Bandaids and Boots

It's Wednesday and I'm fighting a head cold, so this could get foggy.

January, western MT.

It’s Wednesday in America, and I have a head cold. I hate head colds, but probably not for the reason you might initially think. Sure, I hate the fact that I can’t breath as well through my nose, I hate the lingering headache and the diminished energy levels, but most of all, I detest feeling my brain get fogged. I’m aware of it. I can see the fog, like exhaust from my truck in the cold air creeping up before my eyes. It drives me crazy to not have my mind working.

But here we are. So prepare for a little jumbledness.

I do not get sick often. I take some pride in that. I focus on sleep, nutrition, keeping stress to a minimum. When there is work to be done, I do it. When I have time to exercise I take it. But regardless, life on earth includes sickness from time to time so here I am, day 4, foggy, congested, a dull headache, and a weird pulse behind my eyes.

Over the years I’ve come to find out a strange mental predictor or indicator that I am about to get sick. I get a 24 hour period of hyper mental activity. Seriously. I don’t know why. I’ve never heard of it elsewhere. But in the 24 hours preceding a cold or flu like thing, my brain goes into hyperactivity mode and I feel like I could write a novel in a nonstop session if time were to allow. It’s weird. I had it this last week and thought, crap… this is too good, something is about to strike. And the next day I woke up coughing and sniffling. Strange, right? Any of you ever notice this?

It’s been a great week in Montana though. We are in January and we have winter. Snow on the ground. Ice in the rivers. We’ve even gotten a little blue sky, which is always an incredible thing here, especially in our notoriously gray part of the state. I’ve still been swimming every day regardless of the cold, though driving to a little swimming hole a few minutes up the road rather than my normal bike ride to one just down the trail from here. It’s been fun to be in a new swimming hole. It’s a little deeper, and though near a road, a quieter place because no one really goes up there in the winter. Today there was so much slush moving through the creek that it made noises akin to snow falling from trees or footsteps in the winter forest. I kept looking around for a deer or mountain lion near bye, but nothing, the noises were coming from the water as slush built up, broke free, and moved along. My body has little ice cuts on it today from sitting in the stream of flowing slush.

Having a cold, sitting in the water, watching America pass the time I had a few brief thoughts on health. Basic things really. If you follow me on X you’ll see them posted there, but I thought I’d refer to them here too, because here we can discuss them a little more in depth.

In the news today there is a story going around about this new Stargate Ai initiative by Larry Ellison. Well, he is being associated with it because as I’ve briefly read, he likely stands to gain a bunch of that money, but you and I and every tax payer gets to pay for it. Stargate is a new $500,000,000,000 ai infrastructure bill. Did you count all those zeros? I did. It’s a lot of them. Larry Ellison is the Oracle billionaire that will likely make several more billions from this new government program. Stargate is a joint venture investing up to $500 billion for infrastructure tied to artificial intelligence by a new partnership formed by OpenAI, Oracle and SoftBank. One of the big selling points is that it will more readily speed up mRNA “vaccine” technology so we can “combat cancer and heart disease.”

We could stop here and focus on the ways that tax payers stand to increase the number of billionaires in the country while not necessarily gaining anything for the pursuant costs, but that is not the direction I’m pivoting here now. I need more brain cells than are available in this fogged condition I’m currently sitting in so I’m instead going to just pose this simple question.

Why do we try to bandaid everything in America? Why not get to the root cause of problems, and try to change them?

Ok, here is the thing. We about to spend billions, again, count the zeros, BILLIONS on Ozempic in America. It is about to be included in tax funded Medicare and Medicaid so that we can “combat obesity.” It’s insane. In addition to being a free check to the makers of Ozempic, it is not improving the system that causes obesity. It is a mere bandaid.

This problem of bandaging issues is widespread in America. We do it with so many issues. We create problems and then attempt to fix them by simply throwing tax money at people who say they can fix it. Tax and spend is no way to fix an issue. Tax and spend works to build a highway system maybe, but not fix obesity and poverty.

