Angels in Alaska

Summit of West Peak. Douglas Island peaks in the distance

 If I ever see God, I know my words are going to be, “What the living fuck!” I haven’t seen Him and never will but if it any deity comes my way, I learned over the weekend that those words are coming out. As any of the readers of this blog know, I have at times alluded to the wilderness as a source of spirituality, though without digging in detail to what wilderness or spirituality are.  I don't subscribe any religion and I am not starting my own. 

Last Saturday the image to the left appeared out of nowhere while I was standing on the summit of West Peak. It seemed about a 100 feet away and about forty feet tall. It’s two inches tall on your phone. Our phones could be considered an optical illusion. They show us the world but not the world as it really is.

While my vision did not cause me to start a new religion, I am going to talk about a strange and rare phenomenon called a Brocken Specter (Spectre in some countries). Since last Saturday, I dug into what I saw and it fascinates me. A Brocken Specter is a circular prism, like a rainbow, that forms with the viewer’s shadow in the center. It was first documented in 1790 on Mount Brocken in what is now Germany. These specters seem to form sporadically in the mountains.  Wikipedia calls it a type of optical illusion but I disagree… but also agree. The specter looks and feels like a visit from an angel or even God with a halo of many colors. It’s an optical illusion if you believe you saw God and because your shadow is cast much larger than life. You see things that aren't there. These lit apparitions are caused when the observer is backlit in bright sunlight but there is a cloud or fog on the opposite side of the observer. The light creates a prism like a rainbow as it passes through the water vapor in the cloud. The angelic specter (sometimes called a Glory) is the shadow of the observer. It's magnified because the light scatters returning to your eyes. This seems to happen most often in mountains.

The story started when I decided to take my dog Duane hiking up West Peak. I have been up West Peak several times before but it had been a few years. It's a bit of a scramble in places but never technical. I was up and back in six hours and that's with stopping to have lunch. I also thought it would be nice to climb Middle Peak as I have not climbed it even though it’s easy to climb them both in the same day. West and Middle Peaks are some of the most windy places in the Juneau area but the forecast didn’t have much wind. 

Angel of Pride Week

After a couple hours of hiking we got to tree line. It’s still odd to me that the best autumn colors in Juneau come from the alpine where trees are rare. The ground cover turns a kaleidoscope of colors. After a few more hours my dog and I got to the summit of West Peak. The day was spectacularly beautiful and I sat down to take a few photos and eat my lunch, tamales and macadamia nuts. I turned see if the fog to my back had cleared because I wanted to see if the Middle Peak was still in whiteout. Note the photos have intermittent clouds and Middle Peak had been covered. Indeed, it was still covered in clouds. 

I don’t think the Brocken Specter was an optical illusion because things don’t have to have mass to be real. Rainbows are real and only an illusion if you start looking for a pot of gold or convince yourself the Land of Oz is on the other side. Shadows are real even if you can’t weigh or measure them. The specter I saw only seemed 40 feet tall. It was there but it wasn’t really there which why I said it’s an illusion but it isn’t an illusion. The specter didn’t speak to me or direct me to dig up gold plates.

On the way up West Peak. If I ever start my own religion, mine will be superior because I brought a dog.

I got to the top of West Peak my dog seemed interested in something off the cliff behind us and I didn’t want him to jump off. I was just standing there looking to the west and turned around to see a forty- foot personage surrounded by a multicolored halo standing above me in the air. That shadow looked three dimensional and huge.   You can vaguely see a mountain in the background. It’s not a hill. It’s Middle Peak. The angel of Pride Week.

I was seriously taken aback like my eyes were misfiring. Remember the part in Harry Potter where Hermione tells Harry that it’s never good to see things that aren’t there, even in the wizard world. That’s true in the mountaineering world as well. I was looking a forty-foot angel and I had not prayed to ask which church was true. Within a few seconds I noticed the forty-foot angel waved his arms when I waved mine. I did some jumping jacks. Both the angel and I did. I suspect Duane saw a forty-foot dog shaped angel standing in the air with a multicolored halo. He was a little tweaked, though not as much as I was. After I collected my wits, I took a few photos that do not do justice.

My heart slowed down a bit as I realized I was seeing an odd variant of a rainbow. The photo on my phone verified that my tamale wasn’t laced with hallucinogenic drugs though I never worried about that. I have never tried LSD or mushrooms so what do I know? To be clear, I never thought it was an angel, but I did wonder briefly if I was losing my grip on reality.

