Ski Frog

Yesterday was the first day of ski season for my six-year old daughter, Joy, and me at our little local hill, Big Horn Ski Resort. (Suggested motto: Two lifts. No people.)

We were both blessed and cursed with a major snowstorm that was tapering off as we headed up the mountain. Blessed, because there was nearly a foot of fresh powder, the trees were blanketed, and hardly anyone else had braved the roads, so we had the whole mountain nearly to ourselves. Cursed, because the deep powder on the mostly ungroomed trails came up to Joy's knees and made the skiing much more challenging. (Doubly cursed, because our Honda Pilot would slip into a ditch on the way out and now sports a crack in the bumper.)

But mostly, it was a great day for skiing, and Joy and I had been anticipating it ever since our final ski trip last March. Last winter, Joy had turned the corner in her skiing skills in a big way, and we had ended the season by cruising down blue runs together at a good clip. She became skilled and fearless, and we had had great fun together on the slopes.

All started well on this trip, as at the top of the mountain the trail was groomed and the slope was gentle. We started our usual game of "Ski Frog," which is like leap frog, each taking turns angling down the hill, passing the other, waiting, then passing again.

















But when we hit the deep powder, Joy's memories of last winter's successes transformed into fear. A couple of biffs, a ski coming off, a runny nose . . . soon Joybear's tenuous courage wavered as her anxiety surfaced.

As her Dad, I sense everyday Joy's great potential in so many areas, but I am also aware of her proclivity to search for the exits when the going gets tough, to whine, and to have her parents bail her out of tough situations.

Hey, I know, she's only six. But still, I feel a fatherly impulse to guide her away from this whining and dependency and steer her towards problem-solving and mental toughness. (At home when she comes to me to bail her out of any of the myriad problems a six year old faces--"My feet are cold," or "I'm thirsty," or most typically "Grant's bothering me"--my usual refrain is, "Joy, you need to solve your own problems. Daddy can't always fix it for you." Sometimes, this is parenting genius. More often, this is during the fourth quarter of the big game.)

Regardless, I tend to take a laissez-faire approach when Joy gets whiny, and she most always responds well to this and finds she can indeed solve her own problems.

But now, as I leaned on my poles a dozen yards down the slope, she was having none of my non-interventionalism. She was in deep powder and couldn't get her skis under her. I started calmly calling out instructions to her as I shuffled back up the slope. But she started thrashing in frustration, then shrieking in anger at me, quickly exploding into full-blown hysterics. She hated skiing, it was the worst day of her entire life, and she wasn't going to move until she got home: three epiphanies that she vocalized to me as I climbed towards her.

When I arrived, there was a four inch string of snot hanging from her nose and her face was flushed with frenzy. I cleared the snot away with my glove as she reiterated her above-mentioned epiphanies. I stayed calm, reminding her that she could do it. "Just one step at a time, Sweetie." I reached to help her up and she began to pummel my chest with her engloved fists.

I, on the other hand, felt cool as could be, absolutely certain of her capacity to handle this minor difficulty, but her hysteria wouldn't let her see past the moment she was stuck in. I knew I had to intervene, so I mustered my stern Daddy voice (which usually reduces her to mush), and barked at her that this was unacceptable, she was better than this, she had to get a hold of herself. I then pointed out the essential impossibility of her going home without moving. This initial command briefly phased her, and then she resumed the hysterical whining. I intensified the voice, locked her eyes on mine, and said forcefully, "That is enough, young lady! You are not going to make another sound, you are going to get up on your skis right now, and we are going to ski down this mountain. That is the only way. If you don't, I'm going to have to spank you."

Instant silence. She has never been spanked, and that threat has only been pulled out on the most rare of occasions; in times past, I have felt horrible at seeing the fear in her eyes that this could even be a possibility.

But I didn't see fear now. She knew that Daddy wasn't going to spank her, yet the threat seemed to snap her out of her hysteria. What did I see in her eyes, then? Truthfully, I saw trust, as if I had spoken some secret code between us that said, "Look, I'm not going to spank you, but I own this problem now, so you do what I say and trust me to solve it."

I reached down and lifted her up, hugged her, and set her on her skis. "Now, just follow me down the mountain. Go as slow as it takes."

And that's exactly what we did. She had one more minor fall but bounced right back up. We made it back to the groomed trail, and by the bottom of the hill we were ski-frogging again; she zoomed and laughed like she had last winter.


