Rescued

Reading a newspaper these days (or its digital equivalents) is a study in horrors piled on horrors.  Very few stories leave you feeling happy, or even just relieved.

Learning that twelve young Thai soccer players, lost in a flooded cave, had been found alive was one bright star in the black sky.  Blue states and red states, liberals and conservatives, everyone rejoiced that the boys, ages 11 to 16, had not only been found -- but found alive, without injuries.  Weak and hungry but still fully conscious and talking coherently.  "How long have we been here," seems to have been one of their first questions.

Chiang Rai province is immediately to the north of Chiang Mai province, where my nephew and his daughter live at present.  I've spent a couple of days in Chiang Rai province, but was unaware that the province contained a large complex of caves to be explored.  I'm not tempted to go seek them out now.

The cave where the boys were found -- largely flooded by monsoon rains -- offered plenty of water, water apparently safe to drink.  And, as one doctor remarked, a healthy human body is able to adapt for surprisingly long periods (ten days, in this case) without food.

Still to be determined is how the boys will be removed from the cave.  Rescuers were trained Scuba divers.  None of the boys can swim, apparently, let alone dive.  And so they may be stuck in the cave for a considerable period, dependent on food and other supplies brought in from the outside by divers.

Claustrophobia isn't really a problem for me.  But it is for many.  The fact that the boys voluntarily entered the cave may suggest a certain self-selection for tolerance to enclosed spaces.  But everyone has his limits.

I remember, at the age of about nine, crawling behind our living room sofa, squeezing myself between the sofa and the wall.  I found myself in a place where I could move neither forward or backward.  I recall the feeling of panic, and that panicky recollection gives me some empathy for those who do suffer from claustrophobia.  A totally dark cave, sitting on a rock island for ten days surrounded by water, might have pushed one too many buttons for me to tolerate.

But in the photos brought back from the cave, none of the boys visible seems emotionally upset or panicky.  Just tired and hungry.  I would think that after ten days, they would be very cold sitting on wet rocks in shorts and t-shirts, but then I remember that Thailand is not a chilly country.  And they are young.  They may be uncomfortable now, but I suspect they will recall this experience as one of the great adventures of their lives.  Something they can bore their children and grandchildren with, over and over, in decades to come.

Their parents, who have maintained a vigil for ten days at the mouth of the cave, beyond the point when hope still seemed reasonable, may take longer to recover. 

My thanks and gratitude to the rescuers -- of many nations -- who helped find the kids, and my hopes that they are returned quickly and in good condition to their families.

Chestry Oak

Hungary is an interesting and rather complicated country.  After the dissolution of the Roman Empire, it was settled eventually by the Magyars, giving today's Hungarians a non-Indo-European language spoken by no other nation, but related distantly to Finnish and Estonian. 

It became the junior partner in the Habsburgs' Austro-Hungarian Empire, suffered the dissolution of that empire after World War I, became a perhaps reluctant ally of Hitler in World War II, a satellite of the USSR after the war, and eventually -- today -- a small Middle European state with a tendency toward authoritarianism.  It presents something of a problem to its fellow EU members.

In sixth grade -- a year when our teacher still read to us each day for a half hour after lunch -- I listened raptly day by day to readings from a book called Chestry Oak.  I remember my fascination much better than I do the actual plot, but I've always remembered that it was about a boy from a noble family who lived an idyllic life on a Hungarian country estate, a boy who loved horses.  His timing for living his childhood was unfortunate, as the Nazis were establishing control over the country, and nightly he heard the roar of war planes flying overhead.

The boy's family was forced to flee and never return to their estate.  I didn't recall what happened after that, but I now know that he and his family ended up on a farm in the Hudson River valley of New York.

Like other out-of-print books from my childhood -- like so much else from my childhood -- I was never sure how much of this I remembered accurately.  And just as I have no way of reproducing conversations remembered dimly from the past, I thought I'd never be able to recall any more about the book than I've indicated above.  I wasn't sure that "Chestry Oak was really the name of the book, or just a description of the estate on which he lived.  I didn't know the author's name.

But I discovered recently that the book has been re-issued in paperback form by "Purple House Press" of Kentucky as part of their "Classic Books for Kids" series.  It was originally published in 1948, after the Soviets had taken over Hungary, and would have been in print for about three or four years when our teacher read it to us. 

I've just started reading it.  The boy was Prince Michael, and his father was both respected and loved by the peasants under his jurisdiction.  The Hungary the book describes is not the Hungary of cosmopolitan Budapest, but a rural, feudal Hungary that feels little changed from centuries past.  Michael's family takes their hereditary rule for granted, and his father feels a strong sense of responsibility for the welfare of their peasants.

Although the book is anti-Nazi, it might also be a reaction to the subsequent workers paradise imposed by the Russians.  It certainly romanticizes the nobility, but in doing so it helps us understand how rural Hungarian life was lived before World War II.  When published, the book seems to have been perceived more as a children's "horse story" than as a political thriller or a story about refugees.

I've only read the first few chapters of the book.  The story is told from young Michael's point of view.  It is very descriptive, and moves slowly, surprisingly more slowly than I would have expected.  I conclude that kids used to have longer attention spans than I suspect most children would today. 

 I'm grateful to the Purple House Press for preserving this very interesting piece of children's literature  -- and am looking forward to the rest of the book.  Very high ratings on Amazon, primarily from readers who, like me, remembered it from long ago.

