Kirk Kittell

To the top of the Tusk

kirk.kittell — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 18:12:24 +0000

The man in black fled across the desert, and the backpacker followed.

His silhouette roosted on the ridge that separated the climb on the west side from the broken land below the South Rim. It is a dry, disturbed land, periodically remodeled by a god that couldn't leave well enough alone, and then finally neglected. The silhouette shouldered its pack, and disappeared over the ridge.

It was a dry year in Texas. The landscape was the color of no-color. Even the dust had withered and died. The plants had become ghosts. The flop ears of prickly pears lay in crumbling heaps. Sotol stalks lay collapsed on the ground like failed hopes. Ocotillos still raised their strange arms skyward, but their waxy green flesh had faded, revealing a skeletal gray matrix beneath. Maybe the next rain would reanimate all their sorry carcasses. Maybe not. Maybe they would continue crumbling and new shoots would resume the cycle of life. Who knows? In the Big Bend the border between life and death is as illusory as the border between nations.

Up and up. I followed the dusty trail, noting tracks that I recognized. At the ridge I stopped, planted a foot firmly in the dirt, lifted. Aha—the same track. What did it mean? I shouldered my pack, and disappeared over the ridge.

The path switched back and down and east. Past the old corral. Past the junction of Smoky Creek. Past a skeleton line of fence posts. Through the mesquite and sandy washes. Through forests of sotols and snow banks of dry bunch grass. The path rolled on, a remnant of a communication link between ranches in the old days.

Black shirt, black pants, black pack—the man in black sat on his throne, surveying the next long fall of the land. Round glasses, thin shaggy goatee. He sat calmly, absorbing the waves of the land beyond.

I hailed him: "Nice boots."

* * * * *

Every other aspect of the Big Bend Country—landscape, configuration, rocks, and vegetation—is weird and strange and of a type unfamiliar to the inhabitants of civilized lands. The surface is a peculiar combination of desert plain and volcanic hills and mountains, the proportions of which are increased by the vast distance which the vision here reaches through the crystalline atmosphere. There is no natural feature that can be described in familiar words.

—Robert T. Hill. "Running the Cañons of the Rio Grande." 1901. Collected in God's Country or Devil's Playground: An Anthology of Nature Writing from the Big Bend of Texas.

* * * * *

I met the man in black again later that evening at the junction of the Dodson Trail and Fresno Canyon. His name was G—. He worked in lawn care in Maryland. In the slow winter season he would lay himself off for a few weeks, ignite the truck, and point it at the western deserts. Somewhere. Anywhere. This week it was Big Bend. Next week it was Anza Borrego.

G was fretting his water supply. So was I. You can walk for days and days out there—as long as you have water. The rangers recommend four liters (about a gallon) per day. I packed four liters total for three days. I had two liters remaining. The flow at Fresno Creek would be the difference between slinking back to the trailhead or climbing Elephant Tusk in the morning. Fortunately, even in a drought year, Fresno Creek pushes briefly above the surface, trickling and pooling, before disappearing back into the sand. I took one of G's bottles, wandered down canyon to stock us both with water.

Before I left for the evening G asked where I was going the next day. To the top of the Tusk, I said. He said wasn't sure that it was possible to get up there.

* * * * *

I had my own doubts in the morning. I could see Elephant Tusk looming, backlit in the southern sun. It did appear more vertical than I had imagined. In the golden glow of the South Rim, under the head of the Tortuga, I packed a dummy bag for the hike and started walking. Let possible work itself out.

The path first skirted and then dove into the canyon, weaving its way uncertainly toward the river. I wasn't going that far. Elephant Tusk loomed mean and dark, a strange Triassic tooth emerging from a mound of its own debris. Except in the shadows of the narrowest canyon walls, the Tusk remained always in sight.

Just below the three cottonwoods of Elegant Spring, I left the trail and started up the base of the Tusk, weaving among the defensive desert plants. Allow me to save you some trouble and a pint of blood: do not touch the lechuguilla. Don't even scrape it. The leaves look yellow and dry and impotent, like corn husks. This is a trick. A few times I walked too close and had to pause, remove their knife tips from my pants and the shin underneath. The last time I touched a lechuguilla I didn't have to inspect the wound closely. I lifted my pant leg to remove the leaf tip from my calf muscle and a mess of blood plopped out onto the rocks. I accepted this diagnosis at face value, and resumed climbing.

I followed the ridgeline to where the slope met the wall. Which way to go up from here? Which fissure led to the top? It was obvious from the bottom, looking up, but here every fissure appeared to be the correct approach. Walk around the wall until the scene looked right. Piles and piles of rock plate talus had been spewed from the wall and now lay in a treacherous cascade at the steepest angle in which they could rest. Any steeper and down they go. Any extra force applied to the rocks and down they go. Two steps forward, three steps back.

I clambered up the main fissure, talus scraping and clinking a hollow echo as the walls drew together. The fissure funneled to the width of a thorn bush. A toll gate. Pay in blood. I put my shoulder into the bush, the bush put itself into my shoulder, and I heaved through. Into a wall.

I'm no climber, but I do what I have to do to get up. Up. Fifteen, twenty feet up the chute, up. Top out. Look. There was much more up remaining. There was no clear route to the top, just a mess of ill-fitted vertical terraces of rotten rock and gravel.

Squint up at what was surely a false summit hiding more up beyond. The wind was a low hush. The world cleaved neatly into two parts. There was up, and there was down. There was no audience. There was no winning and no losing. No medals. No badges. No achievements. No discovery. No journey into the unknown. Go up and come down, and then it's just a memory, until you die, and then it's not even a memory anymore. Stand there, steeping in self-doubt, wondering why a person is propelled out and up, and if it might not be better for all involved to go back now.

I put my hands on the rock above, dug a toe into a crack, and stepped up. And stepped up. And stepped up. And on and on until there was no more up that wasn't sky. I searched the summit for a why, but couldn't find any. Maybe there is no why. Maybe the strange music leads to unexpected places for no reason at all.

Clouds floated in from the southwest. The afternoon unfurled like the land below, on and on, a long slope of wrinkled ground to the Río. But there was an end to the afternoon like there was an end to the land, and it was best to start moving. I'm no climber, but I do what I have to do to get down.

New Years on the top of the bottom of the sea

kirk.kittell — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 05:27:47 +0000

(Photos on Flickr)

I sped into the parking lot, stopped the engine, and packed a backpack with jittery speed. 1:30pm. The show would commence sometime around 5pm.

Sleeping bag? Yes. Tent? No. Water? Yes. Dinner? No. The primary consideration was time. If an item would make climbing the hill slower, it was abandoned. A tent could be replaced with a tarp. Tonight's dinner could be replaced by tomorrow's lunch.

There was no time to pay the entrance fee or to acquire the backcountry permit. Mañana. The rangers at Guadalupe Mountains National Park would have to wait. The sun is a punctual traveler. I am not. I woke that morning in Portales to find my breath turned to frost on the inside of the tent. Hmm. So I stayed in the relative warmth of my bag until the sun rose and inspired the image of warmth, if not the actual temperature, outside. Then I left—late.

