Procrastination Blogging: Eek My Science Honors Proposal is Due Edition

Ugh, proposals. I need a little space to think out loud, and to get my doubt and self-loathing out of my system so I can be productive. I know it's just an internal undergrad research grant and not an NIH R01, and I am making it a lot harder than it needs to be probably. I had a really hard time getting my (easier) STEP proposal out last quarter too. A big part of it is feeling like I don't completely understand the project, in large part because I haven't been working in Dr. P's lab (or any labs for that matter) unlike most of the other kids applying. So here goes trying to sketch out some thoughts about the background and experimental design--I think best out loud and process by talking, what can I say. Thanks in advance for listening--you guys are the best!

Soap Lake, Microbial Observatory Extraordinaire

The overall area is looking at how viruses drive microbial evolution and genetic diversity in extreme or stressed environments, in this case a super salty and alkali lake in central WA known as Soap Lake. Such lakes are common in areas where there is more evaporation than rainfall or inflow--the minerals and such become concentrated. Soap Lake is an interesting study area for microbes, because it is so salty and the pH is so high that not much else can live in it besides some bacteria, archaea, and their phage. There are also two distinct layers to the lake due to its geomorphology. The whole area of central and eastern WA was shaped by the massive Missoula floods.

The bottom layer, or monolimnion, was formed first in an earlier flood; the top layer, or mixolimnion, formed on top of it in a subsequent flood. The interesting thing is that due to the difference in densities and composition, the two layers don't mix. The trippiest part is that the zone dividing them, called the chemocline, is surprisingly thin--about 0.5 meters. Dr. P tells me that when they take water samples from the monolimnion, if they forget to weight the instrument it literally strikes the chemocline and floats there. The monolimnion is a constant 7-8ºC, and total dissolved solids of about 85 grams per liter, and there is pretty much no dissolved oxygen--it's pretty much all anaerobes down there. The mixolimnion varies by season in terms of temperature, oxygen levels, and composition (average about 14 g/L).

The mixolimion represents stressed environments because of this flux, particularly in the shallower coastal areas, or even the sediment left when lake levels lower. The takeaway is that since the two layers don't mix, and there are different communities of microbes in each layer, it is interesting indeed to consider how common genes get between them. One should be able to compare the numbers of phage and bacteria in stressed areas (coastal mixolimnion) vs. stable areas (monolimnion) to see whether there is support for they hypothesis the greater the stress on an organism, the more that viruses are movers and shakers of genetic diversity.

Bacteria and the Viruses that Love Them

There have been a number of studies showing that viruses represent one of the richest repositories of genetic diversity on earth, and that one of the key drivers of elevated mutation rates in bacteria is antagonistic coevolution with parasites, vis-a-vis viruses, or phage. Further, because of how virus "lifecycles" (I don't know what to officially call them, since phage aren't technically alive) work, stressed bacteria show evidence of greater horizontal gene transfer.

Horizontal gene transfer is simply any transfer of genetic material that isn't passed from parent to child, which would be vertical transfer. In bacteria and archaea, which are single-celled organisms that reproduce by basically simply dividing, there are only 3 ways this can happen. There's conjugation, in which one bacteria can transmit genetic material directly to another, and is sometimes called bacterial sex, even though it doesn't result in mixing gametes because bacteria don't produce gametes. In conjugation, the receiving bacterium just gets some genes from the donating bacterium. However, bacteria of different genera don't conjugate in natural environments, so that doesn't explain all of the genetic mixing one sees in microbial communities.

There is also transformation, in which bacteria can incorporate free DNA in their environment. However, in an environment that is so salty and alkaline, the free DNA is not particularly functional, and in shallow water areas it is damaged by UV radiation as well. Thus, transformation doesn't really represent a likely vehicle for microbial gene mixing.

That leaves transduction, which is mediated by viruses (which are essentially free DNA or RNA protected by a protein capsid. The reason viruses aren't considered to be alive is because they can't reproduce their genetic material on their own--that is why they infect a host cell and hijack the host's cellular machinery to reproduce themselves. Viruses can undergo lytic or lysogenic reproductive cycles, and some can do both. Lytic phage copy themselves inside a host cell without inserting themselves into host DNA, and then burst or lyse the cell open (killing it) right after replication. Sometimes, when the viral particles are packaging the newly minted DNA, they can incorporate bits of host DNA with them, which get carried to new hosts with subsequent infections. This is called generalized transduction, because any bacterial gene can be transferred this way.

Lysogenic, or temperate phage, have enzymes that allow them to insert themselves into a host's DNA. The host then continues to replicate its "enhanced" genome without incident, creating several copies of new bacterial cells with incorporated prophage, until some sort of stress to the host (lack of nutrients, unfavorable environmental change) signals the prophage to cut themselves back out of the host genome and kick over to the lytic cycle. Sometimes, when these activated phage are excising themselves out they don't cut in exactly the right place, and they end up taking bits of host DNA with them. When they go forth and infect new host cells, they transfer those genes, which can then be incorporated into the new host's genome and reproduced. This is called specialized transduction, because the enzymes of the phage can only insert themselves into specific places in the host genome. The takeaway from this part is that in Soap Lake, the only real avenue for significant genetic recombination is bacteriophage transduction.

And Now, the Experiment!

Now it follows to design an experiment that will not only show evidence of transduction, but whether there are elevated rates of transduction in areas where there is greater stress, since we know that 1) phage protects the integrity of DNA and RNA; and 2) stress induces both lysis of cells and conversion, or excision of prophage, which in turn propagates transduction. So, how to measure transduction? What evidence will point to transduction taking place? For me, this is easiest to conceptualize in steps.

1. # of Transducing Particles (ie Phage)

This step will show how many transducing phage are present in each sample area--if transduction is taking place, then transducing viruses must be present. It is also reasonable that the more viruses, or transducing particles, are present, the more transduction is taking place.

Stressed areas are represented by the coastal waters of the mixolimnion and by the steep chemical gradient of the chemocline. Stable areas would then be the monolimnion and perhaps deeper levels of the mixolimnion. Water samples can be collected for each. The numbers of temperate phage can be figured out by filtering out everything but viruses (which are super tiny compared to bacteria, archaea and zooplankton!) and then reacting the the isolated virus DNA or RNA with probes that will "tag" the temperate, transducing phage that I am interested in. The tagged phage DNA or RNA can then be quantitated to tell me how much of it is present in each sample. If my hypothesis is correct, then more transducing particles will be present in the stressed areas than in the stable areas.

