Is that a clone in your mouth?

Both sides of the debate over selling meat or milk from animals with clones in their bloodlines is are in a tizzy.

Seems the Food Standards Agency in Britain has confirmed meat from a bull that originated as an embryo of a cloned cow got into the food chain a year ago. That would be against the law because it should have been labeled a "novel food" to be sold legally, reports meatprocess.com
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration and European Food Safety Authority have no problem with cloned meat.

Also, the FSA has traced an offspring from the same family line to a dairy but hasn't confirmed its milk is going into the food supply. Let's see, if the dairy is feeding and caring for this cow, where do you think the milk is likely going?

Do you care if that happens around here? How would you know?

Just one more bite

Wasn't eating our way through Santa Fe enough?

My wife, Karen, and I recently took an all-too-short trip to that city recently, and, of course, the first stop was a restaurant. The Shed makes basic New Mexican, but so good. Of course, the raspberry soup wasn't traditional, but so what?

Anyway, several days and more than several restaurants later (Check out the fairly new Restaurant Martin opened by Martin Rios, formerly of Inn of the Anasazi), it was about time to leave.

But wait, there's more. Trader Joes, Whole Foods, the fabulous farmer's market and several hundred dollars later, it's time to hit the highway. We were stocked with everything from dried tart cherries to several containers of unique olives and pickled peppers from the olive bar.

Then comes the sad part. It only lasts so long. Last night was the end of the Mario Batali pasta sauce. Can't get it here, so I guess that's that.

Do you ever go grocery shopping while on vacation. Is that wrong?

It's so stimulating!

It's almost time to do your duty to pump up the economy while greening your home.

Texas Comptroller Susan Combs is quite excited about the approaching reservation period for the cash-for-clunkers home appliance program. Check it out, a special Web page that is ever-growing.

She's positively breathless about the opportunity, as evidenced by the countdown clock on the page.

Really, the motivation behind the drive is probably pure, but can't they find better writers to promote a $23 million program? How snappy is "Energy Efficient Appliance Rebate Program," the federal program or "Texas Trade Up Appliance Rebate Program," here in our part of the world?

The idea is to spend federal stimulus money on rebates to consumers who replace their aging, but functioning, dishwasher, water heater, central air, clothes washer, refrigerator, etc with new, energy efficient models that are ENERGY STAR® or CEE qualified?

The comptroller's office is still working out the details, but they'll start taking reservations April 5, at a time to be announced and the buying begins April 16 for a limited time. Don't jump the gun in your enthusiasm or you'll lose out on your rebate. There will be a recycling aspect that is less than clear, but I'm sure it will be more so soon. It will include a $75 bonus rebate for recycling your clunker.

The comptroller's office is so sure this will have buyers buzzing, it's establishing a waiting list for when the rebates are all reserved.

They're really stimulated.

Now spend - after April 16.

I need a lawyer

It is truly the season of whiplash - sweat, freeze, green, brown. It makes you wonder if you need one of those tv personal injury attorneys to "get you what you deserve."

I know it happens every year, but that doesn't make it easy to cope with. The beds are ready to dig then they're covered with a white blanket. I'm ready to spread mulch, but the snow drift on the drive needs shoveling first.

The piles are starting to grow in the house. Between seed packets coming in and the stuff I'm hauling in from winter storage, like flats to plant in, it took me about five minutes this morning to make a stack that wouldn't avalanche in the corner of the living room.

Thank goodness I told the shippers to wait until April 19 before sending any plants this way. Then I scrape a few dried leaves away from the base of what is supposed to be a perennial, and, wow, here comes the green stuff.

Despite how it sounds, I am trying to be good and not trim plants back too soon. And I started some seeds Sunday in frustration in a kind of fancy holder for making sprouts. Maybe that will help when in a few days, in theory, we'll have sunflower, fenugreek and broccoli sprouts to make it taste like spring.

But could someone speak to whoever is responsible for scheduling and let them know these weekend storms are getting on my nerves and trashing my schedule.

Random local greeness

The city's Environmental Advisory Committee met today, and as they kind of rambled through the meeting, several tidbits emerged that locals might be interested in.

First, the official business of the committee involved voting to discuss at their next meeting the names of people they want to recommend to city commissioners to fill some spots possibly soon going vacant because of lack of attendance at meetings. They also voted to begin writing a strategic plan to guide their work over the next year.

