Ridgeway

We explore Ridgeway National Park which is about 7,000 feet and in Ourrey County not far from Ralph Lauren's ranch. The nearby San Juan Mountain Range has 14 of the 53 fourteeners (Fourteeners, Dear Mother, are mountains over 14,000 feet.) Among them, 14,150 foot (4,310 m) Mt Sneffel which is most prominent from our hike. The geography also notable for its layers - ridges - which back up against the blue sky offering various shades of color or darkness. The area is famous for the filming of John Wayne's "True Grit." There is a reservoir lake where we spend the mid-day and picnic then to the Stanfills for Stan's plum cake. Yum.

We take a vote the swimming pool and Madeleine exclaims "four to two - we win!" When I tell her perhaps she has her maths wrong she informs me that her two "buddies" (stuffed animals) cast the deciding votes.

I read V.S. Naipaul's "Among The Believers" which records his travels in the East shortly after the Iranian revolution. Naipaul is generally disdainful of Islam and worse, the fundamentalist who wish to return the region to its faith and yet are dependent on the West for technology, medicines and remittances. Our Pakistan fairs poorly and described as a country founded on hate: of foreigners and Hindus. Politics and progress sacrificed to faith and hence the perpetual ongoing military rule despite attempts at Democracy. The poet Mohammad Iqbal whose vision of an independent state for the Muslims of British India inspired the nation - yet he is criticised for denying the peaceful co-existence of Hindus and Muslim. Not all Pakistanies subscribe to Iqbal of course and when we were there in '97 many were openly afraid of the Sunni Islamists in Afghanistan (the Taliban) who had taken power in '96. Now they are in Pakistan's mountains.