The half-packed pack was light. I walked quickly up the switchbacks on the shaded side of the reef. In the crevices above, and soon enough on the trail itself, remains of last week's snowstorm clung to the slope. More than once I had to scramble off the trail to where the Guadalupean wind had thrown my hat.

This was my third visit to Guadalupe Peak, my first ascent in the daylight. I was on a mission to see the last sunset of 2011 and the first sunset of 2012 from the highest point in Texas, from the top of the old reef that stands dry and prominent and strange over the vanished Delaware Sea. Once the mission was conceived, it was indelible. It had to be done. If not now, when? Maybe never. After a 2011 of wonderful high peaks, terrible low valleys, and little land between the two, I needed some good magic, the kind of magic that one finds in desert mountain sunrises and sunsets.

The wind off the peak was brisk. The ice underfoot was vexatious, melted and boot-packed daily, frozen nightly. The Texas Madroños of the canyon floor gave way to the pines of the higher country, and the sotols and yuccas crossed elevations, binding bottom to top. I had no watch, only the shadow of Guadalupe Peak moving northward across Pine Canyon toward Hunter Peak. The trail wound upward. Returning hikers passed downward.

At the Guadalupe Peak campsite, about three trail miles above the trailhead and one mile below the summit, I set up camp. The tarp was folded over the sleeping bag, staked into the mud, and pinned by rocks to keep it from escaping while I was away. Grab the camera and a notebook, push three bottles of celebration into the snow for later, and go. Plenty of time and sun remaining.

Guadalupe Peak is as I left it. The sun glowed from a different angle and snow hid among the rocks, but it was the same mountain. Good ol' Guadalupe Peak. If you can't trust a good mountain, what can you trust?

Take a seat on the white limestone. The show begins. The sun sank tangerine orange somewhere in Mexico, pink and orange streamers radiating in its wake. The wind gathered itself in one final push before following the sun over the horizon. The ground faded. Indigo prevailed in all directions. 2011 faded to black.

* * * * *

Listen: an organism sitting on a rock watched a star disappear. This happens trillions of times a day—define "day" as you wish—in the universe.

So what?

* * * * *

I sat on Guadalupe Peak and watched the sun disappear. It is superstitious to apply meaning to this. Here is my advice: believe whatever superstition makes you strong.

I sat on the top of the bottom of the ancient sea. That sea is gone, gone, gone. Look to the southeast with the right eyes and a shoreline is visible, arcing away and away into the forever distance of the desert. (The perfect disguise above.) Thought becomes slower and slower, imitating the passing of geologic time that saw seas and salt flats and reefs and mountains rise and fall in the same place.

I gathered 2011 in my arms and heaved it over the cliff. Sic semper tyrannis. I suppose that it's still there somewhere, another pile of debris broken away from the main.

Thousands of steps below, red and white lights coursed north and south. Whither? Whence? Perhaps the sociable people of West Texas were off to celebrate the new year in the company of friends. I envied them, but I would not have traded my position for theirs.

I slept the sleep of the cold and alone. It wasn't refreshing, but it passed the time. I crunched through the snow in the campsite, trying not to wake the other couple camped there. Up. Past the mescal that had collapsed like a toll gate across the trail. The cost? Pay attention to what you see around you, you are far away from where you were and will be and you might not return and that notebook won't capture the smell of juniper and that camera won't capture anything your memory won't remember more vividly.

2012 rose from the dust, inviting hope in even the coldest itinerant on the mountain.

Just one more ghost in Panamint City

kirk.kittell — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 01:10:24 +0000

The sun had set when I saw someone walking up the canyon along the remains of the old road to Panamint. It wasn't dark enough for artificial light, but it was getting close. I was on the front porch, cooking dinner. I was not expecting visitors—not up there, no, not in that corner of the world.

(Charlie Manson's last hideout, where he was captured in 1969, is in the mountains just a few miles south of Panamint. Helter Skelter, indeed.)

And what a visitor he was. He was red-faced, exerted, and his gaze was focused far beyond, past the old town site and up toward the ridge that marked the end of this canyon and the beginning of the next. It is a difficult hike—a filter for the uncommitted. He carried two backpacks, a large one on his back, and a smaller one on his front. He seemed strange—a viable candidate for the mayor of Panamint City, California.

Panamint is a derelict place, a ghost town. Of course it should attract derelict people. I was there. I was derelict, too.

Ken was going on a bit of a walk, a magical misery tour of Death Valley. Around Death Valley. No exaggeration. He was circumnavigating Death Valley by way of the surrounding mountain ranges [1 ]. Six hundred miles, give or take. Just caching food and supplies would take him to corners of the park that are so rarely visited they may as well not be on the map. He was going through hell, and taking the difficult route to get there. Alone.

What a nut. What a madman. I liked him immediately. There are still some among us who haven't fallen in line yet. Good for him. I understood his geography.

That was his first day, his first ten miles—about five thousand vertical feet and ten trail miles from Ballarat. Five hundred and ninety miles to go, give or take. In the morning he lay in bed in the back room of the cabin, staring at the ceiling. Stay? Go? Up over Telescope Peak to Mahogany Flat?

He went. I don't know if he made it.

//-----//

I first hiked Surprise Canyon six years ago. How much water has gone under the sand since then.

Panamint was my base camp for hiking to Sentinel Peak, a summit to the south of the city. I didn't make it that far. The desert below was dry, but the mountains were still covered in snow. Surprise. This may seem obvious but I grew up in Illinois, where mountains are mythology and climate varying with elevation is an abstract idea. Snow. I followed the old mine road to upper Wyoming Mine, where I quit, red-faced, exerted, hands on knees after an hour or two of postholing through the snow, Sentinel Peak nowhere in sight.

I returned with more preparation and less snow. In the morning, I hiked the old mining road up and up to Wyoming Mine, perched a thousand feet above the town site. Wyoming Mine is a fantastic installation in the museum of Panamint, with derelict generators and pumps and carts and tramways arranged as they were abandoned.

There is no trail to Sentinel. The road peters out at Wyoming Mine—or it doesn't.

I clambered up the edge of the graded road beside the mine. Paused. Walked forward to the corner of the ridge that pointed toward Panamint Valley and the Argus Range beyond. Calm. No reason to go anywhere. Not up. Certainly not down. In that moment the rest of the world was forgotten, gone, had never existed. I was the first and only.

I wasn't the first. There were bits of broken green glass underfoot, piles of rusty cans to the right, and artificially stacked piles of rocks to the left. A path emerged from the gravel hill side, leading around the corner and into Marvel Canyon. Sentinel was the high point. I could go there at any time just by walking up until there was no more up. This path was immediate, insistent.

I won't vouch for an exciting time around the corner. The trail became a little broader, more defined. There were more cans, more bottles, more low rock walls, more mine adits, more mine tailings. All of these unremarkable things were remarkable because they were unexpected. There was always one more piece of evidence to be found, one more prop for the imagination. The real show wasn't on the mountain, but in my head. What was it like to be here when the action was happening? What was it like to work this far from the established world? What was it like to hope for a big strike? What was it like when the bubble burst and the speculation ended? What was it like?

