About a month ago, Pepper and I took a tour of Bigfork’s new Harrell Forest Trail. We rode our bikes a few miles and enjoyed the crisp fall weather and the changing colors. Well, today we went back but this time we walked the trail. Our friends Bob and Nancy joined us.
To my surprise, the larch were still quite yellow. Given the thick blanket of needles on the ground, you’d think they would’ve dropped everything, but the fall colors still had a little life in them.
Walking was quite a bit easier than biking, and we covered the same six miles. It’s nice to get out on a trail, especially one that’s less than an hour away…
Today I’m grateful for seasons. That might seem like a weird thing, but hear me out. I’ve met people who haven’t really experienced seasons. People from places like southern California, where it’s warm and sunny year-round. Or Arizona, where it’s a little warmer. Places where they haven’t experienced snow, or leaves changing color, or spring blossoms. I’m sure they all know about those things, but it’s not the same as having them happen all around you.
Autumn is probably my favorite season, but it’s a close race. Summer is a great time to be out on the water, or hiking a trail, or just enjoying a sunset. But winter means skiing and snow hiking and even bitterly cold days where the best thing to do is just sit in a warm, cozy house. And spring is when the flowers show up, and the shorts come out of the closet after a long hiatus. They’re all great in different ways.
So now, as I consider the beauty of autumn all around this area, I’m reminded of a simple photo I took a couple of weeks ago.
Seasons mean changes, and those changes can be a catalyst for self-reflection. As summer has faded into autumn, and now autumn seems to be gliding into winter, I’ve been thinking about what changes I could (or should) make in my life. That’s a topic for another post, but for now suffice to say that I’m thankful for the beauty of the changing seasons.
A few years ago, I wrote a series of half a dozen #givethanks posts in which I listed the big things I’m grateful for in my life. It was a good exercise, and an opportunity to reflect on what’s most important to me.
Yesterday Kyra asked me to create a blog for her, specifically so she can write a series of daily musings on what she’s grateful for. It sounds like her plan is to do it each day through the month of November, and if it goes well she might continue blogging. There’s a ton of research that indicates people who are more grateful are happier, healthier, kinder, and live longer. It’s really not all that surprising, but what is surprising is how seldom people really express their gratitude– either aloud to others, or silently to themselves.
So, inspired by my amazing daughter, I decided I, too, will spend this month writing a post each day about something I’m grateful for. Back in 2020 I wrote those six posts in which I called out my wife, my kids, my parents, and my friends. While those people are still the absolute best thing in my life, I don’t want to repeat what I wrote then. Instead, this month I’m going to follow Kyra’s example and just jot down some other things that come to mind. Here we go.
Today I’m grateful for my job. Well, technically what used to be my job. For twenty years I was a web developer, self-taught not only in the technology, but in running a company.
I poured so much time, energy, and passion into Zing. It was a huge part of my life, but not in the dreary dark soul-sucking way that some people talk about their jobs. I truly enjoyed the work I did; it was like having the chance to solve a new puzzle every day. Although the challenges I faced weren’t always “fun”, there was always a warm satisfaction in solving them. The clients I worked for were almost universally good, friendly, kind people. My team was invariably sharp, thoughtful, and talented.
It was a long journey, at times frustrating and difficult, to retirement. Those twenty years were filled with long days, late nights, and weekend work. Family vacations often involved popping open my laptop after everyone was in bed, so I could rewrite some code or troubleshoot a server. Managing a team sometimes meant hard conversations and difficult decisions. Yet through the myriad of things that made my job hard, there was a constant undercurrent of excitement and fulfillment.
Even after I stepped away from the daily responsibility of work, I continued to be involved in small ways. I closed the page on the latest chapter of Zing a few weeks ago when I shut down our office in Colorado. The guys continue to do good work, and it makes me proud that I was able to create an environment where they can thrive and (hopefully) enjoy their work. For the four years since I retired, Nick has done a great job continuing and building upon the traditions that made Zing what it is.
If I’m being honest with myself, there are definitely days when I wish I was back in the thick of web development, sharing an office with a group of like-minded programmers, hammering out PHP code in my latest effort to give a client a tool that will help them expand or even transform their business. I didn’t expect that. When my retirement was official on May 30, 2019, I wondered whether I was doing the right thing. And, reflecting on that and the intervening four years today, I know it was the right thing. But I also know I was truly blessed to have a job that was so rewarding and fulfilling.
