Aaron's First Birthday!

If you know me you know I'm still friends with my former in-laws. We have lunch, I talk to my ex-husband and sometimes go see a movie with him. I sometimes miss all the extra nieces and nephews I had in that family (they have A LOT). So I was excited when Rebekah invited me to her son Aaron's first birthday party. I'd never even met Aaron since he was born after my divorce. He's their 8th child and was born with trisomy 18 so him having a birthday party at all is pretty exciting. I was glad to go, it was sweet to meet him, and it was fun to see so many of his cousins that I hadn't seen in years. They were so grown up I couldn't believe it. What a fun day.

They had a balloon release for all the other kids he's been around that haven't made it has far as him. Prayers to heaven. It was a sweet idea and looked cool too, but I must admit I didn't bring a balloon and when they handed me one to let go I cringed inside thinking and wondering where these balloons were going to end up. Ugh the sea turtles! But I let it go anyway... The funniest part of the evening was when I got a text from Bryan saying hi and asking what I was up to...."Um, I'm at your nephew's birthday party where are YOU?" He showed up shortly after that and we had a good laugh about how, just by looking at our shoes these days you can tell how incompatible we are. His are even more ridiculous than they look in real life believe me. He's still a nice guy though. Glad I could be on good enough terms with them all that I could share Aaron's birthday.

Rebekah keeps a blog on Aaron's life and it's pretty sweet and informative. Follow it here...

"I realized my participation deserved more than just waving a sign"

Is it just me or does anyone else find it totally lame and completely irritating that the news story coming out of Utah these days and making into national headlines is the fact that a college basketball player has violated the honor code and NOT that Tim DeChristopher will be going to prison for making a peaceful demonstration of civil disobedience against the Gas and Oil companies buying our wilderness land? Really? REALLY? I find it infuriating.
I went to BYU and I think that story is alright, it's a chance to show the world that people still have morals and that there's a school that treats everyone equally regardless of their elite status or the benefits they bring to the school. I agree with the decision, but I also think, as far as Davies is concerned it's sort of a private matter. He did something wrong, from the seriousness of his punishment possibly very wrong, and if I were him I'd sort of wish everyone would stop talking about it.
DeChristopher however did something right and no one cares. He's making a huge sacrifice. He's willingly giving up years of his freedom to make a statement about something he believes in. A statement that needed to be made and he did it in a perfectly acceptable way. He did not commit some violent crime of anarchy. He did not hurt anyone. He brought something to the attention of the people and I feel like no one is paying attention. He had the opportunity to plead to lesser charges, not go to trial, and maintain his freedom but he chose not to because he didn't want to back down from the statement he believed needed to be made. He didn't want to let the oil and gas companies intimidate him and win. He's not getting kicked off the basketball team for a season, he's going to prison! People complain and complain about the atrocities committed by these big oil corporations and yet when one of us makes an attempt to stand up against them and open a door for protest and change…we instead discuss who was the best dressed at the Oscars, Charlie Sheen, and BYU students breaking the honor code.
America is great and I love it, but I also think there's a lot of things wrong with it. I believe most people would agree with that. There's stuff wrong with every country, but whereas many countries major problems seem to stem from corrupt governments, I'm starting to believe our corrupt government stems from a corrupt people. Corrupt in the fact that we just don't care anymore. We don't care about what matters. Other countries hate us and give us this spoiled brat stereotype and I honestly think we deserve it. What happened to us? When Rosa Parks broke the law by sitting in the front of the bus she was making a much needed statement in the most appropriate way possible. Peaceful civil disobedience. She was breaking the law, but a law that everyone later realized was wrong. Our history is filled with examples of this, they are the Boston Tea Parties that go down in history as heroes that spurred change and gave hope and inspiration to their fellow wronged citizens to also stand up for what they believe in and for what is right. I believe in Tim DeChristopher's actions and I want to say something cliché like he is ahead of his time or something equally lame and unfitting, but I don't believe he is ahead of his time. Sadly I think perhaps he's behind the times. He's acting like our founding fathers would have acted and we have forgotten how to follow people like that. Tim DeChristopher is brave. I believe he is a martyr in many ways. It takes a lot of courage to do something like he is, trying to be the first in the hopes that others will follow behind you. I want him to be the beginning of change, an uprising of the public, the start of a revolution for a better world. I want the people to see the beauty and importance of wilderness and pay attention to what companies are doing to it behind our backs. I want us to stop sitting on our butts complaining about them but never trying to stop them. I want us to recognize a hero when we see one. When I first posted a comment on my facebook page about this my sister replied with this Edward Abbey statement which is just one of hundreds of his that could be used for a story like this.

