About Bombs

July 27th, 2023

I am now camped a little south of Leadville. I am at a dispersed site along Halfmoon Creek at the foot of Mount Massive. I have camped off and on here for the last 4 summers. It is a nice area along a rushing creek, yet close to town for groceries and mail. The elevation is slightly under 10,000 feet, so days generally reach 72 degrees and nights are in the upper 40s. As Leadville is just on the other side of the upper Arkansas River valley, there is a strong cell signal.

Each morning after I make breakfast, I go out to check my hummingbird feeder. It hangs on the side of the trailer and needs to be refilled about every 3rd day. There are currently 7 Broad Tailed Hummingbirds that visit, and 1 Rufous Hummingbird. The Rufous is a bright copper orange on the sides and back and is very striking. It is also a bully. It likes to chase off the other as it feels the feeder belongs to it. A single bird can’t be around all the time though, so the other 7 get their fill of “nectar”. Thus, the need for refills every few days. Sometimes as I fill, they swarm around like angry buzzing bumble bees. I watch them from the other side of my screened window next to my bed. They are only about 1 1/2 feet from my head when they visit, so it is easy to see the iridescent colors of their feathers.

I have been spending time on shorter hikes in the area and drove down to Silverthorne yesterday to walk along the Blue River below Dillon Reservoir. There were several fly fishing guides working with college age ladies in groups of 2 to 4. I watched as several of them stood in the cold water and caught 16 – 18 inch cutthroat trout. At the nearby movie theater in Dillon, I caught showings of “Sound of Freedom” and a few days later, “Oppenheimer”. I did not remember many details about Oppenheimer and the Manhattan Project during World War II, but as I watched memories came back. I believe when I was around 11 or 12 years old, my father gave me the book “Hiroshima”. I read about the building and testing of the first atomic bomb, the people involved and the devastation caused when it was dropped in Japan. I think my father wanted me to know about the scientist’s triumph of discovery as well as the horrific toll in human loss when it was used. I also knew when in the Navy in 1945, he had shipped out of San Diego, California, headed for Hawaii and eventually the invasion of the Japanese Home Islands (expected to result in millions of deaths). That invasion never happened, but had it, I most likely would not now be writing this post.

When I last posted, I mentioned that the next day I would be at the hospital for a procedure to try and correct my errant heart beat. That was a week ago. They sedated me and ran a tube down my esophagus, using ultra-sound to view the inside of my heart. They needed to check for blood clots before doing the “shock” portion of the procedure. Well, they found a blood clot attached to the upper chamber wall of my heart by a small appendage. It was bouncing around in the blood flow as my heart pumped. And, that was that. The rest was cancelled due to the risk of that clot breaking free.

Needless to say the result was very disappointing. I now have to wait for 2 months, hoping the clot will dissolve and they can continue. If it does not dissolve, then I will be out of luck and most likely will live with Arterial Fibrillation, leading somewhere down the road to heart failure. If it does dissolve, the procedure may not work, as I will have been in A-fib too long and the heart will most likely not stay in normal rhythm. Or, the clot could just break loose, as in the cardiologist words, I have a ticking time bomb in my heart.

I do not think about this much. I continue to hike, fish and see the sights of nature. As a couple of friends told me, first among them my good friend Sai, who said “You do not know when the end will be. It would be a shame to waste the time you have left worrying. Keep enjoying your life”.

So, that is what I am doing. Sunday, I will move a little north, to Camp Hale, a new National Monument along the Eagle River, with good Brown Trout fishing.