We loaded onto the lift again and headed up the mountain. I still felt unsettled from the confrontation, that awful feeling of having to discipline your children sternly, of having to break them down to build them up.

But Joy apparently felt none of that, as she beamed at me with her rosy cheeks and crystal blue eyes.

"Are you having fun, Sweetie?" I asked.

"Yeah, this is awesome!"

She leaned into me and gave me a big hug. "I love you, Dad."

I smiled at her as I shook my head quizzically. "I love you, too." I thought of what else to say, wondering at her resilience. To validate what had just happened, it seemed I had to verbalize a teaching moment: "Now remember, when you have a problem that seems too big and you get scared, you have to stay calm. Just do one thing, and then do the next thing, and then pretty soon you'll be all the way down the mountain."

"OK, Dad," she smiled politely if somewhat dismissively, then hugged me again, tacitly acknowledging that I, as her father, had to perform this perfunctory teaching duty, but really, it wasn't necessary. The sun burnt palely through the lifting clouds, but the heavy snow persisted, huge flakes now sifting silently through the still air, clinging to our eyebrows. Joy eyed the big flakes and exclaimed, "Hey, Dad, let's catch snowflakes on our tongues!"

And we did.

Ode to Johnny D

Here's a shout out into the Great Beyond, to Henry John Deutschendorf, Jr., better known to all of us as the late and great John Denver.

This salutation comes from me hearing a lot of John Denver recently, as his Muppets' Christmas album figures prominently on my iPod Christmas playlist. Sweet, silly, even saccharine, it speaks to Mr. Denver's post-60's sentimentality and his kid-friendly, parent-approved, save-the-whales public persona.

Perhaps because I often can be overly sentimental myself, John Denver's entire musical portfolio and the earnest innocence of his worldview engender in me a deep sense of appreciation for the man and his music.

When he died in a plane crash on Oct 12, 1997, I shed unexpected (and rare) tears for a man I had never met, but whom I felt I had grown to love through his music. I remember feeling awed that a man with a guitar, three chords and a smile could reach down through the years, through my stereo and, singing only simple melodies and simplistic messages, coax my embittered heart into hoping for a better future.

For the children and the flowers are my sisters and my brothers,
Their laughter and their loveliness could clear a cloudy day
And the song that I am singing is a prayer to non-believers
Come and stand beside us, we can find a better way

What exactly, Mr. Denver, is this better way? Who knows? But every time I hear Rhyme and Reasons I feel it deep in my heart that our troubled world can be led out of the desert of post-modern despair by John Denver, a troupe of flower children, and Kermit the Frog.

You can't hardly hear a vintage John Denver song and not smile, not appreciate a little bit more the beauty of the earth or the wonder of childhood or the exhilaration of love. Sometimes I'll be weighed down by the cares of the world and a good John Denver tune will come on, and suddenly I've got sunshine on my shoulders. (Doesn't make me cry, however.)

To make music that stands the test of time, that transcends generations and modern cynicism, that gets the world to stand and sing in hopeful harmony--what a legacy for a man born as Henry Deutschendorf.

The Incredibly Fantastic And Amazing Telephone

For as long as I can remember, I have had a casual fascination with telephones. Casual, I say, because I've never been fascinated enough to actually devote significant time or brain power toward fathoming their deeper mysteries.

Yet something about them will from time to time suddenly mystify and inspire me. At such moments, I will stare into the heavens and laugh a sly, wistful little laugh, marveling at their magic. (Then I will remind myself to--at some point--get a life.)

One such time was in December of 1994. I was in Londrina, Brazil, sitting in a small office of our local church, staring at a bright red rotary phone, waiting for it to ring for my semi-annual phone call from home. Having previously given my parents a daunting string of numbers to punch in from Colorado, I could now only sit and hope and pray that the darn thing would ring. I waited, fretted, considered that my parents may have botched the timing of the call due to time zone confusion, or that maybe an earthquake in Guatemala had snapped the telephone wire like a thread . . . and then it rang.

I picked it up desperately, composed myself, and then suddenly I was coolly speaking to my admiring parents and worshipful little brothers and sister as if they were sitting across the room. (Of note: my parents and siblings, as best as I can tell, continue their idolization of me to this day, unabated and magnified.)

