Category Archives: Dharma Reflections

THE COVID19 BLUES

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May 1, 2020
Bozeman, Montana

It is said that the opposite of blue is orange, an interesting and symbolic premise in this time of the Covid-19 blues guiding the thoughts and actions of Americans, some of whom see more value in living the blues than dying with orange. Not that the blues guarantees living or the orange dying. There are no guarantees except that life includes death. I mean, the Covid-19 blues is only one expression in the infinite repertoire of the blues which are, after all, as emblematic of America as the racism, slavery and slaves from which they grew in the 19th century as an inspired means to survive unacceptable living conditions by finding value in just living, meaning in song, truth in words, soul in singing and survival in each breath. And orange is as emblematic of today’s America as the racism, sexism, dishonesty, greed and cruel stupidity of its soulless, orange headed, moronic, malevolent president, Donald Trump, who a friend has nicknamed “Agent Orange.” Every American should remember Agent Orange from Operation Ranch Hand in Viet Nam, Laos and Cambodia between 1962 and 1971 when the U.S. Air Force sprayed more than 20 million gallons of the poisonous Agent Orange over five million acres of forest and half a million acres of farmland to deprive fellow human beings of food and forest cover. “Only you can prevent a forest” was the motto of the Agent Orange ‘Ranch Handers.’ Millions of Vietnamese, Cambodians, Laotians and American servicemen and women and their descendants were killed and maimed, crippled and tortured and continue to suffer today as a consequence of the long term toxicity of Agent Orange.

May 10, 2020
Bozeman, Montana

That our nation has both the Covid-19 blues and President Agent Orange to deal with at the same time is a quirk of fate that makes the blues of B.B. King no more mournful than an improvisational standup comedy routine of Robin Williams. I write these blues words in full awareness that my personal circumstances of self quarantine clean hands lock down dealing with the Covid-19 blues are far, far better than those of most of humanity. I have lived the authenticity of my own experience, but the blues has many shades. I have never known anything close to the daily lives of the slaves and slavery that inspired them in the 19th century and which, despite the flaky veneer of American law, have never left and are a shameful reality of our country. Just ask anyone on the dark side of our country’s racism or anyone of any shade of any color trying to support a family working for minimum wage. If you ask Agent Orange about such matters you are more likely to be sprayed with poisonous nonsense or Ranch Handed (handled?) by Agent Orange’s sycophantic lackeys than to receive an answer rooted in reality. I live in a comfortable house by a large pond in an upscale neighborhood abutting the Gallatin Mountains and Bozeman has some of the lowest Covid-19 statistics in the nation, with only one death in Gallatin County. My lovely partner does most of the grocery shopping in order to further insulate my 81 year old body from unnecessary exposure to the Big C, and I have close and easy access to fine hiking trails in the mountains. When my partner is gone on work or adventure trips, even in self quarantine I am surrounded by deer in the yard, coyotes in the night, every so often a bear on the trails or in the street or rambling along the bank on the far side of the pond (I encountered the first one of the year in a neighbor’s yard this afternoon while on a walk), geese and ducks and even once a loon in the pond, and the ospreys/eagles/robins/magpies/bluebirds/blackbirds/crows/sparrows and other airborne creatures cruising above, in and around the trees with the grace and freedom of winged herds (flocks?) dancing the ecstatic boogie-woogie in a ballroom of infinite space. I am reminded of the beautiful blues song sung by many, though Billie Holliday sang it best for me:

“Back In Your Own Backyard”

“The bird with feathers of blue
Is waiting for you
Back in your own backyard
You’ll see your castles in Spain
Through your window pane
Back in your own backyard
Oh you can go to the East
Go to the West
But someday you’ll come
Weary at heart
Back where you started from
You’ll find your happiness lies
Right under your eyes
Back in your own backyard”

The primary change to start the daily routine in my own backyard during the Covid19 blues is that most mornings I do not set a morning alarm. Self quarantine creates more time that my body relishes for the relaxation it needs after all those years (decades) of going east, going west, going up, down and around and around and around (yes, including Spain). Covid19 has stranded me in my own backyard where, as Billie sang so well, happiness lies. My body and the rest of me (I’m still working on trying to understand who/what ‘me’ is) do not miss suddenly awakening from deep or shallow sleep and dark or illuminated dreams to a shrill mechanical shriek. The inherent wisdom of the organic is a better friend to the independent individual body, mind and soul than the schedule of the clock and the convenience of the motorized, linear regimen that defines America’s materialistic/gridlock traffic/smog/ climate change/flooding/vanishing glaciers/drought/forest fires culture of never ending growth, aptly described by Ed Abbey as “Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.” Thanks Ed. Schedule. Clock. Convenience. Motorized. Linear. Regimen. Cancer.

May 25, 2020 (Memorial Day)
Bozeman, Montana

Covid19 is a disaster that at this writing has killed almost 100,000 Americans, the highest fatality number of any nation. There will be many, many more. I will do what I can to keep my body from increasing those numbers because I selfishly wish to keep living. It is also the right action with the right intention for the world that each individual, as much as possible, avoids contributing to a disaster, even if that action and intention will not avert the calamity. There is happiness in doing the right thing, peacefully fighting the good battle even if it can’t be won. Don’t you think?
Less than three months into the process of self quarantine (which will be a one to two year event) I already better appreciate, embrace and am more alert than I was just a few months ago to the connectivity of all things organic and the disconnect between different sides of all things linear and the exclusion of those that don’t move to the regimen. (Gertrude Stein correctly observed. “There is no straight line in nature.”) Organic encompasses everything, including the linear, the regimented and Agent Orange. Since the organic is neither constrained nor regimented by the clock it may take awhile for it to return to working order, but it will. Early signs of the organic in action during the early stages of the Covid19 Blues include clear sky over major cities throughout the world for the first time in decades, bears walking around and coyotes napping in the middle of the road of a closed Yosemite National Park as if their natural home for thousands of years were something other than a stage for modern homo sapiens to proclaim control of and connection to the very environment they continue to decimate. Early indications of the endurance of disconnection in the chemistry of Agent Orange include that it is still poisonously alive in the flora, fauna, food chain, soil, and water of Vietnam and in the bodies of today’s Vietnamese, Cambodians, Laotians and Americans and their descendants after 50 years. It’s still too early to take a reading on the lasting endurance of the damage to the world of Agent Orange’s pestilential presidency, but as Taj Mahal says and we can hope, “Particularly with the blues, it’s not just about bad times. It’s about the healing spirit.”

June 14, 2020 (Agent Orange’s 74th birthday)
Bozeman, Montana

The healing spirit of the Covid19 Blues is everywhere, as is Covid19. On a hike I often make up one of the steepest trails around Bozeman I recently came across a situation I perceive as imbued with healing spirit. A burly Montana dude in his mid-20s wearing a MAGA hat was standing aside at a turn in the trail. An attractive Native American woman about the same age appeared to be giving him a back rub. My first thought was that it was an anomaly for a Montana MAGA dude to be with a Native American. As I passed I commented that he was a lucky man to be getting a back rub. The woman giggled anxiously and there were tears in her eyes and she said, “No, no, since I was a little girl I’ve always been terrified of heights. I’m not rubbing his back. I’m hanging on to him. He convinced me to come up here to help me get over my fear, but I’m soooo frightened.” They started down the trail, one slow step at a time, she hanging on to a patient and seemingly caring Montana MAGA dude. In complete awareness that the dude may have had ulterior, less healing motives than calming the woman’s fears, choosing to attribute his actions and intentions to the healing spirit is in and of itself healing. For sure it is for those who choose the healing spirit and, since all things and people are connected, to some extent it heals the MAGA dude with (maybe) ulterior motives to his exterior moves and relieves some of the woman’s fears from childhood.
Agent Orange, MAGA and Covid19 dominate American life at this writing, neither of them describable as compassionate, healing, and beneficial to humanity or contributing to the well being of planet Earth. They can easily turn the individual away from his and her better self to embrace the dark side that exists in everyone, the side that wounds instead of heals, conquers instead of shares and hates instead of loves. Whenever the darkness arises I try to remember the words of America’s finest poet of my generation, Bob Dylan:

