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

West Side Climbing Story

Northern Lynn Canal

This is not a travelogue, at least not primarily. It’s more than and maybe less than a travelogue, depending whether you are looking for a travelogue.  Last Tuesday and Wednesday, I went on a climbing trip in the Chilkat Mountains south of Haines, Alaska.  Our goal was to climb a peak marked 4755 on the map, Peak 4755. We achieved something else.

As a bit of background, this whole trip occurred in July 2020 six months into the Covid 19 pandemic in Alaska which is very much a part of the United States. Geographically, Alaska is unique and separate from the rest of the country but ideologically, we are (or were depending upon when you read this) just as bitter and divided as any other state. In case any non-Americans are reading, I should point out that Americans are patriotic until the country needs us to do something requiring a modicum of sacrifice. We wave flags and shoot fireworks on the Fourth of July but vilify the doctors trying to save people from a deadly disease and bellyache like toddlers about simple things like wearing a mask or standing six feet away.

Peak 4755 is the taller peak on right.

The Chilkat Mountains run north and south along the Chilkat Peninsula on the west side of Lynn Canal a deep fjord in northern Southeast Alaska. Glacier Bay National Park is on the west of the Chilkats.  There are no roads. People in Haines, Alaska watch the sunset over the Chilkats. You can watch the sunset over Chilkats from Juneau as well with Lynn Canal in the foreground. Alaskans are lucky bastards.  Maps of the Chilkats don’t have names for most mountains and rivers often don’t have names. I am sure there are Tlingkit names for some of the geography. It’s wild country.

Unnamed River. Taken Wednesday morning around sunrise

As a bit personal background, my mom suffers from dementia. She gets frustrated when she doesn’t recognize people that she has known for years. She gets scared when she’s not at home. The heaviness of eroding minds and the failed condition of a once great nation are the background.

I got a phone call from my friend Mike wanting to go to the Chilkat Mountains for a few days. He thought we should go soon because the weather was perfect. Mike and I were joined by Jay, who I had not met before. We loaded our gear into Jay’s truck and towed Mike’s boat to Echo Cove boat ramp, the northernmost boat ramp in Juneau road network. It took us a little over an hour to cross Lynn Canal and motor north to a cove just southwest of Sullivan Island. We anchored the boat and we were hiking uphill by 11AM.

Mike setting anchor.

The plan Tuesday was to follow ridge line up to a saddle between Peak 2875 and Peak 4755 and camp. The next day we planned to climb Peak 4755 and return to the boat.  Tuesday went like clockwork and Wednesday went perfectly as well but we changed gears and objectives after finding our route wasn’t passable. Tuesday around 5 PM we got to a spot on the ridge just east of Peak 4755. The ridge itself was more geographically complex than any of our maps or satellite imagery. 

Much of the Chilkats have a limestone substrate and the bedrock can form in fantastic ways. This ridge was about a ¼ mile wide on the map but the ridge contained numerous “subridges, thin rock walls running uphill in the same direction as the ridge. The top of the wall we hiked varied in width from 3 to 100 feet. The wall was mostly covered in vegetation with some exposed limestone. The route was steep but the sparse undergrowth of the old growth forest made for easy travel. The peak to the west of our ascent had a band of clean limestone that was maybe 400 feet in places. Beautiful stuff. We continued up our buttress to where the ridge flattened out considerably. At this point we found denser and younger vegetation. While the whole trip was a bushwhack because there isn’t a trail, the steep old growth nearer sea level was easy traveling compared to the thick alders, salmonberry, and Devil’s Club. The hike to the high camp was 70% easy walking and 30% bushwhacking but we spent 70% of our time on the 30%. 

Camp. Lynn Canal and Alaska Coastal Range in background.

Peak 4755 sunset

 

In the morning we hiked toward Peak 4755, intending to traverse around the north side and access the peak from the west. The slope we needed to traverse was a vegetated scree slope about 50 degrees. We used the vegetation to hold ourselves from sliding off the mountain and continued far enough to see that the steep slope became steeper still and continued for a long time.  We took stock of the route and opted to come back next year and a different approach to the mountain. We still had a lot of time so we opted to climb Peak 2840 which was east of the high camp. We returned to camp and took down our tents.

 At the tent I realized that all day  I hadn’t thought about the coronavirus. I hadn’t thought about anti-science movement destroying America. Anti-vaxxers polluting the civilized world with conspiracy theories and theories about how the plague of 2020 is a liberal plot. When they find a vaccine, those numbskuls are going to continue spreading death. Stupidity on and on. I hadn’t thought of any of it all day. I hadn’t thought about my mom’s dementia. I packed up my tent and those things left my mind again almost entirely. 