(Later I saw the world from Sentinel Peak.)

//-----//

The men left the mines years and years ago, but the burros stayed. At night, far away—but never far enough—in the canyon they bray like bellicose ghosts. HAW, EEHAW, EEHAW. In the distance the sound is chilling. When they wander into the foreground the sound explodes like a mortar.

HAW, EEHAW, EEHAW.

I do not like the burros.

I hiked up Sourdough Canyon on another morning, on another old mining road. The sides of the path were littered with the stratified debris of temporary human settlement. In the lower layers were the mining equipment and occasionally habited structures. In the upper layers, higher up the road, there was little more than rusty cans, weathered boards, maybe a few bedsprings. In between there were cots, stoves, disintegrating clothes, standing walls, and the ghosts you never believed in.

I walked, eyes on the ridge line that connected to the spine of the Panamints—morning meditation in the mountains. A snort/cough erupted from the hill to the left. I yelled. I danced on one foot. These are evolutionary responses that I do not claim as my own.

It was another burro. Of course. Territorial bastards. Standing rigidly, twenty or thirty yards away. Staring with solid black eyes. Can burros think? Do burros dream of feral sheep?

I tossed rocks into the ditch between us, just to let him know that I meant Business. I picked up a few more rocks and kept walking, up and up. Behind me, around a bend in the trees, I heard the clattering of rocks. Burro. I heaved the rocks in the direction of the sound. The sound resigned. Up and up.

The road banked out of Sourdough Canyon and climbed the ridge to the west. It was now a true road—graded by powerful tools but not degraded by time and weather like other relic roads. My mission: a square at the top of the road. I had seen the square, a neat little square, in satellite pictures. It was an absurd geometry in an otherwise random landscape. What was the square? Why was it there? Was it a cabin on the saddle between Surprise Canyon and Hall Canyon? Should I expect a shotgun salute upon approach? A buckshot bienvenue? Fine, fine—a fine way to go out, better than being bitten by a burro or stepping into a mine shaft.

Up and up. The cabin was nothing—and everything. The door remained. The windows did not. There was a barrel converted into a stove. There was a cot. Insulation had fallen from the walls. Graffiti took its place. There were empty shotgun shells and broken bottles—mementos of 4x4 trips past. It takes a certain type of person—and not a very interesting one, I suppose—to be excited by all of this. So be it.

//-----//

Before leaving Panamint, I borrowed a handsaw from the main cabin and collected a bag of empty propane bottles, beer bottles, and liquor bottles. The trash man comes infrequently to Panamint. The day was clear, blue, warm. I followed the old road, downward ever so much faster than the grinding walk up. The handsaw I employed to clear the tunnel through the vegetation in the canyon. In the willow and tamarisk jungle, up and down were equally difficult, frustrating. Ten years since the last vehicle passed that way, and the trees and grapevines are getting thick. So be it. I left the handsaw on the trail register with a note: saw your way back up.

At Novak Camp I put the rental car in gear and rolled slowly, slowly, slowly down the road, not willing to risk an oil pan or tire or gold-plated tow out of the valley. At the bottom, at the junction of Indian Ranch Road and Surprise Canyon Road, on the edge of the dry lake, I stopped, stepped out barefoot in the gravel. I turned to see where I had come from. Other humans, whether Timbisha thousands of years ago or single blanket jackass prospectors a hundred and fifty years ago, looked at those awful mountains and said to themselves, "Let's go there." And some people insist that we are the intelligent species. Madness.

I blazed down the gravel road, and then down the paved road, and then up the intermittently paved and unpaved road to Wildrose. Balls to the oil pan. I could, with the right amount of foot pressure, make it to Aguereberry Point before sunset and see Death Valley at its sultry, beautiful best. Rattlesnake Gulch, White Sage Wash, A Canyon, Wood Canyon—zoom down the asphalt. Lean into the turns. Down the barrel of Emigrant Pass. Harrisburg, Eureka Mine—six miles and a cloud of dust, no need for any real traction on the corners.

I barged around the final turn to Aguereberry Point, spitting rocks. The sun was a memory of pink clouds in the west. There were no people anywhere—maybe they had never existed, maybe they were just another mirage in this desiccated, brutal, awful place, just a few more ghosts in there or out there or wherever.

I had the speed, I had the momentum, and I knew what had to be done. I pressed down with both feet, pulling on the steering wheel with both hands for leverage. The car leaped from the edge, soared over Blackwater Wash, exploded like a cheap firecracker in the twilight, fell in a tinkling rain of debris on the rubble below. If you stand at the bottom, at Furnace Creek, and look in the right place at the right time in the westbound morning sunlight, you can see the glass and metal shards light up like stars—a constellation on the hillside. Look with the right eyes and you can make out the shape of the constellation:

A burro.

Notes

Panamint Range, Last Chance Range, Grapevine Mountains, Funeral Mountains, Amargosa Range, Black Mountains, Owlshead Mountains, Panamint Range. [back to text]
All of my photos from Panamint City on Flickr: Panamint City, September 2011; Panamint City, March 2005.
Recommended reading: Richard Lingenfelter, Death Valley and the Amargosa: A Land of Illusion.

2011 Ozark Trail 100: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the Ozarks

kirk.kittell — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 18:40:34 +0000

We were somewhere around Machell Hollow on the edge of the forest when the pain began to take hold.

I saw Bearded Dave again. He wasn't looking good when I passed. We were together earlier, but I hadn't seen him since the first quarter of the day. This time, later, I reluctantly left him behind in the dark, his headlight receding in the tree skeletons of November. I continued around the bluffs and through the hollers--unless you're on a river, these are your only options for travel in Missouri--and a different pair of headlights was gaining behind me. Down, over Billy's Branch, up the opposing bluff, on and on. I passed another racer who had stopped, stepped into the trees, put his head down, and tried to understand where it had all gone wrong.

The chasing headlights finally caught me, and kept going. What relief. I let them go, following for a few minutes before pulling over, putting my hands on my knees, and trying to understand where it had all gone wrong.

What time was it? How many more miles? Was the sun ever going to rise? What brain chemicals had caused this, and how might they be neutralized in the future? How long could I maintain?

Everything had looked good until Hazel Creek, five or six miles ago, mile 68 of the 102-mile Ozark Trail 100 Mile Endurance Run, 18 miles farther than I had ever run, approximately equal to my longest week of running ever. I had been riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. A sub-24 hour finish was unlikely, but possible--until it wasn't.

//-----//

Why had I signed up for the thing? Curiosity. I had read Born to Run by Chris McDougall, and gone down to The City to see him and a cast of related characters from the barefoot and/or long distance running cult talk to their people. What was it like to go 100 miles in a single effort? There was only one way to answer the nagging question.