Recall that the world’s religions generally start with some dude walking into the wilderness which is precisely what I did that day. In ancient days people who witnessed strange things like Brocken Specters thought they had seen or become gods. I didn't see it that way because I have access to a world of information. I have always known about prisms and other tricks of light. Anyone born in the last century knows a hell of a lot more than the people who wrote all the scriptures and it's not the fault of the scripture's authors either.

Most religions started in the wilderness. Hinduism started in monastic retreats in the headwaters of the Indus River in the Kashmir Mountains in what is now the border between India and Pakistan. The Buddha, who was raised Hindu, gained enlightenment while meditating under a giant tree, now called the Bodi Tree. Jesus began his ministry by going to the wilderness to fast and pray for forty days. None of his miracles or teaching preceded his trip into the hinterlands. Jesus had to get His wild on first. Mohammed began his ministry by hiking up the Mountain of Light near Mecca and receiving inspiration in the Hiri Cave. Millions of people have hiked up the Mountain of Light and to the Hiri Cave over the years to honor Mohammed.  Joseph Smith started what came to be known as Mormonism by wandering into a grove of trees. The story goes that Joseph spoke to Jesus and God Himself.  Just so you know, I am not grafting for money or encouraging polygamy. In the old days, people who spoke to God seemed to hear that God wanted them to start polygamy. Judaism started when Adam and Eve were cast into the wilderness. Prior to being cast out of the Garden of Eden, snakes could speak and Adam and Eve  had neither knowledge of good or evil. Since the beginning, the wilderness taught us lessons, including the knowledge of good and evil. It has taught me a thing or two.

View from summit of Middle Peak
West Peak is center, specters vanished in the air

I wonder if a lot of angelic sightings in history were indeed Brocken Specters. I had zero idea that this sort of thing existed and my reaction was, “What the living fuck?” Yet I, and any modern person,  had a wealth of understanding of science that ancient people simply don't have. If you were taught from birth that astronomical events like an eclipse, a comet, or a blood moon could mean omens of war, famine, disease, or an important birth or  death. It could also mean you were to be invaded by a neighboring country or that you needed to invade them. We take for granted a lot of understanding of the world. A person in ancient days would have zero tools to mentally process a Brocken Specter. They saw God or the devil. 

The angel on West Peak did not appear bothered by my foul language. Having read about these specters, I now know Duane would have seen a halo with a huge shadow of a dog in it. The wand chooses the wizard. I leashed him and settled into wondering what was really going on. I had never seen anything like it and I have been on West Peak many times before and have climbed more mountains than I can count.  

I once heard that spirituality is reverence for something larger than you. Embracing that there are things greater than you and things completely out of your control breeds humility in my opinion. Humility is a central dogma of all religions I guess. We could all use more humility, even folks like me who do not believe in supernatural beings. 

When I got back to the trailhead, there were a ton of people parked at Sheep Creek because the coho salmon are in. Salmon have been here for 500 million years and will likely be here long after humans kill each other off. Salmon have brain the size of a pea but they are smart enough to not invent nuclear weapons or cancer causing herbicides. Earlier in the day, I debated going fishing rather than hiking and it would have been a grand choice as well. Fishing is always a good way to spend the day. None of the fishermen saw God or walked on water but many of them caught fish, a spiritual experience in itself.

If you want to join my religion, go hiking or climbing or go out on a boat. Play music, even badly. Be nice to somebody. Play with your dog. I have no commandments and don’t charge a fee.

Because music moves me, there's this. The Meat Puppets. Oh me.

https://youtu.be/ey6acnCIFtE?si=b8s4Ga9tM2AOhIeT

Peak 7035 in Tracy Arm.

 

Peak 7035 with False Summit to the left.

If you walk into places where nobody has walked before, it’s expected that you encounter things are not expected. Even in Alaska, it's work to get to a place where no human has walked. Our attempt to climb Peak 7035 was most definitely that. Peak 7035 has never been climbed and it remains unclimbed after our attempt.  You can quit reading if you’re the type that thinks conquest of summits is the only metric of success. We didn’t get to the summit and even if we had, mountains are never conquered by climbers. Unless we come with strip mining equipment, mountains are ambivalent to small lives of humans.  

Alder thicket

My friend Mike invited me to try and climb Peak 7035. It’s on the north side of Tracy Arm at the junction of the North Sawyer Glacier Arm of Tracy Arm and the South Sawyer Glacier Arm of Tracy Arm. Say that fast five times. Tracy Arm is a complex maze of fjords about 60 miles south of Juneau and it’s part of the Tracy Arm/Ford’s Terror Wilderness Area. About 100,000 people visit Tracy Arm because it’s a popular tourist destination for cruise ships and boat tours. It’s a bit like being in Yosemite Valley during the Pleistocene when there were glaciers dropping seracs into a valley floor and icebergs building up. Some of the walls in Tracy Arm rise 5,000 feet off the sea in places. Tracy Arm has almost no on-land visitors because there are only a handful of places where the beach isn't a cliff of some height. Trails don't exist. 

