The Lumbee

Henry Berry Lowrie

The Lumbee are the largest Indian tribe east of the Mississippi, numbering 35000 registered members and another 30000 who claim membership, according to Andrew Lawler, in his book, "The Secret Token." See posts: The Lost Colony, Nov. 11, 2018, and Virginia Dare, Nov. 21, 2018. In this fascinating book Lawler tells the story of the Roanoke Colony, the first British colony in the new world, and how its mysterious disappearance has fostered spooky stories of alien abduction, demon possession and fantasies justifying white supremacy.

Lawler devotes one chapter of his book to the Lumbee Indian tribe, who have incorporated into their traditions a completely different twist to the Roanoke story. According to the Lumbee, the Roanoke settlers didn’t disappear at all. Rather, they were rescued by the Croatoan Indians, the ancestors of the Lumbee. Today Virginia Dare is referred to as the Lumbee’s mother, and Lumbee sons are named Manteo in honor of the Croatoan warrior who returned to England with the first Roanoke party and then came back with the settlers to intercede for them with his people.

This tradition has served the Lumbee well over the years. During the Civil War a male member of the tribe was executed for refusing to dig a trench alongside African-American slaves, and after the war his son led a rebellion against the Ku Klux Klan and it’s persecution of people of color. The man, Henry Berry Lowrie, was never caught. In fact, he once robbed a bank of the reward money collected for his capture.

During the period of Indian Removal, the notorious Trail of Tears, the Lumbee were left in place, probably because white settlers didn’t covet their swampy land.

Later, in the 1880’s, a North Carolina legislator, Hamilton McMillan, wrote a book based on the tradition that the Lumbee had rescued the Roanoke settlers. In his book,

McMillan noted that many of the Lumbee had names similar to those of the settlers, for instance Berry, the name of the leader of the rebellion. He also cited a story of uncertain origin, of an Indian tribe found during the colonial period who spoke English. He then pointed out similarities of the dialects of contemporaneous Lumbee to “Old Saxon English.” As a result of McMillan’s theories, legislation was passed giving the Lumbee recognition as a tribe, voting rights, and better schools. He also made Democrats of them, insuring his tenure in the state legislature.

The Lumbee have a river named for them, the Lumber River, and a branch of the University of N. Carolina is located in the town of Pembroke, in the heart of Lumbee country. While recognized in N. Carolina, the Lumbee are not recognized by the federal government, not surprising since recognition would involve providing special benefits to tribal members.  

The origins of the tribe are vague. The word Lumbee comes from a Siouan word meaning “dark water.” They are located in an area that was originally swampy and remote, which became a refuge for escaped slaves, poor whites, and mixed blood people of color. It was a place where they could survive by hunting and fishing, and where they could escape persecution.

Efforts to link the Lumbee to the colonists have frustrated historians and archeologists, since there are few written records, and no archaeological trace of the colonists. Tribal members are suspicious and reluctant to participate in DNA studies, partly because of fears that it might jeopardize their continuing efforts to obtain federal recognition, but limited studies have been done and they are surprising. They show a high percentage Northern European and African ancestry, but no Native American!

Lawler quotes an Episcopal priest who claims Lumbee ancestry. “I am Proudly Lumbee,” he said , “but recognize that it is an identity constructed by my ancestors to secure a better deal for themselves in the Jim Crow South.”

I think he has every right to be proud.

Christmas Waltz

Virginia Dare

Virginia Dare

Of all the people associated with the Lost Colony of Roanoke, Sir Walter Raleigh: adviser to Queen Elizabeth and sponsor of the colony, John White: governor of Roanoke colony and artist whose paintings were reproduced, published and circulated throughout Europe, shaping early attitudes toward the New World; Thomas Harriot: Oxford trained naturalist, mathematician and astronomer, who learned Algonquin to communicate with native Americans, invented navigation methods used into the twentieth century, plotted the most accurate maps of the North American coast made for two centuries, and cataloged the flora and fauna of the new world; none have inspired more interest and imagination than Virginia Dare, the first English child born in the new world.