One topic that drew emotional comment was participation in community events as promoters.

"I don't think we're in any position to do events," said committee Chairwoman Kim Vincent. "There's this many of us (motioning to the few in attendance) the Web site was hard enough to pull together and we have no money."

Committee member Jacob Breeden chimed in, "I think we should avoid like the plague having any money."

Now to the tidbits: Earthfest will be April 17 at Wildcat Bluff (it attracts thousands for educational fun), hits to the committee's new Web site totalled 2,124 since Jan. 5, Travis Middle School has a "Green Team" of students and there will be a house made of bales of compressed trash at Mariposa ecoVillage.

Is that random enough?

Spring unsprung in the garden

Boy, the momentum was building, but as happens every year (when will I learn) that frosty Mother Nature just had to show off who's boss this weekend.

The chilly winter afternoons lolling through the seed catalogs are passed. One frenzied weekend of making the hard choices of who will get our money for what plants and seeds (no fancy starter kits this year, just flats and seed starter) left me feeling bad..."Sorry Johnny's, I know we've been faithful to each other, but that perky new Cook's Garden got your share of the cash this year. Well, her and that High Country Gardens in Santa Fe." And the afternoons sketching what holes remain in beds as I add more and more perennials are just memories on a legal pad.

Now the action is to begin. My wife pruned like a buzz saw. I planted potted chrysantemums outdoors. We both brushed away the brown refuse of winter from the expanding green crowns of plants. All that on Saturday. Then the winds turned chilly on Sunday. We were limping around a little when we went to Lowe's to stock up on supplies for mostly outdoor chores we're planning on. As long as the product wasn't on a low shelf where we'd have to bend too far over, things were passable.

Then Monday morning got here. It was dark outside, thanks to the stupid time change. A chilly rain/snow was falling and our backs were even stiffer.

Sorry Mother Nature. My bad. But your reminders that we're another year older and the average frost date (not to mention the Easter snow storms) are still to come are fully understood. We acknowledge and bewail our manifold sins and wickedness.

But the next sunny Saturday can't be too far off, giving hope for more adventures. Not to mention the first seed packs have arrived. Do you think it's too early to start cukecumbers?

NOTE:
By the way, there will be a three-day seminar on "Planting the Seeds of Sustainability" this month in Amarillo. It's sponsored by the High Plains Institute for Applied Ecology, High Plains Food Bank and Wildcat Bluff Nature Center. It runs March 19-21. Check out the above link for details.

Another seed sprouts

Linda Lloyd, project manager at Mariposa ecoVillage on the west edge of Amarillo, was happy to be in the cold wind today. Predictions of snow had her worried, but the weather stayed dry so it was time to get busy.

Workers were pouring concrete from a mast high above what will become her house in the development meant to show off sustainable living. For example, her abode will be totally powered by solar panels and will have no water well.

"I won't be paying Xcel (Energy) anything," she said.

The water will come from harvesting rain.

The home is dug into a 12-foot cliff facing south to collect the warmth of the sun during winter months. The walls will have six inches of concrete lined on both sides with two and a half inches of foam.

The living area is about 800 square feet, topped with 300 square feet of office/studio space.

This is the first home at Mariposa. The hospitality center is up, made of compressed dirt blocks. And work to plaster it and complete the pressed earth floors will begin soon.

"I'm on specialist at that," Lloyd said.

Another first happened within the past few days as Mariposa started taking reservations for single-family home lots. There are 17 on offer. They measure about one acre and go for from $20,000 to $25,000.

"You're so fat"

"Your shoes don't fit on your feet"

I must be such a geek. Data brings on music.

Those lyrics, from Robert Palmer's "Trouble" (notably also done by Lowell George), got in my head while looking at some fascinating data from the USDA.

The Economic Research Service maintains historical numbers of available food per capita in the U.S. Some of the stats go back to 1909. How do they do that?

Sure, the Palmer lyrics have to do with a depressed person, "Your car wouldn't start so started to eat your heart out," who has nothing but bad luck. But what I saw today on the Web said fresh and processed vegetable consumption stayed about the same at 336 pounds in 1970 compared to 392 pounds in 2008, but natural cheese went from 11 pounds per person in 1970 to 32 pounds in 2008. That's a lot of cheese burgers, smothered burritos or something.

