ZOMBIES
Oh, and just for the record, I watched Shaun of the Dead last night and it is officially awesome. British humor RULES.

Brad and Sara, neighbors, have a projector/screen/computer setup for movies-- pirated or not-- and gaming. I'm SO not going to get ANYTHING done this year.

Cool.

Circle Game
It feels good to be back among friends, but it's slightly strange to settle back into a way of life that's both very familiar and yet something from "another era" of my life. What I wrote in Montana, that feeling that I was "finished" with school and didn't need, emotionally, to return to it still holds true. Going to the UO no longer seems that important to me-- it's part of the experience but it isn't my psychological priority. I'm here to enjoy the Now, whether classes are a part of that or not.

This year will be much different than the other three I've spent here. The ten months I spent in Tokyo are a prominent rift between "now" and "then," a clear physical representation of the changes I've undergone. I'm very much NOT the same person I was the September before my 21st birthday, and even more so, quite different from who I was the September before that.

Yet here I am again, in the same office I was in the fall of my Freshman year, still friends with the same people. That's a good thing... so is the change, a very good thing. I've already proved to myself that I can still feel quite awkward-- through a series of chance encounters and social mishaps-- but I'm no longer afraid. I've gained a tremendous amount of perspective, courage, and confidence. I no longer feel like a ghost in my own life.

And so, even though I've returned to a previous point, when I felt like I should be moving outward on a line, it's more a spiral path than a circular one that I'm on-- evolving outward toward an unknown end.

This afternoon I head down to San Francisco for the weekend for Folsom Street Fair, quite unsure what I'm getting myself into. Whatever happens, there will be pictures, and maybe even a weekend post. Stay tuned.

Japanimation

The last of the Japan photos are up online, with a new album for sumo, tons o' pics from Tsukiji fish market, and new angles in Shinjuku.

See these links for updates:

Tsukiji Market [37 new]
Shinjuku [28 new]
Ryogoku (Sumo) [24 new]
Shibuya [1 new]
Roppongi [1 new]

**Most of the new photos are at the end of the albums, with the exception of Tsukiji, where they are at the beginning and again at the end.

Llamas and Other Happenings

For the sake of plot continuity, a summary of recent and upcoming events:

**

I have a new home, my own little room with a queen bed and a mirrored closet-- just like a porno studio! I'm in a triplex on a small alleyway and have two roomates with a lot in common-- we're all geeks in relationships with people in other states. But we're not alone our geeky world; we're surrounded by the orgling and bleating of Llamas on the left, on the right and across the alleyway. This, after all, is the Llama District.

So what the hell is a Llama?

"Llama" is a CounterStrike term-- if you don't know what CS is, it's a computer game-- term, originally used for people who are being surly bitches. The Urban Dictionary defines a Llama as "someone who hangs out in another clans IRC channel...trying all they can just to fit in," but I like to think that a Llama is sort of like "that guy," the one that won't shut up and no one wants to be around. That's a Llama.

The original Llamas live across the street in both sides of a duplex, Cockblocker and Trinity, Kilo, Blaze, and Matticus. Cockblocker ran the CS server on which the Llamas of the Llama District originally congrigated, and had an administrator script, "Llama," that when used, effectively "gagged" an obnoxious person, changed their name to Llama and made it so that all they could say was "bleat," "orgle," and "gwar." (Or so legend has it.)

Us second-generation Llamas live in all three units of the triplex facing the other side of the alley. It's our own little commune of geekiness, our own District-- just "the D" to be brief.

**

I came back to campus on Monday, was run around by no less than four administrative departments, found the health center to be closed and realized I forgot my ID so I couldn't get a new one. Meh. Sooo.... I gave up on running errands and went back to work.

What's work?

Work is where the Llamas go when they're not at class. University of Oregon's "Microcomputer Services." Why is it called THAT? I've never been able to figure it out. Is it as if we were going to DENY service to Macrocomputers?

I do tech support, basically. I'm that evil person on the other end of the line, the BOFH, who tries to couvince you, the Idiot User with the p.o.s. computer, that everything is going to be O.K.