Virginia, daughter of Eleanor and Ananias Dare and granddaughter of John White, was born on August 18^th, 1587, on Roanoke Island off the east coast of what would later be North Carolina. She was baptized the next week, and shortly afterwards her grandfather left for England, never to see her again. All we know of her is the fact of her birth, recorded briefly in White’s journal.

The birth of little Virginia remained an obscure historical footnote until 1834, when George Bancroft, a Harvard historian, wrote a book about the lost colony, highlighting Virginia Dare as the first English child born in the new world. The book was a best seller, unusual for a history, but the country was going through some changes at the time that created a fertile environment for her story. Land hungry pioneers had successfully pressured Congress into passing legislation to remove Indian Tribes from the southeast, freeing up the fertile Mississippi valley for settlement. After the slave revolt led by Nat Turner in 1831, oppressive laws were being passed to keep down blacks, both enslaved and free. Americans of English and Scottish descent were searching for ways to justify their oppression of people of color.

About that time several books and magazine articles were written portraying Virginia Dare as a symbol of the purity and virtue of the white race. In an article in the Women’s Home Companion published in 1837, Eliza Cushing described the massacre of the Roanoke Colony by bloodthirsty savages, and the rescue of the infant Virginia by the loyal Manteo*, who protects her through her childhood. As an adult she is rescued from marrying a vicious savage with “uncontrolled passions” by a Spaniard who happens by. They then return to Spain with the Spaniard, where they raise Manteo’s son and cause him to forget his savage past. The story not only supports the superiority of the white race over the Indian "savages," it also supports the practice pursued into the twentieth century of separating Indian children from their parents and from their cultures, in order to “civilize” them.

Over the next almost two centuries many variations of the racist fantasy have been told.

Another story by Mary Mason in 1862 describes the virtuous Virginia Dare being transformed into a white doe by an evil Indian shaman. When she is later killed by a white hunter, she thanks him for freeing her from her curse and for supplanting the evil red man on the continent, supporting the doctrine of Manifest Destiny.

The Civil War only reinforced the Popularity of the Virginia Dare legend, as southern whites struggled to maintain political control of the South.

Around the turn of the 19th century, Sallie Southall Cotton wrote an epic poem about the Virginia Dare legend in which she transforms Dare into a Jesus like figure, comparing Roanoke to Bethlehem and even having Dare transform water into wine in her death scene. Cotton traveled around the country reciting her poem, and in 1896 formed the Roanoke Colony Memorial Association which raised money and bought Fort Raleigh, the site of the Roanoke Colony, where Virginia Dare's birthday has been celebrated ever since. Cotton also advocated scientific motherhood, advocating laws banning the mixing of the races in order to maintain the purity of the white race, an idea which was also popular in Nazi Germany.

Over the 400 years since the disappearance of the Roanoke settlers, Virginia Dare has been used as justification for segregation, lynchings, disenfranchisement of black Americans, limitation of immigration, and other manefestations of prejudice against people of color, in a disgraceful perversion of history. Even now there is a web site vdare.com which advocates limiting the immigration of non-europeans.

Information for this article was taken from "The Secret Token," by Andrew Lawler.

* Manteo was a Croatoan Indian who was taken to England by the first English exploration party, and became an ally of the colonists. Another indian, Wantese, also went to England, but returned to America to lead the resistance against the settlers.

Ain't She Sweet

The Lost Colony of Roanoke

John White Searching for Roanoke Colony

I recently visited North Carolina, the site of the first English settlement in North America, the so called “Lost” Colony of Roanoke. While I was there, I picked up a book about the Roanoke Colony, “The Secret Token,” by Andrew Lawler, and learned some things I didn’t know about American history, about humans’ will to survive, and about their ability to bend history to serve their interests and imagination.