Anyway, even with a grain, or shake, of salt, it's pretty interesting to see so here's some more.

Not a big surprise bottled water went from 1.6 gallons in 1976 to 28 gallons in 2008. But look at meat consumption per person on a boneless basis. Beef was at 51 pounds in 1909 and 61 pounds in 2008. Then here comes chicken from 10 pounds to 59 pounds.

An interesting side note is the measure of the total meat consumption of beef, pork and chicken started at 102 in 1909 to end at 166 in 2008. But in the 30's during the Depression, consumption dipped for several years, getting as low as 75 pounds in 1935.

But most importantly? Mushrooms (not the fun ones). We ate about two pounds per person in 1969 but seven pounds in 2008.

What's up with that?

I love the smell of napalm in the morning

What a classic movie line, especially coming from a wild-eyed Robert Duvall.
"I love the smell of napalm in the morning... Smells like, victory."

It got him that beach in Vietnam to surf in "Apocalypse Now" and might be what people downstate need for their pesky fire ants instead of club soda.

Texas AgriLife Extension bug specialists recently had to readdress the Internet rumor about using club soda to kill fire ants. They politely called it “erroneous pest control advice.” But how can something environmentally friendly be bad.

Erroneous advice indeed.

That’s an understatement of Biblical proportions. I used to have to deal with those devilish ants in the Dallas/Fort Worth area. They killed just-born calves and fawns, they made grown men jump into swimming pools hollering like little girls.

Just pour two cups of club soda on a fire ant mound and no more problem, according to the "advice." All that would do is make the little red monsters mad.

“According to the message, the carbon dioxide in the soda is supposed to displace the oxygen and suffocate the ants, including the queen, killing the entire colony within about 48 hours,” an AgriLife news release said. “It also notes that club soda leaves no toxic residue, does not contaminate ground water and will not 'indiscriminently' kill other insects or harm pets.”

“Impressive bubbling action” from the club soda is about all you’ll get - if you're lucky.

Doesn't something that can do this deserve a little napalm?

A giant sucking sound

Apologies to Ross Perot, but his phrase may be a perfect match for the kiri tree.

The kiri grows up to 30 feet its first year, according to several sources beyond the company promoting it. What helps make that happen are massive leaves (some say up to three feet across). And here's the eco thing - those leaves let it suck in more carbon dioxide than any tree should be allowed to.

A Sacramento, Calif., based company, Eco2 Forests, is promoting the tree as an earth saver. Collie Christensen is the head of the company, after having been involved early on with Cellular One, a barter trading market and a variety of land development deals, so maybe he's good at the Pied Piper thing.

Here's what the tree looks like when just planted before it turns into a carbon-killing machine.

The "Global Forestry Plan" of Eco2 Forests is to plant 3.3 million trees in Malakula, Vanuatu, in the South Pacific. That could earn the company $120 million in carbon credits, according to its own figures.

See, I think Christensen must just like fun words. Malakula and Vanuatu? And how's this, the companies research and development takes place in Jimboomba, Queensland. And the tree is also more properly called the paulownia or the sapphire princess tree. Then there's the "ecoimagineer" job title amongst the CEO and CFO titles of Eco2.

But who knows, it might just be crazy enough to work - for somebody's pocket book anyway. I don't know about the carbon. The wood, ready for harvest in seven years, is highly rated and goes for more than oak plus the carbon credits help.

The company touts the tree as sustainable because it can grow back from the stump, once harvested, about 10 times. Of course it sucks a lot of water too, but that's a different argument as is the fact the National Park Service lumps the kiri in with "alien plant invaders" because it spreads like a bad e-mail joke.

And the company has a good pr team because it's all over any Google search of a related term

Relax, somebody has to make some green out of green.

I know, I know

Been a while, but this really is cool and not nearly as alarming as the polar bears falling from the sky I showed you the last time I returned.

It's called the W+W or wash basin + water closet. Very European, don't you think?

The Rocha company of Spain is marketing this contraption, albeit with sleek lines.

"A meeting of ways between sophistication and love for the planet," according to the company's rather spare, or maybe sophisticated, Web site. The images are nice but the video, well, you decide.