Normally, I'm "outsourced" from central to campus departments, where I get to work face-to-face with faculty and staff, which is both not-so-bad and almost worse than phone and desk support. For the moment, I'm doing the 'on call' thing-- perfect re-training, as I haven't had my hands on a PC for almost a year. Thank God the UO has started to like Macs.

What is tech support like, you ask? Pretty much everything you can imagine...

Yesterday, I recieved a call at 4:57, three minutes before I was supposed to leave. Thirty-two minutes later, I hung up. The called was a girl from the UO Sororities... my first warning. She had been in to our offices and got her wireless and LAN working, and now it wasn't working... my second warning. I ran some typical checks before going straight into the idiot-proofing. Did she have her LAN cable plugged into the correct jack? Neither worked. As there were other people in the room, I had them bring in their laptops to test if the connection worked on theirs, an easy way to tell if the jack simply wasn't active. This took much longer than it should have, and right when we determined the jack wasn't working, her friends began to laugh at her...

She was using a phone, NOT ETHERNET, cable to connect her PC to the wall. She'd had me convinced it was a LAN cable, and at the very least, was quite polite and apologetic about her idiocy... but she still wasted 1/2 hour of my off time. That, folks, is a CLASSIC CALL.

Today I've been troubleshooting a Norton Antivirus problem with a girl who, I kid you not, started to ask me advice about how to keep her new cat from shitting in the corners of her house while the program ran its lengthy scans. OK, I love pets and all, but I'm not here to run tech support for your cat's anus. >.<

Good times, good times.

**

I've so far spent a s**tload of money on books, bike repairs, grocieres and supplies and require a f**kton more to actually completely move into my room, stock my kitchen, vacinnate my cat, etc. etc. Read: this is money I DO NOT HAVE after rent and bills. And, thanks to the UO's Simply Retarded pay schedule, I will not get paid until the end of October. Normally, I'd have a credit card to prevent trouble in cash-less times, and I'm always prompt with repayment, yada, yada, but my card expired in August and my Bank lacked the proper policy that should have sent me a replacement BEFORE THAT FACT. So, the card is in the mail-- somewhere-- en route to my SEATTLE address and, the long and the short, is not HERE. Grrrreat.

Come this Friday I will be, for the first time since early high school, physically broke. I will have NO savings, NO credit and NO cash in pocket-- with outstanding purchases.

So. Screwed.

Fuck you, Paris Hilton, those millions are totally wasted on your vapish sluttyness. Where's my rich benefactor? Grah.

**

Well, c'est la vie. Being po' is just a fact of college life, and all will sort out in the end. I've got other, bigger, kinkier fish to fry than finances... Folsom Fair is this weekend and that means I'mma going to SAN FRANCISCO, for the first time in memory, to help retail rope for Twisted Monk. Then, back to classes on Monday. Did I mention being screwed by the bureaucracy? As of this moment, due to circumstances totally BEYOND my control, I'm registered for exactly ONE academic class out of the FOUR I need, and a 2-credit, once-a-week class at that. I'm not even in the PE class I intend to take.

As they say at McDonalds, I'm lovvin' it. This is back to school.

DAY SIX: Goat Mountain

[ DAY SIX PHOTOS ]

Sunday found Justin and I back at the pass alone, with Rachel nursing Micah at home for a case of weird light-headedness and nausea. (Post-proposal stress syndrome?) We got a late start but with decent weather were determined to break our streak and summit one peak before leaving the park.

The night before, on the phone, Justin's dad had told us about a nice little mountain near the Lake Saint Mary's area that was just a "walk up" a grassy slope. That sounded like just about what we needed, especially as we weren't sure how the weather would change.

As it turns out, the weather DID change-- again, and again and again-- and the mountain was, well, technically walk up a slope... a loooong walk that required the endurance to climb 4,100 feet in litte over 3 miles. No technical stuff and overall not that "difficult," but more of a grunt than expected. The mountain terrain was interesting; it began as a long meadow and evolved into more typical rock shelves and boulders. Near the top, we slogged up some skree (loose rock) to find ourselves in a mysterious maze of canyons that we had to navigate AROUND to get to the summit.