“So don’t fear if you hear
A foreign sound to your ear
It’s alright, Ma, I’m only sighing

As some warn victory, some downfall
Private reasons great or small
Can be seen in the eyes of those that call
To make all that should be killed to crawl
While others say don’t hate nothing at all
Except hatred

Disillusioned words like bullets bark
As human gods aim for their mark
Make everything from toy guns that spark
To flesh-colored Christs that glow in the dark
It’s easy to see without looking too far
That not much is really sacred”

‘Don’t hate nothing at all except hatred’ are words I keep in mind whenever Agent Orange appears in my thoughts, which is much more often than I would like. But I also consciously focus on these words of my own: “I am deeply ashamed of and sorry for every person who supports Donald Trump,” as shame and pity can be tools of healing. On those occasions when I am asked to express my thoughts on Agent Orange (usually but not always by a Trumper), I use the same words, and, honestly, in the spirit of healing a very fucked up world I like saying them to another person more than just thinking them by myself.

DO YOU CARE IF OUR GRANDCHILDREN SKI?

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“Perhaps you notice how the denial is so often the preface to the justification.”
Christopher Hitchens, author

“The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.”
Donald Trump, President of the United States

“I have been described as the grandfather of climate change. In fact, I am just a grandfather and I do not want my grandchildren to say that grandpa understood what was happening but didn’t make it clear.”
James Hansen, leading climate scientist and author of “Storms of My Grandchildren: The Truth About the Coming Climate Catastrophe and Our Last chance to Save Humanity

“Skiers did not create climate change, but we are among a few populations who will be hit by it hardest. It’s time to stand up and save our snow. Forget about fear. Get serious about advocacy and put candidates into office who will do the right thing and lead us into a cold, snowy future.”
Porter Fox, author