We can not spend our way into solutions on a lot of these things. In fact, quite the opposite. In many regards, as we increase the spending we in turn increase the stress on the mechanisms that produce the dollars required to go into the system… ie, we increase the stress load on tax payers, working people, who could sleep a little better if they were allowed to relax a little more without worry of sending upwards of half their income to state and federal governments.

“Not getting anything done, but at the highest possible cost and for the very best “reasons” was what our government was all about, we are learning.” - Walter Kirn

Oh, but we’ll tax the billionaires… Really? Great. We do that already though and at that scale it’s a different game altogether than what the average tax payer runs into. The middle class seems to always be most real world burden when it comes to the modern tax behemoth that runs modern America. It’s time to worry less about “taxing the rich” and consider that maybe all this spending isn’t necessary. Maybe it’s time to focus on less government spending so that the average American can not only enjoy the benefit of keeping more of their income but also, if we were to reduce some of the insane regulations and requirements allowed by massive government bureaucracies, we could actually see the costs associated with starting a business or building a home go down.

“But we need regulation to keep GE from poisoning the Hudson and the like.”

Totally agree.

Regulation at that level is important. In large systematic industries we can benefit from systematic regulation. The problem of course in the last 50 years is that we’ve bastardized all those regulatory agencies anyway by letting them have a revolving door with the people from within those industries, so there is no real regulation anymore. There is only regulation build by those that dominate the arena so that they can create red tape that keeps new, small competition from being able to even get started, let alone compete with the larger players. Need examples? Look no further than the regulations around meat packing that coincided with the consideration of the entire industry. Or Monsanto. Or pharma.

But what I’m getting at is the frustration that exists across America with a level of regulation that makes starting a small business or farm increasingly prohibitive. There is a cost to this endless train of permits, inspections, and endless regulation. The cost is high. Operating a small business in America is wildly expensive and challenging and the competition, in the form of multinationals, is able to undercut prices on endless fronts from the benefit of scale and dealing outside the game board on an international field that is not an option for those just starting out.

We need more small businesses in America if we have any hope of stifling the rapid gentrification of America. But I’m digressing. This is all part of a piece I’ve been working on about the importance of small business in America. That is for a future day. Today is about bandaids.

Great for a cut. Bad for fixing problems. The problem is not the cut. The problem is the thing that keeps cutting us.

We need to learn to recognize problems and go after the heart of the issues again in this country.

Instead of combatting cancer lets prevent it...

Same with obesity. Same with poverty. Same with war.

Handing out pills and checks and bombs at the expense of those paying for them (which is not the same as the person handing them out!) is not a solution. A solution is to fix why everyone is obese. A solution is building conditions for business and livelihood. A solution is not bowing to Raytheon and Lockheed martin and doing the hard work of diplomacy so we don’t need to spend billions on jets that never even fly.

I’ve digressed.

I blame the head cold.

I’d had planned a review not of our societal ills in regards to Ozempic and regulations affecting small business, but to something much different. Maybe I’ll go there now.

These have a very pliable soft sole that is made for gripping snow and slick surfaces. They wear like a “barefoot” style shoe in that the only footbed is flat wool.

It’s Wednesday, anything goes.

In my head, a cold. Outside, a cold.

If you were in Montana and checked your weather app a few days ago you saw “Extreme weather alert.” Perhaps because of my cold, or perhaps because it is actually ridiculous, I get really annoyed as a Montanan to see “extreme weather alert” associated with… “lows down to single digits.”

It’s January. This is Montana. Single digits is neither extreme nor worthy of emergency alert. It’s weather. Common weather at that. It is to be expected. But my irritability is not the point of this, I promise.

It did drop down to zero. And zero is a perfectly pleasant temperature in Montana in January. Most of us love it. And regardless of love, it is what happens, has happened, and will continue to happen in January in Montana.

I love to go for walks in it. During the frigid days there is something in the air. It’s like deep space air or something. Super crisp. Thick in the lungs. It feels good.

There is also a quiet. I think in part is because there are fewer people out and about, but also, something about the way frigid air allows sound to pass through it.