All the way up, the weather was pleasant with blue sky overhead at the mountaintop. But a look behind and it was easy to see that we were only experiencing a break in the rain because the peaks behind us were sucking all the weather over their summits and chewing it up into thin wisps of cloud. By the time we reached the summit ridge, one particularly nasty cloud front had actually made it OVER Going to the Sun Mountain, dropped DOWN the other side and was blasting wind and sleet straight at us. The whole time it stayed clear and dry over in East Glacier, as we could see from the summit. We layered up and hunkered down in the freezing gusts to eat our sandwiches, then booked it the hell off that ridge. Ten minutes later it was clear and sunny again. Go figure.

There was a great skree run down the side that we (thank God) didn't climb up cut the time down the mountain by an hour. The whole way down the loose skree banks, Justin followed a set of animal tracks that crisscrossed the entire mountain face until they disappeared into scrub and we veered off the trail. That's when we saw the prints up close-- thought they might be mountain lion-- and spent the rest of the descent looking behind us. (Although Justin's narration of Alien vs. Predator probably didn't help my nerves any.) Turns out, those prints probably belong to a grizzly. Coincidentally, when we got to the ranger station to inquire about them, the Hidden Lake trail (where we hiked Cannon Mtn.) was closed because a bear had been on the boardwalk earlier... and was still in the area.

We got back to a warm cabin to find Micah and Rachel had engineered their own mixed version of Strong Bad's "techno" song in Apple's GarageBand-- without ever having heard it. They'd spent part of the day canoeing and pulled themselves out of the lake near the lodge when the wind got too strong to paddle back.

There was no cleaning in our underwear to end this year's festivities... but we did take our obligatory "on the cabin steps" photo the next morning as we got ready to leave. It seemed like such a short trip and such a hurried end after so much planning but, as usual, nothing was lacking. Any day in GNP is a good day.

The Clif Bar Story
Stopped at a red light near the mall in downtown Bellevue, seven of us in the car in the pouring rain. My sister first took note of the guy next to us.

"Hey," she said, "that guy's driving a Clif Bar!"

Sure enough, so said a big logo on the driver-side door of his white truck. But the image of someone driving an actual Clif Bar was enough to send us, food-drunk and full of thai cuisine, into convulsions of giggles. Allie pointed, "I think he's laughing!

"No, he's eating!"

What was he eating? You guess. We rolled down the window, dark with rain, to get a better look. Unsatisfied, a motioned at him and he lowered his.

"Are you, by any chance, eating a Clif Bar?" I asked, smirking.

In answer, he looked down at the little nub of snack left in his hand, very obviously the remains of a Clif Bar-- and then chucked it out of the window of his company truck and into our car. It hit me on the leg and bounced onto the seat in between my sister and I. To screams of "EWW!" and "IT IS! IT IS!!" I picked up the bit and turned it about, contemplating the proper response. Should I eat it? Eating it would be funny but might also condemn me to whatever weird cooties Clif Bar guy might have had. Hmm.

I think I thought about it a bit too long, because before I knew it, another flying projectile had flung through the window and hit me in the head-- this time a packaged Peanut Butter Crunch. The light changed, and as we wheeled left around the corner I tossed the munched bit out the window into the rain.

Four sisters, laughing wildly and hoisting aloft up a Clif Bar as if it were pirate booty.

"Prepare to be boarded!"

This is the kind of fun ya can't have if you take life too seriously.

DAY FIVE: Granite Park Chalet

[ DAY FIVE PHOTOS ]

Hike stats: 8-mile roundtrip to chalet from Loop Highline Trail outlet. Elevation gain approx 2,500 feet over first 4-miles.

Justin and I hiked this loop in 2002 with our friend Murray, before the Trapper Creek fire complex swept up the ridge last year and stopped just short of the chalet itself. There were fire jumpers on the roof; forty-four people were evacuated.

When we came to the park last September, it was after nearly three weeks of closure due to catasrophic fire damage and threats to the highline and Apgar Village. When we arrived, the fires were still smoldering. Trapper Creek had just burned up the ridge to the Loop, melting all the porta-potties to the ground, and was still burning softly down at the other end of the valley. A mile across Lake McDonand on Howe Ridge, the Roberts Megaplex (yes, they actually called it that), sent trees up like matchsticks in the night.

