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Category Archives: Memoirs

Backpacking in the San Juans

Posted on June 20, 2015 by Bill Leave a comment

Getting Off at Needleton

My backpacking days are over. I’m old, I have a titanium knee, and I hurt in lots of places. The inspiration for this piece is Reese Whitherspoon’s Wild. The movie is about a woman who decided to pull her life together by backpacking the Pacific Crest Trail. She did it and found herself on the way. I didn’t find myself backpacking, but had some experiences that are still with me. I even had some parallel experiences, the main one being: don’t go on a long backpack with boots that don’t fit unless you enjoy pain.

On a long trip through the San Juans, my boots were too small. We took the narrow gauge train from Durango to Needleton, just a stop on the line halfway to Silverton. We got quite a few looks from the flatland tourists as we got off for a trail into a canyon a long way from anywhere. From the trailhead it was several uphill miles to Chicago Basin in the heart of the Needle Mountains, where we planned to spend some time.

Don’t Buy Them Too Small

About halfway, we came across some guys helping their friend with a badly sprained ankle to get to the railhead. He was in serious pain, unable to put any weight on his ankle. His friends were looking pretty strained. That first trail is where I began learning about my boots. It was the seventies when you had to have those massive European climbing boots for a walk in City Park. I think I spent something like $200.00 for them. I was determined they would fit OK once they were broken in. Hint: those things could be so worn out the soles are falling off, but they won’t be broken in. There was only one thing to do, keep walking.

Chicago Basin

Chicago Basin was miraculous. It is a large glacial basin ringed by mountains, three of them fourteeners. Windom Peak, Sunlight Mountain, and Mt. Aeolus. The area is full of thirteeners, not as famous, but challenging. It is steep country. Most of the San Juans are volcanic, but the Needles are the cores of ancient mountains, much older than the relatively recent volcanos.

In the 1970’s, the United States Geological Survey was changing from 15 minute topographical maps to 7 1/2 minute maps. The map for the Needle Mountains was somewhat behind in the revisions. It was published in 1900. No color, no modern changes to man-made features, but still useful for navigation. 7 1/2 minutes is roughly 7 miles. It is possible to walk through the area covered in one day. The Needle map was 15 minutes with a note to add eight feet to each elevation. No GPS in those days, just triangulating from one peak to another.

The Needle Mountains are one of the most remote mountain ranges in Colorado. A big glacier once sat in that basin at the foot of those mountains and ground away for a long time. There are lots of places in the Rocky Mountains with great views, and Chicago Basin is right up there. The other good thing is that it is hard to get to. Keeps the riffraff out. We had the basin to ourselves, even during the backpacking boom.

Columbine Pass

As a bonus, the weather was good. When it was time to leave, we thought a good breakfast was in order. Pancakes and coffee. Lots of both. We struck camp and headed over Columbine Pass. The trail switchbacks up that glaciated wall to a summit over twelve thousand feet high. Hint number two: don’t climb a steep trail at high altitude with a stomach full of pancakes. They didn’t feel like pancakes, they felt like lead in there. I guess suffering is one of the aspects of backpacking.

The descent led us to Vallecito Creek, and a long hike to Vallecito Reservoir, where my father gave us a ride to the car in Durango. Now, it is day hikes or four wheeling. The knees are the first to go.

Posted in Backpacking, Colorado Mountains, Geology, Memoirs, My Story, Pain

Four Wheel Drive Equipment

Posted on June 3, 2015 by Bill 2 comments

Willys Jeep Wagon

I have been involved in four wheeling since childhood. Stuck up to the axles and high-centered in Utah, Colorado, South Dakota, and Wyoming. I like to get out where the country is wild and there aren’t too many people around. My favorite places are mountain passes in Colorado and the vast red rock country in Utah. I am not a hard core rock-crawler with a vehicle jacked up in the air with near tractor tires whining and rumbling down the street.

I have had International Scouts, Nissans, Dodges, and my current Toyota Tacoma. There is a long succession of Jeeps I have ridden in and driven. I have also been stranded in them. So, no Jeep for me, I just don’t trust them. There are lots of choices in four wheelers, but not as many choices for cheap four wheelers. I’m cheap.