I am in the process of developing those DNA probes right now, as a product of my STEP research grant, using the myriad wonderful gene databases to find genomes of phage and prokaryotes that we know are present in Soap Lake, and then using the equally wonderful free software to compare those genomes and find areas of common, or "conserved" DNA sequences. A probe is basically a short piece of DNA (or RNA, or even antibodies for that matter). DNA is double stranded, and the two strands bind to each other in a very specific way: of the 4 nucleotide bases you have to choose from, only adenine ("A") binds to thymine ("T") and vice versa, and only cytosine ("C") binds to guanine ("G"), unless something goes wrong. Thus, for a sequence reading C-A-T, the complementary strand would be G-T-A. This makes for a stunning and elegant mechanism for coding and replication.

Further, a gene is just a segment of DNA that codes for a product: it can be a protein, or a ribosomal RNA, for instance. So, if you are looking for presence of a specific gene, you can make a probe out of DNA that is a complementary sequence to the DNA of the gene you want. Then you can mix your sample DNA and your probe DNA together in specific temperature and pH conditions, and if your gene of interest is present, it will bind to your probe. Oh, and you can attach markers to your probe to make it easy to find: say, a glowing fluorescent signal. You can then separate the tagged DNA from non-tagged by running it out on a gel and transferring it to what is called a blot membrane, and the strength of your fluorescent signal will tell you how much tagged DNA, or gene of interest, is present in your sample. Pretty neat, yes?

2. Evidence for Actual Transduction

So, hopefully from the experiment above I will know whether or not there are more transducing particles in stressed areas than stable areas. But, that still doesn't tell me that those transducing phage are infecting bacteria and mixing up genomes. I need another arm to my experiment to show that.

For this part, I can collect water samples bacteria and archaea from the same stressed and stable areas as I took for my phage quantitation samples, and catch them on a 0.2 µm filter--the tinier viruses will go right through leaving just the prokaryotes to play with. Once the bacteria and archaea are collected and their DNA is isolated, I can use a DNA probe with a more narrow target, say specifically for viral integrase and excisionase genes (the enzymes temperate phage need to glue themselves in and cut themselves back out of host DNA). If the probe binds to the bacterial DNA, it means that those viral genes are in there--which means that those bacteria and archaea are infected with lysogenic phage! These can also be quantitated in similar manner as in Experiment 1. And, if my hypothesis is supported, then stressed areas will also have greater numbers of infected bacteria.

Finally...wow. That's about it, actually. Other than some snappy statements proving that Sarah Palin and her ilk are anti-science, anti-Greater-Good ingrates if they make fun of this research because they can't see the larger picture, that is. As stated above, viruses are major drivers of bacterial evolution in different ways. Specifically, this research is important because knowledge of viral interaction with bacteria in stressful environments has direct application to how viruses and bacteria will interact in other stressful environments, e.g. clinical medicine when combatting pathogens with antibiotics or antiviral compounds. Further, in an age when antibiotic abuse is epidemic and multiple drug resistant "super bugs" are on the rise, understanding the process(es) and conditions of how bacteria acquire resistance is critical.

So what do you think? Would you give me $3500 plus another grand or so for supplies to carry this out and present it at a conference or research symposium? What parts are good? What parts are missing or need work (other than some of the specifics of the methods, which Dr. P is going to help me fill in, and obviously some of the more breezy, conversational tone that will be formalized up for the actual review committee audience).

More Summer Projects

Did I mention that I'm one of the AMSA community/environmental health grassroots coordinators this year? I am!! It sounds like an important title, and in some sense it is, I suppose, but not as titles go. I'm just happy to have some kind of support and example and community learning to be the kind of doctor I want to be. To that end, I've been kicking around ideas that I might want to head up for my personal project this year, trying to find synergy between things I've done, read, known, like, believe in.

I also need to get off my sorry ass and start volunteering again, and find some docs to shadow. To THAT end, I filled out an application at a network of community clinics here in western Washington (I wish they were east of the Cascades, but oh well) thinking that even if I was doing shitwork in the front office at least I would be getting to see how such a clinic works, how care is delivered, etc. I might even be able to sweet-talk some shadowing. I lagged on getting my PPD test sent off though, and by the time I did all the local positions were filled. However, whatever passes for Providence these days smiled on me--the first suggestion of the volunteer coordinator turns out to be the most awesome. Turns out the Marysville clinic has a small garden behind the building that has fallen into some disrepair, and the new chronic care coordinator and health educator think it would be a peachy idea to revamp it and make it into the community-building, health teaching tool powerhouse it was meant to be, and I quite agree. So that's what I get to do, can you believe it? I get to spend my summer working in a garden for an enormous amount of good, AND I get to make friends with a lot of people who can help me implement a similar sort of project in Ellensburg next year after I move.

Also, I get to serve on the National Primary Care Week planning committee this summer. Shut up, I'm not bragging! I'm just stoked is all.

If you had told me even 2 years ago that this is what my life would look like and this is the kind of potential future I was looking at, I'd have sighed and said if only. Sometimes I really can't believe how lucky I am, to have this chance to become what I might have been.

Friday Summer Freedom Edition

You guys! Finals are finally over. W00t!! I still can't believe that I just took a full year of o-chem, and not only that it was fantastic and I'm in love with it and I CAN'T WAIT for biochem. Also, calculus--so fun! I learned this week that I am only 2 classes plus linear algebra short of a math minor, so there's that. I am, however, a little burned out, so a break from nerd studies is good.

No time for cooking this week, subsisting on salads and toast and oatmeal. And coffee. Lots and lots and lots of coffee! So I'll start the CSA stuff for realz this week, and maybe I'll even have pictures. The weather continues to be cold and mostly kind of crappy, considering it's the middle of June even for out here. We're hopeful but not super optimistic for the garden, although it looks good so far...

I am also finally getting off my ass and learning how to brew. Sunday will be my first foray. We are using James' recipe for a Mutant Blonde--hefeweizen malt, ale yeast and Cascade hops. There will definitely be a post about that. Also, my fantastic calculus prof is also an avid brewer, and started the local club here in B'ham. There are meetings and tastings all the time, so I'm excited to cram as many in as I can before I head east in September. I hear Yakima and Leavenworth both have clubs, so we'll see what happens. The best part of all is that my new bio dept offers a certificate program in craft brewing--my genetics prof is teaching one of the classes. I'm at least 7 different kind of excited about that, as this is something I've wanted to learn how to do for about 20 years now.

OMG CSA!!

Finally! I thought this time of year would never get here. CSA blogging posts forthcoming! CSA's are awesome, you guys. They are an amazing bargain AND you get to support local agriculture, and trying to figure out ways to use what you get every/other week is a super fun and sometimes challenging game--WAY more fun than just shopping for what you want at the farmer's market, which is ok too I guess. Every bin is a surprise, and you may have weird stuff you have no idea how to cook or you may have a ton of something that requires some creativity to come up with different ways to use it all up before it spoils. Last year I discovered gratins, refrigerator pickles, kale/collard/beet chips, veggie burgers and ways to use winter squash so that even I can stand it (not a huge winter squash fan! I wish I were, because it is so beautiful and bright when the weather really starts sucking around here).

