Boreal B[l]og

In the summer of 2014, an Oregon snowmobile club got the go ahead to do trail maintenance in the National Forest.  Unfortunately, the leader of the club didn’t read the whole permit.

That was his first mistake.

The club rented equipment, paid for in part by monies from the gas tax snowmobilers and the rest of us, people like me, pay, and went to work, without direct Forest Service oversight.  That was the second mistake.  The result was an environmental mess over 31 miles of trails.  Trees were knocked over with roots pulled up, culverts destroyed, dirt, brush, rocks and trees shoveled on to roads, damage estimated at well over $250,000.  The Club is getting off scot-free, because it was unintended damage.  Bull.  They never told the Forest Service what they had done. I’d bet money that they intended to do exactly what they did.  They knocked over culverts.  That is not trail maintenance.  They piled refuse in a road.  That is not trail maintenance. The Oregon State Snowmobiling Association (OSSA) states that their volunteer program is a national “model.”  Some model.  Two years earlier, the same club pushed over trees at a Sno-Tel park. This is a trend. I blame the Forest Service for lack of oversight, but bad apples reflect on snowmobilers.  OSSA should be appalled.  The club ought to be disbanded.

If OSSA wants a national model for volunteer work, they should talk to my friends Erv and Sandra who work all over the West every year as volunteers.  They are a model.

The land scars were first felt to be due to rogue logging, until “trail maintenance” was remembered.  OSSA says land in Oregon is being “locked up as wilderness,” when there are 6000 miles of snowmobile trails in the state and Oregon ranks ninth among eleven western states in acreage devoted to wilderness. We have less wilderness as a percentage than Idaho.  Do we have to have loud and polluting machines everywhere?  I don’t care that noise abatement has improved, the machines are loud, and some of us go into the woods to get away from all manmade noise. I don’t care that pollution has improved, it is still pollution, and the fact air quality has never been affected by snowmobiles is due to a different definition of air quality that is not relevant to the woods.  People have a right to snowmobile—responsibly.  I have a right to untrammeled wilderness, and my right is not less than theirs.

For the record, I am an average volunteer who occasionally does trail maintenance in Eugene, where it is very clear what we can and cannot do.  We work closely with the Parks and Outdoor Spaces to plant trees, channel water, clean off bridges, and whatever they ask us to do.  We save them money by our presence.  They do not give us motorized vehicles to use.  They do give us detailed instructions, which our leader reads.   Every word.

The central Oregon group did not. They took a lot of money to damage an area that can never be fully restored.  Congressman Greg Walden said that we didn’t have resources at a national level to do all the trail maintenance that needed to be done.

Greg, you are dead wrong.  We have plenty of resources, but your party stands in the way of anything that smacks of stewardship for the land.  I’d bet money on it.  The Forest Service in 2012 had a backlog of $314 million plus $200 million for annual upkeep.  Don’t give me the “we don’t have the money” bit.  We have the money to throw at contractors in war zones, we just don’t think those who are stewards of our land are worth much. By the way, if we spent money hiring enough people with good equipment, we could have a Forest Service that really “cares for the land and serves people.”  It would create JOBS, Greg, although not paying what you make.  I’ve volunteered with the Forest Service.  Perhaps you should, too, Greg.  Legislate mandatory national service that includes trail maintenance, fund the Forest Service adequately to supervise these people, and we’d have better trails and less unemployment.  Your job is only 116 days a year.  Work a bit more, will you?  Do something for the country, for once. Stop getting in the way, stop voting in a bloc, and heed the late Paul Wellstone’s words:  “Politics isn’t about big money or power games; it’s about the improvement of people’s lives.”  Grow a spine.

No, I don’t think the snowmobile club members should go to jail, despite their destroying a lot of MY land by renting 15 ton equipment and having a good time knocking down trees and widening trails.  Do I know they were having a good time?  No, I don’t.  But I would bet money they were partying out there, drinking, making snide comments about environmentalists and the Forest Service, while they were destroying part of the United States.  Yes, I would bet money on it.