This slot in the limestone is about two feet across, hundreds of feet long, and about 100 feet deep. 

Limestone cracks in bedrock.The slot is behind Mike.

After we climbed Peak 2840, we made our way back to the boat by 4PM. On the way we stopped twice to swim in lakes that dot the ridgeline. At the boat we cracked open some beer and toasted the trip. We packed out gear, headed out to sea, and got back to Echo Cove around 6PM Wednesday evening.

Thursday I was back working, thinking about office issues, and avoiding the plague. My mom’s dementia didn’t go away when I wasn’t thinking about it. The United States continues to falter and fail and much of the country thinks we are great again.

I don’t want to ignore the calamity. None of us should. That said, it’s progress to give ourselves a mental break. I sure need it pretty often. 

Swimming hole.

Chill outside.

I am going to recommend that we chill back everything we do in the outdoors. Here’s why. 

These are little Hitlers. Photo CDC

You can meet all requirements for social distancing while doing that gnarly trip you always wanted to do. Hell, if you gotta stay away from other Homo sapiens, what better way to do it than heading hundred miles into the backcountry? I am tempted. But if I were to grab my pack and skis and try to ski across the Juneau Icefield, I take risks that are not mine alone.

If I break my ankle and I am miles from nowhere, I need a rescue. If I am lucky, they will come and get me. They will be really pissed off. Deservedly so.  The Juneau Mountain Rescue don’t have masks or most infectious disease equipment. My fun in the mountains could risk all their safety.  If I break my ankle and I am not lucky, the helicopter will be somewhere picking up COVID a patient and I will be left in the cold with a broken ankle for a very long time. The Coast Guard might refuse to pick me up. This is going to be the case everywhere, not only in Alaska. Emergency services are overloaded with COVID cases globally. 

EMS is stretched thin and you should do all you can to not need their assistance during this global crisis.

You want these folks to always have your back.
The news gets worse for my broken ankle though. Suppose I am lucky and a rescue comes. They are going to take me to the hospital. The doctors and nurses are going to make me wait until they are no longer busy with COVID patients. I am going sit a long time. I can't expect to get treatment when more pressing patients need medical care. I may wait hours or days maybe.  All the while, I am going to breathe the same air that all those COVID patients exhale. I will end up in quarantine and most likely  worse. A week later I could be coughing up blood because I contracted coronavirus in the hospital. 

Suddenly, a broken ankle is way worse and not just for me. If you don’t need to go to the hospital, don’t go near one. They are full of germs, including coronavirus. 

Eaglecrest View

Once again, I am hoping that folks do chilled out activities and use the outdoors to stay sane. At this point I am not climbing that mountain I have never climbed before. I am not climbing with ropes at all because ropes have germs. Right now that could be really bad. Lately I have been skiing at Eaglecrest, inbounds. Eaglecrest is closed so all skiing in skinning up. If we are still social distancing when the snow is gone, I may look at day trips in a sea kayak. It isn’t apt to get me in trouble. I might do nuttier stuff next year.

I don’t mean to be a downer. Getting outside is good for the soul. Go out, but think more about consequence  and risk more than usual.

Mount Stroller White. It's too gnarly for my tastes today. It was fun last year.

Losing the known?

Yvon Chouinard said, “Fear of the unknown is the greatest fear of all.” That may be true. Perhaps Chouinard’s statement needs a nuance. Jiddu Krishamurti said, “One is not afraid of the unknown, one is afraid of the known coming to an end.” I don’t know if the two ever met.

Lately I ask myself if it is beneficial to practice leaping into darkness. FYI, I am not off my rocker, at least not any more than I usually am. Like many things, there is a backstory to any persistent thought.

A few years back I was at a family reunion sitting at a campfire. Somebody was probably playing the guitar. Earlier in the day we went to a swimming hole on a river. The right bank had a rope swing that launched you into the stratosphere, or so it seemed. The opposite side of the river is a cliff about 10 meters high. Just in case you aren’t familiar with  river trash lingo, the right bank is the bank on the right facing downstream, "river trash" describes people that spend their lives rafting and/or kayaking, and 10 meters is about 35 feet. The rope swing  scared me enough that only did it once. I jumped off the cliff a few times after we determined the water was so deep that you couldn’t swim to the bottom. Just downriver there was a gravel bar on the left bank where you could swim out.