So far, the low-hanging "fruit": a gigantic salad with beet greens from the bin, and mustard/collards from the garden, and lettuce and bell peppers from the store and half the cucumber got made into a mint raita that will probably go over some lentil patties or dress some bean/grain salad.

What are you guys doing for food this summer?

Becoming a Mol Bio Nerd For Realz

It's true. I'm off to CWU in September--w00t!

With Callous Disregard

This. Definitely click through on the links Liss has helpfully provided, they are worth the read. It's exhausting, infuriating, and despair-making, and I don't even have little ones, let alone ones with autism. I get why people distrust the medical establishment, but I also still insist that medical science is the best protection we have: paraphrasing Einstein's quote, "All our science, measured against reality, is primitive and childlike — and yet it is the most precious thing we have." Science is only a tool, and it can be abused like any other. It has been before, and is, and will be again. Particularly in alt health, where all kinds of magical claims abound. Sometimes they turn out to be true, and most of the time not so much. Often measuring their truth claims is hampered by the limitations of current technology, or even sometimes how we think about them and frame research questions. It is true that changing your thinking and questioning your assumptions about what you think you know leads to breakthroughs and important new knowledge. Also, it is often those outside the priviliged class of knowledge makers, those on whom knowledge is deployed, who show that knowledge is incomplete, flawed, and/or comes from a deeply biased place that has no place in responsible science. Before this turns into a huge essay on Kuhn, Haraway and feminist standpoint theory, all I can say is let your own embodied knowledge guide you, but not blind you. Also, skepticism: embrace it.

In Which Greta Christina Says What I've Been Thinking For a Long Time

It's a hazard of the trade when you work in alt health, I know.

But damn--if I have to listen to one more person earnestly impress on me how the universe will provide for me if I let it, how things are meant or not meant to be, or how staying positive!! will totally make everything turn out peachy, I'm going to throw up all over hir shoes. Really, I will. At least Greta has given me fodder for a reply besides a tight-lipped smile and a "Yeah, wow, look at the time, I've gotta get to somewhere else." And she pretty much nails it.

You should check out her Facebook meme project too. I can't deny that sometimes a little of the appeal of being an atheist is how horrifying and scary so many people find it, even though of course it's really pretty innocuous and it usually shines quite a big giant floodlight on that person's unwillingness to be totally intellectually honest with hirself. But mostly, it's just tiresome and annoying.

This makes it all worthwhile again, though. Enjoy!

Why I Want to Be a 'Punk

This post started as a reply to a comment in the last post, and had the added benefit of helping me earn my self-anointed crown of The Procrastinatrix. But it kept growing and growing, so I decided to make a whole other post about it, since it's stuff I've been thinking about for a while and have been trying to tease apart its threads since I got here.

The comment that started it all stated that Boulder and Denver were totally saturated with LAc's and trying to start a practice in either place was only for the punishment gluttons. I think Denver is still pretty wide open if you know where to go and you have a decent referral network in place. This is especially so with CA style practices, if you are willing to set up shop in some the the scrubbier places like the southwest or northeast.

Likewise with Boulder, only there you need an EXCELLENT and large referral network, otherwise, it's beyond annoying. Also, they have two community clinics now that apparently Mary and Sammhita are running separate shops or at least two locations of the same shop. Jen sent me an article last week titled "10 Things About Colorado You Thought Were Cool Until You Got Here", and Boulder is one of them. It's not even the yuppiness and priceyness I don't like. There's this very self-conscious and self-congratulatory awareness and identity of being awesome by virtue of living in Boulder and driving a Subaru and shopping at Whole Foods and doing yoga and having an outdoor lifestyle, whatever that means. Blearrgh.

Earnestness, or performed earnestness that calls attention to its authentic earnestness is obnoxiousness of the first order, I think. And I resemble this description a bit, I admit: I couldn't stand Whole Foods even before their libertarian asshat of a CEO opened his literary piehole in the WSJ and if I could find a yoga teacher who would just teach us the movements without narrating to me what kind of enlightenment I should be getting or how awesomely balanced my chakras were supposed to be becoming I might actually go more than once every two years. But maybe not--running free outside and alone holds a hell of a lot more appeal for me. But, I do drive a Saabaru which I freely chose because I liked it and I play outside a great deal. I guess the difference for me is that what I do isn't my "lifestyle", emphasis on style. It is, quite simply, my life. It's my culture and my orientation and my values and my redemption and my community and the only thing I've found ever that consistently puts me back into phase with myself so I can deal with the rest of the world. There's nothing decorative or "styled" about it. I really can't emphasize that enough.

Which is why I have no interest in people who (earnestly or not) feel the need to "work on themselves" like they'd work on restoring a classic car or model train set. Back a couple of years ago when some Cristo-type artist "stuck" the city of Portland with giant acupuncture needles after mapping out "meridians", and it was all controversial and shit, Skip put up a post about it. I do recommend clicking through and scrolling down the comments, particularly to Lisafer's discussion of what she calls "Hipster Chinoiserie", or the interest in Chinese medicine that is really just interest in it as decoration for something. Go ahead, I'll wait.


Done? Ok then. I'm as irritated by it as she is, and largely for the same reasons. I'm not a goddamn lifestyle and my work sure as fuck isn't about being someone's hobby of spiritual enlightenment. Without realizing it when I began writing, I think I've fleshed out that long-ago promised post on why I can't stand luxury spas and other trappings that deliberately convey exclusionary status by virtue of their cost, rarity and general ostentatious displays of excess. Because at the end of the day it's all a big, elaborate conceit. Because by the time you've gotten to that level, all the other things that go into a zen spa acupuncture treatment are worlds away from the acupuncture and completely about something else. Which is not to say there is no value in such things, and that if places and treatments (giving or receiving) like that really make your heart go pitter-pat, well that's valid.

Just please don't tell me that's all there is to what I do, or all there should be to what I do. If that were true, I wouldn't be an acupuncturist any more. All this time I've been laboring under the delusion propagated by the Marilyn Allen types of our establishment that value is connected to cost, and high cost equals high value, and that if people see that I live a high-cost "lifestyle" (see?!) then they will accord me more respect and value more greatly my work, which will be proven by the amount they are willing to pay for it and I will be a rich (which defines successful) acupuncturist who brings honor and prestige to the profession. I have also been laboring under the delusion that my unwillingness to participate this way means my self-esteem is for crap and I need to "work" on that so I can be a rich successful acupuncturist who brings honor and wealth and prestige to myself and my profession.

Don't get me wrong--I'm all for prestige and respect for my work and my fellow LAc's. We are some pretty amazing people and we do beautiful work in the world, no matter what the setting or patient base. The thing is for me, that prestige and respect and success and value, to me, have nothing to do with how much money I make or charge. Which is not to say I intend to take a vow of poverty, or that I think money is evil and loathsome and too dirty for my noble spirit to brook any truck with. It's just that it's only money. It's functional for me, and enables me to do what I want to do. And except for a few choice pieces of gear and technical clothing, what I want is pretty simple. Also, so. I value community, connection, family, friends, love, simplicity, integrity and kitty cats a lot more. I can't pretend for the life of me I don't.

