IN DEFENSE OF MONSANTO

Yum!

The title of this blog has very little to do with its content; I used it principally to get your attention.  However, in passing:  I know that most of you detest Monsanto, but you are misguided.  If it weren’t for Monsanto (and similar firms) that are responsible for GMO crops such as soya beans and corn, as well as sophisticated pesticides, we would have mass starvation world-wide.  Not in  rich, pampered places like Seattle, but surely in Djibouti.

No, what I’m on about here is our love affair with “healthy foods”.  An initial caveat:  I am all for eating fresh fruits and vegetables: nothing can beat Boxx’s berries or local corn.  What I avoid are foods conspicuously labeled “organic”.   They always cost more, and I suspect are no healthier than the stuff I buy.  I only buy “organic” when I can’t find an alternative.

This blog came about because of something I found in my freezer; what I took to be a small container of chocolate-coconut ice cream.  I don’t know how it got there, but there it was.  I opened it last night because I had run out of strawberries and French vanilla ice cream.  I should have suspected something when I saw that it was nearly full; only a few small spoonsfull were missing.  However, without reading the label I dished out a little and attacked it.

Well, it tasted like library paste flavored and colored by molten crayons.  I dumped the whole mess into a bowl, then set it on the floor for my cat to eat.  She approached it cautiously, sniffed, then licked.  Up, popped her tale, and she stalked away, filled with indignation.  She still eyes me with suspicion and won’t get on my lap.

So I read the labels.  This stuff turns out to be non-dairy, free of refined sugar, devoid of GMO-modified ingredients, gluten free, and does not contain several other “unhealthy” ingredients I can’t name because my cleaning lady just dumped the carton. 

My point?  To heck with “organic”.  I will eat whatever I want, and buy it as cheaply as is convenient.  But, of course, I’m 84.

ONE MISERABLE FEMALE on the TRAIN

Good God!  If these are the sorts of things that rattle around in the skulls of young women, then I am eternally grateful to chance for giving me an Y chromosome!

I refer of course to the novel The Girl on the Train, about which I have heard so many good reports.  They seem even to have made a movie of it.  Oh, Lord!  Why?

I read the first 50 pages of this book this morning while avoiding housework (Abebooks:  $3.59).  It has left me in such a state of depression that I may skip golf this afternoon and go straight to the beer-drinking ritual. 

Part of my Alaska family is arriving tonight.  I may pick up Girl when they leave next week, or I may not.

Tell me why you liked it.

The Rawthey Rhythm

Most of the band

To what heights may an old scientist not aspire?

In this blog I introduce you to Ernie Hailwood, his wife Viv, and the Rawthey Rhythm – perhaps not the most professional musical group in northern England, but surely one of the happiest.  For a taste of its music, click on

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZGlw_3AamOs

and be sure to have a pint of English bitter handy.

Ernie Hailwood (right) is a retired geophysicist and entrepreneur; Vivian, his wife (center), is a teacher and educational innovator.  I first met Ernie at a conference in Zurich, Switzerland, in – I think – 1973.  As part of that meeting we both participated in a field trip to the Matterhorn region where we discovered  a  strong  mutual interests in geology, paleomagnetism, rock magnetism, and goofing off in the mountains.  Later that year I returned to Bellingham, obtained some money for a project in the San Juan Mountains of southern Colorado – and promptly invited Ernie to join me.  Just as promptly, Ernie scrounged some expense money, and accepted.  Thus, the summer of 1975 (probably) found Ernie, my graduate student Steve Sheriff* and myself camped (for at least two months – maybe more) at a FS campground on the Lake Fork of the Gunnison River just above Lake San Cristobal, in Hinsdale County, Colorado.  Boy, what a gas!

  

We worked hard.  We showered occasionally.  We climbed a few mountains.  We ate dinner in town, mostly, and we drank a lot of beer.  Trips to the fleshpots of Lake City (read: a couple of taverns that served food) were made interesting by Ernie and his accent: the Beetles were at their ascendancy, and anything that smacked of England drew a crowd.  It grew tiresome, having to extract Ernie from fervid young women attempting to take him home.  Fortunately for all (except, perhaps, the young women), Ernie was a faithful husband, and a newlywed to boot.  (He used to bristle at the notion that he sounded like a Beetle.  He was from the south of England, not Liverpool.  But in America, who could tell?).

