "a book by its cover"?

I admire folks who are able to, say, work in soup kitchens or provide free counseling to the homeless -- and while doing so are able to welcome each client as equally deserving of acceptance, of being treated and and respected as a fellow human.  To see an ugly rat as a potential saint and a mouse as a possible thug, however cute he may appear.

Philosophizing aside, I suspect my house is now rodent-free.  I'll be listening for any unwanted sounds inside the walls as the day passes. Whether from rat or mouse.

Never stop hiking

Hiking in the Val d'Aosta
Italian Alps

September 8.  We've reached the second week of September.  It occurs to me that not once this summer have I been hiking in the mountains.  A wonderful hike along the Cornwall coast, back in May, sure, but that's not mountain hiking.  And yet I live surrounded by the Olympic and Cascade mountain ranges, a hiker's paradise.

My friend Pat and I had plans to go for a day hike tomorrow, but we may have dawdled too long -- the weather forecast is for rain tomorrow and most of the week, and we've had to cancel.  We're now thinking about late September, but the days grow shorter and the weather becomes less predictable. 

Regret for my missed opportunities -- in a way, for a missed summer -- was reinforced by my reading for a second time Paolo Cognetti's novel about growing up in the Italian Alps, The Eight Mountains, a beautifully written work that I discussed in this blog in 2018.  The novel is the story of a relationship between father and son, and between the son and a friend, but it's also a loving depiction of life in the mountains -- climbing, hiking, walking, observing, exploring.  It was hard to read the first time, and equally hard this second time, without longing to head for the hills myself, to put on a pair of hiking boots and set off into the mountains.

Higher up again the vegetation disappears; snow covers everything until the beginning of summer; and the prevailing color is that of the gray rock, veined with quartz and the yellow of lichen.  That was where my father's world began.  After three hours' walking, the meadows and woods would give way to scree, to lakes hidden in glacial basins, to gorges gouged by avalanches, to streams of icy water.  The mountain was transformed into a harsher place, inhospitable and pure; up there he would become happy.

I'm old enough now not only to regret missing a summer's opportunity to hike and climb, but to worry about the number of summers I have left to do so.  Already there are climbs that I could have done ten years ago (or even five years ago) that today -- at least in a group of younger climbers -- I wouldn't attempt.  But much still remains open to me; I want to take advantage of my opportunities.

Cognetti's book, of course, especially suggests the Alps.  Not climbing the Matterhorn or Monte Rosa -- climbs I wouldn't have attempted at any age -- but simply walking up and down the lower hills in the area.  My nephew Doug and I did a traverse called the "Haute Route" from Chamonix to Zermatt about thirty years ago, and ten years later another nephew, Denny, and I did a similar walk around Mont Blanc.  Both were strenuous hikes, but they were strenuous primarily because of the pace we were attempting.  Similar routes wind throughout the mountains of Switzerland, passing through one Alpine village after another, with mountain refuges provided where villages are sparse.  The hiker can set his own pace. 

I'd love to do something similar in the near future, preferably with one or more hiking companions, but alone if necessary.  But I don't really need to fly to Switzerland.  The opportunities for mountain hiking around Seattle are boundless.  And the area between Snoqualmie and Stevens Passes hasn't been named the "Alpine Lakes Wilderness Area" for nothing.

I'm making a mental note, which I'll reinforce in the months ahead, to take full advantage of all my hiking opportunities in 2020.  I'm hoping to be able to hike for many years to come.  But why gamble? 

Perseverance

The itsy-bitsy spider
Climbed up the water spout
Down came the rain
And washed the spider out.

The wearisome travails of the common spider have inspired many observers. 

Americans, and even more the Scots, know the story of Robert the Bruce, who, while hiding in a cave from English forces, watched a spider trying to build a web.  Time after time the spider tried and failed to connect the web to a support.  But finally the spider succeeded, and then quickly constructed her web.  Inspired, the Scots king didn't give up.  He continued his struggle, and won the Battle of Bannockburn in 1306.