So yeah, personal growth takes consciousness and discipline and reflection, but it also takes integration and the willingness to live it as you're doing the work. And if you have to advertise what you're doing so people will give you the cookies you think you deserve for being such a speshul widdle snowflake, then enlightenment: ur doin it wrong. Avoid nothing, face everything. As you live it. It really doesn't get more simple than that. And you by no means have to execute it perfectly--fucking up royally is part of the process. Art and activism are inseparable from life. I also have a lot of contempt for dogma, stereotype and cliché.

That being said, that's no reason for Absolute. seriousness. at all. times. Back in my halcyon Women's Studies days, my favorite inspirational quote was a saying attributed to Emma Goldman: "If I can't dance it's not my revolution." My medicine and my work and my approach to both are joyous, fluent, flexible, often unruly, possibly irreverent, probably humorous and generally sacred by being not at all sacred. Hmm. Sacred is another word with I have trouble with, but that's still another post. For now, my work is me and my work is of the world. It is humble and borne of love. It is my offering to the multiverse. No fanfare, no fuss.

Mental Aether Update 2

I almost don't know what to say, so much has happened since the last post. And I'm actually sleepy at a somewhat reasonable hour, which is a minor miracle. So I'll just sum up for now.

Loveland is out. Also, the practice purchase in Longmont is a no go. True, it has its problems, but I could have dealt with that if I knew I were totally in love with being her and committed to staying indefinitely. Or at least for the next 5 years. Which I'm not. Necessarily.

Practice is slow, for a number of reasons. The economy blows goats. No one here knows me. People who have heard of me are freaked out about losing their jobs, and even if they are not, $75 per tx is a tough sell when your patient base is what/where it is. Every time it seems to pick up it slows back down again.

I feel exactly like I felt on the JMT last year. Sitting on a rock at the base of Donahue Pass, miserable and hating myself for wanting to quit and knowing I was going to, even thought it was what I wanted and I knew it would make me happier. I really just want company.

So for some reason I picked up Lisa's book about Acupuncture is Like Noodles, and was instantly made happy and inspired again. A lot of it resonates with me, and themes I've been rassling with lately. Namely, privilege. Throughout my acupuncture education, there was absolutely no examination of privilege or intersectionality. There was no attempt to locate any of what we were learning in any kind of historical or cultural location that MIGHT just not be universal. There was not much attempt of any kind to be critical of anything at all. And it really gave me buttrash sometimes, especially when concepts like yin and yang got conflated with gender performance and what a woman or man was SUPPOSED to be or supposed to act like. It really made me want to yell at things.

The stuff about class was just as awesome as the stuff about gender and sexuality (and I'm reminded of Dorothy Parker's line about how heterosexuality isn't normal, just common). To wit, that if we really valued ourselves and our work we would charge expensive prices for it and if people couldn't pay then it meant they just didn't value their health or they weren't ready to get better. Because everyone can tell stories about poor black single mothers with elaborately braided hair and painted nails who buy groceries with food stamps. It boils down to the whole "Why you haz cell phone?" argument. But of course not all working class people are like that. Most of them aren't. And whether they are or are not, is not the point. As Lisa cogently notes, a person earning $25k a year pays about 7% of their monthly income for a $100 treatment. For a person earning $150k, $600 represents about 7% of their take home pay. No one morally scolds the professional earning $150k for balking at paying $600 for acupuncture, even though doing so would likely not jeopardize that person's ability to keep their utilities on.

I've been in tight spots too, and I have to say--that's just not accurate about people not valuing their health. It sounds a lot like blaming victims to me, like the concurrent obsession with mendacious fuckwittery like The Secret wherein if anything bad happens to you its your own damn fault for not thinking more positively. Ugh. These are people supposedly in the vocation of helping people with compassion. To me the class bigotry is unmistakable. Privileged people never tire of hearing the ways in which their own privilege is justified and makes the world as they experience it a just so story.

So I'm going back to my original passion of having a community style practice. It squares with just about everything I want to do, with all that drives me and gets me up in the morning. The only question is... where? Stay tuned.

14er Day!

See how windy it was?

Well, it happened. I spent a perfectly good Sunday clambering up and down Longs Peak, the highest 14er in the Front Range. It's a rite of passage, really, if you are a Coloradan. I mean, we have a few 14ers in California, but people don't keep little passports and check each peak off as they bag it. Perhaps because most Cali 14ers are somewhat technical, or at least a huge pain in the ass to access, even if you want to spend a weekend doing it.

So, I figured it was about time. I've heard about the legendary shitty weather. I was supposed to climb the Kieners route in June with my BMS class, but my need to spend a week on the San Juan (I'm so NOT sorry) negated that. This seems like the best time of year to go for a "hike" route, even though our weather has been unpredictable even by Colorado standards, which is saying something.

Jamie and I had tried to do Audobon the day before, but weather. It was cold,rainy and generally shitty from waking up in the morning, and it didn't get better until we were mostly back to the car, lolsob. As a few drops fell, and thunder rumbled languidly in the distance, we looked at each other, not wanting to turn back but... we said, we'll turn back if the graupel comes. Sure enough, right before we popped out above treeline the graupel hit--fortunately for us we had timed it perfectly and the hill plus trees provided the perfect lee if we hunkered down low. It passed, and we decided to go up to the top of the ridge and see what it looked like. It looked better, but then there was a huge, ugly black cloud moving fast from behind the summit, straight at us. The cold wind picked up and nearly knocked up sideways. It was painful, but we bagged it and started down. By the time we got to the car, it looked better at the peak, but... it's close, we'll do it another day.

So for Longs, I crashed at Bob's and we got up at 4, were out of the house before 4:30, and were walking by 5:05. The parking lot was FULL, so we found parking on the side of the road, which was also pretty full. And it was COLD--about 45º, less than I would have thought, even if it is 9400 feet. And it was windy--cold windy. Bob's headlamp died a sputtery death before we even got to the trailhead, so it was all on our little LED flashlight (I forgot mine too, duh). A harbinger of things to come? Sort of.

We stopped after about an hour when Bob announced he had to dig a cathole. He said something about, "You can go on if you want..." trailing off into the trees. But it wasn't settled, so I sat down to wait. And wait. And wait. I tried to take a 5 minute catnap, thinking surely he wouldn't miss me coming back to the trail. Weeeeell.
After 20 minutes or so I decided to go tell him I was going to start moving, because I was starting to shiver. But I couldn't find him. I shouted out, but nothing. So, do I assume he moved on, or? I picked up the trail and started walking, and asked the first party of people coming the other way if they'd seen a man meeting Bob's description. Sort of--they were positive they did, but then they also asked if he was wearing glasses and a turtleneck and trekking poles (he was wearing a short-sleeved crew, no glasses and no poles). Hmm. I made a note of the burnt snag at the side of the trail, checked my watch, and kept walking, in case I needed to find the spot again. After a few more minutes who should come hurrying down the trail, confused because he knew I wasn't as slow as some of the people out there but no way I could be that fast either. We resolved to wait for affirmation of communication from now on.

