Stumble of the Week

• As if it weren’t dead enough, bipartisanship stumbled this week when Judge Robert Simpson of the Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court refused to block the state’s voter identification law. Such laws may appear benign and reasonable in their wording, but at least in this case the intent was “to allow Governor Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania.” That’s not me speaking; that’s Mike Turzai, the Republican Majority Leader who sponsored the legislation. A recent study found 27 instances of voter impersonation in 197 million votes cast across the country from 2002-5. To swat that gnat, lawmakers are eager to disenfranchise as many as 9 percent of the state’s eligible voters.

• Tolerance stumbled again in Tampa when the GOP platform committee added a draconian plank on immigration to go with its call to end abortion with no exceptions. Explained Kris Kobach, Kansas’ Secretary of State, “If you really want to create a job tomorrow, you can remove an illegal alien today,” oblivious to how many more of our jobs are going to Asia than to immigrants. I can’t wait to see the convention’s civil rights plank.

• Now that Larry Ellison has bought the Hawaiian island of Lanai, archrival Bill Gates has apparently set his sights on Rhode Island. Asked his opinion on buying a whole state, presumptive GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney, “I am in favor of privatization . . . especially of states whose electoral votes my campaign wrote off months ago.”

Basic Goodness

Like many people, I have long struggled with the conflict between individualism and community – between the quest to be a distinct, whole and individuated person and the desire to be an integral part of a group. I admire the person who stands up to the crowd, who sets off alone on the open road, who thinks for himself and speaks what he thinks. And yet I also get the need for community, not for companionship only but to be part of something larger than yourself. We suffocate in communities; we starve without them. In his New Year’s address to the Shambhala community in Halifax, NS, sent to me by my brother Walker, Sakyong Mipham talked about “basic goodness,” saying that it “is not just a personal experience, it is also a social experience.”

“It is not just about me,” he continued; “it is about humanity . . . this notion of human nature is the most important global issue. What we do to our planet, what we do to ourselves, how we relate to our own minds, how we make decisions, and how we relate to the world is all coming from this notion of basic goodness. It is up to us.”

Basic goodness, as I understand it, does not require us to submerge our hard-won egos into the group, but it does ask us to see our interconnectedness with all living beings in a world filled with violence and anger – and to note that the path to building a peaceful world begins with being at peace with yourself.

Rape

Todd Akin is no quitter. In the face of calls for his resignation from Republican leaders across the country, Akin announced yesterday that he would stay in the race for Missouri’s Senate seat. Who can blame him? Polls show him winning, and he is in lock step with his party, which yesterday approved a constitutional amendment to ban abortions with no exceptions and to apply 14^th-Amendment protections to a fetus. Meanwhile, Akin told Mike Huckabee that he was being pummeled for “one word and one sentence on one day.”

The word that seems to stick in everybody’s craw is “legitimate.” The word that should is “rape.”

These guys talk about rape like it was like falling off a bicycle or getting a bloody nose. You know, stuff happens. And, occasionally a little miracle is the result. The great fear is that women will feign rape to get access to abortion services, but the gatekeepers are too vigilant for that.

Rape is an instrument of violence, of torture, of war. During the war in Bosnia, the UN Commission concluded, rape served “a political purpose – to intimidate, humiliate, and degrade [a woman] and others affected by her suffering.” It was also a tool for “ethnic cleansing,” and Bosnian Muslim women raped by Serbs were often forced to carry their pregnancies to term and give birth to “little Chetniks.”

Todd Akin is not some distraction from the real issues of this election. Wrapped in the false rhetoric of the sanctity of life, he represents a worldview that is as dangerous as it is repugnant.

Soul of America

While today’s hot question is whether Congressman Todd Akin will give up his bid to be Missouri’s next senator, the more significant questions are: (1) after his disquisition on “the female body,” why is he still leading Democrat Sen. Claire McCaskill? And (2) how did he get the nomination anyway? Akin is no one-blunder wonder.

On Energy: “Energy regulations from the EPA and other agencies have stifled our industry.”

On Guns: “Certainly, some people commit crimes with weapons and I support the prosecution and conviction of these lawbreakers – this includes everyone from the street criminal to our Attorney General, Eric Holder.”

On Health Care (other than pregnancy, of course): “Health care decisions are intensely personal and touch every American.”