I’d demand that they pay for the damage.  Sell their snowmobiles, their trucks and their trailers, if they have to.   As it stands now, the Forest Service has asked the clubs involved to pay $35,000.  Asked.  I’d bet money that’s pocket change.  If they didn’t pony up, I’d saddle OSSA for the whole damn thing.  They have the money.  After all, they brag on their Web page how snowmobiling requires more outlay for equipment rather than $100-$200 for other uses—you know, like cross country skiing or snowshoeing, where people have to actually expend some effort.  I’ve taken people on Cascade hikes and waived the $5 fee for a non-member, along with the gas charge for our carpooling.  Their toys pollute air with noise and fumes, their users violate private property and scare animals, and yes, I hold them responsible for the actions of a few.  That’s the way of my world.  Clean up voluntarily or through regulation.  Take your pick.

I’ve seen good trail maintenance by the Disciples of Dirt mountain bikers on the Larison Rock trail.  They cut erosion and made the trail suitable for both mountain bikes and hikers.  I’ve seen what the High Cascade Forest Volunteers can do clearing downed trees on Maxwell Butte in early season.

Snowmobilers have a right to use the woods. I wonder if they feel I have a right to go into quiet wilderness, where there are no machines and a person has to do all the work.

They didn’t have the right to destroy the forest.  If a liberal environmentalist did one-thousandth the damage the snowmobile club did (that would be trashing 160 feet of trail), it would be on national news, Rush Limbaugh would have apoplexy, and the Republicans would vote to ban the Sierra Club.

I’d bet money on it.

Whoever sows injustice reaps calamity, and the rod they wield in fury will be broken.

Proverbs 22:8

Many Republicans are in a tizzy these days, because Donald Trump won’t go away, each week saying something more and more outlandish.  I’m reading conservative columnists, because they are attacking Trump and not the Democrats.  How refreshing.

What strikes me most about Trump, however, is he never apologizes. He’s never wrong.  On the other hand, he is a candidate of a party that is never wrong on any issue, be it the climate, ISIS, the economy, immigration, or education. The Republicans sowed the seeds of never being wrong, never compromising, and never apologizing, and now they are reaping the whirlwind of a campaign that they can’t control.

We should all be worried about Trump, because the guy is electable.  Hillary Clinton has proven herself to be a poor campaigner and has more baggage than the Texan who shared a French train with us, who had to stand between two cars for four hours, because his wife’s huge pink suitcases wouldn’t fit in the overhead.

Many of the young will be upset that Bernie Sanders didn’t win, and they may stay home.  I had hoped we had learned a big lesson from Nader.  A lot of those who ought to vote Democratic for the next five generations—beneficiaries of the Affordable Care Act, Social Security, Medicare, Gay Rights—may stay home. There are those who bag it because it is becoming more difficult to vote rather than less.  There are others who now have to bring photo IDs, which cost money, on the basis on non-existent voter fraud, and now the Republicans are floating the idea of having Congress represent the voters rather than the people, which will give rural America, red as a beet, disproportionate influence.  We should have a national holiday weekend just to give people time to vote, and yet hours are being cut.

The Republicans sought the Evangelical vote, because the Democrats were in favor of abortion, civil rights, gay rights, and other social causes that the Evangelicals wouldn’t support.  The megachurches supported the Far Right, were able to do so without tax consequences, their leaders invited to prayer breakfasts, and the Republicans were able to capture the “family values” group, despite a high number of divorces and scandals in high placed Republicans.

When the Tea Party came into existence, the Republicans sought their support too, for here was a group that had rabid members and hated the President.  The Tea Party was well organized, and after the fiery debates over the Affordable Care Act, were able to take over Congress, winning 63 new seats.  They may have changed Congress for a generation, much as Civil Rights lost the South probably permanently, except for a few retiree states.

