paperbacks and peaks

the HB prefers hardcover books because they last longer and still look nice. He would love to have shelves full of collections of hardback books someday. I prefer paperback books because you can bend them. And when you're done reading them they look used, but they also look loved. I like that things break down and decay. I like it when things get overgrown by other things. I like that species become extinct--not when sped by human action, but when it naturally occurs--and when new species or existing ones' population grows to fill the gap, thus altering the ecosystem again to create other extinctions and flourishes (I just finished reading “Cod” and the fictional “children of men”—both great stories of population growth and decline).

What's cool is that the HB and I both love old buildings. He's into history and I think the decay is plain romantic. This weekend we backpacked up to Emerald Lake with April and Bill and then summitted Mount Timpanogos. There’s an old shelter by the lake that’s been vandalized. I don’t think it gets used much now but I wish I could see it when it was thriving. When Tyler and I went to San Francisco in July we got to explore the ruins of an old bath house by the coast and then compare it to the poster picture of what it must have looked like. That was awesome.

Tyler is the shiz. He hiked up by himself to meet us at the lake Saturday night after his football team’s scrimmage. It was dark by then and a long hard hike with a pack, especially on a trail he’d never been on before. I was so worried about him and probably drove him crazy by continuously calling him on his way up. Then I hiked down a ways to meet him and show him our campsite. Bill built some chairs out of rocks and our site looked really awesome. In the morning I couldn’t wait to show Tyler the area and to get up to the top with him. It was cool to hike to the peak together and then all the way back down even though I thought the last mile or two was going to kill me. When we got down we both grabbed a 32-ouncer at the gas station, for me, a vanilla Diet Coke, woohoo!