On Taxes (other than the very rich): “We need a system where more people would pay some taxes and, thus, have ‘skin in the game.’"

On National Defense: “Defending our country is a proud part of the Missouri tradition. . . . Missouri is ranked 5th in the nation in total defense contracts, with over $12 billion, . . . almost 160,000 jobs in Missouri are connected to defense, and over 16,000 active duty military personnel are garrisoned in our state.”

On Climate Change: “In Missouri when we go from winter to spring, that’s good climate change. I don’t want to stop that climate change, you know. Who in the world wants to put politicians in charge of the weather anyways?”

Despite Akin’s complete unfitness for office, McCaskill ran ads supporting him in the Republican primary – which he won with 36% of the vote – because she considered him the easiest challenger to beat. That is to say, she spent $2 million people had donated to her campaign to put this man in position to be a U. S. Senator. That is unconscionable.

Sticks and Stones

Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted. Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) via Annie Blaine. This, I think, helps explain the poisoned atmosphere of our political discourse. It has become personal in the worst kind of way.

It has happened before. On May 22, 1856 on the floor of the U. S. Senate, Preston Brooks, Democratic Congressman from South Carolina, beat Republican Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts so viciously with his cane that Sumner never recovered. The attack came in response to a speech two days earlier in which Sumner had heatedly attacked both the institution of slavery and the character of those who practiced it. Brooks intended to “punish” Sumner, not for his attack on slavery but to avenge the honor of his relative, Senator Andrew Butler (D, S.C.).

Many Southerners thought Sumner had it coming. As the leader of the radical Republicans in the Senate, he was an uncompromising abolitionist whose speeches were filled with invective and incendiary allusions. (His counterpart in the House was Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsylvania, he of the club foot, who held the seat I ran for in 1996, a seat now occupied by one of the most reactionary men in the United States Congress. Such is the sad trajectory of the Grand Old Party.)

Four years later, the country was at war, in part because some had taken forceful speech against an unconscionable institution as attacks on their personal honor.

Stumble of the Week

Lucky 13. That’s the minimum percent of his income that Mitt Romney paid in taxes the last 10 years. “Every year I’ve paid at least 13 percent,” he said. “And if you add in addition the amount that goes to charity,” added Mitt, “why the number gets well above 20 percent.” Suggesting that his tax-deductible tithe to the Mormon Church virtually doubles his effective tax rate is certainly creative bookkeeping. The Romneys announced their findings after rereading a decade of their returns. But they aren’t sharing them with the rest of us. Maintaining that they are “very transparent to what’s legally required of us,” Ann Romney said releasing more returns would just provide “ammunition” for their foes. Well, of course. It gets even better, wrote a friend who sent a link to Jerome Corsi after last Friday’s “transcripter” post. Corsi, a tea party activist, Harvard PhD, author of The Obama Nation and “swift boater” in the 2004 elections, who has called Fox News too liberal and Paul Ryan the “best possible choice.” has now produced evidence that, before Michelle, Barack Obama was married to his Pakistani roommate at Occidental College. I think there must be a contest to see who can lay the most abominations on Obama, and Dr. Corsi will be hard to beat: homosexuality, same-sex marriage, miscegenation, interfaith dating, loving a Moslem, sitting in another man’s lap, hypocrisy, lying. I know this is the fringe – at least I hope it is – but how often do we need to be reminded that the fringe is dangerous?

The Jordan

I was in a seething black rage the other day, and so I went down to the water. Jordan Stream runs clear and cold much of the year. Its waters descend from the mountains of Mount Desert Island and gather in Jordan Pond before continuing to the ocean. They run through a woods of mostly conifer, poplar and birch, where the only sound, apart from an occasional birdcall, is the rippling of the stream as it meanders over red, brown and deep gray granite stones. If this won’t calm the mind, nothing will.

Streams and rivers do a lot for us. They provide water and food. They irrigate our farmlands and replenish their soil. They transport both goods and people. Harnessing their power was the first step in the Industrial Revolution and the modern world as we know it. But we need to stop thinking of streams simply as public utilities that provide essential goods for human consumption.

They are places of great beauty and spiritual rebirth. None more so than the Jordan River – the real place where Jesus was baptized and the mythical destination that slaves sang of crossing to freedom, one way or another.

Today, the Jordan River is the source of fierce contention in the Middle East, where it is listed as one of the world's 100 most endangered ecological sites – another reminder that a stream is an ecosystem that supports the entire web of life, and a refuge from the world and, sometimes, from my own rage.

