The finish of a big June day on Tahoma, replete with a surprise mountain of snow on the last mile of trail.

About

Physicist. Trail Runner. PNW.

I’m trying to get organized and thoughtful about my adventures. Documentation seems like a worthy step in that direction. So here goes. I’ve got some fun ideas for how this will unfold, please check back in the coming months.

@seanforscience

Downstream you really get into it. I can’t believe how hard it is to stop and even catch your breath. Sure while running these days I worry about catching cold (read: going hypothermic) but that rational bit is only part of it. There’s this mental inertia to carry on what your doing no matter what. Humans are good with habits and patterns, is that all? Probably not. Yesterday Seth had an interesting review of the Monty Hall problem and I went to see Kaku talk and somehow he managed to eek out the conflict apparent between Everett’s many worlds and Hawking’s issues with Chronology protection. The one arresting feeling came from my emotions as the day accumulated. These ideas are fun to play with. They’re nuanced, complex and can often be made very precise. The exercise of that latter bit is what can feed development of new work and new ideas. One drives the other. Small, reductive, incremental steps towards improving our understanding is the process, but it’s not the method. It’s not the strategy. It’s not the goal. When we get the two confused, we end up stuck. Let’s get unstuck today.

Still water feeds the cascades downstream. It’s hard to remember this in the rush of an urban morning, or the melee of the day, where anything from the wrong java dependencies or cluster settings or random collisions can interfere with the task of trying to carve a bit of science out amidst the spray and roar of forking strategies and timelines. It’s hard to remember when you crawl into a bar stool to watch the M’s crush another game while traffic crushes itself and you can happily take transit back in the early evening with sunlight still about. The trick is not just the starting calm but the finding a way to carry all the water uphill every day.

Flowers in the swamp, on the way to the office.

Is anyone else out there a kinesthetic learner? Its challenging to explain learning modalities to the uninitiated, but I’ve long since discovered that reading and watching and hearing have a much lower retention rate than doing. This has a lot of wild downstream effects that I can’t really explain otherwise. I know what I do know cold, what I do know isn’t a major intersection with what most other folks know (at least in a technical field, but also with driving directions!) and so leaves me feeling constantly behind and conflicted about purpose. There is also this susceptibility to weird behavior patterns.
I woke up today feeling a little different. Yesterday I ran around Cougar in an attempt to get rolling miles in, and connected a bunch of trails together in my head (finally!). That “critical mass” of doing gave me a nice, global picture of the park in my head which I’ve failed to realize previously. The lesson that simultaneously sunk in was that I could use this as a strategy.
It is a much welcome mental boost. Here we go!

Wow what a rough and tumble week! Some folks had it much worse, but I for one am psyched to see that monster in the rear view mirror. Thankfully, my MCL was also screaming for some bonus rest days, so everything seems like it balanced out. That said, I’m finally getting around to sharing some of the trilliums that exploded on my long run last Sunday. That little trail up the coal creek canyon isn’t big or epic or even hard but it’s where I learned how to run off road and still return to after work. When it’s warm and the sun is out and the water is still rushing by... it’s just as good a day out as any. Especially if you can chase the creek all the way up to it’s “headwaters” at Klondike Swamp and the cute little duck pond near the mining shaft. Running and hydrology few good together, no?

The sun gets higher every day. It happened fast. It always does. There’s that one day you’re outside, in shorts, you look around and realize the hum of summer is beginning to form and the high country is about to start calling. Surround yourself with the sun and fun, friends. I think this is the year that we can finally let go and move to the other side of all this.

Hisashiburi.
I hadn’t been out here since the fires. Stunning contrast with the snow. Some snags were barely holding on. Others still had their crowns.

It was a great weekend for human adventuring.

I feel like I’ve been working frantically for years, but don’t really have a lot to show for it. I know that’s not actually true, but there is a broad disconnect between what I set out to accomplish and what I did accomplish. And not in terms of quantity or quality so much as relevance. I keep assuming I’m rational when in reality most of that experience seems framed after the fact. Tesla’s “meat machine” hypothesis. Too much fast thinking not enough slow thinking. The anxiety over the aforementioned disconnect is probably a result of that lack of rational awareness. It’s as if the word day dreaming has a nested meaning.

Big Snag in the Gully blow Mt High-G. The inside of the trunk and a bunch of scars on other trees suggested a fire from a whole back. Gorgeous run down into a pretty wild area tucked behind an otherwise well harvested space.

It was a beautiful day on land and over the water. A super flock of Canada geese overhead while down in Skagit Valley. Everything is on hold until the tulips pop, but the Cascadian Spring is in full gear even without the hordes.

Quick stop. I used to conflate spontaneity with freedom. Well, I still do. But that’s a local assumption applied to a closed system (ie just oneself). With so many type a, plan-or-die, time imperialists out there it’s a wonder how anyone can take a deep breath and enjoy anything. Sure, having concrete goals moves a lot of folks forward. But in an open system it’s also a defensive posture, to beat back the calendar barbarians with a quiver of “I’m doing this! Join or else!” Which feels unnatural. Nobody likes playing defense. Just a reminder to you experiencial types that methodical types only think they’re doing it right.

Confirmed. I love summer. Not enough to wish we weren’t several standard deviations from normal in terms of weather this season - I also love the rain - but ever longer days and running without concern for layers is an easy kind of joy. Grateful to get a few of these in.

Back in town and I’m already thinking about shipping out. Did I miss anything?

Things are definitely looking up.

Soooo. After being fed up with the cold and the dark and the snow in Seattle, and ranting about it, naturally we headed to the Methow and single digit temps. Daytime was gorgeous though!

More from summer, because really. The climb up the Ice Lake Trail out of South Mineral Creek campground had absurdly perfect conditions just a few days before Hardrock last year. No afternoon thunderstorms, just peace, quiet, climbing and the occasional subset of the trail family. A light jacket towards the end of the day. Let’s see how this year’s snowpack evolves!

more fun from summer to celebrate the #seattlesnow. This time let’s revisit the top of Baldy from the Bridgers just outside of Bozeman.