If you, esteemed reader, are among those who share Donald Trump’s values and purposeful (and, perhaps, real) ignorance in denying human caused global climate change, please read no further. Turn on your TV to Fox news or your radio to Rush Limbaugh, relax and enjoy the show. My intention here is not to insult or offend those who have been politely and clearly alerted to read no further, but, rather, to encourage everyone (including skiers) to, among other things personal, civic and environmental, get serious about advocacy. There is no time for relaxation in the face of our last chance. The show is getting less and less enjoyable and by the time our grandchildren reach our ages it will be a shit show for skiers/mountaineers and a worse one for those less privileged.
In the spirit of James Hansen, to be clear, the current and coming climate catastrophe is caused entirely by humans and can only be averted or even softened by them; but while Porter Fox is mostly correct skiers did and do contribute to climate change. We, fellow skiers, are complicit and the only way to start saving humanity (as well as the rest of Earth’s biota) is by getting serious about advocacy and putting candidates into office who will do the right thing and lead us into a cold, snowy future. Don’t let your grandkids have to say that grandpa and grandma understood what was happening but didn’t care enough to make it clear and did nothing about it. Lao Tzu said it best: “From caring comes courage,” and many years later Mahatma Gandhi said, “A coward is incapable of exhibiting love; it is the prerogative of the brave.”
Skiing has always seemed to me a metaphor for larger aspects of life, including cowardice and bravery, courage and love, care and greed; and the industry of skiing, as well as many of its citizen practitioners, have been reluctant advocates of seriously and effectively addressing climate change. Every life-long skier old enough to be a parent has noted decreased snowfall and shorter winters since their own childhood. Everywhere in American ski country winters are shorter and warmer than they were 50 years ago, and every skier old enough to be a grandparent has changed skiing habits and patterns because of it. Every skier my age (81) or more (and several years less) realizes that skiing isn’t quite the disaster it is going to become without action, but it is certainly more and more an artificial snow show. When I was a boy I had the good fortune to live at Lake Tahoe, including the winter of 1951-52, (which recorded the second highest Sierra snowfall since records have been kept) when more than 65 feet of snow fell on nearby Donner Summit. Since then the amount of precipitation falling on the Sierra and elsewhere has dropped about 1.2% a year and more and more of that precipitation is falling as rain rather than snow. Porter Fox points out that “By 2050, snowpack in the Sierra Nevada is projected to decrease 40 to 70 percent. If we do not slow or stop burning fossil fuels, we will be looking at brown mountain ranges all winter long as soon as 80 years from now.” The artificiality of man-made snow is in some ways in the short view good for the business and practice of lift-serviced skiing: among other things, so long as it continues to be cold enough it is controlled by man without relying on nature, is more manageable and can be groomed into surfaces smooth enough that an 81 year old experienced skier as well as first year skiers can more easily be enticed to buy a lift ticket and slide upon it. But artificial snow is part of the problem of global warming, sort of like putting an infected band aid on a self-inflicted open wound and then again stabbing the wound through the infected band aid with a dirty knife. Over the last 200 years mankind has slowly crippled nature’s natural processes by releasing CO2 and other air pollutants and greenhouse gases into the atmosphere and creating the Greenhouse Effect. The process of making artificial snow contributes to the Greenhouse Effect and adds to global warming, as, of course, does all the automobile and airplane miles each of us travels to our favorite mountain and its retreating snowpack. In many places, before too long it will not be cold enough to consistently rely on even artificial snow.
Every skier is part of the problem and, if there proves to be one, part of the solution. Since the United States has only 4.6% of the world population and is 2nd highest (next to China with a population 4 times that of America’s 3.11 million citizens) contributor of greenhouse gases which cause global warming, each individual American has a larger responsibility (and burden) than citizens of other countries to be an advocate for a cold, snowy future for all the Earth’s inhabitants including our skiing (or not skiing) grandchildren. Any solution starts with the individual but it does not end there. Each of us can alleviate the ongoing destruction of Earth’s atmosphere and environment in many ways, starting with becoming educated. If one is uneducated or confused about the matter, a good place to start is Union of Concerned Scientists at https://www.ucsusa.org/global-warming#.W6PW-vZMFPY where it is made clear (by the finest scientific minds) that global warming is real, that it is entirely caused by mankind and was not created by or for China, though that country is the leading contributor to greenhouse gases.
The individual effort matters, but as skier citizens of America—the only nation on earth to reject the Paris Agreement on climate change, which Trump falsely and treacherously described as “…an agreement that disadvantages the United States to the exclusive benefit of other countries.”—we need to become advocates for making America a good citizen of the nations of the world instead of the moronic, soulless, ethically challenged MAGA pro-fossil leadership/oil/gas/coal corporate directed imperialist mercenary the U.S. government has officially declared itself to be and which the rest of the world has duly noted. The individual matters, but unless the ideology, policies and practices of the U.S. government changes drastically the individual will not matter enough. As individual skiers we can begin with the world of skiing and we need to vote, march, protect, protest, read science and push on corporate leadership to ensure THOSE entities are pushing on government. Porter Fox published an article in Powder 3 years ago about the many ski industry leaders who give money to climate change deniers in the U.S. government. They include Vail Resorts, Deer Valley Resort Company, Solitude Mountain Resort, Alta Ski Area, Snowbird, Brighton Ski Resort, Jackson Hole Mountain Resort, Mammoth Mountain, KSL Capital Partners (which owns Squaw Valley, Loon Mountain, Sunday River and Sugarloaf) as well as the National Ski Areas Association (NSAA). NSAA issues an annual report on ‘Sustainable Slopes’ subtitled “Keep Winter Cool” and its charter states, “In order to continue to offer quality recreational experiences that complement the natural and aesthetic qualities that draw these visitors to the mountains, the National Ski Area Association (NSAA) and its member resorts have committed to improving environmental performance in ski area operations and management.” A worthy commitment but, since several of the member resorts are those donating money to climate change deniers in the U.S. government, it calls into question their definition of the word ‘commitment’ among other obvious questions. Last year KSL teamed up with Henry Crown and Company (HCC), which owns Aspen Skiing Company, to acquire Intrawest Resorts Holdings and Mammoth Resorts. This company is called Squaw Valley Ski Holdings (SVSH) which consists of 12 ski resorts with, according to KSL’s website, “… approximately six million skier visits, 20,000 skiable acres and significant land available for real estate development, as well as Canadian Mountain Holidays, the world’s leading heli-ski operator, plus comprehensive aviation and real estate businesses.” The Aspen Skiing Company, still owned by HCC but not part of SVHS, is a minority bright light in the U.S. ski industry by intentionally and effectively being serious about doing the right thing and leading us into a cold, snowy future. Check here: https://www.aspensnowmass.com/we-are-different/take-action
Some backcountry skiers and riders do not use ski resort facilities and perhaps do not think of the ski industry as representing them or their values and interests. Whatever the merits of this mindset, in reality the ski industry is the public face of skiing in the halls and offices and bars and restaurants and, most important, lobbying donations given to members of Congress who are deniers of human caused global warming. James Inhofe, Oklahoma Senator and Chair of the Senate Committee on environment and Public Works, has a slightly different perspective than Donald Trump on the ‘hoax’ of a global warming conspiracy theory, saying, “Because ‘God’s still up there’, the ‘arrogance of people to think that we, human beings, would be able to change what He is doing in the climate is to me outrageous.’” Giving money to climate change deniers in the U.S. government who share Trump and Inhofe’s denials of reality (for whatever stated reasons—God ‘up there’ or China ‘over there’ or head up ‘somewhere’) is supporting killing the very snow that we, fellow skiers, depend on as our foundation, revere and make the tracks of life upon.
Bob Dylan, as he so often has, said it best:
“While money doesn’t talk, it swears
“Obscenity, who really cares
“Propaganda, all is phony”
To state the obvious, no obscenity adequately describes giving the money that skiers pay in order to ski to people who call any reality that interferes with the short-term bottom line a hoax, people whose actions indicate they do not care a snowflake in hell whether our grandchildren ski or, even, survive.
Personally, I care.
Do you?
If so, forget about fear, embrace the prerogative of the brave and learn to love getting serious about advocacy. The fate of life on Earth and the skiing possibilities of our grandchildren, depend on it. It’s that simple, human caused global warming is real and the money the ski industry gives to climate change deniers in the U.S. government is your and my public face, fellow skiers. Is that the face you want the government and the world to see, skier friends? If not, then take whatever steps are necessary to stop the ski industry from giving money to climate change deniers in the government and, even more important, vote and work to get out the vote and elect who will recognize the coming (and already evident) climate disaster and not avoid the real work by calling it a ‘hoax.’
While the loss of the incredible if not always acknowledged luxury and privilege of being able to ski one or one hundred days a year is minuscule in the larger scope of the coming climate catastrophe, it is our way of life and what we know and love. Snow is the foundation of that life, knowledge and love. In all things, when the foundation collapses everything it supports quickly follows. It must be acknowledged that it might already be too late, that humanity has not cared enough soon enough to avoid the catastrophe we have brought upon Earth and all its inhabitants, but fighting the good fight to do the right thing in what might be a losing battle has many advantages over resignation, despair and surrender. Auden Schendler is the driving force and Vice President of Sustainability for the Aspen Skiing Company’s efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, avert the coming climate catastrophe and allow our grandchildren to ski. In a NY Times op-ed Schendler wrote, “Historically, we’ve tackled the biggest challenge — that of meaning, and the question of how to live a life — through the concept of “practice,” in the form of religion, cultural tradition or disciplines like yoga or martial arts. Given the stark facts, this approach might be the most useful. Practice has value independent of outcome; it’s a way of life, not a job with a clear payoff. A joyful habit. The right way to live.
“…I.F. Stone…said…’The only kinds of fights worth fighting are those you are going to lose because somebody has to fight them and lose and lose and lose until someday, somebody who believes as you do wins. You mustn’t feel like a martyr. You’ve got to enjoy it.’… “…To save civilization, most of us would need to supplement our standard daily practices — eating, caring for family and community, faith —with a steady push on the big forces that are restraining progress, the most prominent being the fossil fuel industry’s co-option of government, education, science and media…Our actions must be to scale, so while we undertake individual steps in our lives, like retrofitting light bulbs, we must realize that real progress comes from voting, running for office, marching in protest, writing letters, and uncomfortable but respectful conversations with fathers-in-law. This work must be habitual. Every day some learning and conversation. Every week a call to Congress. Every year a donation to a nonprofit advancing the cause. In other words, a practice.
“…There should be no shortage of motivation. Solving climate change presents humanity with the opportunity to save civilization from collapse and create aspects of what the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. called ‘the beloved community.’ The work would endow our lives with some of the oldest and most numinous aspirations of humankind: leading a good life; treating our neighbors well; imbuing our short existence with timeless ideas like grace, dignity, respect, tolerance and love. The climate struggle embodies the essence of what it means to be human, which is that we strive for the divine.
“Perhaps the rewards of solving climate change are so compelling, so nurturing and so natural a piece of the human soul that we can’t help but do it.”
Each individual can become an advocate in several ways, starting with reducing your personal carbon footprint: Huffington Post recommends 7 instant and uncomplicated actions….1.) Cease eating meat or eat less meat; 2.) unplug your devices; 3.) drive less; 4.) don’t buy ‘fast fashion’; 5.) plant a garden; 6.) eat local and organic; 7.) line-dry your clothes (not always possible in snow country). For individuals who wish to advocate in the larger arena, a good place to start is https//www.patagonia.com/actionworks or Protect Our Winters (POW) at protectourwinters.org
Many reading this have a practice of skiing (and other practices of moving over and through snow, but the author is a skier) that has given meaning to and helped answer the question of how to live a life. More, the rewards of skiing and other practices of moving over snow….”are so compelling, so nurturing and so natural a piece of the human soul that we can’t help but do it.” All we have to do is extend the practice to solving climate change.
What better practice of life could there be than to strive for the divine? What better gift could we leave our grandchildren than their own cold, snowy futures?

FOREWARD TO “The Spirit of Icarus: Tales of Flying Close to the Sun” by John Crews

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“Those who know, do. Those that understand, teach.”
Aristotle

John Crews both knows and understands his own well-lived life of learning, experiencing, exploring the limits of and teaching several physical skills in the spirit of Icarus. To John, that spirit does not represent the mainstream association of Icarus with the human weakness of hubris and its inescapable destructive consequences. Instead, for Crews, the spirit of Icarus embodies the Stephen Hawking quote, “The thing about smart people is that they seem like crazy people to dumb people.” He delineates this difference in the introduction as “”…the Icarus spirit that determines whether Icarus spirits appear as ‘crazy people’ or as ‘smart people’ with a slightly different value system.”
Crews is smart and completely aware that the line that characterizes the two aspects of Icarus spirit is as thin and some would say invisible as the difference between good judgment and good luck, as evidenced in the sub-title of “The Spirit of Icarus”: Tales of Flying Close to the Sun. Chronologically, the initial autobiographical tale in this fine book is about John’s first fall down the basement stairs in his family’s Washington State home when he was 1 ½ years old. He writes, “My next clear memory is of sitting on the concrete floor at the bottom of those stairs looking back up. I was not clear about what had happened in between, except that it had been very exciting. The strange sensations all over my body I recognized as PAIN, which called for extreme vocalization until someone showed up to make it better.”
That first very exciting experience appears to have inspired in John a slightly different value system and a lifetime quest for more and more and more and, yes, there has been some pain. “The Spirit of Icarus” is a beautiful depiction in word and photo of that quest. John Crews has spent his life polishing his physical skills at the limits of moving on, in and through as well as considerable air time over water (if one accepts that snow is a form of water), and he has passed on his understanding of that life as one of the outstanding teachers of his professions. I have known, liked and admired John for many years through the world of one of his endeavors……skiing……and can attest that he is one of the finest skiers and ski instructors in America. I am neither practiced nor knowledgeable in matters of the warm weather, big wave, oceanic endeavors he pursues when winter ends each year, but his reputation allows me confidence that he is as accomplished as practitioner and teacher there as he is on skis.
And there is this: on the wall of my office is a small cloth tapestry given to me by a friend with a depiction of Buddha and a quote attributed to him. The quote reads:

Success is not the key to happiness.
Happiness is the key to success.
If you love what you are doing,
You will be successful.

