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April 16, 2007
How To Be A Slacker, And Other Details
1) Thank you to all of you who left words of encouragement regarding my job interviewing process. You are all very kind! It's a bit strange to say, but the first emotion I felt when I heard that I hadn't gotten the job was relief. If it had been offered to me, it would have been a difficult decision to make. The job itself was a wonderful opportunity at advancement. However, it would have required leaving my current employer, leaving my current home, moving to a moderate-sized town, etc., etc. You know the drill, having to ponder whether one positive change is worth all the other accessory changes it induces in one's life. There were sneaking suspicions here and there that, despite the tremendous professional opportunity that it was, it wasn't quite the right fit. Right now, I still feel glad that the decision was made for me.
2) If you've arrived here looking for words of wisdom on good training, you should probably move on rather quickly. If you're looking to build your bank of excuses to skip training, then read on! My high hopes for last week simply dissolved into a week of near-nothing, training-wise. See last week's training entry for details on the unraveling of a good training week. Good grief, Meghan, get a grip and train if you want to race well this summer. I have excuses galore for last week: On Wednesday, I used my 2 hours of training time to sleep because I was so-danged exhausted from working 12-hour shifts plus overtime. On Thursday, I spent about 13 hours (and all available training time) preparing for Friday's job interviewing extravaganza. On Friday, I spent the whole day traveling to the interview, interviewing, and traveling home from interviewing. Blah, blah, blah, blah...
3) My poor week of training was arguably salvaged by a great weekend. My sweetie was here and the weather was great and we played outside. What more can you ask for? We spent the afternoon on Saturday riding on the still-closed interior road of Yellowstone. The road will open to cars this Friday, so this past weekend was the last hurrah for many bikers. We rode from my house in Mammoth to the Norris developed area and back, and probably saw about 100 bikers over 45 or so miles. Amazing! The headwind on the way out was ridiculous, a steady 25 miles per hour. Pushing into the wind, my sweetie and I talked about how fun the tailwind ride back would be. Wouldn't you know, but the wind had dissipated to almost nothing by the time we turned around! Oh well, it made for a harder-than-usual ride, and I felt it in my legs by the end. I'm slowly, steadily building my cycling endurance, with this being my longest ride of the season so far.
We went out to a great Italian restuarant for dinner on Saturday night. Is it sad that one has to drive 1 hour each way to eat at a good restaurant? This is perhaps the -only- downfall to living in the wilderness, that culture is a ways away. However, I had a gift certificate left over from a race last year, so we treated ourselves to several courses of food. Mmmmmmmmn, yum.
Sunday's run was kind of crazy, I've got to say. We went out on the La Duke Trail, in the Gallatin National Forest. We went out with the intent of doing a several-hour run. I've been on this trail before alone, but I always turn around at the same point. Where I turn around, things just get a little creepy because the terrain screams bear terrain. My sweetie, my dog, and I bravely forged past this point yesterday, knowing that group travel in bear territory is much safer than solo travel.
I cannot tell you how creepy it got beyond the turnaround point! I just have to wonder about this "creepy sense" that I have for certain people, places, and incidents. Sometimes, I chastize myself when the "creepy sense" gets going for being wimpy or judgemental. Almost always, though, I heed the warnings of the "creepy sense." For about 30 minutes beyond my previous turnaround point, we encountered at least 15 dead animal carcasses. Some carcasses appeared to be the remains of deer and elk that hunters had killed and gutted last fall/winter, and that had been fed upon afterwards by predators. Other carcasses were just plain killed and fed upon by predators. It was literally a wildlife killing field up there, though. After a time, we were just plain creeped out, so we turned around. I couldn't have been happier to get out of there, and I don't intend to go there again. Aside from the dead animal weirdness, it was a good run. We climbed close to 2000 feet on the way out, and dropped back down on the return. From high on the La Duke Trail, the Yellowstone River Valley opens up in all of its beauty, and you feel like you can see forever.
4) Bears, bears, and more bears. Last week, a grizzly bear mauled a man near my sweetie's home. The article describes all sides of the debate, whether the attacking grizzly should be left alone, whether it should be trapped and relocated, or whether it should be killed. The results are in, and the "suspect" bear was trapped and killed by local officials.
The situation is described in these two articles: A family lives in a cabin located at the edge of the wilderness, adjacent to national forest land, not far from Grand Teton National Park, and well within the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, one of the only remaining large, healthy habitats of the grizzly bear in the world. A grizzly enters the family's property and feeds on a moose carcass. The family's dog encounters and barks at the grizzly; a man investigates the barking and encounters the grizzly; the grizzly attacks the man. The man surives the attack and is released from the hospital 3 days later. The "suspect" grizzly is trapped and killed.
Why was this "suspect" bear killed when it was exhibiting normal bear behavior in normal bear habitat? Why does humanity fail to understand that we must carefully and respectfully share a world with other living creatures? Why is a member of the federal Endangered Species List, the grizzly bear, treated like it is infinitely disposable? Why do humans have the perspective that they as a species must be at the top of the food chain? I cannot understand these phenomena.