November 5: It was a cold morning, and I had slept in the cab of a pickup truck. Away we went, eighty-some runners in a pair of yellow school buses, rolling down the lettered Missouri highways for an hour and a half to the start line, a banner slung between trees in the dark in a place remote enough that not even the banjoists dared duel. Away we went in a line of flashlights and headlamps, rolling down the leaf littered Missouri hills for an hour and a half in the 6am darkness until the sun dared shine.

The first 50 miles were a breeze. I haven't worn a watch while running since four months ago. Without any reference point, there is nothing but trail and trees punctuated by an occasional aid station and passed or passing runners. The sky was overcast most of the day--there was no time, only light. There were no expectations of pace or pain per mile.

But the sun did arrive, finally, sometime between Gunstock Hollow and Brooks Creek, between miles 35 and 44. That was pertinent. The light in the treetops above was my measure of how worried I should be. I stashed my headlamp in a drop bag at Highway DD, mile 51. Beyond that, the world was full of firsts. Every step was the furthest I had ever gone. Also, I had never run on the trails in the dark with a headlamp. The world shrank to the reach of the light, bits of reflective tape glinting on the trail markers ahead. It was very strange. There were no dimensions. No watch: no time. No horizon: no distance. The race was point-sized--located, effectively, in my mind only. As my mind went, so went the race.

The next segment, Martin Road to Hazel Creek, mile 68, the two-thirds mark, was the longest segment of the race. Nine point three miles. It was a smooth run. It felt quick. It needed to be quick. I was breathing plumes into my light, and the drop bag with my long shirt and stocking cap were at Hazel Creek. After Hazel Creek, the world unraveled. Or did it? Did my knees feel like bags of broken glass around mile 74, or did I lose my will and think that my knees were smashed? I could put together bursts of running, but nothing like the previous smooth miles that were punctuated only by occasional uphill walks.

I walked out of Machell Hollow, mile 76, and when I was out of sight of the aid station I experimented with running. It was awful. My body had become two halves. In the upper half, my chest tried to pull my body upwards in some anti-physical denial of gravity. In the lower half, my feet tip-toed on the trail, trying daintily to keep pressure of my knees. I stopped, put my hands on knees, and figured it was time to call it a day--or night or morning, as it must have been near midnight by then.

Along came Bearded Dave and Purdue Ryan and his pacer, Tony, a local runner who was in charge of maintenance of this section of the trail--talk about a fortuitous intersection. They convinced me to tag along with them as they speed-walked to Berryman Campground at mile 81. There, I stalled and sent them off without me, and tried to drop from the race. The aid station volunteers campaigned against it. I couldn't manage the shame of (a) quitting and (b) trying to convince people that I wanted to quit, so I went on, determined to show them they were wrong, which is the kind of logic that gets employed when one is cold, tired, and frustrated.

//-----//

The next seven miles, from Berryman to Billy's Branch, were feverish and ugly. The body felt crystalline and fragile. The mind looped the desire to drop from the race. The wind made the air feel cold. The batteries in my headlamp faded, and I replaced them in the dark.

Strange memories on that nervous night in the Ozarks. Five hours later? Six? It seemed like a lifetime, or at least a Main Era--the kind of running peak that never came again.

I tried to drop again at Billy's Branch, mile 88, this time fully from shame. Twenty-four hours had passed, and the sky's barely perceptible change meant that twenty-five hours, the latest I had ever imagined as a finish, must have passed as well. The aid station volunteers told me that it would be easy to walk the last fourteen miles and beat the thirty-two hour cutoff time and get a finisher's buckle. That thought that must have been compelling to some, but to me it was a reminder of a great disappointment. Finishing the thing had never been interesting to me. I never had a doubt about that. The precipitous fall at the end was the frustrating.

No sympathy for the devil; keep that in mind. Buy the ticket, take the ride . . . and if it occasionally gets a little heavier than what you had in mind, well . . . maybe chalk it off to forced conscious expansion: Tune in, freak out, get beaten.

I swished through the fallen leaves. I yelled at the trees. I sat and napped for a few minutes when sleep turned predatory. I had a homemade cookie at the final aid station. I swished through the fallen leaves. I brooded on the humiliation of walking a run. I discovered that the last seven miles weren't a vanity cruise to the finish, but a trail coursed up and down the bluffs. But the mind--not my mind, but the mind, for I had ceased trying to own the thing--punished me more than any hill ever did.

And that's the way it ended as I walked through the finish line, not even bothering to fake a run or to unscrew my face out of the disgusting mask it had become.

All very disappointing. A year of losing that was supposed to end triumphantly ended, instead, ambiguously. But a good race is still Out there. Or maybe it's In. Having this enigma of a race means I might have to go out and vindicate myself--for good or ill.

Final time: 29:34.

//-----//

Notes

I wanted to write something original, but I copped out and twisted a few (too many) lines from Hunter S. Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream. and one from Hell's Angels: A Strange and Terrible Saga.

Sponsor me for 826 Boston Write-A-Thon fundraiser

kirk.kittell — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 16:13:04 +0000

(Shortcut to just sponsoring.)

Hello, friends. In my spare time, I volunteer as a tutor at 826 Boston. They're a wonderful group. Primarily they support students in learning to write--an important adjunct to both reading and understanding--but as the resident engineer (nominally) I also help tutor in physics. And Spanish.

Today and tomorrow (28 and 29 September, if you're from the future) are the last days of 826's Write-A-Thon fundraiser. Please help.

Why?

(Shortcut to just sponsoring.)

I know what you're thinking: "Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses?"

Indeed. But here's a taste of what the donations do:

$3,500 allows us to publish a book of stories such as 2% of 2% of All the World's Stories, written by our after-school students.

$1,000 pays for one student to attend a whole year of after-school tutoring.

$500 supports one student attending our summer science writing camp, "Fiddler Crabs, Millipedes, Leeches & Sea Serpents, Oh Yeah!"

$250 is enough to create chapbooks for 20 weekend workshops like "Odes to Common hings" and "Words of the Wise."

And I have to schlep my ass 90 minutes each way (uphill both ways, in the snow... and we were happy) to get there, so you better believe that I think they're performing a worthwhile service for students.

How?

(Shortcut to just sponsoring.)

The deal is: you donate money, and I write.

I got a late start on this--it's a month-long fundraiser, and I was in California for three weeks and now am embarrassingly tied for 25th place--so finishing that Huckleberry Finn-slash-zombie novel is right out. But I have other ideas...

Donate $8.26: get a postcard. Sounds lame, but I give great postcard. (Can I get a witness to testify?)
Donate $82.60: I'll send you one of the student-written 826 books (like the 2% book).
Donate a clever value greater than $8.26, e.g., $18.26 or $22 (the number of points Deron Williams scored in Illinois' come-from-behind victory against Arizona in the 2005 NCAA basketball tournament) or whatever you like, and commission a piece from me (see below for ideas). Cleverer (not necessarily bigger) donations get priority.

Commission a piece... what? If you're even thinking of donating, chances are that you know me. (Sorry about that one time!) Then you know that 2011 has been, for me, a year of traveling to strange countries like India and California, and a year of running strange races. And you might be one of those people bothering me to write about it. I've got notebooks full of stuff, but nothing written publicly due to The Fear. Yeah. Writer's block has latched onto my skull like the teeth of some feral burro. You can pry some stories out of me and support students in one swing.