Because the fires were still burning, the Loop Trail was closed and there was a "no stopping" edict on Going-to-the-Sun road. We could only stare in mournful awe at the dead pillars that had been live trees a year before, as we circled past the Loop.

This year the trail had been re-opened, so we hiked both to see the damage and to get an idea of how much new growth there could be in the little less than 4-month span that the park is not under snow. It was rather amazing. All the trees were dead; not a single one had escaped the fire until the very clear line where the complex stopped. The landscape was barren. There were no birds, no animals, and no rusle of foliage. The view to the valley floor that had previously been blocked by thick vegitation was clearly visible between the thin stalks of deadwood. But what I had expected to be a sadenning hike was anything but: underneath the bald pine poles was a thick, green carpet of ferns, bushes and other undergrowth.

The lightning fire of 1976, which Justin remembers from his childhood as a mass of dead trees bordering the road, is now a lush new forest of aspen and small pines. Like the fire of '76, this burn will become our "checkpoint" as we return to the park year after year.

Q-tip
Justin and I have recently made the disturbing discovery that our cat, Rupert, likes the taste of earwax...

His own or anyone else's. HOW we discovered this was that one day Justin had been scratching Rupert to help him get an itch in his ear and afterwards scratched him under the chin. When Rupert smelled his earwax he went after it like Justin had butter on his finger. EWW. If you've ever had the unlucky pleasure of tasting your own earwax, you know that it's not yummy. We had to find out if he just liked his own-- and stuck fingers in our own ears to find out.

MMMkay, yeeeah, I'm just now realizing how WEIRD this sounds.

DAY FOUR: Mt. Siyeh Garden of the Gods

[ DAY FOUR PHOTOS ]

Up at 6 a.m. to be out door by 7:15 a.m.-- that's the way it works when you want to climb one of the 10,000-footers. That particular morning, it was, as we say, "ass cold," even at 3,500 feet. From the previous days' rain, there was snow on the pass and high winds besides. Not the best day to attempt a climb, but the best weather we could hear in the week;y forecast. We weren't optimistic about summiting our goal peak, Mt. Siyeh. Nevertheless, we decided to hike three miles in to Preston Park, one of the most beautiful mountain valleys in Glacier and assess the climb from there.

As we gained elevation and broke through the treeline into mountain meadows, the landscape looked more and more like what Rachel described as "a Harry Potter movie." At the foot of the mountain, Justin picked an ascent route and led us up what we thought the proper stream bed to begin the climb. Unfortunately, the greatest part of the peak was shrouded in swirling clouds and only parkway up, we saw that the clefts on the face that led most easily to the summit were packed solid with snow and slippery with ice. We turned around, and luckily, too, for we later learned that we'd chosed the improper route-- one that might have gotten us "treed" with improper preparation.

We backtracked to the two lakes below Siyeh�s high skree shoulder and followed another stream up to the pass, back into the wind. The higher we got, the windier it was, and the more exposed we were to the stinging snow forced from the clouds. But at the top of the shoulder, above a sheer cliff dropoff, the whiteness parted and exposed the valley hidden more than a thousand feet below the pass. We stood at the edge of the world, our back to their fierce weather, facing into clear lushness visible all the way into Canada. Up the ridge, along the edge of the cliff we climbed, until along the face became visible the hidden ledge that Justin�s father had named (aptly) The Garden of the Gods.

In the Garden, we ducked out of the wind and devoured our lunches. In the valley below, a herd of sixteen or more elk grazed in summer bliss around a mitten-shaped lake, oblivious that winter was raging in the peaks above them. We had left Siyeh peak with some reluctance, not just because of a previous failed attempt, three years ago, or our subsequent ECS (Emotional Commitment to the Summit) but because we had wanted to summit that very mountain to fulfill the driving force behind this year�s Glacier trip. While I was still at school in Tokyo and unsure of my summer plans, none of us had been able to commit to a date and didn�t even know if we could make it. Then, Micah emailed me:

Justin and Kat,

Hey there guys, I know we've had some issues trying to schedule Glacier this year, I'm not really sure where the plans stand right now and such and I've just refused to think about the possiblity of *not* going until just recently. I hate to put more pressure on you and such, and really I'm not writing this email to do so, I just wanted to find out if there was anything else we could do to work in even a short trip up there with you guys.