Mike’s plan was based on a newly uncovered “ramp” exposed as the North Sawyer Glacier receded. From near the toe of the glacier it seemed possible to scramble up slope to a ridge leading to the peak. The north end of ridge is about 4,000 feet in elevation and rises to a significant false summit (6745). Once you reach the base of the false summit, our plan was to maneuver around the east side (back side) and continue toward the true summit.  There were considerable unknowns because nobody has ever climbed to the ridge and nobody had even seen the back side of the false summit. It has been seen from planes of course but not close enough to be useful information. Satellite imagery and maps made for satellite imagery show a hanging glacier or a snowfield on the back side but imagery for glaciers suck often. Glaciers are melting too fast for maps to keep up.

We boated out early Sunday morning and got to the toe around 10:30 AM. After getting the boat anchored and unloaded, we started uphill at 1PM.  From there we scrambled uphill through scree for a few hundred feet and soon encountered an alder thicket. These alders were bushes rather than trees.  

I enjoyed  primary forest succession, the process of an ecosystem developing from bare ground to old growth forest. Primary succession starts at bedrock and the first phase is to develop soil. Secondary succession is more common and it usually follows a clear cut or a forest fire. Mosses and lichen are the first to colonize bedrock in primary succession. Alders are often the first trees to grow on exposed bedrock because they don’t need much soil. Alders create their own nutrients from the atmosphere.  Furthermore, alders adapted to avalanches by evolving the ability to bend downhill and flatten out when hit by a megaton of snow. Thus, an alder thicket in an avalanche zone is a jumble of sticks; most no more than 4 inches, often a foot apart, and they are growing up, sideways, and even down. Most alders in this thicket were no more than ten feet tall. We found alders in spades and while I appreciate the role alders play in the ecosystem, walking through a dense thicket makes me empathize with a fish caught in a gill net.  We were each carrying a 45 pound pack with an ice axe sticking out, the perfect tool to catch a branch. 

Base camp

 In the next six hours we wiggled through, pushed over, and jiggled past alders (and some willows) to a camp at 1,700 feet. Our plan was to climb to 4,000 feet on the ridge but we were completely knackered. Mike found a boulder about ten feet tall that was just above the height of the thicket.  This was our base camp and where we spent the following night as well. This boulder had a view to die for. Somewhere in the hike I punctured my sleeping pad so I slept two nights directly on a rock.  There was swarm of mosquitoes guarding the rock. We cooked some food, had a bit of bourbon, and went to sleep. The tent worked great for keeping out the mosquitoes.

Sunset from base camp

The following day we headed uphill again and about 3,000 feet we encountered alpine tundra vegetation and remnant snow. This was a huge relief. The views kept getting better and that was hard to believe considering the view from our boulder.  We reached the ridge at about 2PM. 

The ridge is not a knife edge but about 200 yards wide.  From the ridge we got our first glance at the back side of the false summit and saw a very impressive icefall. At this point we took some photos and took a nap in the sunshine. The downside was the icefall meant this trip was not going to go the summit. Climbing an icefall was not in our plans. Nevertheless, it was a very cool icefall and the views from the ridge were spectacular. The view had added gravy in knowing that we were standing in a place where no human being has ever stood. Up until five years ago, one had to scale a 500 foot cliff to access that ridge. 

Mike with Glacial Icefall in background

It’s difficult to describe an alder thicket to anyone that hasn’t fought through one. I have heard them described as “Spaghetti Trees.” You are a meatball ready to get eaten and meanwhile you are stuck in the dimensional space. The thicket snags, pokes, traps, and knocks you off balance all the time. Because the alders were higher than our heads, we rarely got a view of where we hoped to go. We likely meandered a lot. We both questioned our judgment in taking on the thicket because it wasn’t our first bushwhack and we knew it could get difficult. This was more than we expected but we didn’t have any information on what to expect.  We did not encounter any Devil’s Club and that stuff is next level malicious. Devil’s Club thickets make me briefly believe in God because only an evil deity would create something like that.  Looking at the panoramic view across from the icefall, makes me believe that the Nature itself is the only God I need. After an extended lunch and a nap  on the ridge we turned around, climbed down the snow field, and fought our way through the alder thicket to our boulder base camp. The mosquitoes were still there. We cooked food and shared a can of Long Island Ice Tea. By and by we went to sleep. That was Monday. Tuesday we headed back down into the alders again and got to boat about 11 AM. 