Don't miss your chance. You and I will always cherish that night of postcard that we had together. You don't have to tell your husband. It will be our little secret.

Writing prompts

Here are some ideas of activities from 2011 that I can write about:

India (this will also unlock unposted photos): Asirgarh; Burhanpur; Hampi; Jaisalmer, Jaipur; Udaipur; Kumbhalgarh; Pondicherry; Gingi; Thiruvannamalai; etc.
California: Corkscrew Peak; Yosemite; Panamint City; Pacific Coast Highway
Racing: Auroville Marathon; Chandigarh Marathon; Pineland Farms 50-miler; etc.
Or: you choose. If you want fiction, make sure that donation has three or four zeroes on the end of it.

More?

Here's Dave Eggers, founder of 826 Valencia, explaining the program in a 2008 TED talk:

Crazy People at the Naked Cabaret

kirk.kittell — Mon, 25 Apr 2011 14:17:04 +0000

Last Saturday, I took the train down to Boston to catch the Naked Cabaret.

Yes, now I've got your attention...

Some people just never question it

Well, not totally naked, but... Harvard Book Store hosted Chris McDougall, author of one of my favorite books, Born to Run, and a cast of crazy people [1 ] at the Boston Public Library to talk about barefoot running. These people are nuts--and good thing, too. Normal people aren't interesting to talk about.

I found Born to Run in February 2010. I was interested by the premise: an injured runner asking the question, "How come my foot hurts?" I had just come off a two-month forced running vacation thanks to a stress reaction (not quite a stress fracture) in my right hip. I wanted to know what his answer was. I didn't know about the rest of the story--the ultramarathoners, the barefoot runners, the persistence hunters, and so on. That was an added bonus, and even if you're not interested in running it's a hell of an adventure story. I encourage you to read it. [2 ]

Barefoot running, or nearly barefoot running... it's strange enough to be its own classification and comes with a list of benefits that can be recited by a group of True Believers. That is to say: it has all the trappings of being a cult. That's why I avoided it. I want no crazy-eyed don't-tolerate-no-disbelief-in-the-One-True-Path fundamentalist insanity of any kind, thank you very much.

But I do get the benefits. What I took from the barefoot sections of the book is that there is a different--better--way to run: softer. I don't do much running without shoes, but I did rescript how I run when I could run again, first concentrating on going ten steps, then twenty steps, then a whole block, then a whole minute without a taking a running step that thumps into the ground. When you get to the point of running softly, running with other people is almost painful when you hear them pounding each step into the pavement. It's no wonder running gets a reputation for destroying knees. Running isn't the problem; people are the problem.

Anyway, I'm not going to get into discussing the pros and cons of barefoot running. There's plenty of information out there. What I'll leave you with is a line from McDougall: "There's this mentality that you must wear shoes, and people just never question it." [3 ]

Songs in the key of Caballo

Let's get to the reason I started this story before I got carried away. The first and most colorful character in Born to Run is known as Caballo Blanco. He's the one that brings together the 50 mile race in Mexico at the end of the story. As Chris McDougall talked about running as the first art form, he recounted the poignant pre-race speech given by Caballo, a part of the story that I didn't recall because I was anxious to get to the action.

"I remember very vividly the moment when he stood up before the race and gave us our pre-race instructions. If you've ever had a pre-race instruction, it basically tells you where the Porta-Potties are and don't miss that left turn toward the finish line. That's what I expected from Caballo. Instead he gave this summation that was a beautiful expression of what all art is, but particularly this lost art of distance running. He took this bleak thing and turned into something really glorious."

After that, the program took an unexpected turn. Chris invited Brandon Wood, triathlete and opera singer, on stage to give an operatic rendition of Caballo's counsel--maybe a little over the top, but what the hell? Here it is, as recorded by mobile phone. (You might see two audio players here. Ignore that. They're the same. Gotta fix that. There's something wrong with this website (and it's probably me).)

Here is the relevant selection from the book, slightly condensed:

"There's something wrong with you people. Rarámuri don't like Mexicans. Mexicans don't like Americans. Americans don't like anybody. But you're all here. And you keep doing things you're not supposed to. I've seen Rarámuri helping chabochis cross the river. I've watched Mexicans treat Rarámuri like great champions. Look at these gringos, treating people with respect. Normal Mexicans and Americans and Rarámuri don't act this way.

"What are you doing here? You have corn to plant. You have families to take care of. You gringos, you know it can be dangerous down here. No one has to tell the Rarámuri about the danger. One of my friends lost someone he loved, someone who could have been the next great Rarámuri champion. He's suffering, but he's a true friend. So he's here.

"I thought this race would be a disaster, because I thought you'd be too sensible to come. You Americans are supposed to be greedy and selfish, but then I see you acting with a good heart. Acting out of love, doing good things for no reason. You know who does things for no good reason?"

"CABALLO!"

"Yah, right. Crazy people. Más Locos. But one thing about crazy people--they see things other people don't. The government is putting in roads, destroying a lot of our trails. Sometimes Mother Nature wins and wipes them out with floods and rock slides. But you never know. You never know if we'll get a chance like this again. Tomorrow will be one of the greatest races of all time, and you know who's going to see it? Only crazy people. Only you Más Locos.

"Tomorrow, you'll see what crazy people see. The gun fires at daybreak, because we've got a lot of running to do."

And now for something completely different

I pulled this off a bottle of #9 while I was writing this, and it seemed to fit the theme:

Prospective race calendar for 2011

Perhaps ironically, after running three marathons and three half marathons in India in the first quarter of the year I'm just now getting back into shape. Here's where I think I'll be racing this year as of... now:

29 May: Pineland Farms Trail Running Festival, Maine
11-12 June: New England Relay, Rhode Island-Connecticut-Massachusetts-Vermont-New Hampshire-Maine
10 July: Bradbury Scuffle, Maine
31 July: Escarpment Trail Run, New York
14 August: Bradbury Mountain Breaker, Maine
11 September: Bradbury Bruiser, Maine (a great place to donate some blood... to the trail)
25 September: Vermont 50, Vermont
5 November: Ozark Trail 100, Missouri

Endnotes

The crazy people were:
- Brandon Wood, IronBrandon
- Chris McDougall
- Daniel Lieberman
- Scott Jurek
- Lee Saxby
- Irene Davis
- John Durant, Hunter-Gatherer: How to live wild in the modern world
[back to text]
You can buy the book here at Amazon: Born to Run. Or, you can buy the book at Amazon via this link and I'll get 4% of the proceeds at no extra cost to you: Born to Run. Or you can borrow it from your library: WorldCat. Whatever's Right--just read it. [back to text]
Chris McDougall. Interview by Shawn Donley. "Christopher McDougall: The Powells.com Interview." PowellsBooks.Blog. 19 April 2011. [back to text]

A week early, and a few rupees short

kirk.kittell — Sat, 19 Mar 2011 12:03:09 +0000

A few astute observers noted: hey, wasn't I supposed to return next week? Indeed. The plan was changed a little, and I'm already home. Let me tell you a story.