Lawnmower despotism

Clover from my childhood 

"A lawn is nature under totalitarian rule."
--Michael Pollan

I last mowed my lawn a few days before I left for Scotland.  I left for Scotland one month ago today.  Do the math.  It needs mowing.

But not as much as you might think.  In Seattle, lawns grow like, well, like weeds from March through May.  They grow slowly into July.  Then, if not watered, they dry up and await the inevitable rains of autumn.

So my lawn looks shaggy, with odd things growing out of it.  But it doesn't look like a hay field, as it would have in April if I'd skipped mowing it for a month.

Letting your lawn do its own thing -- freeing it from Pollan's "totalitarian rule" -- has its own pleasures.   First, there is the daily execution of the dandelions.  In spring, the dandelions grew close to the ground.  Between mowings, I'd go out and pluck the flowers before they went to seed, wondering if this would somehow cause dandelions to give up and go elsewhere (it doesn't). 

But in June -- and I'm no botanist, so don't ask for explanations -- the dandelions grow high before blooming.  Perhaps 18 inches to two feet high.  Overnight.  Literally. And they put out buds several days before the buds flower.  This gives me the opportunity to, as it were, nip them in the bud.  The occasional stalk with bud does occasionally escape my notice, and puts forth a defiant flower.  In a sense, this plant has beat me at my game, but it pays a high price.  Instant decapitation.

But life in the back yard isn't all life and death.  I also observe plants that I never see when I cut the yard regularly.  The hardy blackberry vine, whose struggles to survive I've discussed in past posts, slyly begins poking up in places.  The lawn becomes a carpet of small white clover flowers.  Various plants resembling wheat or other grains thrust up delicate stalks.  Buttercups abound, mistaken from a distance as offensive dandelions.  Prehistoric-looking horsetail ferns spread upward and outward, reminding me of playtime in open fields as a child. 

But most interesting of all -- and most reminiscent of childhood -- are the large purple flowers of a certain type of clover.  Flowers that offer a Mecca to delighted bumble bees -- bumble bees who I otherwise rarely see in this neighborhood, but who appear out of nowhere in appreciation of my rare purple clover.

But alas!  This blog posting has been written as only one more form of procrastination.  Today, the lawn gets leveled, the flowers fall, the bees disappear.  Ecology takes another hit. 

Totalitarian rule is once more imposed.

Walking in the Arboretum

I live essentially across the street from the Seattle Arboretum.  As shown in the map, the Arboretum is a long, skinny park, some 230 acres in size, and co-managed by the University of Washington and the City of Seattle.  It is squeezed between the Montlake neighborhood to the west, where I live, and the Broadmoor gated community and golf course to the east.

Within the park, close to the western border, flows Lake Washington Boulevard, a somewhat heavily trafficked arterial disguised as a scenic drive.  No part of the Arboretum is really out of earshot of Lake Washington Boulevard traffic, but the foliage is so dense and the paths so winding that, unless you're listening for it, you hear the traffic sounds simply as white noise, like a rushing stream or wind in the treetops.

Until this year, despite living next to the Arboretum, I rarely entered it.  Not because it wasn't beautiful, but because, except for an access road that ran next to the Broadmoor border, there was no simple way that I could run or walk while daydreaming within the park.  When I did venture in, I loved it.  The trails wound up and down hills, and were mazelike, totally disorienting.  A bit like a much larger version of the Rambles in New York's Central Park, without some of the sociological problems associated with that area.  You thought you were headed one direction, and ended up somewhere else entirely, which -- when in the right mood -- is a delightful way to discover a park, a city, or a country.

The Arboretum is both a laboratory and a park, and the functions don't always co-exist easily. It has only been within the last few years that the scientific aspects of the park have been emphasized.  Different areas of the park have been devoted exclusively to distinct ecological patterns or different species of plants, even at the expense of some beautiful old trees that were unfortunately removed.  Signage has been greatly improved, and the museum like quality of the park thus emphasized.

One change has been to construct a paved loop from one end of the park to the other, incorporating the old access road on the Broadmoor border for one side of the loop, and building a new pathway paralleling Lake Washington Boulevard for the other.  The loop is suitable for both bicycles and walkers.  I was appalled at this idea, because of my romantic attachment to the wilderness aspects of the park, the sense that large areas were discoverable only by exploration -- by trying out those winding paths and seeing where they led. 

But the loop works.  Its course is indicated by the faint white line that circles within the yellow portion of the map.  It makes an excellent walk, and has lured me into the park far more this year than ever before.  And most of the old network of winding paths still exists, still confuses wonderfully, and can be accessed from various points along the loop.

I was afraid that the Arboretum would be inundated by users, but so far that hasn't happened.  I just finished a walk at 7 p.m., and encountered only occasional walkers and bikers.

So, I remind myself once more: change isn't always bad.  Even if you could "stop progress," it might be a good idea to give progress a chance and see what happens.  Sometimes.  And certainly in the case of the Seattle Arboretum.

Equality and excellence

Stuyvesant High School

The tension between the pursuit of excellence and the search for equality is one theme in Mary Renault's novel, The Last of the Wine, set in fifth century B.C. Athens.  She has one of her characters ask whether fervent proponents of the latter will demand that every beautiful child have her face slightly disfigured, preventing her from beginning life with an undeserved advantage over her less favored peers.

This struggle between objectives is one that confronts any society that calls itself "democratic."  It is playing out at present in New York City. 