The Tea Party was a game changer, and contrary to what I read now, they are still a powerful force in the country today.  They are a bunch of boors.  One yelled “Liar” in the middle of a State of the Union speech. One simply does not do that.  Congress had always worked by compromise and politeness until these people appeared.They have proven to be like Trump, non-apologetic, against everything Obama has tried to do, unwilling to compromise on anything—much like the Dr. No I had to deal with in my medical director days—and have single-handedly shut down the government.  Only forty or so are in the House now, but their power is essentially that of 220.

When Boehner was Speaker, he used the “Hastert Rule,” named after a prior speaker, which means that no bill gets introduced unless the majority of the majority party agrees.  This renders Democrats ineffective.  The minority has no say.  No bill they write has a chance.  It is ironic that this year Mr. Hastert pled guilty to a hush money scheme that is still not clear what for, although I am betting on pedophilia.  We are therefore governing the House based on what one speaker—now felon—thought best years ago, which has limited severely the number of bills that we can pass.

The Tea Party convinced Boehner to shut down the government, costing several billion dollars and accomplishing nothing. We almost defaulted on our debts, and indeed our bond rating fell a notch, for the first time ever.  The Tea Party eventually caused Boehner to resign, and the first and second choices to succeed him appeared to have baggage of their own, forcing Paul Ryan to make a decision to take over, rather than to spend time with his family.

One would think with 246 representatives, somebody could have come forward to serve who might have been a great speaker.  But not if the Tea Party can stop anything they want.

Ryan is himself dangerous.  He doesn’t want to give “one red cent” to Planned Parenthood.  Being a good Catholic, I suspect his religious beliefs are getting in the way of the idea that having fewer children and planning when to have them would go a long ways to alleviating poverty within two  generations.  Fewer children would also decrease the number of abortions, but when one believes that anything greater than zero is wrong and should not be allowed to happen, options are limited.  Ryan wants to make Medicare a system of vouchers.  I can’t imagine the huge number of people on Medicare trying to make sense of vouchers and shop for the best coverage.  I’m 67 and a retired physician.  I have difficulty understanding the system.  What about an 85 year-old widow who isn’t thinking too clearly and doesn’t have a lot of money?  Does one really think this is what market choices is all about?

Lindsay Graham is the only contender in the Republican Party who has said that he will refuse to vote for Trump, should the latter become the nominee.  Not even Paul Ryan said that.  That speaks volumes about the Party.

The Republicans wooed the Evangelicals and then the Tea Party.  They did nothing for the Evangelicals and figured the Tea Party would do their bidding.  Instead, the Republican Party is being whipped around by the tail of the tiger they grabbed.  Trump is the leading contender, and he is threatening a third party run, currently supported by 68% of his supporters, very few of whom would likely vote Democratic.  The Republicans have sown hatred, bigotry, lack of compassion, lack of collegiality, and boorishness, and they are now reaping the whirlwind.

What the country will reap remains to be seen.  I am not optimistic.

After finishing graduate school, I returned home to become a medical statistician.  At 51, I knew people in the community, I was a statistician, I knew medicine, medical administration, was trained in quality improvement, and a decent writer.  I had it all.

Except for the course on marketing.  I bombed, completely failed, one of the biggest failures of my life. I was bitter for at least 5 years, maybe longer, until time and dealing with the deaths of my parents both shoved me into another direction.  I often blamed my failure on the fact that I had pissed off the medical community.  War on Mike, I could have called it, sort of like the War on Christmas.

Except for a few vocal detractors, perhaps four, the medical community could have cared less about me.  They were too busy getting on with the stresses of their own practices, families, and other matters, not trying to think how they could screw me over.

Sometimes, I wonder if I will ever become an adult.

After being executor of my father’s estate, I moved on. I’ve been fortunate.  Nah, I won’t be famous, but I am content in my own skin.  I have discovered that there are some good things about growing old and there are things that just plain suck.  In short, I am alive, and a lot better off than most.