It filters the water you run in the sink then fills the cistern of the toilet, oops, I meant water closet. Allegedly it saves 25 percent of the water normally used.

But I must say the idea of a toilet facing a big ol' wall of glass overlooking a balcony open to the city is a little disconcerting or maybe it's European.

How will carbon screw up your life?

Don't worry, the feds are on the case.

Yeah, it kind of makes sense investors would like to know if too much methane is going to break them, but now federal regulators will be watching to make sure they know.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission gave publicly traded companies “interpretive guidance” on Wednesday, telling the businesses they will have to disclose to investors how climate change might affect their bottom line. I don't know how much pain and suffering comes if you're a violator, but it sounds bad.

But investors don’t have enough to worry about, oh, like losing all their money because of greedy, arrogant risk takers or borderline criminals. Now they need the enforcers to look out for cow farts raising ocean levels and flooding the condo they invested in or whether the coal-fired utility they have shares in will get big-time fines for pumping out too much carbon.

The guidance is the first economy-wide climate risk disclosure requirement in the world, according to a group of environmentalists like green-minded investors at Ceres and the Environmental Defense Fund.

“The lack of specific guidance until now has resulted in weak and inconsistent climate-related disclosure by public companies” they said in a news release.

“Today’s vote is a clarion call about the vast risks and opportunities climate change poses for US companies and the urgency for integrating them into investment decision making,” said Mindy Lubber, president of Ceres and director of the Investor Network on Climate Risk, a network of 80 institutional investors with $8 trillion in collective assets. “The business risks of climate change cannot be ignored. With this guidance investors can make more sound decisions based on better information – and businesses will have a level-playing field with clear standards and expectations for disclosure.”

Feel better?

Go ahead and freak

Everybody else is. "OMG snow's coming!"

The weather jockeys are all out of breath about it. Predicting this and that. Of course there's the complication that they really don't know for sure what's going to happen. Maybe that's why they're covering their bets in vagueness. But for a change they have something to talk about.

My mom's out of breath because she lives in the country where electricity and phones get knocked fairly frequently. (Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't want to be an SPS guy messing with electricity in a blizzard.) So my wife and I took her a giant cooler of water, an extra lantern and some reading material.

My wife's out of breath to the extent we'll be staying in town at her mom's so we don't get trapped away from work. What a drag that would be.

One sister wants to know "Are we going to die?" Okay, the other one is happy she can stay in her cave in front of a fire and eat candy with her dogs. Maybe that balance out.

And there's a general buzz of out of breathness in the newsroom because who knows what could happen.

Are we going to die?

Probably not. This 12 inches, maybe, forecast sounds like a cakewalk compared to other snows we've gotten. I've been snowed into Amarillo for almost a week before I could crawl home back to Wildorado on I-40. It really did look like a parking lot. People were getting out of their cars and visiting in the bright sun after the storm. I could have walked home faster.

So we'll see. All we can do is wait. And no, I'm not making fun of the people and animals who will really suffer. I love a snow, but I hate that. It's just that the air seems to be vibrating. What's the big deal? We live on the tundra so just be careful out there, and after all, we need the moisture.

I'd rather eat boogers?

It’s must be hard to rhyme with sugar because Campbell Soup has underwritten a book called “Who Grew My Soup” that quotes the curious youngster lead character Phineas Quinn as saying, ”I like stuff that’s deep-fried and loaded with sugar. But vegetable soup? Yikes! I’d rather eat boogers!"

But it’s all for the good cause of getting kids to make better food choices like eating more vegetables, presumably in the form of soup from you know who.

Apparently, Phineas didn’t like veggies and hatched a plan to avoid eating them. One argument he hatchs is that you never know where they’d been. Maybe they were grown in Timbuctoofar, he argues.

What illustrations I’ve seen are pretty cool and the few rhymes available in preview are kind of fun if you’re a kid.

The book was written by New York ad agency veteran Tom Darbyshire who, you guessed it, was working on an ad campaign to tell the story of Campbell’s “100-year commitment to using only the highest ingredients.” The book’s illustrator was C.F. Payne.

Get the 32-page hardcover here.

The circle of life or something

This is a new one on me - "upcycle."

An Oregon winery, COWHORN, is promoting not only its early releases, but recycle, upcycle, whatever programs. It's sent its first shipment of 1,000 used wine bottles to be "upcycled" into "heirloom goblets, pitchers, tumblers, vases and votives," according to a news release.