7 March. Bus Stand, Jalgaon, Maharashtra--a junction town in west-central India. I was no longer rushing. It was too late--the bird had flown. I had just finished a four-hour bus ride from Aurangabad. I had a rail ticket in my wallet for the 12627 Karnataka Express, a train that was leaving to Delhi from Burhanpur in two-and-a-half hours. Four days prior I had come from Burhanpur to Jalgaon. It took three-and-a-half hours to make the trip.

I had a plan. I grabbed an auto from the bus stand to the railway station, crossed up and over the tracks to the third platform, and went to the Deputy Station Manager's office. He ignored me. I went to the Station Manager's office. He wasn't there. I went back to the Dy. Station Manager's office. He gave me an annoyed look that had clearly been honed over time.

I told him my story, that I had a ticket from Burhanpur to Delhi.

He said, "It is too far. What can you do?" and bent down to his papers again.

Yes, yes, I knew that. I informed him that the the same train stopped at Jalgaon before proceeding to Burhanpur. Could I board the train there in Jalgaon?

Ah. A chink in the official's armor: the enquirer knew something. With near-comic exasperation, the manager made a phone call, said a few things in Marathi, hung up. I had a 2AC (two-tiered, air-conditioned) berth. He said there were no available seats in that class.

Of course. But, sir, couldn't I buy an unreserved ticket, ride the 180 km from Jalgaon to Burhanpur in general seating, and then switch to 2AC?

After a very well executed eyeroll and sigh, he made another phone call, then reported back to me. He said that this train had a minimum distance requirement. Tickets could only be bought for a 600 km or greater segment. He said, "It is impossible."

Nothing is impossible in India. Nothing.

I crossed back over the tracks to the ticket office and bought the impossible ticket with no problems. When the train arrived--late, of course--I took a deep breath, grabbed the bar beside the door, placed my foot at the threshold, and charged.

Let's pause for a moment to explain something. Unreserved or general class train cars are mobile madness. Every inch of space was occupied--I mean, every inch of volume was occupied. The two tiers of benches were filled with people. People were lying in the overhead luggage rack. People were sitting on the floor. Some industrious person had rigged a hammock over the corridor to the toilet. Bags were dangling from all places that could hold them. The aisle was packed from front to pack with people, people, people. Cattle don't like to be packed this tightly. Claustrophobes are kindly requested to avoid general class.

You have to push to get beyond the door, and then push to get beyond the first corridor, and then push until you find a place to stop. When you stop being the pusher you become the pushed. Until the train leaves there will be more people boarding.

Ten minutes down the line I noticed something was... off. I touched my front left pocket. There was my mobile phone. I my front right pocket. It was empty. I touched my back right pocket. It was empty. No wallet.

Perhaps, while compulsively checking my ticket at the platform, I had slipped it into my back pocket instead of my front pocket. Or someone could have taken it from my front pocket, given all of the jostling as I boarded. No matter. The wallet was gone. I wasn't angry. I was amused. I was an easy target. I glanced around and met the eyes of several passengers. There was no way to tell who was the culprit. It could have been anyone. The setting sun shone through the port side window bars, turning all that brown skin a potent orange. It was almost beautiful.

First stop: Bhusaval Junction. Second stop: Burhanpur. I pushed through the crowd toward the door a little less gracefully than my entrance. Burhanpur is nowhere. It is a one-minute station stop. My car (bogey, if you'd like to use the local term) was eighteen cars down the train--200 or more meters away. Backpack strapped, camera bag in one hand, ravanhatta in the other hand (another story later to explain what this is), I leaned forward and ran down the platform. Breathing raggedly, I closed in on my destination. The whistle blew and the train started to move toward me. I grabbed the bar, swung on board. 1200 km later I was in New Delhi.

I doubt I lost more than $20 in cash in that wallet. I regret that, but not as much as losing my ATM card, which was my access to future cash for things like eating and sleeping. So I moved my return tickets forward. Forty-eight hours after running the Chandigarh Marathon I was already in the sky, facing westward.

I maintain, even after the loss, that I'm some kind of logistical savant--the bus from Aurangabad to Jalgaon, then the impromptu second-class ride and run to fulfill my reserved seat. I could pass clear across that country with nothing more than an idea. Next time, though, I'll be a bit more careful.

So. I'm back. A few people asked: am I going to write a wrap-up post from the trip? No. Maybe I'll make a wrap-up map that shows where I went. Also, I'm posting photos. The generous gypsies from the musician's colony in Jaisalmer and the rotten shopkeepers from Udaipur and six days of boulder-scrambling in Hampi--these are all full stories, not just paragraphs. India is a big, strange place that doesn't wrap up neatly in a little box. That would be impossible. Stay tuned.

[P.S.: I'm searching for meaningful work now that I'm back. In the meantime, I'm available for a variety of temporary work: web sites, various IT and database things, digital archival, outdoor work, whatever. If you've got a lead, give me a shout.]

2011 Jaipur Half Marathon: The gauntlet

kirk.kittell — Fri, 11 Feb 2011 13:18:43 +0000

The Jaipur Half Marathon... I shouldn't have run it. But here I am, three weeks later, and the bastard hasn't killed me yet so I'm going to post this before the Auroville Marathon finishes me off.

I shouldn't have run it. I mean this. I wasn't in Jaipur to run. I was there for the Jaipur Literature Festival. The half marathon was a coincidence. I learned about the half marathon offhandedly, and I didn't commit to anything. The Mumbai Marathon, on 16 January, was a road marathon and I don't train much on roads so I was extra sore. And I had been pampered in Mumbai by Pradeep and his family, so I was also extra whiny when I got to Jaipur. It was the perfect storm for copping out.

But don't worry, Dear Reader, after thirty years I'm not about to start letting common sense enter the equation. On the day before, an old friend in Illinois found the registration venue for me. (And I quote Mel: "rajput sabha bhawan, bagwan das road. i have no idea what i wrote, but i hope it helps.") I went there. The sign said, "Registrations OPEN for Dream Run Entries Only Today." If you follow the rules in India you are a fool. I went in. They let me register for the half marathon.

Sunday. 23 January 2011. 6:00am. Dark on the western side of one time-zoned India. Wake up in my running clothes. Pin my numbers on my shirts (That's an intentional plural, numbers, front and back--only in India.) Tie my shoes. Here's the exciting part: it is the first day since running Mumbai that I was able to bend down, tie my shoes, then stand up without using the bed or table to lift myself.

6:30am. Out the door. And then not out the door. It's early. The guest house staff is somewhere else, asleep. The front door and outside gate are locked. Well, gosh darn it, I guess I'll have to go back to sleep. Back upstairs to inspect my window for possible ways to climb out. Back downstairs to check one more time and--damn. A sleepy man fumbles through his keychain, letting me escape into the inky blue morning. I accost a rickshaw driver at the first intersection--the hunter has become the hunted. He's too surprised to even jack me over on the rate to Albert Hall Museum. Victory.