Juneau is down there somewhere in the unknown.

Later we were sitting at the fire and somebody suggested we jump off that cliff again. Many dares were made and I seemed to have the most bravado at the fire. Alcohol  was not involved in our decision. My bravado waned as the situation became more real. I was the last to jump.

We got to the top of the cliff and there was nothing down there but dark. I don’t know what metrics they use to measure darkness but there was not a single photon reflecting off the water. Light is measured in photons and perhaps dark is measured in fear, at least when jumping into it. The moon illuminated the gravel bar enough that we knew where to swim out.  

We weren't leaping into the unknown but it seemed like it. Jumping off that cliff wasn’t fundamentally different than it was earlier in the day. The water was still deep and the cliff was still about 10 meters high. Yet, my bravado was gone.

Deep water solo, near Skagway, Alaska. 
I don't have a photo of the cliff we jumped off in the dark.

My brothers jumped first and swam to the gravel bar. I stood on top the cliff for a while. There was no logical reason to walk down so peer pressure gave way. I jumped and it seemed like it took a long time to splash down. Certainly, it took the same amount of time as it did in the day but it didn’t seem that way. Under water I closed my eyes and followed gravity and buoyancy to the surface.. Yet, the forces of physics feel different in the dark. Maybe it isn’t only the dark that changes our perspective. Maybe it’s a good idea to practice leaping into the unknown because without practice you fail badly when faced with a novel experience.

Yvon Chouinard could be mostly right. The unknown might be the greatest fear of all precisely for evolutionary reasons. Evolution tells us not to eat an unknown mushroom. Evolution tells us not to jump off a cliff unless we know the water is deep enough. I am not sure if there is any evolutionary benefit to jumping off a cliff into water on a dare. Yet, dares have been around a long time and people who take dares haven’t been eliminated from the gene pool.  

Half my family jumped off that cliff. The other half would have joined but they had gone to sleep by the time we thought to do it. I have a big family. We were raised by parents with a sense of adventure. I have several friends that took major leaps into the unknown, in very different ways. The common denominator in their stories is that unlike most people they recognize that the familiar world and is just as dangerous as he unfamiliar world.

Interstate 405 in Los Angeles. There is at least one breathing human in each of those metal boxes and most of them base at part of their self worth upon the make and model they drive.

I know two people that saved some cash, bought a sailboat, and floated out to sea in search of foreign lands. People told them all manner of risks and none of the naysayers knew squat about sailing. Few of them knew squat about foreign lands. Astoundingly the naysayers didn’t know that the US has a crime problem yet they warned that you might find crime in foreign lands. Six months after sailing away, my friends made it to Tahiti. They were gone almost two years and had a great time.

I know a guy who quit his job and moved to Latin America to travel around for the rest of his life. He figures he can live indefinitely on $15K/year and that is the interest on his savings. He doesn’t have a work visa in any Latin American country so if he runs out of money, he must return to the States. People warned him that $15K isn’t a lot of money. They still warn him even after he’s been living well on $15K for years. They also warned he might get robbed or killed by cartels and narcos. All manner of rotten predictions were made and so far he’s doing just fine. He currently lives in Belize near the beach and volunteers with an organization trying to preserve coral reefs. I don’t know how his safety compares to life in Alaska. Neither does anyone else unless they spent time in Belize. If by any chance he runs out of money and must return to the States, he still won’t fear the unknown. Once you learn the unknown isn’t any more dangerous than the known, you can’t easily unlearn it. Once you see what drives human behavior, people living in industrial society start to look like a flock of scared chickens with destructive social habits.

White Faced Monkey, Cahuita National Park, Costa Rica

There’s a cliff and it’s dark down below. I am not interested in living full time out of a backpack like my expat friend. I don’t want to live on boat either like my sailboat friends. I like knowing where my home is.  However, I think we could all learn from them. 

Is it possible that Jiddu Krishamurti was right? That we don’t fear the unknown but fear letting go of the known. It takes more courage to question what we think we know than it does to jump off a cliff into the dark. Jumping off a cliff into the dark is an adrenaline jump but embracing the unknown feels bonkers. It’s scary to embrace the unknown when what we know might come to an end. My friend living in Belize made two important choices. He first chose to say "no" to a consumerist  lifestyles and second he chose to move to Belize.  I think his first choice required more courage than the second.  Sometimes it requires as much or more courage to say no to something we do not want than it does to say yes to a leap into the dark.

