I’ve been reading Einstein’s biography by Walter Isaacson this past week.
I know, that sounds like something crazy to do this time of year; it’s late summer, there’s more fun stuff to be done in the great outdoors right now than you can shake a stick at, and the press of a fall season looming down on us is almost unbearable. Why read it now instead of during the depth of winter? I don’t know – it just called out one night last weekend from the bottom of my ‘to read’ stack.
(To make you think I’m even more crazy, and in somewhat of a weak defense, my family gave up TV now almost nine years ago, and while we’ll watch a movie now and then, we’d much rather be outside doing things or reading when outside activity is not possible or practical. My wife and I more or less have a book (or two) in progress at all times; she reads about fifty books a year and I’m in the eighty to ninety range. Both of our kids have followed the no-TV angle and read fifty or more books at minimum).
Einstein’s conceptualization of specific and generalized relativity just after the turn of the century (the nineteenth) was nothing short of astounding (as are the revelations about his personal life).
His conceptualization and description of concepts such as black holes, the space time continuum, specific and generalized relativity push my feeble brain to its very limits of physics capacity, which is pretty damned skimpy at best. Trying to tie the book to my personal experience, I did step in a black hole along the Firehole last fall and nearly disappeared into a pit of warm mud that stank of rotten eggs. My space time continuum was impressively and memorably disturbed for 3 minutes or so back then.
Einstein wrote occasionally of convergence, and while I think the concept of which he spoke was somewhat different that what I was thinking when I wrote my section of our Good Chi newsletter early this morning, he inspired my words.
For the past 18 weeks (where the hell has the spring and summer gone) our team has been rounding up highlights from area river reports and publishing them weekly in sort of a cheat sheet for the newsletter. This week a plethora of events converged to derail our efforts to publish our report –
- Amazing fishing last night on the upper Gallatin under what was probably one of the most striking moonrises any of us have ever seen. (That’s one of the least impactful pics from last night – we may just run the rest in Fish Can’t Read sometime….)
- Out too late as a consequence of the above, producing the convergent event of a very late pizza dinner. Window rattling belches, heartburn, very strange dreams all part of the package.
- Too much work to do with Fish Can’t Read’s upcoming first issue début.
- Too hot in the office lately.
- New raft in the garage (Aire Jaguarundi) which has not yet graced a local river. Damn, damn, double damn, triple damn, hell.
- Started a real diet this week. Ditto comment above, and the pizza didn’t count.
- Sage has yet to repair or replace my broken six weight.
- Generalized panic among the troops that fall is just around the corner.
- Al the Pal is on a tear about how we folks in Bozeman are wimps and sit around drinking lattes and eating cupcakes all day. (What the hell, Al, just because you’re old and can’t chew solid food anymore doesn’t mean you have to throw stones our way.)
- Missouri River Steve had a minor brush with the law this week (not his fault, really).
- Jake’s CJ7 lights have mysteriously stopped working.
- Jake left his $250 pair of new sunglasses on the edge of the truck bed last night as we roared off to reposition for photos on the northern edge of Yellowstone. Discovered their absence 10 minutes later and recovered the road killed remains after a quick search in the dark along highway 191.
As we noted in the newsletter this morning, convergence can be a bitch; sometimes it’s a good thing.
Watch out for convergence in your world this week.
By the way, Gray Drakes, Caddis, midges, and Mahoganies were converging on the upper Gallatin last night. Even Einstein would have said wow during the 60 minutes or so after the sun left the water.
More on the fishing to follow.
