Mr Trail Safety Speaks!

I had only pondered the verticality of the Bulldog Road for a mere 19 minutes when I was stopped by an earnest young man heading down the mountain. His first query was in a dialect and demotic strange to me, but familiar. Upon a second request his plaint was made known to me, and was as follows: "Where is Corral Canyon?" Oh my young woodchuck, it is the better part of a league in the exact opposite direction you are heading. He was revealed to be a sincere young man, an Indian native from New Delhi, and had ambitions to be a Sierra Club Group Leader. This was the preview to the provisional hike prior to ordination in the order. Inexplicably I thought of several recent openings in various chapters after outings on Mt Baldy. I held my counsel. After guiding him safely back to Corral Canyon, I continued my gyre. It was a good day, a 21 mile trot "in the bag" so to speak, and my car awaited me 4.2 miles hence. The wind was at my back, and I was travelling at an average ...

Cougars are a fact of life here in Southern California. As the pressures of urbanization increase on the foothill and mountain communities, human interactions with mountain lions are bound to increase, often with unpredictable results. Recently there have been several highly-publicized encounters between the cougar and humans. Some have been fatal for humans. Mountain bikers, runners, and casual hikers are becoming more aware of the cougar's presence in the mountains. The following talk was delivered at the Quarterly Proceedings of Anthropomorphic Zoology, Spring 2004, by Erasmus Binkster. The symposium was held in the Ayn Rand Asbestosterium, located on the Pyroclastic Community College campus, Puta Vista CA. ===== Southern California Wildlife: Year of the Cat "Hello...Hello...I think my PowerPoint Presentation is having a few problems [tapping sounds]...while we're waiting for the AV techs to work this one out, let's get started...oh! there it is! In Farsi and Punjab...