Dear friends of the Rocky Mountain Corn Project,

Greetings from the Mountains in Winter!

I trust that I find you in good cheer wherever this missive finds you as The Golden Age of Agriculture draws nigh, given new breath by the winds of change that are blowing through the worn out structures of the old paradigms and their toxic legacies.

Yes, there is a Golden Age out there waiting to be born as proclaimed by our new President. I have been trying to wrap my arms around it for the last half century. The foundations are pretty well pinned down in my mind. I just need to put pen to paper to bring it into this world. 

Meanwhile, there is the woodpile. 

The wood pile promotes clarity. Splitting the daily kindling is excellent therapy for cabin fever. You never know when unexpected episodes of joie-de-vivre may be triggered by daily tasks well done with sharp implements. 

This is my favorite time of the year. The good earth sleeps beneath it’s mantle of snow and the cloudless sky glimmers with energy – call it the Aurora Mountainalis – a time for reflection and meditation on the nature of reality – a time to peel away the accretions and projections of a technocratic society - pseudo-life simulacrums and fake realities. 

I had to learn the hard way to shed a lot of clanking armor and excess baggage that was weighing me down. It took some years of being dogged by a goad at my heels, a shadow who would second guess every constructive thought and circumstance that presented itself in my mind. It took a lot of work to finally deal with that phantom demon of my own creation. I call it “Goodby Doppleganger.” 

Everyone loves a good story told in the lingering alpenglow as the first stars come out. So put another log on the fire and pull up a chair. 

It happened some fifty winters ago when I first came into the mountains to build a homestead on the edge of the wilderness. 

The first year I slept in a tent for six months until I got the roof on the house just in time for winter. I subsequently finished my homestead, raised a family and lived grid-free for the next thirty-three years. My wandering days were over as I began a change of persona.

Sleep in that tent was real sweet until the snow started to fly. I really did not want to move inside.

I had developed another recurrent dream, this time a bit more auspicious. If I had to personally put a name on it, I would call it, 

“Goodbye Doppelganger.”

Otherwise, for a general audience, let’s call it simply…

The Trail of Dreams 

The trail led ever higher. Switch-back after switch-back on the right side of the glacier—disappearing now beneath a snow-bank in the shadow and then emerging into the intense solar radiation of baked earth and rock. At this elevation, there was little snowmelt. The snow and ice sublimed directly into the evanescent atmosphere. The world reduced in slow-motion to an essential simplicity. A deliberate cadence of several breaths with each step. No rest. Just the next step ever onward and up. 

If you looked straight up, the sky is blue-black in contrast with the great snow-peaks, making you dizzy with the exposure. Better to look at the trail and stay in cadence, stay in the mantric rhythm of breath and movement that will convey you to the top. It’s almost like flying. Pull back on the stick steadily and off you go, gaining altitude without flapping your arms.

After the next traverse, the trail swings south and the terrain ahead is covered with a stunning verdure of shrub-like plants growing fast to the edge of the glacier. A group of horned beasts on the slope above are attacking the greenery with apparent relish.

Around the next turn, the trail ascends into more snow and disappears as clouds boil over the ridge ahead and obscure the sun. The mood changes abruptly as a blast of hail and graupel issuing from the squall forces you to shelter behind a boulder with your head between your knees. The stinging buckshot stops as quickly as it began and you rise up and search for the ancient trail midst the darken prospect of frozen yak tracks, the scattered bones of lost travelers and failed expeditions. 

Think not that you need a guide.

The sun reappears and momentarily reveals a saddle in the ridge that disappears in gusts of blowing snow from the cornice overhanging the headwall.

You plot a course of more or less mortal exposure and begin to kick step through the softer spindrift, using the ice ax on the harder stuff. You head for the upper end of the saddle that is anchored in exposed rock to avoid the perils of the cornice. It’s slow methodical work with no mistakes allowed.

I gain the rock, secure my clothing and goggles against the wind and find a purchase over the lip. Giddy from the altitude and exertion, I can hear my arms flapping as if to fly away. But no. The flapping is real. There, just on the col is a giant rock cairn draped with shredded cloth flags that are flapping in an unceasing wind. The windward side is scoured clean down to the dirt. 

I find a hand sized rock and stagger over to the cairn and add it to the pile as is the custom for those who make it to the pass. 

I look to the other side whose depths are obscured by cloud and slowly approach the edge looking for a descending trail. What is that sticking out of the snow behind the cairn? It’s a boot. The tread looks strangely familiar. What is that? It’s a leg attached to the boot.

