The Great Beyond

I was flipping through my Facebook feed last night there amid the usual personal drivel was a post by Micah Dash. For those of you unfamiliar with the illustrious Dash he is/was the archetypal Boulder yuppie climber who perished under and ice-fall over the summer.

Accidents of course happen. It has been my observation that such accidents are more prone to happen when folks go off seeking fame and glory with a cameraman in tow then the onus is upon them to proceed instead of saying FUCK THIS when conditions are sub-optimal or just downright suicidal. In this case as with the late great and woefully uninsured Alex Lowe climber(s) and cameraman were buried alike. Nobody of course thinks they are going to die except of course me who knows he's going to die any damn day all it would take would be a moment of inattentiveness on I25 and some crack-whore subdivision mom in her Honda Pilot yacking on her phone to her life-coach/yoga guru/colonic therapist will plow right into my Cooper forever snuffing out my cantankerousness.

Having had a bevy of tins of strong ale I wrote on his (MD's) page "holy shit dude yer dead..." as if from beyond the River Styx this person still sought fame and recognition. Mind you I had never even met or heard of this person before they requested me as a friend then I come to see what a famous personality they indeed are which is why I assume they befriended me in the first place. I should note that good men and women get killed nearly every day in those far-flung shit-holes Afghanistan and Iraq, for what purpose I cannot say. Yet they are fellow citizens some of whom I actually met while practicing down by Fort Carson soldiers there with families and worries off on 12-15 month deployments where they are not exactly always welcome yet they saddle up and go anyway from a sense of duty or out of a need to pay the mortgage.

The point being that if you walk around Boulder you'd think the wars existed on another planet everyone being so health conscious and self-absorbed. When there was a draft young men were conscripted and sent off to places like Vietnam which maybe cured them of the urge for subsequent adventure travel. Now that there is a privileged leisure class freed from such societal obligations with nothing better to do but recreate and go on luxury vacations by way of a profession we are supposed to feel a deep sense of grief when such a holiday goes awry.

If I actually knew these people that might be the case my own feeling that there is a certain amount of nose-rubbing into the fact that these folks have such a cool life being featured in one catalog or magazine or another aren't they just so amazing? Then there's the fact that I HAVE known some of these people although not this particular bloke which leads me to think to some extent that they might have got their comeuppance for a lifetime of questionable antics whilst being rather smug up until that point.

So we are all free to do, and write, whatever we wish. By inviting me to be his "friend" he invited me though unintentionally to comment upon his demise, the keepers of the flame may be offended by this and so they may but I too take umbrage with their insistence upon lock-step adulation. I can recognize the need to grieve as I have for parents and a lost child but revisionist deification I have little patience for.

For no one is getting out of this life alive, of this I can assure you all. Yesterday Susanne popped open a bottle of red wine we were saving, "for what?" she said and so we guzzled the warm drowsy red fluid in the last warm sun of 2009 a sun which soon slid behind the mountains with the ensuing autumnal chill seconds behind.

I must have slept soundly for just before 7 (a luxury to sleep in so late for me who is usually up before 5 out of the house before 6) I awoke to the dawn illuminating tall yellow grass on my property. A fresh day full of potential, all I ever really hope for...