New York has eight public high schools with rigorous curricula that admit applicants on a competitive basis, one criterion being high scores on the "Specialized High Schools Admissions Test."  Another school, the LaGuardia  High School of Music and Art and Performing Arts, offers admission based on auditions.  These schools offer an excellent education, often the equivalent of that provided by expensive private schools.  The opportunity for talented and academically oriented students to attend such schools induces many better-off parents to keep their children within the public school system. 

They also have student bodies that are heavily white or Asian, and upper middle class.  Aye, there's the rub.

The city's mayor has suggested that twenty percent of the admissions to each special school should be awarded to students who are low-income, and who fall just below the minimum acceptable test score for that school.  The objective would be to integrate the schools to some degree by social class and, not so incidentally, by race.

I find it impossible to think about this issue without feeling completely ambivalent.  First of all, I question the effectiveness of the mayor's proposal.  I look at magnet schools in Seattle, notably Garfield, which include both lower income students from the neighborhood and talented students in various disciplines drawn from across the city, and see schools where the students quickly re-segregate themselves from within.  Not out of racial or class hostility, I gather, but simply out of the desire to hang out with friends who have similar interests and aspirations.

On the other hand, if we are not to be a polarized society, we have to begin somewhere.  I suspect that rubbing shoulders with people unlike ourselves -- whether at school, at work, or in other activities -- increases understanding and acceptance of each other, even where that contact tends to be superficial.

The issue is often discussed in terms of fairness to the low-income students who need to escape low-expectation schools versus fairness to the well-off kids who want a superior education.  And that's an important balance to make.  But I also am concerned about the national welfare -- don't we want to produce the brightest, best educated young people we can?  Kids who can create the scientific and technological advances we''ll need in the future, as well as the writers and students of the humanities that the nation will need to govern itself?  Every country that wants to be a leader in the future is finding ways to give its brightest kids the most intense education possible.  Certainly China is.

On the other hand -- again -- the national welfare will not be served by allowing creation of a vast underclass of poor and poorly educated citizens.  America enjoyed its best years economically after World War II, when universal education gave all students as much education as then seemed required -- a high school diploma -- which in turn created a population with a smaller gap between the highest and lowest paid than known at any time before or since.

One problem with the creation of schools limited to gifted students is that those become the schools that the best teachers naturally vie to teach in.  But -- to a certain degree -- the smartest and best motivated kids have the ability to teach themselves.  It is the poor learners, the kids from homes that have not motivated their kids to study and learn, who need the best teachers.  Regardless of whether we segregate or integrate our good students from our more problematic students, maybe we should be focusing on higher incentives for good teachers to teach the more difficult children.

This has been a rambling post, as I knew it would be.  It rambles, because I have no solutions to suggest.  If I did, I'd write a book.  I merely see the problems.  I hope the political and educational leaders in New York City have the background and experience that I don't have -- as well as the wisdom and concern for all elements of the community -- that will enable them to make the wisest decisions for their schools, and for their diverse student bodies.

New York's problems aren't limited to New York.  School districts all over the country will be watching.

Great Glen Way completed

Loch Ness

"Your country consists of two things, stone and water. There is, indeed, a little earth above the stone in some places, but a very little; and the stone is always appearing. It is like a man in rags; the naked skin is still peeping out."

--Boswell: Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides (quoting Samuel Johnson's taunts about Scotland)

Remember, to begin with, that the Great Glen Way runs in roughly the same latitudes as a route from Sitka, Alaska, to Juneau.  June nights do get dark, but not totally for much more than a couple of hours.  Remember, also, that the Great Glen Way runs from the Irish Sea to the North Sea, both seas being the source of a heck of a lot of moisture, even in summer. 

We enjoyed the long hours of daylight, and escaped almost entirely the expected precipitation.  Locals spoke in wonder of the local "drought" -- eleven days without rain.

The Great Glen itself is a geologic fault between what was at one time the continent of Europe to the south and the continent of North America to the north.  Like other faults, such as the San Andreas fault south of San Francisco, it reveals itself as a depression in the earth which has been filled with a series of long, narrow lakes.  Because of slippage along the fault line, the geology and flora is different on opposite sides of each lake ("loch").

Samuel Johnson, in his inimitable fashion, was describing the highland portions of Scotland, areas whose top soil had been stripped off by the last glaciers.  The area of the lochs along the Great Glen, however, supports beautiful forests and other lush vegetation.

And so we prepared for our six days of hiking.

After four of us had climbed Ben Nevis (prior post), our other four hikers arrived from Edinburgh -- Jim's brother John and sister Anne, and their respective spouses Ann and Tony.  We spent a pre-hike day together, hiring a ride to the Isle of Skye in the Inner Hebrides, and exploring it by vehicle.  We drove from the mainland at Kyle of Lochalsh by a fairly recent bridge, viewed Eilean Donan castle, drove north as far as Portree (Skye's largest town), returned south, and re-crossed to the mainland at Mallaig by ferry.  Skye's scenery was striking, almost Alaskan in its mountains and open plains.

By then, my toe (injured descending from Ben Nevis) was much better, and we were all eager to begin walking.

The Great Glen Way feels like two distinct hikes, joined at Fort Augustus, where we stayed an extra day.  The first three days follow the flat banks of the Caledonia Canal, which extends from Fort William all the way to Inverness.  The canal joins a series of lochs of slightly varying elevations, with locks permitting passage of boats, mainly pleasure vessels, between the lochs.  ("The locks between the lochs," as I joked perhaps once too often.)  The first day took us to the shore of Loch Lochy; the second day, we hiked the length of Lochy; and the third day we walked the length of Loch Oich and on to Fort Augustus on the southern end of Loch Ness.