Taken with an inexorable premonition I take the ice ax and gingerly begin to chop away the ice and rime. He is laying face down with his hands extended in front, palms down in some final obeisance. I turn him over and stare at the bearded visage, knowing what to expect.

Yes, it’s me.

The persona of the Pilgrim Trekker on the Shangri-La Quest had finally met his demise on the threshold of an unknown territory.

I was brought back by the flapping tent and the north wind heralding the snows of October. The morning light softly suffused the translucent interior as I stirred in my sleeping bag.

In that twilight state between dream and wakefulness, my first thought was a question.

“Did I find the lost trail?”

Then, coming more into this world, thoughts of more practical matters intervened and a new course was set.

“Did I put away all my tools yesterday?”

“I hope they are not covered with snow.”

“I need to get up and get to work. I have a new wife joining me soon and there’s not a minute to lose.”

Little did I know that I had another appointment on the trail.

Obscured by cloud and down the other side around the bend, the Atomic Trekker was silently waiting as I prepared for a new life in the deep Montana winter.

As an aside to the reader at this juncture, I would submit that there is much more to this life and to reality than what you apprehend with your five senses. It is generally accepted in this modern era that there are two methods of reasoning in the pursuit of knowledge, deductive and inductive logic. Francis Bacon is said to have ushered in the scientific method with the use of inductive analysis. I believe in a third way of acquiring knowledge and solving problems that I will label direct cognition.

I have always had a certain facility with this third way which is really beyond methodology but will be called a method for lack of a better term. When faced with a seemingly insoluble conundrum, I can often sleep on it, wake up with an accurate solution and then submit the solution to conventional analysis for verification. Don’t be too quick to dismiss the third way as mystical nonsense. You would be surprised at the number of supposed scientific discoveries that are precipitated serendipitously in this manner.

I would suggest that the dreams of most people are the rumblings of the subconscious mind when the surface mind is more or less quiescent in sleep. Be assured that when the subconscious mind is purged of mass trivia and pollution of various sorts and is trained to be quiet, another whole species of dreams become accessible with proper training. You can call it the superconscious mind if you wish.

With proper internal and external guidance, you discover that you are being trained to choose your own trek every step of the way and to choose wisely using the tools you have earned by merit.

You begin to understand that one receives the guidance he or she deserves based on previous actions.

The guidelines continue until the path becomes part of your DNA and you don’t have to think about it so much anymore. The way becomes implicit in your being.

You begin to realize that at a certain stage of the journey other choices start to fade and there really is no other choice. There is only the way, the immutable way that is your life and sustenance.

The way can continue for as long as one might imagine. Sometimes much longer if you confuse the preliminary approach with the final ascent. 

I used to think there were shortcuts, that I could cut across the switchbacks, that I could blaze my own trail.

Again, I had to learn the hard way. Sometimes I could scramble to the top only to discover a false summit with the way back beyond my skills and lightning threatening to blast me off the ridge.

Often my life was hanging by a foolish thread but I never gave up and survived to walk another day, another month, another year. I was driven and compelled to keep walking. 

Now, almost half a century later, by virtue of skin and soul in the game of life, I have learned a few things. I have a torch, a baton to pass to the next generations who might prove worthy of receiving it.

Look at the opportunity not so much in the context of the Galilean Master who said “follow me” (Matthew 4:19), but more in the spirit of a seasoned ski instructor I met in Zermatt back in the day when I had the Swiss girlfriend who flew for PanAm.

We had met on that flight out of Delhi and the relationship had continued through the years with rendezvous at exotic locations in obscure parts of the world. Ruthli was based in Honolulu and obviously wanted a change from the alps. That’s why she flew for PanAm instead of Swiss Air. (Blonde and lovely, her real name was Ruth. Sweet Ruth. I added the “-li” diminutive because that was my private name for her and her Swiss attempt at un-Swissness.)

Now we were on holiday back home visiting her family and looking to hone our skiing skills. A family friend had introduced us to one of the coterie of legendary Zermatt ski instructors.

Well fortified with Raclette and Kirschwasser we were out on the slopes overshadowed by the Matterhorn after formal classes had ended. The instructor casually looked us over and with perfectly accented British English said,

“Follow me.”

He pushed off-piste down the mountain as the shadows were lengthening with the last run of the day.

I cannot possibly tell you what to do or what not to do without invitation. Otherwise, I suffer the uninvited consequences. I can tell you what I have done, what I am doing and what I intend to do in the future. Consider this exposition as an ad libitum prescription for your use going forward in the eternal quest for the lost golden age.

New Ordnance
Mountains of Montana
Winter 2025