The past few days, I've noted a spider web strung between the driver's door of my car and the side view mirror.  A spider sits in the middle of the web, patiently awaiting prey.  The web is invisible from outside the car, and the spider is small.  But both spider and web are clearly visible -- and a bit distracting -- from the driver's seat.

Several days now, I've driven off, forgetting about the web until well underway.  Each time, I've been sure that the wind would blow the spider loose.  The web flaps violently as I approach 40 mph; the spider clings on for dear life, as though hanging onto a tree in a hurricane.  Today, I noticed that when I slowed down or stopped, she would work her way off the web and take cover within the framework of the mirror.  This happened twice -- going to and from my destination.

Logically, I know that the spider has minimal consciousness and sense of foreboding.  But she's not quite merely a little automaton; some sense of herself and of her surroundings are experienced within her tiny nervous system.  I hate to anthropomorphize, but it's hard not to ascribe feelings of terror and frustration to my little friend.

Some folks would either swipe her off the side of their car, or smash her into spider juice.  I won't.  She can stay there as long as she wants, with the proviso that I must use my car as a car.

As a young boy, my grandmother showed me a spider's web in her garden.  My grandmother repeatedly made small tears in the web, and the spider repeatedly repaired the tears.  Eventually, after a number of such repairs, the spider decided to cut her losses.  She ate up the web (thus saving its valuable protein) and went off in search of a less weirdly dangerous site to construct a web. 

I assume that my little friend, sooner or later, will do the same.

When children are dying in the Bahamas, being murdered in Central America, suffering from starvation in Africa, and being ripped from their parents' arms by Trump's legions here at home, it may seem perverse for me to worry about a spider.  But as William Blake suggested, how one relates to tiny pieces of creation may reveal how we see the created world itself.

To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.

Respect for the struggles of a small spider is a small step toward compassion for the efforts of the oppressed immigrant to seek a safe life, and of the starving victims of natural disasters simply to stay alive.

Scalped

In the Pacific Northwest, vegetation grows quickly.  Who can blame me for not keeping up with it?

Well, probably my neighbors, although they are too polite to say anything.  I see them out cutting and trimming and mowing constantly, in what seems to be a hobby, a constant frenzy of landscaping.  Or, if they can't bear to do it themselves, as is increasingly true as my neighbors get younger and younger, and more and more affluent, I see their gardening proxies arrive at regular intervals, in old pick-up trucks filled with implements.  These workers, speaking foreign languages, manage to make a full day out of basic landscape management.

I am neither a gardening hobbyist nor a spendthrift.  I also secretly like living ensconced in wilderness within the city.  My taste in landscape design is, as we say, informal.  The gardens of Versailles are fun to look at, but not to live in.

And yet, even I have my limits.  I can go two years, and usually do, with no attention to my yard beyond mowing the lawn.  But, as I say, in the Northwest Corner vegetation flourishes.  Even effloresces.  Takes over.  Overwhelms.

Even I prefer that portions of my house be visible from the street in front.

And so, about every second year, I reluctantly call a local gardener, or landscaper, or handyman, or whoever has recently sent me a brochure.  I show him what needs to be done.  He usually is polite and non-censorious.  He gives me an outrageous estimate.  I assume it's outrageous when I calculate it out to hourly wages for himself and his young assistant (who may actually be his son).  But I've been asked for more or less the same amount by other professionals in other years..

I call them "professionals," because their effective billing rate is about the same as that of many struggling attorneys.

They perform for a full day with various noisy tools, and at the end of the day my yard appears barren.  Like new construction for which landscaping has not yet been installed.  I cry a bit for the rich greenness that's been stripped away.  But at least I can now enter my front door without struggling past predatory vines wrapping themselves around my arms and legs and attempting to drag me deep into the steaming jungle.

And I know it will all grow back.  Before I know it.