We peeled off onto the Jim Grove trail, and soon enough joined back up to the masses and found ourselves at the Boulder Field. We found ourselves some boulders to hide between and snack on last night's leftover pizza. This was where the fun part would start.

Boulder-hopping onto the north face, no big deal, just easily winded from out of shape and 13k feet. Then, the route crossed a snow field. The snow was rock hard and crusty. We had no axes or crampons. We opted to scramble up the exposed rock spine at the edge of the snow, and discovered that there was a net of ice, or verglas, strewn over lots of the rocks, which made placing hands and feet limited. We started up a crack that looked a little dicey but doable, until Bob, who was above me, said, "Let's not go this way." We downclimbed, traversed back across the snow and onto the proper crack.

But, we had no pro--and our only ropes were a cordelette and a 15ft length of 11mm rope someone had fashioned into rap sling which Bob retrieved on our way up, thinking it might come in handy. Ahem.

The crack route got icy, and there weren't super bomber handholds everywhere for starters. The cable has long since been taken down, although the fatty eyebolts are still there and frequently used as rap anchors. Thus, making sure your hands and feet weren't going to slip or otherwise make you lose your balance was super, SUPER important--because if you did, you were probably going for a tumble off the north corner of The Diamond, a huge, sheer cliff on the east face. It would be a recovery effort more than a rescue, likely. But we didn't let our brains go there until after we sat, shaky, at the top of that section saying, "Let's never do that again."

Fortunately, Bob is a better and taller climber than I, so he led us up. We fashioned a ridiculous belay for me with a loop of the rope around my wrist and him holding onto the other end and the rock with a death grip. Also fortunately, I'm good enough that I only needed the rope as a kind of aider for my left hand on the last pitch, where he could hitch it securely around one of those eyebolts.

All that was left was more scrambling to the top, where we popped out onto a huge, windy and cold football field at 14,265 ft, or something like that. Even tucked in behind a rock it was still cold. Bob grabbed his super sexy red GoLite down jacked for me, but packed only a thick fleece for his insulating layer. I admit, and so does he, the wind was unexpectedly cold that day. We finished the rest of our pizza, and headed back down the Keyhole route like everyone else that day--we had Cables all to ourselves. Still, it wasn't nearly as crowded as I thought it might be.

The route down was just long--seemed way longer than the way up, but then I guess it usually does.

Jamie and I are doing Elbert on Labor Day weekend. According to my sources, there is considerably less of a pucker factor on that one. Stay tuned!

More Women We Love

Finally, someone publicly debunks Uncle Pat's racism for the crustified, unreconstructed wankery that it is.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

How I Love Sarah Haskins

The next person to offer up patriarchal, crustified wankery dating advice like this bolus of writer's crap that appeared in my inbox yesterday is totally getting this link.



I do recommend clicking through to the Intent articles comments thought. The mind reels.

CU's PA Program is Officially Awesome

So I meant to put up a post when I got home on Friday and then things got away from me. I've officially begun the search for a good PA program and to organize the effort to get in! I've thought about it a lot over the past year or so, I've shadowed a couple of PA's (ones in family practice and one who does ortho surgery), I've talked to docs who've been in the profession long enough to sense which way the sands are shifting, and I'm pretty well there. I know from the message boards that PA's exist who hate their jobs because they would rather be docs, but those who thoughtfully weighed their decision between the two, evaluated the differences and came out on the side of PA are really, really happy.

On the MD side is my ego and the fear that maybe I am able to only work for myself. On the PA side is getting to do the part of the job I love the most (diagnose and treat) while not having to mess with the responsibility of a practice, of getting to work with a doc so there is someone to bounce difficult cases off of, 4-5 years of training as opposed to twice that, the ability to pick up and change specialties as easily as changing jobs instead of having to complete a whole new residency if I end up not liking what I'm doing, etc. etc. In short, it looks like it will fit into the life I want, instead of requiring me to dedicate and conform my life to it. Sure, there are specialties you can choose if you prefer to "dabble" in medicine: radiology or maybe physiatry, ER can be pretty flex too. But still. The more I learn the more excited I get, and I don't think I've felt this excited since I realized I needed to go to acupuncture school. Being a PA will, of course, mean that I will not only still be able to be an acupunk I will be able to get to people who would otherwise not think to try it in a million years. It will satisfy my need to integrate the two worlds. I can work with overseas and underserved populations that as an LAc are years away. And so on and so on.

So I visited my first program on Friday. Holy shit! The medical campus makes up for being in the middle of east Jesus nowhere by being all sparkly clean and new, and by having all kinds of cool stuff like a standardized patient program and high tech mannequins for practicing procedures and treatment scenarios. In the gross anatomy classes you only share your cadaver with 3 other students and you don't rotate--you get to do a full dissection. They have overseas rotations including India, Ghana, and a Spanish immersion in Costa Rica. You can put together your own rotations if there's someplace you'd like to work and they are open to it. You have the advantages of going to a school that also has a medical school, dental school, nursing, PT, etc. schools and all the professional resources that those provide. They work integratively with some of the other schools so you begin to get a sense of what it really means to work as a team.

Predictably, it is competitive. 600 applicants compete for about 100 interviews and about 40 of those get spots. I have my work cut out for me as I plan my prereq courses and start prepping to retake the GRE (sadly my awesome previous score is so 1998) early next year. It will be at least 2 years out, but I'm so excited sometimes it's hard to sleep at night. I am still a dork.

A very, excited and purpose-driven dork.

Why Health Shouldn't Equal Moral Rectitude

Amanda has a great post up over at Pandagon on the concern trolling of OMG Regina Benjamin is too fat to be surgeon general!!11! and the larger issue of moralizing health. If you guessed that all the fuss really isn't about Benjamin's weight or health status at all (last time anyone checked, there were no such requirements in order to be able to kick ass at the job), congratulations--you win a pony!

For instance:

It’s enough to know that most people strongly associate health and weight. So when disingenuous sexists start to bellyache about the dangers of letting fat women out in public, they get traction, because it’s becoming increasingly acceptable to suggest that not being perfectly healthy is a moral failing that should be punished with social disapproval, shaming, ostracism, and lowered access to society. Of course, we double down on fat people, and triple down on fat women, because of plain old prejudice, but this isn’t happening in a vacuum. Smokers, people who don’t eat right, and other people with poor health habits are also considered morally inadequate, if harder to judge because they’re harder to spot.