"At some point we must draw a line across the ground of our home and our being, drive a spear into the land and say to the bulldozers, earth movers, governments and corporations, “thus far and no further.” If we do not, we shall later feel, instead of pride, the regret of Thoreau, that good but overly-bookish man, who wrote, near the end of his life, “If I repent of anything it is likely to be my good behavior.”

Unfortunately I believe that whereas Thoreau's behavior was proper and good, ours is just laziness. I want to have hope in the American people, myself included. I want to believe we will continue with what DeChristopher has done. I hope someday I look back at this as the start of something big, but I'm having a hard time maintaining that hope. I don't believe America lacks the right leaders, I believe we lack the right followers.

Read more here and here.

My New Phone

With my Christmas Bonus this year I...paid a big chunk of my mortgage. How boring and responsible, but I still had enough left over to finally upgrade my phone. A more responsible thing there would have been to fix the heater in my car but that's what coats and gloves are for. I was still using Bryan's old Razor phone. It was pathetic and starting to turn itself off when it got cold. Along with my new phone I also got the internet at home! It's been years and it's been oh so nice! It has already come in extremely handy although it's only on my phone so it's just inconvenient enough that it prevents me from wasting too much time on it. So far my favorite thing about the phone is the camera! It has so many cool settings and last night I found even more picture features. I was up way too late playing with them.

It has a "depth of field" feature that's cool. (just because I get a new phone doesn't mean the subject mater of my pictures improves any. Still the cats)

I spend a lot of time after I go to bed trying to figure stuff out on the phone which results in pictures of me in bed. I don't know why there's an option to take blue pictures. I was showing the phone to Alicia and James and he thought the pointless feature was the distortion option...but I beg to differ. It kept me entertained for hours. Then after you take the pictures you can edit them with fancy effects. So far my favorites are vintage looking "glimmer" and "bleak"

I can download old photos too and do stuff to them. Check out what I did to these old hiking and climbing pictures of me. Already cool pictures, but now even cooler. They remind me of the old pictures I find stuck into the Rockwood Log up at the cabin, except no one is hiking with curlers in their hair and no one has bottlecaps attached to their shirt.

These pictures make me miss good weather and climbing. This was the only fun winter picture I edited.

The dangers of your own home and graffiti, two things to ponder when snowshoeing

On Saturday I went snowshoeing up the Butler Fork Trail. I went alone and thoroughly enjoyed myself. But as I climbed the steep hill that follows the creek I couldn't help thinking about the dangers I was putting myself in by being there alone. I never felt scared and I didn't go into any immediately dangerous areas, I didn't go so far I might get lost, and I didn't go anywhere I wouldn't be found by others pretty soon. I was meeting up with some friends that evening so I knew someone would be aware I was missing should something have happened. I almost made it up to Circle All Peak but the sun was going down and I wanted to be safe so I turned back just below the top. Nothing happened, I just had a great time and enjoyed the fresh air and solitude of the mountains in winter.

(I'd never been up this trail in the winter but I went in the fall once with Andy and Kris. Here's the same spot in the above picture without the snow)

(The trail was packed into this nice bowl shape and it made me wish I'd packed a sled up with me so I could ride back down to my car.) Back from my first solo snowshoe outing in the canyon this season, I was feeling pretty good about everything. Then...Sunday night...I fell down the stairs in my own house! It hurts a lot more as an adult than I remember from when I was a kid. Luckily I fell backwards and just bumped my way down instead of tumbling Scarlett O'Hara style and escaped with just rug burns and bruises. (It still hurt A LOT) I laid sprawled out at the bottom for awhile and wondered how long it would have been before someone found me if I was hurt and wondering where my phone was. The next day was my day off from work and I had no plans with anyone. It'd probably be at least Tuesday afternoon before someone would think to look for me, but more likely Wednesday.

So to sum things up:

• If I'd have injured myself in the mountains alone in the snow, the skiers I saw on my way down would have seen me within the hour and if not them, at least a dozen people the next day, plus friends would wonder where I was that evening.
• If I'd seriously injured myself on the stairs at my house I'd have laid there for 2-3days with only the helpless hungry cats as company.

