Bolt Camp Shelter

I know it’s been a long time since I’ve posted, but there’s no reason to bore either of us with an explanation. Acknowledgement is sufficient.

I think what I will be doing for the summer, though, is posting brief recaps of trips, whether it’s camping or whatever, because experiences are important, fun to share, and fun to read about. A lot like politics. Er, wait….

This particular trip ended up being a bit different than we had originally planned. Jen and I had made a general plan to hike the Lewis River Traverse over July 2nd and 3rd. As the time for the trip approached, though, we realized that we hadn’t lined up care for the dogs, Sebastian, our Pit/Lab mix, and Belle, the Chihuahua. This isn’t a big deal and we last-minute the dog situation all the time, but this time it didn’t work out. So we needed to make an adjustment.

After talking through what we were each trying to get out of the trip, we identified the following goals. Jen: go running, spend time together, spend time with the dogs, read. Dave: sleep outside, disconnect from electronics, read.

Based on these goals, we decided to make life a little simpler to accomodate the dogs and to aim for the Bolt Camp Shelter, about 2.5 miles into the hike, and to set up a basecamp there that we could operate from. We’d spend a night or two and then hike out. Not great training for my PCT hike in 2019, but sometimes fun is fun and we don’t need to devote every waking moment to preparing for another.

As we hiked in, we were relieved to see that there were a few good open campspots available on the way in to Bolt Camp Shelter (BCS) from Curly Creek trailhead. The information I had read said that this place was pretty remote and unused, which I thought was important given the holiday weekend. There were quite a few other hikers around, but few enough that you knew when you were alone and when someone else was approaching. My thought was that if someone was already at the BCS we could have some other options. Luckily, we were the first-come and therefore the first-served at BCS.

I had brought my new “Colorado Flag” hammock by Kammok, and after inspecting the shelter carefully we decided that it was structurally sound enough to be our swinging spot. I’m a huge fan of the hammock and will definitely be bringing it along for my more “camping” (i.e., less “hiking” and being on the move) trips. With a puffy for a pillow, this is an ideal reading setup.

Happily, the fire threat is low and I felt comfortable getting a small fire going.

Campfire is my TV

Jen went running the first afternoon and I did camp chores and read. That night I slept well, although Belle was crawling all over Jen making it hard for her to sleep. Sebastian slept tied up to a tree outside the tent on my tarp, and didn’t make a sound all night.

I woke up early and while Jen slept in I started a new fire, filtered water, etc. I made breakfast and Jen woke up to join me. I have been reading this book called Behave by Robert Sapolsky which is great and fascinating, but is not a casual read. Lots of information comes at you 100 mph and as a result it’s not a book you can read for hours on end. Jen had just finished a book in two trips called The Stranger in the Woods by Michael Finkel, so I thought I would give that a try. It is an incredible book about a hermit in the woods of Maine who lived without human contact for 27 years. I read the entire thing that day.

Rocks integrated to root system

While I was tearing through the book Jen got in another run. While she was out Belle and I took a hike a couple of miles north. On the way, I saw the underside of a tree root structure that was cool… the area is really gravelly and the tree had grown around the gravel, integrating it into its root structure. The tree this root system supports was probably about 50-60 feet tall, impossible to show in pictures.

On the way back Belle made me carry her, for a half mile or so, but when I put her back down so that I could have footing on the mud she was revved up and wanted to lead the whole way back. I spent the day doing camp chores like filtering water and tending the fire and reading. Ideal.

When Jen got back we decided that spending a second night would put too much strain on our Tuesday July 4th because we have a number of errands to run and etc. We packed up camp late in the day (around supper time) and hiked out with the dogs.

The Stories of Breece D'J Pancake

The Stories of Breece D'J Pancake by Breece D'J Pancake

My review

rating: 5 of 5 stars
First thing to just kind of get out there is that the story of Breece D'J Pancake is kind of a bummer. I won't get into it in too much detail - but suffice to say that Pancake was apparently a guy who wasn't too comfortable in his own skin, may have been a bit depressive, and seemed to feel like a person outside much of the time. The reason you probably haven't heard of him is that he committed suicide at a relatively young age - 25. Admittedly, I am often drawn to this kind of person - Nick Drake, Elliott Smith, etc.

