Garden

My relationship with this piece of land continues to evolve.  Last night as I was digging cucumber sprouts out of the compost (volunteers make for great gardens) I unearthed a family of mice living in my compost heap.  Twice I uncovered them, intending to disturb their home, send them packing, but both times, as I watched the adorable baby mice squirm, I was reminding of my own adorable baby and   both times I recovered the mice and decided to let them be.  Before heading to bed, I set a mouse trap in the pantry and this morning there was a fat healthy mouse in the trap.  Mom?  Dad?  Maybe those mice won't make it after all...

I'm on my fourth or fifth reading of Michael Pollan's first book, Second Nature.  Most recognize Pollan from his blockbuster The Omnivores Dilemma, or the curious Botany of Desire but his finest work, I believe, is found in his discussion of man's place in the world.  Second Nature explores his relationship with an abandoned farm that he slowly works into a true garden.  Not a garden in the American sense of the word, all tomatoes and carrots, but a garden more in the English sense, a landscape consisting of grasses, trees, plants, and of course, vegetables.  His discussion of nature is particularly interesting to me.  There are few places in this world that are untouched by man, and arguably, due to our effect on air and climate, there are none.  As stewards of this earth, or at least as enlightened being living on it, we have an opportunity, if not a responsibility, to see our place in it as natural and not alien, and to use the tools and knowledge at our disposal to shape the landscape, to consult "the genius of the place" as he would say, and to find a best-use scenario that encompasses the needs of every plant and animal in it, not the least of which, our own.

I've found as I grow older, as I work in and with the land, planting and cutting, weeding and digging, that my careful input has a greater and more positive impact on the land than merely letting nature run it's course.  Living on this piece of property has given me added perspective, for here is a place that has not been "natural" for many years.  If you poke around the fields and woods you will find old rusted plows with 40 year old trees growing up among the tines.  30 year old locust trees dominate a once thriving boxwood grove.  Only through careful, meticulous and consistent editing (a fancy word for weeding with a chainsaw) has this land begun to emerge as something more than a random collection of woods, planted and otherwise, and fields.

So it is with the saw, the weedeater, the mower and the hand clipper that I reclaim and shape this place, this garden.  Our traditional vegetable garden encompasses several square feet (for now) but I see this entire place as a garden, 80 acres begging for attention because the oaks can't fight the locust and the paradise trees on their own.  Trails give access to the far corners and now that spring has sprung, the spaces are truly gaining their character.  My time and energy is limited, but my vision is not.   To abandon this place "to nature" would be unnatural.  It's a garden, a place where humans and mice (and one fat raccoon) live in harmony, so long as they stay out of the pantry.

A Farm

At one time, the property here was all farm.  Animals and plants, tractors and barns, the whole nine.  Over the years the fields were reclaimed and the structures crumbled.  Twice in its history this land was planted as a nursery.  The evidence is everywhere in the trees in tidy rows and the holes, the never ending holes that will probably never be completely filled.  10 years ago the fields were cleared, roads and utilities were laid out, lots divided and prepared for green vacation homes.  Fortunately, the economic situation of the entire continent shifted and the lots were left fallow, the seedlings and shoots got their opportunity and they took it.

4 years ago a group of intrepid individuals walked these fields and had a vision.  Green fields, trails, music, camping and even a return to it's original purpose:  farming.  The fields are now mowed, trails built and building, music and campers come regularly, but the farm aspect is only just now starting to take shape on a windswept, rocky patch near the only home.  This farm is without name and as yet mostly without shape but it's mine.  I have a vision, a shovel and a compost heap.  Two 3 foot wide, 20 foot long beds carved out of the ancient river bed, clay soil, too much sun and wind, not enough water, no drainage...  the obstacles are substantial.   But a productive farm is not made in a day, no amount of soil amendments can transform a spot of earth overnight.  Sun, rain, soil and human input collaborate in the ongoing evolution of a cultivated patch.  Mine is only just beginning and it looks fairly lonesome out in the field, just a patch of broken up clay with too many weed seeds and not nearly enough bed depth...

So it begins, one man's mission to tame the grasses, herd the worms and feed his family.  Pray for rain.

Blame Walmart

This is about meaningful work.

Listening to NPR, hearing stories about people who don't have work, can't make ends meet.  I blame Walmart.  Hear me out.  Walmart rolls into a community and puts up a big efficiency box.  You can get everything you need there and you can get it cheap.  Auto parts, bike parts, groceries, clothing, pharmaceutical, office supplies...  it's all in there.  None of it was made in this country, by the way, no one under that roof, save maybe a couple managers, makes a living wage.  If you're a consumer and cost and time are your highest priority (gotta get home to watch TV), Walmart is appealing.  One-stop shopping and the lowest prices ever imagined.  A more short-sighted and selfish consumer the world has never seen.