The Roanoke Colony was a project of Sir Walter Raleigh, who was seeking gold, a shortcut to India, or some other way to make himself richer, and in 1585 he was granted a charter by Queen Elizabeth I to establish a colony in North America. After an initial party explored the area, three shiploads of colonists were sent in 1587. They settled on the island of Roanoke, just inside the barrier islands known as the outer banks, off the coast of what is now North Carolina. The colony’s governor, John White, returned to England for supplies later that year, leaving behind his daughter Eleanor, his son in law Ananias Dare, and their new born baby, Virginia. Soon after he returned to London, the Spanish Armada attacked the English coast, and every available ship was used for defense, preventing him from returning until three years later, in 1590. When he finally made it back to the site, all he found was the word, “Croatoan,” carved on a tree.

Ever since then, the fate of the 115 Roanoke colonists has remained a mystery. The carving suggests that they moved near the Croatoan Indian tribe, which was located on what is now Hatteras Island, but no archaeological evidence has been found to substantiate that theory. Over the last 400 years, archaeological digs have been done in other locations where the colonists might have gone. Genetic studies have even been done on descendants of the local Indian tribes looking for DNA from the colonists without conclusive results. The fate of the Roanoke colony does have some historic importance since it was the first English settlement in the new world, predating the Jamestown colony by 20 years, and John White’s granddaughter, Virginia Dare, was the first English child born here.

Through the years there have been many theories about what happened to the Roanoke colonists. They most likely were either taken in or killed by the local Indian tribes or starved to death like the Jamestown settlers almost did twenty years later. After some initial misunderstandings, the Indians had been helpful to the colonists, thinking that an alliance with them might give them an advantage over the neighboring tribes. Spanish colonists and  African slaves had been adopted by tribes further south in similar situations. There was a drought about that time, so no one, not even the Indians, were getting enough to eat, so the starvation theory also makes sense. Actually, when the Jamestown settlers arrived, Chief Powhatan told them that his warriors had killed the Roanoke settlers, although historians think that he was referring to a group from the earlier exploring party stranded on the outer banks in 1585.

Since there’s no good evidence to support any of the more realistic possibilities, many legends and other supernatural explanations have been invented over the years to fill the void.   

The word Croatoan has been found in the journals of Amelia Ehrhart and Black Bart the pirate after their mysterious disappearances. Edgar Allen Poe, famous for writing spooky stories, is said to have whispered the word “Croatoan” on his death bed. One legend tells of the colonists being stricken by a terrible disease that drove them to cannibalism. In a variation of the story, the colonists were possessed by evil spirits which the Indians banished by carving the word Croatoan on the tree. In the movie, The Lost Colony, The Legend of Roanoke, released in 2007, the island is haunted by the souls of Viking explorers, who take revenge on the helpless settlers. The current season of the TV series American Horror Story has been devoted to the spirits of the Roanoke colonists. Some have even claimed that the colonists were carried away by aliens. 

While some of the speculation over the disappearance of the Lost Colonists of Roanoke has been entertaining, some of it has been taken seriously, and may have even had an effect on the course of history.More about that in my next post……… 

You'll Never Know

Geel, Belgium

Saint Dymphna

Sorry for the delay, but my post of October 1 was meant as an introduction to this one, about Geel, Belgium.

I have known about Geel for some time, but NPR did a story recently and it reminded me about Geel, and about my friend, Greg.

Geel is a small farming community in Belgium that has a unique custom of caring for the mentally ill in people’s homes. The tradition began in 1480, after the death of a nun, Dymphna, an Irish princess who had fled to a convent in Geel to escape from her father who was “mad.” As a nun, Dymphna had special compassion for the mentally ill and she cared for them in her convent. Her story ended when her father followed and murdered her. She was canonized after her martyrdom, and then families began make pilgrimages to Geel with their mentally ill relatives. Eventually there were too many for the convent to handle, so instead of turning them away, people in the community took them in.

It’s a remarkable story, not just as evidence that human kindness still exists in this contentious world, but also because the system still seems to work, after 500 years! Now the process has been modernized. Guests are screened by doctors, prescribed medication when appropriate, and assigned to families. They help their host families or have jobs, and the government provides a small stipend. Some of the guests act out, depending on their diagnosis, but they are accepted by their families and by the community. According to the reporter, the host families were surprised by questions about whether their guests are a problem. The average length of stay with a family is 28 years!