Big Fracking Deal

Think of natural gas as the methadone of our fossil-fuel addiction. It’s cheaper than oil and therefore more addictive. It’s cleaner than coal so we can feel good about using it. And there is lots of it so we can take it until we drop dead. In Pennsylvania, dubbed the “Saudi Arabia of Natural Gas” because of its massive Marcellus shale deposits, 60,000 new wells are forecast by 2030. They will require clearing thousands of acres of woodlands, threaten the forest habitat of countless species, and have a multi-dimensional impact on fresh water: drilling a well requires hundreds of thousands of gallons; gas companies contend the chemicals they inject are a proprietary secret; and hundreds of wells will be drilled near the state’s cleanest streams. A chemical engineer friend told me that, while the technology exists or soon will for safe fracking, he doubts many oil and gas companies will use best practices. Meanwhile, stories of both human and environmental contamination pile up.

In the face of risks that are both huge and still largely unknown, the gas rush intensifies because the money is mind-boggling and the oil companies have enormous economic and political power. They spew the usual mantras: jobs, growth, dependence on foreign oil – although, as my son Jake pointed out, the U. S. is a net exporter of oil products.

As Bill McKibben wrote in a recent article that will wake you up, as long as the big energy companies control the public debate, little will change, and our addiction will end like all other addictions . . . badly.

Intercontinental Ops

One of the great pleasures of reading Dashiell Hammett is that his plots are so convoluted that I have to focus on the memorable characters (Sam Spade, Nick and Nora Charles, the Continental Op) and the murky, smoke-filled backgrounds that become characters themselves. The novels bear almost endless rereadings as I try to unravel the intricacies of the story. The closest thing to Hammett’s fiction is Chinese reality, where two current law cases would do Dashiell proud. They have everything: lust for power, greed, bribery, corruption, magnificent names, murder – everything, oddly, but sex, which lurked ever below the surface in Hammett’s work.

The first case involves the fall from power of Bo Xilai (think French wine), amid revelations of extraordinary wealth and corruption among the ruling elites, and the imminent conviction of his wife Gu Kailai for the murder of a shady British character who made the fatal miscalculation of threatening Gu’s only child. The trial lasted a few hours. China’s conviction rate is 98 percent.

The latest case involves Sheldon Adelson, the ubiquitous billionaire who has poured over $35 million into Republican campaign coffers. He recently accompanied Mitt Romney to Israel to make sure he toed the hard line there, but it also turns out that two-thirds of Adelson’s fortune derives from his casinos in Macau, an island noted for mob activity and the only legal gambling in China. The case, which involves a socialite named Bao Bao and a frantic call to Tom Delay to bury a resolution condemning China, is but one more example of the global scale of corporate greed, political corruption and organized crime.

Olympic Moments

“Jake,” I asked my son recently, “do you think my titanium knees give me an unfair advantage in climbing mountains?” “No,” he said, and returned to his iPhone.

I had brought the matter up because one of the two Olympic stories that fascinated me was that of Oscar Pistorius, the South African sprinter whose legs were amputated just below his knees when he was 11 months old. Fitted with an unlikely-looking set of prostheses, Pistorius runs fast enough not only to qualify for the Olympics but to have his legged opponents complaining about his “unfair advantage.” Although he has been subjected to batteries of inconclusive tests, the true test seems simple: in a world in which people will go to almost any lengths to gain an advantage, I have yet to hear of anyone amputating his legs in pursuit of Olympic glory.

The other story is that the International Olympic Committee again refused a moment of silence for the 11 Israeli athletes who were taken hostage and murdered at the 1972 Munich games. Meanwhile, Sarah Attar, the first female Saudi track competitor, was cheered wildly for finishing last in the 800 meters, perhaps because her government required her to run covered from head to toe in traditional garb. No one complained about her handicap.

Attar represents a step toward equality in the Arab world, but the continuing refusal to acknowledge the barbaric tragedy that happened 40 years ago in Munich shames everyone who allows it to happen.