How could a voice, speaking into a plastic and copper device from the other side of the planet, be transmitted in such perfect clarity (save for an incessant background clicking noise), without appreciable delay, into my homesick ears? How could sounds be instantaneously converted into electrical impulses, then relayed across tens of thousands of miles of copper wires precariously strung through mountains and jungles, across oceans and third world dictatorships, and then be reconverted into sound waves that so perfectly reproduced vocal tones and subtle inflections that I could easily discern the individual voices of my gaggle of pre-teen brothers, whose squawking sounded to me only like spasms of incomprehensible, guttural screeching?

How could it be done? It must be magic, I marveled briefly. And then I continued picking mango shreds from my teeth.

That event happened a relatively recent thirteen years ago, before the full advent of the now ubiquitous cell phone. (I believe in that same year my father had an attached company "car phone" that was roughly the size of a small microwave oven.) Cell phones have only made the telephone mystery exponentially more mystifying. How can I be sitting in my car in Chugwater, Wyoming, hit two buttons, wait for a few rings, and then be speaking to my sister in Littleton, Colorado for a brief second before she puts me on hold because she has to say goodbye to another one of her giggly friends?

What sort of genius was Alexander Graham Bell or Fred P. Motorola to figure this thing out?

Wait, don't explain it to me. First, I probably wouldn't understand it.

But second, there's something I like about not knowing, something mesmerizing, baffling, even humbling about such technology. To know how it works? That might diminish the allure, they way the thrill of a magic trick dissipates once you know the secret.

And the telephone is just one of a thousand technological marvels of our daily lives. From the time I flipped on a light switch this morning to the time I'm posting this on the internet from my home computer at night, and all of the medications and computer programs and automobiles and refrigerated foods and Sportscenter broadcasts and YouTube "debates" between sanctimonious Republican candidates in between, everything around us is a technological miracle, evidence of mankind's genius and creativity.

Some guys who are just like me (other than being a lot smarter and wealthier), figured this stuff out, harnessed the elements and the laws of physics, and brought these wonders into our living rooms.

But I'm fine not knowing all the details. Mr. Arthur C. Clarke once famously remarked, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

I love a good magic trick. So allow me the pleasure of suspending my disbelief in this one thing, of being awestruck by the quotidian telephone.

Now, if you'll please excuse me. My phone is ringing . . . again.

The Memory of Fish

Two straight posts about fish?

Not really. This one is about memory, but it was partly inspired by our resilient goldfish, Foxy.

Foxy came into our lives about two and a half years ago when some friends went on an extended trip and left him/her--how do you tell fish gender, anyway?-- with us to fish sit.

They never came back for him.

Fearing that Foxy would feel hurt and abandoned, we took him under our wings and tenderly cared for and nurtured him until one day we went on a five day trip and completely forgot about him. Upon returning home, Foxy was floating belly up in the fishbowl. I dropped some food in the bowl to see if he was really dead, and then left to find my little green fish net to transport him to his final ride down the porcelain express. But when I came back, Foxy was zooming around the bowl, lunging lustily towards his nibbles, making frisky little blooping sounds with his mouth. What a joker! Since then, I call him Resurrection Fish whenever I think about him, which, frankly, is about once every 2 months when his bowl, depleted to less than one-third its volume and coated with a murky green scum, needs cleaning.

That's when I pull out my trusty green fish net, chase Foxy around the bowl, dump him in a plastic cup with some water, and then proceed to de-slime his brackish environs.

How Foxy has survived this long, I don't know. (How long do goldfish live, anyway?)

Foxy and I don't have much of a relationship, but I am probably the second most important being in his very, very small world. The most important is Elizabeth, who feeds him everyday. I am second most important, because I am the deus ex machina that swoops down from the nether-worlds every two months, snares him in a green tractor beam and places him in solitary confinement. When Foxy emerges from this alien abduction, he is placed back into a world that has been cleansed every wit, even as if by fire.

The point is . . . what? I can't remember, which actually IS the point: remembering.

And now here is my profound thought: does Foxy remember any of this? In the midst of our little bi-monthly Master / Fish interactions, I sometimes think I can see some trace of anticipation in Foxy's beady little eyes when I lug his bowl towards the sink and produce the Green Wand of Mystical Powers. There seems to be a little more swagger to his swim, more purpose to his puckering, more flibber to his jibber. But in reality, I think I'm fooling myself, and I think that he experiences this infrequent ritual entirely afresh every time.

