Green Mountain Falls to CR67; Distance = 12 Miles; People Met = 6
Mike Grabon guided us up the new trail he helped to build up to the Catamount Reservoirs near Pike’s Peak. Mike is a very intelligent and very vocal person. He’s a trained physicist, now semi-retired entrepreneur who can shed light on the travesty that has been our energy policy over the years. But that’s not what we mainly talked about.
One of our longest conversations evolved around me pointing out that carrying a pistol does not entirely jive with being a Buddhist who hates to kill even a fly (by his admission). Now he could have replied that due to his military years carrying a pistol was now habitual and he sees no reason to stop the habit, given the benefits it might provide. At that point the conversation would have ended.
Instead he tossed out a plethora of hypotheticals as to why carrying a pistol would avert potential life-threatening situations. Being a grassroots empiricist myself I could not let that go because there are too many paternal forces in the world constantly making us apprehensive with hypotheticals, to their ultimate benefit.
In the end an empiricist is not going to win an argument against hypotheticals, nor vice versa, so we had to agree to disagree. Likewise with our other big argument of the day, which was whether we are at the point of needing grassroots community involvement (my position of course) or revolution. As you can imagine, the day passed rather quickly, even though it ended with sleet and snow.
That evening we went to a meeting of Green Mountain Falls esteemed trail committee. I announced that I’ve backpacked over 17,000 miles, but have not been on any trail better than the one they built which we hiked that morning. I meant it: impressive trail, impressive trail crew. I believe I will feature a podcast on it whenever I find my digital recorder.
Dick Bratton and Mike Grabon discussing their new trail
Mike and Cindy hiking up the new trail above Green Mountain Falls
Oncoming storm