What is troubling about this is how it shapes policy: healthcare coverage is only for the deservedly healthy--if you have a poor outcome it's probably due to your irresponsibility and therefore you don't deserve help.

There is also an important discussion on the tactics of shaming in order to eliminate or modify people's behaviors:

People who see sex as a fraught, moral issue aren’t often in a good place to make healthy changes to their sexual habits. People who don’t view the status of your genitals as a judgment on your moral character are often in a lot better position to take care of themselves. For instance, if you get an STD and you think this means that you’re being punished for sin, you’re much more likely to be in denial, not get treatment, and pass it on. If you think it’s got no more moral implications than getting a cold, then you’re much more likely to get treatment.

I guess we need to make a choice, and sooner than later: do we really, truly care about helping people and having a healthier society full stop or do we care more about the smug, self-satisfied superiority we get from being moral scolds who other and punish?

On Food, Economics, Community and Development

This is EXACTLY what I was on about in my last I Write Letters post.

Having access to healthy food and an active lifestyle is, simply put, a matter of privilege. I grew up around towns like these and we'd see it all the time, although the industry was less agriculture and more logging/millwork since we were closer to the foothills.

Which is not to say there is nothing people in such circumstances or communities can't do about it--there are plenty of examples, from community gardens and CSA's out of vacant lots and school grounds to the group in the story that met with their city government to fix up their park so they could safely start a walking club. It's just to say that some people have to work a little bit harder, and it's not just about simply making "different" choices. As the story shows, plenty of people in the central valley would love to make different choices, but there are barriers preventing them from freely doing so.

The audio can be downloaded at the link above.

One More Future Post Note

I really, really need to explore why spas make my skin crawl. I just know there's lots to unpack in that knapsack, don't you?

I Write Letters

Dear Pitchers of Self-Righteous, Sanctimonious Victim-Blaming Health Woo:

You make me crazy with your assertions that people's poor health is totally, 100% their own fault for choosing to live "toxic" (conveniently ambiguously undefined!) lives how if we'd all just detox we could live in wellbeing and harmony and all fart rainbows. You piss me off for the same reason all the people still yammering about things like The Secret and the so-called Law of Attraction piss me off: that you are 100% responsible for everything that happens to you and that you are in 100% control, and if you don't have what you want or bad shit comes your way it's your own damn fault so just change it already and quit yer bitching and victim talk and take control problem solved thanks that will be 3 low, low, LOW payments of $29.95.

I want to say a lot more about this later, as it really deserves its own(additional) post, but for now, I want to get down that I understand the inclination to want to control your world. I do. I want it just as much as anyone else. But your assertions are patently ridiculous. And it reeks, reeks, REEKS of economic and class privilege to aver that this is categorically, uncritically so. It's like telling the poor to go and eat cake if they can't find bread to eat. Seriously.

So, for the article I read this morning (one in a series which I also hope to get to eventually--I've reached my critical bullshit breaking point) opining that health is up to the individual, I agree and disagree. Partly on the basis of the author's shaky at best "grasp" of the science of diseases like cancer, straight up. But also, even presupposing the author's premise that health is a choice and unhealthy people get cancer because they choose to live such a filthy, toxic lifestyle, I say your privilege is showing again.

I am a privileged person. I grew up in a white, middleclass, educated family, with two grandmothers who were so old school they were hippies before hippies existed. We ate almost exclusively homegrown fruits and vegetables, whole grains, weren't allowed sugar or soda or even juice on a regular basis (except, everything else as preservative and additive free as possible. We never ate out and never ate fast food. Not allowed to watch TV and "forced" to go outside and play in our vast yard or safe suburban neighborhood or even more vast (and safe for kids to roam free) open space behind our house. My mother even made much of my baby food herself with our Foley mill. I grew up in a small, rural town with most of its nature intact and unpolluted/uncontaminated by industry. Etc, etc.

I am lucky to come from GENERATIONS of such people on both sides of my family. Read: we have no family history of diabetes, cancer, heart disease, stroke, etc. Nearly everyone lives to be at least 90. Yet, my own mother, who was also subject to this healthy genetic pedigree and was raised in the same privilege and was so conscious of health that she made my own baby food, was herself diagnosed at the age of 34 with cancerous tumors in her heart (yeah, wrap your head around that one, it's extremely rare even in the medical literature) that aggressively metastasized, well, everywhere and was dead about 3 months later. And children cancer--are you seriously going to tell me their parents brought that shit on by insisting on living a life of shitty food and environmental toxins? Or crappy, negative thoughts? Really?

I now am lucky enough to live in a sweet little neighborhood in south central Denver in a well-cared for house amongst many well-cared for houses, far enough from the freeway or messes of high tension wires that I need to worry about such things. We have an excellent water supply. On Sundays in summer I can walk to the Old South Pearl farmer's market, and when I can't I can afford to shop (if I'm picky) at either Whole Foods or Vitamin cottage which I can either walk or ride to. As I shop in such places, surrounded by organic whole foods many of which are local and most of which are sustainably produced, I notice that pretty much everyone shopping there is like me. They always are. I live this way because I care, because I am conscious that it DOES matter what food and lifestyle choices we make. And because I have privilege, I am able to CHOOSE in the first place, not to mention make fully informed choices.

Even though I have been quite poor at various times in my perpetual student lifestyle, I recognize that I am still privileged. Even the times when I was happy to eat rice and dried beans and oatmeal for a few weeks just to have something to put in my belly I'm still privileged. Because I know it won't always be this way. Because I have the knowledge and experience of taking good care of my health and making good choices. Because I am not so debased that even in (especially in!) Los Angeles I was able to afford to live in a neighborhood that was safe, and quiet, and green, and close to the ocean where natural breezes helped dispel some of the hazardous pollution, and safe places to recreate were all around me. Healthy people surrounded me and supported and praised my decision to choose health. It makes a huge difference. Does it ever occur to anyone to ask why everyone at their yoga classes and such is almost always from a certain cultural and economic station?

When I worked at Scottel, I shared an office with a young woman who had a 7-year-old and a 2-year-old. She and I would talk about them from time to time, and the trials and tribulations that come with raising kids. She and her husband were basically just starting out with fairly entry-level jobs, trying to raise 2 little ones in an expensive city. They lived in a little apartment where it wasn't safe to send kids out on the streets to play unless you watched them like a hawk, so they spent a lot of indoor time, watching more TV than she would like. And since her husband was all but a child himself in the kitchen and she worked full-time and neither of them were raised with the best traditions of food choices, it was tough for her to make sure everyone ate right all the time. Etc, etc. Tough going for a 23-year-old. I understand her frustration.

