ThomStratton.com

The kids had a couple days off from school this week, so I took today off work. We all headed up Millcreek Canyon to the Big Water Trail up to Dog Lake. We figured we’ve got the dog, they’ve got the lake–it’s a perfect combination!

We’ve missed the peak of the fall foliage, but the mountain is still quite resplendent. It was a beautiful day out, though a little chilly to begin with. We didn’t notice after a while, partly because Sam likes to climb mountains even faster than Richard!

Dog lake is about three miles up, along the ridge between Millcreek and Big Cottonwood Canyons. There are actually two ways to get there, but only one trail allows dogs. It took us a awhile, but we finally found it.

Sam is a black lab, so we were a bit surprised that he’s not really a water dog. He doesn’t mind getting wet, but it’s not his favorite thing by any stretch. He was happy enough to chase sticks into the lake, but if we threw them too far out he would just let them go. One time he went too far out and had to swim a little to get back, and that was it for him.
He wasn’t about to chase anything more than about five feet from shore. The important thing is that he didn’t want to stop playing, in any case. We’d still be up there now if he had his way. But we were big meanies and made him come back down with us. We thought he would be a little tired after that, but no. He pulled us all the way down the mountain, too. And when we got home he was still ready to play.

Of course now that we’re home and had lunch and everyone gone their own direction he’s finally crashing. That’s our Sam: play hard, sleep hard, live life with gusto.

Millcreek Canyon has some really nice trails. You have to pay a little per car to get in, but it was well worth it for the gorgeous scenery, fresh mountain air, and the last hurrah of fall colors. It’s really a treat to have trails this nice so close to home.

I don’t think YouTube knows what to do with me. Every time I go there they present me with a page full of recommendations based on what they think I like. If I click on one of those links and watch a video they seem to think I like everything like that and start showing me a bunch of stuff from that same channel. Far too often, one is enough, and I don’t want to see more like it, so I click to tell them I’m not interested. They’re probably thinking, “Make up your mind!!”

Everybody wants to rule the world. Unless there’s time travel, and then they want to kill Hitler.

I love skipping rocks, but this guy, Kurt Steiner, takes it to a whole new level. He’s the current world record holder, with 88 skips.

But clearly even the experts don’t get it right all the time. And, not surprisingly, people can turn this into a competition with rules and regulations.

Here’s one of the comtestants from the second video explaining how he got into it.

Okay, I don’t think I’ll become a competitor, but I’d like to improve my rock-skipping. I guess I need to watch these guys more carefully and see what I can learn.

Gandalf was old. Dumbledore was old. Obi Wan Kenobi was old. Curly in City Slickers was old. It seems in our literature and entertainment, at least, we equate wisdom with age. Even in our Sunday comics the guru at the top of the mountain, to which everyone goes for wisdom, is an old guy.

Funny, then, that in everyday life we immediately assume that any old person is out-of-touch at best, knee-deep in dotage at worst. Except for the Dalai Lama, so long as he keeps his jokes politically correct, of course, or Pope Francis on a good day.

I suspect the wisdom of our elders is relative–relative to whether or not we like what they have to say. Indulgent grandparents are great when we’re the kids they’re indulging, but transform into obnoxious saboteurs when it’s our kids they’re hopping up on sugar and handing back to us.

But in that light, I have to wonder where we got the wise elder stereotype in the first place, then. Did it used to be true, and we’re just producing an inferior crop of elderly these days? Or are we just experiencing another form of that proverbial teenage malady of “the older I get, the smarter my parents become”?

I’d vote the latter. We see them struggle with new tech, for example, and assume that, just because they’re struggling with a smartphone, they’ve never experienced disruptive tech before and have no frame of reference that could apply. It’s more likely a different, related form of teenage malady, the “no one could ever understand me and what I’m going through.” We find it easy to believe that the elderly couldn’t possibly understand conditions today, and couldn’t possibly be clued in enough to have any applicable wisdom to share.

Especially if it’s a message we don’t want to hear.

And I suppose, for some people, or for some topics, that’s probably true. I wouldn’t go to my mom, for example, for advice on how to fix my computer. But I’ll bet she knows more than I might suspect about how to encourage my kids to maintain balance in their time on the computer or smart phones and other activities. It may not have been smart phones, but I suspect that the television and video game systems were a similar concern when she was raising me, and whatever insights she gained from hard experience would probably apply.

But no, we like to think we’re special, that today’s troubles have no analog (pun intended) in the “old days”, and that we’re breaking new ground in our wisdom of youth. The elderly are far too chill about all of this–or far too worried–and can’t be trusted to know the real score. They can’t possibly understand the complex times we live in. Right?

I hear that–or variations thereon–said about the leaders of my church, for example. People feel that having so many old people running the show can’t be a good thing. They’re out of touch. They can’t possibly understand the new, modern world  we live in. They’re too mired in the ideas and morality of the past. At best they really need us young people to help them sort things out.

It’s actually rather amusing, when you think about it. Laying aside whether or not they have direct access to divine wisdom, these aging gentlemen spend much of their time each year traveling around the country and around the world. They probably talk to more people in the space of a month than I do in a year, and more new people in a week. Among the fifteen top leaders of the church, they probably visit more foreign countries in a month than I’ve even flown over in my life. They probably have more “on the ground” experience with foreign nations and the issues facing their people than most US Presidents have after their term of office, let alone before.

