Some of the results of last Saturday’s wanderings. The wildflowers are in evidence nearly everywhere you look. Hiking through entire fields of them stretching off into the distance is such a pleasure:
The view toward Snowmass lake (you can just see it) that you can get from being on top of Buckskin pass at 12500 feet. There’s still snow on the ground:
It’s a pleasant lunch spot indeed. Then one pops back down.
If it is not already good for one’s thinking equipment being at 8000 feet day to day at the Physics Center, coming up here certainly clears out the cobwebs. It is odd though – I really do have much clearer thoughts (computations seem to work out more quickly, more efficiently… my insights seem to go a little deeper, and so forth) when I’m visiting here. I don’t really know why that is. I’m pretty sure the fantastic thunder and lightning storms help a lot. I love those, and we’ve been getting them quite regularly, along with a great deal of rain, which is a treat for me given the drought conditions over the last year or more back home in LA. But the storms and rain can’t be all that’s doing it. Is it the altitude and reduced oxygen? The light? The smell of the pine trees in the air? It all seems to help me get a lot of really quality work done. Perhaps it is just the lack of distractions. Or that the main overwhelming distraction to thinking is the urge to go for a walk or hike and think some more.
I think I’ll be lacing on the boots* again and trying a bit of cobweb–clearing again today. Not that it feels like there are any left, but you never know….
-cvj
(*If you’ve been keeping track, they’re working marvellously.)
