Malouf's Mountain in Dutchess County, New York 5/24-2/26

In Limbe, a beautiful beach town on the southern coast of Cameroon, the Peace Corps volutneers had a house at the top of a hill. The view was astounding- you could see the Atlantic Ocean unfolding from the burning fires of the town, the Equatorial Guinea capital off the coast. Mt. Cameroon was behind us. At night, the bats would dive bomb through the sky. It was a great place to be barefoot, clean and half-drunk.

On the flipside, there was a long, arduous hill you had to climb in order to get the house. Most drivers had no intention of managing the hill and it wasn't uncommon to have someone turn you down, even for a thousand francs, to drive to the top. And at times, when I did convince a driver to do it, I always had this fear of his drive-train being impaled by a ill-placed boulder, ruining his livilhood and casting his family into realms of poverty we can only dream about, causing him to harbor a seething hatred for white-men, which he would eventually channel into a proto-military revolutionary group consisting of marijuana-smokers and child soldiers. They would catch me one day, trying to convince another driver to go up this hill, and they would put me in the center of a pile of tires and set me on fire.

So, more often than not, this paranoia led me to having the driver drop me off at the bottom of the hill for one hundred francs and I would hoof it up. If you did this in pairs or groups, the steepness of the grade rendered all conversation mute. Except for some gutteral comments about the steepness, the climb was made in silence. And once you got to the top, the mere thought of crawling back down again was enough to keep you from leaving.

My wife and I went camping for the first time in years last weekend. The hill leading from the bath house to our campsite was very, very similar to the climb in Limbe, and I couldn't make it without thinking of that trek. Malouf's Mountain is located in Fishkill Ridge, a small group of mountains located in Dutchess County, New York. This is Pete Seeger country, a place where all the locals wear biker t-shirts and have beards and pony tails. Located near the Hudson, it was just recently made part of the Scenic Hudson, which works to protect natural areas in the regions. The unique thing about this campground, however, was it's proximity to the world's greatest city and it's catered philosophy of camping. We took the subway, transferring to the Metro-North at Grand Central Station. After about an hour train ride, we arrived in Beacon, New York. Tracy, a staff member at the park, picked us up in her beat up Corolla. I liked it because it reminded me of delivering pizzas and driving drunk. She dropped us off at a trail-head. She brought our gear up for us, so it was there, at our campsite, when we finished our hike. Hence, the term "catered". There are several hikes you can choose to get to the site. We chose the short one, even though it was early in the day. And it was short: only thirty minutes. A lot of marble and slate, maples and mountain laurels. We saw a nice sized garter snake immediately in the path and the ubiquitous chipmunks, which I'm not used to seeing down south, so they are always interesting. I keep thinking they will talk to me and say something witty, like they do in Disney films. And then we can all sing together.

The sites are on platforms that have tarps and a chow box. The chow box is like a mini-kitchenette. Our site had a tent. We had an endless supply of firewood, which we used quite liberally. I find that nobody in the world likes to start fires more than people who have been holed up in New York City. That first afternoon, we ate hot dogs and beans. When Crissy went to the bathroom, a pretty brutal hike down the side of the mountain, I swear to you I saw something out of the X-Files running up the hill. It was white and made a bee-line straight up the side of the mountain, hit a ridge and then bolted right. It ran like an ostrich, so I know it wasn't a deer, which are common up here. And it couldn't have been a person, but it was big like that. However, it could have been my mind playing tricks on me.




We drank 3/4 of a bottle of Pogue whiskey and wrote songs about insects and ferns. I was excited to use my new sleeping bag and mat. I still need to work on the pillow factor. I usually stuff my stuff-sack for the bag with towels and clothes, but it was disappointing at best. This is a problem I need to fix, along with my shoes (don't have any good ones- I was hiking in my winter boots) and finding pants that fit my skinny ass. My backpack comes with a nice fanny pack, which you wear over your fanny and makes you look completely, utterly stupid, but it was convenient for the short hike we took the next day. We hiked up to the top of the mountain (about 1400 feet), thinking the trail junctioned with another trail, only to find the trail come to a dead-halt. We scrambled up some precariously perched rocks and boulders to try and actually summit the mountain, and we got really close. The top was covered in tough, low-lying brush, so it was impossible to get there. We looked again for the junction, but couldn't find it, and gave up. So we walked back.