The thing is, I've been planning (I know, I should have talked with you about this) to ask Rachel to marry me on top of a mountain in Glacier this summer.��She doesn't know about this so shhhh, dont tell anyone.��I know the moment anyone in the friend group catches wind of it the gig will be up so NO talking =).

I have backup plans as well so if we really can't work anything out, that's cool too.��Rachel has talked with her professors and if she were to miss a week of class they recommended that she simply not take the class at all since they are only 4 week classes. Stupid College of Ed.

Anyway, this is my last ditch plea! =)��Thanks again for being so patient with us, lots of things have been changing in our lives recently and I know it has made planning this year very difficult!

Take care, hope to hear from you both soon!

Micah

It took a $250 plane ticket change and shaving four days off a fabulous family trip to my home state, Michigan, but we made it and now were faced with the only unpreventable circumstance that might keep us from any summit: weather. I had asked Micah that morning to consider what he wanted to do in the event that we not summit Siyeh and, weather pending, any other peak. The hidden Garden of the Gods, overlooking that hidden paradise, seemed to me as good a place as any. We were getting cold, and it was almost time to keep moving to stay warm. As we packed up to leave, Micah looked at me over Rachel's shoulder and asked me the phrase which we'd termed the "secret code" for 'proposal time'; "Will you take a picture of Rachel and I?" Justin caught on and tackled Rachel in a bearhug as he saw Micah struggling with the ring in his pocket. Once we knew everything was green and Rachel didn't have a clue (*wink*), I backed up to photograph and film the special moment.

The result: a very surprised and flustered Rachel, many kisses, and one newly engaged couple!

Whew. Mission accomplished (thank God, eh?)! Now alls they've got to do is plan the wedding. *grin*

DAY THREE: McDonald Creek

[ DAY THREE PHOTOS ]

While we waited for Micah's hair to stop standing on end after the weather crashed on us the previous day, we kicked back and took a late morning to cool down our burning thighs. It only... sort of... worked. Five hours indoors and we all started to get a bit... wound up. So, to feel like we did something productive, we walked the length of McDonald creek to the falls, where Micah and Justin staged the Heroic Rescue of a Verizon phone they saw from the cliff banks. As an example of how bored we were, there's even video footage of Micah saving the phone (which was quite broken) from watery doom.

Can you hear me now?

Tits.

rope slut
Good, now that I have your attention, I figure that since Justin and I just told his mom, the secret's out: I've got one weird part-time job. Well, err, I guess the job itself isn't that weird; I'm simply packaging product for a friend to sell at a San Francisco street fair later this month. It's the product itself that's weird.

Remember that post I made a while back about naked sushi? Well, same said friend, a Mr. Monk of twistedmonk.com [LINK NOT WORK SAFE], runs an internet business to sell rope... for the sex industry (to put it rather crassly). Organic, hand-oiled, romanian hemp bondage rope. Yeppers. For people who like to do a lot more than break out the "fuzzy cuffs" at drunken cocktail parties and joke about how kinky they are with friends.

Now, while I don't really consider myself sexually repressed or, as they say, "vanilla," keep in mind that bondage, leather, and Kink (with a capital K) is not a world I'm terribly familiar with except by means of a rather bemused sort of Six-Degrees-of-Kevin-Bacon connection. But, knowing me, would you expect that I'd pass up the chance to be a Booth Bunny for a rope vendor the Folsom Street fair in San Francisco's Castro District? BWA HA HA.

I think not.

Got me a nice little T-shirt with the post's title phrase on it, one I don't suppose I'll try out in mixed or polite company. All detail for Folsom Fair transport and lodging are taken care of... now all I've got to do is remember to charge the camera battery and the Power of Cuteness to aid me in my duty as booth babe. Anyone in SF on the 26th of this month should be sure to stop by Twisted Monk's booth on Folsom street. We'll be there ass-early in the morning.

