Dave Klausler writes here on occasion. Now, just between us, we do not know if a word he writes is true, but heck, writing is writing, and I like it. Did Hemingway ever do anything in real life that he used Nick Adams to relate to us? I thought that I would take an opportunity here to tell a true story (are you reading me correctly, Dave?), one that nearly cost me my life even if I did not kill a bear. Maybe I would have been hauled out on a helicopter after rescue by a stray mountain lion.

We lived in Bozeman, and I was invited to accompany a couple of older gentlemen to Black Diamond Lake in the Spanish Peaks, part of the Gallatin Range. At a certain point we had to leave the trail and cross Spanish Creek, after which there was no trail. There was a log straddling the creek, which is why Bill, our leader, knew where to turn. The task at this point was to remember the route, as I would be coming back alone.  Bill and a man I’d never met before, a doctor named Paul, had a few years on me. I was in my fifties, they in their sixties. Consequently, every now and then, we stopped, dropped our packs, and napped.

Continue reading “My Klausler tale” →

Thoreau is Full of Shit

By: DS Klausler

­­­­ Nah, he’s cool, mostly, I just liked that title. We’ll get to him later.

“The question is not what you look at, but what you see.”

Only relatively recently have I used this e-mail account for my private communication. Historically, I used the corporate account that I was linked with via employment. Because of that and being reduced-in-staff [because of my age] (I had no means to sue a billion-dollar company), I cannot locate my trip report from a family vacation over a dozen years ago. Strange, but I also cannot locate either my complete digital electronic images or photographs from the same trip. By memory alone, I think that the trip included Niagara Falls, Mount Marcy (NY highpoint), Mount Mansfield (VT) and Jerimoth Hill (RI) – which was a boulder on a trail (really). Missing is the highpoint of Maine – Mount Katahdin (5,269’).

My memory also says that #1 Son and I turned back high on Katahdin due to high winds and near zero visibility in the fog and rain. I recall being very concerned that he would have dangerous difficulty on the even more slippery exposed rock and sparse re-bar hand holds. I thought, back then, that he was a little kid. It was only after we had returned home that I dug a little deeper into maps, trails, images and trip reports that we had halted just a quarter-mile mile from the summit. In good visibility, we would have been able to see the summit. More on this later.

Wifey and I reviewed, and I found just seventeen images – NONE of the hike up. It turns out that #1 Son was almost FIFTEEN – but he was a very slight kid – very much like his father in his youth. Photos show his height just to my shoulder; so maybe five-one. Anyway, my thoughts remain clear about one thing: it would have been too dangerous for him on the worsening wet and very steep descent.

Continue reading “Klausler Chronicles once more” →

I did not know that when Ab asked me to be on his podcast last night that he wanted to talk about, of all things, 9/11. I really wasn’t prepared, and in fact, have not written much about that day over the years because others have it covered. It is so big, so much research has been done, and more yet to be done.

One guy who has done yeoman’s work on that day is Simon Shack. The podcast below is over two hours, pretty daunting, I know. If anything, listen to the first hour, which is Simon. It is really interesting.

Continue reading “Another chat with Ab (Fakeologist)” →

This post, as I envision it, will be a ramble about a number of topics not even related, but hopefully that generate interest and comments over the weekend. But first, I want to highlight a comment from yesterday, as I recall, on the Carl Sagan post:

Yeah, agreed on Sagan, and his successor in scientific fraud, Neal DeGrasse Tyson. I did not want this post to be a forum on Sagan, as he did say some useful things, as in “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.”

As long as I am leading with my chin, I will lead with that, but the reason I want to highlight the comment is that in the history of this little blog, it is number 50,000. I did at one time eliminate a large number of posts as part of a general cleanup, and when a post is discarded all comments underneath it go too, but officially, that it #50K.

Continue reading “Some specious-osity” →