On the Difference Between National Park and Forest Campsites

Our national parks and forests are a treasure. As David, a motorcyclist
I met while camping out in Yellowstone earlier this week said, "This is
the first national park in the world. While you're riding through the park
tomorrow think about that." I did think about that and it's huge, both
Yellowstone and the idea of national land set aside for the people.

The United States first established Yellowstone National Park in 1872. The
law stated, Yellowstone "is hereby reserved and withdrawn from settlement,
occupancy, or sale under the laws of the United States, and dedicated and
set apart as a public park or pleasuring ground for the benefit and
enjoyment of the people."

see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellowstone_National_Park

As a common user of our public natural lands, I can say, the establishment
of public lands is one of the best features of the United States.

Back to the subject at hand, I recently rode from San Francisco to Crater
Lake, Glacier National Park, Yellowstone, Lassen Volcanic National Park
and back, and camped out mostly the whole way. I stayed in state park,
national forest and national park campgrounds in California, Oregon,
Idaho, Montana and Wyoming. Sitting now in the Summit Lake campground
located in Lassen Volcanic National Park, I can tell you I much prefer
the more remote national forest campsites.

Don't get me wrong, this place is beautiful, but the solo or small group
motorcycle trips come with a sense of solitude and remoteness that just
isn't matched by the well traveled parks during the height of summer
vacation season. I prefer the days be bookended by the same disconnected
feeling you have in your helmet on the road. The national parks have more
campsites closer together with kids running around screaming and babies
crying and that detracts a bit from the experience for me.  Give me
a quiet setting, off the beaten path, any night and I'm a happier camper.

Elevator Lobby With a View

  I sit in the 19th floor elevator lobby alone.  There are two chairs here and the backs shun the panoramic view of Ottawa’s unseasonably cold night.  Midnight is sneaking up on the lobby from the east and I have a liter of beer that’s worth at least two.  The beer was brewed not far from here.

  The elevator rings randomly but, so far, the doors have remained shut.  Sometimes I enjoy writing in a public space.  The thought that someone may chance by gives me a sudden sense of urgency and I forgot what I was going to say.

  On the plane ride to Ottawa, the man sitting next to me flipped through about five pictures of a motorcycle for about an hour.  It was a colorful cruiser sort of motorcycle.  The handlebars and forks raked back at a lazy 45 degrees.  A tiny teardrop of a tank sat on top of a mass of black and grey metal which was the engine.  The chrome and slightly trumpeted tail pipe shone out in front of an oversize chocolate doughnut of a back wheel.  I wouldn't buy such a cartoonishly designed bike, but I can’t say that is was unattractive.

  It was in good condition, I think.  I could only sneak a good peak now and again because I didn't want to give away how interested I was in what my neighbor was doing during his flight.   Nevertheless, interested I was.  I wasn't at first, but I had noticed that he was cycling through a small set of pictures of the same object for a while.

  What interested me was not so much that he was looking at a motorcycle, but that he was looking at the same four or five pictures of the same thing over and over.  What could he possibly be thinking about this bike?  Is it a bike he was considering purchasing or selling?  Was the bike stolen from him?  Did he total the bike on a road trip?  I could hardly focus on reading my own book, a pre-flight impulse buy, because of his obsession.

  It’s midnight, Friday morning, and two people have now walked by my writers outpost in the 18th floor elevator lobby of the Quality Hotel at Rideau and King Edward in downtown Ottawa. I've now decided to call this the 18th floor even though it’s labelled 19.  Sorry about that.  The 13th floor doesn't exist, so this is really just the 18th floor. Either way, It is still the top floor of the building and the view behind me is nice.

  I didn't talk to the guy with the pictures of the motorcycle at all.  Well, maybe a word or two about the logistics of our proximity, but that was it.  I mostly just read my book and noticed things about him as he existed so locally to me for about two hours.  The motorcycle did cause some introspection, but I’ll leave that story for another time.

  I like the feeling of the elevator lobby on the 18th floor (named 19) of the Quality Hotel in downtown Ottawa.  It feels comfy in this chair with my back to the intersection of Rideau and King Edward 18 metric stories below.  Rideau is all torn up down there from road construction.

  The security guard just told me that I needed a cup for my beer or he’d take it from me.  I went and got one.

Such is life.

Only by forgetting...

 It's late afternoon on the last full day of my seven-day trip to San Francisco. The night before I left Chicago, I watched one of my favorite movies of all time with a couple of friends -- David Byrne's True Stories. This quote has been in the back of my mind the whole time I've been out here:

 "I really enjoy forgetting. When I first come to a place, I notice all the little details. I notice the way the sky looks. The color of white paper. The way people walk. Doorknobs. Everything. Then I get used to the place and I don't notice those things anymore. So only by forgetting can I see the place again as it really is." -- David Byrne, True Stories.

 In that vain, I've attempted to forget as much about the first few days I spent here in order to see this place as it truly is. I'm unsure how successful I've been at this task; but, I feel like there is a certain freedom in this city that doesn't exist in Chicago. It's a freedom that I can't quite enumerate here, in words. Something about the people or the place or the combination of the two. The cool climate seems to subdue the blood. The topography of the streets seems to elevate expectation of what's around the corner. Unfortunately, even though I try, I still can't help but notice the doorknobs and the way people walk.

 Or maybe, I'm just externalizing my own freedom. The freedom of traveling alone and away from my milieu.