That brings me to Starbucks, which has a plain red cup for Christmas, and now accused by many so-called Christians as “hating Jesus,” being anti-Christian, and has Donald Trump calling for a national boycott.  I think the country has more important matters to address then the color, which I like, on a Starbucks cup.  To those who now hate Starbucks, I say, “get a life.”  Re-read the second, third, and fourth paragraphs above, especially the fourth.

My solar eclipse video in 2010 got 1000 views, yet the Starbucks customer who said that the company hated Jesus has a video with over three million views.  Sort of says something about Americans.  You know what?  I’d rather be a quiet guy who taught people about solar eclipses, volunteered teaching math, taught English online to people in 90 countries, donated to animal welfare in two countries and four cities, and on my own dime led hikes in the Cascades than a guy who had three million people listen to his stupid rant.  For the record, I decided not to add to his count.  If he looks at my video, I’ll look at his.

The holidays are a time I now look forward to.  Formerly, when in practice, they were a time I dreaded:  most of my partners took time off, patients who went to the hospital usually had a horrible reason, services at the hospital were often slow, because people were “away for the holidays,” and I usually came down sick with something.  Additionally, I had to do Christmas shopping, because my late mother made a big deal about Christmas. Oh yes, night call was really depressing when somebody with a Grade V subarachnoid hemorrhage or irreversible anoxic encephalopathy had to have the plug pulled on Christmas Eve.  I disliked the season.

These days, my wife and I go to the mall on at least one December Monday (more if we can) and watch people in line with their pet animals wait to get a picture with Santa.  What a hoot.  A woman last year had a Siamese cat perched on her shoulder for at least 45 minutes while she stood in line.  She had another half hour to go.The best we could do with any of our cats is about 4.5 seconds with the silver one, and maybe 4.5 milliseconds with the semi-feral 5 year-old.  I’m not exaggerating.

Yes, that is a Siamese on her shoulder. Valley River Mall, 2014

Christmas Eve Day, we go shopping for things we want, have lunch somewhere, and return home early.  After dinner, we walk the neighborhood looking at lights, then turn on the 24 hours of “A Christmas Story,” which we love.  Hell, two of our cats are named Red Ryder and Black Bart.  We use quotations from that movie often:  “The line ends here.  It begins back there.”  “Soooooaaap poisoning.”  Christmas Day is vegetarian; we do just fine with fake turkey and all the trimmings.  I put on some Christmas music, pick up the tree that the cats have knocked over and enjoy the day.

Who is declaring war on Christmas?  Well, the nightly progress reports about how well merchants are doing this year compared to last is a little counter to the message Jesus preached, if I understand the Bible.  I don’t think Jesus would like our constant war since 2003 and our troops overseas since 1945.  I think Jesus might have preached something about gun violence, but I’m not religious, so I may be wrong.

It is a goddam red coffee cup for Chrissakes!  It’s not Satan jumping over the counter.  Get over it!  Bring in your own decorative cup or mug and save the planet.  Starbucks lost $3.2 million last April when their computers crashed, so they gave customers free coffee.  It was April, not December, but isn’t there something  about keeping Christmas in your heart the whole year?  Saturday,  Safeway had $1, $5, and $10 coupons to donate food to the needy. On impulse, I threw in a five spot.  My heavens, the clerk started ringing the bell as if I were a breast cancer survivor in October at Starbucks in the MSP airport.  Yes.  That Starbucks.  Where the manager comes out and hugs a survivor.  I don’t cry easily, but that sort of stuff brings tears to my eyes.  Yes, that Starbucks.  The one that wants to increase hiring of veterans to 10,000 and provide free tuition to get a bachelor’s degree at Arizona State University.  And a red coffee cup is all the talk is about, rather than helping veterans to attend college?  I’m a veteran, and helping vets trumps any complaint about coffee cups, which I happen to like.

