this blog needs a new tagline. i'm taking suggestions.

Today we start in on backpacking, which naturally means this will be my last post for a week. We drive up into the mountains from Pueblo this morning towards Buena Vista. We’ll camp at the trail head tonight and then start hiking Monday morning.

I’ve gotten a lot of questions over the past few weeks regarding such things as: Are you really going to sleep in a tent for a week? Are you going to have to carry all of your food on your back? You mean you’re not going to have running water out there?

Yes, all this is true. I consider this true camping – back-country backpacking, carrying all your needed items on your back in a pack, and far, far removed from civilization. We sleep in a tent, not a cabin. We cook our own food. We do not have bathrooms. We do not care if we smell bad this week.

This in my opinion is the purest form of a vacation, and I absolutely cannot wait.

Our trip this morning will take us up one the prettiest drives in Colorado, that being the Arkansas River canyon from Canon City westward. It features 100-300 foot sheer cliffs on either side of a narrow canyon which twists and turns upward over the course of 30 miles. The road is right at the bottom of the canyon, bordering the Arkansas River which at this point will be quite narrow, though moving quickly and appears extremely pure with a blueish green tint. Very beautiful.

Buena Vista is the closest town to where we will be hiking, though even that will be about 20 miles away from us once we get up into the back-country. But to give some sense of placement, we’ll be about 100 miles directly west of Colorado Springs up in an area called the Collegiate Peaks Wilderness. It’s called this because the primary mountains of the region – reaching upwards of 14,000 ft tall – are named after a handful of the Ivy League schools such as Mt. Harvard, and Mt. Yale, etc.

So that’s the plan folks. Five days from now (Friday) we’ll be exiting the wilderness – hopefully much refreshed, and inspired by some of the most beautiful country in the world. Priority #1 will be finding a steak restaurant to partake of a medium-rare prime rib, after a week of eating dehydrated meals in ziplock bags. But after that I’ll post an update or two here to bring you up to speed on how the week went.

I will say this, if you don’t hear from me for say, I don’t know, two weeks from now, you may want to call the ranger station in Buena Vista, CO. But I don’t anticipate any issues… let’s just pray for good weather, and safe hiking. Talk to you soon!

Today, after staying up until 3:00 AM for the most epic night of bag-packing ever, we left Nashville for the American West. Destination: Colorado. Mission: Backpacking the Collegiate Peaks Wilderness Area.

We’re taking 3 days to get out to our starting point, which will be a trailhead near Cottonwood Pass west of Buena Vista, CO. But the short term goal for today is Kansas City, MO where we visted with Steph’s dad, and will meet up with my family to caravan the rest of the way out to CO.

We left Nashville in a rainstorm, which was fine – the car needed to be washed and we didn’t have time to do it before we left. I’m certain my backpack is much too heavy. I pride myself on loading a light pack. During highschool packing trips I would load up a 24 lb. pack pre-food (which is pretty dang light). But on past trips I’ve always been a little light on food, and as a result have been left feeling a little too hungry some days. Never a good combination when you’re exerting yourself physically.

So I’ve got food for this trip. Lots of food, and it weighs a lot. I’m afraid I’m going to have to thin things out a bit before we hit the trail.

Another thing adding the weight is my camera gear, which I’ve resigned myself to accept. I’ve never taken a really good camera up into the mountains before, and it’s something I’ve always wanted to do. I’ve got my Canon 35mm SLR, which is a great camera, and 9 rolls of black & white film (I’m fascinated by really good black & white film landscape photography). I’ve also got two lenses – a standard zoom and a wide angle zoom (which I just bought off Ebay last week). And finally the tripod. Got to have the tripod for good landscape photography, and here’s why:

Good landscapes show incredible detail as a result of a great depth of field. This means that things really close as well as really far away are all in focus, which means you need to set your aperture very small, which means that only a tiny amount of light is allowed to hit the film. This automatically means that your exposure time has to be set relatively long. And you know what happens when you have a long exposure time and you’re holding your camera by hand – blurry pictures. Unacceptable, and this is fixed with a tripod.

So here we are in Kanasas City, ready to meet up with the rest of the family tomorrow morning. We’ll drive through the entire breadth of Kansas, stopping off to see my Grandma Burns and aunt, uncle, and cousin. We’ll get into Pueblo, CO late Saturday night and stay in a motel, and then it’s off for the mountains Sunday morning.

It’s 4:53 PM. Long day at the office. My esteemed colleague Jon, tired from a long day’s work returns to his office craving a fresh can of… pears. Actually, they’re not fresh. The can of pears has been sitting in his desk drawer for months, maybe years. He finally brought a can opener into work earlier this week so that he’d have one on hand just-in-case. Came in useful today.

Jon was proud of his Spoiled-Chef can opener, or Coddled-Chef… whatever it is, I can’t remember. He demonstrates how it has a handy little magnet on the top of it to lift the cut can lid from the can and transfer it to the waste basket without touching it at all. Oh wait – magnet failure. He dropped the lid. Pear juice everywhere.

Come on Jon.

So it’s been pointed out to me several times now that I haven’t blogged recently. Thank you for bringing this to my attention.

In truth I’ve been taking a bit of an intentional “sabbatical” from writing because, well, because I wanted to. And it’s been nice. I’ve enjoyed stepping away from feeling the pressure to keep on the blog from week to week. Also, I’ve been embracing the world of micro-blogging via Twitter, and that’s been fun too, keeping the world up to date 140 characters at a time.