As an aside, Justin and I went out to Toyoda's for sushi tonight... and left after 4 salmon nigiri, 6 unagi nigiri, 2 amaebi nigiri, 4 aji nigiri, a tekka maki, a negi-hamachi maki, a california roll, miso soup, octopus and squid salad sampler, udon salad, marinated tuna sashimi and a large tumbler of hot sake... with a bill of only $22... AFTER TAX. I gave Toyoda a copy of one of the pictures of Justin and I in kimono. We chatted in Japanglish and ate a f**kton of free food. Some people go out for cheap chinese or pasta on a budget. We eat the best sushi in Seattle for close to nothing.

It's like we have our very own Cheers!!

DAY TWO: Mt. Cannon

[ DAY TWO PHOTOS ]

We knew cold weather front was supposed to hit the pass in the afternoon, so we headed up early and chose a �local� peak, an 11 mile round-trip with only 2,200 foot elevation gain to the summit. The rangers� station wasn�t open yet but Justin, Micah and Rachel weaseled past the window-washing staff to register for the hike in case impending weather treed us in the peaks. I went into the ladies� room and was greeted by ... a marmot.

�There�s a marmot in here with me!� squaked an older woman, holding open the stall door, where a large hoary marmot sat looking up at the toilet. Ms. Marmot simply sat there until I decided to take a picture and then fled, squeaking something that sounded like "pervert" in Marmot-ese, and chased by a Park Ranger with a broom.

We followed the boardwalk trail past Hidden Lake overook. Just before it dropped to the basin, we cut upward under red skree cliffs bordering the mountains above. After another mile of well-marked trail, we crested the shoulder between Cannon and Clements. There, on the horizon, we saw the head of the weather front, the end of all our good weather, manifested as thunderclouds in the distance.

Another hour up the southeast ridge, we were climbing in eroded gullies when the wind started to rise and clouds previously only visible as shadows over distant peaks swept into the McDonald valley. We heard thunder.

Storms on mountains are a touchy subject among climbers. Though normally the chance being struck by lightning is slim to none, and far less than being injured in a car-commute, among the spires and summits of 8-to-10K peaks, that statistic becomes null and void. As we stood on the summit ridge, we watched bolts jump from cloud to cloud. Then, as the storm rolled between the first of the mountains on the Continental Divide, the bolts were drawn from the boiling front to higher ground. The thunder grew from a roll to a roar as we put on our waterproof gear and bunkered down beneath a cliff overhang to shelter outselves from the weather. In came the storm. The temperature dropped ten degrees and water fell in a white sheet to the valley floor. Water struck us horizontally, then hail, and finally snow. We watched for Saint Elmo's Fire. Should our arm hair have stood on end, we would have stood and maybe run, and with right cause. The wind screamed past above our heads. Lighting struck the peak to the left and to the right. We counted thirteen bolts in a minute. Directly across from us, the sky burst open as a tree on the opposite sky of Bearhat Mountain went up in smoke.

And yet, I felt only awe. I shook with it. For what could be called terrible and fearsome seemed to me suddenly to be the touch of God. The thought that echoed through my mind, though perhaps only because I knew one of our group was terrified of lighting and felt the duty to be brave, was that if I were to die, I would offer myself gladly upon the pyre of that mountain.

The storm, which passed in between five and ten minutes, was one of the most amazing things I've ever seen. But we had suffered injuries, not to our ability but to morale. After traversing the peak and climbing another shoulder under azure blue sky, we saw another storm moving fast across the valley and more boilding clouds behind it. I have been one to call off several summits, for weather, for fear and for simple lack of faith in myself. When one party member does not want to climb, no one should force them, especially in the face of slick rock and high wind. We turned around and headed down the peak, posthaste, and thus aborted Mt. Cannon.

Although I spent several long minutes looking up at the peak with regret, I didn't leave with the fear that I wouldn't be back. If Tokyo taught me anything, it's that if I want something enough, I can take it for myself, without fear, and embrace it fully. I've lost my anxiety of many things that plagued me before I left for Japan, some everyday and some more exceptional. I no longer fear exertion, exposure or vertigo. To the contrary, this may only mean that I've come back from Japan with a death wish.