1953 Chevy 2wd

I buy base model vehicles. I even bought one without air conditioning. 4x4s aren’t particularly cheap, but it is not necessary to spend $50,000 for a nice rig. My Dodge pickup had a small engine. Oh, wait, it wasn’t even four wheel drive, although I treated it like it was. I guess my willingness to use a two wheeler goes back to my youth, when we had a 1953 Chevrolet pickup. That was in the days when the only 4x4s were old military Jeeps and the venerable Dodge Power Wagon. Both were capable, but slow and fairly unreliable (35 mph in the Jeep, about 50 in a Power Wagon). Dad and I went hunting and fishing in that old Chevy. Dad was an amazing driver in the bad stuff. He used to maintain the telephone line from Fruita to Cisco, Utah across that adobe desert in a two wheel drive pickup. Up in the Bookcliff area, there used to be a pile of rocks at the bottom of a bad hill. If it was muddy or snowy the driver would stop, load the rocks in the back of the pickup, go about his business, and unload the rocks at the bottom of the hill on the way out.

Two times we went places in that old Chevy where no sane person would go without four wheel drive. Once, we were deer hunting up in the Douglas Pass country after a storm. The road was muddy with that slick stuff Western Colorado is famous for. We drove down into a saddle that was steep at either end. We couldn’t get up the hill. A newer pickup came by that had a limited slip differential, new at the time, and went right up the hill. We had to put the tire chains on.

Battlement Lakes Road

The other adventure was going fishing at the Battlement Lakes road on Grand Mesa. That road wasn’t steep, but was full of big rocks and mud holes. It was narrow, with little room to maneuver around obstacles. Dad put that old pickup in second gear, not even the granny gear, and mostly idled along thar road with that old Chevy six lugging along. The rocks in back rolled around and smashed my good spinning rod. We met some guys in there in a Jeep. They could not believe we got in there with a two wheel drive pickup. I don’t think the fishing was very good that day, but no matter.

Scout I

After he retired, Dad got into four wheeling. His first one was an old Jeep station wagon with a 283 Chevy V8. That thing was good in the bad stuff, but leaked oil and had some ignition problems. The next one was an International Scout I. Pretty primitive, but capable with one exception. There was a place on Elephant Hill in Canyonlands named Scout Slot. It was narrow, in solid rock with a ledge that was in just the right place to break the transfer case of a Scout.

After that was an older model Jeep Cherokee. It was pretty good, and it went around the White Rim Trail with some friends. Next was a Scout II. It was good, but one night coming off Elephant Hill it quit. Dad and I walked to the Canyonlands Resort and got the owner to tow us with his Ford pickup. We bounced a short distance and the Scout started. The carburetor float must have been stuck and bounced loose. I sold the Scout for the Dodge pickup.

2009 Tacoma

I did two wheel drive for a while then bought a Nissan Frontier. It was capable, lasted quite a while, then I crashed it on ice in Glenwood Canyon. Now it is the Toyota. It is good, but I gave it a dent on Pearl Pass. Now I have a Detroit Trutrac limited slip differential which should help. Summer is coming, and I’m ready to get out there.

Posted in Current Activities, Four Wheeling, Memoirs, My Story, Stories

My Music

Posted on May 5, 2015 by Bill Leave a comment

Buddy Holly

I was growing up when Rock and Roll was born. Prior to rock and roll, popular music pretty much defined banality. Then, the blues and the beat. Early rock and Roll was not always great either. There was a lot of bad stuff out there. The radio stations had to fill their space, and Buddy Holly, Elvis, and the Everly Brothers would not stretch far enough. The music was born out of the blues, and there were black musicians who kept the tradition alive with some innovative infusions. A lot of the trash came from Phil Spector, with his wall of sound.

Like most things In our culture, the real stuff got co-opted by white men in suits. The real stuff stayed alive, but you didn’t hear it on top 40 radio very often. There were some musicians far away who did listen to the real stuff, and they infused it with their own culture. The British Invasion began, and music changed again. A tremendous burst of creativity came forth, almost world wide. Today, it’s called classic rock. The suits, however, got to sell their schlock alongside the good stuff.

There was a parallel trend during all this change. The folkies were alive and well, with the real stuff, Judy Collins (From Denver), Joan Baez, and others. We also got the Kingston Trio-like commercial music. The king of the folkies was a Jewish boy from Hibbing, Minnesota. Not blessed with a great singing voice, he developed a huge following because his lyrics managed to define the mood of a restless generation.