Stumble of the Week

“Birtherism,” the cult – whose most famous members are Glenn Beck and The Donald – that insists Barack Obama was not born in America, despite how many iterations of his birth certificate he produces, and is therefore at best ineligible to be president and at worst some kind of Manchurian candidate whom dark forces have made the first communist* president of the United States, seems finally to be running out of steam. But fear not, it has been replaced by “transcripterism,” whose adherents have offered a $20,000 reward to anyone who can produce the president’s transcripts from Occidental, Columbia and Harvard Law School. In an article in Beck’s “The Blaze,” Wayne Allyn Root (Columbia 1983) suggests the reason he never heard of his now-famous classmate was because he rarely went to class, got lousy grades and “attended Columbia as a foreign exchange student.” Oh, well, perhaps birtherism isn’t dead yet. Root, of course, equates the demands for Obama’s transcripts to those for Mitt Romney’s tax returns. * Helder Camara (1909-1999), Catholic Archbishop of Brazil: “When I feed the hungry, they call me a saint. When I ask why people are hungry, they call me a communist” (sent by my daughter, Annie).

Human Justice. In northern Mali where the people now live under Sharia law, an alleged thief recently had his hand cut off and a couple accused of adultery was stoned to death. I’m not saying all fundamentalists are alike. I just don’t want them running my country.

Bleeding Kansas

It didn’t rival the border wars in Kansas territory that culminated in John Brown’s deadly attack on the pro-slavery settlement at Pottawatomie Creek in 1856, but Tuesday’s Republican primaries for the Kansas state senate were bitter enough. When the votes were counted, the Tea Party candidates had shellacked the moderates, reducing the latter to a rump group with little clout. Such state and local elections are where the political map of America is being redrawn, largely out of sight because the national media aren’t paying much attention – another consequence of the collapse of the traditional press. And it takes a tiny fraction of eligible voters to make a big difference in these races. In March Rick Santorum’s 15,290 votes gave him 51% of the Kansas vote – crushing Mitt Romney by over 2-1.

This vitriolic infighting is happening across the country. It’s not clear what it will mean for this election, but the Republican right’s distrust of Romney has deep roots. Although it began in 1854 as the party of abolition, the GOP was from the beginning the party of big government and big business – and also of midwestern farmers who were deeply conservative on social issues. Nixon’s “southern strategy” enticed southern whites to the GOP over civil rights, and Reagan attracted working-class Democrats in big numbers. Those constituencies have long distrusted Wall Street and the eastern capitalists who run the national party. They now have the votes to remake the party in their own image. They also have the money. The Koch brothers are from Kansas, too.

Unspoken Words

A friend sent me the following in response to yesterday’s post. Words never mentioned on the campaign trail:

• "the poor"
• "climate change"
• "gun control"
• "reforming financial markets"

I was stunned. These are four of the most critical issues we face. They all have enduring consequences, and the first two go a long way to defining what kind of a country we will be – for how we treat each other, particularly the poor, and how we treat the earth are two sides of a single coin of humanity and survival.

It is not especially surprising that Mitt Romney isn’t talking about these things. Concern for the poor is not a striking trait of the modern GOP. Climate change is a hoax. The Second Amendment is sacrosanct. And the financial markets need liberation not reform.

But Barack Obama could build a campaign around these issues. The poor are a constituency that needs empowerment. Climate change already affects all we do. With Jared Loughner pleading guilty to the Gabrielle Giffords shooting spree and recent bloodbaths in Wisconsin and Colorado, it seems a good time to discuss America’s obsession with guns. And the accusation that Standard Chartered laundered billions for the Iranians is but the latest in a never-ending story of arrogance, corruption and greed in the marketplace.

There are other words that aren’t mentioned much either: entitlement reform, Palestine, community.

In what many call “the most important election in our lifetime,” the candidates seem determined to talk about nothing important at all.

Beyond the 99 Percent

Today’s post is an almost-inadvertent addendum to yesterday’s. In the interim I read a review of The Price of Inequality, in which Joseph Stiglitz describes the consequences of the vast inequalities of wealth that now define America, perhaps more than any other nation on Earth. Stiglitz, the Nobel Prize-winning economist, argues that our two-tiered society has arisen, not primarily because of either the survival of the fittest or the impact of globalization, but because the rich have become increasingly able to control the political system: “While there may be underlying economic forces at play, politics have shaped the market, and shaped it in ways that advantage the top at the expense of the rest.” The result, he says, goes beyond unfairness; it undercuts the virtues of a free market system by promoting inefficiencies, reducing the educated labor pool and not investing in the infrastructure capitalism requires. (Yes, Barack Obama was absolutely right to point out that we don’t do it alone.) My concern is that the focus on a two-tiered society obscures what is happening. This entire political campaign cycle now involves rebuking or vindicating the one percent and toadying up to the mythical middle class, which is everybody else – the 99 percent. Once again, the poor, whose lives are as removed from the middle class as they are from the rich, have become invisible – none more so than the urban poor, who are locked in ghettos from which there is little escape. This is a moral calamity. It is also a tinderbox . . . and every time we reduce essential public services, we add fuel for the flames.