Selfie from the ridge, Mike (R) and Carl (L)

We loaded up the gear and took a slower trip through Tracy Arm looking at the scenery. I would like a kayak trip in Tracy Arm because it seems the smaller your boat, the more you see of the scenery. We were in a sixteen foot skiff and cruised slowly beneath a dozen or so waterfalls that fall from thousands of feet above.  Once we got out of Tracy Arm we turned north and got to Juneau a little after 5 PM.

On the boat ride home, I kept thinking that I would likely never go back to climb that mountain. I was freaking worked. I am 61 years old and it’s hard on the body. Mike is also 61 and he was also super tired though he generally travelled faster than me. Since returning to Juneau, I keep thinking of how climbing that peak could be accomplished. Trying again next year isn’t completely out of the question.

 Thanks for reading to the end. Unlike sports like football or hobbies like pickleball, nobody won and nobody lost. 

Video of the view from the ridge at about 5,000 feet. 

https://youtu.be/Zk0tvuCS4FI?si=jp-UyOIrHSB4zGVI 

Peak 5,260, Endicott Arm.

 

Mountain Goat. My spirit animal.
 Little Mount Sumdum in the background. 

I bear sprayed myself and I wasn’t trying to hit a bear. It’s the second time in my life I have done that and both times it was accidental. Both times I was with my friend Mike. The first was on a trip to a peak on Admiralty Island ten years ago. More on that later. 

Peak 5260 east side of Endicott Arm

Southeast Alaska. 

 Mike called me on Friday with a plan to leave Saturday morning and get back Sunday night but bring enough food for another day because shit sometimes happens. My wife suggested I should go because Mike’s ideas rejuvenate me. Admittedly, some of my trips scare her a bit. My trips with Mike can be sort of hairy but also fantastic.

This plan was to climb a peak we called Peak 5,260 on the east side of Endicott Arm just 4 miles southeast of Mount Sumdum. Mount Sumdum is 6,666 feet tall so it is indeed haunted by the devil himself. Sumdum was a village of Tlingkit Natives living in the area years ago, not an insult to the glacier’s or the mountain’s intelligence. It’s Sumdum, not Some Dumb. The glacier no longer reaches the sea but is still a very cool site. There are several tidewater glaciers in the area on both the Tracy Arm and Endicott Arms of Holkum Bay. Endicott Arm is hundreds of miles from the Endicott Wilderness that I wrote about HERE in 2020, though named after the same person. William Endicott was the Secretary of War under President Grover Cleveland, 1885-1889. I wonder how many Native Americans he had killed to get his name on the Endicott Arm.  

 Endicott Arm is part of the Tracy Arm Wilderness Area. Both arms are extensive fjords, packed with ice bergs, less so near the mouth of the fjord which is where we were. Still, it’s wise to lookout for those things. It was a strange and cool experience being on iceberg look out. Our concern was bergy bits, just little bergs that are hard to see, yet weigh in at over a ton. Mike owns a sixteen foot aluminum boat. 

Orcas seen on the boat ride to Endicott Arm

Despite the events surrounding the Titanic, they are easy see if you are looking, it isn’t night, and easy to avoid if you aren’t in a massive vessel. On a sunny day at ten in the morning we cruised right along.  Cruise ships hit the bergy bits and bounce right off. The cruise industry and adventure kayaking tours makes it such that many people see and photograph fjords of Holkum Bay but almost nobody sets foot on dry ground. There are large icebergs too and they are easy to see. 

A cruise ship is a monument to gluttony and a stain on the human race. Sure, we went to Endicott Arm in a motor boat that burns gasoline, 25 gallons were burned. A cruise ship creates more greenhouse gasses than some countries. This is not an exaggeration. If you live in an inland area, you may not have seen one up close. Some are bigger than the Empire State Building. don’t hide that they are gluttons in every way so I guess they are honest in that regard. They brag a 24 hour buffet. On a cruise one can see Alaska, or think you see Alaska, without actually experiencing Alaska.  The same is likely true for cruises to other locations. This, I think, is by design. Actual travel takes you out of your comfort zone a little, either physically or culturally. The cruise ship allows one to travel about while only changing lawn chairs. Meanwhile guzzling diesel fuel and the 24 hour buffet like there’s no tomorrow. 

