Herd of elk on the way in.

I hope to get back in those basins, but rain held me up the first day.

Set up camp in this pleasant meadow.

The goal is to camp in a basin and day-hike up on that ridge for views of the skyline beyond.

The beetle kill is severe all through here. Large swathes of this forest appear to have been reduced below the percolation threshold by beetles. It's frustrating and degrades the aesthetic of the landscape. Many of the dead lean under force of the wind. The living trees remain straight.

Amidst the skeletons many young are growing. Nature's resilience is on display. And with the tranquil stream through rolling green meadows, the scene remains predominantly hopeful. It's too easy to succumb to bark-beetle blame, to human-impact shame, both tiny mites that can't control their appetites. All these vices likewise reside in me. The rain still falls so clean. The patient Earth has time and a horizon unburdened by aesthetic desires. The patient Earth has time and a horizon unburdened by aesthetic preferences.

The full moon rises over that rocky edge and reminds me for a moment of the cycles of bounty and dearth, the light and dark, before is slides behind the evening clouds. Blue, green, brown, sliver, round—forms in perpetual flux.

In the morning I hike the rest of the way to the basins.

Not a bad spot to camp.

In the midst of all the deadwood, life is made more vibrant.

Is it a picture of a forest dying or a forest recovering? A forest in the throes, or life just as it goes?

It seems for each pine taken there's a fresh sprout reaching forth.

Evening views from around the campsite.

In the morning, ready to explore. Tried a new brand of boot this time. The blister on my heel is too severe to put them on. Fourtunately, most of this basin has soft enough grass that I can traverse it barefoot or with socks, as I was designed. The surprise rock still hurts a bit, revealing my dependence on my technological adaptation.

Frogs and birds share the airwaves. As many grasshoppers as blades of grass, The grasshoppers jump each time I take a step, like I'm kicking up a cloud of living dust. They turn the grass right into themselves, borrow it for a while so they can jump around and rub their legs together, and if I run out of Cliff Bars, I'll collect a harvest of their jittery, crispy exoskeletons in a bucket as I roam the meadows to fuel another day in my form as animate Earth, bipedal quasiparticle, binocular cosmic portal.

The last thing I wrote in my notebook before I started this trip was, "Owen can now describe what the thinks about, what he dreams about." The last thing I did before I left town was take Owen to Pop Kim and Grandma Vickie's. A big playlist was shuffling, and an old Tori Amos song ('Strange' from Scarlet's Walk) came on. Owen said, "I'm actually starting to like this song."

His mom would cringe.

"Oh, yeah? What do you like about it?" I asked.

"It's a good nighttime song," he said.

So this four-year-old is now able to remember songs he's heard maybe three times in his life. He's able to form opinions about these songs, update his opinions, and realize he's updating them. And he's able to realize certain songs have moods, and these moods are matched to various transitory mental states he experiences at different times of the day. Last night when I was laying in my tent I wondered if Owen would like the sound of the frogs, and if he'd think they provide nice nighttime ambiance.

This place has almost no mosquitoes. Grasshoppers by the barrel, but no brainless bloodsuckers. It's been years since I've camped without the ceaseless barrage of those proboscis-equipped tyrants. I'll take the trade any day. Grasshoppers are silly, easily excited to leap haphazardly like unpracticed circus performers, but completely benign. More company than adversary. Backup banquet.

After last summer's trek, the soles of my old boots began to delaminate. Did a little research and found such an final state is common with that brand. So after four pairs of the same kind, I switched to a different make and model. "Best you can buy," the internet told me. "Never had the soles detach." Thirteen years with my old brand and never had a blister. With this new pair, my heel flesh is simply gone, stripped clean as if all the hungry insects of last year's basin were broght to bear on those silver-dollar circles, revealing the colors of my insides. So now these $400 boots sit back at camp with their soles firmly affixed while my god-given soles get to know the grass, that much less separation between me and what I came to experience.