The NPR piece described several examples of families’ relationships with their guests. One man twisted the buttons off his shirt every day, and every night his host would sew the buttons back on. When the reporter suggested that the host use tougher thread to save herself the trouble of her nightly repair job, she was shocked. She said, “He needs to do this.” A man with hallucinations about being chased by lions was satisfied when the host pretended to chase them away.

There were examples of violence, of abnormal sexual behaviors, and in each case the host families found ways to adjust. Both hosts and guests interviewed described themselves as being happy with their arrangement.

Several studies have been done trying to explain what makes Geel’s system work, without any real success, but one factor seems be the attitude of the host families. The guests are accepted as they are. The hosts aren’t embarrassed by them. They don’t try to “cure” them. They don’t even think of them as abnormal. This explains one of the rules for assigning guests to families. No one is assigned someone from their own family.

The reporter did look for other examples where acceptance of mental illness is practiced. It’s a little hard to replicate Geel, because they have a  long tradition, everyone in the community understands and accepts the situation, and the community is rural and there are a lot of ways for someone to be useful without fitting into traditional occupations. She did find a woman who has been managing an apartment house in a US city, trying to replicate to situation in Geel, with some success.

Which brings me back to Greg. I’m certainly not any more accepting, or more broad minded than average, but Greg and I got along fine. And maybe Geel's principals of acceptance should apply not just to differences in behaviors, but also to differences in opinions and beliefs, . 

We can all learn something from the people of Geel. 

La Vie en Rose

Unforgettable

Accepting People as They Are

During my last year in medical school I roomed with a guy named Greg. He was the brother of a friend of mine who had moved to New York to attend Union Theological Seminary. Greg had lived with him until he got accepted to Union and he didn’t want Greg to have to live by himself. I was kind of tired of being alone in my apartment anyway, and it was nice to have someone to share the rent.

Greg was several years older than I, but we got along fine. He was neat and had a  pleasant personality. He wasn’t opinionated and didn’t have any rowdy friends. He was taking some classes at Central State University in Edmond, Oklahoma, so both of us were busy, and we both studied in the evenings. There was something unique about Greg though. He was paranoid schizophrenic.

Greg’s brother didn’t actually tell me much about him, so I didn’t know much except for his diagnosis. He had done some outlandish things in the past. He told me that he had once walked down Main Street in his underwear brandishing a pistol, but at the time I knew him he had learned how to control his behavior, and he was on a big dose of Thorazine, I think 800mg a day.    

I didn’t notice anything very unusual about Greg. He was very open and would talk about his history or his experiences if I asked, but I didn’t pry. I didn’t want him to feel uncomfortable.

Greg didn’t drive, so if he needed to buy groceries, go to the laundromat, or just get out of the apartment, I would take him, since I had a car. He rode the bus to school. When we went out he would glance around at the cars behind or beside us. When I asked why he said that he thought someone was following us. I reassured him, but he kept looking around anyway.

The other thing Greg did that was unusual, especially in those days, the early ‘60’s, was listen constantly to a little radio he carried with him every where he went. When I asked him why, he told me that it was to drown out the voices. It was then that I started to realize how miserable he must be, having to listen constantly to hallucinations. They weren’t just the ordinary daydreams either.  They told him that he was in danger, that people were plotting against him, and it was hard for him to ignore them, hard not to believe them, even though he knew logically that they weren’t real. He would tell me sometimes about the voices, I think just to get me to reassure him. 

Greg was kind of childish. He not only relied on me to help him fight against his hallucinations. I also helped him to establish a routine. I got him up in the morning, helped him with his breakfast. He told me his schedule so I could make sure he got to class on time. He was having trouble with his weight, so I put him on a diet, which he followed to the letter and lost twenty pounds in a month. He wasn’t stupid. He was just constantly distracted. I can’t imagine what it was like for him.

Greg and I roomed together for a year and then I left him. I went to St. Louis for my internship. After a couple of months I heard that he had killed himself. He got in the bathtub and dropped a lamp in the water. It still hurts when to think about it.