Our day of leisure in Fort Augustus had as a highlight an 8 p.m. cruise of the near end of Lake Ness.  The boat's guide was well educated and articulate in his lecture.  The boat also provided a means by which we were able to photograph "Nessie" -- the Lake Ness monster.  Far be it from me to pass up the opportunity, which I believe everyone else in our group was happy to do.

The second three days provided very different hiking experience.  Rather than hike the tow paths along the canal or the lakeshore along the lochs, each day we climbed high above Loch Ness, through dense forest into expansive high country moorland.  And the hikes were longer.  The second to the last day, from Invermoriston to Drumnadrochit was 14 miles, and the final leg into Inverness (from which three of our group opted out, taking a local bus instead) was 18 miles.  The hikes were tiring, but the scenery -- of Loch Ness below and of the mountains and moorlands above -- was striking.

We had a final dinner together in Inverness, with everyone but Jim, Dorothy, and me leaving early the next morning.  We three took an afternoon train, spending the morning on a visit to the Battlefield of Culloden, some five miles from Inverness.  Culloden was the battle, in 1746, where the English finally defeated the Jacobite forces of Bonnie Prince Charlie.  The battle effectively ended -- until recently -- Scotland's efforts to obtain independence.  The English forces of the Duke of Cumberland refused quarter, killing all Scottish soldiers who were injured or captured.  For years following the battle, the English launched punitive expeditions into Scottish villages suspected of Jacobite sympathies,  slaughtering all inhabitants.

Following that rather grim look at history, we took the train back to Glasgow, a final dinner, and flights home.  An enjoyable hike with excellent company.

Climbing Ben Nevis

Waving my hands in triumph
at the summit

Climbing the highest point in the British Isles wasn't our primary motive for traveling to Scotland.  It wasn't even an original motive -- more an afterthought.  We came to do the Great Glen Way walk.

But summiting Ben Nevis certainly became a major highlight of the trip, for those of us who did it.

After a night's recuperation in Glasgow from my Icelandic Airlines flight, I joined Jim and Dorothy on the four hour train ride north to Fort William.  Jim has been a close friend since we met as students at the University of Washington, and Dorothy is his Scottish-born-and-reared (but now American) wife.  Jim first introduced me to the art of wilderness backpacking in the Olympics and Cascades, back when we were at an age when carrying a heavy pack for several days was still a matter of pride rather than an intolerable burden!

We had allotted four days to explore the region of Fort William, before beginning the Great Glen Way.  I wasn't all that enthused about attempting the Ben Nevis climb our first full day in Fort William, but the weather was excellent, and there were forecasts of less favorable weather in the days ahead.

Jim and Dorothy

And so June 1st was, in fact, selected for the date of the climb.

The eve of the climb, we ambitiously walked the three miles from our Fort William bed and breakfast to the visitor center at the start of the route up the mountain, making sure we wouldn't get lost while still wandering about on paved roads.  The walk was very pleasant, but long enough to persuade us to take a taxi to the visitor center the following morning.

Ben Nevis is only some 4400 feet in elevation.  The climb, vertically, is about the same as Mount Si near Seattle, which I climb every year in less than two hours.  And yet, British guidebooks warn that the average climber takes 3½ to 5 hours to make the climb, and another couple of hours to come back down.  "Those Scots," I thought to myself.  "All that haggis and "black pudding" has softened their muscles, if not their minds."

The trail certainly began easily enough, and for the first half of the way up we climbed on rough stone steps.  "What next?  Escalators?" I snarked to myself.  Not quite half way up the mountain, the steps lead to a beautiful (and welcome) plateau, on which is snuggled scenic Loch Meall ("Lochan Meall an t-Suidhe"). 

A short time after passing the loch -- which is visible below the ascending trail for a considerable distance -- the steps disappear and we found ourselves hiking on a rough path.  Guidebooks said we would be hiking on scree, which suggests something different to those of us used to the volcanic mountains of the Northwest Corner, where scree means two steps up, and one step slipping back down.  Here, we were still on hard, well-defined trails, but the trails were covered with a sort of loose gravel (well, scree) that often prevented us from getting a firm footing -- particularly on the descent.  Also, the underlying trail increasingly consisted of rocks and boulders of varying sizes rather than firm soil.  In other words, the footing was often difficult.

Eventually we reached what the guidebook called the "zigzags," or switchbacks.  I didn't realize we had reached that point when we did, because I was looking for tighter, more obvious switchbacks.  These were long switchbacks, where the trail continued in one direction for considerable distances. 

The trail, especially after leaving the Loch Meall plateau, was steep, and I was breathing hard.  Tough guy that I am, however, I never faltered or stopped for breaks -- primarily because I was keeping my eyes on Jim's back as he sauntered along ahead of me.  (He complained later about the difficulty of the trail, but this is the sort of "complaint" that one makes to express humility before your fellow climbers.)

Kid at true summit

Finally, the  relentless climb became easier, as we approached the summit.  The summit itself is quite large and flat.  The absolute highest point is marked by a "trig point," or surveyors mark, which in this case took the form of an elevated pillar atop a small rocky mound on which you could stand, gloating, for your photograph.  (One boy wasn't satisfied with this rocky pedestal, and ascended the pillar itself -- a true summiteer.) Aside from this trig point, there were a number of abandoned stone buildings in ruins, including a one-time weather observatory.  The summit was also covered by a large number of fellow climbers, reminding me that my accomplishment didn't make me Sir Edmund Hillary.       