To keep our minds off defeat and weather bad enough to guarantee snow on the pass for the rest of the trip, we chatted while we hiked home to another night of eating, drinking and... other things that one does in the most beautiful place on earth.

DAY ZERO: Travel (ugh.) and DAY ONE: Mt. Brown Lookout

[ DAY ONE PHOTOS ]

We met in Missoula, a detour of over an hour from the "beaten path" to Glacier National Park. My flight from Traverse City, Michigan was more than on time, it was (gasp) early and still, less than ten minutes after deplaning and fishing my stash of bags from the belt, I was met at the curb by Justin, UO Llama comrades, Micah and Rachel, and a car full o' shit. Nevertheless, because we(?) felt it was necessary to shop organic, we loaded up on whole food groceries in Missoula, things like Annie's Naturals Goddess Dressing and free-range ground buffalo, that would not be available in Columbia Falls.

So here we were, loaded into a car so heavy the tires barely avoided the wheel wells, with three hours left to drive. Fun times, I'll tell ya.

The first night, we did what we always do after a ten-hour-plus drive; we crashed hard. In the tradition of "second days," (after the 2001 failed Siyeh Mt. climb), we got up late and decided to hike something that would kick our asses but not require too much mental exertion. HAH.

We thought, as we were all in peak shape, that a "strenuous" lookout hike with a summit peak within a mile-and-a-half might provide ample opportunity for some altitude gain. We'd done the lookout hike before in 2001 and, needless to say, had forgotten just HOW strenuous it was. Starting at lake level, we hiked about four-and-a-half miles, gaining 4,700 vertical feet with over thirty switchbacks in the last two miles. Phew.

This hike is notorious for being the ONLY hike I've ever heard Justin complain on.

Near the top, and one of the switchbacks overlooking the lake, we met two smokers, dressed more for a college drag than for hiking. They seemed silent and reserved but after some joking banter amongst ourselves, we decided it was better that Goths were hiking in the park at all. When we got to the lookout we saw them again, when they met with two friends at the top. This time the girl smoker took out a bright burgundy, crushed velvet bag. Was this her version of a hiking pack, I wondered?

"Nice bag, is it velvet?" I asked.

"Yes." she said. With no further response to initiate the conversation and without really thinking, I spat out, "What's in it?"

There was a long pause and I wonded why I asked. The look on her face said that the there was something secret and almost shameful in the bag's content. What could it be? I'd have bet it wasn't a hiking pack any more.

�Stuff?� I said, trying to give her an easy out.

Her reply, slow, guarded, and daring: �My husband."

For a moment, my mind raced. How did her husband fit into the bag? Was she joking? Then the secret look and the answer locked into place.

�You�re up here to scatter his ashes?�

She nodded, on the verge of tears, and one of her friends moved in to put his hand on her shoulder. For a moment there was a very full and awkward silence, then I apologized for asking such a loaded question so casually.

Justin�s father wants his ashes scattered over the park. My grandfather wants his scattered in the Bob Marshall Wilderness. Someday I hope to have some part of myself left in the summit winds. Later, we found out from one of the three others in her party that she had lost her husband a few months earlier to cancer and that they two had been to the park four years earlier, and were so moved by what they saw that she had returned with three friends to grant his last request.

The man who relayed the story, dressed in a Pink Floyd tee-shirt, ripped shorts and sneakers, told us that he had spent all his years in Wisconsin, completely unaware that places like Glacier Park even existed. �My God,� he said, �I had no idea. When I get home, I�m gonna quit my job and go see the world.� When I laughed (my way of affirmation, which many mistake for amusement), he said, �I�m serious. I never even knew.� This park changes more lives than I can even imagine.

after these messages
Back in civilization again (alas) after 6 days in beautiful Glacier Natl. Park. Will be back with a play-by-play and pictures for such highlights as:

-Grizzly Bears!
-An Engagement!
-Marmot in the Women's Room!
-The Thunderstorm!
-Justin Tries to Kill Us!
-Goat Mountain!