Bob Dylan

Then, he went electric. Bob Dylan and his legion of followers and contemporaries created music that inspired and motivated many of my generation. There also was this war lots of people did not like. The music led and we followed it into the streets. It wasn’t just the music that created the cultural shift of the 60’s; the civil rights movement probably started it all.

There were some parallel trends in music during all this. People still listened to big band standards, the Burt Bacharach’s were out there, commercial bubblegum polluted the airwaves, and Jazz stayed alive through it all. The 50s and 60s were probably the golden age of jazz, taking its roots in the blues to entirely new places. I left rock and roll for a while around 1959-1961 for jazz. I guess I needed the blues. Today’s jazz seems like Muzak with chords.

Classical music. There was not much of a classical music scene when I was a kid in Fruita. My introduction came from the Brumbaughs. They had a piano, and used it. Tedd, the older son, was my age, and two blocks away. The Brumbaughs took me to a violin concert at Mesa College in Grand Junction. Tossy Spivakoski was the violinist. (How can I remember his name? It must have been around 1956.). He was a well-known concert violinist, but I think he thought he was casting pearls before swine in the middle of nowhere. . He hated any coughing or other noise while he was playing, and scowled at the culprits. I liked the concert.

J. S. Bach

After my mother died, I listened to a lot of classical blues. Tchaikovsky’s Sixth Symphony is the probably the best musical lament of all time. Classical, especially Baroque, is now my favorite genre. Baroque seems to appeal to people with ADD. I can’t connect with the new stuff, pop is as insipid as always, and country is pop with a steel guitar. The scene is so fragmented I can’t track it.

I am sure there is good music, I just don’t know where. One place of genuine creativity that channels 60s protest music is Hip-Hop. I don’t connect with the sound too much, I guess I am too old and white, but if you want to know what is going on in Baltimore, listen to hip-hop.

Yo Yo Ma

I can’t listen to classic rock, I have heard every song several hundred times. Pop and country suck, so it is classical for me. Recently Carol and I went to a Yo-Yo Ma concert at DU. He is the most famous cellist in the world, and most of his program was Bach. I was transported. I have some old R&R in my truck, Bonnie Raitt, Dylan, the Cranberries, but it is mostly classical, mostly Baroque. I am content with listening to music that has been around for centuries. I am still a bit of a folkie, so that music is OK as long as there is no John Denver.

Posted in ADD/ADHD, Early Rock and Roll, KOMA, Memoirs, Music, My Story, Stories

Rock and Roll in the Sticks

Posted on May 2, 2015 by Bill Leave a comment

1958 Chevy

Western Colorado in the late 1950s and 1960s was a cultural backwater of the first magnitude. I-70 did not exist, making travel to Denver at least two hours longer than now. In Grand Junction, there was one television station and two radio stations. The Junction had the Daily Sentinel newspaper, and Fruita had the Fruita Times, a weekly with stories about the bridge club.

Things were on the move in the land. Rock and Roll had appeared, but not in our neck of the desert. The only contact we had was the Ed Sullivan Show, which introduced Elvis to the world. The local radio stations weren’t interested. They were making money playing Patti Page, the Andrews Sisters, and Doris Day. The raciest they got was letting Johnny Ray cry.

At first, we found Lucky Lager Dance Time on KNBC in San Francisco, but you needed a good radio, and there better not be any lightning between the Junction and California. Then, salvation! KOMA! As soon as the sun was down, KOMA boomed in from Oklahoma City. Rock and Roll ruled the sticks. And the sticks were extensive. KOMA dominated Oklahoma, New Mexico, Rural Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota, Wyoming, and neighboring boondocks.

That radio station was our lifeline to the rock and roll youth culture developing in the country. This was not the Beatles and the Stones. It was Buddy Holly, Elvis, the Everly Brothers, all those Phil Spector bands, and some R&B, like Chuck Berry and Little Richard. KOMA was top 40, no obscure bands, just the big stuff. Yes, there was country and western, and Grand Junction even got a station later, but country was mostly confined to the pool halls and beer joints around 1960.