People, if you live in or otherwise enter into the habitats of predators that may well hurt, maim, eat, injure, mangle, kill, or feed upon you, travel at your own damn risk. You and your 6.5 billion other little compadres in crime have already settled, developed, and destroyed a fair bit of this little limited resource called the Earth. For one single second of your lives, think about living a selfless, shared existence, rather than the selfish existence you currently dwell within, with the rest of this earth's living creatures. You are not at the top of the gawd-danged world and you never will be, so give the grizzly bears in North America, and the tigers in Asia, and the jaguars in Central America just a bit of wilderness space to roam free and hash out some sort of limited life in the little that's left of their natural territories. If you simply cannot stand the idea of sharing the wilderness, of being below something on the food chain, of the idea that there are places that aren't perfectly safe, then just stay the hell out. Ride your bike on your urban jungle multi-use paved pathways. Live freely in your condo on the thirty-second floor of your cookie-cutter urban residential development. Walk safely on the manicured, overly fertilized, and pesticide-laced green grass at the park down the street.
Shortly after the attack, the victim said, "I really didn't feel it was the bear's fault. I stumbled into his area." 'Nuff said.
Posted by Meghan at April 16, 2007 1:35 PM
Comments
If the bear had him by the head the way it did, it could have killed him easily. He's a lucky guy. I think he's right - it didn't intend to kill him. It was just sending him a definite message and wasn't going to take any arguements.
Posted by: JeffO at April 16, 2007 4:45 PM
Sheesh. I read about that last week, the day it happened, and I thought every one was on board that it was okay to let the bear live.
I think what you had to say at the end - the part about if you choose to enter a dangerous area, then do so at your own risk applies to everything! For goodness sake, if you are going to swim in the lake, there is the possibility that you might drown. If you order hot coffee, you could get burned. If you climb a tower, you could fall off. Where do people get the idea that they can do something risky then blame everyone else? (Not that drinking hot coffee is risky to a normal person.) Our society has been overtaken by a population that refuses to shoulder responsibility or admit to fault for anything. Drives me nuts!
Posted by: backofpack at April 16, 2007 9:42 PM
Yeah but Grizzly bear tastes like chicken!
Being a person who really enjoys the wilderness I have had a hard time accepting the reintroduction of wolves and grizzly bears simply because the whole "human buffet" potential.
You can't blame the early settlers for killing the animals for food, fur, and self defense. It was a survival thing at that time. Nowadays we humans can live in those condos and forage for food at the market. If we choose to venture out into the woods we have the advantage of knowing these animals feeding and defense methods.
I agree that we venture out at our own risk. I think if the bears decide that the "human buffet" is like going to the market and attack another human then they should be destroyed. I guess that's great unless you are the second course for the bear in question.
When I was hiking and running up in Alaska last summer the owner of the B&B we stayed in told us how to tell the difference between Black Bear scat and Grizzly Bear scat. The Grizzly Bear scat has bear bells in it. Ba-dum.... *crickets chirping* ...ching.
Run with caution grasshopper..
Posted by: Eric at April 16, 2007 9:44 PM
may I just say..... AMEN!!!! Well said.
Posted by: anne at April 17, 2007 7:11 AM
Taking a bureau-cratically human, de-emotionlized (experimentally speaking, not advocated) perspective: the punishment was not commensurate with the crime. The Grizzly should have lived and roamed on parole. Institutionalised killing for lack of funds or patience (or plain lazyness) is a little archaic...
Posted by: corrado giambalvo at April 17, 2007 7:17 AM
de-emotionalized point 2:
you title your link in 4) "a grizzly bear mauled a man" whereas the least possible title to describe the situation would have been: grizzly-bear-is shot-to-death-by-hunter-after-it-attacked-hunter's hunting buddy-after-he-shot-and-killed-another-smaller-grizzly.
If you needed to further zip it I suppose you could have: "Hunted grizzlies attack hunters." Or maybe "Hunters attacked by grizzlies."
"A grizzly bear mauled a man" (which by the way links to a very factual report and indeed describes no sides of any debate) set me up to want to condemn the bears without reading any further. Especially attached to the other residential-type attack... And yet, when you read the facts...If the larger bear was indeed the mother of the smaller bear, well... the law might say there were some extenuating circumstances...
Posted by: corrado giambalvo at April 18, 2007 4:25 AM
I keep coming back and still unsure what to say. part of me is all for "if you enter wild territory, wonder at your own risk". Another part of me "if wild animals decide humans are easy meal...". Just as I often have arguments with my husband (who calls himself a renessance man) about a place of a woman in a family and society and about kids' obedience, we can not turn the development of this world back as time goes forward. Whether or not it is good for Mother Earth to have human habituating into the wilds is not something that I am qualified to discuss, but since it happened - it would be nice to be safe. I am a Libra, I am all for finding a "happy medium". And I am scared of Grizzly, as well as cougar and snakes, but I still love been alone in forests:)
Posted by: olga at April 18, 2007 2:38 PM