Schweitzer Summit
I hadn’t been hiking on Schweitzer since 1979. Not much has changed. That’s how it is with the physical world. It outlasts all of us. We’re just a blip in time. Sure we think we’re forever, but despite all the hosannas, even Michael Jackson’s music will soon be forgotten. It’s not human nature…we’re talking Mother Nature!
Last August in route to the Harley-Davidson 105th Anniversary celebration I posted about the posse travels and stop in Sandpoint, Idaho which is home to Schweitzer. And again over this past July 4th holiday weekend I found myself disconnected from everything deemed important and traveling the “long-bridge” across Lake Pend Oreille (pronounced: ‘pond –oh– ray’)… the largest natural lake in Idaho. The lake is 65 miles long and over 1100 feet deep in some areas which explains why the Navy continues to perform underwater acoustic testing at an old WWII base.
Schweitzer mountain is an amusement park of the mind. Rather than going on rides, being turned upside down by some mechanical contraption, you look at the Selkirk Mountain landscape and your mind does somersaults. How did this happen? It’s hard to imagine a glacier which was part of the continental ice sheet forming a lake over 800 feet deep as far away as Missoula, Montana. Now it’s only a “small” remnant of all that glacial action.
One evening relaxing from a mountain hike I happen onto HBO and watched the Nicholas Stoller movie, “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” starring Jason Segel and Kristen Bell. It’s a comic look at one guy’s herculean task to deal with and get over a recent break-up. Overall the movie was better than I first thought and afterward’s I caught the local news who were in an uproar over Sarah Palin’s resignation. Palin was born in Sandpoint, and her father, Charles R. Heath, was a science teacher and track coach. I attended school where Charles taught after my father pulled orders for a tour in Vietnam and we relocated closer to relatives. Even though the Palin family moved to Alaska when she was an infant many in the area have a source of pride in her connection to the city.
Lake Pend Oreille
I couldn’t help but connect the dots between the movie and how the resignation were seemingly intertwined. Palin was like the ex-girlfriend they’re SO over, never want to see again, have already forgotten about – really it’s OVER – but they can’t stop talking about her. Whatever you think of Palin, her argument for resigning seemed logical and the only “incoherent rambling” was coming from the obsessively focused media who couldn’t stop talking about her resignation and her potential TV show…yep, they are SO over her! I half expect to see Keith Obermann (MSNBC) crying because he has no one to help drive up his viewer numbers.
Instead most folks that I visited were asking: Have you seen all the Michael Jackson coverage on TV? Or speaking of resignations, how’s work going? And what’s going on with all the IED troop casualties in Afghanistan? It was a hysteria filled July 4th news cycle, but I’m thinking everyone needs to take a moment of pause, get some wind in the face, hike a mountain summit and enjoy becoming placed in natural perspective.
Photos taken at Sandpoint and Schweitzer Summit.
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