Bergy bit

Sumdum Mt and Glacier

Our plan was to access the beach at the foot of Peak 5260 on Saturday morning, hike up through the forest to above tree line, camp Saturday night, climb Peak 5260 Sunday morning, back to the beach, and motor back to Juneau. It’s about six miles and 5,260 vertical feet to the summit one way. As I write this, it seems unrealistic that we thought we could do it in two days. We didn’t make it back Sunday night even though no shit happened except that we are both almost 61. Thus slower than we used to be.

1,000 + foot waterfalls 

Peak 5,290 from boat

We made it to the beach at the foot of Peak 5260 by 10AM. When we got there we dumped the gear for climbing and camping on the beach and Mike moored the boat a little offshore. We didn’t want the boat to drift away with a high tide or beached on a low tide. Once the boat was anchored offshore Mike rowed to shore in his packraft. By 10:30AM we were hiking uphill carrying overnight camping gear, a trad rack, 50 m climbing rope, climbing harnesses, crampons, and ice axes. We didn’t bring bug spray and that wasn’t a good omission. 

There are no trails in the Tracy Arm Wilderness Area. The Forest Service figures trails aren’t needed because you cannot drive there (no roads) and the closest town is Juneau, 60 miles away by boat. The Forest Service is likely correct. If they built a trail it would like grow over in a few years due to very infrequent use. The Endicott Arm is vastly wilder than Juneau where trails abound. We encountered Devil’s Club and many fallen logs in large quantities right away. Devil’s Club is so named not because Sumdum Mountain is 6,666 feet tall but because it is adorned in spines. It is to Southeast Alaska what jumping is the Sonoran Desert. By and by the terrain became steeper, about average 25 degrees. The Devil’s thinned a little but fallen logs got worse. I cursed under my breath a lot while trying to climb uphill over logs that were covered Devil’s Club. Going was slow.

Devil's Club

Field of Devil's Club

We made it to a high camp at 3,248 feet after eight hours of bushwhacking. It was only two miles. For some reason both Mike and I love this shit. We would have taken a trail if one existed. The camp was buggy. The camp was also spectacular. Mike carried two white Russians in a can the whole way.  Two things will happen if Mike and I get to the Pearly Gates on the same day (we came to Earth on the same day). First, we are both going to be shocked that there is an afterlife and second, I will plead that Mike should go to heaven for carrying two white Russians in cans up that mountain. We ate mostly dehydrated food that tasted great and swatted at bugs while sitting a boulder. I have seen bugs much worse but they still sucked. We went to bed early.

Mike. Boat moored offshore

Our plan was to bring one two person tent and share. I opted to sleep outside for reasons that seemed sound. I toss and turn a lot and my sleeping pad was leaky so I didn’t want wake Mike on a routine basis. These were NOT sound reasons. I covered my head in a tee shirt and the bugs bit right through. I added a jacket and that stopped the biting bastards but it got hot. Around midnight it cooled enough that bugs slowed their plans to eat me alive and it wasn’t so hot with the jacket. I arose and started coffee and breakfast. Mike said he wanted to leave early for the summit and I was not sleeping. 

Lack of sleep defined the day, though I was not aware of how much until later on. 

High Camp

We left our camping gear at high camp and were on our way to the summit of Peak 5,250 by 4:30 AM. We reached our first peak soon at 3,600 feet. From there we perceived that the summit might not be possible with the gear we had.  We did not bring climbing shoes and it looked like there could be steep rock. We both figured the summit and a couple spots on the ridge were probably impossible that day but wanted to walk up the ridge that connecting Peak 3,600 with Peak 5,260 anyway. It was an astounding view and one that few if anybody has ever walked and there is no way to really know if the path is impossible until you see it close up. I am glad we walked it. The ridge line was faster travel than the previous day. It was not completely straightforward but with some route-finding we made it to the base of Peak 5,260 by 10:00 AM.  Along the way I experienced a lesson in psychology.

 

We also saw a mountain goat that approached us clearly having never seen humans. Mountain goats are my spirit animal, if such a thing exists. 

The psychology lesson played out thusly. By 6AM I was convinced that we were not going to make it to the base of the summit and certainly not climb it. It seemed like too much vertical rock than we were prepared to deal with. By 8 AM it started to look like we might make it to the base of Peak 5,260 and anxiety set in. My mental status changed with the expectation that the day was going to be a stroll down a ridge, not a challenging peak. Mind didn't change back immediately. I started to feel shitty and started to notice my left knee. It’s always weak. The anxiety and lack of sleep knocked back my endurance. There was interplay between lack of sleep and anxiety and that was psychology lesson. I was dragging like a slug on a sidewalk. Mike did most of the route-finding because I was always dragging up the back.  By 9 AM I told Mike that I just wasn’t feeling well about pushing to the summit. Mike suggested that we continue to the base and have a look. This made sense of course.

