Hiking at Russian Ridge, part 2

My blog about our hike Sunday at Russian Ridge Open Space unexpectedly grew large— just like the hike itself more than doubled in length based on choices we made on the fly— so I've split it into a second blog entry.

I left off in part 1 of our hike at Russian Ridge with us angling up a wide-open hillside just beneath the ridge. After climbing gradually for a while with 180° views across the mountains to the Pacific Ocean (not that we could see the water, it being totally socked in with thick fog) the trail dipped under tree cover and began descending.



Hey, look, fall foliage! Is it time to stop and smell the roses? ...No, wait, that's poison oak! 😰

Shortly after this photo op we reached the next trail junction. This is where I thought we'd loop back up to the ridge and then back to the trailhead, making a nice little hike of just over 2 miles for the day.

"How about we go further, to the Hawk Trail?" Hawk suggested.

It would not only more than double our mileage but add at several hundred additional feet of ascent. The weather was nice and we were enjoying it, so I agreed.

We even saw an actual hawk on the Hawk trail. 😂



Usually when we hike the Hawk Trail at Russian Ridge we loop around so that we're hiking down it. Sunday we went up. It's steep! Going up it makes it a different kind of challenge. Going down it's all ankles and trying not to slip on the dry, dusty surface. Going up it's all cardio and muscle tone.

Finally we got up to the top. ...Not that the top is even the top!



From atop the Hawk Trail there's still plenty more hiking, including another few hundred feet of ascent. On the whole day we hiked over 5 miles, more than we estimated even when we made the choice to extend our hike. By the time we were done we were tired and sore. But it was a good kind of tired and sore! It's been too many weeks— six of them, now— since we got out like this. Hopefully we won't wait another 6 before doing something like this again.

"MAGA Mike" Johnson

Two weeks ago the Republican majority in Congress elected "MAGA Mike" Johnson as Speaker of the House. That sobriquet isn't my invention, by the way. It was used first by fellow Republican (and attention-seeking clown) Matt Gaetz in praising his colleague's strong Trumpist credentials in the hours after he was elected speaker. Since then it's been picked up widely by opinion writers— and probably more using it in scorn than praise. But how MAGA is "MAGA Mike"? Here are three things:

Rep. Mike Johnson is not just an election denier, in the sense that he was one of the 140+ current members of Congress who, on 6 January 2021, voted to discard the will of the people expressed through a free and fair election that was not at all close; he is also an architect of election denial. He filed a brief in an utterly frivolous Supreme Court lawsuit attempting to nullify the election results of four states (Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin) and encouraged dozens of Congressional Republicans to sign on to it. He was also a key figure in communicating with Donald Trump to organize actions ahead of January 6.

Johnson staunchly opposes gay civil rights. He not only opposes marriage equality, he has tried to pass laws making LGBTQ sexual activity illegal. He has equated gay marriage to bestiality, equated being gay to being child molesters, and said that allowing LGBTQ rights will destroy America.

Asked by reporters after his election to describe his beliefs, Johnson scoffed, "Go pick [up] a bible." Okay, so he's Christian.... But he doesn't seem to differentiate that the parts of the bible widely cited as condemning homosexuality condemn equally many other things that modern self-professed Christians take far less exception to— including premarital sex and adultery. And, depending on which section of the bible we're talking about (Leviticus 18-20), mixing clothing fabrics such as cotton and wool. And where in the bible does it say it's okay to overturn an election? Oh, right, some of the passages that condemn homosexuality also condemn thievery (1 Corinthians 6:9-11) and liars (1 Timothy 1:8-11) in the same sentence.