Home and Garden

I spend a good deal of time in my car – a beat up old Volvo with 119,000 miles on it – and I can usually find whatever I need in the trunk – sleeping bag, tennis racquet, clothes. Still, I have never actually considered it the equivalent of my home, so I was surprised to read that in Detroit, the birthplace of the American automobile industry, a Chevy Malibu and a new house both cost $21,000. The car may be the better buy. My friend Charity, who has a degree from the University of Michigan, supports seven people across three generations on $12,000 a year. A few years ago, the city took her family's house by eminent domain to build middle-income housing. When she lost her next home to foreclosure, she sold everything she had and bid $2,500 to get the house back at auction. A suburban “investor” bid $3,000 . . . and then took her note for $10,000 in exchange for not evicting her family.

Yet Charity has dedicated her life to saving her city. She focuses on food security because nutrition is perhaps the greatest challenge facing the urban poor, and she spends her days nurturing the hundreds of urban gardens that feed growing numbers of Detroiters. Many have flowers as well as food, and they are tiny oases of beauty in a devastated city.

“I’m trying to starve the ugly,” said Charity. “But I cry.”

She will never give up: “I believe the community will win. We have no choice. The apathy cannot survive.”

Stumble of the Week

Oddities I stumbled on last week: • The latest CBS poll shows that 12% of Americans approve of the current Congress. Meanwhile, a new study estimates that spending on all federal elections will total almost $6 billion this cycle, 77% of it from business interests. That’s a lot of money to buy influence with people held in such low regard. Why not create a lottery for the unemployed, draw 535 names at random and send them to Washington; return the $6 billion to the rich contributors; and raise their marginal tax rates by 10%? Fresh faces, campaign finance reform, fair taxation – done.

• When Lech Walesa endorsed Mitt Romney, he became the first major labor figure to support a Republican since the Teamsters backed Ronald Reagan and George Bush in the 1980s. Known for their infiltration by the mob, the Teamsters also supported Richard Nixon in 1972, six months after he had pardoned Jimmy Hoffa and three years before Hoffa disappeared without a trace.

• In response to a contribution to the Obama campaign, I got a letter from the national finance director that seemed more ‘price is right’ than presidential: Thanks so much for your generous donation. . . .We've always depended on supporters like you – not special interests or Washington lobbyists – for every dollar we get. To show our appreciation, here's a special coupon code for the Obama 2012 store.

DEADLINE!

Using that code at checkout will get you 10 percent off orders of $10 or more. But it's only good through August 1st, so swing by the store now.

Lights Out

Two days ago a massive blackout in northern India left 670 million people in the dark, in the heat and, in the case of 200 coal miners, in the ground. Now there is much head scratching over what caused this colossal electrical failure and endless finger pointing over who is to blame.

It seems pretty obvious to me.

Let’s begin with water. India’s monsoon rains are well below normal, which geometrically affects hydroelectric power because farmers are competing with energy producers for ever-scarcer supplies.

Then there are demographics. With half its population under 25 and two-thirds under 35, India is on its way to becoming the world’s most populous country, and its energy production lags well behind – in fact 300 million Indians have no power at all.

None of this has stopped the country’s monomaniacal pursuit of industrial growth that is based on a 19^th-century model of extractive development, including a heavy reliance on coal, and an obsession with economic growth at all costs.

And finally there is the equally old-fashioned corruption, with charges and counter-charges of diverting power to political cronies, demanding bribes for access and selling electricity at prices below production costs.

The conventional solution is to double down: produce more energy to grow faster to get richer to pull more people out of poverty and become a world power. Disregard the troublesome global climate hoax and blame low-level bureaucrats and the Indian culture of corruption.

This strikes me as a foolproof formula for ignoring the systemic causes of the problems, which are global, and reinforcing a positive feedback loop that will ensure they get worse.

