If you have ever found yourself wondering why Bear Peak is called Bear Peak, and why Bear Canyon is called Bear Canyon, wonder no more: it is because they are both inhabited by bears. Bears rustling in the trees just out of sight, bears drinking by the river just out of sight, and at least one bear WALKING ON THE HIKING TRAIL, very much within sight!

Climbing Bear Peak, elevation 8461 (3000+ vertical feet from the starting point) and 11 miles roundtrip, has been Dan's and my hiking goal for the summer. Every hike we did was supposed to lead up to this one. Yes, it is a weakling goal and yes, I have 60 year old coworkers who do twice that every weekend carrying 50 pound backpacks with snowshoes on and raging windstorms around their heads, but for us, it is a big deal. And this weekend, we hadn't really planned on doing it. Not yet. It was a lofty, eventual goal, one to be mulled over and planned for and possibly never actually done. Instead, we had planned just to walk up Bear Canyon trail and walk down, itself nearly a 5 mile hike. But when we got to what would have been the end, the peak looked so close and tantalizing, we just couldn't resist. "Climb me," it purred from what looked like ten feet away, but was really like ten thousand. "Walk on my soft, gently rolling west ridge. Enjoy my slopes and curves. I'm right here! You can nearly reach out and touch me! Look how flat my trails are! Sure, at the end I'm a steep pointed monster of a cascade of boulders, that will necessitate nearly climbing, and falling often, but never mind that! I am worth it! Look how close I am!"

Well, we succumbed to its charms, soft slopes and insane rock scrambles all, and enjoyed a breathtaking view of Boulder and the Indian Peaks, whilst eating salami-mozzarella-spinach rolls and listening to the hardcore hikers around us, not even sweating (sample statement: 'Okay, let's get out of here and hit South Boulder!' [South Boulder Peak is the next peak south, 60 feet higher])

On the way down, right at the junction where we could choose between going down Bear Canyon the way we came, or going up another insane peak, Dan suddenly stopped in his tracks and pointed at Bear Canyon trail, saying in a low monotone that I almost mistook for joking, "Thatisafuckingbear."

And it was a fucking bear, ambling down the trail for all the world as if he were human, following the set path and not deviating from it for a second, not even to skip the cumbersome switchbacks. He followed the switchbacks, pausing briefly to look around. Luckily, he didn't notice us up at the overlook, clinging to each other like children and staring at him as though he were an alien from another planet, and not an animal wandering through his natural habitat.

My surprise surprised me, hitting me as indignance. Like it was my right to walk on the trail without a bear on it, when we've taken away so much of the bear's land already. It was only a flash, motivated by fear, and it passed - I would give up my weekends of hiking in a second if it meant the bear could have its land back - but I saw the same thing on the faces of everyone we told.

The people we walked with on the way down - we figured walking together and talking loudly would alert the bear to our presence without scaring him - we said we had seen a bear and their hands flew to their mouths like we had just told them a child had died. And the people we ran into a little later, on the way up, when we told them, the guy in the front immediately turned around, as if to go back the way he had came - no way was he going to go up a trail on which a BEAR had been seen! A BEAR!

I would venture to guess that that whole area is teeming with bears, just that most of them don't use the trails. All the rustling we heard on the way up... I'm sure lots of it came from bears. But it's easy to rationalize those things when you're in the city, and not so easy when you are looking at a bear's claws in detail and realizing that bears can rip into cars to get food if they want to.

I think I've had it about up to the ceiling with chirpy receptionist voices. Not that it's limited to receptionists. Oh, no. Wandering salesgirls who want to know if there's anything you need help finding today, or checkout girls who want to know if you found everything okay today. Girls at the register in restaurants who ask if that'll be all for me today, girls who answer the phones at my insurance company and tell me first that they have changed their policy on paying for my composite tooth fillings, refuse to engage in a discussion, and at the end thank me for choosing MetLife for my dental insurance needs and tell me to have a very nice day today.

(And why do they always tack 'today' onto the end of their sentences as if it might be possible they were talking about tomorrow, or next month, or 2054?)

I don't want to be sexist but there's just no guy equivalent. Not that there aren't annoying guys in these positions, but at least they're annoying in their own individual ways. Like the pompous guy in the shoe store, for example, who has become a running joke ever since I was trying on some Chacos and my feet are skinny so the straps were too long and dragged on the ground, and he said, "True Chaco enthusiasts, the ones who climb fourteeners, say that the strap dragging just won't make a difference. The soles are so rugged that you won't slip."

Ever since then, every time I have a problem with my Chacos (which I bought, by the way, from another store) it's, 'True Chaco enthusiasts don't mind when rocks get stuck in the rubber and scrape their feet!'... 'true Chaco enthusiasts know that the toe strap randomly tightening and cutting off circulation is just another wonderful feature that keeps your foot snug!'