There's much more information than my usual Vibram callouses allow me to ascertain — which micro patches are pokey and which are kind, that loosened dirt where ground dwellers burrow is softer than a dream, dirt and grass and elk splat are just instantiations, different phases of the same basic concept, muddy feet wash quite clean with a quick dip in the stream, and these wet walkers dry in a jif with warm summer wind and bright sunlight.

I also am reminded that it matters not how many times I declare a day of rest, I have a propensity to move — sleep at night, but emerge each day to explore, booted or no, just as the vacuum of the universe has a ceaseless desire to become, to turn shapeless into form, elk beads into fertile Earth, soft soil into wildflowers. There is only process.

These crags display the same pattern of production. The mesh of packed-in stones indicates the history. The prior mountain range was once lifted where I stand — great peaks pushed by the churning Earth, then reduced to modest rocks by the ceaseless wind and snow. The Ancestral Rockies, we now call them — their dust was packed like this, boulders in a grid fixed only to be lifted again, now proud peaks and spacious basins, same ceaseless Earth, same grinding glaciers.

These crags display the same pattern of production. The mesh of packed-in stones indicates the history. The prior mountain range was once lifted where I stand — great peaks pushed by the churning Earth, then reduced to modest rocks by the ceaseless wind and snow. The Ancestral Rockies, we now call them — their dust was packed like this, boulders in a grid fixed only to be lifted again, now proud peaks and spacious basins, same ceaseless Earth, same grinding glaciers.

When I was reading in the hammock, I noticed an elk up high on the ridge. Seemed to be grazing, disappeared behind a stand of trees and I didn't see it again. Then an hour later the whole herd traversed the length of the twin lakes and disappeared over the next glacier lined ridge.

Moments after the elk were out of sight, three campers came into the basin. Maybe the elk were running away. Add human voices to the frogs and birds. Kinda defeats the purpose. Let's see if my attitude improves. Strange, I had a vivid dream last night of hikers coming in, saw them cross the ridge, identically the same. If you want to be away from folks, don't camp near the lakes. I'd pack up and move right now, but I can't do it with my foot in this condition.

As they set up camp, I started reading a paper about metastability in the brain, the idea that cognitive states are like temporary resting points in a continually shifting landscape. Trains of thought move through these points along a so-called heteroclinic trajectories. But I couldn't concentrate, distracted by my new circumstance. I packed up the hammock to go for a short walk, maybe scope a new campsite for tomorrow. Next thing I knew I was up the hillside opposite the one the elk had traversed wearing only socks. If you're thinking this is a stupid thing to do, keep in mind I had on two pair, and they were Smart Wool. The ground was accommodating, and suddenly I was at the top overlooking the vast plateau that had motivated this destination in the first place. Best vistas of the trip so far. Uninviting place to camp, but an optimal landscape to explore all day tomorrow. I circled round this upper lake and dropped back down into the basin on an elk trail I'd been eyeing since arrival.

After this trajectory and from this perch I didn't see an invader disrupting my solitude. I saw a focused fishermain lit gold by the perfect evening. Heteroclinic trajectories. My attitude has improved. If these scribblings are notes to my future self, don't seek a single resting place, a fixed, momentous thought. Stand still while it suits you, and then be on the move.

When Ozzie Smith was interviewed on Wait Wait, Peter asked him what his secret was. Ozzie said if he had to point to one thing, it would be perpetual motion, always swaying, knees bent, ready to spring toward that shortstop snag. Adapt as soon as the moment requires it. Now I know that a soft grass route exists from my camp to the great plateau, and tomorrow offers it all, weather permitting.

Is one of these pictures more beautiful than the other?

I'm not gonna take this opportunity to write a bad review of those boots. I should've been getting used to them for months. Rookie mistake. But I will give five stars to Smart Wool. These socks withstand trekking in alpine terrain for quite a few miles. I mean, that's a sturdy sock. Only complaint is when the wind blows they aren't heavy enough to keep my papers down.

Woke up just before the waning gibbous dropped below the ridgeline. Elk calls filled the basin during breakfast. Set out for the plateau with four pairs of socks — two liners, two outers. Quad sockin' it. Counting both feet, it's the octosock configuration.

