This world is incredibly depressing; I don't know how any of us can perform all the ordinary happenings in a typical day when so much sadness and wrongness occurs in between the spaces of our sweet triviality.

People do bad shit, yo! Glow in the dark puppies and kittens? Come on, how can that be okay? How?! Done in the name of progress, science, our health, goodness: the idea is that this sort of technology can eventually develop treatments for diseases. Of course, treating diseases is noble and important, but I'm wary of an incongruency (I don't think this is an official word, but I'm using it anyway) that I can't quite articulate, which exists in the equation of manipulating one animal's genes with a completely unrelated animal's genes for the sake of human advancement. This "glow in the dark" experiment is from 2007; Snark mentions it in passing yesterday evening while we are talking about the world and news, and it pushes me over the edge of what I can handle. I look at the photos of beagles glowing red under UV lights, the white and pink rimmed eyes and noses of Turkish Angora kittens. It reminds me of being a teenager and listening to Paul McCartney's song, "Looking for Changes," and I just don't think this kind of experimentation can fall into my instinctual category of What-Is-Good-For-All-Concerned.

Earlier in the evening, Snark tells me more about BP's suppression of information, their manipulation of the press (see photoshopping scandal), and the continuing slanted portrayal of current (and predicted future) environmental destruction and decimation in the gulf and beyond. The news that some kittens and pups now fluoresce due to inserted sea anemone proteins maybe shouldn't seem like too big of a deal in the face of entire ecosystems going extinct, but for me it is incredibly disturbing. It's the straw that breaks the camel's back. I start to cry, finally.

Finally because I would be crying--grieving--all the time if I paid close attention to the injustice that goes on in this world. Finally because I shut my heart to it usually and sometimes my mind as well, so I don't collapse, each day, in despair. I know there's good stuff, too, going on; it's just hard to balance all the fucked-up-ness and deception with the kindness, the compassion. It's difficult to stay informed without completely breaking down, feeling helpless, powerless to affect change.

I retreat to reading as a source of comfort and hope--it is a way of coping, though it is reading about these inequities and selfish, sometimes fatal abuses that also exacerbates my sense of desolation.

(The other day, Snark and I dropped off our recycling at the recycling garage in Bisbee, and I found a discarded Backpacker magazine from August 2006. I was thrilled to have it.) Last night, after crying on the couch with Snark, I scoured this magazine from front to back cover in search of reports describing some of the most environmentally cherished places in this country. I found an article called "The Last Unknown Places" and other smaller snippets for places to hike in protected wilderness spaces. Miserably, I also read about an ongoing (at least, in 2007) debate over a proposed asphalt road through "38 miles of the largest unbroken tract of mountain forest in the eastern United States" (46). A draft document released by the park service at the time when the article was written said the construction would leach "pollutants into the park's waterways," would replace "views of rare alluvial forests" along the Appalachian Trail "with bridges and embankments," and predicted sound pollution, in addition to detrimental consequences "on air, water, and wildlife"; nonetheless, it determined that these results wouldn't "harm the 'integrity' or 'enjoyment' of the
park or the AT" (46). In the end, I can't say this reading comforted me or encouraged the desired-for-hope that I was reaching for. This conclusion from the park service is exactly what I'm talking about when I use the phrase "fucked-up-ness." Please! Crumple me into a ball of despair right now! How can they even begin to conclude something so irresponsible and blatantly untruthful?

Another side note: Remember Orwell's concept of doublethink? It's an acceptance of thought marked by explicitly contradictory ideas or falsehoods. Orwell's brilliant coinage is fresh in my forethought because Snark and I recently watched the documentary, Orwell Rolls in His Grave. This film chronicles the deterioration and misrepresentation of news by the media (newsprint, online, radio, TV, etc.) in the last 30 years, due in part to media consolidation, and including the mainstream media's overreporting of more lackadaisical and transient news stories (that are nevertheless drawn out for days, weeks, months) and the underreporting, inappropriate slanting, and outright negligence of serious news issues.

So this evening I was looking through our books and found one of Andy's books, An Open Heart: Practicing Compassion in Everyday Life. Maybe this will offer some wisdom on how to participate in the beauty and goodness of life, staying informed, and yet not growing disillusioned and incapacitated at the onslaught of harm that people commit toward other lives--human and other. Reading the introduction of this book is optimistic. The Dali Lama says, "If we have a positive mental attitude, then even when surrounded by hostility, we shall not lack inner peace. On the other hand, if our mental attitude is more negative, influenced by fear, suspicion, helplessness, or self-loathing, then even when surrounded by our best friends, in a nice atmosphere and comfortable surroundings, we shall not be happy. So, mental attitude is very important: it makes a real difference to our state of happiness" (6). Yes! Perhaps this easier to read than to enact, but yes! This is how he believes we need to train our minds to think.

(Maybe the sculpting of mental attitude lightly relates to a  focus on appreciating the casual daily moments? For instance, can my reveling in Snark's homegrown clover sprouts and our homemade yogurt be an action of positive mental strength, though incredibly small and trivial as it may seem? I will think about this later on. I'm going to get back to hopping from one loosely related thought to the next.)

Getting back to the subject of the Appalachian Trail (which was originally a side thought, but oh well), a few weeks ago I finished a book called, A Walk in the Woods, by Bill Bryson, which I really enjoyed. I liked it because it offered a plethora of humorous, but informative discussion about thru-hiking and the AT (which utterly fascinates me) and specifics about everything related to it, such as the AT's conception and history, the park service's involvement, and conservation struggles. I also like it because Bryson brazenly admits to being afraid of bears and what can come of meeting one on the trail, which is a near and dear vibrant fear of my own hiking and camping existence.

At the end of the book he writes, "I had come to realize that I didn't have any feelings towards the AT that weren't confused and contradictory. I was weary of the trail, but still strangely in its thrall; found the endless slog tedious but irresistible; grew tired of the boundless woods but admired their boundlessness; enjoyed the escape from civilization and ached for its comforts. I wanted to quit and do this forever, sleep in a bed and in a tent, see what was over the next hill and never see a hill again. All of this all at once, every moment, on the trail or off" (270-71). This struck me as an echo of my own feelings toward hiking and camping. I love it, even though it's actually full of discomfort and sometimes more hardcore suffering, which isn't always wonderful, depending on what perspective one takes, but it is alluring to me all the same.

That's all I've got, folks; it's a long, disjointed, partially sad post that must come to an end and I've determined now's the time!