So my proposition is this: yes we live in a toxic shitty world. Yes, it is possible sometimes to choose whether (and to what extent) you will live in it. But at some point you have to acknowledge that not everyone has those choices, or at least that range of choices. For millions it's not as simple as telling them to quit eating conventionally grown produce and fast food, and get outside and get some exercise and start a meditation practice in the 5 minutes you may have to yourself as a single parent holding down 3 jobs to make ends meet. And I haven't even started on access to decent healthcare, or problems endemic to our current system of healthcare as predicated on a disease-management model vs. one based on prevention, but whatever, as we say in grad school academia, "that is beyond the scope of this discussion."

At some point, if you are serious about helping people, if you really, truly, REALLY give a shit then you have to acknowledge institutionalized forces (that are bigger than any individual) of economics, of public policy, of FOOD POLICY in this country which SUCKS tremendously, of racism, classism, sexism, able-ism, all the other -ism's that dictate and constrain the choices people make every day about how they negotiate their world. And once you do that, of course, you become dangerous, and radical in the most traditional meaning of the word. And not everyone is ready or willing to go there, to see that much or call for something so big and comprehensive. It means going through the looking glass.

It means acknowledging your own unearned privilege and maybe even giving some of it up. It means committing to paying with your life (not in death, necessarily, but in myriad other ways) in order to continue your work for wider goals of economic and social justice for everyone. It means considering that there are barriers in the way of everyone living your so-called simple universal "cosmic laws". It means having an honest discussion about our country's food policy and making sincere efforts to support community gardens and CSA's and the like that are actually trying to empower people and communities instead of just telling them to buy better food and get some exercise, fatty or you'll get all the health problems you so richly deserve (ah, fat hatred apologia--yet another series of future posts!)

And if you're not there yet, that's ok, I totally get it. I wasn't always where I am, and boy have I been painfully called out on the carpet for my ignorant assumptions over the years. Wanted to sink through the floor and die, I did. It's a process, and we are all in it, and it takes a lifetime. It's not always comfortable, and sometimes it's depressing and even scary, and you may occasionally find yourself paralyzed with despair. You'd be in some good company, believe me. But you move forward with it because you care, because you are committed. You can only start where you are and go from there. But goddamn. Be upfront about it.

And until you are willing to be that comprehensive and self-conscious, kindly take your self-righteous, healthier-than-thou sanctimony and shove it up your ass.

Love,
LoLo

Mental Aether Update

A lot of things have been swirling around in there for a while. There are many, many posts I should probably write. There is a whole other health-related blog that I need to imagineer for my practice and soon-to-be-honest-to-goddess website. I'm feeling frustrated and somewhat rudderless trying to find my way and how I will fit into the larger world as a practitioner of TCM, like a woman without a country since I don't feel much affinity with what I've encountered so far in the "orthodox" TCM camps, but allopathic medicine by and large still has its head up its collective arse about incorporating anything new that isn't shiny and expensive and readily demonstrated by randomized, double blind controlled studies. Also, I went to an awesome functional medicine seminar in Boulder last week given by a former internist named Larry Dossey that was extremely interesting and thought-provoking, on the growing importance (and hopefully inevitability) of [allopathic] medicine's acknowledging the connection of mind, body and spirit when it comes to healing (and that each has the potential to affect the others, to which those of us trained in Chinese paradigms roll our bored eyes and mutter "duh!" while taking another swig of some elixir out of a highball glass).

In short, there's been a lot going on in my head, and I've been feeling a lot of frustration about wanting and not being able to zero in on the words to express it.

I need to review a couple of things, hopefully this week or next. One, there was a huge expose of Oprah and her great love of woo (fine, it's Oprah, whatever) but the privileging of that (with the complete abandonment of reason and science) over what we now practice and believe to be true about medicine is not okay. And I come from a long background of analyzing and criticizing bias, privilege, knowledge and knowledge production, etc. I am not beholden at all to the idea of science as some kind of church or holy sacrament for which you will be swiftly and surely punished if you dare to be critical. But I do see lots of parallels to work we did in women's studies and later in my career in education. So there's that.

And in my quest to begin to understand why I hate woo and have such a visceral reaction of anger toward it (and the pressure to accept it uncritically, even if it seems made up out of whole cloth), I came across yet another article this morning about how your poor health is totally, 100% your own fault for choosing to live a toxic life. It grew to be so long that it became it's own "I Write Letters" post. If you are reading this far, you've already hopefully enjoyed it.

So yeah, I have lots to say. Lots I NEED to say. As Gloria Anzaldua wrote that she was afraid to write, but she was more afraid NOT to write. She also wrote a shitload of righteous awesome in her book La Frontera and her other writings in This Bridge Called My Back, which should be required reading at some point. And please understand that I don't mean to appropriate her struggles and the risks she took to speak out about them or even consider them to be remotely my own, but they do help. They illuminate and inspire. And stress the importance that there has to be hope and vision for something different, and better.

As she and Cherríe Moraga once said, "To assess the damage is a dangerous act. To stop there is even more dangerous."

Now, if you'll excuse me I have some reading to go and do!

Finn Discovers Mushrooms!

The boring kind, that is. But still awfully cute...

For Whom the Maroon Bells Toll

You ever have a trip that turns out to be nothing like what you worked so hard to make it be? Even when you didn't really work that hard? Then you know what I'm talking about.

The original plan: leave early Saturday for the 26.something mile 4-pass schlep around the Maroon Bells. Arrive at trailhead, hoist on packs, and go--hopefully at least getting over West Maroon by the end of the day. Day 2 and 3 more of the same until back at the car, whence glorious shedding of stinky trail clothes and plans for post-trail beer and pizza commence. Drive home full of delicious beer and pizza, take showers, take naps, procrastinate cleaning gear as long as possible.

Well. Blink. Sigh.

Don't get me wrong--this was an awesome trip! Just, different.

It began the night before Day 1 when that nigori I split with Quinn over dinner made me too sleepy-drunk to drive home and James had to instead. Plus getting home and remembering that we still had to write out recipe instructions and prep/repackage all our food and pack since we got back too late from climbing the 5th to do it before dinner. James wanted to do some of it at night, but I made sad puppy eyes at him and flopped on my bed, practically falling asleep instantly.

We got up at 6 and did all that, had almost left the house just after 9 when we realized all kinds of stuff, like ZOMG we forgot the wine AND the platypus to put it in, we still had to stop off at the Crushery for coffee and breakfast, etc. I think it was more like 10 when we finally got on the 25. Once there decent time was made--I loved the red convertible with a couple in Cat in a Hat hats, all decked out for the 4th. It seemed like forever until we got to Glenwood, but we did.

Then, we had to stop at the gear shop because James needed a shirt and I needed a rain jacket (except I didn't, since my old one was hiding in the deepest darkest corner of James' pack unbeknownst to us until we shook everything down in camp later that night). Ah well, you can never have too many jackets, right? Then Safeway for a pot scrubber and pouch of smoked salmon and inferior deli sammiches, and finally we were on our way down to Aspen.