It was Jim and I who were planning to make the climb.  Dorothy came along to the base, she said, just to see us off.  Somehow, however, she forgot to stop walking, and shared our glory at the summit.  Score one for gender equality.

The scariest part of the climb is said to be finding the trail down from the summit in foggy (not unusual) weather.  We were equipped with compasses and instructions on bearings and distances.  Missing the trail can take you over a precipice that I found truly impressive (and scary for us acrophobes) to gaze upon.  But in bright sunlight -- and wearing t-shirts -- the way down was obvious.

Descending a snow field, the
only snow we encountered

I won't describe the descent, which can be inferred from what I've said about the climb.  Except that it was a nightmare.  My boots, which I'd worn for years, somehow crowded my toes on the descent, costing me a toenail and a great deal of pain.  Our climb was a respectable 4½ hours, but our descent took another unexpectedly long four hours. 

Ben Nevis ain't no Mount Si!

We arrived at the bottom, and staggered a few hundred feet from the bottom of the trail to the "Ben Nevis Inn and Bunkhouse ("A wee Inn at the foot of the Ben" as it calls itself).  We had burgers and beer.  I nearly fell asleep in my beer.

The next day, Jim's neighbor Fred arrived in Fort William, determined to make his own climb alone.  He was the youngest guy in our group, a happy extrovert, and he charged the mountain with a certain amount of good-natured swagger.  I wished him well, but was secretly pleased to see him return with sore feet and a haunted look on his face. 

I'm glad we did the climb when we did.  The second day after we climbed Ben Nevis, the area was drenched with rain.  And I needed the three days before the Great Glen Way walk began to regain full use of my legs and feet.

I bought a t-shirt, of course.  "I climbed Ben Nevis, Scotland's highest mountain," the shirt reads.  The claim fits.  The shirt really doesn't.
------------------------------
I'll describe the Great Glen Way walk in a subsequent post.

I'll take the high road ...

Ben Nevis

I fly to Glasgow on Tuesday, via Reykjavik, on the first stage of my traipse across the north of Scotland, via the geologic fault called the Great Glen, a depression that includes several lakes -- notably Loch Ness, of monster fame.

Jim, who I know from university days, and his wife Dorothy will have arrived a day earlier, and will meet me and others at the airport.  The others include Jim's brother and his wife, his sister and her husband, and an unrelated next door neighbor.  The day after arrival, we take a train ride of just under four hours from Glasgow to Fort William in the north -- a train ride paralleling the West Highland Way which I hiked back in 2011.

On arrival in Fort William, we will have four days to acclimate, explore the area, visit perhaps some of the neighboring Hebrides, and avoid eating haggis.  Jim and I -- and possibly others -- also plan to attempt a climb of Ben Nevis, assuming decent weather.

Ben Nevis is the Everest of the United Kingdom, I say jokingly.  Yes, it is the highest point of that kingdom, but at 4,411 feet, it's not exactly large by Himalayan, or even Rocky Mountain, standards.  The elevation gain is about the same as climbing Mt. Si, near Seattle, which I do in under two hours.

On the other hand, the weather is unpredictable in northern Scotland, and it can easily snow in June.  There is a humorous essay on-line written by a fellow who climbed Ben Nevis in June 2015, and encountered rain, fog, sunshine, and snow on the way up.  He ran into a hapless couple about one hour into the hike.

It’s raining with a slight headwind and for once I’m wearing the right gear, equating to comfort and safety.  In front are a young couple. He’s soaked, his jeans hanging low in the style of some hip hop rapper type dude. The showerproof kagool offering him little protection as the rain has already broke through. She’s in a worse state. Her footwear is open toed sandals, no jacket, instead she’s wearing a cotton or light wool smock, with neither a hood or back pack in sight.

The writer could hardly believe his eyes, but met them still ascending on his way back down.  When he told them that there was snow ahead, the woman exploded.  A relationship appeared to be unraveling and coming to a messy end.

Jim and I are both well familiar with hiking at any elevation in the Pacific Northwest, and won't be caught unaware sartorially by the weather.  On the other hand, the weather can be pleasant, or it can make for a difficult and even dangerous climb.  Many climbers have been caught in fog at the summit, and have started down the wrong way, with unfortunate consequences. 

We will have compasses.  And knowledge of the bearing we need to get off the summit.

But, as Bobby Burns reminds us, “The best laid schemes o' mice an' men  gang aft a-gley”  If, as we climb, we run into problems that are causing us to gang a-gley, we'll scurry back down to the bottom and to the hotel, where we'll have us some nice single malt whisky and bowls of porridge as we regale others about our misadventure. 

After all, we're going over for the walk, not for a climb.  Still -- fun to stand on the highest point of the United Kingdom, eh?

The Eight Mountains

Paolo Cognetti

I spent my "junior year abroad" (six months, actually) in Florence.  We were given frequent periods of free time to explore post-war Italy on our own.  During the first free period, most of us went to Rome, some to other cities.  But a kid named Fred ("Federico" to our Italian language teacher) went to a place most of us had never heard of -- the Val d'Aosta. 