Anyway, the cashier asked if I wanted my name on the coupon.  Embarrassed, I declined.  She thanked me three times.  It was just $5.  But no, that’s not the point.  I was making this cashier and some unknown recipient happy.  That’s what Christmas is about, not politicizing the event to make it sound like we are trying to defeat the 70% of Americans who call themselves Christians.  Can’t we just have Christmas, Chanukah, Kwanzaa, and any other holiday this melting pot of people celebrate, without claiming there is some sort of war?  Can’t we do good things for others? Are these people Dementors or Ebenezers?

The very next day, I went right into Starbucks that’s part of Target, although I personally prefer Dutch Brothers, and by God, I got me one o’them red cups for my decaf.  Yeah, I have to drink decaf. It’s better for my heart, especially when I am dealing with damned idiots who think we’re having a War on Christmas. It’s repetition, and repetition doesn’t make it right.  It’s wrong, and I am by nature argumentative against wrongs.

Take it from me, you poor Christians who feel persecuted.  I thought the medical community was persecuting me, and I just didn’t do a good job marketing myself.  It took me a while, but I got over it.  Start marketing yourself.  Begin with following Jesus’s teachings.  Ya know?  Love, caring for the poor, he who is without sin….

Be big boys and girls.  This War on Christmas is bogus.  Get over it, you hear?  Go to Safeway, stick a tenner coupon in with your groceries, which I will do the next time I’m in, and you will be doing the Lord’s work.   The next time I might even put five of them in.  It will make the clerk’s day.  Then, this non-believer, who likes pagan holidays like Christmas, will say to her:  “Merry Christmas.”

And walk out of the store with a big smile on his face.  Won that war.

When I moved to Oregon, I volunteered for organizations I didn’t even know existed, and I didn’t volunteer, but thought I would, for others. Such is life, and I predicted this experience before the move. When I learned there was a state-wide reporting system for medical errors, I wrote them, eventually being invited to their offices to meet with the staff. I was optimistic.

But not surprisingly, nothing came of it. I knew that when I walked out the door after that meeting. I read body language well. I saw the expression, “I’m really busy and need to get back to work rather than talk to this guy.” What I brought, they didn’t need, and that is OK, just unfortunate for me. I later wrote an opinion piece about the need for pharmacies in the state to do more analysis of the errors they made, so that we could improve state-wide systems. Seven hundred pharmacies in the state generated only 20 reports last year. That’s disappointing, but again not surprising, either. Nothing came of my article, but I didn’t expect anything. I’ve gone down a lot of dead-end roads. I turn around and try others. Occasionally, I find a path that leads to interesting places. I don’t find one often, but if I don’t try, I won’t find it at all.

After a few problems obtaining my medication, which I recently wrote about, I sent a letter about my experiences to the head of the Patient Safety Commission. I didn’t know what would happen, but again, if I didn’t write, nothing would happen. I received a reply, saying my letter was forwarded to the staff as a reason why the Commission exists. I found that Interesting. A few days later, a staff member wrote me saying she knew a man who taught pharmacy students, and he might be interested in talking to me. This road was going a little further than I thought. After exchanging a few emails, the pharmacist called me and we spoke about medical errors, pharmaceuticals, and other issues.

It wasn’t a fit, and before I heard the words, I knew this wasn’t going to work out. I can read body language over the phone well, too. He wanted somebody “downstream,” a patient who could come to his class and explain how a medication error affected them. That’s asking for a lot, and I think is unrealistic. I sure couldn’t provide it. I saw the Dead End sign, but we had an interesting talk. I think his class would benefit from one who had seen a lot of errors in other fields, studied them, and could advise his students about system design and learning from errors. Somebody like me.

For a couple of hours after the call, I had the usual down in the dumps feeling, which happens when I encounter a dead end sign. Maybe something will happen. He might talk to other people who are interested in what I have to say. But I strongly doubt it. It almost never happens. Networking to me has led only to my giving free advice, almost never receiving anything in return. Still, I keep trying, although I am running out of time.