Well, I’ve started working on this year’s Christmas cards. It began with a photo shoot in Utah when we were visiting the kids. Although our cards have featured only me and Pepper the last few years, I felt like it would be nice to include all the kids (and Ollie!) this year since we happened to be together.
Last week we happened to be at the post office to send a package, and decided to grab some Christmas stamps.
And today I’m beginning my work on the card itself. As always, there’s a lot of graphic design work to be done– no simple portrait photos for this guy! I’m laughing as I do it, and I hope it draws a chuckle from the 350 or so people who will be receiving it…
Pepper and I wanted to go to the downtown Bigfork trick-or-treat event, as we did a few years back. But it’s a little awkward just wandering around as adults, and more to the point, we can’t get much candy that way.
I joked that we should rent a couple of kids and take them around town. Pepper laughed and then promptly called our friend Brandi, who happens to have a couple of kids. We offered to take them trick-or-treating and give her a break for the evening.
And so it came to pass that we went around town with a little Transformer and princess in tow, getting candy (and popcorn, and hot dogs) from the various shops.
I managed to score a few treats myself, although Lily and Will ended up with the lion’s share. It was a good time, and fun to be reminded of the joy that free candy brings.
… but in fact it’s Kyra’s “class” at the daycare where she works. These are her four toddlers, and for Halloween she brought in some small pumpkins, foam paintbrushes, and some (hopefully non-toxic) paint. Although one of the babies is working on painting his masterpiece, I can’t help but notice another is already eating the paint, and two more are considering it.
At the end of the day, Kyra said everyone had a good time, they managed to get some amount of paint on all the pumpkins, and no one barfed from injesting it. So I guess it was a success.
For me, the really fun thing about this is how much Kyra adores these little kids. She truly enjoys spending her days with them, and is always thinking of fun little activities like this.
This spring, we burned our brush pile. It had accumulated over a few seasons, and had become quite the mess, so we enlisted the help of our friend Allen to torch it. He brought his handy flamethrower, which is basically a metal tube connected to a propane tank.
This fall, we’ve accumulated another big pile of brush. Our summer yardwork, and the fall cleanup, left us with a lot of plant debris. Obviously we’re going to be burning this stuff every year (twice a year, in fact), so we decided to invest in our own flamethrower.
Today was the day. October is open-burn season in the county, so we went to work. I connected everything, lit the end, and stepped up to the pile of somewhat wet brush.
Although it looks like all that grass and little twigs would go up in a huge inferno, there’s been enough snow and rain that everything was kind of damp. It took a bit of work shoving the flamethrower into various parts of the pile, but finally the flames caught.
We felt like we were becoming true Montanans when we bought a chainsaw, and now with the addition of a flamethrower, we can feel even more like the natives. How cool is it to stand next to a huge pile of flaming grass holding a twenty-pound tank of explosive propane?
Apparently AT&T overcharged us on a recent bill. I have no idea how, since we just use auto-pay every month, but whatever. They “refunded” us the overage by sending us a prepaid credit card. It’s a MasterCard that we can use at any store, and it’s been loaded with the amount we overpaid.
There’s just one problem: the amount on the card.
Yeah, it’s worth eighteen cents. This is ridiculous on so many levels. First, the postage required to send us this 18-cent card was over three times its value. There’s also the cost of the plastic and printing for the card itself. Whenever you use a credit card, MasterCard and the rest of the cabal charge merchants twenty cents plus some percentage of the amount (typically around 2.5%). So the fee to simply swipe the card is greater than the amount on the card!
Why AT&T couldn’t simply credit the money to us on our next bill is beyond me. Ugh.
Cheba Hut is my favorite sandwich shop in the world. A month ago, when I was in Colorado, I was thrilled to be able to eat there twice in a day. Last year in Las Vegas, I was also thrilled to discover there was one in town. Naturally we stopped.
Since the closest Cheba Hut is literally a thousand miles from us, I thought maybe I could make one of their sandwiches myself. I toasted some French bread, added some deli ham to the grill, threw on some bacon, sliced a few pickles, melted cheese, and slathered mayo and seasoning over everything. The result was…
… not that bad. But it definitely wasn’t Cheba Hut. The bread was all wrong, and frankly the bread is a major part of the experience. So it’s back to the drawing board. Maybe I can come up with a concoction that’s a little closer to the real thing. Until then, I just have to wait for another trip to Colorado or Nevada…
“Dad,” Kyra said a few months ago, “I’ve never been backpacking. Can you take me sometime?”