But they’re so old!! Why, some of them only got on Facebook this year! Most of them still haven’t!

Considering my love-hate relationship with Facebook, I’m not sure that’s not a point in their favor, actually.

I think it’s terribly ironic that we only consider our elderly to be wise in fiction. Perhaps that’s because in fiction they’re usually proven to be right within a few hundred pages at most, whereas in real life it may be years or decades before the proof is evident–and by that time we’ve forgotten that they ever said anything at all. But the other half the equation in fiction usually proves just as true as it does in reality: the young whippersnapper to whom they dispense their wisdom almost never listens. To them, the aged are only wise when they tell them what they want to hear.

It would make for interesting performance art to put someone on a street corner and have them shout out the things posted on people’s Facebook feeds. Interesting in the way a Westboro Baptist Church protestor or a street prophet of questionable sanity is interesting. You’d want to duck your head, refuse to make eye contact, and hurry on.

This occurred to me the other night while wading through my Facebook feed. If a person’s Facebooking is a snapshot of their life, there are some of my friends I really have to feel bad for. They live to be offended, and seem to have few interests outside of freaking out over the latest injustice in their sphere of attention. They live angry, reactionary lives while providing little value other than to validate other angry, reactionary people. Granted, to look at my feed would probably suggest I have no life at all–and that’s probably true.

But, as I’ve observed many times before, I have to wonder if these people would really be like this in person. If they found themselves on a streetcorner with a handy soap box, would they choose to shout to the masses the same things they post to the masses online? I know I wouldn’t. I’m emboldened by the fact that my Facebook friends are supposedly just that–friends, and therefore might have some interest in what I have to say.

It makes me wonder what sort of image I project to my friends online. Hopefully I’m the wise old guy in the corner who only speaks when he has something interesting or useful to say. I doubt it, though. I’m probably the annoying guy who randomly blurts out something, but mostly just says, “If you want to know what I think, you’ll need to follow this link and read something long and tedious.” I rarely post much on Facebook, other than a link to my daily blog post. I probably comment more on other people’s posts than I post my own material.

But I digress. I understand a little negativity here and there, but there are people who spew up several dozen negative posts at a time, mostly angry reactions or reposting of other people’s angry reactions. I feel sorry and helpless–these people are clearly experiencing pain, are quite obviously not enjoying their life, and yet there is nothing I can do to help them. They would probably respond to my efforts to help with more angry reaction.

How do we help these people, I wonder. How do we reach out to those who seems as though they’re crying out for it, but in a medium very un-conducive to rendering true help? Social media is very good for broadcasting your hurt and pain, but very poor for responding to it in an effective, caring, personal way.

At the very least, I hope I don’t become like that myself. The world doesn’t need more negativity. The trick is learning how to become part of the solution.

I know that it’s a running gag now of how Disney is going to ruin Star Wars. But this is pretty darn good…and almost makes me want to see it!

We have a big, energetic dog who likes to chase things. We also have yard that is limited in how much room there is to chase things. Fortunately we have a dog park not far from our house. We’ve begun taking Sam there now and then, and a few times I’ve been able to go along.

This weekend we went at a time we don’t usually go and found it a little crowded. But we were already there, and we needed to wear our dog out a little, so we stayed. Previously the other dogs have shown no interest in chasing a ball that wasn’t theirs, but this time was different. There were at least two different dogs who love chasing balls as much as our Sam, and they were both faster than him.

Sam didn’t care. He just loved the thrill of the chase. If someone else got it, that was fine, so long as they brought it back for another throw. I think we ultimately went home with a different ball than we’d brought, but that was not much of a concern. Dogs–well, at least most dogs–seem to know how to share.

We went again the next day and found it even more crowded. Big dogs, little dogs, young dogs, old dogs, purebreds, mutts. There was a trio of dogs that were the welcoming committee, blocking the gate to enter in their excitement to welcome newcomers. There were half a dozen dogs that circled around the park at random, checking out people and dogs and generally looking for entertainment. Pockets of dogs and people clustered here and there, some just watching everyone else, some just playing with their owners. Every so often a ball would go flying and a stampede of dogs would go hurtling after it.

The most fitting description was “Joyful chaos.” The only common denominator was that nearly every tail was wagging and every mouth was hanging open with tongues hanging out. Most every dog looked like they were having the absolute time of their life. Occasionally a play fight would break out, but otherwise dogs could bump one another, trip over one another, or jump on each other, but no one minded. They were all just focused on having fun, and could be incredibly patient in their pursuit of that fun.

You’re probably thinking I’m leading up to a moral about how people should learn to be more like dogs. If you’re thinking that, then I don’t need to. I mainly just wanted to try and describe a place I find particularly fun to hang out. Not everyone would, of course. Some people would find that a suitable definition of hell. But for me, a dog lover, there are few things more contagiously happy than a happy dog. Having a whole park full of them seems like, if not heaven, at least an awfully fun place to be.

Sam (right) and his new friend Bubba. They both love chasing balls. Bubba is pretty darn fast for a little guy.