As my consistent reader will know, I am not as young as I once was and sometimes I whine about it. Usually I whine tongue-in-cheek. I have nothing to complain about: I am in good health, all my parts are in working order, I am happy and have an altogether good life and am certainly not “old.” But the fact remains, I am older than I once was and whiffs of mortality float by from time to time as two did on my recent Grand Canyon trip.
I went with five other men and none of us are as young as we once were. We spent more time talking about health insurance than we did about women. Thirty years ago we would have talked more about women. But on this trip, none of our wives would have found anything objectionable in our conversations.
Well, except the earrings.
The earrings were attached to the ears of a young woman who was quite pleasant to look at and who was in the bottom of the Grand Canyon and had hiked to get there. With a pack. We were triply impressed: She is beautiful, she backpacks on rugged, primitive Grand Canyon trails, seems to enjoy it and has the presence of mind and dignity to wear earrings while she does it. This, in our experience, is a rare combination.
In fact, the six of us, long time backpackers, had never seen anything quite like it. Apparently she backpacks because she enjoys it. Her husband was with her, they have two sons; one already ten years old, so she isn’t doing it to impress him. She has landed him and has no reason to pretend to like backpacking just to please him. The earrings were miniature rock cairns which he gave to her. We concluded that she must really enjoy backpacking.
Let me be clear: All six of us live with fine women, one of whom is an athlete. It is just that they are not as crazy about backpacking as we are and they choose not to go. Many other women backpack regularly, but we are not married to them; so we find it refreshing to meet a couple who backpack and, as far as we were able to tell, really enjoy each other’s company while they do it.
In short, we were envious. Her husband, while not quite as pleasant to look at, was delightful company. He even joined us for a beer in Flagstaff the night we came out of the Canyon and we all count him – and his wife – as new friends. May they have decades of happy trails to hike. 
But she did not come up in my conversations or musings on the way out of the Canyon. These days, if I think about women at all while hiking, I am more likely to remember Juvenal who wrote in his Satires, “. . .while the hair is but newly grey, while old age is still fresh and erect, while there is still some yarn for Lachesis to spin, I can stand on my own feet without leaning on a stick.” [1] Or a titanium trekking pole. With Montaigne, “I have often found that we men have overlooked weaknesses in [womens’] minds on account of their bodies, I have yet to see one woman willing, on account of the beauty of a man’s mind, however mature and wise, to lend a helping hand to his body once it has even begun to decline.” “Why,” he laments, “is not one of them ever moved by desire for that noble Socratic bargain of body for mind, her thighs for a philosophical relationship?”
He concludes that men have more discriminating tastes as they age, thus want more but have less to offer. Love is not available,
“. . .for this poor fellow who is on his way out, rushing towards disintegration.”
Hogwash. We all came home to loving women. They just don’t like to walk all day with a heavy pack; down hot, rocky dusty trails, to eat dubious food then sleep on hard ground without a shower. I wonder why?
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[1] Lachesis was the second of the Three Fates. Clotho spun the thread of life, Lachesis measured it out and Atropos cut it. Lachesis’s measurement determined how long the person whose thread it was would live. In less attractive guises, they were the Wyrd Sisters consulted by Macbeth. The first painting is by William Blake (ca. 1795) and the second by Friedrich Paul Thumann who painted during the Victorian Era when it was acceptable to depict bare breasted women so long as they were mythological and not real. The photograph at the top is the moon rising over Comanche Point taken from the shores of the Colorado River about 5000 feet below.
The Golden State 