There was the KOMA band circuit. There were several rock and roll bands that traveled the region, playing in small town Grange Halls, Legion Halls; anywhere the band could rent a hall. Sterling, Roswell, Scott’s Bluff, Colby, Torrington, Hot Springs, Alliance, Garden City, Trinidad, all those little towns starved for anything from the outside world. The only band on the circuit I remember was Spider and the Crabs. They advertised their gigs on KOMA and kids came to the dances from all over. KOMA made money from the ads, and bad rock and roll ruled the boondocks.

Several of us would buy a case of Coors bottles, go to Grand Junction, listen to KOMA, cruise all evening drinking beer, and throw the empty bottles at highway signs on the way back to Fruita.

Was that youth misspent? No, not at all. I am writing about it now, aren’t I? Rock and Roll survived, and all was well until the mid-1960s. Here’s to KOMA in Oklahoma! The station is still in business, still playing rock and roll.

Posted in Colorado History, Early Rock and Roll, History, KOMA, Memoirs, My Story, Stories, Western Colorado

The Dentists

Posted on March 24, 2015 by Bill Leave a comment

At the Dentist

I have trouble with the dentist’s office. It all goes back to my high school days. My parents were bad at taking care of their teeth and I did not get good habits from them. In high school my teeth were riddled with cavities. So, off to the dentist’s office in Grand Junction.

It was the 1950’s, so the dental arts were not like today. The dentist was probably well into his 60’s, and his art was behind even those times. He did orthodontics as well as general dentistry, and he liked to show off his work.

He had a number of display cases filled with plaster casts of deformed mouths he had worked on for the last 50 years or so. They belonged in a circus sideshow. They were horrible and fascinating, with crooked teeth, missing teeth, teeth that had grown the wrong direction, and deformed jaws. A few skulls and skeletons would have completed the collection.

He had an old fashioned dentist’s chair that had a porcelain basin with swirling water for you to spit the blood into. The worst part was the drill. It was a large apparatus with the motor at the base. From the motor a series of leather belts and pulleys ran up the arms to the drill. I am surprised it was not operated by a treadle.

That drill was slow and noisy. Today, the drill has a high pitched whine. His drill vibrated, made a grinding sound, and those leather belts turned on their wheels making the clumsy drill turn. He did a lot of drilling, or torture. I can still hear the noise and feel the pressure and the pain. No anesthetic, ever. That went on for several visits with gutta percha temporary fillings between appointments that always fell out, exposing sensitive places.

After the interminable drilling came the gold fillings. The lower molars had the largest cavities, so he cast gold inlays. He then cleaned out the holes with that damned drill, applied an adhesive and installed the fillings. He used a punch and mallet and hammered them in.

The upper molars had smaller cavities so he used gold foil. He would pack some foil into the cavity, then use some kind of tool that was like a manual impact driver. Click, wham. Click, wham. Click, wham. That repeated what seemed like thousands of times. When he got enough foil in the cavity, out came the punch and mallet to really pack that gold in. This lasted for weeks. The good part? Most of those fillings are still there.

I tended to avoid dentists after that experience until I had to. In my middle thirties my impacted wisdom teeth had to come out. There was anesthetic along with the cutting, prying, hammering, pain, and wrenching. I developed a dry socket that had to be packed and tended until it finally healed. I had more dental trauma with that process.

I did start getting intermittent dental care, but not enough brushing, flossing, and cleanings. Every time I opened my mouth to brush it reminded me of all that time in the chair back in High School. I developed gum disease and was referred to an oral surgeon. I made the appointment, drove into the parking lot, turned off the ignition, sat there, turned the ignition on, and drove away.

Now I go to get my teeth cleaned and have work done at Metropolitan Dental in downtown Denver. The dentists are good, I know them, they know me and my phobias,so we get along. Barb, my hygienist, is just the best. I get chided, told to use a Sonicare or a Water Pic, but the sounds and the feelings I get from them bring all the old trauma back. I brush and floss irregularly, and get along. I have lost one tooth.

At my last visit I found I need to have a crown replaced and went into a tailspin, hardly able to brush at all. I still have not made an appointment. I have post traumatic stress disorder from dentists. I think it is time for some PTSD therapy.

Posted in Dental Phobia, Dentist, Fear, Memoirs, My Story, Stories

Beware of Cats

Posted on March 16, 2015 by Bill Leave a comment

Cat Trapped in a Folk Music Environment

It started innocently enough. I like to get on Facebook, and some of the people I am friends with are into the animal rescue thing. Lots of cute pictures of cats and dogs. I didn’t pay much attention to them until this great cat picture appeared. I liked it, laughed, and shared it on my page.