John Crews is 68 years old and a happy man.

Check out the book available at your local bookstore or on Amazon

RECOGNIZING THE MIRACLE OF THE MINDFUL TURNS OF SKIING

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“Every day we are engaged in a miracle that we don’t even recognize: the blue sky, the white clouds, the green leaves, and the curious eyes of a child. All is a miracle.
“When we walk we’re not walking alone. Our parents and ancestors are walking with us. They’re present in every cell of our bodies. So each step that brings us healing and happiness also brings healing and happiness to our parents and ancestors. Every mindful step has the power to transform us and all our ancestors within us, including our animal, plant and mineral ancestors. We don’t walk for ourselves alone. When we walk, we walk for our family and for the whole world.”
Thich Nhat Hanh “At Home in the World”

Many skiers are familiar with the Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hahn because of his writing and activism during the Viet Nam war, but the majority of skiers are not practitioners of Buddhism or familiar with the value it places on what is termed ‘a skilled mind.’ A basic Buddhism guide describes such capable awareness: “Essentially, according to Buddhist teachings, the ethical and moral principles are governed by examining whether a certain action, whether connected to body or speech is likely to be harmful to one’s self or to others and thereby avoiding any actions which are likely to be harmful. In Buddhism, there is much talk of a skilled mind. A mind that is skilful avoids actions that are likely to cause suffering or remorse.” It may be a stretch for some to conflate the deliberate, well-placed step of walking with the faster movement of controlling the slide down a snow-covered slope on a pair of skis as equally mindful tools of healing, happiness and transformation for the whole world, but it is a stretch I am willing and obliged to make. More people walk than ski but we all carry our ancestors within, and the necessary control of the arc of the turn is as personally powerful as the placement of the foot and requires the same mindful attention to the present moment. Those who may posit that the act of skiing carries a greater inherent risk than that of walking have a point worth considering, but as a lifetime skier I am far less likely to encounter or cause harm skiing any slope I choose to ski than I would be on a leisurely walk alone in certain neighborhoods of any large city on earth, and, alas, most smaller cities and towns. That said, there are all too many skiers and walkers with unskilled minds, dangerously and obliviously unaware that they do not move alone on the paths and slopes of the world.
Each of us carries and is engaged with the miracle of sky, clouds, leaves, parents, children, ancestors, animals, plants and minerals of Earth with every breath and step we take and every turn we make—for ourselves, our family and the whole world. Every skier who has ever lived knows instinctively if not always intellectually that the act of skiing is transformative, but not every skier appreciates that none of us ski by or for ourselves alone. Stop alongside any blue, green, black or black diamond ski run in the country and observe the action, and I am confident you will notice a surprising number of skiers who seem oblivious to the skiers around them as more than impediments to the arc of their turn, completely unaware of the ancestors carried within. Perhaps you have literally encountered one of them. If so, I hope you both came away from the meeting unharmed, transformed and more mindful rather than in need of physical, emotional and karmic healing.
Common sense and modern science assures us that we do indeed carry our parents and ancestors within us. I like the idea which makes sense that engaging in action that brings healing and happiness to ourselves includes our parents and ancestors, and not just those connected by direct genetics as all things and every person are connected. Those for whom skiing is a major factor of life do not question the importance of engaging in it with a skilled mind.
Mindful skiers are aware that the miracle of skiing as we know it is unraveling in many different though connected ways. One indicator as obvious as and directly connected to the blue sky and white clouds is that in the last 40 years the average annual snowpack in the Western United States has dropped by 41% with a consequent shrinkage of 34 skiable days. This trend is expected to continue so that in 50 years the mountains of today’s Western American ski resorts will be brown in February. Ski resorts around the world are closing because of lack of reliable snow. Another thread in the fabric of the undoing of skiing is the economic reality of recent decades that fewer and fewer citizens of the world can afford to ski, and the rate of new skiers entering the sport is declining. The inequality of the world’s economic reality (especially in the United States), the diminishing snowpack and the subtle changes in the blue sky and white clouds and the unequivocal environmental crises are as interconnected as the parents, children, ancestors, animals, plants and minerals of Earth. These same dynamics are evident everywhere on Earth and all signs are that they will only increase, not diminish. That is, the untying of the miracle of the Earth’s environment and the inequality of its human economy are as woven together as all our ancestors and, it needs emphasizing, descendants.
Our parents and ancestors are walking and skiing with us, and so are all our descendants, including our plant, animal and mineral ones. Humans with unskilled minds have for far too long treated the Earth as commodity and market rather than cornucopia and miracle, and the consequences of such greed based carelessness are obvious everywhere on earth and do not need more description. It is going to get worse and humans are not going to heal the Earth. In the process of healing itself it is possible and very likely probable that the Earth will rid itself of humans, and there’s not a damn thing we can do about it.
What we can do for ourselves is take each step and make every turn on skis with a skillful mind bringing healing and happiness to each of us and all our ancestors in the present moment. And if that’s all we can do, why not do it?

THE ANTHROPOCENTRIC ANTHROPOCENE SHAM/SCAM

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“If all mankind were to disappear, the world would regenerate back to the rich state of equilibrium that existed ten thousand years ago. If insects were to vanish, the environment would collapse into chaos.”
Edward O. Wilson

“I don’t like formal gardens. I like wild nature. It’s just the wilderness instinct in me, I guess.”
Walt Disney