I once thought I “knew” that if I followed set of instructions and worked hard, I could become a captain of industry. I could rule my own little kingdom but what I thought I knew was wrong for at least two reasons. If you work hard sometimes you still don’t become a captain of industry; you become a meaningless peon. But the most important lie is that it’s a false win even if you succeed at becoming a captain of industry. I mistakenly “knew” that I wanted to be a captain of industry even though ruling anybody runs counter to my personality. I don’t even like being in charge over anybody at work. It took me a long time to question why would want a rule over a bunch of people because the metrics of “success” are so heavily ingrained. We are taught measure ourselves by a contest to see who can obtain the biggest house, the fanciest car, etc. Our success (as we perceive it) is measured by how many commodities we obtain. Foreign lands and/or foreign ideals seem tamer and less dangerous once we recognize the dangers of the world we inhabit. By most definitions Bill Gates is a “success” but my friend living in Belize presumably isn’t a success because he’s living on $15K/year. 

Sometimes we  mistakenly think we know that even experience is a commodity. Bungee jumping or riding the zipline can be distractions from facing real fears. Those things aren’t any more dangerous than my leap into the river at night. Too often we define adventure as a commodity purchased from a vendor. Tourists in Juneau are commodities to the cruise ship industry. Cruise reps use fear to con people out of their cash. They tell tourists not to go on a hike without a cruise ship certified guide because you could be killed by bears. There are three trailheads near the cruise ship docks but cruise reps are instructed not to tell anybody how to find a trailhead in Juneau.  Hint from a guy that hikes all the time in bear country, you won’t get killed by bears.  You get the same con when you try to plan hikes elsewhere. I have been looking at activities in Costa Rica because I am going there with my wife in May. We get told it’s too dangerous to do the most basic things unless we pay somebody to hold our hand. We get told hiking is dangerous without any explanation for why except that you need a guide.  People hike in Costa Rica without guides all the time.  Deep down most of us understand that consumerism is a con but we fear the unknown. Letting go of what we think we know is harder sometimes than embracing the unknown.

Eyelash Viper, Costa Rica

Bears are real. Paying a guide to take you into bear habitat won’t change that.  Don’t eat strange mushrooms. Don't get addicted to television.  Poisonous snakes live in the jungle.  Don't die of boredom or meaninglessness. Don’t jump off cliffs unless you know the water is deep.  Don't jump off cliffs unless you want to. 

It is possible to jump off the cliff and into the dark. People do it every day and they are just fine.

Amalga Shore, Juneau

I have a dream. It's a climbing thing, mostly

Mount Lemmon, Arizona. MLK Day, 2020

I have a dream. Yeah, this story is partly about Martin Luther King but it isn’t only about him. I went on a climbing trip on MLK Day. Many years I go skiing but this year I was in Arizona.

The Battle of Picacho Peak was a Civil War battle that occurred in what is now the state of Arizona and it was more of a skirmish. Thirteen US soldiers met up with 10 Confederate soldiers and three people got killed. Afterward an American army went to Tucson to find that the Confederates had already left for Texas. As it turns out, territorial Arizonans didn’t much care what side of the Civil War they were on. Slavery didn't matter to them.  They cared which side sent troops to fight the Apaches.  Some 150 years ago Cochise felt like a real threat to white supremacy so they slaughtered Chiricahua Apaches. Now there’s a plaque at a rest stop on I-10 commemorating the battle and there is a mountain in southern Arizona named after Cochise. The plaque doesn’t mention slavery or Native American genocide. I happened to be at Picacho Peak about sunrise on Martin Luther King Day. A few yards away from the Civil War plaque there was a sign warning people that dangerous snakes and lizards inhabit the area. Some things don’t change. I got back in my rental car and continued toward Tucson and finally Mount Lemmon, the tallest peak in the Santa Catalina Mountains.

Alex on a trad route.

I was in Arizona because I have family there and I was able snag some cheap plane tickets. I also met up with a friend who is living in Tucson and we went climbing up Mount Lemmon. I have spent years in Arizona and mostly ignored Mount Lemmon. It’s a great climbing destination. There is a ton of exposed granite with very little loose rock. The highway leaves Tucson at about 2,500 feet above sea level and climbs to the 9,159-foot summit. Summer and winter there is always a place with the right temperature for climbing somewhere along the road. There was snow on the summit this January. We drove up to about 6,000 feet and found some sport routes. Climbing on Mount Lemmon is also great because of Eric Fazio Rhicard and Sara Plummer Lemmon.