Don't ask me why they spell their name in all caps, but they do.

COWHORN is also partnering with Ashland Food Co-op to covert used corks into compostable wine packs.

On top of that, literally, "At COWHORN, even the soft metal bottle cap covering the cork gets a new life through Rogue Recycling."

And then there's talk of nature flowing in cycles, etc. But the Biodynamic winery seems to be trying. And the end products look pretty nice.

The only rub is they tout their wines as pleasing the James Beard Foundation and people in the Oregon eco-culinary scene.

"Among the new estate’s early accolades is a 90-point rating from Wine Spectator for its 2007 Viognier, now sold out. In their annual round up of most memorable wines, the San Francisco Chronicle featured COWHORN’s 2007 Marsanne Roussanne, also sold out, as one of the year’s top 20 'unexpected pleasures.'”

Please note, two sold outs mean we'll never know how good they might be. Frustrating.

Another day, another lawsuit

WildEarth Guardians are still on their BioBlitz warpath.

It’s their campaign to raise awareness of endangered species and to mark the 36th birthday of the Endangered Species Act with a new lawsuit or complaint every workday for eight weeks.

This time their focus is the prairie ecosystem we call home. Prairie Week will include suits to save two insects, a fish, a lizard and a kangaroo rat. The threats include” urban sprawl, oil and gas extraction, invasions of non-native plants and animals” and other stuff, according to the group.

“The Great Plains needs a home makeover that provides enough space for the original prairie occupants from the animal kingdom,” said Lauren McCain, Prairie Protection Director for WildEarth Guardians.

I know, I practically bet the lesser-prairie chicken would have been on the list. But our highest-profile threatened species didn’t make the cut.

The lawsuits and petitions this week are aimed at protecting habitat for the Great Plains wolf, plains grizzly bear, Audubon bighorn sheep, eastern elk, passenger pigeon, and heath hen.

Now we surely live on the plains here, but I haven’t seen any of these around. The Great Plains covers a lot of area, so I guess they’re somewhere.

Cap and trade is so passé

There’s a push on to cut those nasty Wall Street people out of climate control in the U.S. It’s called cap and dividend as in there are still permits for businesses to belch global warming gasses, but the income generated through sales of the permits mostly go back to the public. They wouldn't be traded in the Chicago marketplace specially established for that and patterned after the Mercantile Exchange there.

Every energy conference I’ve been to has provoked questions about how to curb financial speculators in the market for carbon credits. You know, those people who like to make money for nothing. (I wish I hadn’t said that because the MTV song is in my head now, probably for hours.)

Continuing. The supporters of the proposal say while energy prices will go up under any cap system, especially as the permits shrink, allowing fewer emissions. The key is consumers under the dividend version get – dividends. They would amount to about 75 percent of the income the government gets for the permits. The rest of the green would go to environmental research.

The bad news is both the passed House version of climate legislation and the proposed Senate version are cap and trade. The good news is the new proposal would limit a business’ ability to use offsets, like planting trees in Sri Lanka, to make their emission quota. And then there's that limited trading of greenhouse gas permits.

The cap and dividend proposal has a Republican, Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, as a co-sponsor, so maybe it would have some momentum since Republicans who support cap and trade are an endangered or extinct species. However, even if the Senate passes a dividend plan, they would have to negotiate with those House people who make those Wall Street people look like school kids.

And now, the local bits

Linda Loper, who's kind of the honcho on the ground at Mariposa EcoVillage, reports the cold weather has put a crimp in some of the work out there west of town.

After Tuesday's Environmental Advisory Committee meeting, she said work on plastering was on hold until things warmed up a little. The welcome center, however, is weathered in, so work can begin soon on the earthen floor. That will be a lot of packing of dirt from the site to make it hard, smooth and shiny.

And building No. 2 will begin to take shape soon. Linda said her house will be going up. It will be built with insulated cement slabs on a site carved into a hillside.

While the welcome center's compressed earth walls were interesting, her home should be fun as well. It will be completely off the electric grid, and 'look ma,' no well. The water will come only from rainfall capture. Now I can see that in Austin or somewhere, but here in the Great American Desert, as early maps labeled our stomping grounds.

She seems to know what she's talking about, so we'll see.