The sun threatens to rise. A runner in a Santa Claus costume runs up to me and says, "Hello! I'm Santa Claus!" Indeed. A young boy, learning a new trick, doesn't ask me for 10 rupees, he asks me for an extra timing chip because he, ah, needs one. It's not like they just give out extra timing chips, little man. I wish they did. I looked down at my shoes and realized that my own timing chip was resting safely on my bed at the guest house. Lucky.

7:10am. The race is set to start at 7:00 Indian Standard Time, so it's not late yet. There are other foreigners (read: pale people) in the running crowd. That's good news. The per capita being-stared-at index went down a few notches. A few Running and Living guys came down from Delhi. They spotted me because I was sporting a Running and Living jersey from the Panchkula Half Marathon.

7:20am. The gate opens. The runners surge forward. To the next gate. I try running 200 meters to warm up. Not happening. My left calf and right quat muscles are furious. 200 meters is less than 1% of a half marathon. I try running backwards to see if my projectile crying will serve as a form of propulsion. It works. Six years and two aerospace engineering degrees haven't gone to waste after all. (Hire me.)

7:30am. The gate opens. The runners surge forward. Dignitaries--politicians, actors, the sun--cheer from raised bleachers. A movie camera rises into the sky and captures a sweeping shot over the passing runners. The official Jaipur Half Marathon song blares from enormous speakers. I know it is the official song because the Hindi word for marathon is marathon. Hey, Chicago, where's your official marathon song? That's right.

Right. The half marathon itself. It hurt a lot. And then it was over.

What? More? OK.

The start of the Jaipur Half mraathon had everything I ever expected in an Indian race. It started late. There were stages on the sidewalk with drummers and music and dancers. (I appreciate the dancers in the Boys Town segment of the Chicago Marathon, but I have to admit a preference for dancing Rajasthani girls.) On the opposing sidewalk there were masses of working class men in stocking caps and rough cotton shawls giving the universal gape for, "What the hell is going on here?"

My goal was to not get hurt. I slacked off after the first kilometer, but then #5569, a high school boy running his first half marathon, came up and encouraged me to pick up the pace--and thanks to him for doing that. I tried to communicate that I didnt' want to. I'd say, "You go ahead," and sweep my hand forward. He'd respond, "With," and give a sweeping gesture to come with him and his friends. OK. Slower pace, faster pace, it didn't matter since every step hurt. I kept pace with them until 5 km, then no more, no more.

The first 6 km were a straight line down Jawaharlal Nehru Marg. Then we U-turned and returned. At the turnaround, race officials flicked some red stuff on our shirts as a marker to prevent cheating. It was a good idea. I say this with 50% conviction. The other 50% is reserved for when/if the red splotches ever wash out of my jersey.

As we looped back we met the Dream Runners. Ah, yes, they followed us. I should have known the dancing girls were for them. Blast! The upside was that they provided key crowd support for the half marathon runners--for me, at least. I'm not sure they asked all of the brown runners where they were from and how they liked India. Around 10 km, near the halfway mark, we cut west, left the Dream Runners, headed off into the wild.

Let's all give the traffic cops the kudos they deserve. They had the uneviable job of holdin gback the increasingly mutinous Jaipur traffic. Every passing minute brought more pedestrians, more scooters, more rickshaws, more cars, all eager to take back their share of the morning road. In the second half of the race we runners were quite dispersed, tens and hundreds of meters between us. The held back drivers gaped in menacing disbelief at traffic cops stopped them at major intersections for each single, straggling runner.

In some cases the traffic prevailed and we shared the road. OK. I expected this in India: functional madness. We all went to our destinations in our own ways. I don't know how we got there, but we got there. That's India. I don't know if I could do it every day, but it's fun in doses.

And on and on. Past St. Xavier's School and right onto MI Road, a major road now eerily devoid of traffic. Left through the reconstructed Ajmer Gate and into the old city, the Pink City. Through the not yet opened markets. I had an advantage here: I studied the course map before running. We were almost done. Good news: my brain sent a message to my legs that is was now acceptable to feel broken.

The traffic circle at Choti Chaupur--people crowded around like a tunnel like the sidelines of the Tour de France. The traffic circle at Badi Chaupur--more of the same, but larger, as the name suggests. (In Hindi, choti means small, badi means big... I think. Obviously I'm no expert.)

Almost there. Back onto MI Road, which is no longer devoid of vehicles. In Indian traffic as in oceans, it is foolish to think you can stop the tide. Into Ramniwas Bagh and Albert Hall Museum, down to the last few hundred meters. The next wave of traffic isn't vehicles--it's Dream Runners. They block the road in front of the finish line. That's why most races have chutes and barriers at the end of the race. After 21km, no one wants to finish via a gauntlet.

As I noted earlier, I consider myself an informal ambassador of the United States of America. As such I see it as my solemn duty to introduce Indians to American culture. I taught the mass of Dream Runners a few (American) football moves: the cutback, the spin, the hurdle, the stiffarm. Thank me later, Hillary, thank me later.

Unofficial time: 1:50:50.

Hop on: a desert cycling tale

kirk.kittell — Tue, 08 Feb 2011 05:25:49 +0000

One of the going away activities from my 2005 X PRIZE internship in the Mojave Desert, California, was a chance to eat lunch with Burt Rutan, Mike Melvill, and a few of the other rocket men of the Scaled Composities SpaceShipOne team. Midway through lunch, a gray-bearded man came in. He had been cycling across the desert, at midday in May, and wanted to show Burt his invention, a remarkable thermal material that could help the boys in Kuwait. ("Or Iraq," Burt corrected.) It was aluminum foil. He also had an older invention: Braille candy. ("You can taste the colors.")

Anyway, the point is that people cycling across the desert in the middle of the day are carrying more than a week's supply of The Crazy.

While I was in Jaisalmer I rented a bicycle from Narayan Cycles for a midday ride west out of the city, into the Thar Desert. Suriya suggested it would be a nice ride to see the Jain temples at Amar Sagar and the cenotaphs ("umbrellas") at Bara Bagh. Hell yes: adventure. (More on Suriya and family to come in a later episode. He's a good friend of mine in Jaisalmer.)

Before going, I glanced at a guidebook so I'd have a rough idea where I was going and what road to take to get there. All I had to do was to take the highway west from Hanuman Circle, near where I was staying. Amar Sagar would be 5 km to the west. A place called Mool Sagar would be 2 km beyond that. Perfect--a path and a distance.

Here bicycles are simple machines: one speed, crunchy bedspring seats, U-shaped handlebars set to the plane of the street. Jaisalmer has the simplest traffic I've seen yet in India, but it is still a challenging to dodge pedestrians, bicycles, scooters, motorcycles, autorickshaws, cars, jeeps, and cows. (And cowpatties.) Jaisalmer is a small city. Once you've passed Hanuman Circle you've passed everything but the military guards at the "Thundering 27" base, the guards with the red Japanese fans on their heads.

