Before Fall Goes (Detour #19)

Campaign Manager: “Twenty-five percent of people are psychopaths.”

Me: “Really? I sure hope that isn’t true.”

Campaign Manager: “It is. A college professor told me so. And obviously the other party is full of psychopaths and that’s why they don’t care who they hurt.”

Honest to God, she really said that. She called the other party by name, of course, but does it really matter which one she believed to be full of Neanderthal knuckle-draggers without an ounce of empathy when a puppy gets kicked in the head? It could have been either side. A day after last week’s election olive branches were flying and politicians were rushing to the microphone to announce their eagerness to break the gridlock in Washington, but nobody was buying their newfound Kumbaya. The bitterness runs too deep to be sweetened by a single November day. And honestly, I suspect a lot of us are perfectly happy with the dysfunction, since a Washington that works might change something and change is a scary thing. But could we at least have our status quo without having to listen to the hate?

For the record, the internet tells me psychopaths make up only 1% of the population, not 25%, a correction I find comforting. Even if we give some wiggle room to the number, add a percentage point or two just to account for the impressive amount of Washington crazy, I still think it’s a pretty good bet most politicians love their mothers and want to go home at the end of the day believing they’ve done some good.

Which is what I did after my conversation with the campaign manager and the recording session that went along with it—I headed home hoping I’d done some good. I didn’t go straight home though. I’d tried to take the scenic route past beautiful Sequiota Park only to find construction had blocked the road, and having to turn around and pass the park a second time proved too much temptation, especially as I had my husband’s Nikon D300 sitting beside me in the van. Here are a few of my shots of fall:

No camera can replace the Nikon, but our brand new Canon SX60 is trying hard to strut its stuff despite my inability to master its supposedly simple settings. This was shot a few days after my stop at the park, and the camera kept trying to lock onto the window screen instead of the roses outside, but I don’t give up easy. It’s the view from our commode. Who says we’re not as blessed as the geese?

Another shot with my Canon SX60. The lens has a 65x zoom and I used a tripod to test it on the birds in my backyard shrubbery. This was taken from about 30 feet away.

The temps are dropping to the teens tonight and it’s supposed to snow this weekend, so it’s winter already in all but name. This shot from October warms me though. The ragged peaks of the Sangre de Cristo range stand across the valley, but I hiked to these aspens over rolling hills. The grove blankets a slope above a trickling creek and comes as near to my image of heaven as any spot I’ve seen. The world simply falls away there like the aspen’s yellow leaves, which must all be gone by now. Did you know an aspen grove is a single organism, one living thing with no way of knowing where the roots of one tree ends and another begins? These many are actually one. Washington could learn a lesson from the aspens.

Keep warm and stay safe from the psychopaths. And peace.