Perhaps this deep thought occurred to me because I had just finished reading a fascinating article in this month's National Geographic about memory. The well-written story bounced between analyses of the neurophysiologic basis of memory and the captivating stories of two real persons with extraordinary memory disorders. One woman, referred to as AJ, has the most perfect, photographic memory ever tested; she remembers, quite literally, almost everything that has ever happened to her. But to her, this is a tormenting phenomenon, as if the past is continually in the forefront of her mind, not allowing her to escape her ever-present regrets, mistakes and embarrasments.

The other person, a man known as EP, had the neuro pathways in his brain eroded by an bizarre infection, and now has absolutely no memory beyond about ten seconds. Imagine every ten seconds awakening entirely anew to the whole world, with no memory or insight into where you were or who you are . . . and not even the slightest awareness that this complete naivete was, in fact, abnormal. But EP, in contrast, is not tormented in the least. He appears quite happy, care-free, an unwitting Zen Meister living unencumbered by the past, unaware of any future, and entirely in the now.

These extremes of memory highlight the miraculous nature of that organ where we all live out our lives: the brain. In medical school, I remember a fellow student asking our neuroanatomy professor a "why" question about the brain. His response went something like this: "I cannot answer any 'why' questions about the brain. In this course, I will teach you the what, where and how of the brain. But for the answers to the why questions, you'll need to speak with a theologian or a philosopher. Because, frankly, I don't know why this miracle exists."

Three pounds of flesh. Three trillion synaptic connections. The home of genius and madness, of symphonies and psychosis, a computer, a soul, a muse, a miracle. The most powerful tool in all of creation.

I'm talking, of course, about Foxy's brain.

The Fish

by Elizabeth Bishop

I caught a tremendous fish
and held him beside the boat
half out of water, with my hook
fast in a corner of his mouth.
He didn't fight.
He hadn't fought at all.
He hung a grunting weight,
battered and venerable
and homely. Here and there
his brown skin hung in strips
like ancient wallpaper,
and its pattern of darker brown
was like wallpaper:
shapes like full-blown roses
stained and lost through age.
He was speckled with barnacles,
fine rosettes of lime,
and infested
with tiny white sea-lice,
and underneath two or three
rags of green weed hung down.
While his gills were breathing in
the terrible oxygen
--the frightening gills,
fresh and crisp with blood,
that can cut so badly--
I thought of the coarse white flesh
packed in like feathers,
the big bones and the little bones,
the dramatic reds and blacks
of his shiny entrails,
and the pink swim-bladder
like a big peony.
I looked into his eyes
which were far larger than mine
but shallower, and yellowed,
the irises backed and packed
with tarnished tinfoil
seen through the lenses
of old scratched isinglass.
They shifted a little,
but not to return my stare.
--It was more like the tipping
of an object toward the light.
I admired his sullen face,
the mechanism of his jaw,
and then I saw
that from his lower lip
--if you could call it a lip--
grim, wet, and weaponlike,
hung five old pieces of fish-line,
or four and a wire leader
with the swivel still attached,
with all their five big hooks
grown firmly in his mouth.
A green line, frayed at the end
where he broke it, two heavier lines,
and a fine black thread
still crimped from the strain and snap
when it broke and he got away.
Like medals with their ribbons
frayed and wavering,
a five-haired beard of wisdom
trailing from his aching jaw.
I stared and stared
and victory filled up
the little rented boat,
from the pool of bilge
where oil had spread a rainbow
around the rusted engine
to the bailer rusted orange,
the sun-cracked thwarts,
the oarlocks on their strings,
the gunnels--until everything
was rainbow, rainbow, rainbow!
And I let the fish go.


(Elizabeth Bishop is one of my favorite poets, and this is one of her most accessible poems. Hope you enjoyed it!)

Speaking Truth to Power

Christ before Pilate . . .

Peter at the Day of the Pentacost . . .

Paul before Agrippa . . .

Martin Luther before the Catholic Church . . .

Galileo before the Inquisition . . .

Joseph Smith in chains at Liberty Jail . . .

Martin Luther King, Jr. on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial . . .

President Reagan in the shadow of the Berlin Wall . . .

The Tank Man's silent protest in Tiananmen Square . . .