Toward the end of the summer Viv joined us, and the pace of life picked up.  Viv was young – about Steve’s age – red-headed, and had a tiny, little, very  becoming chip on her shoulder regarding Americans.  It seems that she was tired of Yank tourists regarding everything in England as precious or quaint, and explaining patiently how things were done (better) in America.  Steve sized her up immediately and began pushing buttons.  Her reaction was muted, but predictable.  I was bemused (and maybe a bit amused) by the whole thing.  Poor Ernie was caught in the middle.  Suffice it to say that, while on the top of Mt Uncompaghre  (pictured), Steve did not allow himself to be caught between Viv and the cliff face.

But this is about music.  I should have suspected something when, around a campfire one night after Viv had arrived, Ernie pulled a harmonica out of his jacket pocket, said “Oh, what’s this?” – and then proceeded to play it like a virtuoso.  (I have tried to master the harmonica several times, without the least bit of success.  It’s hard.).  Immediately Viv joined in, singing.  They were musical!  I was jealous.  Seeds of Rawthey Rhythm were already in the ground.

Anyway, Ernie went on to have a successful career in academia, and later in business, while Viv created an educational program called Brain Child about which I know absolutely nothing.  Linda and I spent a happy month in their beautiful house in Yorkshire a decade or two ago, and they used our Bellingham home as a base for exploring the North Cascades at about that same time.  I keep inviting them for a return visit – but they are too busy assuring that the toes of tavern-goers in western Yorkshire conyinue tapping to be able to accept.

*Steve Sheriff went on to be Dr. Steve Sheriff, Chair of the University of Montana Geology Department.  He is retired now, and seems to work full time at skiing.  At the time of our adventure he was a typical hippy of the day: long hair, ragged jeans, faint odor of weed.   He narrowly avoided being lynched by the local cowboys.  Thank God he escaped: I needed a field assistant.

GUNDELBERG EXPLORES THE SIERRA NEVADA

LeConte Divide?

My first serious backpacking occurred in the Sierra Nevada (California), in the years around 1960.  I loved the fact that, once above tree-line and armed with a good topographic map (and the ability to read it) you could ignore formal trails and plot your way from here to there in the almost certain knowledge that the route would work.  There is nothing like glaciated crystalline rock (granitics, high-grade metamorphics) to set you free!

Gundelberg (Bob Keller), on the other hand, had cut his backpacking teeth on relatively short mountains that were distressingly vertical.  These mountains – the North Cascades – were smothered in healthy, dense, impenetrable vegetation to timberline, above which they were frighteningly steep, rugged and covered in ice.

To put the contrast simply: getting around in the Sierra Nevada required a map and a good pair of boots, whereas in the North Cascades it required that, plus a trail system and climbing equipment.

Keller once told me that he enjoyed nothing so much as hiking Sierra “mountaineers” into the ground.  As he couldn’t do that to me, he conceived a desire to see just what the Sierra had to offer.  And so, we planned a trip.

Another Gundelbergian fact you might not know is that he loathed automobiles.  (He was once severely admonished by the law for punching a moving car.)  From Bellingham to the Sierra is at least 1000 miles, and that was simply too far for Bob.  And so we took the bus to Reno, and then hitch-hiked on down!  It took a long time but, hell, it was summer and we were college professors.

I am shaky on the geography of that trip so I will be vague.  We “went in” from the east, crossed the range by – I believe – LeConte Divide, then hiked northward along some trail system, crossed back over (Bishop Pass?) and descended to civilization.  The mountain part of the trip took about a week

.

Sierra scenery - maybe Evolution Basin

I sometimes speculate that the only thing that prevented Keller from being a Himalayan expedition climber was physiology; he had a terrible time adapting to high elevations.  At about 10,000 ft. he invariably got sick.  LeConte Divide is, perhaps, 12,000 ft.  The upshot was that we spent a day camped near the top of the range; me fishing the nearby streams, Bob prostrate in his tent, moaning and burping up little globs of vomit.  I would check on him now and then, bringing him water and more food to vomit.  He was still so weak the next day that I was forced to ferry both packs over the col, while Bob crept across, not smiling.