Aosta is an Alpine valley in the far northwest corner of Italy, hugging the southern slopes of Monte Rosa -- opposite Zermatt which is on the Swiss side of the mountain.  This was 1961, before the outdoors and backpacking craze had hit American youth.  Aosta seemed like an odd  place to visit, at least for a kid's first experience in Italy, but Fred was a quiet, friendly, clear-eyed, and patently decent young man.  If anyone in our group was meant for a remote Alpine valley, it was he.*

Paolo Cognetti writes about a small fictitious Aosta village, Grana, in his novel, The Eight Mountains -- the first of his writings to be translated from Italian to English.  It has won awards across Europe.  As have its English translators, who have given us a translation that is in itself a work of art.

Eleven-year-old Pietro, his chemist father, and his health worker mother live in Milan.  His mother is outgoing and cheerful, his father is precise, strict, and introverted.  Pietro, shy and sensitive, combines their personalities.

In 1984, they rent and rehabilitate a derelict summer home in Grana.  Pietro encounters Bruno, a boy his age and equally silent, who works tending cows on the neighboring property.  Pietro's mother brings the two taciturn lads together, and without making a fuss about it they become best friends -- a friendship that continues throughout their adult lives.

Pietro's father and mother both love the mountains.  The mother loves the quiet pleasures of woodlands and pastures, but the father is obsessively devoted to climbing summits far above the tree line.  Pietro feels his father cares little for the scenery -- only achieving the summit matters. 

The father takes the son with him on some of these expeditions.  The son is proud of his developing abilities, but he is prone to altitude sickness and secretly dreads each climb.  Achieving the summit doesn't mean to Pietro what it does to his father.

It was more of a relief than a cause for elation.  There was no reward awaiting us up there; apart from the fact that we could climb no further, there was nothing really special about the summit.

They take Bruno with them, and Pietro is both happy and a bit jealous that Bruno seems a more likely son to Pietro's father than does Pietro himself.

Cognetti's novel is a story of a boy's fraught relationship with his father, and a story of a friendship between two boys that survives despite great differences in their background and in their experiences as adolescents and young men.

The novel features yet another character, a critical character -- the mountain itself.  The novel revolves around the father's obsession with the mountain, around Pietro's love of the lower slopes -- the lakes, the woods, the streams, the paths and slopes, the sunbaked scree -- and around Bruno's intimate knowledge of his very small world of mountain and pasture, and his successful efforts to initiate Pietro into his world.  The mountain above Grana is the fulcrum on which the lives of both Pietro and his father balance -- while spending their early summers at Grana, and long afterwards when Pietro has moved far away, seeking fulfillment in the Himalayas of Nepal.  It is the tie that holds Pietro and Bruno together, and the obstacle that pushes Pietro and his father apart.

Pietro's father in his commitment to his work and to climbing the mountains has lost -- or perhaps never had -- the ability to listen to the people close to him, to understand that their needs were different from his own.  Pietro has inherited to a lesser degree this aloof quality.  As a young man, he is unable to commit for any period of time to any one woman.  He watches happily as the girlfriend  closest to him finally gives up, joins Bruno and has Bruno's daughter.

Like his father, Pietro hates any change in the Grana region.  Grana -- like the Westmorland of Jane Gardam's The Hollow Land -- was a once-prosperous and well-populated area that had lost most of its population as farming and mining stopped being economically viable.  The land  was littered with ruined farm buildings and huts, tunnels and bits of mining equipment.  The region was enjoying in places a bit of a revival from tourism and winter skiing -- but a revival that Pietro, like his father, hated.

Cognetti's writing is a hymn to nature, both to the lower mountain slopes, and especially to the mountain heights.  He describes the smallest details of climbing, the pains, the difficulties, the joys, the  terrain, and the trees and plants, as only a person who is intimately familiar with climbing can do.  For mountain hikers, the novel revives happy memories; for someone who hasn't hiked or climbed, it may encourage some eager experimentation.

Pietro's father dies of an unexpected heart attack at age 62.  Pietro then learns of the tragedy in his father's past -- in his twenties, Pietro's father had led his less-experienced best friend  Piero on a poorly equipped and poorly planned expedition across melting snow fields.  There was an avalanche, and Piero was killed.  His father never recovered emotionally from the death, especially when everyone -- including his friend's family -- blamed him for his negligence.

While in Nepal, Pietro learns from a local Nepali of a favorite subject of mandala designs -- the secret mountain Sumeru which exists in the center of the earth and is surrounded by the eight mountains and seas which constitute our visible world.  The Nepali continued

We ask who has learned the most, the one who has been to all eight mountains, or the one who has reached the summit of Sumeru?

Pietro, always contemplative, decides that the mountain at Grana was his own Sumeru.  His mountain brings him back repeatedly to Grana and to Bruno.  Bruno and Pietro spend a summer together building a hut high on the slopes above Grana, a place selected by his father before he died.  Bruno has no interest in finding a life in Milan or Turin, a city life away from his mountains.  He considers himself fit only for mountain life, and chooses to live in their hut summer and winter.

Then, the winter Pietro and Bruno were forty, an avalanche hits the house.  Bruno is killed.

From my father I had learnt, long after I had stopped following him along the paths, that in certain lives there are mountains to which we may never return.  That in lives like his and mine you cannot go back to the mountain that is in the center of all the rest, and at the beginning of your own story.  And that wandering around the eight mountains is all that remains for those who, like us, on the first and highest have lost a friend.

