09.29.2020

    There was an open window in the last six months to go full left-brained for extended periods wherein nearly all my 'free time' i.e. "work+podcasts" was spent in the clutches of a phase-locked delirium with "health experts" of the world. I suppose it annoyed me (once I'd appraised all the usual paper trails) that I was one of a handful of people in my periphery exerting any effort for a subject that had so taken the public's attention. I've followed some of the same researchers for over 15 years now, kept up with their books and blogs, watching them evolve while they did the dirty work for mankind. I merely wanted to understand virology, but since I have a basic grasp of statistical analysis it was also clear that there were too many anomalies to ignore. Sure, there's a social price to pay. There's always been one. It used to get me worked up and bitter, but these are minor grievances compared to looking at one's self at the end of the day and sleeping well. It's like any major event. Most people take a spoonful of sugar and hunker down without much to-do. When in crisis, I read. I read without bias or hope. I only read to build a picture out of the many disparate pieces. When I was harassed here and there it brought to mind a common paradox in society: People have varied interests about all sorts of things. Some people gain a knowledge-base from a trade-school or history class or any given occupation they might have. Others have hobbies. Well, the point is: I wouldn't tap a plumber on the back and expect him to validate my opinions about plumbing would I? Of course not, because I don't have the necessary knowledge-base to comment on his methods - but the fact is that baseless opinions are now the meat of social discourse. We share paltry sums of pragmatic knowledge book-ending opinions that don't result in anything useful outside of pushing data storage to its human limits...and these arbitrary opinions and parroted copy/paste methods have turned 2020 into a kind of information battleground. Who's actually crunching the raw data though? Who's looking at it dispassionately?

    It's just strange. That's all I'm saying. I said "2+2 doesn't equal 5" and was told that I don't have the qualifications to add small numbers. I noticed the Germans have been a little quicker on the uptake. They're logical to a fault and the stats must be driving them up the wall.

    I haven't blogged in so long...well, I have but then I've deleted them on second-glance because I noticed things weren't coming off in the intended spirit. My spirit is also tired of being harangued by a post-truth movement which seems to have veered into the Twilight Zone without a compass. I'm not sure what I can do about it, but if I have to keep having theses discussions I'm more than happy to if there was anyone willing to engage I certainly didn't choose 2020. It wasn't on my Vision Board but I've found silver linings everywhere. Moreover, it has forced me to reckon with a lot of baggage I was carrying in my pack after the PCT; baggage I lugged to Switzerland and back. 

   I was in an odd place to begin with. I came home from the trail without a mother...released seven albums and promptly hopped on a plane for Switzerland where I spend a year writing Time in the Year of the Bluebird (which still needs lots of revision) and hiked around the Alps between family and friends and copious amounts of red wine. It was unimaginably strange and wonderful and my heart beats for the grass and glaciers and great winding rivers that duck behind farms and towns. Things never stopped feeling surreal for a moment...but at the other end of the spectrum I was spent. So very spent. I just wanted to curl up and sleep for a year after 2018 but that wouldn't be very Swiss would it?

   I landed back in Flagstaff a week before Covid hit, found a job, was furloughed for a week, then brought back on board as we looked nervously at the world around us. How are other people taking this in? I don't know...well, what do you think? Me? I don't know..." (Which bothered me) So I began reading.

  One thing that hasn't changed is my dedication to balance. In health, in activities and creative pursuits and work. All in a week. Even with perspectives. No, I'm not going to politicize it. No, I don't want to talk about the "new normal". The old normal was fraught with problems as well. No, I don't think it's the Apocalypse. As I've said before: What westerners call the Apocalypse happens at least once per week in India but I'm not a prophet, I'm just not going to join the circus whether they're right or wrong. I'm done. I pine for different things. I find my peace in the mountains. Tertiam Quid. Third Way. 

    Hanne is doing well and able to work remotely in front of a big window in her little forest home. She wakes early to catch the meetings in Zurich. I coast downtown around eight. Each week is a new adventure full of new ideas and ways of approaching life. We try to live by the Balance mantra and attempt to stay up on all the local trails, consistently finding new routes through the high desert. The other thing is that we're looking at the AZT more seriously now. I think it has our attention a little more than the CDT for some reason. I don't know why. We pushed and pushed to hop on the next trans-national buzz and found ourselves digging deep for answers. During the PCT my motivation and reasons were rock-solid and unwavering. I lived and breathed Trail Life long after the final steps. I suppose we finally took a step back this year. More of a regrouping. I watched a lot of things happen in the trail communities that I didn't resonate with. They weren't immune to 2020 either. It seemed like some Orwellian lock-step group-think mania had taken root...something that happens when large amounts of people are shell-shocked all at once. Of course I understood. I just didn't feel like arguing so I walked away. Online outdoor and trail communities are paradoxical to say the least. The AZT looks like something we can wrap our heads around. We technically live on it and watched the recent short documentary from Darwin Rakestraw that he made last year and premiered at the Orpheum downtown. It feels right. It has to feel right to be right or it isn't right. There's no other way to approach a thru-hike. So that's where we're at with 2021: Doing what feels right. Deep intuition. Deep reclamation of the Self despite the loud noises.