Summertime, Gerschwin

La Plata Peak

Yipeeeeeeee! I finally climbed La Plata Peak! 14,336 ft, 9 ½ miles, 4500 ft. altitude gain. It’s not the tallest mountain in Colorado, or even the most challenging climb, but La Plata is special to me.

I started out trying to reach the summit of La Plata over ten years ago. I can’t remember now why I chose it, but I remember that it was after I had climbed all the mountains near Denver, as well as Long’s Peak, a much tougher climb, supposedly.

I remember driving over to the trailhead for the first time. It’s between Buena Vista and Leadville, about a two hour drive from Denver. I was pretty experienced by then, and knew I had to get started on the trail early to get off the summit by noon, when the clouds build up enough charge to produce lightning. So I took off down the road leading to the trail, but got confused. The trail goes left as the road curves to the right. I turned left alright, and somehow ended up in a marshy area, wading through a thicket of willows that eventually led back toward the road. I eventually got back on the trail, but by the time I reached the tree line I didn’t have enough energy left to go to the summit.

Now, I want you to realize that climbing a 14er is a big deal. I only try it about once a year. There’s a lot of preparation involved, checking routes, finding maps, trail descriptions, photos; getting gear together; making sure I have extra batteries, camera; checking the weather forecast. That’s in addition to running, hiking, training to get into peak condition for a major effort. Failing to reach the summit is like wasting a year.

It was a couple of years later that I attempted La Plata again. I wanted to be sure I got there early so I rented a room in Buena Vista to make sure I got an early start. This time when I showed up at the parking lot I met a young man from New York. He was a teacher, and said that every year he comes to Colorado to visit his sister, and while he’s here he goes on as many hikes as he can. He had already climbed Mt. Elbert, the tallest mountain in Colorado, and wanted to summit another 14er during his stay. He got me talking about my family, which distracted us both, and before we realized it, we had been walking on the road for almost an hour, and hadn’t seen the turn off. When we got back to the La Plata trail, it was almost noon, and my new friend decided to give up and go back to his sister’s house. Frustrated by failing the second time, I headed up the trail anyway, hoping to get as far as I could. Actually I got further along than the first time, but headed back down about 4 PM, not wanting to get caught on the trail after dark.

                                                       Ellingsworth Ridge, taken from Southwest Route to                                                                                                                  La Plata in 2009 where I gave up on my second try. 

                                                      Some people actually climb to La Plata on that ridge.

Now I need to say something about the La Plata trail. It’s very steep. There’s a 4500 ft altitude gain over only 4 ½ miles, which means you’re climbing at about a 30% incline for most of the hike. Also there’s a lot of slippery gravel and for about the last mile there’s no clear trail, just talus, big rocks, with only an occasional cairn, or rocks stacked on each other as a marker, to indicate the general direction you should go. Anyway, all this makes for a more difficult climb.

So here’s what happened on year three. This time I rented a camp site by Twin Lakes, even closer to the La Plata trailhead, and camped there the night before. Next morning I was on the trail by day break. I got to the tree line by mid-morning and was right on schedule to reach the summit by noon, but, climbing over the boulders I started to feel a tightness in my legs. It got worse and worse until finally both my legs cramped up so badly that I had to lie down on the rocks. I couldn’t go any further. I could see the summit from there. It’s hard to estimate distance on a mountain, but I think it was still about 500 feet above me, a long way still. So again, down I went.

                                                            La Plata Peak, 2010. That brown spot up ahead 

                                                               is where my legs cramped up, with an hour’s 

                                                                                    worth of climbing left. 

Another note about hiking in the mountains. It’s a lot harder going up than down. That sounds obvious, but the difference is dramatic. It must have to do with the difference in energy required. You can feel it immediately. When I’m climbing above 12000 ft. or so, I can only take one or two steps, and then I have to catch my breath. On that hike up La Plata, I got to the point that I literally couldn’t take another step, but once I turned around, I had no trouble walking the 4 ½ miles down to the trail head.

Anyway, that was about eight years ago. Since then I’ve climbed other 14ers, but steered clear of La Plata. I said to myself. “I’ve been almost to the top before. I’ve seen the vistas. I’ve got pictures. It would be a waste of time to go up there again.”

