Twenty-six years old and it’s over.
A hiker in Glacier National Park in Montana is dead after supposedly “following all protocols” to avoid a fatal bear attack, including emptying an entire can of bear-repellent spray before succumbing to the wild animal.
As a human reflex, my heart always goes out to people when I hear of their heartbreaking losses and end of their life cycles.
This one didn’t have to happen.
You can pave a road through the Big Sky mountains, put up a couple toll booths and restrooms, a visitor’s center, a hotel, lay down a couple parking lots and voila!
A National Park.
But it’s the bears’ home.
Always has been.
So, at the risk of sounding heartless (once again) the bear was NOT the trespasser.
The young man did NOT follow ALL protocols, may he rest in peace.
Respect for your environment and your place in it is the most important protocol.
You don’t need to issue cans of bear spray which may (or may NOT) work to save your life. The only sign you need to post at the entrance of EVERY National Park:
ENTER AT YOUR OWN RISK!
Boom!
I think I just did it again!
And what should come as no surprise to any American citizen, tourism from visiting countries is down. Despite the recent World Cup and our corrupt media’s ability to camouflage and deceive the multinational crowds into thinking our country is really something (ignore the man behind the curtain…).
Canada alone seems to have saved themselves three-billion dollars by truncating their visits to the United States and spending their money elsewhere.
In spite of all the acrimony, Canadians aren’t staying home.
Mexico and Europe are providing alternate vacation destinations, and they are more than happy to reap the benefits of our shattered foreign policy and our alienation of the critical-thinking members of the world community.
You get what you pay for.
Not really.
Not anymore.
It might be reduced in size, weakened in strength, or chemically altered to facilitate a faster use of the product, generating more sales and hence, more profit.
Uh-oh.
I just scrolled across an ABC News story that’s hook was “How a single psychedelic trip may cause physical changes in the brain.”
Right.
I am definitely the anomaly.
I don’t count.
My first psychedelic experience involved purple mescaline, and it was just the beginning…
That was in 1972.
Sheets of blotter acid and garbage bags full of peyote buttons later, and I somehow managed to get my hands on a super valuable kit of lysergic acid used in psychotherapy for the British Royal Pharmaceutical Company with a royal crest on it and everything.
It lasted a whole month of VERY trippy trips.
In 1974 I had a girlfriend who was a chemical engineering student at the University of Arizona, and she made me an entire LITRE of LSD-25. It lasted until I migrated north to Las Vegas in 1977 where cocaine replaced LSD (I must have been on a real health kick).
From my very first concert in 1969 (Pentangle opened for Spirit) to my last (Guns and Roses, 1990) I was on psychedelics. Maybe thirty concerts in all.
So I have enjoyed no less than 300 psychedelic “trips.”
I wonder what physical changes MY brain has undergone?
Even I am surprised I am still alive.
But it has been hell fun.
Stay well.