I might have told the students about the error in a Bend hospital, where a lady after recent brain surgery came to the hospital and had fosphenytoin, an anti-convulsant, ordered. For some reason, she was given an IV bag containing rocuronium, a paralytic, but labelled as fosphenytoin. She might have survived had there not been a Code Red, for fire, and was left unattended for 20 minutes. She died a few days later from anoxic encephalopathy. It’s like a plane that has a landing gear problem that consumes the pilot’s attention so much that the plane runs out of fuel and crashes. That happened in Portland in 1978, killing 10. It spawned CRM, Crew Resource Management, which essentially considers everybody in the cockpit an equal resource in an emergency. The concept worked a decade later on a United jet and to perfection in 2010 when a Qantas A-380’s port engine exploded and the plane had to be nursed back to Singapore. The video is worth seeing, as an example of how teamwork in the cockpit saved the plane and all aboard. The investigation is worth reading, as well, as to how a seemingly minor quality assurance problem at Rolls-Royce had catastrophic results. Oh, it wasn’t a miracle that everybody survived. A miracle would be not to have had a problem ever occur with anything we make. Everybody survived because of redundancies built into the aircraft and skill of the crew. Medicine needs that kind of dedication to safety, where pharmacists are important resources who can find errors in drug choice, dosage, or interactions.

Instead, I read online that there now needs to be a safety zone where those mixing drugs will not be interrupted. I’ve been harping on that for 15 years. Sterile cockpit means that nobody talks about anything but the aircraft when the altitude is below 10,000 feet. In 2013, exactly four cases of incorrect medication being given were reported state-wide. Whatever the number, we aren’t learning from them. I later read that up to 440,000 deaths in the US occur from medical errors annually, and I don’t believe that number, either, because if we can’t even track something simple like the wrong medication’s being given, we can’t possibly know the number of medical errors. I offered a solution a decade ago, one that uses random sampling of hospitals, but I hit a Dead End sign.

I could have spoken to the students about our needing to count the number of prescriptions filled improperly, the number of prescribing errors made, and the number investigated, not to shame anybody, but to understand how many errors and what kinds of errors are made, so we could refine systems and know whether or not we had refined them successfully.

I think with examples compared to aviation, which I find compelling, we could start educating students the need to have a safe, effective, voluntary way to report safety issues. Maybe that generation would stand on my shoulders and see further than I.

No, I have spoken out on the topic enough, maybe too much. I’m out of date, but there are things still happening that shouldn’t be. A patient was recently awarded over $12 million from being given the wrong dosage of Amiodarone during a procedure. He is now brain-damaged for life. This was a preventable error. For him, normal life hit Dead End.

That’s far worse than the Dead Ends I’ve had.

Cummins Creek Trail, Oregon Coast, 2014

The 2015 Canoe Trip has been like the last twenty or so.  We fly to Minnesota, drive 4 hours north to Ely, get the gear we rented, drive to the entry point, our jumping off point, and the next morning, regardless of the weather, enter the wilderness, for entry permits are day and place sensitive.

We are both old now, although we do note with some pleasure a few more folks like us on the water than in years past.  I think it’s because the gear is better, lighter, and more convenient than it once was, and a lot of our generation grew up in the outdoors.  I don’t do the long travel trips that I once lived to do.  Instead, we go in a dozen miles, find a site we like, usually one we have stayed at before, pitch the tent, and settle in.

Fall Lake from the Fall-Newton portage, BWCA, 2015

I like base camping.  It’s nice to pitch the tent and not have to take it down the next day to do another dozen miles.  Yeah, we could do it, but we’d pay for it a lot more.  The site we have is really nice.  It’s not one people go to by choice, I suspect, because there are only two tent sites, neither of which is great.  The one we use has me slide slowly towards my feet during the night.  I can live with that.