But this year I almost had no other choice. I had actually wanted to climb Humboldt Peak in the Sangre de Cristo Range. I tried it last year and failed the over 5000 ft. climb. This year I was planning to rent a jeep to park higher. That way I could cut 1000 ft off the climb and then if I camped out at the foot of Humboldt, climbing the rest of the way should be manageable. But time was running out this summer. The weather had turned cool and they were talking about opening some of the ski slopes. Then miraculously the temperature went up into the 90’s again. There was no time to arrange a trip to the Sangre de Cristos. I just tossed my gear in the car and headed out towards La Plata.

One thing I dread about backpacking is the weight of the pack. A couple of years ago I climbed 3000 ft. with a 45# pack, and I thought I would die before I got to the camp site. Now I’ve got a smaller pack, and I bought a one man tent that weighs only 3 pounds. I’ve been filtering water instead of packing it in, and I decided to leave out my camp stove too, and just eat energy bars and Twinkies. I also tossed out my air mattress. That was a mistake. What I ended up with weighed about 25# which seemed okay, at first.

The trip over was nice. I stopped in Silverthorne just on the other side of the Continental Divide, ate a big breakfast, and got a couple of ham and cheese sandwiches and some Twinkies.

The parking lot at the trail head was packed. The only spot left was by a van filled with teenagers. They had their gear scattered all over the place, so I had to wait for them to clear out before I could pull my car in. While I waited, I found out that they were from a high school in Steamboat Springs, the Steamboat Mountain School, where hiking, camping, and survival training is part of their school work. They were camping out and climbing La Plata the next day like me.  

I took off as soon as they cleared a place for me to park.  I was starting late, around noon, since I only planned on going up to the tree line and setting up camp. Walking along the road to where the trail branches off, I met a guy from Ashville, North Carolina. He and his wife were heading back to their car because she couldn’t make it up the steep trail to the tree line. He seemed disgusted with her, and I told him that La Plata was a pretty challenging trail, even for someone used to the altitude. Then he told me maybe it was because they had climbed Elbert the day before! I noticed that his wife didn’t stop with him to chat. He’ll be lucky if she doesn’t divorce him for expecting her to climb two 14ers in two days.

The sign where the trail to La Plata branches off still doesn’t say “La Plata,” but there has been a small improvement. Someone put up a sign informing you that there’s no such thing as a “Poo Fairy.”

                                                                         Sign at beginning of La Plata trail

I really appreciate that sign. I wish there was one at every trail head. It’s one of my pet peeves that dog owners bag their dogs’ poop and then just leave it by the trail, as if there were a “Poo Fairy” to come by and pick it up. Even if some animal doesn’t choke on it, it will still be an eyesore for years. I carry a trash bag to pack out trash, and I hope others do too. 

The La Plata trail goes along a stream for the first couple of miles. It’s very steep, and some one has actually installed steps to make it easier to climb. The steps are built from logs and rocks and are from 6 to 18 inches high so it’s still pretty tough climbing, but in the places without them it’s slippery and easy to fall. I’m always amazed by the people who maintain the trails. They clear out fallen trees, build bridges, drainage trenches to prevent erosion, and when a trail gets too worn, they will re-route it to allow the area to recover. The work is done by volunteers and they provide a valuable service. One of these years I’m going donate some of my time to help.  

I passed the kids on the way up through the forest, or, rather, they passed me. One of the boys asked if he could take my  picture, so he could include it in his report.  

After about a thousand foot climb through the trees, the creek levels out and goes into an area of thick underbrush. At this point the trail leaves the stream, so I stopped to filter some water. I wanted enough to last me through the night and the next day. I stop and drink water every 30 minutes, and if I don't my mouth starts getting dry after an hour or so. I see people on the trail with only one water bottle, and I can’t imagine how they can finish a long hike.

                                                      This is near where the kids from Steamboat Mountain 

                                                      School kids camped. The trail leaves the stream soon 

                                                              and heads up towards La Plata, on the left. 