So I would say the biggest news from the last month is the fact that we had to retire our dear purple Cavalier – the fine piece of American machinery that we purchased from good friend and ex-blogger Timmy a few years ago. We pushed it past 200,000 miles earlier this spring, but the transmission finally gave in on us, and it just cost too much to fix.

So, we went out searching and in one short weekend actually found a car that we really liked! We landed on an 2003 Mitsubishi Galant that we picked up from a used car dealer in Murphreesboro. We like it a lot, and it’s treating us well. Can I just say that I truly enjoy entering the 21st Century by now having a car that has power windows, power locks, tinted windows, and brakes that don’t shake like an earthquake every time I try to stop. And as much as I like a manual transmission, I don’t have to sit in rush hour traffic arguing with a clutch anymore, and that is glorious.

Thanks for bearing with me through my sabbatical. I hope to offer up additional reading material soon.

I had a disturbing conversation with Steph this morning that I felt the need to share. It started as an offhand discussion we had this weekend regarding race and marriage and whether or not it was acceptable for people of different races to marry each other.

Both Steph and I are from Minnesota, so I think our views of this are in general a little more accepting than maybe other parts of the country. Neither of us think that interracial marriage is inherently wrong. If two people love one another and they want to get married, then they should, regardless of what color their skin is.

Steph works outside of the city (Nashville) – that is to say, she works with a handful of true red-blooded Southerners. She decided to do a little investigation Monday and get their take on the whole interracial marriage bit. What she discovered really shocked me. I was naively living under the assumption that we’ve made great strides in overcoming racism over the past few decades in America. I was wrong. Here’s a smattering of responses:

• “My dad would kill me if I brought a black man home for dinner.”
• “My pastor taught us growing up that it was wrong to marry black people.”
• “If you spend too much time with black people you start to act and talk like them.”
• “The Bible says not to associate with people from different cultures.”
• “I don’t want to hang around black people because I don’t want anyone to get the wrong idea.“
• “There’s a difference between black people and niggers. There are some good black people, but then niggers are like the black version of white-trash, and it’s just not right to associate with those people.”
• “It’s a sin for people of different races to marry.”

Allow me to be very clear here: If you agree with any of these statements you are wrong and you disgust me.

I cannot believe that in 2008 we are still using the Bible to justify our cowardly selfish racist mindsets. That is absolutely utterly shocking to me. I’m sorry I was so naive to think that we had progressed beyond this sick and disgusting state. I also can’t believe that I have to spend a blog post outlining why the above statements are the most ridiculous and stupid things I have ever heard.

Specifically my comments are aimed at white Christian Americans who find themselves agreeing with some semblance of the above statements:

God Does Not Operate On A Class System:
At the core of all these statements is this sentiment that one race is better than another – that somehow God has selected white American’s as the preferred culture of people, and all other races are lesser and degraded forms of the above. Sounds like a Nazi propaganda if you ask me… while we’re at it, should we weed out the blond haired, blue eyed folks and just do off with the rest of us?

When it comes to a “chosen” race in the eyes of God, I assure you it’s not white Protestant Americans… it’s the Jewish people of ancient Israel. This is a culture through which God first spoke and demonstrated his love – and wrath. What color do you think their skin was? The great thing for all races though is that he made His love accessible to all of us through the death and resurrection of Jesus… this is the reason we all get to share in the blessings of God. The Apostle Paul effectively tore down the barriers of race throughout his life and persistent ministry to those outside the Jewish culture. All are welcome at God’s table.

It Is Not A Sin To Associate With Other Races:
I’m having trouble figuring this one out – where did this idea come from that white people aren’t to associate with black people, or anyone else of another race? Since when are Christians isolationists? Weren’t Christ’s last words on earth “Go into all the world and preach the good news”? This doesn’t sound like separation to me… rather, this sounds like a command to start making some diverse groups of friends. And no, I don’t simply mean a four day mission trip to Columbia – the gospel of Christ is a genuine message of relationship that speaks to true lasting friendships and acceptance of people from all walks of life.

It Is Not A Sin To Marry Outside Your Race:
I understand that precedent and tradition have led to a general societal taboo of interracial marriages, and that is what it is. But it doesn’t make these marriages wrong. For Christian’s to take a verse like Genesis 28:1, “So Isaac called for Jacob and blessed him and commanded him: ‘Do not marry a Canaanite woman,’” and then improperly conclude that God has commanded Christians not to marry individuals of other races are incorrect in their interpretation.

This command, and ones like it, speak to spiritual matters – not racial matters. The Canaanite culture of the time was known for their blatant disregard of God, and as such, it would not be right for a Jewish person to be married to someone who did not share their worldview and belief set. Likewise, it would be unwise for a Christian to pledge their life to an individual who does not share their beliefs, but again I emphasize, this has nothing to do with race.

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It really saddens and frustrates me that thoughts like the ones I listed above are prevalent in our culture – it really irritates me that I’m hearing these thoughts from a group of self-professed Christians. I’m certainly not trying to say that Christians are “morally better” than the rest of society, however, Christians have been given an example in the Bible as to how we should treat and interact with the people around us. We need to strive towards this and as a faith-group set a positive example of how to treat those around us with respect and without prejudice.

You tell me if you think I’m out of line here, but I think you’ll be hard pressed to find an argument that holds water.