It is important when using social media to avoid posting material one might regret later. I have ADD, and one characteristic of my condition is impulsivity. I get myself into trouble. I don’t do Twitter as a result. I also watch my behavior on Facebook and have seldom made a fool of myself. But, I posted a cat picture.

This time, however, it all went bad. I haven’t posted anything rash, but that one act, posting a cat picture, has led to my moral decline. I look at too many animal pictures, Like them, and even follow links. Even more dangerously, I find myself following ever more decadent Internet pages. Stories about Kardashians! Jenners! Brad and Angelina! Republicans! Media liars!

I have worthwhile things to do with my life, but my time is increasingly going to meaningless pursuits. I even found myself looking at The Enquirer in the checkout line yesterday. I fear that I may even start watching reality TV shows. Oh, the horror! Will I switch from The New York Times to the Daily Mail? Watch Good Morning America?

My worst nightmare is watching Fox News. I have managed to avoid that so far, but I feel myself weakening. I used to avoid most sports writing and programming, but I found myself talking to my wife about Lance Armstrong this morning. I also tend to follow attractive woman athletes. Mixing my weaknesses together.

Will I have to have ESPN now? Will I find myself at Nuggets and Avalanche games? Will I start following the sports betting lines from Las Vegas? Even worse, will I be at Caesars Palace instead of Carnegie Hall?

Remember, Dear Reader, that a cat caused this crisis.

Posted in Cats, Current Activities, Humor, Memoirs, Moral Decline, My Story, Stories, unjustified Fears

A Volkswagen in Italy

Posted on February 27, 2015 by Bill Leave a comment

I had a good U.S. Army career, all three years of it. I was in electronics school for almost a year, on the Jersey Shore and in Huntsville, Alabama. Then, it was the USNS Buckner to Germany. I was trained on an obsolete missile system and my first duty station was with a unit that operated another obsolete missile system.

1963 VW

The unit was about to go out of business, so they were pretty lax with us. I bought a car. A new 1963 Volkswagen, black. It cost $1389. I paid cash with 20 Deutschmark bills (about $5.00 back then) in a paper bag. Freedom! At least part of the time. This was unusual for an unmarried junior enlisted man. We also had real jobs doing electronics, so they didn’t mess with us too much. I could get away evenings and weekends most of the time. I was stationed in Aschaffenburg, Bavaria for five months then in Hanau, Hesse. Something like 28 kilometers apart on the Main river, they were different cities. Bavarians just seem happier. Those Hessians were nice people, but more reticent. Did Martin Luther bring that about?

Palatine Hill, Rome

After I was in Hanau for a few months, two buddies and I did a big road trip to Rome. What a trip! We did some of the standard tourist things, but G.I.’s on the loose in Europe see the places from a more earthy perspective. There was Michelangelo’s David in Florence and the whores on the Palatine Hill in Rome. 2000 lira for us, 1000 lira for a local. The whole thing was so sordid I could not partake. I liked Switzerland. Nice people, great scenery, and so orderly. We partied some in Zurich and got to talk to some of the locals. Everyone knew we were American soldiers, of course. The haircuts gave us away. Then onto a train that carried everyone’s car through the St. Gotthards Pass tunnel to Italy.

Milan Traffic (modern)

We loved Italy. Beautiful country, from the Alps to Tuscany and Rome. Wonderful people. Warm, friendly, helpful, and lots of wine. The most striking view was approaching the walled city of Siena from the Tuscan countryside. The most terrifying experience was driving in Milan during rush hour. We got onto a traffic circle in downtown Milan that had about eight cars abreast, all jockeying for position. Italians are good, aggressive drivers, and drove those little Fiat 500s like they were Ferraris. We were out of place in that VW. It just didn’t fit in. We also had engine trouble. It would start missing and stuttering until it lost enough power that we would have to go to a shop about every 300 miles. That is where the language problem really took over. There was no language problem in Germany, Austria, or Switzerland, but the Italians had no English. The best I could do with Italian was the phrase book and some Spanish. The Volkswagen’s ignition points were burning up. We could communicate that and get new points, but we couldn’t get across to them that it was a chronic problem. So, for the rest of the trip it was new points every 300 miles. The mechanics were all eager to help, but the language problem was too much of a barrier. Back in Germany, my mechanic fixed it in about 30 minutes by replacing a burned spark plug wire. I learned about having difficulty while traveling and still having a good time. The car trouble added to the adventure.

