The X X Factor

Mesclun spring lettuce mix, much like monogamy, is a concept forced upon men by the women in their life.  If you believe I am an immoral philistine for saying this then I suggest you ask the man in your life if he wouldn't prefer to be able to eat iceberg lettuce with Russian dressing.  Or to have iceberg lettuce on his sandwich.  I didn't even know how to spell mesclun until I googled mescalin.  Nor does blogger.com.  They also think I mean mescaline as evidenced by the appearance of the spell check squiggly line under every instance of mesclun in my draft.  Mesclun, mesclun, mesclun, mesclun.  You can't see it in the published version of this post but I am seriously messing with the spell check.  And by the way, I beseech you to not broach the other subject of this paragraph.

Leave No Trace might also be an idea started by a woman.  Men, as a general rule of thumb, don't like to clean up after themselves.   A simple concept like closing a gym locker door after you are done showering and changing seems to elude most of the men at my gym. Nor do they rinse their shaved whiskers out of the sink or wipe the seat after peeing through the slit in front.  I don't know what goes on in the girl's locker room but I bet the girls close their lockers and wipe the porcelain when they are done doing it.  It's the same in the backcountry.  I have known hiker girls who can spend an entire weekend in the woods without ever completing a number two.  Men on the other hand, feel the urge to poop 100 yards from the trail head (or maybe that's just me).  And there is usually no time to dig the proper 6 inch deep hole.  Some scratching in the leaves is about all we have time for.  I have been on plenty of climbs where the men are obsessed with every aspect of their bowel health including the frequency, color, consistency, smell, and how many blue bags they have left.  I have never once heard a woman mention her blue bag count or the need to even go number two for that matter.  A man could never have dreamt up the idea of leaving no trace, not even something so natural as a bowel movement.  It is a concept, I believe, that only a person who has never had to deal with a backcountry GI situation could dream up.  If putting the seat down doesn't occur to a man, how could carrying out his own feces and used toilet paper ever enter his thought process?

Putting ones clothes in a hamper, folding and putting away the newspaper after it is read, using a dish instead of eating right out of the pot, cleaning and drying dishes rather than leaving them in the sink until you actually need one, and indeed putting anything away at all (with the possible exception of tools), are concepts that could only have originated in the female brain.  Saying excuse me after burping or other expellation of gas, eating vegetables that are not fried, cheesy, or soaked in butter, closing the bathroom door, and putting on a clean pair of underwear on the remote chance you could end up in the ER are all behaviors passed down to the sons by their mothers. As I alluded to earlier, the only thing your Dad cared about was where the hell you left his screwdriver after fixing your skateboard and not leaving the lawnmower out in the rain.

What is this post about?  I have no idea except that while hiking to Eagle and Balsam Mountains this afternoon I came up with the first line of this essay and I thought it too clever to not share with you.

Why I am Not a Vegan

Dear Michael Pollan,

The other day while on a hike up the backside of Belleayre Mountain in Highmount, NY, I started dreaming about my post climb meal.  It was neither artisinal nor locally made.  And it boasted a number of ingredients that did not exist prior to the invention of modified corn starch products.

Was there ever an athlete that dreamt of eating a bag of organic carrot sticks or a broccoli rabe and mushroom sandwich after a big competition?  I seriously doubt it.  Several years ago I recall reading an interview with Mark Allen in Outside Magazine.  Mark Allen, you may remember, was one of the big three  superstars of the Hawaii Ironman Triathlon.  He had just been out for a 100 mile training ride before the interviewer met with him.  And since Mr. Allen was a guru to many budding long distance athletes, nutrition was a very important subject.  The writer, in fact, made a big deal of the post training lunch Mark was eating; A hummus and sprouts sandwich on whole wheat bread.  Well, I have news for you.  After the interviewer left, I am quite certain Mr. Allen wolfed down a quart of  Ben and Jerry's Chunky Monkey with a Snickers Bar chaser.  No one, not even the most disciplined Zen Monk, rides 100 miles on a bean sprout sandwich.

And it is thus in the mountains as well.  Here is a partial list of what I have seen eaten at the summits of hills and mountains between the elevations of  2,500 feet and 15,000 feet:
Beefaroni in those little microwavable cups (eaten cold of course),
Dole fruit cocktail in corn syrup packed in those little non-biodegradable plastic cups,
A Dunkin Donuts Muffin,
Peanut M&M's,
Slim Jim and cheddar cheese food product,
Pop Tarts (frosted of course),
and cold pizza left over from the pre summit feast in town.
To be fair I have seen an orange peel or two littering the trail to the summit.  But anyone who is inconsiderate and  slovenly enough to leave non-indigenous food plant debris on a hiking trail deserves no credit for PC eating.

Though in the interest of full disclosure I will confess that one of my favorite summit lunches is a hummus and cucumber sandwich with carrot stick snacks.  But I follow it up with by a Baby Ruth Bar and I wash it all down with artificially flavored and sweetened Gatorade powdered drink mix. I guess organic gluten free fig bars from Whole Foods are enough to satisfy a summit sized appetite but I never have seen one pulled out of a backpack.  I have, on the other hand, seen an entire clip (slang for one plastic sleeve of the cookies) of Nabisco Fig Newtons eaten on Mount Rainier after a nice glissade down the Muir Snow field.

My wife, a woman known to eat an entire bag of Swedish Fish on Christmas Morning, has tried to convince me that I need to develop a taste for bitter winter vegetables.  Why?  So I can look forward to a mound of  kale and turnips after a day on the ski slopes?  They don't sell collard greens in the Belleayre Mountain Ski Lodge.  They sell fried onion rings, hamburgers and beer.  And rightly so.  Bode Miller never made it to the gate fueled up on Belgian Endive and Rapini.  Winter vegetables are okay for Volvo driving, Birkenstock wearing, Bernie Sanders voting Vermonters who make goat cheese for a living.  But between treating gum disease in my suburban NJ hometown and summiting 3500 foot Catskill peaks on weekends, I barely have time to boil some steel cut oats.  Convenience rules.  Besides, stress is going to kill me way before the high fructose corn syrup shuts down my pancreas.