End of September

 Son Tai took me seriously when I said I wanted to go by the river (Animas River).

Quite a colorful playground, at Santa Rita Park...where all these photos were taken.

The Emma Sweeny is another reason for the park by the river.

Horse sculptures, with riders. I kind of thought they had wings at first.

It's hard to see that rocks are making white water out in the river here. A few days of rain meant the parking lot we stood in was pretty wet still, but at least not too muddy.

This is a take out point for some of the rafting outfits, where they pick up passengers and rafts on busses to take them back to their starting point.

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Life becomes much more interesting once we let go of our quest for perfection and aspire for imperfection instead.

Ouch!

 Tooth ache! Yelped with pain when tried to drink something cool. Wow. That was Wednesday last week. 

Fortunately Ibuprofen and Tylenol helped with the pain, and switching to hot beverages.

Dental appointment coming up next week. will I make it?

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OK let's share something a bit more interesting. The above photo was part of a series up at Fort Lewis College.

Interesting to note that lots of forts keep their names, no matter who they were named after.

Anyway there's a great display with a photo naming the mountains to the west of Durango. Unfortunately the elements haven't been kind to it.

First I must say I mis-heard my son telling me I saw Heron's Peak out my windows. Turns out it's Perin's Peak! 

The taller peak on the left of the photo below is Perin's Peak. Then way across is  the squared off Barnroof Point (center). Silver Mountain would be the far distant triangular peak behind Barnroof Point. (My best guess.)

Silver Mountain is where I'm looking to see early snow...but unfortunately I can't see it from down in Durango below the college.

The Animas River can be glimpsed by the large buildings...perhaps the high school or fairgrounds, not sure.

My teeth weren't bothering me that afternoon, and I even skipped wearing the oxygen thing for the short stop of looking at the mountains. Tai is trying to figure out what happened to the app which was supposed to identify mountains for him, which was failing to do so. His compass app was also not working. Oops for technology!

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Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to, and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them. 

-Frederick Douglass, abolitionist, editor and orator (1817-1895)

This can happen to any of us

 UN Climate Change on Facebook

“The climate crisis is accelerating – but so are the solutions.”

United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres addressed leaders at the UN Climate Summit 2026 in New York with an urgent call to action:

“We have seen how fossil fuel dependence wreaks havoc – driving up costs, draining budgets, squeezing households. And leaving countries at the mercy of conflicts and decisions far beyond their borders.

We must match an accelerating crisis with accelerating action.”

The solutions are clear: transitioning away from planet-heating fossil fuels and strengthening resilience, especially for the most affected and the most vulnerable.

In the Secretary-General’s words: “Renewables are the cheapest, fastest, and most secure source of new electricity almost everywhere. Clean energy has gone from alternative to unstoppable.

Without adaptation, droughts become hunger crises; storms become debt crises; and heatwaves become killers.

We are the first generation with the tools to end the fossil fuel age – and the last who can avert climate catastrophe.”

More: https://www.un.org/.../secretary-generals-remarks-the...

John Walter (on his Substack) gives his opinion on:

The 5 Places In America You DON’T Want To Be When Society Begins To Collapse

His conclusions are based upon this way of thinking:

When we speak of the end of the world as we know it, we usually imagine spectacular explosions: nuclear bombs, killer pandemics, cyber attacks that extinguish the lights in an instant. But history teaches us that civilizations more often die in whispers, through gradual erosion, through the accumulation of micro-failures that, on a certain morning, transform into catastrophic system failure.  

His concluding paragraphs follow, after he had gone into detail why the Northeast Corridor, California, Florida, Phoenix, and The Industrial Midwest are not good places to live.

 The five regions examined share characteristics making them particularly vulnerable to systemic collapse: high population density, infrastructure dependency, environmental stress, and limited exit options. They are not the only vulnerable regions in the United States, but they represent concentrations of risk exceeding national averages by significant margins.

For those finding themselves in these regions, questions become ones of timing and preparation. Relocation is optimal strategy, but it requires resources, flexibility, and willingness to abandon social networks and economic opportunities that may have taken decades to build. For those who cannot relocate, preparation takes form of redundancy: water storage, food reserves, alternative heating or cooling, communication plans, and community networks providing mutual aid when formal systems fail.

But beyond the practicalities of preparation lies a deeper recognition that we have built our civilization on assumptions of permanence that geology and physics do not guarantee. The Northeast Corridor assumes that water can be moved hundreds of miles indefinitely. California assumes that desert can be made to bloom through engineering will. Florida assumes that the ocean can be held back by pumps and walls. Phoenix assumes that heat can be air-conditioned into submission. The Industrial Midwest assumes that pension promises can be kept through financial alchemy.

These assumptions have persisted because, for decades, they have worked well enough. The water has flowed, the crops have grown, the cities have functioned, the checks have cleared. But systems operating at the edge of their capacity have no margin for disruption. They are, in the terminology of engineers, “brittle”—strong under normal conditions but prone to catastrophic failure when stressed beyond design parameters.

What the next decade may bring is unclear. Perhaps the infrastructure investments that have been promised for generations will finally materialize. Perhaps the climate models are too pessimistic, and the jet stream will stabilize, and the rains will return, and the aquifers will recharge. Perhaps the financial wizards will discover some mechanism for making the mathematics of pension obligations work. Perhaps.

But perhaps not. And if the systems do begin to cascade into mutual failure—if the water stops flowing, and the power goes dark, and the trucks no longer arrive, and the temperature does things that human bodies cannot survive—then your location will determine whether you are among those who adapt or among those who become statistics in a catastrophe that future historians will struggle to explain.