Of course! We talked about some options, and given her limited time off work, we settled on “something in Utah”. Last year’s epic Canyonlands trip with Thom came to mind, and I worked out a route through the Needles District (which he and I hadn’t explored). I scouted campgrounds, presented my plan to Kyra for her approval, and went to make arrangements for the backcountry permits. I was dismayed to learn that permits for Canyonlands are available in the spring, sell out almost immediately, and thus weren’t available for an October trip. Back to the drawing board.
Zion, it turns out, has a completely different reservation system (why?) and permits are available a month prior to departure. Again, they’re snatched up immediately, but I managed to get in the three-minute window and snag the ones I wanted. We were set for a trip to Zion.
Our first morning dawned with a crystal-clear blue sky and temperatures in the 50s (it would warm up later in the day) so we headed to the Zion shuttle station. Only the official NPS buses are allowed to run up and down Zion Canyon, so you have to wait in line to jump on a bus. And what a line it was! It felt like a morning at Disneyland…
This photo doesn’t even do it justice– the line snaked back and forth well outside the frame. We made our way through this morass of people for about 45 minutes before finally boarding a bus. That adjusted my plans for the day a bit; we’d have to take these incredible crowds into account when considering the timing of everything. I guess I’m used to smaller crowds on my backpacking trips in late September and early October, but in southern Utah the temperatures hover in the 70s and the days are beautiful, so people gravitate there (much more than, say, the North Cascades).
As we wound our way through the canyon and eventually hit our first trail of the day, I was in awe of the scenery. Glacier has incredible vistas of valleys and mountains, and Zion mirrors that with canyons and sandstone cliffs. Here’s a view south through the canyon:
These sheer orange cliffs are stunning…
… Especially when you’re at the base looking up.
We’d originally planned to hike the Narrows. Thom and I made that hike nearly twenty years ago, and I brought the whole fam on our 2015 road trip, so I was hoping to repeat that awesome trek through the water. However, the water was running high: nearly three times its normal flow, with a water temperature around 50 degrees. So instead of ankle- or perhaps knee-deep cool water, the Virgin River was a torrent of chest-deep frigid water. In the words of the park ranger who’s navigated the Narrows hundreds, of time, the hike was “outside her fun zone”. Instead, we took a few smaller hikes in Zion Canyon.
As the afternoon waned, we had to make our way to our first campsite. It was in a neighboring area called Wildcat Canyon, which was advertised as having “outstanding views of Zion Canyon”. However, as we traversed the trail, we were disappointed. Large outcroppings of rock blocked our view of that area.
Nonetheless, we found a good site and set up camp. It was a cool area, despite the lack of views as promised.
Kyra did well hiking that day. I think we covered around eight miles.
The night was chilly (probably around 40 degrees) but we were both cozy in our sleeping bags and tent. It was Kyra’s first night in a tent that wasn’t in a campground, and as we enjoyed some breakfast and hot cocoa in the cool morning air, she remarked that it was pretty awesome.
Our backcountry permit for the next night was in Kolob Canyon, but we learned that part of the road had washed out and we weren’t able to get to the trailhead for the area. There’s an alternate trail that goes “the long way around”, but it was something like ten miles each way, and wouldn’t fit in our schedule. Instead, we decided to hike a different part of Kolob Canyon and then head home a bit early.
But first, we donned our eclipse glasses.
The annular eclipse occurred while we were driving up to the Kolob area, so we pulled over at a little roadside stop and spent about twenty minutes admiring the celestial phenomenon. It was funny to see other people stopped alongside us, or just along the shoulder of the road, staring through their eclipse glasses.
Kyra was impressed.
Although we weren’t in the area where the full “ring of fire” was visible, we were close. It was cool to watch, and I’m looking forward to next year’s total solar eclipse.
We continued up to Kolob and started our hike of the canyon. The trees were in full autumn color, and it was an absolutely beautiful hike.
We covered about six miles, stopping frequently to admire the sandstone and the leaves.
As we approached the end of the out-and-back trail, it looked like it might slip into a slot canyon. Kyra was excited because she’s never hiked in a slot canyon, but it turned out the trail simply ended abruptly. We hefted our packs, turned around, and returned the way we’d come. By the end of the hike, she was pretty worn out. We’d done nearly twenty miles in two days, which is far more than she’s accustomed to walking. Good for her!
We hopped back in the car and headed north, stopping for dinner at Olive Garden and absolutely gorging on breadsticks. It had been a great trip, and hopefully one that convinced her we should go backpacking again. Although the scenery was stunning, my favorite part was just spending time with my favorite girl.