 

Mike

Mike

At the base I said I didn’t want to continue but that I would wait for Mike. We are now listed as the first humans to climb Peak 5260 even though I didn’t climb it.  Mike did. There was a pitch of fourth class climbing and a climb up a snow field that ended with short scramble to the top. 45 minutes later Mike was back to where I waited. 

 Mike had been climbing solo for ten minutes and much of my energy returned. The mountain and lack of sleep had simply psyched my out. I considered climbing the peak solo myself and I regret not listening to my thoughts. There was nothing up there I couldn’t handle. All too often we are unaware of just how much we can accomplish. That’s not only in climbing.

I have some regret at not climbing all the way to summit of Peak 5,260 but not a lot because it was a very cool day indeed. My spirit the goat probably never summits Peak 5,260 and he lives there. We were back to high camp by 2:30 PM.  We considered trying to get to the beach that night there wasn’t much impetus. With all that bushwhacking over logs and Devil’s Club and a three hour boat ride, there was not time to make it to Juneau that day. We moved camp downhill for the night but didn’t make it to the beach. We shared the tent and it really wasn’t that bad. We got up at the same time twice during the night to pee and re-inflate our sleeping pads. His leaked too.

We made it to the beach and the boat by 10 AM morning. While bushwhacking down the mountain, I somehow caught and tore off the safety mechanism on the bear spray canister on something and sprayed my hip with bear spray. It stung for a bit but it wasn’t a full on hit. Thank goodness.  We did not see any bears though we saw a fair amount of bear shit.

 

We were back in Juneau by 3 PM. I missed a day of work. I probably need to do that more often.

View to west of the ridgeline

Freedom of the Hills

I have never felt more free than when standing atop a challenging summit. Certainly, there are other ways than climbing to feel that absolute sense of liberation that flows through you on a hard earned summit but freedom that complete is rare. That feeling comes in music sometimes for me as well but it is rare. Perhaps it has to be. Freedom is tied to love for me too. Most of us have those moments but few can describe.   

What the hell does freedom even mean? I won’t completely answer that. Nobody ever will completely.  

The summit of Split Thumb, Juneau Icefield.

Freedom is all very simple until you think more, then it isn’t. People in bondage often have music. They have love, and often they have the legs to climb, though not the freedom to do so. Those in bondage often have more courage than I will ever have. They lack the institutional structures to move forward like access to jobs, access to education, access to correct information about the world around them, and social and family stability. Climbing a mountain proves nothing. Many find freedom in the mountains.

The most widely used text on climbing is called Mountaineering, Freedom of the Hills. If you want to know how tie a knot or set up an anchor or a climbing technique, the book has it all. It is in its tenth edition. Conrad Anker called it, “The definitive guide to mountains and climbing .” The title suggests the hills are a source of freedom. How and why do hills set us free? The hills don’t give shits about human beings or anything else. They are made of rocks. Freedom is complicated.  

Insert Freedom of hills

Climbing a mountain makes me feel free because nobody stops me from doing what is simultaneously sacred and completely useless. There is nothing on the summit to eat, nothing to buy, nothing to sell, no stocks to trade, and no television shows to watch. Indeed there is nothing on the summit but the face of God etched in time and rock.

 

Bob Marley sang a song of freedom, perhaps more than one, but I am thinking of Redemption Song. There are many definitions of the word redemption but Marley was using the biblical definition of redemption. “to set free.” “Won’t you help me sing, these songs of freedom.” Marley said that all his songs were intended to set people free. Whether he was telling us that he didn’t shoot the deputy or about the three little birds on his doorstep, he was singing songs of freedom. What is freedom? I find it on a mountain or like Marley, strumming a guitar and singing ya know… songs of freedom.  And of course  Jesus said, “The truth will set you free” and he might be right. Maybe there is some truth on the mountain as well.  

I find the stuff I learned in school about governmental structures useful but lacking in explanation in practice. In the Preamble to Declaration of Independence Thomas Jefferson wrote, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” This is brilliant stuff, albeit hypocritical. At the time Jefferson wrote his famous letter to the King of England, he owned slaves. In 1776 it was not self-evident that all men or women were created equal. Slave traders were hauling Bob Marley’s ancestors to the Americas.  Old pirates yes they rob I. Sold I to the merchant ships.  Redemption song is romp through time that starts in bondage and ends in liberty. Yet, the declaration of Independence was and is brilliant.  The Preamble of the Declaration of Independence formed the summit of freedom that Americans have been climbing toward for 244 years. That Jefferson never accomplished the goal of human equality, doesn’t mean it isn’t a good goal. The Declaration of Independence is a blueprint freedom; it’s not freedom itself.  