So Walmart moves in and offers the services/products of 20 specialty stores.  Your local gas station, oil change place, sporting goods store, grocery, pharmacy, clothing store, housewares shop... none of these places can compete with the price and convenience of Walmart, so they shutter their doors and the employees go to work at Walmart.  But Walmart doesn't need all their employees, specifically they don't need any of the white collar workers like management or owners.  They only require one manager, one accountant for the entire store.  19 managers are out of work.  19 middle class workers now go to work for minimum wage.  Because the jobs aren't skilled, they can share across departments, so while the oil change place on main street used to employ 10 guys full time, Walmart makes it work with 5.  So 5 guys take a pay cut and 5 go unemployed.  The local bike shop gets it the worst.  Ever been to the sporting goods department at Walmart?  There isn't a bike mechanic under that roof, there's not even a single employee that can tell you the difference between a presta and schraeder valve.  There goes another 8 positions, formerly filled by passionate, inspired individuals, who now can't find work in their field of expertise.  This has social and health implications as fewer people get into cycling when the bike they buy was put together with the fork on backwards... but this is primarily a rant about economics so back to the point.

Distribution is streamlined, so there's only 3 trucks making one delivery per day instead of 20 trucks making 40 deliveries to individual businesses.  This is great from an environmental aspect, I admit, but delivery and trucking jobs are meaningful and pay well.  They also keep the community connected.  You know your UPS man?  Your mailman?  They know you.  17 of those jobs are gone now too.

Of primary concern is that 20 business owners, engaged and invested in their work and community are now working for a faceless mega corporation.  Their work went from meaningful to meaningless.   Their job requires no skill, has no positive impact on the world/community and they're easily replaced.  Their value as a worker is basically nil.  They wonder now why they get up in the morning...  Of course we're facing unprecedented unemployment;  we've allowed Walmart to concentrate the wealth of an entire nation of skilled business owners in the hands of 5 individuals in Arkansas with the last name Wal.

Ok, so we hear about the economy and there's a huge segment of this country in the role of the victim.  They can't get meaningful work, but they shop at Walmart.  They can't afford to make informed choices, so they walk through those sliding doors and put another nail in their own coffin and pop one in their neighbors while they're at it.  We are the economy.  WE ARE THE ECONOMY.  Did you fucking hear me?  If everyone in this country skipped their weekly Walmart trip for a year, the entire Economy would flip on it's head and the available jobs in this country would be more than enough to keep everyone meaningfully employed.  The choice is yours, economy.

Chip!

This is how we roll in the High Country.  This bad boy's hour meter read 0000.  Plan to return it with at least 15...  we'll see.

Moots Trail Builder

If you know me, you know I love to build trail, ride bikes, run a chainsaw and drink beer.  Moots out of Steamboat built this one-off titanium 29er designed for just that.  

If you want more details, better pictures and close-ups, click HERE

Just got off the most epic Stringdusters Ski Tour ever.  We had shows outdoors in the snow, a mess of new people coming out, we met the cats at TGR (the greatest film company on the planet), scored some ill Icelantic skis and ripped at a bunch of world class resorts including a 15+ inch pow day at Jackson Hole.  Home now, chainsaw today, solo show tonight...  On and On and On and On!!

Ski Tour 2013

Ski Tour this year is proving to be absolutely epic.  Record shows in Durango, Aspen, and Boulder and an unprecidented outdoor festival show at night in a blizzard with 0 degree windchill.  So far three great days on snow, new friends at Icelantic skis, plans hatching for Summer River Tour and 2014 Ski Tour (expect big things)..  Here's the photographic evidence:

My daughter Ruby is absolutely gorgeous.

The Crew at Purgatory, opening day of Ski Tour.

This was the view from the audience at WinterWondergrass.  It was storming onstage too.

These are the actual three bottles of Stranahans we downed at WinterWondergrass.

Here's our skis from Icelantic (Pilgrim), and pow at Vail.

Tomorrow we ride Park City, then rock Park City Live.  Another day of skiing follows, hopefully at Powder Mountain with the Icelantic Crew, possibly here at Park City if it's snowing...  Then two days/nights in Jackson Hole and I'll be headed back across country to resume The March of the Chainsaw on the property.  Looking like we're gonna need more trail...

Cross Country Course Design

It starts with a short section of singletrack.  Just a few turns through some cool terrain.  Then everyone agrees a trail run would be fun, so you build a course with a hand clipper, a weedeater and a chainsaw.  The few sections you've built aren't enough so you take what you've learned and you build more.  Then the parents and the kids and their dogs show up and every nasty thorn, every bit of fossil fuel you burned is worth it.

One thing leads to another and one day you realize you have an opportunity to host a High School Cross Country Meet on the trails you've built.  Having never technically run Cross Country, competed in a Cross Country event, or even seen a Cross Country course, the first thing you do it take to the internet seeking information.  The Race Course itself is a racing events greatest and most crucial asset and as designer you have a certain obligation to the entire past, present, and future of the sport, to create a distinctive, unique, demanding course as well as one that is up to regulation.

In my search for information, I came across this 150 page Masters Thesis on Cross Country Course Design by Audrey B. Lancaster of Utah State.  A very interesting read for Course Designers of any off-road genre'.

In the 2010-2011 manual written by the IAAF, the supreme world-wide governing body for cross country, it states, “There are extreme variations in conditions in which Cross-Country is practiced throughout the world and it is difficult to legislate international standardization of this sport.  It must be accepted that the difference between very successful and unsuccessful events often lies in the natural characteristics of the venue and the abilities of the course designer.”  Indeed.