Explain the World to Me, please

This latest blog edition comes to you from the banks of the Colorado River, a few miles upriver from Arches National Park in Utah, at a BLM campground where dogs have more rights than they do with the National Park Service. The last week or so was spent in Steamboat for the final days of ski season and where I finally spent more than two consecutive nights in the small condo I purchased here in December and rented out most of the ski season while I wandered parts of the globe. I finally had time to stay and settle in the place for more than a night, and start compiling a list of home improvement projects. In the end, I removed, reconsidered, then re-hung,then reconsidered some more, then re-removed a cabinet door, added some trim and stain and called it good.  I also attempted to figure out a new tile or hardwood flooring choice, got fatigued by the trivial differences between “canyon birch,” “sandy summer”  and “morning desert” and left for Utah with no clarity on the future floor of the condo.  

I rolled into the town of Moab earlier this evening, needing to pick up a few groceries for backpacking, and briefly checked out a few motel rooms since setting up camp in the dark can be frustrating. The first three motels were full. The fourth had one room left for one night. Perfect. It’s one of those motels where the check-in clerk magically appears from a curtain behind the front desk, which is actually an entry to where she lives. Living at one’s workplace sounds awful to me, and I admire the motel proprietor who can do it. The conversation was brief because she had to be somewhere, so she handed me a key and asked me to come back later to fill out the registration card,make payment, and so on. I love those moments of trust between strangers. 

I parked the car in front of the room, which had an outside entry and also shares a wall with three other rooms. And in the scorecard of unsavory and unpleasant noises coming from the walls, I went three for three.Behind Wall #1 was a hair dryer and a Michael Bolton tune, I think. Behind Wall#2 was a very loud Judge Judy on the television chewing out some pathetic guy who didn’t pay his half of the rent to his girlfriend with poor grammar. And in classic bad-motel stereotype fashion, the sounds of Wall #3 were the grunts and moans of bad sex.  Based on the configuration of the rooms, I’m certain that the ones having sex were also serenaded by the sweet sounds of Judge Judy. If we measure how good everyone had it based on the volume and excitement of the voices, seems like Judge Judy was the big winner that evening. 

I left the motel to go the grocery store and gas station,and it was dark by the time I started my way back. I drove right by my motel, although it looked familiar but I concluded that I wouldn’t stay in a place that looked so trashy. Until I realized that apparently I would stay in a place that looked that trashy.  Fast forward this story: I went back to the room, the previous noises from the three walls were replaced with equally unpleasant ones, so I packed up the car and left.  Setting up camp in the dark isn’t so bad when it’s free from Judge Judy, hair dryers and other people’s bad intimacy.

I had about six hours of drive time today from Steamboat to Moab, most of which was filled with play-by-play radio coverage of the manhunt near Boston.  I would change the station sometimes when the coverage would get repetitiously sad, or have nothing of actual value and seemed to be just about keeping the story going (“can you tell us how high the helicopter is hovering” a journalist asked a witness), but would usually get sucked back in within a half hour or so.

I’ve got a barrage of unorganized thoughts about this week’s events in Boston. When the news first broke that explosions occurred near the finish line, my reaction was first through the lens of a runner, one who has participated in the Boston Marathon.  The runners this year were denied the amazing feeling that comes with participating in one of the world’s greatest sporting traditions. I remember writing a bucket list for a class when I was an undergraduate in which we had to write down 50 things we wanted to do in our lifetimes, and then narrow it down to 10, and the Boston Marathon was in my final 10 (along with meeting  the voice of “Gonzo” from the Muppets. No joke.).

When I ran it in 2004, it was unseasonably warm and the race didn’t start until noon in those years;  it has since been moved to a morning start. Slogging through 26.2 miles in 80+degree heat was one of the toughest challenges I think I’ve faced.  It hurt.  It hurt bad. The last few miles were spent trying to separate mind from body, to ignore the strong message my brain sent my body to just stop already.  At the finish my eyes swelled up with tears. I remember crossing the finish at the same time as a runner with a Chinese flag on her shirt, and she just fell into my arms as soon as we crossed.  Those ensuing minutes were a blur, as runners congratulated each other and cried with each other in both agony and celebration. The Boston Marathon is more than a sporting event. Like the Olympics, it is a demonstration of international goodwill.  

I ran it again in 2005. That year my sister and good friend Pete Flynn also ran it.  At the time, it was my best ever marathon finish, which I owe to Pete’s regime that he put me through during training. Pete is a crazy good runner, and training with him was perhaps the best and worst decision of my running life. It was the best because his training led me to perform at a level I didn’t think was in my grasp. It was the worst because during those training months I puked multiple times during a workout, and also dealt with a bout of hypothermia on a 21 mile run that resulted in me being brought back from the brink of death by handfuls of carrot cake frosting (a story for another time).

So my initial reaction was one of tremendous empathy from one runner to another, that their memories of the Boston Marathon would be etched with a scene that they would prefer to forever forget. As the news about the event continued to unfold, the extent of the injuries to nearly 200 people, many with lost limbs, and then the ensuing days of a city brought to a halt by the uncertainty of where the suspects loomed and what they might do next, my reaction changed from that of a runner to that of an American and someone who, like so many others, wants to remain hopeful about the world.

Having only lived once that I know of, I don’t have any comparison point to know first-hand if the frequency with which super bad shit has happened during my lifetime is normal or not. There’s obviously been world wars, assassinations, and other horrific events endured by previous generations.   But I don’t know how often this storyline has unfolded in the past in which one individual or a small group of individuals catches all of us off-guard and does something completely unthinkable and unanticipated.  9/11. Columbine. Within the past 9 months, horrific killings at an Aurora Movie Theater. At an elementary school for god's sake, in Newtown, Connecticut. Boston Marathon.

As I stated before, I have a ton of unorganized thoughts and emotions in my head about all of this, one of which is anger.  One of my basic tenets in life is I won’t allow fear to be a motive for my behavior. I simply find life to be more fulfilling and less stressful if I’m willing to extend a little bit of trust and belief that most people are generally good, and the likelihood of me crossing paths with those that are bad is miniscule. I want people to believe I’m a good person -- even if they don’t know me -- and so I need to do the same. This has generally served me well, though around this time last year I didn’t lock my front door and came home around midnight to a super-drunk and completely unknown college student passed out in my living room.  And he was only wearing underwear.   I didn’t feel threatened but I was definitely unsure about what to do and called 911 for some input.  By 12:30am, my neighbors stood on their porch amidst the lights of one ambulance and two squad cars in front of my house, and watched the passed out nearly-naked college student hauled out of my house on a stretcher, a scenario which I had to re-interpret for them the next day.

I’m angry because every time something like the attack atthe Boston Marathon happens, it provides evidence and rationale for living in fear. The adages “you just never know” or “better to be safe than sorry” are more justified, and I despise those adages.  They narrow our comfort zones and force people to prove their goodness to us.  Living that way makes us skeptical of the person at our door soliciting donations fora charity. It makes us reluctant to help someone with a flat tire. I remember an email going around awhile back about a crime spree (which turned out to bean urban legend) of would-be criminals putting a speaker with the sound of a crying baby on people’s door steps, and urging people not to answer the door because it was a set-up for some kind of robbery. Who on earth wouldn’t open the door if you heard a crying baby?  That’s not a world I want to live in.

So my trip to Utah is well-timed. I can use the time while backpacking to sort out the mess of emotions and thoughts, and hopefully be able to contribute in some sensible way to dialogue with others who are also struggling at present with understanding what kind of world we live in. 

On a much, much more positive note, late this afternoon I met a guy named Mack who is on a one-man and nearly 200 mile river trip from Fruita, Colorado to Lake Powell, Utah (just before the Grand Canyon) on his oar boat on the Colorado River.  I had pulled into a riverside rest stop to take in the view and to let my antsy dog out of the car, and Mack pulled his raft over and asked for a weather forecast and spare reading material.  Unfortunately I’m mostly on e-books these days but I offered him a copy of Steamboat’s free daily paper which I had picked up in the morning, and a Steamboat dining guide magazine. He declined the newspaper but took the magazine.

“Reading the news works against my intent for doing this trip, but the magazine will be good for starting campfires.”

Mack (pictured below) has the right idea. Especially this week.

Hippie ein Deutschland

Guten tog from Germany where I arrived a few days ago after a great stretch of eight days of mountain time near Vail that included four consecutive days of powder skiing, and eight days of beach time in Pensacola,Florida which included one instance of clumsily falling off a paddle board in full view of an Easter brunch dining audience of a waterfront restaurant.  In both instances I am abundantly fortunate to have friends with homes in these places who generously allow me to stay in their homes. Thank you, Tom/Jane and Shannon/Matt for contributing to a wonderful stretch of relaxation, reading, cooking and losing track of days of the week.

If you flew over northern Germany and dropped a rock from the plane, wherever that rock lands is very similar to where I am.  The middle of nowhere exists also in Germany.  The last sight of any population of people or a German pub was yesterday morning approximately 20 miles from here. At this moment, I am at a place called SeminaHaus, a small retreat/workshop center located in the agricultural north region of the country.  In German, SeminaHaus means “way the hell out there.”

Cadenberg, Germany

If you read my “Escape from Kipepeo prison” blog fromJanuary, you might recall the German proprietor of the guest house from which I made a daring escape. My taxi driver in this story, I’m fairly certain, was her sister.

We didn’t get off to a loving start. Earlier in the morning,I re-read the arrival instructions for this workshop which indicated a three hour advance notice for the taxi company is requested. I clearly missed that cutoff, but ultimately it’s a taxi company and calculated that last minute requests probably aren’t that irregular. I called just before I boarded the train, about 90 minutes ahead of time.

“Do you speak English?” I asked when the call was answered.

“If you must,” said the grumpy voice of a man or a woman.He/She had waged battle #1 by passively pointing out that no, I don’t speak the primary language spoken in this country and the burden should be on me, not him/her. I get that.  But yesterday the impact of the language gap peaked when the salesperson at the drug store in Hamburg walked me to the condom aisle when I was trying to explain that I needed Vaseline fora blister (a blister on my foot, to be clear). I remain embarrassed by what on Earth she thought I trying to communicate with my hand gestures and series of one-word English terms. “Rub,”“Blister,” “Sore.”   I politely shook my head and walked away.  A few minutes later she was now my cashier,and I was purchasing shaving cream.   “For da bed?” is what I heard her ask though I really really hoped that she asked “for the beard.”

Back to the taxidriver.

“We ask more time to know before,” said the grumpy taxi voice on the phone, quick to engage in Battle #2.

“Will you be able to pick me up?” I wanted to add “or not”at the end of that sentence to make my point but shrewdly refrained.

“We will try to be there,” and the phone hung up before I could express an insincere “thank you.”

The 90 minute train ride out of Hamburg ended in the small hamlet of Cadenberg, where to my relief, a taxi awaited with the driver that I’m pretty sure was a woman.  I met a fellow workshop participant on the train who had not arranged transport from the station at all, and he assumed that this exact scenario of meeting another participant while en route on the train would unfold. Sh would have destroyed him had he walked off the train and asked her for a ride, and I was willing to run interference. 

“Now you are two?” she said. It wasn’t so much a question as it was an angry statement.  At this point I assumed her taxi was a Porsche 911, which only has two seats, and that’s why a third person triggered a scowl from her weathered face. The other and more accurate explanation was this woman really did not like any surprises, no matter how inconsequential.  There appeared to be plenty of room in the non-Porsche.

We waited inside the taxi while the driver finished her cigarette outside. I sat in front, which meant my throat would be within reach of her large, strong hands when I mention that I need to stop to buy toothpaste.    

“Next time you tellme three hours,” she managed to say just before a barrage of coughing wasunleashed.   “Please sit behind.” 

I was surprised she said “please.”

I skipped the request to stop for toothpaste. If I cut open my current tube, I could scrape a few days’ worth more out of there and spare any additional wrath from the driver.

I moved to the backseat and Angry Taxi Driver pulled a cat out from her overcoat and set it down on the passenger seat as though this were perfectly normal, as though any amused reaction on my part would be weirder than a cat riding shotgun in a taxi. I felt empathy for the cat and the time it had to spend in in the woman’s overcoat so close to her bosom and heart of rage.  

Angry Cat Lady drove fast. Crazy speeds of fast.  I was clearly in the country of the autobahn.  She shoved a cassette into the player, and by god, it was a mixed tape.  Our ride covered five songs:  “We go Together” from the soundtrack of Grease, “Forever Young” by Alphaville, “You are so beautiful to me” by Bob Seger and two songs in German.  I desperately wanted to know who gave her this mixed tape, and the circumstances that led to its creation which I assumed was in the 1980s, the Decade of the Mixed Tape and when most of these songs had their hey day. My mind raced along with the car in a whirl of questions about Angry Cat Taxi Lady’s past love life, that perhaps she was a nice, beautiful lady who was the target of a young suitor’s attention. It was difficult to maintain this dream for her as she periodically rolled down her window to spit.  

We arrived at SeminarHaus,I mustered up the courage to ask if she had change, then paid Angry Cat Taxi Woman and she sped off barely before I had closed the trunk.

The Art of Participatory Leadership. That’s the name of the workshop that explains why I’m in the middle of nowhere, Germany.  A focus of my sabbatical is to become more proficient, knowledgeable and enlightened about leadership theories, processes and strategies, particularly as they relate to conservation. In the Fall I will be fully entrenched in directing a few leadership initiatives for our university’s College of Natural Resources. Leadership isn’t my area of expertise or background, so I’m forging conversations with experts, building my network, and participating in these types of trainings to prepare for this role.  

Now, in our world of natural resources we have a contingent of very earth-loving, earth-minding, and sometimes earth-smelling individuals.And these natural resource circles sometimes overlap with the hula-hooping,twirling, incense-burning community circles. This Art of Participatory Leadership, to my surprise, is a rather shining of these overlaps. I could stand up during one of our circle sessions –we rarely meet in any other shape form – spin around a few times with my arms spread, and no one would pay much mind to it, and more likely, a few people would probably join me.

I am appreciative of the hula-twirl-incense community because they often live a simple life from which our planet benefits.  However, it is not always a crowd that I interact with especially well.  Despiteour mutual respect for nature and concern for its well-being, when I introduce myself as a faculty member from a university and she introduces herself as an “intentional nomad who transfers stories around the hemispheres,” I’m not sure what to do with that and thought a more direct way would be to ask "Who signs your paycheck?" but that seemed too direct, even for a German.  While checking email one morning I received an unsolicited “I refuse to  be a slave to email” comment, and for a second I wanted to hold her up by her scarf and tell her I need to check email so kids in Kenya can f-ing go to school.   But I hold back, because I'll smell like incense if I touch her.  Instead, I just avoid.   

I have to, for example, avoid the Hugger. I have been confronted with this prototype in the Earth muffin community before, and the Hugger is represented here as well.  She has no boundaries. Need for personal space is part of “the problem” in her view. This morning she bear hugged someone from behind while he was trying to pour milk in his cereal bowl.  During a session about facilitation techniques, each of was asked to design and implement a 15-minute discussion on a topic of personal interest, and hers was titled “Cuddle.”  I’m not joking.  I am hiding from “Cuddle” right now in my room because we are given the liberty to be a “butterfly” during this workshop and opt in and out, just as an actual butterfly would apparently opt in and out of workshop sessions if that was available in the insect world. Call me Monarch, call me Mariposa, but dont call me down to that session on Cuddle.

At the least, the Hugger brings a game aspect to this workshop for me and I love competition (another character flaw the Hugger would perceive, I'm sure).  I fear that if I break the thinnest layer of ice with her, she’ll see me as a target. I’ve seen her hug others. I could read a book chapter and clip my nails in the time it takes her to complete a hug. So the game is making sure I don’t end up in her vicinity. I have to be mindful at all times of her whereabouts, in the dining hall, the meeting rooms, and hallways. Today I reached for the salad tongs at the same as she did. We almost touched. Fortunately, before I could scream, she pulled back and quietly exclaimed “croutons." That's a new one for me, a Hugger or Hippie aversion to croutons.  I've seen croutons in a lot of other countries, so it was probably an anti-globalization thing. 

Just prior to the “Cuddle” discussion a second Earth Muffin in pants that I associate with clown outfits requested to close her discussion session with a Native chant.  There’s no precedent for “closing” a session thus far, and despite generally being skeptical of white people who do Native chants, I strapped in for the ride and sat back to watch the show. The Closer was a friend of the Hugger.  The two of them hugged a lot. Today they hugged when they found themselves together at the section of the kitchen where you put your dirty dishes, as though the cosmic force brought them together yet again for the 12^th time so far today.  The Closer asked us to close our eyes.  I knew the Hugger stood up while the Closer chanted because she was sitting two seats away from me and I could hear and feel  her arise.  Next to me was a colleague as skeptical and cynical as myself – thank god we found each other on Day 1.  But, the Hugger hadn’t risen to hug. She had risen to twirl. I know this because I kept one eye open which I needed to do for self-preservation.  The chant by The Closer sounded something like “Barn owl dries the miso” and it was repeated in a variety of cadences for about two minutes while the Hugger twirled away. The Hugger and the Close shared a massive embrace, as though they were separated at birth by a stoned midwife and were just now reunited 28 years later.  It took a lot of self-restraint to maintain a stoic look. I dared not make eye contact with my fellow cynic.

Tomorrow I plan to run. I ran this morning and afterward it was suggested by one of the facilitators that I include my run as one of the options on the list of  “Morning Preparations” which is fancy hippie talk for “things people do before breakfast.”  I would generally rather have someone in the bathroom with me while I pooped than join me on my run. It's MY time.  I kindly indicated that I preferred to run alone, which was refuted with a challenge to be different here than I am at home. So I got more strategic and spoke their language. Running is my form of my meditation, during which I can connect with myself and feel a sense of harmony while harvesting the dreams of the night.  This response was met with nods of agreement, as though I had just made myself vulnerable and was opening up.  Whatever it takes to get in a solo run.