I remember a line to a song that said, "such are the dreams of the every day housewife you see anywhere any time of the day." What are exactly the Dreams of an Odd Beat Poet. I always thought my dreams were of the white. Snow, skiing, mountain sides covered in white snow, being above timberline. A climber friend of mine in Vail once told me, "I get very quite above 20,000 feet in elevation." Do you think? The silence of mountaineering and the white and the solitude and the quite is deafening to me. It touches me deep in my soul. My back pages are filled with mountain scenes. I have consciously chosen places to live where mountaineering and skiing were a by product. Dreaming of my golden years and acclimating to being around people and society in Oregon, preferably Eugene, I still have mountains on my mind. How about the Three Sisters in the Cascades, Mount Hood and Mount Bachelor? What is it about not letting it go. Do you ever really give up your first love? In Vail I had Vail Mountain, Beaver Creek, and the Beaver Creek Children's Theatre. I'm sensing a theme here. Is old age spent in trying to recapture your youth? Ah to be twenty five again. I was in the best shape of my life for skiing in Aspen at forty after taking my wife's skiing conditioning class at the Aspen Athletic Club. I would like to think that I move on. However my obsessions are still my obsessions. I am a schemer, a dreamer. Dreaming about the ocean and walking on the beach and writing short stories and conquering the writing challenges that I envisioned for myself in my youth. I still find myself googling Mount Ranier and wondering how hard it would be to climb. I find myself taking long walks with Kathy these days under the pretense of staying in shape. I secretly think the Odd Beat Poet is plotting advanced workouts to get in shape for a major climb, somewhat similar to a Walter Mitty adventure. He googles late at night, "The oldest man to climb Mount Everest."
What are you doing? Those days are gone, not forgotten but gone.Why is it that men attach feminine characteristics to inanimate objects. I know that almost every mountain that I have climbed or skied, I have at some point looked back at it and said, "isn't she beautiful." My most favorite ski run has to be the Pallavicini at Arapahoe Basin. Even tho it is next to impossible to rule out Utah and British Columbia, run for run my heart belongs to the Pali. I think that because in the early days you would have to start at the top of Montezuma Bowl traverse the cornice run to access the Pali. It was a long traverse with a giant tuck and a herring bone climb, if you didn't hit it hard enough to reach the top of the Pali.
All good things eventually come to and end. In bounds skiing gave way to out of bounds, open snow fields and steeper runs with deeper snows. Long climbs and incredibly steep unforgiving chutes, couloirs. Places where you came to the bottom rested on your ski poles your knees knocking together and your heart racing in your chest and couldn't wait to climb back up and do it again. Even those came to and end with age, fear, and disability. The body and mind betrays you. A ski patrolman friend of mine always said, "there are old ski patrolman and bold ski patrolman, but there aren't any old bold ski patrolman."
There is a new youth and they are more daring than my friends and I ever thought of being. I secretly envy them and wish I had thought of skiing off cliffs with parachutes or gliding suits. There are amazing young men and women accomplishing feats of daring that are astounding.
The Walter Mitty Odd Beat Poet flashes back to reality and he is walking along the Colorado River, with his champagne toy poodle and wife of twenty-six years, in Laughlin Nevada in the desert and avoiding other people so we don't get. Covid. We still talk about Oregon and will go there this summer. The Russians have invaded Ukraine and I am letting life flow with the Beautiful River. Since the beginning of the Pandemic Kathy and I have watched the news and said is it time to stand up hug each other and wail? We came very close watching the invasion lately. A full scale assault on Innocence, Freedom, Sovereignty and Democracy. If I was younger I would go and fight. I had a high draft lottery for the Vietnam war and did not have to go. I went to ski! It is out of my control, at least I will write today. My writing is getting good. Hopefully, I'll write about my Love of Mountains.
Skier Takes An Insane Run Down A Tiny Gap Between 2 Mountains
A Song of and Odd Beat Poets Love.
Judy Collins and Leonard Cohen "Suzanne"