The whole experience made me agree with John Muir more than ever when he wrote this:

“To the timid traveler, fresh from the sedimentary levels of the lowlands, these highways, however picturesque and grand, seem terribly forbidding—cold, dead, gloomy gashes in the bones of the mountains, and of all Nature's ways the ones to be most cautiously avoided. Yet they are full of the finest and most telling examples of Nature's love; and though hard to travel, none are safer. For they lead through regions that lie far above the ordinary haunts of the devil, and of the pestilence that walks in darkness. True, there are innumerable places where the careless step will be the last step; and a rock falling from the cliffs may crush without warning like lightning from the sky; but what then? Accidents in the mountains are less common than in the lowlands, and these mountain mansions are decent, delightful, even divine, places to die in, compared with the doleful chambers of civilization. Few places in this world are more dangerous than home. Fear not, therefore, to try the mountain-passes. They will kill care, save you from deadly apathy, set you free, and call forth every faculty into vigorous, enthusiastic action. Even the sick should try these so-called dangerous passes, because for every unfortunate they kill, they cure a thousand.”

I agree with Muir, I'd rather have died in the canyon with my snowshoes on looking at the stars and the trees than at the bottom of my stairs in my dorky mismatching old pajamas and a pint of melting ice cream in my hand.

Now let's talk about Graffiti. I kinda like Graffiti, but I think it should be limited to train cars, bathroom stalls, and that old abandoned building you pass as you drive to Idaho. Not on trees. If you actually own the tree then I think it's sweet to carve initials inside hearts, but not in wilderness areas. People can not help themselves though, so I guess we should look on the bright side of things.

I do appreciate when people put some thought into it and go beyond just carving their initials... and deep down, I kind of like the way old carvings look on aspens. (A couple of these are from a trail I took along the Alpine Loop a couple springs ago)

But I like the aspens most without any words.

"We had left no mark on the country itself, but the land had left it's mark on us."

Sigurd Olsen

Fisheye Camera

I got a roll of film developed...yes developed

I found my fisheye camera the other day and noticed there was film in it, so I finished it off and had it processed. The first pictures were over a year old and some had really suffered but funny enough, when I got the pictures back both the old pictures and the new pictures were mostly of the Tolls. I wish the second pictures were also taken eating at Lone Star....mmmmm....Lone Star Taqueria. Kjirsten and I played around the the double exposure abilities of real film and I think they were some of the cooler pictures.

Sidenote: When I was 16 I had my first job ever working with my friend Sarah at a 1hour photo mat, how obsolete that is now. Also from my teenager days, I finally gave in and let Kjirsten have my last pair of Chucks which I bought back when I was 18.

Snowshoe Running

I hate running. I have no endurance and I have bad knees....and I don't like the look of tennis shoes* worn with shorts. I have long given up the dream that I will ever run for exercise and it's really a shame considering my legs are at tall as redwood trees, but yesterday I tried snowshoe running in the park. As far as the endurance part went, it was so much harder than normal running. As far as my knees went, it felt great! I ran all over the park for almost an hour. I ran around the bases of the baseball diamond, I ran laps between trees, I ran through big drifts, I ran in circles, I ran wherever I wanted to! Then I gobble up icicles off the trees and felt like puking, but my knees felt great! I think I'll do more of this snow shoe running this winter. (I thought I was going strait but whenever I turned around I'd made a weavy trail over the snow...no wonder people wander around in circles in the woods and get lost. I can't even go strait across an empty field.) It totally beat going to the gym that day although I think I could have justified not going after shovelling all the snow out of my driveway.

I should get the stray cat some snowshoes, instead of making the usual tracks to my door he had to plow tunnels to get his food. It appears he has as much trouble going in a strait as I do.

*I spelled tennis shoes "tennishoes" originally and my spell checker suggested I change it to tennis hoes. really.

Snow Trees

The last big snowstorm was perfectly timed to hit in the middle of the night. I got to do my favorite winter activity of shoveling in my clogs in the middle of the night. It was snowing so hard in fact I had to re-shovel the driveway a few times before I finally gave up. I swapped my clogs for my taller fluffy boots and trudged around the neighborhood looking at the heavy snow on all the various kinds of trees and taking pictures of them imagining I was some kind of nature photographer. They are really bad pictures since I didn't bother with any kind of night exposer, tripod, or lighting. I was just trying not to get snowflakes on the lens.

This is "snow coat hair" very similar to sleeping bag hair and a close cousin of "bed head" and "helmet hair". Sometimes I wonder if having such long hair is worth stuff like this.