The problem with this is that it only took a couple of hours. It is weird being in the woods, in area chockful of trails, and being in the position where you can't find them. I asked a couple of guys later- one of whom said he couldn't find it either- and another who said it was there, for sure. I think we just missed it. We farted around a little longer on another familiar trail, not far from the site, and came back and took a nap.



Malouf's mountain is a catered site. You can order food from them and they will bring it to you. All you have to do is cook it. They pick you up and drop you off at the train station. And they are all very friendly and determined to make this campground a success. It was a good, easy re-introduction into the world of camping and I'm hoping there are more to come.

"Blue Clay People", by William Powers

Plot Synopsis: William Powers scores a position with Catholic Relief Services in Liberia. In charge of allocating money to different programs, Powers runs into problems inherent to international aid. He also breaks up with his American fiance and finds a new Liberian girlfriend. He writes a book about it.

My Two Cents:For a country coming from such dark, dense, violent political upheaval, and it's unique spot in the African continent as a former colony of the U.S.A, for a lack of a better way to put it, "Blue Clay People" can be sometimes surprisingly pithy. The book is an easy read and that's not what I'd expect from a novel about the plight of Liberia. It was interesting reading about the how difficult it was to get anything done over there, but it wasn't interesting reading about his love life. Is the novel about Liberia? Is it about William Powers? Is it about William Power's experience in Liberia? It is more the latter, and while I did not expect a piece of journalistic narrative, a la Aidian Hartley and Howard French, I did want more than the dramatization of a long-distance relationship that was doomed from the start. Anybody over 25 could have told him that. It was equally depressing reading about his relationship with the young Liberian Ciatta. What these asides did was make Powers seem incredibly ill-prepared for the job, as well as unconcerned. He'd have been better off joining the Peace Corps, and writing that memoir. As such, he was put in charge of millions of dollars worth of aid through the Catholic Relief Services. I just don't think he seemed qualified enough to take on that responsibility. With all that being said, it is important that books like this get published, not only to shed light on what is happening in West Africa, but to make us question the various aspects of international aid that sometimes go horribly wrong. As for his love life, hopefully that won't make much of a difference in the grand scheme of African history.

My Grade: C

Neurosis with Mastodon @ the Brooklyn Masonic Temple, Friday, Jan.25th, 2008

The Plot Synopsis: Nuerosis plans a rare show at the Brooklyn Masonic Temple in Fort Greene, a bit off the beaten path, and adds post-rock addled metal stars Mastodon as a very special guest.

My Two Cents: Usually a town will have one of these buildings and they will be the center of the town. Everyone will know how to navigate based on where they are in relationship with this particular building, usually an old bank or church building. The thing is with New York is that these buildings are everywhere, these just gorgeous feats of architectual integrity, back when it was supposed to be integral to the building of a temple. The structure was incredible, a big open performance space, with a large, seated balcony. The masses in thier black hoodies, noserings and dreadlocks were downstairs in the smoking room, filling the bottom floor with the smell of Brooklyn, circa 1999. The place was not especially laid out for a metal performance, but the shows were okay.

Mastodon sounded a bit muddled. I do appreciate their ability to just attack their instruments with abandonment, to shred me to pieces with fingers that flew up and down the fretboards like pieces of spaghetti. And I especially like hearing the Thin Lizzy/Lynyrd Skynyrd guitar licks fly in there. This was one of the best bands I had ever seen four years ago. They were good tonight, but it was a firmly average show.

Neurosis came on shortly after, sounded much louder and much better. I wasn't as blown away as I was expecting. In fact, my friends split four songs in, but I decided to stay. It got much better and continued to improve, sending me to the schwag table with money to burn, where I bought my own black hoodie, in support of smoking rooms and Masonic Temples.

I staggered out of there, which is what 5 dollar 20-ounce Becks will do to you.

My Grade: C+