These iconic moments are seared into my conscience by the profound courage their protagonists displayed. I get goosebumps just watching these clips or reading the accounts.

These heroes could have been merely ordinary, but a combination of determination and destiny brought them before the heights of power, where, armed only with the courage of their convictions and with their own lives in jeopardy, they spoke the truth. They unmasked evil, denounced injustice, eviscerated ignorance and exposed deceit. They stood, they delivered, and they changed the world.

Entrenched power creates and perpetuates leadership opportunities, and this usually is a bad thing. (See Vladamir Putin, Saddam Hussein . . . or Teddy Kennedy :)

But courageous leaders, speaking truth to power, resonate their message deeply within the collective conscience, and expand their influence through the essential clarity, verity, and hopefulness of their vision. They spark revolutions and topple governments, not through force but through ideas.

The power fades, but the truth endures.

Here's to those heroes, past, present and future.

(And once again . . . GO ROCKIES!!!)

Rocktober

Normally, this is football time in Colorado. But not this year . . .
The Colorado Rockies are on a winning streak unprecedented in the history of baseball, closing out the season by winning thirteen of their last fourteen games, which gave them a chance to earn a berth in the post-season in a winner-take-all tiebreaker game against the San Diego Padres on October 1st.

What ensued was one of the most thrilling games imaginable. The Rockies jumped to an early lead, gave up a grand slam in the third inning, battled back to take the lead in the sixth, then gave up a tying run in the eighth on a miscue from Matt Holliday, their erstwhile All-Star and MVP candidate.

Then the real drama began. The teams were deadlocked after nine innings, and as the game headed into extras, each pitch began to carve thickly through the heavy tension that settled over the infield. The tenth, eleventh, twelfth inning passed. . . each team gave up opportunities with men in scoring position, but no one could deliver the final blow, until in the thirteenth inning the Padres hit a two-run homer.

It was over, we all figured. No way could they have any magic left to conjure an extra-inning, two-run rally.

But the Rockies had different plans.

Matt Holliday strode to the plate, and in one mythical swing, he hit a triple that not only tied the game, but also redeemed his prior fielding error and secured the NL batting crown and RBI title for the season.

He then stood on third base, and a sacrifice fly sent him sprinting for home . . .

A head first slide, a cloud of dust, a bloodied chin . . . and finally a delayed "safe" call from the umpire.

The Rockies had won most improbably, and launched into the playoffs for only the second time in team history.

They quickly dispensed with Philadelphia , and now tomorrow they line up against the Arizona Diamondbacks. Can their winning continue? What's gotten into these guys? How can a mediocre team suddenly transform into a giant killer, a team for the ages? Could they when it all? Why not? If they could make it this far, anything could happen . . .

This is when baseball gets fun. There are few things less interesting to me than early season baseball games. Major League teams play a ridiculous 162 games during throughout the spring, summer and fall. Who cares if they win or lose in June?

But it all pays off in October, when every pitch, every swing carries the weight on an entire season, of every fan's dreams, of a city's self-worth (as the Broncos crumble). And even more so, it's the tension in between the pitches that is addicting.

Every play in a baseball game starts with a lone gunslinger on a hill hurling deadly projectiles towards a solitary hitter armed with a wooden club. Man to man. Weapon against weapon. Willpower against willpower.

Maybe it's baseball's cowboy--and even prehistoric-- undertones that make it so captivating, speaking to some vestigial, pre-civilized inclination in all of us to see our tribe's warriors slay the enemy's.

Or maybe it's just a heck of a game that Abner Doubleday (or whoever) invented that has woven itself into our collective identity, that sometimes flashes brightly before our eyes and thrills us to the core.

Especially in October.

And this year, especially in Rocktober.

Go Rockies!

The Supreme Effort

I've been inspired.

I've just finished a great book, Long Distance: A Year of Living Strenuously, by Bill McKibben. Recommended to me by my friend Dan, it's the personal narrative of an accomplished writer who is also a chronically sub-par middle-aged athlete. For one year's time, he devotes himself exclusively to a rigorous endurance training regimen, hoping to maximize his athletic potential and compete in a world famous cross-country
ski race.