Back to the Green Committee, they will take the new Web site to city commissioners Tuesday to get their blessing and suggestions. Live launch is planned for Jan. 19.

Lights Out – The clock is ticking

The second annual “Sylvania Socket Survey” is full of surprises.

Okay, it says 74 percent of participants have switched to energy-saving light bulbs in the past year. That may be true, but there are more than 74 percent of shoppers at stores I frequent buying standard bulbs or the stores are foolishly filling shelves with the outdated bulbs.

That was surprise one. But No. 2? Almost 75 percent of respondents didn’t know that incandescent bulbs are headed for a phase-out beginning Jan. 1, 2012.

Count me and everybody I know in that group. I’m not proud of that, but it’s true. A press release about the survey says the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 calls for the transition to start with traditional 100-watt bulbs and continue from there.

At the bottom of the release is the explanation that the survey involved only 300 adults. That makes some of the findings make a little more sense, but I wonder if some of the them are really true. How does compact fluorescent lights get into “71 percent of homes in America” but rank second to traditional bulbs in terms of use? Are the CFLs not turned on or do people only use them in a few lamps, using the usual bulbs in all the others?

I don’t get it.

Anyway, here’s the rest of the results.

66 percent of respondents said they are likely to purchase a compact fluorescent light (CFL), halogen or light-emitting diode (LED) bulb in the future.
Halogens are used in 40 percent of homes.
12 percent are using LED lighting.
52 percent said price is a key consideration in purchasing; the responses reflect a 12 percent spike compared to 2008.
Just 13 percent said they plan to buy extra 100-watt bulbs before the phase-out.
16 percent say they will shift to lower wattage incandescent light bulbs.
91 percent said they consider energy consumption per bulb to be an important factor.

I don’t get it.

But then there's the recycling. CFLs have mercury in them, so don't throw them in the Dumpster, experts say. And you might want to use a drop cloth when changing bulbs because you don't want to have to sweep up a toxic mess.

But wait, there's more!

The phase-out will happen over two years, and by 2014, maybe there will be more choices, but the main option now is CFLs. Just be careful you get the right kind. There is a special kind if you have a dimmer switch, and you have to get the right temperature bulb, for some reason measured on the Kelvin (not my idea) scale, to get the type of light you want from yellowish to blueish. The Energy Star folks have a good illustration, but this seems a little complicated.

Nevertheless, the idea is to save energy, and that's a good thing says Andrew deLaski, director of the Appliance Standards Awareness Project in U.S. News & World Report.

"It's hugely important," he says. "A 60 to 70 percent reduction in light bulb energy use will save as much energy annually as that used by all the homes in Texas last year."

I guess disrupting my life is worth that.

Adopt an invertebrate this week

Those WildEarth Guardians can’t be still. They’re in the midst of celebrating their BioBlitz and biodiversity in general.

Think of this, eight weeks of suing somebody almost every business day to mark the International Year of Biodiverstity. Sounds like fun.

The efforts are to commemorate the 36-year anniversary of the Endangered Species Act. The group is saluting the act’s impact on preserving biodiversity. So there will be 36 lawsuits or legal petitions to protect something new under the act.

They are so zany and lawyer friendly I can’t believe it.

This week, is E.O. Wilson Week for the campaign. He commented, “Attention is turning (at last) to invertebrates and microorganisms, which are what I call ‘the little things that run the Earth’ and to their immense diversity."

Dr. Wilson sounds like he's no slouch in his field, so I’ll take his word that this is a good thing. He’s won two Pulitzers and is a professor emeritus and honorary curator in entomology at Harvard, according to the Guardians.

In honor of the doc’s "life-work, all species in this week’s BioBlitz line-up are invertebrates," the Guardians said in a news release. So what will we try to protect in honor of the week? The Sacramento Mountains checkerspot butterfly, the narrow-footed diving beetle, the unsilvered fitilarry (butterfly), the Brian head mountainsnail and the Arapahoe snowfly.

I really do get it. What is good about building a ski resort in the last remaining habitat of some creature that is nearing extinction? But the Guardians might want to consider a broader outreach. Preaching via “BioBlitz” theme weeks, next week is Prairie Week, can you say lesser prairie chicken?, seems like yelling on the highest mountaintop. Who’s going to hear you except the other crazed hikers?