Roman Forum

We were in Rome several days, staying in a Pension not far from the Vatican. One night we hooked up with some local college students who took us to the suburbs, no tourists, and a great time. Sitting here thinking about Rome, lots of images come up even sixty years later, but the Roman Forum is most memorable. It was the center of the world for a long time. I steeped myself in the history. Going back to Germany, when we crossed from Italian Switzerland to German Switzerland, we dropped into a beautiful glacial valley. At the head of the valley was a Gasthaus. Wiener schnitzel, pommes frites, and beer never tasted so good after all that tomato sauce and wine. That trip remains one of the highlights of my life.

Posted in 1963 Volkswagen, Memoirs, My Story, Rome, Stories, The Army, Traffic in Milan, Traveling in Europe

The Buckner Banner

Posted on February 24, 2015 by Bill 4 comments

USNS Buckner

One of my first literary adventures was as editor of The Buckner Banner, the ship’s newspaper on the USNS Simon Bolivar Buckner, a troopship sailing from New York to Bremerhaven, Germany. It was 1963, and the U.S. Army was shipping me to Europe. Just out of technical school, I had one skinny little stripe on my sleeve. I must have been chosen as editor by some random process, as I had no experience. I guess that has always been the Army way. The Banner ran a news digest from the radio room every day, and had a lot of canned content used on every nine day voyage. My job was to come up with some original content. I had a crew of clerk typists who made mimeograph masters we ran off every morning. The most valuable thing I learned as editor is to listen to your people. One of the guys suggested we serialize a Sherlock Holmes novel. The passengers on the ship were a lot of GI’s headed to their first real duty station in Germany, stacked four deep in bunks in the cargo holds, and a large number of dependents, family members of career Army personnel. There were daily movies and a library, but little else for people to do. The Banner was a major defense against boredom. That Sherlock Holmes novel was a big hit. The mimeographed paper was hard to read. The machine was worn out, and the reproduction quality was terrible. We made no effort to make each paper entirely readable, so the passengers were forced to share their copies in order to be able to read every page. A detective novel became a shipboard community building event. People loved it, and I got a lot of compliments for someone else’s idea. I also had the run of the ship as the editor and got to explore the entire vessel, from the heads in the bow to the fantail. I was also exempt from all the nasty little jobs the Army gives troops to keep them busy. I was on the same ship on the way home, and knew all the places to hide. Mostly, the voyage was routine. There were stories about previous trips with bad weather. Those cargo holds full of troops had waves of vomit sloshing back and forth as the ship rolled and pitched. Then it had to be cleaned up. The most excitement we had was the lifeboat drill the first day out. The dependents lined up behind the lifeboats. All the GI’s in their life jackets lined up facing the water. We used to joke that part of the Army nomenclature for us was “expendable, non-returnable, with cover”. There have been some interruptions in my literary career, such as as the need to make a living, but the Army gave me a start.

Posted in Memoirs, My Story, Stories, The Army, Troop Ships

College Towns

Posted on February 10, 2015 by Bill One comment

I have lived in college towns for most of my life. They tend to be more liberal, have a vibrant cultural life, and steady infusions of young people having some of the best years of their lives. The energy inspires me.

Grand Junction, Boulder, Fort Collins, Colorado Springs, even Greeley are all good college towns. Here in Denver we live near the University of Denver. I drink coffee and write in a coffee shop near the campus. I write mornings, and the shop has a rush every hour when classes change.

We go to concerts at the Newman Center on the DU campus. The student productions from the Lamont School of Music are always a lot of fun. The musicians are excellent, and the operas are good, but the student voices are not always top quality. I always want to hear Baroque music, and we go to concerts put on by Friends of Chamber Music.

The Newman Center also regularly presents professional artists from most everywhere. Most notable recently are Cameron Carpenter, a wildly flamboyant and talented organist. We just saw The Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company, a post-modern dance group from New York. I was entranced by the dancers and the music, performed by Lamont students.