First, I'm inspired by the fact that a man could live and support his family for a year by writing about his own amateur athletic endeavors. Can I quit my job, sign a book deal and get a large cash advance to write about my efforts in early morning basketball? In golf? (Hey, sweetheart, got to be at work all day today . . .basketball in the morning, tennis in the afternoon, and then I'll be on the back nine until late. Can we push dinner back a bit tonight?)

But even more so, I'm inspired by his desire to mentally and physically test himself, to literally reshape his body and mind, to trim off fat and mental weakness, and to push himself towards his supreme effort, one race, one encapsulated moment when he has focused his mind and body to a razor sharpness, when he can say, "There. That is the very best I can do, no regrets."

Not a natural athlete, he gives himself over to expert coaching and countless hours of lonely endurance training. He meets disappoint and personal failure over and over; race after race, he confronts some new weakness, physically finishing, but always aware that somehow, somewhere along the race track, he bailed out early: he hit the wall and backed off his intensity; a faster skier passed him and he felt doubt creep in; he lost his focus and then lost miles of race to sloppy form; he felt pain and became scared of the cost of pushing himself any harder.

His enters his final race with a sense of failure, but then, quite unexpectedly, he finds an inner reserve. He hits the wall at twenty kilometers but pushes through it, feeling the exhilaration of hundreds of hours of training transform into a second wind; another skier approaches him, but he keeps pace and fends him off. His confidence soaring, he attacks a hill and finds himself in second place with the finish line approaching.

But then the pain creeps in. He has pushed himself faster and farther than ever before. This now is his last and ultimate challenge: the fear of pain and exhaustion and failure. What if he gives it his best effort, but still falls short? Isn't there some security in holding something back, because then you can reassure yourself that you could have done better if only . . .? But he has found a zone now, and has no time for his brain's misgivings. He sets his jaw, digs deep, lunges towards the finish line, collapsing in utter exhaustion . . . and utter triumph.

His supreme effort was by no means world-class: he finished second in the middle wave of the amateur race. But he had performed the best that he possibly could, and he knew it.

Every athlete who ever had a coach has heard the phrase, "Leave it all out there," a jock's injunction to give it your very best effort within the confines of whatever venue or game awaits. Perhaps that is one of the great attractions of sports: rules and parameters, definable moments in space and time--against the clock, on the race track, between the chalk --where it is possible to exert a supreme effort in a compressed timeframe and acheive a tangible result: a trophy, a record time, a "Yo Adrian" photo. One moment in time . . . (I think I hear Whitney Houston singing.)

If only real life were that way. By definition, a supreme effort must be unsustainable, for could you sustain that level of excellence indefinitely, that performance would then become ordinary. The value and glory of the supreme effort come from pushing beyond the limits of the possible, and from exacting a heavy cost at the hands of the performer.

But life, sprinkled with rare opportunities for such ultimate efforts, is largely a haphazard accumulation of much more mundane stuff, activities that require monotonous plodding, not heroic striving. This is not to say that consistent excellence is unattainable. But the vast majority of our lives are spent in acts of just getting by, just doing our jobs, just clinging to the status quo and to whatever level of excellence or mediocrity that we and others have come to expect of ourselves.

How could it be otherwise?

How could I give a supreme effort in being a father?

"Honey, it was tough in there, but I did it. That dirty diaper is history!"

In being a doctor?

"Ma'am, with every ounce of energy I possess, please--PLEASE-- lose fifty pounds. How can I make this any clearer? LOSE THE CHUB, Ma'am. Trust me, I'm a doctor."

In being a neighbor?

"Look, Bob, you've been sick. Let me mow your lawn today. Best job you've ever seen. Through thick and thin, Bob. Put her there. Now, can I borrow your saw?"

I've given a number of supreme efforts throughout my life: cross-country, basketball, missionary work, residency. Sometimes I've excelled; often, I've just hung on by my fingernails. But I have had the satisfaction, when the effort was over, of knowing that I had given it my very best, no regrets.

But it's been a long time since I've had that feeling. Maybe that's just part of my entry into middle age. No more glory days. The new trick is to find meaning, purpose, and joy in the commonplace events of everyday life. And I do find great purpose in my wife and children, in my job and church, in my hobbies and interests.

But the tantalizing spectre of the supreme effort hangs out in front of me. Is it urging me towards some unforeseen, nearly unattainable greatness? What's it going to be? Cross-country skiing? A marathon? Mountain climbing? Or is it tempting me to ignore the pressing issues of real life to wistfully indulge in extraneous daydreams?

