Mt. Charleston – Suffering The Benz

I’m driving toward Mount Charleston on 214 this morning, watching the sun rise orange and hot in my rearview mirror and listening to NPR. Billy Bragg is talking about the Newport Folk Festival, and he gives a hilarious account of Gillian Welch fighting airline delays to arrive 30 seconds before her set starts.

Disoriented and surreal, she broke into a version of Jefferson Airplane’s “White Rabbit,” which NPR offers a snippet of. “Feed your head … Feed your head.”

Maybe it’s not quite what the Airplane was thinking when they wrote the song, but that’s exactly what I’m doing as I ascend Mount Charleston, watching the temperature gauge drop steadily while my truck climbs to 5,000, 6,000, 7,000 feet. When I get out to start hiking the Bristlecone Loop at 7 a.m., it’s 48 degrees. After the heat of the Vegas valley, it’s like a cool, pi

I hiked the North Loop on Mount Charleston a few weeks ago, following the trail up to a 3,000-year-old Bristlecone pine tree. It’s magnificent. And while I’m standing there admiring it, a few guys wander up wearing Zappos T-shirts.

We talk for a while, and I ask them about the Zappos shirts. Turns out they work there, and they’re my neighbors (Greenspun Media Group is within spitting distance of Zappos’ headquarters). One is a programmer and the other works on search engine marketing initiatives, so it isn’t long before we’re standing in the shade of this ancient tree talking about open source code, SEM strategies and my feeble efforts to find filthy lucre on the Internet.

Suddenly, I pause. Look at them. What the fuck are we doing talking about this crap. With a smile and a nod, we continue our separate ways, lost in the beauty of the refreshing desert mountains and the bristlecone pine.