Guitar the campfire in the Buttermilks, Bishop, CA

I have played Redemption Song on the guitar as long as I can remember and didn’t realize I learned the lyrics wrong until last month. I learned it, “Emancipate yourself from mental slavery…” However, the lyrics are, “Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery. None but ourselves can free our minds.”  There is a difference between “emancipate yourself” and “emancipate yourselves” because the former implies that freedom is something you can achieve on your own and the latter suggests that we must work together to emancipate ourselves. Liberty rises from the social stability which depends upon justice. We can’t be free if the cops are shooting black people and other people of color. It doesn’t matter if the cops are doing a good job 99.9% of the time, that one murder undermines the trust. It also leaves a person dead. According to Bob Marley, the path to freedom is collective. Thomas Jefferson knew this. A crowd of people signed that famous letter to King George III. He didn’t mail it to England on his own. 

What is freedom? I still don’t have an answer but I think there’s a path. What holds people back from the pursuit of dreams, goals, and better lives? Emancipation requires mental emancipation before physical. I think one thing that holds us back is the ability to define what holds us back.  

An important step toward emancipation is to pull our collective heads out of the snowbank and admit things are not as great in Alaska as we like to project in our tourist brochures. Remember Jesus said, “The truth will set you free.” Lies and conspiracy theories will lock you in chains. We have loads of conspiracy theories in Alaska and a herd of elephants in the room. Climate change is damn real and Joe Biden didn’t steal the election. The militia compounds in the hinterlands are packed to eyeballs with deadly force, waving flags, and they are hunkered behind paramilitary barriers but the walls look just like prison walls.  They are much more likely to become tyrants than save us from them.

We have a ton of problems we don't like to talk about. Alaska has a problem with alcoholism and domestic violence. We lead the nation in rape almost every year. There are a lot of suicides. We have inadequate treatment for depression and other mental illnesses. There is unequal access to education and jobs across the state. Racism is common and it part of the above problems. For the last forty years inflation outpaced increases in wages, especially for blue collar workers. The people working the hardest gradually become poorer each year. The cost of university is rising, sending generations into debt. We are undermining universities and making it impossible for the poor and middle class to attend and in the process crippling our ability to know the truth and our ability to act upon it. The homeless alcoholic man with no prospects for a good job or a warm place to sleep does not have the same access climbing the mountains of Southeast Alaska as I do. That is true even if he sleeps next to the trailhead where nothing stops him from trudging uphill. He’s too busy trying to survive to think about climbing a mountain or the Declaration of Independence that says that men are created equal. 

Lemon Creek Glacier. Out of view is the Lemon Creek Prison

 

The summit of a mountain feels so liberating because of the perspective it provides. The world is huge and I am small. The entirety of all the humans on earth and those that came before us are small when gazing at the expanse from the summit. The mountains were there eons before humans evolved to climb down from the trees and the mountains will still be standing when there’s nothing of the human race but fossils. Yet, I am on top of the mountain for a moment. I see the grandeur and feel the insignificance. 

 

Won’t you help me sing, these songs of freedom? I recorded a cover of Redemption Song

https://youtu.be/wOTxJTnlBtg

Love and Physics

 

Mountain Goats on Juneau Ridge. They have incredibly strong tendons. 

I tore some ligaments in my left knee while skiing in the backcountry last Sunday.

Sherman Alexie wrote a short story about two brothers who went to a party, started fighting, and beat themselves unconscious (Every Little Hurricane, 1993). The brothers were the protagonist’s uncles and the whole story played out again at another party and then another. The uncles spent their whole lives with an unspoken agreement to be each other’s weapons of self-destruction.

Homer, the ancient Greek, told of Odysseus and his soldiers who came upon the singing of bird women (Sirens) so beautiful that they couldn’t stop themselves from diving into a violent sea and crashing into the rocks.  Only love and beauty mattered when faced with a siren song; logic be damned.  Odysseus blocked the ears of his men with wax so they would not hear the Sirens and continue and fight the people of Troy.  For his part, Odysseus wanted to hear the Siren song so badly that he had his men tie him to the mast so he could not escape but still listen. It drove Odysseus mad, at least temporarily. 