Well, I'd love to sit and chat about this some more, but hey, it's Saturday. There are some great football games on.

Guess I'll have to mow the lawn next week.

(Bob's on his own.)

Fruit: The Greatest Hits

As much as I love the veggies from my garden, I've got to admit something. You know the food pyramid? The one that recommends 5 servings of fruits and vegetables every day?

Give me the fruit, baby.

The sweetness, the coolness, the freshness, the flavor . . . what isn't there to love about fruit? By divine providence, we don't have to settle for just a handful, but rather we have a nearly endless variety of succulent fruits to sink our teeth into and let their juices drip from our chins. Fortunately, we live in an age when supermarkets bring to our doors the ripe bounty of the world's best fruits . . .

Here's a list of my twenty all-time favorites, with special attention to the top five:

1) Peach: No fruit carries a higher risk: reward ratio. Nothing is as awful as a dry, stringy peach, but NOTHING is more heavenly delicious than a perfectly ripe peach. I prefer the Palisades, Colorado variety.

2) Strawberry: My innate Fosterness nearly constrained me to place strawberries in first place. But they are a very close second. Sitting on the back porch with fresh strawberry shortcake is as close to Foster paradise as it comes.
3) Grapefruit: The three years we owned a home in Phoenix fulfilled a dream for me: owning a grapefruit tree. They were so sweet and juicy that I never used sugar on them. I have many fond memories of slurping out the final drops of grapefruit juice from my bowl, memories which also haunt my dear wife

4) Mango: My two years in Brazil were memorable for many reasons, but sparking my continued love affair with this ubiquitous fruit was one of the most enduring. We used to pluck them off trees along the streets and suck them dry, then toss the pits into the storm drains. (Of course, then we'd be plucking mango strands from our teeth the rest of the day.)5) Blackberry:
I recently renewed this love, which was first forged along Grandma's blackberry hedge in Tennessee. I love the tartness and the texture of these berries . . .


6) Cherry

7) Raspberry

8) Nectarine

9) Orange

10) Grapes

11) Watermelon

12) Kiwi

13) Apple

14) Apricot

15) Banana

16) Pineapple

17) Cantaloupe

18) Plum

19) Cranberry

20) Pear

(Did I forget any?)

So many fruits, so little time.

Which are your favorites?

Shooting Stars

Recently, Grant and I went camping in the Bighorn Mountains. We were fortunate to go on a night with a new moon and perfectly clear skies, and the stars were radiant and innumerable.

Stars, of course, are always innumerable, but our capacity to perceive them is greatly limited by more local conditions, like sunlight during the day, like moonlight, cloud cover or light pollution at night, or even by our human frailties, like poor eyesight or sleepiness.

But the stars shine on regardless, and on certain nights like this one they revealed themselves to us in all their distant and unfathomable brilliance. The Milky Way was strung like a shimmering banner across the middle of the sky. Constellations too obtuse to name declared themselves boldly. The North Star confidently anchored the whole celestial orchestra as the stars rotated slowly and almost perceptibly across the sky.

The lack of cloud cover made the night crisp, and Grant I and lay bundled in coats and hats on an extra sleeping bag in the middle of a large meadow surrounded by pines. As always, he remained relentlessly inquisitive, peppering me with questions about the sky, and I taught him as best as I could about the sun, the moon, and the stars, about asteroids and meteors, about satellites and falling stars. His sharp mind grabbed the gist of it all, and soon his questions relaxed; our joint pursuit of the evening became to see a falling star.With more stargazing experience I was able to pan my vision out and catch a larger area of sky; over then next hour I saw--not a lot--but dozens of shooting stars, ephemeral flashes of faint light zipping across the corner of my vision. I would point them out, but Grant would turn his head a fraction of a second too late, just after a scintillating streak had evaporated into darkness.

If only I could predict in which pocket of the sky they would flash next; or if I could teach him to widen his focus and encompass a more panoramic vision of the night; or if a monster meteor would tear through the atmosphere and create an unmistakable arc of fire . . .

But time and again, I caught the faint streak out in my peripheral vision, exclaimed surprise and pointed, and Grant would turn, asking earnestly "Where, Daddy? Where?" To which I responded, "Oh, you just missed it, Buddy. Keep watching over this way . . .", and I would point, as if the odds of seeing one over there were somehow increased because I had just seen one there.