I walk down the to creek and not only do my footsteps make a softer, quieter sound in the crunchy snow, but the creek, a slow slushing of water as it becomes viscous, then solid. Ice falls begin to build in riffles, making the declining angle of the waterway ever more obvious as you sit and stare. The colors of the ice too, are wintery and perfectly tinged with blues and greens.

As I wrote about recently, years ago I had frostbite from wearing Sorel boots in cold conditions like this for several days straight in the backcountry. The frost bite occurred on the last day when I had not dried the liner out properly and was forced to wear the frozen boots for several hours in -20 F conditions. My feet turned black and white.

At a wilderness first aid class I was in while still recovering from my frostbite I was introduced to Stegar Mukluks by two women that worked in the arctic circle.

Here is the difference. The common winter boot, like a Sorel or Kamik, are made with a rubber footbed, leather upper, and wool liner. In cold, wet conditions these work masterfully. They are waterproof, so you can comfortably step into a cold puddle, and your foot will stay dry and warm. However, in very cold conditions, well below freezing, the waterproof factor becomes a negative. Feet sweat. And what stops water from coming in, also keeps water from escaping.

Enter the Stegar Mukluk. The mukluk design is a leather booty with either a leather or canvas upper and a wool or fleece liner and footbed. Mine are a leather/canvas combination. These boots are not good in wet conditions. They readily absorb water if you step into it. But in frozen conditions they are supreme. The footbed is wide and boxy allowing for airspace to insulate in addition to the fleece or wool liner. A wool footbed also keeps the bottom of the foot insulated from the freezing below. And as the final function, the leather in combination with fleece/wool allows foot moisture to escape, so there is never trapped moisture on your foot.

I’ve warn these every winter since getting frostbite, and even in the most extreme cold, my feet do not get cold. They are also incredibly lightweight and comfortable, and feel akin to wearing a cozy slipper. Yes, friends laugh at them. I’ve never cared. The comfort level is like no other when it is below 20 degrees.

The leather straps wrap around allowing for whatever level of tightness your layers allow. Keeps snow out wonderfully when up and tight, but loose, like pictured allows for easy slip on and off.

Again, these are not muck boots. If you are going to be sloshing in creeks or puddles or mud, this is not the boot you want on. But if it is down in the single digits, and you are not going to have to step through water, this is a boot that will keep you warm well into the negative double digits. I have broken through into water before, and because my reaction time was swift, and I was able to pull the boot up out of the water quickly, there was no penetration. The water froze to the outside and in minutes had broken off, but on warmer days I’ve gotten them wet, and while warm, they are not as comfortable. For that reason if it’s above 20-25F I generally will wear my Muck boot or Kamik (which is like a Sorel).

Yes. I have several boots. I live where we get all the conditions. Muck boots, like Boggs, deserve their own review some day. They are so simple and incredible. But in these coldest days of the years I greatly enjoy having my mukluks. They are not for fashion. They are not for most of the year. But when you want to get out and it’s - 10F, there is no more comfortable boot than these.

Alright. A little all over the place today. I blame the head cold. But I’m taking all the tinctures and witchcrafty things I can come up with to get rid of it. New to this cold at the advice of a friend I’m taking some Stamets mushroom tincture, which if nothing else is a wonderful placebo. But I’ve been reading a lot on the magical properties of mushrooms lately and wonder if I’d started this sooner if it would have helped stave off the worst of it. Maybe, right?

Keep your eye out for two additional posts coming this week… I’m going to try to get the Coffee Brief News Roundup out on Friday, though it may be Saturday at the rate my brain is working. And new this week, I’m not sure when, will be a photo roundup. Several people have expressed a liking to simple photography, and being a thing I do a ton of every single day I thought I’d experiment in adding in a weekly roundup of photos. Stay tuned.

If you have anything to add to the boot conversation, or anything for that matter, I’d love to hear it! And as always, feel free to share this post if you enjoyed it. I’ve gained a few new paid subscribers and would like to thank you all for supporting this.

Cheers to another great week on earth. I don’t know of another place I’d rather be.