But putting all of that aside, Pancake was an amazingly talented writer who excelled in the short fiction form. Pancake was from West Virginia. Think coal miners, farmers, rural towns. This is the world that his stories inhabit, and the authenticity of this world leaps off the page.

His stories are poignant and profound, with layers of meaning not explicitly outlined, but there for the reader to pick up and examine, just like the trilobites that are the feature of one of his better known stories. As I read this I thought a lot about Hemmingway. Apparently I'm not the only one, as the comparison is drawn on Wikipedia as well.

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Barbarians at the Gate: The Fall of RJR Nabisco

Barbarians at the Gate: The Fall of RJR Nabisco by Bryan Burrough

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars
Think the television show "Thirty-Something". Think Ronald Reagan, greed is good, the movie "Wall Street" or "Glenngarry Glen Ross". Think about the 1980s when the kimono of Wall Street was being opened and the 80% of people in America who see money as a necessary evil became aware of why companies do the seemingly senseless things that they do.

"Barbarians at the Gate" is what the movie Roger & Me should have been. A turn by turn, holistic account of the players involved in what was the largest leveraged buyout in Wall Street history. The book is meticulously researched and is just as effective at conveying the motivations, back-stories, and insinuations of the story as the facts themselves.

Burrough and Helyar have done an excellent job in portraying the full, three dimensional personalities of the characters involved, and it is probably this fact that makes the book so immensely readable. While the financial terms and short-hands could be potentially confusing they aptly dumb down the terminology without losing the meaning necessary to understand the events. It is probably these two characteristics that I love most about this book.

Make no mistake, this is a book about the drama of white men in suits. There is no diversity in this book - the women involved are wives of the men "on stage". The closest the story gets to diversity is the handful of jews featured, which itself is an unfortunate stereotype.

I found this book to be fascinating, and a great example of how the motivations and incentives of those who make profound decisions about the US' largest companies may not align with the best interest of those who depend on them for goods, services, jobs, and investments.

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The Amber Spyglass - Phillip Pullman

The Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullman

My review

rating: 3 of 5 stars
The Amber Spyglass concludes the "His Dark Materials" trilogy. Much like the second book, The Subtle Knife, the action in this book paled very much compared to The Golden Compass. In my review of the Golden Compass I pointed out that what the book lacked in character development and depth of Character it made up for in action and suspenseful plot movement. This cannot be said of The Amber Spyglass.

The third book in the trilogy suffers from a need to advance an increasingly complex plot, which carries forward its authors message with all the subtlety of Kevin Smith's Dogma. Phillip Pullman's point of view and values are interesting to a point which is crossed about 2/3rds of the way through the book.

I will avoid a spoiler, but suffice to say that the book ends with an inexplicable love story that truly comes out of nowhere. Overall I would say that this series is good, but not great. The series is saved by its imagination and when the action does pick up in these two last books it is well worth the wait. I just wanted more.

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Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson

Cryptonomicon is a story about cryptology, WWII, and generational legacies.  The book plays with time in its storytelling, jumping back and forth two generations in its action.  It also contains multiple main characters, whose lives intertwine throughout the narrative.

One of the main characters is an individual who knows a lot about UNIX, and his knowledge is sprinkled into the narrative.  As a linux user, I liked that aspect of the story a lot.  I also appreciated the diagrams and drawings that are tastefully employed throughout the book.  I'm that kind of visual person and it reminded me of my own desperation to find a white board as I attempt to explain concepts.

The one criticism I would have of the book is that the language is clever in a way that can be slow reading at times.  Sometimes a writer's style can flow in a way that causes the book to be easily consumed, such as in the case of King, Grisham, or Vonnegut, but Stephenson is not one of these kinds of writers.  Each character has a very strong voice, and it can be a bit jarring to follow the constant transitions in the book.

The book is a generous 900+ pages, made even more dense by its lack of chapters or sections. After reading the entire wheel of time series this doesn't seem so huge to me, but it is a pretty long book.

I definitely dug this book a lot and would recommend it to anyone who is into a bit of technology or science-fiction in their reading material.