It reminds me of childhood summers, when I'd go to the barber and ask for a crew cut.  The barbers hated crew cuts, but I'd insist, "Cut it off.  Cut it all off."  I'd go home, and my mother would gasp and get misty eyed for a moment, but then we'd all get used to it.  It grew back.  It took much of the summer, but it grew back.  And by the time school began, I'd once more have to anoint my hair with whatever greasy product we used in those days, and comb it back off of my face.

And thus will it be with my yard.

Her own private Idaho

The easiest way to visit my sister, traveling from Seattle, is to fly into Sun Valley airport in Hailey, Idaho.  Alaska Airlines provides the only direct flight from Seattle, once a day in each direction.  And in the off-season for either skiing or summering, like October, only three days a week.

Early last week, therefore, I found myself in that small airport, renting a car.  The odyssey had just begun.

There are basically three routes from Hailey to Challis, near my sister's home.  The fastest, according to Google Maps, begins with the "highway" heading east from Sun Valley (Trail Creek Road).  I've been on that road before, so I went into the drive with my eyes open.

Actually, it wasn't bad.  The day was sunny and warm and dry.  The road begins as a normal, paved two-lane highway.  It soon becomes gravel, although well-graded, as it winds steeply over the Pioneer range.  Virtually no traffic until you reach the intersection with north-south U.S. 93 at Chilly.  No cell coverage.  I've been warned, since my return, that rental companies generally prohibit use of passenger cars on unpaved roads, but how was I to know?

It's a fun drive, although if the traffic were heavy it would be a dusty nightmare.  And it's closed in the winter.  You don't drive fast.  Eventually, the road flattens out and becomes paved again, and you reach U.S. 93 about an hour after leaving Sun Valley (and an hour and a quarter after leaving the airport).  It's another hour north on U.S. 93, an easy and pleasant drive (in summer!), with little competing traffic, until you reach the "outskirts" of Challis. 

Challis, with a population of about one thousand, is the only community of any size you encounter after leaving Sun Valley, and the last community you would find if you continued north on U.S. 93 until you reached Salmon (pop. 3,100), some 59 miles farther north.  Challis is a small town with basic necessities, but it isn't your final destination.

But we're getting there.  Leaving Challis, I drive another 20 minutes on a winding road heading west into Challis National Forest.  Just before reaching federal land -- on the federal land border, in fact -- I reach my sister's house, sited on some fifty acres.  It took a while to get there, but once there I settled into a relaxing week, finding myself about as isolated from civilization as you can get in today's America (although wi-fi reception prevents total unawareness of the "excitements" of the outside world).

Your correspondent,
pretending he knows what he's doing.

It was a great week.  The house is far larger and more comfortable than you might expect for back country, and the land on which it sits is a combination of rolling hills, arid prairie, and woodlands irrigated by two creeks running across the property.   For a person like me, who likes to walk, there were plenty of walks, over various terrains.  There were two dogs, both easy to like even for a cat-person, and 25 or so pet rats pandered to by my youngest nephew.  There were horses, inquisitive and well-trained.

Also helping to prevent wilderness-madness, a couple my sister knows from Sonoma also have property about five miles down the road -- a couple who provide both good conversation and excellent food. 

So, no, I wasn't exactly roughing it.  My sister, by choice, loves isolation, but this isn't really "Little House on the Prairie."  If you don't mind driving twenty minutes into town every time you need something from the grocery -- and with modern traffic, drives of that length can happen even in Seattle, from my house to Safeway -- you can live a very pleasant life outside Challis.  And especially as a visitor with a ticket back to the big city.

But I reckon I got to light out for the territory ahead of the rest, because Aunt Sally she’s going to adopt me and sivilize me, and I can’t stand it. I been there before.

But in the tradition of the American frontier -- only a few years after escaping the creeping urbanity of Ennis, Montana -- my sister already feels the world closing in on her.  We spent a day driving on gravel roads deep into the national forest, to Copper Basin.  She had her eye on a house, 2¼ hours on gravel roads from Sun Valley.  The only neighbor within miles was a tiny forest ranger station.  The only concession to the modern world was a rough and overgrown air strip. 

"Ah, yes!  This is more like it!"   She's ready to light out for the territory.