I know that these positions are mind numbing and the way most people deal with that is to become robotic and detached. It must work for them, to just switch off their personality entirely and become an automaton until it's clock-out time. It's never worked for me. Even though I have to say the same thing into the phone approximately 20 times a day, I never say it the same way twice. It isn't a script. It's the answer to a question that some individual called up to ask, and they didn't call to ask the question to an automated answer machine. If you take the time to read the customer's mood, you can have a few laughs and make a temporary phone friend. I've done this. It makes the day brighter - it doesn't make it go longer - and it puts me in a better mood than chirping, 'Our service runs from 7AM to 10PM. Is there anything else I can help you with today? Thank you for calling the HOP and have a nice daaaay!'

Plus, I know most girls' voices aren't doll-like and squeaky naturally. No one sounds like that outside their job. But as soon as they put on their uniform, they become indistinguishable from one another. The salesgirl singsong. Almost as ubiquitous as the sorority girl smokers' rasp or the frat boy bellow, the tour group twitter or the ingratiating whine of an underling.

It's the sound of the absence of a person and the presence of a utility. Personhood has nothing to do with the goal of selling shirts, so it's phased out. I disagree with that conclusion, actually; for me personhood has a lot to do with the goal of selling. The most I've ever spent on clothes, and the happiest I've been in a clothes store, has been in a tall girls shop after having a friendly bitch-session with the two saleswomen about how clothing for women is woefully inadequately sized for anyone not between 5'3" and 5'7", and how clothing manufacturers seem to think that, say, '4' is a perfectly descriptive size tag for women, but men get to have their waist size and inseam size in inches and have a tag of, say, '32x34'. It had an effect on how much I spent, definitely. The products had to be good, obviously, but that conversation was the difference between one and two pairs of pants.

And being an automaton just contributes to this sprawling sense of automaton-ness you get when you spend a day out and about. Go to the coffeeshop and you'll find legions of people glued to laptops sipping drinks and ignoring each other, to the bank and you'll find a person behind the counter who has less personality than the ATMs, there solely to serve you, and it creates a strange sensation, reducing yourselves to 'one who wants to deposit money' and 'one who's there for the purpose of depositing your money'. Etc.

My local grocery store seems to be exempt from this, strangely enough. The woman behind the fish counter always shares her disapproval of the marinade I choose for my salmon, which I find funny. Someone's always ringing up something wrong or the scanner starts malfunctioning and the 'section leaders' know absolutely nothing about their section, to the point where the condiment guy didn't know what oyster sauce was, but I love it there and so does everyone in the neighborhood, because their food is great and organic and costs half as much as Whole Foods.
But me and my neighborhood must be the exception and everyone else must enjoy the automatons, because that's what businesses are choosing and so it must be turning profit. Maybe someone will need to explain that to me someday.

Boulder's Boulders

During this last impromptu Weekend ‘o’ Fitness (Flagstaff Mountain and a 23 mile bike ride in the same weekend! Sorry, feet! Sorry, legs! I hope you regain feeling soon) Dan and I came upon a strange phenomenon: tourists. We had just started our descent down Flagstaff Mountain, and had come to the first portion where the trail intersects with the road. A car with Colorado plates pulled up to us, and inside were two people, a man and a woman, that looked almost precisely like the stereotype of Boulderites: the man was all slender muscle and khakis, and the woman was casually dressed with messed-up hair, but with perfectly plucked eyebrows and expensive sunglasses. So we were not expecting what came out when they opened their mouths.

“Hi! We were wondering how to get to some good boulders.”

Now, the Front Range of the Rockies is hardly anything BUT boulders. We were, at that moment, standing in front of a bunch of boulders; down the canyon, clearly visible from the car, was the back of the first Flatiron, Saddle Rock, and, maybe two minutes by car away, Crown Rock, a major bouldering destination. Boulders were literally everywhere.

Confused, I asked, “So you want to go bouldering?”

Their faces turned to the edges of panic. “No! No! Not… go…bouldering… what’s bouldering?”

Dan had to explain to them what bouldering was, only he inadvertently made it sound easy. Something like, “well, it’s like climbing, but you don’t need any rope or anything and the rocks are only about ten feet high.”

“Oh, wow, that sounds fun!” exclaimed the man. “Wouldn’t you like to go bouldering, honey?”

At which the woman exclaimed, “No!”

Now everybody was confused; if they didn’t want to go bouldering or even know what it was, then what kind of boulders were they looking for and why were they not seeing the boulders surrounding them at every turn?

I directed them down the road about a mile to Crown Rock, but as we came down the trail, I saw their car shoot right by it, as if Crown Rock weren’t a GIANT, OBVIOUS OUTCROPPING OF ROCKS WITH BOULDERING CHALK ALL OVER THEM, FLANKED BY A PARKING LOT THAT SAYS ‘CROWN ROCK’ ON IT. At the bottom of the road I wouldn’t be surprised if they also flew past Gregory Canyon (walls made of beautiful striated rock) or the Flatirons (huge park with jillions of hiking trails flanked by rocks leading to the most famous giant rocks in town) or, if they turned north, Red Rocks (tall spires of red boulders randomly shooting out of the top of a hill) and the Hogback Ridge (boulders that form spines on a mountain ridge like the hair-raising of threatened pigs).

Perhaps tourists are told that the boulders in Boulder are made from gold, or that they emit a soothing glow, or that they are bluish green in color, or that in some other way they look like no other boulders on earth.