People whose wilderness instincts haven’t been ground into pabulum by the daily grind and who still know and acknowledge the differences between a forest and a tree farm, a meadow and a lawn, a river with and without dams and the relative values of long-term environmental health and short-term profits, also know that homo sapiens is a part of nature, the ecology and the web of life of Planet Earth. As E.O. Wilson succinctly points out, mankind is neither master of life on earth nor essential to its existence. Members of our species who are incognizant of this reality are, at best, deluded. Words are insufficient to describe those who appear incognizant but in reality are not. Among the many precious, irreplaceable treasures of life, including clear air, clean water, life sustaining seas, mountain glaciers, healthy soil, jungles, forests and democratic economy already being sacrificed to their delusions and addiction to greed are the quality and security of the lives of your grandchildren and mine.
That pisses me off. In my view it should piss off everyone at a deep gut level. Every human, with or without grandchildren, is inextricably connected to everything that lives past, present and future and every individual thought, word, action, inaction and standard of integrity affects the whole. I wish for my grandchildren the best of healthy, vibrant, engaged lives guided by wilderness instincts and compassion. Anthropogenic global warming climate change deniers and other adherents of/participants in the anthropocentric anthropocene sham/scam (AASS) don’t give a shit about your grandchildren or mine or about the other irreplaceable treasures of life. Deniers are the 21st century’s mental/emotional/spiritual/ethical descendants of European Medieval inquisitors of the middle ages and the perpetrators of the Salem Witch Trials of 17th century America. These people, literally, do not think twice about sacrificing the living and the unborn to the status quo of dead and discredited superstitions. The AASS’s standards of honesty, intelligence, morality, ethics and compassion are perhaps best exemplified at this writing by Donald Trump and a few years ago Dick Cheney, who was happy to take time out from justifying his better known wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to serve as point man in AASS’s war on reality and scientific consensus.
It’s been 500 years since the inquisition placed Galileo Galilei under house arrest for the rest of his life for the ‘heresy’ of publishing his accurate scientific observations. Galileo, honored today as the “Father” of modern observational astronomy, physics and modern science, observed, among other things, that the Earth moved around the Sun and could not be the center of the universe. This reality was in conflict with “the” church’s dogma that the sun moved around the Earth which was the center of the universe. Galileo’s observations also threatened the anthropocentric delusions about mankind’s place in that universe on which “the” church thrived. The good news in the obtuse, cruel violence of the inquisition is that Galileo got off easy, relatively speaking. The bad news is that anthropocentric craziness is alive and well in the modern world.
500 years later AASS has replaced the inquisition with something more sophisticated and amorphous but just as brutal, stupid, parasitic and destructive to the best potential of mankind and the ecological health of the Earth.
Anthropocentrism is the fallacious idea that human beings are the center of the universe and the most significant creature on Earth. E.O. Wilson puts that self-absorbed idea in perspective.
Officially, the majority of scientists agree that earth is currently in the Holocene (meaning ‘recent whole’) marking the period since the last ice age nearly 12,000 years ago. The so-called Anthropocene is a proposed term for the present geological epoch since the Industrial Revolution in the 18th century began to impact the climate and ecosystems of Earth. As such, it is a recognition of the destructive influence humans have had and a backhanded, unintended denial of the deniers, but as currently used it conflates the power of destruction with the gift of creation All of the older and more traditional ‘cenes’, as in Holo, Plio, Oligo and Paleo, took millions of years to form, but the anthropocene sham/scammers don’t have millions of years. 300 years is plenty of time to build an AASS cene for those whose quarterly profit reports, particularly from those extractive/polluting/poisoning industries too well known to need listing, are the center of their universe. Irony weeps.
AASSers have embraced the famous anthropocentric quip/quote by Stewart Brand “We are as gods and might as well get good at it.” (Which he later updated to what might be termed the AASS motto: “We are as gods and have to get good at it.”) But a simple deconstruction of Brand’s flippant if tempting solution to, for instance, human caused global climate change reveals it to be a shameless/shameful sham/scam. “We are as gods” is anthropocentrism at its most deluded and dangerous. The natural world, the environment, wilderness and the wild existed on earth for millions of years before human beings appeared. The very concept of God or gods is a recent human invention, a projection of the human mind no one has ever seen and which is a very different reality from the creation of a blade of grass which everyone has seen. “We” cannot create so much as a blade of grass, though since inquisition times we have discovered how to better destroy, genetically modify, domesticate and turn blades of grass (temporarily) into vassals instead of members of the biotic community of the web of life, their rightful place.
We are not as Gods any more than we are as Martians, and we cannot get good at being whatever it is that gods do as we cannot get good at living on Mars. And it is telling that some AASSers are already talking about colonizing Mars after our reign of being as gods on Earth has ended. Details about our future on Mars haven’t been worked out, but we are as good at pretending that details don’t matter as we are not at being as gods.
AASSers cloak themselves in a green mantle synthetically dyed by such organizations as The Nature Conservancy that consistently and oxymoronically insist that nature is dead and gone and that they are protecting nature by the very science and economic policies and dogmas that are killing it. It is worth remembering that the Koch brothers have given millions of dollars to The Nature Conservancy, and the many mantles covering the Koch brothers are the green of money not of grass.
The Anthropocentric Anthropocene Sham/Scam and its supporters like Trump, Cheney, the Kochs, the Nature Conservancy and others less well known have allowed greed, dogma, superstition and hubris to blind them to what Lau Tzu pointed out more than 2500 years ago:

“As for those who would take the whole world
To tinker as they see fit,
I observe that they never succeed:
For the world is a sacred vessel
Not made to be altered by man.
The tinker will spoil it;
Usurpers will lose it.”

Don’t lose it. Keep your wilderness instincts along with the world. Even if you don’t care about them, your grandchildren will. Just ask Greta Thunberg.

ACTING YOUR AGE AT 80 IN THE BACKCOUNTRY ALONE

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“We don’t stop playing because we grow old. We grow old because we stop playing.”
George Bernard Shaw

“The secret of a good old age is simply an honorable pact with solitude.”
Gabriel Garcia Marquez