I am a little sad because Carol now refuses to ever see The Nutcracker again, and this year she would not go to see Oklahoma! I just don’t know what is wrong with her. When we lived on Capitol Hill we went to some productions at The Denver Center of Performing Arts, but the events at DU are less expensive and the Newman Center is one of the best venues anywhere.

I am not much for sporting events, but DU’s Lacrosse team is good and I have seen several games. It’s a good game, fast, with more scoring than soccer, making it more fun to watch. The crowds are fun as well, with a lot of youth lacrosse players watching the college boys. There are always some fans of the other teams as well, because Denver draws people from all over the country. It is also good that DU dropped football in the1950’s. I used to watch Colorado College hockey when I lived in Colorado Springs, but haven’t been to a DU game yet.

Denver is a big city with several colleges. Some of the colleges have neighborhoods that are part of the big city but qualify as college towns. The area around DU is an example. The Auraria complex has CU Denver, Metro, and Community College of Denver, with many more students than DU, but the area is a downtown complex, with most of the students commuting. There is no college town feel there.

Washington Park

Capitol Hill has some of the feel, with a young population and a diverse, eclectic cluster of communities, but no college of any size. DU, however, has dorms, lots of apartments, rental houses, and fraternities and sororities. A real resident population, much like Boulder, Greeley, and Fort Collins. People walk, go to events, party, and hang out in bars,restaurants, and coffee houses. I didn’t know how much I missed all that until we moved into the neighborhood. Evans Avenue, University Boulevard, Old South Pearl, Washington Park, and Observatory Park are places that tie the community together, with a fine University at the center. I lived near Colorado College in Colorado Springs that had much the same feel, just on a smaller scale.

College towns, my favorite urban settings, I want to live in them always.

Posted in College Towns, Current Activities, Memoirs, My Story, Stories, University of Denver, Writing

The Meaning of Life

Posted on January 30, 2015 by Bill 2 comments

Sitting in the coffee shop I see that the meaning of life for the two year old running around the room is love, connection, and the joy of moving. That little boy, expressing sheer joy, has managed to communicate that feeling to everyone in the room. That is as it should be, and is probably as far as we really need to go.

As we get older, it gets more complicated. Pain, loss, death, and suffering come into our lives. Finding Meaning in the midst of suffering is difficult for many of us. Many people find their meaning in following. They follow gods, rulers, gurus, preachers, the girl next door, teachers, or their family and tribe.

Some of us, however, refuse to follow. One of my mottoes is “Don’t trust anyone who says he knows the will of God.” I prefer to think for myself. I search for answers and have for as long as I can remember. I am 72 years old and I am still searching. I have had a number of peak experiences. These experiences have come in several contexts, Christian, Buddhist, chemical, and in nature.

Every experience was life changing, giving me a new way of seeing and being. Sometimes they are brief, fleeting. Other times I have dwelled in the grasp of divine love for as long as a year. I have prayed without ceasing, done mindfulness meditation, spoken in tongues, laughed in ecstasy, cried with joy, and had years of no spiritual connection at all.

I know that a spiritual connection does not have to come in any specific religious context. I do not, however, know how to maintain that connection all the time. It is just not “After enlightenment, the laundry.” It is not being able to sustain a practice for a sustained period.

Do I lack discipline? No. I have maintained a discipline for an extended time and had an event that broke the connection. Am I a spiritual dilettante? It seems so. Most of the time,however, I am a spiritual nobody.

It’s a mystery. I know without any doubt that there is more to life and being than this round rock we ride through space. I have seen the eternal web of universal connection and oneness. I have been wrapped, enveloped in God’s love. I have received spiritual gifts. I have shared those gifts.

Now it seems that my task is to live in the world as a householder and writer. I do a ten minute meditation every morning and that’s it. Most of the time the meditation is clutter. Sometimes I get an experience of complete peace. That, for now, is enough.

I am not called to lead, to take action in the world. I learn, reflect, write a little, try my best to be a good husband and friend. I have family, which is saying a lot, as I come from a family with weak ties. Today the ties are strong and growing. Love.

Another task before me is to smooth out the bumps in my brain. I get angry, irritable. I obsess about meaningless things. I get depressed. I forget and procrastinate. I eat too much and don’t exercise. Lots to do. It is time to be in the world and find meaning here, not out there.

Posted in Current Activities, Memoirs, My Story, Stories

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