Mount Lemmon, as the spelling might indicate, is not named after citrus but after a feminist pioneer Sara Plummer Lemmon. In 1871 Ms. Lemmon traveled solo through Panama and continued up the Pacific Coast. This was just nine years after the Battle of Picacho Peak and nine years after  Cochise and the Chiricahua Apaches fought off the Confederate army at what is now called Cochise Stronghold. Cochise's victory was short lived. 

Sara Plummer Lemmon was a botanist in a time when women weren’t usually allowed in the halls of science.  Sara cataloged the plants of Santa Catalina Mountains. She eventually married John Lemmon but the mountain is named after her.

Several decades back, Eric Fazio Rhicard got a good deal on a thousand climbing bolts. For those of you unfamiliar with climbing, bolts are sometimes put in rock so you don’t fall to your death. Eric thought his bolt purchase would last his whole life but once he started looking at all the options on Mount Lemmon he quickly ran out of bolts. He obtained more bolts. Eric and the rest of the Tucson climbing community have been careful to not place bolts on routes that could climbed as trad. Trad routes are climbs where you protect yourself from falling with cams and nuts placed in cracks. Most of the bolted routes are close to the road on routes that don’t have cracks.  There are great trad routes on Mount Lemmon.  Other people helped Eric develop the mountain of course but it’s fair to credit Eric Fazio Rhicard with elevating climbing in Tucson. He also had a goal to climb 60, 5.12 routes during his sixtieth year and surpassed his goal and climbed 63 routes.  If I ever meet him, I am going to buy him a beverage for sure.

I got to Alex’s house in Tucson a little after 9AM and we headed up the mountain. We started the day at Windy Gap. There’s a parking area there and a magnificent view of the desert headed to the west. Parking is free and so is entrance to the National Forest. The weather was about perfect but clearly it had been colder. There were remnants of snow in shady areas. The place was a little busy with folks but not too crowded, especially since it was a holiday. I was impressed with the type of routes because climbing felt more three dimensional than I am accustomed. I spend a lot time in the gym.

Driving back to my sister’s house in Gilbert, I decided to listen to MLK’s speech on my phone. It was only then that I remembered the people on Mount Lemmon were almost exclusively white, myself included. I might not have noticed everybody we met on the mountain was white if it weren’t Martin Luther King Day and I had not read the plaque about the Civil War. The Civil War was about slavery and the plaque didn’t say squat about that. I have a dream that we remember what the Civil War was about. I have a dream the we don’t forget that Robert E. Lee wasn’t a hero.  I have a dream that we recall that Cochise was a hero, even though the Chiricahua Apaches eventually lost. After the Civil War the US Army returned in larger numbers.

Photo Credit, Alex Hughes

 Tucson is an ethnically diverse city. It has an incredible culinary tradition as a result. Tucson also has the benefit that the Santa Catalina Mountains sit just east of town. The mountain range is part of the Coronado National Forest. Mount Lemmon is also great because somebody had to foresight to designate the land as National Forest. The Catalinas are a “Sky Island,” which is an ecosystem separated from other montane environments by a ‘sea of desert.” The Catalinas are the north end of a chain of sky islands that stretches into Mexico. Rare ocelots, jaguars, and coatis live in the sky islands of southern Arizona and these species survive only through transport corridors to Mexico. Endemic species of plants and animals live up there and they are distinct because they have not had contact with species from other sky islands for thousands of years. It’s an evolutionary experiment in action where species survival depends upon subpopulation connectedness. At the same time some new species were formed by years of spatial separation. Darwin would love the American West. 

So I have a dream. Everybody should have a dream, not only Martin Luther King. I have a dream that we don’t sell it off. I have a dream that we don’t let public lands get polluted or turned into a commodity only available to the wealthy. I have a dream that we don’t kill off endangered ocelots, jaguars, and coatis with a racially motivated wall on the Mexican border.  I have a dream that we don’t treat any ethnic group like they are subhuman. I have a dream that we actualize the phrase in the Declaration of Independence that states that all men and women are created equal and entitled to certain inalienable rights. I have a dream that everyone regardless of ethnic background or economic status will feel equally welcome on public land. I don’t think I am in a position to know if everyone feels welcome.

I am glad that I can climb and hike and ski etc. on public land.  Everybody should have that opportunity, now and in future generations. Public land really is a part of our freedom. If we lose access to public land we lose part of our ability to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Freedom becomes the choice of consumer products or a choice of television shows.  We can’t take public land for granted and we can’t let corporations gain more access to it.

Cochise (photo from AccessGeneology)