In 1981 at the age of 42 I embarked on a week-long solo ski tour in California’s Sierra Nevada, a remarkable and beautiful experience which has served me well. This from the essay about that tour in my book “The Perfect Turn” describes my thoughts at the end of the first solitary day in fine mountains and snow: “The last words in my notebook that night: ‘It is extremely beautiful and peaceful here. How do I get so far away from this feeling when I’m in civilization?’
“That question alone is worth the trip.
“Another question: What is the answer worth?’”
Having lived almost as long since that solo ski tour and writing those words as I had before it, I still don’t have a definitive answer but the question has inspired a few observations, reflections and life directions. First of all, alone is not lonesome in the backcountry as it sometimes can be in what is called ‘civilization.’ And, the answer is not worth losing your life, though, as every backcountry skier knows or at least should know, the search for it could and can and, for some, will end lives. That awareness is part of the beauty, peace, wild and wilderness of the backcountry that reminds us, among other things, to be wary of civilization’s hubristic veneer of guarantees. On the 2nd night of that tour I jotted in my journal: “I haven’t spoken a word since yesterday except a tight-spot grunt and a loud squawk when I fell once. Unlike Don Juan, I haven’t mastered turning off the internal dialogue other than on rare, special times. My mind goes into the past and then jumps ahead to a possible future, and when it stays in the present it enjoys itself. My mind right now is out to enjoy, not necessarily excel, though certain standards will be maintained out of pride. And today I noticed that every decision was not made by me alone. ‘We’ made the decisions. ‘We’ is here. Being alone in this state is never lonely.
“Colors and lights change continuously. White, grey, blue and then orange and gold. There is wind and an occasional airplane. I keep thinking I hear a large engine or generator, but it must only be the sound of my own head.
“That night a coyote called for a long time and I woke. Stars filled the black sky and the snow sparkled.”
Nearly 40 years later my moment by moment awareness and pleasure in recent backcountry solo ski experiences has been better than ever (or at least so it seems to my old mind), the standards and pride in excelling have plummeted (how could they not?) and the soloing is no longer a personal choice but is usually my only option if I want to play on skis in the backcountry. Those plummeting physical capabilities inescapably affect the technical standards and capabilities on skis. While I am able to keep up with some backcountry companions on descents, I can only keep up with a few possessing gargantuan amounts of patience, kindness and time on the ascents. For some reason, those few are usually unavailable after one day, sometimes after one run. I don’t blame them, but it limits my options and expands my thinking about beauty and peace—-and ego—-in the backcountry and elsewhere. I am 81 this winter and am forced to contemplate (and deal with) the reality that backcountry experience at my convenience is going to be solo. Something about those decade birthdays encourages serious contemplation of the organic reality only hinted at by the abstract science of mathematics. To paraphrase Gertrude Stein: 80 are 80 are 80.
I have skied for 70 years all around the world, the majority of those uncountable miles of pleasure and thrills attained with the aid of ski lifts. That is, I have never been among those ‘earn your turns’ puritans who ridicule the effortless ride up and disdain riders as lower class citizens of the ski world. I have always been an alpine skier who dabbled as a Nordic skier and even a ski jumper in competitive days, while the backcountry, even what is now sometimes called ‘side country,’ was never my first skiing priority. However, I do admit that as a longtime ski instructor (both legally within the system and underground) I had a few wealthy clients who hired me to accompany them helicopter skiing, and after my first week at CMH I determined that if I were wealthy I would spend 10 or 12 weeks a year living there and skiing every day. Alas, I was and am not in that economic bracket. Still, the backcountry, some of it accessed with sno-cats and helicopters, has long been a significant aspect of my skiing life, but I also earned a lot of puritan turns and miles over the ski touring years. In 1970 I was one of a group of six on an early attempt to ski from the summit of Denali. Four of the party reached the summit, but had to leave their skis far below. Doug Tompkins and I were stopped well below the top by severe high altitude sickness (HAPE and HACE), and I consider myself lucky in two ways: I got home alive, and one of my all time best mountain memories is Doug and I retreating off Denali with our skis beneath our feet (if not our tails between our legs) telemarking down the Kahiltna Glacier with 80 lb. packs in beautiful powder snow and clear, cold weather. But in many ways the longest and best was in 1975 when we did a 200 mile tour from the southern end of Wyoming’s Wind River Range to Jackson Hole. There have been lots of tours of various lengths, but it never crossed my mind to compete in any of those torture-fest randonnee uphill/downhill races on a pair of skis. Still, I always felt strong and proficient enough to be confident of getting up and back down anything I chose to ski.
That erroneous (hubristic?) perception changed quickly in 2001 when I was 62. I had a magazine assignment to write about a gathering of fine skiers, including Daron Rahlves, Danielle Crist, Reggie Crist and Zach Crist, to heli-ski in Haines, Alaska which has some of the best skiing and steep extreme lines on earth. Support crew included Pete Patterson, one of America’s great ski racers and mountain man extraordinaire; Roger Crist the father of Reggie, Danielle and Zach; Gerry Moffatt the well-known Scotsman climber/skier/kayaker/writer/photographer/bon vivant/philosopher; and Greg Von Doersten (GVD) a fine skier/climber and mountain photographer. Haines is at sea level on the Gulf of Alaska at the north end of the Inside Passage and the combination of northern latitude temperatures, low elevations and sea level atmosphere causes the wet snows of Haines (and other Alaska sites) to stick to cliffs that would not hold snow at lower latitudes or higher elevations more distant from seas. The original plan was to ski bigger mountains away from town at higher elevations and more spectacular scenery, but the weather kept us hunkered down in rainy Haines for several days until time and financial constraints limited our options from plan B to C to D. When weather cleared we went immediately to the close to town cliffs that would not hold snow at higher elevations. My job was to observe, stay out of the way of the cameras, gather material for my story, post daily updates on the magazine’s website and, of course, a few turns of my own. I had been a speed skier and had skied a few steep lines in earlier times, but Haines introduced me to a new concept of steep including new basics…..like making two turns before moving to a new line so the sluffs from the two turns don’t knock you down so you fall rather than control the descent to the bottom of the cliff, and then making two more turns and quickly moving to a new fall line, over and over and over. One morning in the company of Roger Crist, an old friend the same age as me, and Danielle the helicopter dropped us off on the spine of a ridge that dropped more than a thousand feet on both sides of the steepest skiing I have ever seen, imagined, or will ever again ski. The helicopter backed off so the photographers aboard could film the stars and senior guides skiing outrageous lines down beautiful cliffs, and so they did. We—Roger, Danielle and I—were left on top with a guide we later determined was not among the most experienced to make our way down. (Danielle, unlike me and Roger, was completely capable of skiing steep lines with her brothers, but sluffs of chauvinism rolled down the magazine’s pages before they could be turned, burying her skiing skills and depositing her with the two elders.) We dutifully followed the guide a short, steep way to a small ridge between two lines where he stopped. He instructed us to ski the line to the right, one at a time, while he was going to ski the line to the left. He said he’d see us at the bottom and took off.
As a long time climbing guide and ski instructor, I was more than surprised the guide would tell us to ski one line and he another, but we had bigger and more immediate issues to ponder. I had (and have) never stood on skis on a slope so steep and to say that I was scared shitless is an injustice to organic shit. It was bad. Just above the bottom of the thousand feet slope we were to ski was an open crevasse, a covered possible crossing on the left side of it. It seemed a lot further than a thousand feet away. Danielle went first, skiing with elegant care and precision and made it down with no mistakes. Roger went next. He was slow and steady and seemed okay until halfway down he made a mistake and took one of those falls no skier wants and never forgets. He was tumbling (literally) towards the crevasse and managed to stop just before dropping in. He was uninjured if shaken. Then it was my turn. My attention must have been complete as I made it down without mishap, but it was neither enjoyable nor satisfying. It was not a success but only a run of survival. Later that day we watched Zach take a 600 foot fall down the aptly named “Tomahawk” run. He was beat up a bit but had no serious injuries.
I wrote in my journal from the perspective of a 62 year old lifetime skier: “The energy spent on this is enormous, a revealing display of the contrived adventure documentary. These films are not documentaries about adventure; they are adventures conceived, orchestrated and made to fit into the limitations of the film. This is not adventure in the classic sense. It is a business (entertainment business) that is more interesting than being a lawyer or selling paint or stocks. The thought occurs to me that because of its very nature it is more dangerous and prone to bad judgment calls than more traditional adventure situations. Where the focus is fitting the situation into the film instead of making the film conform to the situation many things can go wrong. When the situation is inherently dangerous, this scenario is one that needs constant monitoring.”
I am reminded of Susan Sontag’s astute observation: “Photography implies that we know about the world if we accept it as the camera records it. But this is the opposite of understanding, which starts from not accepting the world as it looks. All possibility of understanding is rooted in the ability to say ‘no’”.
The day after leaving Haines we received word that our friend Hans Saari, one of the finest extreme skiers in the world had been killed after falling down the Gervasutti Couloir in Chamonix. The Haines experience and Hans’ death combined to illuminate ever-present perils of the backcountry and the personal reality of being past 60 and no longer that which I once was, or at least thought I was.
Still, through my sixties I had some fine backcountry ski adventures, including using skis to climb part way up and ski back down both Mt. Kennedy (13,944 feet) and Mt. Steele (16,644 feet) in Canada’s Yukon. There were many fine day and overnight ski tours in the Sierra, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming Argentina and France, including some beautiful solo day trips in which consciously adapting to the day’s feelings of strength and proficiency kept the experiences enjoyable and nutritious.
And then came the 70s, another of the decade birthdays. The first couple of years were not too bad, but by the mid-70s back country skiing was just one of many aspects of the physical life that were showing my age. I continued to make backcountry ski excursions without a partner, but more and more of them were in places like History Rock and Mt. Ellis near Bozeman and Durrance Peak and Titus Ridge near Sun Valley where there are always plenty of other skiers within shouting distance. A few true solo tours were as spooky as they were satisfying, and when finished I felt like I’d gotten away with something more than accomplishing anything besides a good workout. That is, alone in the backcountry was starting to feel lonesome. And then last Christmas at the age of 79 I went with my partner Jeannie Wall and our friend Kim Hall for a couple of nights into the Woody Creek Cabin a couple miles outside Cooke City, Montana where there was lots of snow and fine skiing. It is an understatement to say Jeannie and Kim are far stronger and faster than me, and I seldom saw them except in the parking lot and at the cabin.
The track into Woody Creek was well trod and by the time I reached the cabin Jeannie and Kim had the fire going, water melted, cabin warm and hors d’oeuvres prepared. Backcountry luxury at its best. For the next two days we’d get up, build a fire, breakfast and then Jeannie and Kim would leave for a larger adventure and I’d tidy up the cabin and putter around the woods close to the cabin on moderate slopes until I’d had a good workout and enough good turns. On the last morning we agreed on a time to meet at the parking lot and Jeannie and Kim left for a morning’s adventure. I cleaned up the cabin, shoveled the porch (it was snowing 6 to 12 inches each night), chopped enough firewood for the next guests and locked up the cabin. It was minus 10 F which contributed to an instinctive change of plan to just take my time getting to the parking lot instead of a short tour before. The track from Woody Creek to Cooke City is gentle, easy skiing, but I kept skins on my skis in order to slow the descent, acutely aware that a fall and broken ankle in the lonesome woods of the Beartooth Mountains in minus 10 F temperatures could be really ugly. When I reached the parking lot I was far more fatigued than expected and was happy for the feeling of survival and missing that of success.
For my 80th birthday gift to myself I took solo backcountry ski touring off the list of options, except, maybe, every now and then in places like History Rock or Mt. Ellis.
I am reminded of this from Leonard Cohen’s beautiful “Anthem”:

“Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.”