Then: nothing. The Thar Desert is not a scenic desert--at least not the small bit of it that I experienced. Granted, I'm prejudiced towards the Mojave Desert of California, the Chihuahuan Desert of Texas, the Canyonlands of Utah. These are legendary places to me, wonderlands of mountains and arches and canyons. The Thar Desert along MDR 53 wasn't even that scrubby. On one side of the road there was a landscape of smashed sandstone, perhaps being quarried for building projects in Jaisalmer and beyond. On both sides were sparsely distributed plants with large rubbery leaves.

The children were friendly. From the sides of the road, from the dilapidated buildings set back in the dust, and from places I could hear but not see, children waved and yelled, "Hello!" Women filling water jugs at a leaking irrigation pipe giggle and said, "[Something something] gora" among themselves. Men passing on tractors slowly rotated their heads to follow my passing. Exchange the turbans for feedcaps and it was just like Central Illinois.

At Mool Sagar there was nothing. Nothing. I went an extra kilometer down the road to be certain. Nothing. Kuch nahin. There were a few miserable houses and rock-bounded plots with no houses at all--much like California City, California. How do people survive on the fringes? Why do people survive on the fringes? I turned back, left them there. Maybe it's better on the fringes, on the outside. At Mool Sagar I had an omelette and a chai with a few stone cutters before returning to the east, to Jaisalmer, capital of the fringes.

Later, in the guidebook, I would read more closely about Mool Sagar: "...Mool Sagar, a run-down oasis with a Shiva Temple." Ah.

About 5 km from Jaisalmer there is a junction. Ten kilometers to the north of the junction is Lodurva, the home, I'm told, of a collection of Jain temples. I hadn't found Amar Sagar yet, so what the hell? Why not go to Lodurva?

There at the crossroads was a boy in a light blue ninth-standard school uniform. I prepared my best Amar Sagar kahan hai? (Where is Amar Sagar?) Before I could ask, he pointed at the back of my bike. I returned a quizzical look. He motioned again, and mimed that he wanted to sit on the rack. Oh, you want a ride? Yes, I'm going to Jaisalmer city. Let's do it. Hop on.

Off we went down the desert highway, a gora and his boy--or was it the other way around? We puttered along for 3 km, exchanging simple Hinglish questions and answers.

About 1.5 km from Jaisalmer, as we passed Indira Indoor Stadium and entered Defence Land, the boy on the back said something I didn't quite hear. "[Something] five [something] rupees." Ah, how cute. No, young man. I come as an informal emissary of the United States of America. I am here to do Good Work. I will not charge you for this strange ride across the desert. Go forth. Uncle Sam loves you.

"Money. From you to me."

"What?"

"500 rupees?"

"What?"

"500 rupees? I am poor boy."

"No."

"100 rupees?"

"No."

"500 rupees?"

And so on. The treacherous little bastard continued to ask for money. It's one thing to ask foreigners for money. It's another thing--and certainly not a problem--to ask for a free ride. But it takes a real deviant to cop a ride and then ask for money from the driver as he pedals through the noontime grit.

After another half kilometer of being hounded for cash, I stopped. "Get down." I rode the last stretch alone, free of one white man's burden.

2011 Jaipur Lit Fest Days 4 and 5: Myths of Mumbai, coincidences on the Nile, and cabbage

kirk.kittell — Wed, 26 Jan 2011 01:47:06 +0000

The 2011 Jaipur Literature Festival is over. Walking past the jampacked final panel--the standing easily outnumbering the seated 3-to-1--with Vikram Seth, under the colored banners, and through the gate of Diggi Palace a final time, I was a little melancholic. What next?

On Day 4 I opened with the "Mumbai Narratives" session with Sonia Falerio and Gyan Prakash because--what the hell--I had just been to Mumbai and I'll be back and I wanted to hear some stories. Now I have another book to find and read when I return home: Mumbai Fables by Gyan Prakash. Like a fair number of authors at the event I had never heard of Gyan Prakash, but I was taken in as much by his motivations for his work as what he read. In Mumbai Fables Prakash says he was not looking for the stories themselves, but inquiring into the nature of how they were created--peering behind the curtain of the mythology, trying not only to understand what something is but how and why it got that way. That's important: as in engineering, always check your assumptions.

Anthony Sattin's session on the unlikely coincidence of Gustave Flaubert and Florence Nightingale, from his book A Winter on the Nile, was one of the top panels of the week. Imagine this: two young people go on a trip (independently--they never meet) because they are frustrated with their progress at home, then return to do major work which history has not forgotten. Yes. Familiar. Sattin's enthusiasm for the two main characters, the arcs of their lives, and the places in Egypt (and France and England) was exciting.

On Day 5, Priya Sarukkai Chhabria and Arunava Sinha spoke about "Translating the Classics." I have an enormous amount of respect for translators (and, more broadly, polyglots). To be able to decode works in a language different from one's native tongue--that seems like having keys to a level of the castle that few will ever see. The chief concern of the panels was with which version of the final language to use. When translating a classic, should one use an archaic English to create a sense of temporal distance? Should one use a contemporary voice? And what does one do with words and ideas that exist in the base language but not the final language? Of course the answers were: it depends.

I'll admit here: I harbor this pointless desire to be able to translate something myself--to be able to open the locked door with my own hand. That's why I attended one more session with Katherine Russell Rich, the "Dreaming in Sanskrit" panel with Lee Siegel. I envy and admire the focus she exhibited to spend a year learning Hindi in Udaipur, then writing about it in Dreaming in Hindi. Hooray for the doers of the world, in whatever form they appear.

To end the day and the festival, Irvine Welsh read from his upcoming book, Reheated Cabbage. I've never read any Irvine Welsh, and his session was up against Indian literature titan Vikram Seth. I've not read anything by Vikram Seth yet either, but I'm aware of him and his books are on my list, so I decided to give Irvine Welsh a try, a final attempt at broadening my experience. Maybe it was the Scottish accent, or the unhesitating use of street language, or the straightforward stride through some putrid subject matter--anyway, the point is that Irvine Welsh ended the festival, for me, on a sustained high note.

I enjoyed the 2011 Jaipur Literature Festival--I'm happy that it was suggested to me and that I modified my trip to Jaipur to attend. There is the immediate question, "What next?" that applies to my remaining 57 days in India. But the value of the festival to me was listening to accomplished people on stage and conversing with members of the audience and how it all gave me the confidence to consider the greater "What next?" that will exist when I go home.

Kirk Kittell

To the top of the Tusk

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New Years on the top of the bottom of the sea

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Just one more ghost in Panamint City

Notes

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2011 Ozark Trail 100: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the Ozarks

Notes

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Sponsor me for 826 Boston Write-A-Thon fundraiser

Why?

How?

Writing prompts

More?

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Crazy People at the Naked Cabaret

Some people just never question it

Songs in the key of Caballo

And now for something completely different

Prospective race calendar for 2011

Endnotes

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A week early, and a few rupees short

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2011 Jaipur Half Marathon: The gauntlet

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Hop on: a desert cycling tale

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2011 Jaipur Lit Fest Days 4 and 5: Myths of Mumbai, coincidences on the Nile, and cabbage

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