Thoughts on the Subway

  When I'm waiting for the train I like to be close to the edge of the platform.  From there I get the the best vantage point for spying or hearing the oncoming transport.  However, as it approaches the station, I always modify my stance from parallel to perpendicular to the tracks.  It would be so easy for someone to come up from behind at the last second and transfer just enough energy onto my person as to propel me into a collision course with all the kinetic and momentus energy of the oncoming vehicles.
  Crazy, right?  While the modification of my lower limbs would slightly increase the prerequesite force to send me to my doom, it is by no means the best possible position to maintain to avoid such an occurance.  Yet, this small defence that I mount somehow makes me more secure in my up close preparation for boarding a crowded thorax segment on the millipede home.
  Upon entering the car, I look for a seat and something to do to detach myself from the reality and people around me.  On good days I write or read, depending on my mood; on bad days I try to stay awake.  Sometimes I do anything I can to distract mself from the intense desire to urinate on any light pole that I can see out the window flying in reverse as if it's heading back downtown.

Thunder Snow '11

  In the yellow light diffused by the overwhelming snow falling in dense quantities from the heavens, we sat eagerly awaiting our impending doom.  The talk for days of sno-mageddon, or sno-pocalypse some preferred, had ratcheted our imaginations up to the point of intense expectation.

  I feel that, at least for me, there was a moment that lived up to the hype.  It was an amazing feeling that night, if you happened to hear the thunder and see the lightning as the peak of the freak snowstorm passed.  It was as if a door had been opened in your mind.  With all the fantasy of storytelling that we grow up with and are bombarded with in our media rich lives, we sometimes forget how amazing the world can be on it's own.

  Once, when I was a boy, I was outside playing in the yard.  All of the sudden it started raining across the street, but in our yard it was dry.  It was dry and the sun was out! It stayed like this for what seemed to be tens of minutes.  This was a mind widening experience for me. "Of course there had to be an edge to the rain", I had thought. I had just never experienced or thought about it so starkly and statically.

  In a similar way, when the computer voice read the weather report over the radio and uttered the phrase "thunder snow", my brain jumped a little inside my head.  Just because I had never experienced a thunderstorm that happened to be dropping snow on me didn't mean that it couldn't happen.

  I can't quite put my finger directly on what this changed inside of me, but I feel like it definitely changed something.

Logic

I am a person, more specifically a man, that tends, at most times, to look at the universe as a giant system that obeys some fundamental principals, laws if you will. Application of these laws allow engineers to build bridges and skyscrapers, doctors to cure diseases or redesign faces, scientists to piece together where we've come from, what is happening, and where we could be going. The practical application of logic has allowed us, as a species, to progress in so many ways that I will not continue to extrapolate on them here, as that is not my point.

In a high school geometry class, one expects to learn how to calculate the area and perimeter of basic shapes, to memorize a bunch of formulas, and to apply those skills to the 'real world' through the solving of word problems. Our teacher used the same standardized text as the rest of the mathematics faculty, but he had more to impress onto us than solely geometry. Many of my classmates said that he was not a math teacher and did not appreciate him. At least, they didn't appreciate him at the time.

One day he asked the class how fast we were moving. Puzzled, looking around, the class assessed itself. Everyone was in their chairs, not moving at all. After an uncomfortable silence Dr. LaFruit explained to us that our speed is relative to other objects. For instance, even though we felt as if we were sitting still, we were traveling at hundreds of miles per hour relative to earth's axis, tens of thousands of miles an hour relative to the sun and hundreds of thousands of miles an hour relative to the center of the milky way galaxy. All while sitting on your ass, perhaps even sleeping through a freshman geometry class. Quite possible this fact might expand your mind, if you weren't sleeping of course.

Logic is learned but it comes from that Ah-Ha moment that jumps up to surprise us. I remember when I was a young boy, playing outside on a rainy day. I watched with amazement as rain fell across the street and my side of the street stayed dry. Before that experience, I had never really thought about the fact that the rain had an edge. My world had grown slightly bigger and more complicated.

Some teachers, the good ones, teach by leading a student to that moment. On multiple occasions, Mr. LaFruit had started class by holding up a map of our galaxy, the Milky Way, that had a small point away from the center labeled with an arrow an the text, "You Are Here." He would explain to us that the sun would, in 4 billion years, swell into a red giant and engulf the first four planets of our solar system. "This will destroy the planet earth," he would say, "your grade in geometry does not matter."

This was an odd thing for a math teacher to be telling a class full of math students. Perhaps that is why I remember it over a dozen years later, while many other memories of high school fade into the background noise of life. I think now, I'm beginning to realize what he was trying to lead us to.

Spring Has Sprung

Spring storms have passed through, the earth soaked up the life giving liquor that fell from the sky. The tulips have bloomed and since dropped their petals to the earth. The trees in the backyard, silent for a season, have started a fresh conversation with the wind.

I saw a bumblebee bouncing in the breeze the other day, legs loaded and hanging orange, visiting the numerous blossoms of the flowering redbud tree. I thought about how the bees were all disappearing and sighed. A harbinger of drastic change in our environment lies in the stinging menace. Children jump up, yelling and waving their arms, to escape them. Adults, with intense faces, avoid them with haste. I watch in wonder, this insect bobble through the air. Never would I have thought, the bee could go extinct.

Spring is a time of new beginnings, not only in the dirt, but in people's hearts as well. Flowers are not the only things blossoming.