To quote Josh Shelton, who quoted Gene Autry: "Back in the saddle again..."

I feel as though any post attempting to "summarize" the last month or so of our lives would be hopelessly convoluted. So, I'm going to present you with a semi-related, wild-and-crazy combination of paragraph-style prose, categorical lists, and multimedia.


Things I've read, partially read, or am reading:

Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space by Carl Sagan

• As always, Sagan was inspiring in his inclusive, poetic perspective on the cosmos. I briefly became obsessed with Voyager 1 and other unmanned spacecraft.

William James: In the Maelstrom of American Modernism by Robert Richardson

• I will always love Richardson's prose. However, James's story did not grab me in the way of Emerson's and Thoreau's. I'll give it another go, I'm sure.

Thus Spake Zarathustra: A Book for All and None by Friedrich Nietzsche

• I will hold my final judgments until I am finished. At the moment, though, I much prefer Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil. Zarathustra seems very heavy-handed... even in its intentional heavy-handedness. 

A Game of Thrones: Book 1 of A Song of Ice and Fire by George R. R. Martin

• David pleaded with me to get into this series for a few months, and I initially resisted. Then, after William James failed to keep my attention, I bought the book and began reading it just a few days ago. So far, it's an immensely pleasurable read. Tyrion Lannister and Eddard Stark are wonderfully rich characters.

I've also become, or am in the process of becoming, an avid hiker. Since I bought my hiking boots and CamelBak just a month ago, I try to go hiking as often as possible. So far, I've (or Lauren and I have) hiked several trails at the Chautauqua trailhead, the Mt. Sanitas trail a few times (a short, but steep little bastard), one trail in Rocky Mountain National Park, and the Sourdough Trail outside of Ward, Colorado. We tried to hike the Glacier Rim Trail, but it was closed. Next Friday, we hope to hike the King Lake Trail outside of Nederland, Colorado.

Goal for the next month: Go on a 3-night hiking trip in the Rawah Wilderness. Once my Suddenlink refund comes in, I plan to get my multi-day pack from REI, construct my homemade Super Cat Alcohol Stove, and get going! Here's to my survival! And, if not, may my corpse feed the animals and fertilize the earth!