The thing was, 10,000 ft. stopped Bob in his tracks – but only for a day or so.  Once he recovered he was fine, and could scramble about as if he were at sea level.  We hiked together in Wyoming many times later, and we learned to include a down day in our plans.

After that the trip went smoothly, and Bob enjoyed it – until the trip home.

Obviously, we had to hitch back to Reno, to catch the bus.  It took several days, and multiple rides.  Our dirt-smeared persons, ratty packs, stubble birds, and ice axes repelled normal drivers.  The only people that would give us a lift were fellow back packers – or drunks.  We encountered one of the latter and, in something like desperation, hopped in. 

It was two women, mother and daughter, in a pick-up truck.  We were in the back, with our gear.  The two ladies apparently lived out in the boonies, somewhere SE of Reno.  Apparently they had picked us up out of kindness; we received no invitations to stay overnight.  Hardly surprising, in view of how we must have smelled.  Anyway, we noticed that we were passing an awful lot of traffic.  Also, we seemed to weave back and forth more than seemed necessary.  The reason became apparent when the younger lady slid open a small door to the cab, stuck through a whiskey bottle, and asked us if we wanted a drink!  Thereafter she kept the door open and wanted to talk.  Every so often she would offer the bottle to her mother, take a swig herself, and then pass it to me.  I felt obligated to drink a bit; that had the twin benefits of emptying the bottle quickly, thus perhaps saving our lives, and also rendering me less afraid of death.

Bob, meanwhile, pretended to be asleep.

Well, as should be obvious, we survived.  We made it to Reno that night, bought showers at a trailer park, and caught the next bus north.

The upshot?  Neither of us ever again proposed  the Sierra Nevada for an adventure, and Bob never again suggested we hitch-hike, anywhere.

GUNDELBERG AND I CONFRONT MT. CHALLENGER. Challenger wins

Whatcom Peak: Challenger in background

The events I relate here sandwich the bear encounter described in “Of Gundelberg and the Bear”  In other words, it explains why we failed to climb Mt. Challenger, twice.

Our first attempt was thwarted by Nature and my lack of self-confidence.  The route we had chosen required us to traverse on smooth rock from Whatcom Pass to the foot of the Challenger glacier.  The smoothness of the rock was owing to erosion by the Whatcom glacier, which had retreated but still was alive and healthy, grumbling away not far above our path.

The”path” itself was on the side of a sloping half dome, which steepened to our left, away from the glacier. On that side the smooth rock dome steepened and eventually fell off almost vertically into a valley filled with dead trees.  To our right it rose but flattened, to the nose of the growling, grunting glacier.  I knew it was stupid to walk out under that billion-ton sheet of ice, but the way looked so easy and we had hiked so far…..

Well, half way across we encountered an unexpected impasse.  There was a steep-sided channel in the smooth rock, at least 100 ft. deep and filled with colossal blocks of ice.  There was no obvious way to get to the other side.  We were carrying full packs, of course,  We should have known better, but we set them down and began scouting around for a quick fix to our dilemma.   And then Nature took over, as you would expect.  

A huge block of ice broke loose from the Whatcom glacier, perhaps 200 m. above us -- and came crashing down, straight at us.  The smooth rock surface that I have described had “steps” every so often.  Through the good offices of whatever agency of Fate takes care of idiots, there was a substantial one, perhaps a meter high, right at our feet.  We ducked down beside it, and watched the broken ice avalanche pass right over us, so close you could have grabbed a bit to cool your evening cocktail.  And so we survived.

However, we were nowhere near out of the woods yet  because – where were our packs?  Nowhere to be seen.  Remember that everything we needed to stay alive was in those packs.  If the ice fall had shoved them into the deep valley described earlier, we were in very serious trouble.  After searching for a frantic twenty minutes or so we located them, far down on the smooth rock half-dome.  In the meantime the Whatcom glacier, which was in full sun, tossed out another little bouquet of ice.  I may be stupid, but I can tell when Fate is giving me advice, so I strapped on my pack and traced a bee-line back toward Whatcom Pass (and, of course, the bear), all the while hurling profane imprecations at Bob, who was back searching for a way across the big gully that had stopped us in the first place.  But in the end he relented, and so survived to try again another day.

We did try again a few days later, using the Easy Ridge/Perfect Pass route.  As this already is too long, I will describe that “adventure” another time.

Perfect Pass

We never got there