One needs to pay attention to the crack in everything and then to be able to look into the light.

A TALE OF TWO CITIES

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THE SISTER CITIES OF SUN VALLEY, IDAHO AND KITZBUHEL, AUSTRIA
(Published with photos in the Winter 2019/2020 edition of Sun Valley Magazine here https://sunvalleymag.com/articles/tale-of-two-cities/

It is well known that Sun Valley, Idaho and Austria have been connected since before Sun Valley was born. In 1935 Averell Harriman, Chairman of Union Pacific Railroad and an avid skier, hired his skiing friend Austrian Count Felix Schaffgotsch to ride his trains around the mountains of western America in search of the perfect location for a great American destination ski resort. He stipulated, “…find an area where the powder is dry, the sun shines all day, and the harsh winds of winter don’t penetrate.” And Harriman stipulated that the resort had to be on or close to the Union Pacific line. After several weeks of searching the Count heard about the small mining community of Ketchum, Idaho at the end of a Union Pacific spur. He arrived and quickly wired Harriman, “This combines more delightful features than any place I have ever seen in Switzerland, Austria or the U.S. for a winter resort.” Within eight months Harriman had bought 4,300 acres of ranch land east of Ketchum from the Heiss family, built the Sun Valley Lodge, installed ski lifts and opened the Sun Valley Resort in time for the 1936 ski season. The rest is history, a significant part of it determined by Adolf Hitler, Nazi Germany and the approach of WWII, a dynamic familiar to ski historians but less so to today’s general skiing public. In my view, this latter point deserves more discussion than it receives. Even before the Anschluss by which Germany ‘annexed’ Austria in 1938, Hans Hauser, an Austrian, was the first ski school director in Sun Valley. Anschluss means ‘connection’ and that one caused many of the best skiers of Austria to flee their home country and immigrate to America. Many of them were young men who had spent their lives skiing. Two of the most famous Austrian skiers to immigrate to America were Hannes Schneider and Sigi Engl, and they were both enormous influences on the development of American skiing and ski resorts. That is, immigrants fleeing tyranny in their homeland have long proved to be significant assets to America, as evidenced by the history of American skiing and the community and culture of Sun Valley, Idaho. Engl, who was from Kitzbuhel, was one of the great ski racers of his time, winning Kitzbuhel’s Hahnenkahm and the Austrian National Championships twice. He was also a fine and popular instructor who immigrated to America in 1937 to teach skiing at Badger Pass in Yosemite before moving to Sun Valley in 1939. He was Director of the Sun Valley Ski School from 1952 until 1972. Engl was responsible for bringing some of the best skiers/instructors of his hometown, 5355. 43 miles away, to Sun Valley. They include:
Christian Pravda, World Champion and one of the greatest ski racers in history. His son, Chris, is still a member of the ski school.
Konrad Staudinger was a member of Austria’s 1956 Olympic Ice Hockey Team. After the Olympics he moved to Sun Valley and was one of the most popular members of the ski school for 50 years before retiring and moving back to Kitzbuhel in 2008. He still visits Sun Valley once a year.
Rainer Kolb, though born in East Germany, moved to Kitzbuhel as a child and learned to ski, race and teach there and was director of the Sun Valley Ski School from 1974 until 1999. He was also producer of Sun Valley’s Ice Show.
Hans Thum moved from Kitzbuhel to Sun Valley more than 50 years ago and is still working on the ski school. His son, Hannes, graduated from the Sun Valley Community School in 2003 and returned in 2009 as a science teacher and trip leader for the school’s Outdoor Program.
Other Kitzbuhelers who have worked on the ski school include Heinz Achhorner, Karl Beznoska, Rudi Erler, Peter Erler and Heiner Koch.
In 1967 Sun Valley and Kitzbuhel officially became sister cities.
According to the Sisters Cities website, “The U.S. Sister Cities movement was founded on September 11, 1956 at a White House Conference on Citizen Diplomacy led by U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower who described its purpose as “…to help build the road to an enduring peace” and “work out not one method but thousands of methods by which people can gradually learn a little bit more of each other.” Originally part of People to People and then the National League of Cities (NLC), Sister Cities International (SCI) became a separate, non-profit corporation in 1967. Today, SCI is the nation’s foremost citizen diplomacy movement with more than 2,300 communities participating in 130 countries. Appropriately enough, since the movement was inspired by a great WWII military leader who knew more about the true costs of war and the true values of peace than most, Sun Valley’s other sister city is Yamanouchi, Japan.

END

INTENTION

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(From an unpublished book)

The Four Vows
Sentient beings are numberless, I vow to save them.
Desires are inexhaustible, I vow to put an end to them.
The Dharmas are boundless, I vow to master them.
The Buddha Way is unsurpassable, I vow to attain it.

The Four Noble Truths
1. Life is suffering.
2. The cause of suffering is desire.
3. The cessation of suffering is attainable.
4. The path to the end of suffering is the eightfold noble path.

The Eightfold Noble Path
Right View, Right Intention (WISDOM), Right Speech, Right Action, Right Livelihood (ETHICAL CONDUCT), Right Effort, Right Mindfulness, Right Concentration (MENTAL DEVELOPMENT)

The Four Vows, The Four Noble Truths, The Eighfold Noble Path are connected and intertwined, and each of us in every home and town and Buddhist community in the world is at all times acting on and influenced by each other. Whether it is literally valid or whether we can comprehend its exact dynamics “The Butterfly Effect”—the idea that a butterfly flapping its wings in Brazil will cause a tornado in Texas—is an apt description of a Buddhist understanding of how the world works, what karma is, and why mindful, personal practice is so important. The smallest greedy action, the careless word spoken in anger and the unexamined thought can and have caused more suffering in the world than a tornado in Texas. And a kind thought or action can alleviate just as much suffering. How we understand, practice, examine and conduct our lives according to the four vows, the four truths and the eightfold noble path matters—to ourselves, to our families and friends, to the community and to the world. We sit because that is the heart of the Buddhist path and intention lights up that path.
Everything is connected, any work we do in one part affects the others and we can begin anywhere. The second step of the eightfold path, right intention, is a good place to enter and take stock of our practice because intention is a volitional act. Intention is the mental energy that controls action. We may not always be able to see things as they are, which is the definition of right view (and both the beginning and end of the path), but we can always, with some effort, patience and self-awareness, examine our true intentions.
Intention in Buddhism is the commitment to consciously work on ethical and mental self-improvement by examining one’s own intentions and private relationship with and progress along the path. I know a person who hasn’t started but wants to learn about Buddhist meditation in order to deal with personal anxiety. Buddha vowed to sit under the Bodhi tree until he got it right, until he experienced enlightenment and had, so to speak, right view. The intentions of the two might seem to be worlds (kalpas) apart, but they are not; both are manifestations of the intention to reduce suffering in the world.
The three types of right intention are 1.) To resist desire; 2.) To resist anger and aversion; and 3.) To resist thinking or acting cruelly, violently or aggressively; to develop compassion.
Intention is the most powerful and important of all mental activity. The intention to live according to the four vows, the four noble truths and the eightfold path is based on seeing and understanding ourselves and the world as they are. It is not based on a projection of how we would like things to be. True intention is the pursuit of clarity. The well meaning (sometimes) intention of pursuing how we would like things to be is the work of ego sustaining our illusions. Right intention begins with asking: Why do you desire something? Why do you need to acquire something you don’t have? Why do you hope for anything to be different than it already is?
The answers we each find are steps along the path and cut away illusion along the way, step by step.