Pietro returns to the Himalayas.  A beautiful and beautifully written story.
---------------------------
*Fred has nothing further to do with this post. He was simply the occasion of my first hearing of the Val d"Aosta.

Climbing

"Good day to you," one would say.  "The boy sure can run, no?"
"He sets the pace," my father would reply.  "I just follow."
"What I'd give to have legs like his."
"That's right.  But we did have once."
"Oh sure.  Decades ago maybe.  Are you going right to the top?"
"If we can make it."
"Good luck," one of them would say, and with that the exchange was concluded."

This trail-side banter, between one hiking group being overtaken by another, rings true with anyone who hikes.  Here, it is reported by eleven-year-old Pietro, hiking with his father to the summit of a lesser mountain to the south of Monte Rosa in Italy.

In a few lines, the conversation suggests the camaraderie between mountain hiking groups, the edge of competitiveness between them, the envy of youth, the regret of advancing age, a father's pride in his son, and the optimism by climbers already tired that they would reach a distant summit.

I've experienced them all.  And, most notably, I now experience the frustration with declining ability both to climb long distances and to function efficiently at high altitudes.  The frustration is made tolerable only by the memories of climbs done when younger.  On the other hand, it is intensified by the thoughts of climbs left unclimbed, hikes left unhiked, views left unviewed.

Like the Ancient Mariner, therefore, I wag a bony finger at the young and urge them never to put off climbs and hikes until a more convenient time.  It will never be easier than now, and when you're older there will be other, possibly more insistent, demands upon your time.

These thoughts are inspired by, and my initial quotation drawn from, a novel I've just begun reading -- The Eight Mountains, by Paolo Cognetti.  The book was reviewed in this morning's New York Times.  It reads so beautifully, and so truly, that I hate to finish it too quickly.

I suspect a review will be forthcoming on this blog.

Keeping cool

"Don't let him see that you're upset," Peggy warned me.  "Cats sense when you're upset, and get upset themselves."

I was a bit embarrassed, because I didn't think I was really upset.  Or if I was, that it was evident to the casual observer.  Peggy is our neighborhood "pet woman."  Mainly dogs.  Every day you run into her out walking dogs along the sidewalk, standing in for neighbors who dearly love their dogs, but apparently don't have time for them. 

Peggy will also be my cat person, looking in twice a day on my surviving feline Muldoon whilst I'm off wandering around the Highlands of Scotland.  I say "whilst" just in preparation for Britain.

If not "upset," I do confess to being a bit concerned.  Muldoon has been diagnosed with a benign thyroid tumor, a common problem, apparently, in cats.  The tumor causes the thyroid to produce T3 and T4 hormones (don't ask, I'm not a doctor) in large quantities.  I take Muldoon into a specialist tomorrow who will inject him with radioactive iodine.  The iodine is immediately absorbed by the thyroid gland, where it will kill off the tumor without bothering the healthy tissue.

This, at least, is the plan.  Muldoon's tumor is a bit more advanced than average, and the chance of the procedure being a complete success is only 70 percent.  If in the unlucky 30 percent, he'll either need a second procedure to complete the job, or -- if the dosage overshot the problem -- he'll have to be given thyroid pills for the rest of his life.

But my concern really isn't about the procedure.  I'm just aware that Muldoon is not the most easy-going sort of cat.  Unlike his recently deceased step-brother, he doesn't take change in stride.  And in a short period of time, he's had to adjust to being the sole cat in the household, and then wander the empty house alone for four days while I was back in Washington D.C.  Now he faces a trip to the vet, impoundment at the hospital for up to six days until he stops giving off radiation in excess of what the government allows, and limited hugs and contact with me for another week or so, even after he comes home.  And then, the final straw, I'm abandoning him again in favor of the Scottish moors.

It's enough to make a cat question the humanity of his human.

I was holding up well, nonetheless, or so I thought, until Peggy warned me that my anxious demeanor might somehow freak out poor Muldoon.  So now I march about the house, under Muldoon's suspicious eye, looking incredibly -- and unbelievably -- blithe and unconcerned. 

"Tut-tut, it looks like rain," I keep repeating loudly, imitating the inimitable Christopher Robin in a vaguely similar context.  Muldoon stares impassively at the blue sky.

I'm hopeless.  Sooner or later, I'll break down, burst out crying, and give him a huge bear hug.  Muldoon will regard me with some concern, but will make every effort not to show it. 

He hates to upset me.

Cloudy skies over the Nation's capital

A worried Lincoln

Washington may be one of the most beautiful capitals in the world, unless we include capitals -- like Rome -- that are adorned with picturesque ruins as well as with buildings still in use as buildings. 

During my visit over the past four days, the shiny, white marble of Washington's classical edifices was often highlighted against skies dark with gathering storm clouds, and illuminated by flashes of lightning at twilight.  What could a partisan (such as I), with a mind inclined to obvious metaphors, conclude but that the darkness was a Trumpian darkness, a malignant darkness dimming the beauty of the American Republic.

Washington Monument
under stormy clouds

Except, the darkness and the clouds were actually quite lovely in their own way.  As Trump's personal darkness decidedly is not.

I did the usual.  Museums.  Buildings.  Parks.  Riding Metro, back and forth from my hotel near National Airport.  And walking -- I covered over 25 miles during just the two complete days I spent in the city. Rather than describe further the city, often shining -- whether under bright sun or under lowering clouds -- I'll just let you look at some of my photos.