Down a bay is an isthmus site where I stayed in 2013.  It’s pretty, being ten yards from water to water at its narrowest spot.  There are a lot of tent pads, a decent kitchen area, and great sunsets.  I liked it and thought in 2014, when my wife was again well, we’d stay there.  She had seen the site once before with me when we were exploring and in 2014 we fully expected to stay there.

The isthmus campsite from our site on the point. They get the sunset, we get the “Ross Light,” a special light at sunset, coined by the great wilderness author Sig Olson.

However, the site was taken. Bummer.  We paddled back out the bay, deciding to look at a site on the point.  It rises up some ledge rock from the lake, only 20-30 feet, but elevation matters in the Canoe Country.  We immediately noted the view down the lake a couple of miles to Canada and back to the isthmus site where we had just been.  Yeah, it’s work bringing the packs up, but we only have to do it once.  We get here in 4 1/2 hours and we often just sit for hours, watching the water and an occasional traveler.

Evening view down the lake

We have learned that by sitting still, we see a lot more.  This is basic to observing nature, but in the past, I’ve been in a hurry to see what’s out there, not as conducive to seeing wildlife.  Last year, we were treated to a nightly show of beavers swimming into the small swampy inlet next to us.  This year, we had no beavers, although the beaver house was still nearby.

No matter, the weather was rainy for three straight days, so we got out for some short paddles and spent a lot of time in the tent, sleeping.  We sleep a lot out there.  The autumn colors were better last year; this year they are just beginning, although they were going to peak the week after we left. We get what we get.  The last full day out, we awoke to mist everywhere, threatening rain, figuring we’d take another day trip with the canoe.  The weather cleared, but then the wind came up, strong enough that we decided just to sit in camp the last day, reading, writing, looking down the long channel, or over to the isthmus.  We had a long paddle out the next day and wanted to save our arms.  At least that was our excuse.  Neither of us was looking at anything, just the trees that had changed color, the sky, the shadows, and the.….otters that suddenly appeared right off shore, three of them.  The day before, we watched one play with a stick on a rock face, before he ran down into the water.  We had missed the beaver show, but the otters played right below us, diving, allowing us to see them underwater, come up by a rock, by each other, and then disappear again.

Otter, Basswood Lake, BWCA, September 2015

By remaining silent, we saw a hermit thrush walk through camp, a Hairy Woodpecker and a Three-toed Woodpecker work on a dead birch tree near us.  Sometimes you see this stuff when you are traveling fast; the chances are greater you will if you sit still. I have long had the philosophy that wildlife viewings are a gift.  I never expect any, so if I see something, I feel blessed and grateful.  The otter viewing was the best I’ve seen, and I’ve seen a lot of otters.

We talked about what we would do when either of us or both of us can no longer do the work to get up here, or if the benefits don’t outweigh the effort, which can be considerable.  We can see those years in the future now.  It could be next year.  For my wife, 2013 was such a year.  On the other hand, we are able to do the work, and we hope maybe we’ve got a few more years out at this site until we need to move to a place that closer in, but still keeps us in the wilderness we’ve grown to love.  Eventually, we may have to stay in a cabin and canoe from there, not in the wilderness, but close to it.  That is how we hope our lives may play out.

There are many who say that age is just a number, but they are young and not wise in the ways of probability and genetics.  Things happen as we age.  The work necessary to get into this country requires strong enough arms to paddle long distances, often against headwinds, legs and body to carry packs and a canoe, decent balance to walk in camp, and ability to take care of oneself in the outdoors.  I’m relying heavily on experience these days.  On the trip in, the canoe went up on my head automatically, without my even thinking of it.   I can still move a canoe in any way I want it to go, I can read the sky and try to travel smart.  There are no guarantees, however.  I want to come out here as long and as I safely can.

I spend only a few nights every year up here.  They have now added up to more than three hundred in the border lakes country.  The special places I’ve seen are where I go in my mind when things are bad, life is difficult, and I need to mentally separate from the present.  Like the otter, I appear there, spend some time, then go, glad for what I experienced.

Eagle near the Canadian Border, BWCA