The high school kids stopped to camp by the stream, but I went on. It was another 3000 ft. to the summit and I didn’t want to risk another failure. Above the stream the trail gets steep again. There are no steps, but instead, switchbacks. This just means the trail goes back and forth in a zig-zag fashion, so it won’t be as steep. The switchbacks up La Plata are pretty steep anyway, but they help a little. Nearing the tree line, there were breaks in the trees so I started seeing the surrounding mountains, and even La Plata, which didn’t look so high, even though it was another 2000 ft. above me.

View from the tree line. Mountains on west already in shadow

I usually occupy my time looking for unusual vegetation and wildlife, but this late in the year most of the flowers have wilted and for some reason I didn’t even see many marmots and picas. I did try and take some pictures of the fall colors. The contrast between the yellow and orange aspen leaves with the evergreen pines and spruce is pretty.

As I got above the tree line, I started wondering where I was going to camp. There was no place flat enough to put a tent until finally at 12300 ft. I found a flat grassy area and stopped. 

My “camp.” Ridge to La Plata on left, about 1000 ft above me

The tents they make these days are a lot easier to put up than the ones we used in the Boy Scouts, but they do require some assembling.  As I was threading the flexible metal support rods through the edges of the tent I suddenly noticed that the tarp I had spread on the ground was blowing away. It was moving pretty fast so I ran, and as you do when running downhill, I picked up speed until I was running faster than I wanted. Suddenly the tarp stopped and so did I, with some difficulty, and then realized I was standing on the edge of a cliff. You never can be too careful on a mountain.

After that adventure I sat down on a rock and ate one of my ham sandwiches, which sitting in guacamole all day, had pretty much turned to mush. It was getting dark pretty fast by now, so I got my stuff into the tent, arranged it so I’d be able to find it in the dark, put my food on top of that rock you see on the right, hoping that if a hungry bear visited me he would occupy himself with my remaining sandwich long enough for me to get out my bear spray. I tried to call Sarah on my cell phone before turning in. Sometimes I can get a signal, but usually not. This time was no exception. I don’t understand how cell signals work. It’s a satellite. How would it know the difference between a town and a mountain? I always turn off my cell phone on a hike to preserve the charge in case I get stuck out there, but sometimes I wonder why I bother, since it doesn’t usually work anyway. I might as well be using it to read a book or play solitaire.

Well, after my failed cell phone call, I got into my long underwear and undershirt, and got my tent and my sleeping bag zipped up just before sunset, when the temperature on the mountain suddenly drops down below freezing.

It was 7 PM when I got into the tent, and there wasn’t anything to do but go to sleep. It was a long night. The small tent and my thick padded sleeping bag kept me warm enough, but I spent the night trying to worm my way between clumps of grass, which got harder as the night went on, and I had a headache, caused by the altitude I'm sure. I had my pee bottle of course – no old man, or woman, for that matter, should sleep outside without a pee bottle – so I didn’t have to get out in the cold. Then there were the noises: scratching and thuds, as if little animals were trying to figure a way to get in the tent with me. Luckily there were no big thuds. I kept feeling for my bear spray, just in case.

My headache went away at some time during the night, and I finally got some sleep. I woke up about 5 AM, and was having trouble going back to sleep when someone walked by on the trail, and shined a flashlight on my tent. They must have started up the trail at 2 AM. What do you do at the top of a mountain at 7 AM? I figured it probably  involved ropes and pitons, but I wasn’t interested enough to get out of my warm tent to ask. I unzipped the tent a crack, and the air which rushed in was so cold I decided to lay there until the sun came up. In the meantime I started putting on my clothes and wishing I had brought something heavier than a windbreaker.

By 6 AM I was tired of waiting, so I rolled up my tent and sleeping bag and headed up the mountain, shivering, with two bottles of water and a package of Twinkies, leaving my heavy, 25# pack for the bears. 