The choice, for now, remains yours. The window, according to those who watch these systems most carefully, may be narrower than we wish to believe. The ground is shifting. The question is whether we will feel it in time to move our feet.

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I may not be a "prepper" - the term I think used for those people trying to live completely "off the grid." But I have already lived through one catastrophe where the infrastructure of a community failed. And since I depend upon having electricity (not to mention food and water) for medical conditions, I do take this seriously.

As the second anniversary (Sept. 27) of Hurricane Helene just passed, those of us who were impacted (and still are) in Western North Carolina are considering how we reacted, and what we hope to do differently to have better outcomes from failures of the systems we depend upon.

Those weeks and months changed the lives of people who had never expected tropical storms to toss their mountain homes and the very infrastructures of electric power, cell service, water and sewer services, roadways, and governance into chaos.

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Of note are not just the personal tragedies, but that I-40, an interstate highway, is still under repair where it was damaged by storm waters near the North Carolina/Tennessee border - two years later!!

DOT published this shot of the Pigeon River taking out part of I-40 on Sept. 27, 2026, saved from FaceBook Oct 16.

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I personally have seen that the biggest unexpected wonderful thing that happened was how neighbors helped each other with this sudden catastrophe in North Carolina.

Everyone showed respect of each other's lives...safety first! Gone were political or religious differences. Shared were any resources, no matter how meager their stockpile. Finding solutions to the new difficulties was everyone's job. For instance, having no supplies or communication (cell towers were down) there suddenly appeared poster board signs on telephone poles saying where to go to get a hot meal, or drinking water, or where there would be a meeting. Volunteers prepared those hot meals, mostly being served at churches.

And a community town meeting in the town square was facilitated by a brilliant young Forest Service volunteer. That format was soon followed by the larger city governments...whose officials valiently tried to provide answers through whatever media was available. 

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Our brokenness is also the source of our common humanity, the basis for our shared search for comfort, meaning, and healing. Our shared vulnerability and imperfection nurtures and sustains our capacity for compassion.

BRYAN STEVENSON

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Pottery at the Durango Autumn Arts Festival

Abby Lou Pottery was a nice collection of seasonal things.

The best of people dealing with the worst of Gaia

Hurricane Helene devastated western North Carolina Sept. 27, 2024

Gaia (mother earth) is going through the climate crisis. It is not just one storm. It is not just one season of El Nino.

What is most interesting is being an observer...one of the people who have watched this happening over several years (a decade?)

And seeing what happens whenever people have to deal with a climate crisis. In person. Together. Reaching out to help one another!

Again and again.

What would you do? You never know for sure.

But the stories of helpers aren't just fabrications.

Rev. Fred Rogers, of Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood was right, look for the helpers.

Biltmore Ave at Swannanoa River Road. Sept. 27, 2024. I frequently would drive through and pick up lunch at that Wendy's.

Asheville Mall in background on Tunnel Road.

The French Broad River  by Victoria A. Ifatusin

Ole' Guacamole's Restaurant flooded by Flat Creek in Black Mountain

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 What did I learn after Hurricane Helene? By Beloved Asheville Love in action, FB group

I learned that political divisions fade when the only hands we have are the hands of our neighbors, when the only hope we have is the strength of our community.

What did I learn after Hurricane Helene?

I learned that possessions can be swept away in a moment, but every survivor repeats the same truth: life, family, and love are what truly matter. Everything else can be rebuilt.

What did I learn after Hurricane Helene?

I learned that strangers will risk their lives for friends they have not yet met, without hesitation, proving that human compassion runs deeper than fear.

What did I learn after Hurricane Helene?

I learned that in the midst of destruction, even the smallest act of kindness can light up someone’s entire world—a meal, a blanket, a word of comfort, a hand held in the dark.

What did I learn after Hurricane Helene?

I learned that the world we dream of—a world where love for our neighbor is our daily practice—is not a utopia. It is real. We lived it. Something within us synchronized, vibrating with Radical Love, reminding us that unity is not an idea, but a living truth.

One year later, the storm is behind us, but its lessons remain. If we carry them forward, we do more than rebuild homes—we rebuild hope, community, and humanity itself. Together, we heal. Together, we rise

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This check was for a landlord to help people living in tents and travel trailers on his land.

December in Swannanoa NC.

AmeriCorps Volunteers taking FEMA applications at the Swannanoa Library in mid-October. On the other side of the room were shelves of food free to take home for the applicants.

There were also blankets, sleeping bags and clothes. A National Guardsman may have been asked to keep people from taking more than they needed, or just to give a sense of security. He wouldn't say.

More supplies were delivered...drinking water was a first priority.

Emergency services dealt with trees that had fallen from wind and days of wet saturation of the ground. This is Montreat Rd. in Black Mountain, where I drove to see how my friend Teresa and her husband were doing. They were fine though a limb of a tree had come down on their roof.

Free hot meals were distributed in several locations in town. This was after I returned to town - having to evacuate for 10 days myself. I had to leave when there was no electricity so that I could use my breathing equipment...and was so grateful to cousin John who took me in, and friend Martha who made my visit feel like a vacation.

Sharing with Thankful Thursday (if it's still open)

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Bad officials are elected by good citizens who do not vote. 

-George Jean Nathan, author and editor (1882-1958)

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More pottery from the Durango Autumn Arts Festival

Brianna Kramer came from Pagosa Springs CO with her mid-range (cone 6) stoneware. It was the closest to what I would usually see in North Carolina festivals.