Bikers in front of the
Smithsonian "castle" 

Gen. Lafayette on horseback

Eisenhower office building

Press in front of Supreme Court

National Airport

Lincoln Memorial

Off to Washington (the other one)

He went off to Congress an' served a spell
Fixin' up the Government an' laws as well
Took over Washington so I've heared tell
An' patched up a crack in the Liberty Bell.

Where is Davy when we need him? 

I'm off to Washington myself tomorrow.  I'd love fix up the government (and laws as well).  And the problem of the crack in the Liberty Bell sounds quaint when one considers the many cracks (and crackpots) which today find a home in our nation's Capital.  But I never kilt myself a bar when I was only three, and while the pen may be mightier than the sword, I don't feel capable of using my pen to kill bears -- or to defeat people acting worse than bears.

So, no.  I'm off to Washington for a few days, but as a simple tourist.  I expect to wear off a little shoe leather and put a few miles on my phone's pedometer.  I was just reminded that the Mall, alone, is two miles from one end to the other.

It's a great town, politics aside, with lots to see, monuments to gaze upon, free museums in which to hang out, and lots of fellow tourists to rub shoulders with.  And many miles to walk.

I return late Monday night, and -- if past visits to D.C. suggest anything -- I'll have comments to make when I return.

Moot court

I served on a three-judge panel, representing the entire nine-judge U.S. Supreme Court, at a law school moot court proceeding Monday night.

I've done this many times before, and have commented occasionally on this blog how impressed I've been with the students' performance.  Let me say so again.

Unlike most of the moot court proceedings over which I've presided, or joined with others in presiding, this was a moot court for first year law students only.  It was the first moot court in which any of the participants had participated.  Moot courts were less common and less frequent when I was in law school.  But all first year students were required to participate once as part of our legal writing class.  I enjoyed the writing; I was terrified at the prospect of defending my opinions before three practicing attorneys.

I vowed that, once graduated, I'd become some sort of scrivener, surrounded by books in the back room of a law firm, writing briefs with a quill pen for others to argue.  Instead I became a trial attorney, with considerable experience in appellate practice.  Such are the little surprises that life springs on us.

But, although some seemed a bit more nervous than others, no one appeared terrified last night.  Arguing before us were four first-year students, two arguing that the lower court's ruling should be overturned (counsel for the petitioners), and two arguing that the lower court's ruling should be affirmed (counsel for the respondents).  They argued complex constitutional issues regarding freedom of speech and due process of law -- not the sort of issues that most students encounter during their first year of law school. 

Both sides did an excellent job of analyzing these issues.  All four students appeared poised and articulate.  All four did a good job of responding to the judges' questions.  I have argued a fair number of cases in the state court of appeals and the state supreme court.  I would have considered any one of these four students a competent adversary. 
 
Part of our job as moot court judges was awarding points for various qualities of argumentation and, finally, choosing one of the two teams the winner.  (Moot court judges do not judge the issues argued on the merits -- we judge the quality of argumentation.)   The losing party was not eliminated from the first round -- they were to face each other again last night, changing sides as to whether they represented petitioners or respondents.

I was pleased with the experience and pleased with the students.  I'm pleased that my law school is both admitting and educating superior future attorneys.

War-war more fun than jaw-jaw

So America today trashed the agreement with Iran that has prevented that country from proceeding with its nuclear program in exchange for the West's lifting of crippling sanctions.  Or rather one individual, Mr. Trump, has trashed the agreement after eliminating one by one every adviser who had advised otherwise, and after dismissing with disdain the united opposition of our European allies.

Did he do it because of his pathological hatred of Obama, who has been credited with negotiating the treaty?

Maybe.  Or maybe it's just one of those gut feelings on which he has based all aspects of his life, a gut feeling predating his election.  As Trump said, trashing the Iran deal was one of his campaign promises, and by golly Mr. Trump is a man who keeps his promises.

So we further alienate a major country in the Middle East, one whose middle classes have traditionally been friendly to the United States.  We make it more difficult for moderates to prevail, and make it easier for the radical fundamentalists to keep a chokehold on Iran's foreign policy.

While alienating Iran, whose nuclear program at least purported to be aimed at providing nuclear energy, Trump falls all over himself in seeking to reach an accommodation with North Korea -- a country led by a far more unstable Supreme Leader, a guy who has threatened repeatedly to involve the world in a nuclear conflagration, and a country of far less importance to the world economically and geopolitically.

If I felt that Trump had made his incomprehensible decision based on some skillfully developed strategic plan, in coordination with the best political and military minds our nation offers, I might be more cautious in my criticism.  But Trump is a man whose lack of curiosity about other nations and inability to focus on any matter more than five minutes is one of the wonders of our time.  At some point, something about Iran irritated him.  He probably doesn't even remember what set him off; but he does remembers that, boy, he sure doesn't like Iran.

Or Obama.

Who knows, maybe everything will work out.  Even dead clocks are right twice a day.  Trump feels that yelling and blustering and being the bully that he is by nature is prompting North Korea to consider a peace treaty.  He thus concludes that he has a technique that will work everywhere.  All that Peace on Earth has been waiting for is the advent of some streetwise real estate dealer from New York who will straighten things out. 

"You got a real nice town here, this Tehran.  It would be a shame if something happened to it."

Bullying may work in New York.  It may even work in Korea, although that's far from certain at this point.  I don't think it will work against the proud descendants of the Persian Empire, a people who, with patience, have repeatedly come back from adversity throughout their some 2,600-year history.