Symbiosis

I took several garbage bags filled with a disconcerting number of beer cans and bottles to the recycling center yesterday afternoon. As I placed the aromatic contents in bins swarming with yellow jackets, an old man beside me filled the bed of his rickety red pick-up with unbroken bottles. In Maine, wine and liquor bottles bring 15 cents, all others a nickel – but many small towns don’t have redemption centers, and I realized that this man was taking out what I was putting in. He had spent all day weed eating up in the graveyard. “People appreciate it,” he said, “but when I get sweat in my ears, my hearing aids don’t work.” He had come here to make extra money.

“Last week,” he said, “I took $268 out of here in two days. . . .If we don’t take these, they just end up in the dump.” I redirected my treasure to the back of his truck.

Years ago in Ireland and later in Bhutan, two of the world’s most beautiful countries, I was appalled at the amount of trash by the roadsides and in the streams. Both countries were emerging from poverty into consumerism. The idea of excess was new, and they found themselves overwhelmed by throw-away goods.

“We had no concept of trash,” a Bhutanese official said. “What one person discarded, another had a use for.”

Maine’s 24-year-old bottle bill has reduced litter, promoted environmental awareness, and become a small source of revenue for the state’s increasing and invisible poor. It is also under attack from commercial interests and the governor.

Over the Hill

I’m a bleeder. Blood pours unbidden from old wounds as if I were some St. Gertrude for unbelievers. I attribute it to the 12 pills doctors make me take daily, one of which, I’m pretty sure, is to remember the other 11. So when we arose in the early rain near the top of Dix Mountain, it looked as if I had single-handedly fought off the bear. Worried about our water supply, we eschewed coffee and slogged uphill. We arrived at a face of rock, only 30 feet long, but very steep and shaped like an open book. We could not get up it with our packs on. The moment of truth had arrived. “Do we have rope?”

“Yes, I packed it.”

“Where is it?”

“It’s in here somewhere.”

“Go through your pack again.”

We sent Michael up with the rope, then hooked up the bags and followed ourselves. Soon we were at the top of Dix, where we took in the two-foot view of fog and rain. It would be “all downhill from here.”

When you reach a certain age, that phrase has a depressing ring to it – and it turns out to be true, of hiking as well as life, that coming down is harder than going up. It seemed an eternity before we arrived at a small lean-to on Slippery Brook, where we at last had our breakfast of coffee and sweet-and-sour chicken.

Like many Americans, I have come to expect my wild to be tame – trails marked, nature benign and pretty. And let’s be honest, pretty much it is. But that is because we have made it so. As Michael, Anne and I sipped our coffee, our bond strengthened, our souls revived, our fears behind us, we knew that this had not been just any walk in the woods.

Ah, Wilderness

Nineteenth-century census maps show the American population moving steadily west across the frontier, with a few exceptions: northern Maine, the Everglades, and a large unpopulated circle in upstate New York. The Adirondacks were too inhospitable to sustain life for any but the most rugged people. Today, the 6.1-million-acre Adirondack Park is the largest U.S park outside Alaska. It is famed for its 46 “high peaks” over 4,000 feet, and an exclusive club of “46ers” has climbed them all. As of Wednesday morning I had climbed none of them. By Thursday morning I had quite unexpectedly climbed four, including Dix, the sixth highest in the range.

Wednesday was clear and beautiful when I set off with my friends Michael and Anne, 50 pounds of essential supplies on my back. The first indication we might not be heading into paradise was our arrival at the “the slide,” a several-hundred-foot, very steep open face of rock on Macomb Mountain. Too terrified to look at the panorama unfolding behind us, we crawled our way up, only to find that the mountaintop was still far away. We trudged up and down three peaks along an unmarked “herd path,” and as we slogged up Dix itself, exhausted and worried about our water, it grew dark.

We stopped at a spot far too small to pitch our tents, and when we threw our sleeping bags on the ground, Michael discovered that a chipmunk had eaten through his Ziploc bag of Tang. This rendered bear-proofing preparations unnecessary, and as we settled in for the night, we each adopted a bear strategy: Michael smoked a cigar; Anne stayed awake; and I snored. And of course we put Michael and his Tang downwind.

The rain began at 11:30.

PS For another way to do this, see http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/29/opinion/sunday/kristof-blissfully-lost-in-the-woods.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss