The absolute truth, denial, and opportunity and phase four

I finished phase three in Missoula Mt. This leg of my journey was wet, windy, and mostly cloudy but not any less contemplative and enlightening. Have I learned anything more about myself that I already didn't know?

Some, but mostly I clarified for myself more of my own contradictions. One of these contradictions is my ability to look at the big picture future while ignoring the nuts and bolts needed to make my ideas/plans work. I am simply not good at minutia. For example I was able to work with Rory Reynolds to design and implement the west's first large-scale (state wide) ecologic restoration program right smack in the middle of red-necked Utah. Both of us were large-scale thinkers and had it not been for the luck of designing a program that relied on minutia managers and finding key players, we probably wouldn't have had the success we had. And we both stubbornly refused to hear the word "No" or phrases like: "we've never done it that way," "why fix it if it isn't broken (in this case the environment was and is really broken)", "why should I care?", and "we don't have a process in place to deal with that."

One of the things I've thought about is "truth." I've said that: "the absolute truth is always filtered through your personal paradigms." This is what makes us unreliable witnesses.
"But I saw it (the accident, human exacerbated climate change, etc) differently therefore your version is wrong and if  you insist on telling the story that way you're lying!" we say or at least think it when someone shares a different version of the truth.

But the truth is either boring or very scary. For example a well written memouir--which should be about your truth--would be boring if the author didn't color in the edges of the true story as that person remembers it! One of the more serious consequences of exposure to the absolute truth is the denial that we pull on like a coat to protect our values, our world view, our version of the truth. Everyone does this!

The biggest challenges we had when we started Utah Restoration Initiative were paradigms like:

1. there isn't anything wrong with ecosystems! (in fact most systems are seriously departed from naturally functioning processes)
2. climate change is natural and no, we didn't exacerbate it! (climate change is natural but we've been changing the carbon load since the beginning of the industrial revolution, increasing silt in our reservoirs by destroying native ranges by grazing (cattle and other ungulates including some wildlife species) and arcane fire management practices, increasing devastating infections of vast public land forests and increasing silt loading by "tree farm management" practices, etc.)
3. if we only kick the cows off, quit cutting down forests like we do, etc. it will all look nice in our life time; (maybe but only if a number of things come together like we pull out of the five-decade long general drying change in the west, we change other adverse actions like: arcane fire control/reclamation policies, fragmentation of habitat, poorly planned uses on public land, poorly planned development, really poor use of water, etc.)
4. and last: why should I care? (zero sum is a hard thing to overcome!)

Part of denial is that we're stuck in the present, assaulted by conflicting media, conflicting science, conflicting world views,poorly articulated truths about the environment (especially by me!) and poorly articulated opportunities for fixing things. We have a great number of options. But we don't want to see, for example, that a southern Utah stream needs periodic devastation to stay healthy in the long-term. Instead we want to see knee-deep grass, sprouting cottonwoods waving in the breeze, trout jumping, and Bambi snuggled down in its warm bed. These are part of stream health but the nasty side: scoured stream beds, raw gravel beds, ripped up clumps of willows, etc. are just as much a part of that health. So. I've coined a phrase that fits ecologic things as well as personal "truths." I call it:  Polaroid Mentality or Snap Shot in Time Mentality. This thought process is the poster child of denial, does not allow for growth, for evolutionary change, for opportunity instead this denial blinds us to potential, to hope, to action. Everyone who has adult children has a snap shot in time of their favorite age of that child. When we first see them we usually don't speak to the adult child instead we speak to the child in that photo! Conflict!!! This by the way is one of my personal contradictions.
The absolute truth can be disheartening and very scary. But the consequences of denial are devastating in the long-term to the environment around us, our relationships with family, and with our personal growth. I am stubbornly committed to seeing the facts of life (the world around us): over-population, pollution, personal conflict, as incredible opportunities. It is incumbent on me to think long-term (I can't think any other way anyhow!); to have faith that the restoration work I've had a hand in, that my personal changes work, that I can only fix things incrementally, that I can rally just enough people to take action, and last that I may not live long enough to see the positive results of my effort!

I had to use my stubborn streak to make the miles I needed to make in order to get to Missoula in time to catch a plane. The minutia I left out was forgetting that I'm 61 and don't have the legs I once had to pedal several 50+ mile days consecutively. In this case, I got rained out the first couple of days and was able to ride just half of a daily goal. I'm not a Tour d France competitor. They only drugs I take are lots of B-complex, protein, and chocolate--dark 70% chocolate if you please. So I had to do three back-to-back days of at least 75 miles. I can and have done 100 (century rides) or even a couple of 100+ (super-century) rides but I have only attempted to do two of them back to back once.  My legs felt like wood when I finished, I couldn't feel anything from my butt both ways, my brain was seized, even the little bit of hair I have left on my head hurt!
But I did it. I ignored my butt, popped B-Complex like candy, drank protein shakes (chocolate of course--thanks to Rob my trainer at Holladay Health and Fitness in Utah who sold me chocolate protein powder), and I stopped often to see the sights. Seeing an Osprey struggling to pull a fish out of the Clark Fork (bigger than any trout I've ever hooked!), listening to the silence of the wind, the river speaking words of a language that we have forgotten how to hear, seeing a deer with her fawn resting under a shrub at streams edge, made it much better.
Part of the road (nine miles) was cliff on the uphill side, white stripe, two winding narrow lanes, white stripe and river! Oh! The distant sound of two logging trucks approaching: one upstream one downstream, the adrenalin surge needed to pedal hard around a tight curve in the hope that they would see me and at least know what they had run over, the muscle spasms in my back when I made it out of this section alive; oh yes, this is fun! When I got out of the gauntlet I stopped, and after I dislodged the bicycle saddle from my lower body, I lay down next to the river and thought about my family, my grand daughter, and how luck can work out sometimes instead of pre-planning!

Next and last phase for this phase is Missoula to Great Falls. I need to finish this part of the tour on the eastern slope.