People get up early to climb mountains so it wasn’t long before I had company. Two guys caught up with me at the top of the ridge at about 8:30 AM. They were experienced climbers but they’d never climbed La Plata. “How about you?” one guy said. “Oh, this  is my fifth time,” I bragged, exaggerating a little and not mentioning the fact that I’d never made it to the top. They asked how it was for the rest of the climb and I confidently told them that they had about 1000 ft. to go, and it was mostly steep talus, which was true. Before they went on ahead, one of them said, “by the way, how old are you?” When I told them 76, they congratulated me and said they were impressed that I could still get up a mountain. I didn’t realize my age was that obvious.

Climbing up big rocks – talus - with no trail really is difficult. My sense of balance isn’t what it once was, so I always carry a hiking stick, and I use my hands a lot. I’ve only fallen one time, but I really hurt myself. Afterwards my back bothered me for several months. I still can’t sit comfortably in a straight backed chair, so I climb carefully.

There are cairns placed strategically on the rocks, but they are hard to see from below so I got off the trail a lot. There were others on the rocks by that time though, so we were in a constant discussion about which way to go. About half way up, the high school kids passed me. I told them that I’d been waiting, and thought they’d never catch me. They smiled as they climbed past.  

When I finally made it to the top, the high school kids were still there. Their teachers gave me high fives, because they also knew how old I was, and one of them offered to take my picture. There were 15 or 20 people at the summit, resting, enjoying the view, and taking pictures. There’s nothing like standing on top of a mountain, above everything around you. It’s like being in an airplane, except that you climbed up there yourself. You’re above the clouds. Occasionally you even see a plane down below. People on the trail below you, if you can see them, are like dots. And the view. Every mountain is different, but from La Plata you see nothing but huge mountains in every direction. Elbert, Massive, the Collegiate peaks, and with the fall colors, the mountainsides look like watercolor paintings.

                                                              The view toward Mt Elbert, with some of the 

                                                                      Steamboat students in the foreground

After putting my times down in my log book, recording the track in my GPS, and eating my Twinkies, I headed back down. I even got off the summit before noon like you’re supposed to do. It’s easier going down, not only because you don’t have to go as slowly, but on the rocks it’s easier to see the cairns from above. I had my GPS recording for backup, but it wasn’t hard to follow the trail.

There’s not much more to tell. They say it’s harder going down than up, because the jolting is harder on your legs, but this one was hard for me just because I was exhausted. My pack seemed heavier going down. I was continually watching the trail, looking for something solid to anchor my feet so they wouldn’t slip, but I didn’t fall, even though I scooted on my butt a time or two when I couldn’t find firm footing. And I felt pretty good after I got back to the car. My legs weren’t cramping. My joints weren’t sore. I think I was the last person back to the parking lot because I’m so slow, but it was still light when I started home.

I’m ready to go again.

A Cry Out of the Darkness

Well, here I am with my annual, well almost annual blog post. It seems like I’ve given myself enough of a vacation from writing, almost two years, so that I could return to it again. It’s not that I don’t write. I still correspond with friends, and then I write a kind of diary, putting together my thoughts and organizing them as well as I can. I have never tried to post anything like that on the blog though. I doubt if anyone would be interested. The only people who can do that are famous people. If someone is famous, if they’ve accomplished something, people are naturally interested in what’s special about them. There's nothing special about me, so maybe I should continue to keep my thoughts to myself. 

Since my retirement, I've worked really hard to improve my violin playing, and I think I have improved, now that I have more time to practice. I’ve developed a repertoire of old melodies,  familiar to my audience, 70 to 90 year olds, whom I entertain at nursing homes and hospice facilities. What I've learned over the years about performing is that people want to participate. They want to tap their feet. They want to hear something that reminds them of their youth, their first love. They like for you to tell them a little about yourself, about the tune you're playing. Sometimes I think they enjoy the story as much as the music

That’s what I got from my historical writing. I got involved in the stories, and hopefully so did my readers. As I get older and think about what to do with the rest of my life, I really want to keep entertaining people, with my violin and with stories. I have plenty of music, and plenty of stories, stories about my adventures, family stories I couldn’t include in my book, stories about people I admire, people that interest me. I hope you will enjoy them. 

Singin' in the Rain