As we drove up the road to the trailhead, a road easel informed us that auto travel was restricted up to the Bells and we would have to take a bus. Crap. Or not, depending. We circled around, found parking, tried to find info in the people-forsaken visitors center (nice touch, Aspen Highlands!) and finally figured out from a guy working down in a gear rental shop that overnighters could in fact drive up and park. So up we went.

We pulled up to the ranger booth at the entrance. Our conversation went something like this:

Me: We're here to start a 3 day backpack trip.
Ranger: You have to go back down and take the bus.
Me: But there's no overnight parking down there--what are we supposed to do?
Ranger: Oh, you're overnight? Oh! Well ok. $10. When are you leaving? Oh, let me write you a different pass then.
James: Here's $10.
Ranger: You'll also want to take some chicken wire to wrap around your car for porcupines 'cuz they--oh, you know?
Me: Boy howdy, I do--I've had a car eaten by marmots in the Sierras more than once.

Etc. As she talked I noticed a list of annual passes taped to the window, and that my National Parks pass looked a lot like one of them, so I asked. Turns out, it did. So she took back our pass, and threw a couple rolls of chicken wire into the back seat, but didn't give us back James' $10. When we asked, she replied, "I don't remember you giving me a $20... but..."

Sheesh.

So we get up to the trail head, and realize we don't have the pass it sounded like we needed to put in the window, so after gulping down the inferior sandwiches (I was powerful cranky by now, and it was raining--yay!) we drove back down, only to be informed by a different ranger that putting up our annual pass would be just dandy, thanks so much. So, back up again. Changing into trail clothes in the rain, getting organized in the rain, etc. We toyed briefly with either trying to find a campsite or hotel room in Aspen, but then laughed at ourselves for thinking such a thing on the 4th of July. Suck it up and at least hike to Crater Lake, and then reassess. We even considered driving back down the road the the place in Snowmass where James took me and Jamie last year.

By the time all of this was done and we were on the trail, it was about 3:45 and the sun was back out. No excuses now! We quickly slalomed through the day trippers around Maroon Lake and headed up the Crater Lake trail. Such a relief to finally be out! After about an hour it started raining again, even though it was still sunny and no clouds overhead. Bloody weather. Soon enough we got to the lake, and were pleased to discover that hardly anyone was there--even backpackers. We found our camp at #4 (the best one is #6, but that's what you get for not finding enough beta beforehand I guess) and set up. James took an awesome shot of his tent pitched in front of a dark, wet clearing that, along with the reflection from his camera flash on the guy-lines, made it look like the tent was hovering above the ground, suspended by lasers. I set about setting out the kitchen to make quiche, WEA-style. No cotton gloves for stove operation though--oops!

In retrospect, as I sat trying to cut the butter into the pastry mixture with a tiny plastic spatula and the titanium spork for which James had finally found a use (did I mention he mentioned this was his first trip not eating freeze-dried meals in pouches?) I reflected that really, this step could probably have been done at home. Also, a couple pairs of vinyl gloves are way better than the unwieldy used ziplock bags for handling the dough and keeping your hands from becoming a gooey, clubby mess.

The quiche poofed up beautifully, and unfortunately settled a bit too much as it cooled. However, it WAS very filling, which is a nice feature of backpacking food. And the flavor was good, although some dried herbs would have worked wonders. Next time, I suppose. The brownies turned out much, much better. And all the same, it was all good enough to attract the biggest, most fatty-boom-balatty porcupine I've ever seen (ok, it was the only one I'd ever seen, but zie was so big and fat zie could barely waddle away after grunting at James for trying to get a closeup pic).

At night, it stormed well--bright bursts of lightning and deafening cacophonies of thunder. Most of it was 1-2 miles away, but it came from the west and disappeared off to the east, right overhead. The morning dawned cool and overcast, and so we decided to leave camp where it was and just range out as far as we could on day hikes. We headed out toward West Maroon Pass with the leftover quiche for brunch, and got a couple more miles up the trail before we ran into our neighbor from the next camp coming the other way. He reported he'd gotten to the first major stream crossing (and we could see the stream from where we were, and it was fairly major) and turned around since he was just out for fun and didn't feel like changing out of his boots. His dog was ecstatically wet and muddy though.

After sitting down to eat and watching the weather come in around 11AM, we reached the same conclusion--no sense climbing higher out of the trees if it was going to be electrical. We donned raingear and headed back, made it almost to camp before it really started raining and a huge clap of thunder sent 3 dayhikers scurrying for tree cover along the shore of Crater Lake.

What else to do but take a nap? So we did. And it was nice, since neither of us slept well the night before. Woke up to still cloudy and a little drizzly, but lightening. We pulled out the packs and headed up the Buckskin Pass trail around 2:45 and the sun was already blazing.

Buckskin turned out to be a pretty cool trail, and amazingly beautiful. Fairly steady climbing but nothing rude, and flowers everywhere--columbine, avalanche lily, shooting star, Indian paintbrush, alpine strawberry, and lots of others I don't know. Lots of avalanche slides down that gulch, some of them pretty recent judging by the bits of still-green fir branches that littered the ground. We came on a guy in a good mountaineering tent camped in the most idyllic spot, except for being totally exposed in an open meadow to storms. Hrmm.

At last we were able to see the top of the pass, totally blocked by a gigantic cornice. As we got closer, we could see another trail that swung way out to the left of it to clamber over a much shallower wedge of it, but alas, no time. And no axes anyway. We turned around at the trail junction with Willow Pass and headed back down to camp.

The pizza with sundried tomatoes, olives and artichoke hearts came together nicely in spite of not having a big enough plastic to roll it out on (and I don't trust my throwing skills enough to not land our only bit of dough in the dirt). We were pleased as well that we had wine left in the platypus. The storm that looked like it was brewing seemed to swing north of us and pile up in the east, where it looked dark and angry.

Around the last of the sunset James spied a tiny wedge of alpenglow on the peak behind us, so we grabbed cameras and wine bottle and headed down to the lake. There we saw our 2nd porcupine, although not nearly as fat as the first. There were some deer too. I love twilight.

The rain chased us back up the hill and into the tent, where we stayed for the rest of the night. Of course, we awoke to bluebird skies. Breakfast of pancakes with butter and boysenberry jam, because really--why carry it on your back when it can go in your belly? On our way out we gave lots of beta to people coming in, and got reports that the weather was supposed to dry up for a few days. Nice timing, eh? Oh well. It was still amazing.

Once back at the car we were pleased to discover it unmolested by porcupines, marmots or other varmints with sharp nasty teeth. We also decided not to head back out down the East Maroon trail. The bag of fresh car clothes was so seductive, as were my chacos...

The drive home was a little sad, as it always is. I would love to go back again when the weather is more accomodating--thinking about what's on the other side of those passes is driving me nutz.