Odysseus and the Sirens. Greek vase (ca. 480 BCE). British Museum. The Sirens were not mermaids but beautiful women with wings. 

But you see, I am a scientist… a biologist. Logic says there is no evolutionary gain for two brothers to beat each other senseless at every local party. There is no evolutionary gain to jump into a violent sea for a Siren’s song either.  Love and logic are like that. The uncles will fight each other until one of them is dead and yet they love each other.

Logic and physics say you could get maimed or killed flying down a mountain on a pair of skis.  It’s simple physics. Force equals mass times acceleration. Mass is measured in kilograms and in this case acceleration comes from gravity is 10 meters per sec². There is also upward acceleration exerted by your jump.  Force calculates to kilograms times meters divided by the number of seconds squared (kg(m)/sec² )  but that is a mouthful so physicists call the unit of force a Newton. After Isaac.  It’s a more complex physics equation that determines the force that exerted on your knees because there is torque involved but the units of force are still Newtons. I won’t bore you (or excite you) with calculus except to say that torque increases the force on your knees when you’re doing a hop turn.  An even more complex equation the force one exerts on the tendons in your fingers when you crimp in rock climbing. So far the tensile strength of my hand tendons are holding the stress of climbing rocks.

                                             Isaac Newton’s equation for force. 

As an aside to this story, the metric system is not a liberal hoax. Nobody calculates force in old fashioned units.  The coronavirus and climate change aren’t hoaxes either. Yet, the United States is jumping headlong for a siren song. We love about monster trucks and road trips more than facts or reality. Homer is laughing in his grave. 

Hawthorne Peak backcountry ski trip, Juneau Alpine Club. 2020

A hop turn is just what it sounds like. It’s a turn while hopping and twisting on skis. You initiate a turn which drives your skis deeper into the snow and you hop out of the snow, twist, and finally land pointed a different direction. All of this happens in about a second. A hop turn compresses your knees at first, a microsecond later pulls the bones in your calves apart from the bones in your thighs, and finally compresses the cartilage in your knees again when you land in the new direction. Throughout the turn your knee cartilage is being twisted apart and your ligaments and tendons hold it together. It’s a tug of war between the force of the jump and the tensile strength of the cartilage. Keep your cartilage healthy. It’s a public service announcement. 

Up to a point, the human knee evolved to take this sort of abuse but apparently I past that point last Sunday and felt a pop in my knee.  Lots of people do all sorts of things that could break a human to pieces and most of the time we come out okay.  The pop happens when the force exerted on the knee exceeds the tensile strength of the ligaments. It hurts when a ligament tears but the real pain is the immediate understanding that there is a long road of recovery coming. In the case of my injury, I initiated a hop turn slow my descent and to miss a tree but it’s more complicated than that. 

I am in love with hop turns. I didn’t have to ski the steep slope through the trees but then again, I had winged women singing in my ears and the lyrics were, “Don’t ski the groomers. Those are for pansies.” 

High East Bowl, Douglas Island. 

It isn’t only hop turns or even skiing enticing me to jump into a violent sea and die pursuing sirens. My knee has been sore pretty much constantly since July when I slipped and twisted my knee while running a mountain ridge. Apparently I am polyamorous because I love trail running, rafting whitewater, and climbing rocks as well.  A week or I twisted my knee in July I was back running again and did it again and then again and again.  I have twisted this same knee before doing similar stuff.  Perhaps I should strap myself to the mast like Odysseus.  

Blackerby Ridge 2020. One of my favorite trails runs.

How does a scientist like me deal with sirens? I am supposed to be logical. I am supposed to follow the facts and the facts say my knee loves me and wants me to love it back. My body doesn’t want me to treat it like those uncles in Sherman Alexie’s short story. They loved each other. They hated themselves. The story of the sirens in the Odyssey has stood for two thousand years because people have been throwing themselves into the sea (metaphorically) since the first Neanderthal decided to hunt a mammoth with a spear. The risk didn’t make sense but there was a mammoth and that Neanderthal was a hunter. Sometimes you have to prove to yourself that you can. The siren song is anything that erases logic. Then again, most of Odysseus men were killed in battle a few days later. Now that I think about it, it’s much more gallant to die trying to score with a woman with wings than get stabbed and bleed to death at war. 

Unless I don’t heal as expected, I won’t need surgery for this tear. My goal is to be kind to my knee, work on physical therapy, and spend more time playing the guitar. I wrote a song about the Sirens a few years ago. Music is yet another love. Listen to it if you want. 

Sirens, the song

https://youtu.be/-9mu-NtXZVY