Seeking to reward his curiosity and enthusiasm, I turned his attention to satellites for a while, and he was better able to spot them as they criss-crossed the sky in their slow methodical orbits, flaring and fading as their metallic bodies spun and glinted in the invisible moonlight. This was a small success, but not as fleeting or fulfilling as a shooting star . . . and so still we hopefully gazed.

My mind began to drift in and out of the stars, to my oldest dreams of being an astronaut, to science fiction novels, to religion and science, to the agelessness and ancientness of the starry skies, which must have looked just as they had a hundred, a thousand, or even a million years ago, excepting the satellites. I began to perceive depth in the star-fields, convincing my brain that these were not dots on a sheet, but diamonds scattered disparately through the empty profundities of the universe . . .

And then suddenly a brilliant flash ignited directly overhead, blazing a long white-green arc across the middle of the sky that seemed suspended in air for a catchable second. "Ooooh!" I gestured. "Grant, did you see that?"
But my little buddy was quiet, and I glanced to his head nestled on my arm. He breathed deeply and contentedly, his face bathed in blue starlight, his eyes closed. I imagined him dreaming of brilliant and beautiful things, like these shimmering starfields on this moonless night in the mountains that lullabied him to sleep; or like the elusive shooting stars that he couldn't yet see, though his Daddy could, and that was enough for him.

For more amazing star photos, check out this link to the Hubble telescope website

Summer Gardens

I love to garden.
I freely admit it. Maybe that takes me down
a few notches on the coolness scale.
But the truth is that gardening has become
a deeply held passion for me.

Last summer, because of the timing of our move to Worland, we were unable to have a garden, and I felt a tangible sense of loss.
What was summertime without a garden?
All winter long, I thought about our future summer garden:
What would we plant? How would I parcel it?
What would grow in Wyoming?

Springtime came blessedly.
I tilled the garden, mixed in fertilizer and peat moss,
and waited for the magical date of May 15th,
which was to be the last frost for this latitude.
We planted; we watered; we waited.
Nothing sprouted for weeks.
And then--great tragedy!
Thousands upon thousands of weeds began poking out of the soil.
My fertilizer must have been contaminated. Despair!
Feverishly, I plucked and plucked,
but the next day there would be twice as many new weed sprouts.
It seemed impossible to eradicate the intruders.
I had a very real creepy-crawly sensation,
like I was vicariously covered with cooties.
But then my green beans pushed their green heads
through the crumbly soil.
Next came the carrots and onions,
then the zucchini, the cantaloupe, and the sunflowers.
Finally, the broccoli and the watermelon emerged.
The tomatoes and pepper sprouts began to flourish.
I reformulated my weeding strategy.
I couldn't kill the weeds in their infancy--
there were too many and they grew too quickly.
Instead, I would allow the weeds and the veggies to grow up together,
and then as the weeds matured
they would be easier to distinguish and pluck.
It was a downright biblical plan.
A few weeks went by,
and finally it was time to separate the wheat from the tares.
I spent several hours on several nights pulling thousands of weeds and filling dozens of buckets.
It was sweaty, grimy work--but it was intensely satisfying,
like a purging of poison from the body.
The garden seemed to breath freely
with the eviction of the strangulating weeds,
and within days it seemed to double in size.
Its canopy of shade and expanding root system asserted itself,
preventing the weeds from re-establishing.

And now our garden is lush and green and abundant,
and we are dining nightly on its fruits.
We have succulent greenbeans, gargantuan zucchini,
ripening cantaloupe, bright orange carrots,
pendulous tomatoes, and burgeoning broccoli.
Not to mention a mammoth, twelve-foot tall sunflower!

Watering the garden every evening has become a top priority and a meditative ritual. I shower the garden, I breathe in its humid airs,
soaking in its vitality, its productivity, its earthen, organic vibrance.

I garden, therefore I am.

The Assault on Cloud Peak

Three men and a dream . . .
A lush green valley with innumerable lakes . . .
A mystical 13,162 ft peak shrouded away in clouds . . .
A hailstorm, a lightning storm . . .
An endless field of car-sized boulders . . .
A triumphant summit . . .
An exhausted descent . . .
A highly illegal campfire . . .
An adventure, a conquest . . .
A memorable trip with two good friends . . .