THE FUTURE FACE OF MONEY: a column written in 2015 with an update

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Question: What do George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Alexander Hamilton, Andrew Jackson, Ulysses S. Grant, Benjamin Franklin, William McKinley, Grover Cleveland, James Madison, Salmon P. Chase and Woodrow Wilson have in common?
Answer: Their images are on all U.S paper currency. George is on the $1 bill and Woodrow on the $100,000 bill. The others, on bills between $1 and $100,000, are also white males. No African-American, Native American, Asian American or Hispanic image is found on American currency.
There are no females represented on the paper currency of the U.S., though Susan B. Anthony is on dollar coins minted between 1979 and 1981, Sacagawea on those minted from 1999 to the present and Eunice Kennedy Shriver is on a special commemorative silver dollar.
That could change. In recognition (and celebration) of the 100th anniversary in 2020 of women’s suffrage a grass roots movement hopes to change the future face of money by replacing Andrew Jackson with a female on the $20 bill. The organization spearheading the move is called “Women on 20s” (W20) and the first thing one see on their website is “W20: THE ELEMENTS OF EQUALITY.”
One also sees:
“The year 2020 marks the 100th anniversary of the passage of the 19th Amendment that granted women the right to vote. So it seems fitting to commemorate that milestone by voting to elevate women to a place that is today reserved exclusively for the men who shaped American history. That place is on our paper money. And that new portrait can become a symbol of greater changes to come.
“Let’s make the names of female ‘disrupters’ the ones who led the way and dared to think differently as well-known as their male counterparts. In the process, maybe it will get a little easier to see the way to full political, social and economic equality for women. And hopefully it won’t take another century to realize the motto inscribed on our money: E pluribus unum, or ‘Out of many, one.’”
W20 started with a large list of American women who have contributed significantly to America’s history, culture and morality. More than a quarter million people voted for their favorite candidates until the list is down to four candidates: Eleanor Roosevelt (1884-1962), Harriet Tubman (1822-1913), Rosa Parks (1913-2005) and Wilma Mankiller (1945-2010). Everyone is welcome to vote for one of the four candidates to replace Andrew Jackson on the $20 simply by going to the W20 website. You can also find compelling reasons why Jackson, who is generally viewed by Native American people and nicknamed “Indian Killer” as the very worst of all U.S. Presidents, should be replaced.
When a winner is determined W20 will petition President Obama, who has said “…it is a pretty good idea” to put more images of women on U.S. currency,” to make the change. Go to W20 and cast your vote.
I voted for Rosa Parks for many reasons including remembering when she finally had enough of inequality and took a stand, or, rather, kept her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama bus and later said of herself, “I would like to be remembered as a person who wanted to be free…so other people would also be free.”
Me too.
Wouldn’t you?

(Update on old column) Well…..Rosa didn’t win, Harriet did, but before the future face of money could arrive the title of very worst of all U.S. Presidents was transferred from Jackson to Trump who promptly hung a portrait of Jackson in his White House office. Then the worst President in history had one of his munchkins, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, announce that “for technical reasons” the note would be delayed for six years, despite the reality that all the technical work on the bill had already been done under the Obama administration. As we all know, anything that was ok with Obama is not ok with Trump, including having the image of a black woman replace a white male racist on the U.S. $20 bill.
So it stands at this writing.
Some fun protest is available. Go to Etsy.com and get a Tubman stamp and you can stamp all your $20 bills with the image of Harriet over the old image of Jackson. It’s great fun to spend those bills and see the reaction of people when they notice Harriet instead of Andrew gazing back at them. Most but not all of the reactions are positive, and both are educational for everyone involved.

THE HIDDEN VIOLENCE OF STRUCTURAL VIOLENCE

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A newspaper column published in January 2001

“Not only do most people accept violence if it is perpetuated by legitimate authority, they also regard violence against certain kinds of people as inherently legitimate, no matter who commits it.” Edgar Z. Friedenberg
“It is better to be violent, if there is violence in our hearts, than to put on the cloak of non-violence to cover impotence.” Mohandas K. Gandhi
On the highways of America — even in sparsely populated Blaine County — police use racial profiling to determine which automobiles to pull over and search for drugs.
Few American males in the company of other males go a day without a disparaging sexist joke, story, comment or expletive entering their conversation, even among the unusually well educated population of the Wood River Valley.
We (humans) consider a “sustainable” relationship with nature one in which there will always be enough resources for every human being, a perspective which respects nature only in terms of what nature can offer mankind, not on its own terms or in consideration of nature’s own needs.
Between 1951 and 1963 the U. S. government detonated 126 above ground atomic bombs into the atmosphere above the southern Nevada Atomic Test Site. Every one of the pink clouds that drifted with the winds (mostly into southern Utah, but actually over most of America) from the blast sites contained levels of radiation comparable to the amount released after the 1986 accidental explosion of the Soviet nuclear reactor at Chernobyl. That’s 126 times Chernobyl, and not one of them an accident.
African American women are twice as likely to die from breast cancer as European American women because of inferior medical care.
The normal workings of America’s economic institutions ensure that poor people have significantly increased risks for cancer, heart disease, AIDS, depression, environmental threats and premature death.
Our use of the automobile involves the acceptance of 50,000 deaths a year on the roads of America.
We live in a patriarchal society, which has institutionalized the dominance of men over women.
In our society aging is viewed as a “problem” whose solution is largely solved through institutionalizing the problem in isolation wards for the old, though they have picturesque names to mask their true function.
The preceding are examples of what is known as “structural violence,” a mostly hidden, mostly unacknowledged form of violence having to do with the everyday, normal functioning of institutions and policies of society. “Cultural violence” is closely related and is sometimes indistinguishable and equally hidden. It includes racism, sexism, homophobia and the devaluation of particular groups and cultures of people. “Direct violence” is any deliberate attempt to inflict injury to a person’s physical or psychological integrity through brutality, homicide, imprisonment, forced labor, or, it could be argued, any unsafe or poorly paid labor done by people without other options.
These three categories and the concept of structural violence have been developed mostly by Johan Galtung, a pioneer in the field of peace studies. Galtung, the author of many books, is the founder of the International Peace Research Institute and is currently Professor of Peace Studies at the University of Hawaii. He claims that the opposite of peace is not war but, rather, violence. He proposes a much wider than generally accepted understanding of violence as that which violates basic needs, rights and the individual’s intrinsic dignity as, for instance, enumerated in the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948.
Structural/cultural violence, whether it be a police policy of racial profiling, a federal government practice of irradiating its citizens in the name of national defense while lying about the consequences, destroying the environment in the service of business interests, or any attitude or action that disenfranchises a particular group of people is violence. It may be subtle and hidden to those benefiting from it, but it is neither to those affected.
According to Galtung, the opposite of peace is violence. And violence always nurtures more violence. Even the greatest of 20th century peacemaker, Mohandas K. Gandhi, recognized that it is better to be violent than powerless, and structural and cultural violence makes people powerless. Peace is the opposite of violence, and the first step towards peace is the dismantling of the structures and cultures of violence, whether they be national, local or individual. Everyone holds or at least knows a piece of those structures that he or she can remove.