Just before I came over the ridge to the plateau, two fellows riding horses dropped down from above. We exchanged niceties, and they said they were scouting fallen trees that needed to be cleared from trails. They were coming back next week with a team of six volunteers. I told them the trail was clear all the way back a few miles because it was mostly above tree line. They said thanks, saved them a few hours of riding. They turned, and we summited the ridge together. I thanked them for their service. One complimented me on my sunscreen, which I gathered was not completely rubbed in. They asked where I was from, and I told them Boulder. They didn't say it, but I bet they were thinking, "Could've guessed it from your footwear."

Up on the ridge scouting views.

Very little beetle kill up here.

Since the encounter with the gentleman on the Continental Divide in the Weminuche in 2017, I have been looking for ways to simplify my camping gear. After last year's trip in the Raggeds, I noted that I could make due with fewer socks, although it wouldn't save much weight or space. This year I brought the exact same amount of socks: a liner pair and an outer pair for each day up there. Note for next year: cut the boots before you cut the socks. Save a lot more space and weight that way, and you can usually find a rock to weight your papers down. The guy on the Continental Divide would advise not to pack one in.

Then today again I was laying in the hammock after the morning hike, and I spotted three more elk upon that same line traversing the hillside, again moving with some urgency. More campers? Then the fisherman emerged, dropping back down the ridge just like yesterday, this time just out fishing. Must be strange to live your life constantly foreshadowed by one or more elk. It's hard enough to muster the nerve to talk to a pretty girly. Can you imagine starting your approach only to watch her get trampled by a bugling herd?

Seeing the horsemen on the ridge today was pleasant. They were nice folks, and I enjoyed visiting with them, gaining a small glimpse from their perspective. But in reflection, they showed me why I occasionally thirst for solitude. They were a partial mirror back to me, reflecting features of this human individual. But sometimes I prefer no reflection back at all, the Earth itself as the only input.

There's also the fact that human voices carry through a basin like this, and the mind can't help but attend to spoken words, however wind-blurred, any more than it can ignore the wail of an elk. Camper conversations scatter a thought train right out of its basin. What to do? Get over it. Whatver thoughts you were thinking definitely weren't that special. You wrote basically the same lines each of the last dozen years, and neither you nor anyone else cared or cares. That is the beauty of the transient returning to the absence.

It probably seems like Smart Wool™ pays me to post all this here. Given the traffic of this website, the value of this testimony is no doubt in the countless millions. But no, these opinions are genuinely my own. I'll just say it again, these are damn fine socks. Smart Wool: wear 'em as a sock. Hike 'em like a boot. Ride 'em like a horse. Just don't use them as a paperweight.

My research group leader, Sae Woo, was diagnosed with brain cancer almost a year ago. Another member of the group, Kevin, lost his son, Luke, just two weeks ago when struck by a falling rock on a routine hike. When the loss is that profound, the story of the great rebirth of the Rockies brings little solace. Kevin can't possibly care that rain falls through the smoke of our cremations. The day I heard about Luke I changed my plans to come to South San Juan instead of Eagle's Nest. I told myself the route was safer. Maybe I remembered there was quite a bit of beetle kill, and I wanted to look right at it. A few years back on a drive to Durango — same trip where I met the Continental Divide minimalist — I saw these vast hillsides transformed to tinder, and it left a splinter in my soul. In this final evening sunlight I see hillsides out to horizons of the sitting dead, stripped of green but not yet fallen. Yet somehow the breadth of the view could not be more fulfilling. I see new growth pushing forth, yet still imagine a devastating fire that could sweep it all. It's easy for me to dwell in the balance of emergence and decay on this perfect perch, trusting I will go home tomorrow to my cherished wife and son. Easy for me to say the Earth is just right in its churning. Can't mean much to those torn wide by trauma, but saying it is all I can think to do. I love you, Kevin. I love you, Sae Woo.

Drive home past mountain ranges like book cases, glacier-carved drainages like so many tomes I'll never know.