Battle Slurry

Tonight I think I perfected the Battle Slurry. A while back, I posted a blog about my dinner. Tonight, I tweaked it, and it was delicious. I'm dubbing it "Battle Slurry". Battle... obviously because of where I am. Slurry is a term I first heard my friend Todd use in reference to a big bowl or pot of some random, mixed... unknown... foodstuffs. So for my slurry, I put in a regular (16 oz?) can of black beans with jalapenos in lime sauce, a two-thirds size can of corn with peppers in it, a small can (3 or 4 oz, maybe) of diced green chilis, a small can (tuna sized) of cooked chicken, and one pack of Uncle Ben's long grain wild rice (the already cooked, throw in the microwave back, about the size of a DVD case). Throw it all in a pot and stir it up while you're cooking it so you don't burn it. Serves two. If you're one, save the second half and eat it for dinner tomorrow. For desert: devil squares by little Debbie. Perfecto.

Oh yeah, I checked out Golden Gate Canyon State Park today. I thought of my mom the whole time, as it was nothing but rolling hills and lodgepole pines, snow, and mountain panoramas. She would have loved it.

From The Bunks

It's an early night tonight. The last few days, I've found it more comfortable to make a cozy nest on the floor and just pile myself up with blankets and such. It's been a great experience so far. Tonight I lay on this floor looking up at my home... so simple. So tidy. I just feasted on a dinner of clam chowder and potato bread. Time to do some reading. Still working on Atlas Shrugged... sigh...

Morning in the snow...

I woke up this morning, turned the van and the heat on full tilt, and tucked myself back into my nest. Ten minutes later, I was comfy. Way comfy. It wasn't nearly as rough as I thought it was going to be.  I love this project!

Cold and snowy.

It's 10 minutes to 11 at night, and I've burrowed myself in a cozy mummy bag under all my blankets and I'm sound as a pound. This blizzard has been the first real cold temp and deep snow test of my journey. I'm lovin it so far! It's awesome. Way drier than the snow cave was on Berthoud Pass last year. We'll see how I feel when I wake up.

The Blizzard of '09?

I wonder if that's what they'll call this sudden masterpiece of mother nature's wrath.  We went suddenly from beautiful afternoons with shorts and t-shirts to a stunning and strong snowstorm, with snow blowing and falling nearly horizontally. We got almost half a foot to a foot and a half in some places in less than 6 hours.

I was really looking forward to hunkering down in the van, but I got invited to spend the afternoon (and perhaps the evening) with a good friend's family. It os all the more touching to me that it seems that the most adverse conditions in nature spark the opposite response in humanity.

Wow, big thought: the worse circumstances turn out to be, the more we stick together and overcome the odds. Look at all of the disasters of our time, like Katrina, 9-11, even our little snowstorm here, which brings us together to help out and be helped. My friend calls it, "the upside of the downtimes". Awesome statement. Good company. Warm rooms. Tasty food. Cozy and cuddly big red dog.

Sometimes humanity is awesome.

Ancient Roots

This weekend I took a trip to Florissant to check out the Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument. When I was there, I discovered these huge, fossilized and petrified Redwood stumps. These remains of the goliath trees that are famous in northern California are collosal in their own right. Some stumps are taller than me and upwards of 12 feet in diameter.

Geologic history is fascinating to me. The way the whole planet evolves over time, and the drastic means by which it does so, puts things in perspective. It makes me realize that everything changes to suit its environment. This is something that comforts me when different problems arise in my own life. We, too, can adapt to suit our environments.

Help in Disguise

Today I was bouldering at Mt. Sanitas park near Boulder, and I snagged this picture of a crack. It looks like a nasty whole in the rock, but to a climber, this is a super awesome mega good hold. The quick analogy that I'm trying to draw here is that sometimes we see cracks in the rock when we're trying to scale some big problem of ours, and we don't realize what that fissure is capable of. We don't understand that it can be something that helps us to ascend the difficulties which lay before us. It's amazing, too, that once we do learn to identify these bits of disguised help, they suddenly appear all around us. We are immersed in a sea of tools by which we can succeed and prevail.

That's my phisolophy for the day.