- Humbled, me, by Cadillac Mountain South Ridge Trail, five miles up, five miles back, all but first and last half mile on treeless granite in 90 degree heat, 80% humidity. Kicked my ass. First hike this summer I feel the next morning.
- Trail head marker - Acadia uses wood signs for trail heads and intersections, they are slowly rotting, and blazes are fading on the trails, I see no evidence of trail maintenance in the three years we've Augusted here.
- I don't know why I haven't wanted to post cairn-porn, but nine of ten miles yesterday marked by cairns, well-maintained, no doubt by hikers.
- Park is packed, trails are crowded, fees are up (not much, $5 per week, but).
- I have yet to see a Park Ranger or a Park Ranger vehicle.
- The souvenir shack at top of Cadillac - fat fucks drive to the top and buy "I Hiked Cadillac Mountain" t-shirts - staffed by 15 year olds.
- Get to your national parks while they still exist, my fellow mofos.
- Finishing first brutal climb, Earthgirl checks out the hard one to top.
- The Veneration of St Death.
- Let me be clear, this is going to lead to famines and droughts which kill hundreds of millions of people, minimum. It will lead to water and land wars. It will lead to mass migrations which make past refugee “crises” seem as nothing.
- The two biggest trends on Earth.
- Taking down Goldberg.
- Cursed image.
- Scars on 45.
- Oh dear, six Green voters from central Ohio wrecked the Clinton restoration, the Putin fools!
- Send him new words and old books.
- World is as it seems.
- Sorrentino the Metafictionist.
- I'm not, as in can't, reading this vacation, is weird.
- I yapped about The Posies with a friend last week....
- .... and went and listened to a few songs, they or me or both haven't aged well....
Madonna del Parto
Forrest Gander
And then smelling it,
feeling it before
the sound even reaches
him, he kneels at
cliff’s edge and for the
first time, turns his
head toward the now
visible falls that
gush over a quarter-
mile of uplifted sheet-
granite across the valley
and he pauses,
lowering his eyes
for a moment, unable
to withstand the
tranquility—vast, unencumbered,
terrifying, and primal. That
naked river
enthroned upon
the massif altar,
bowed cypresses
congregating on both
sides of sun-gleaming rock, a rip
in the fabric of the ongoing
forest from which rises—
as he tries to stand, tottering, half-
paralyzed—a shifting
rainbow volatilized by
ceaseless explosion.
