What the Hell is Going on Here?

Finding my Zen on top of a 9,000-foot mountain top.

I live and work and hike in a national forest. It’s a quiet place away from the crime and the urban jungle of the cities near Los Angeles below this alpine mountain town. It can feel worlds away from the stress and suburbia of the busy hell holes of the cities down below. We don’t have a lot of domestic violence, it feels like a safe place to live in this crazy world we live in today. We rarely have car chases and if you tried to walk out of a store without paying for something, I guarantee a redneck would tackle you and/or pull out a registered firearm. Yes, a lot of people have legal concealed carry weapons here and yes a lot of them have NRA bumper stickers on their trucks. This is not Portland or Seattle. We support our sheriff department in this little rural town. In the world we live in today, yes it can sometimes feel like we are still living in the nineties here (For the worse or better sometimes depending on what side of the aisle you vote on) But we love our small-town life.

Even in my small mountain town, today just started out so uber strange.  When are we ever going to get used to the outlandish state of the world today? Is waking up to outlandish breaking news every single day of my life the new normal?

I literally just had an ambulance drive by me and I thought oh that’s good that emergency services are up and running where I live. I can’t believe I would take the whaling of a siren for granted. But wait according to fake news, CNN crime is not at an all-time high. Why would we need emergency services?

More Zen

I woke up this morning before the sun at five a.m. ready to tackle another ten-mile hike as soon as the sun rose just a bit. As Big Bear Lake, California’s premier hiking guide, I wasn’t expecting a bunch of messages from my clients from across the country asking if I could refund their money as all of these travelers’ flights to California had been canceled. What on earth was going on? I don’t usually turn on fake news CNN before I have my coffee and let me tell you these liberal yahoos were in the middle of one hell of a dumpster fire!

Seriously, I have friends who are literally conspiracy theorists who are looking pretty damn smart right about now. Days like this make me happy we have three months’ worth of food stocked up in the garage. I mean what is going to happen next, I had to wonder after today’s shenanigans of airlines, hospitals, 911 and police departments going down. I know people who hide money in their backyards and suddenly they are not looking so crazy after all!

As I sipped on my coffee and pet my twenty-two-pound Norwegian Forest Cat, I honestly could not understand why on earth CNN was not covering this story. This is one of the biggest stories I have seen in my lifetime! You can’t call 911 in some areas! Over four thousand flights were canceled worldwide! Shouldn’t people be talking about this? For a while, all planes were grounded in the United States. The only other time that has happened in my lifetime was 9/11! Most millennials don’t even remember that, but I do.

Meanwhile, Joe Biden is relaxing at his Delaware beach house and obviously, the United States newscasters can’t make a big deal about this because old Joe is at the beach. With Covid right?

Meanwhile, instead of talking about the biggest software situation in our lifetime, CNN would rather talk about all the lies that Donald Trump told last night at the RNC.

Like as you know how inflation is at an all-time high. Obviously, that’s fake news! I mean I just paid seven dollars for a loaf of bread. That’s completely normal right, for a loaf of flour, water and probably GMO’s as it was not organic. Who can afford organic in a Joe Biden economy?  And obviously, it’s completely normal to pay $5.25 for a gallon of gas.

Oh, and my favorite also Donald Trump’s fake lie last night is that crime is not at an all-time high. I mean it is literally unsafe to live or travel to once amazing cities with booming tourism like Portland or Seattle. Friends who live in Portland don’t even lock their car doors because vagrants and looters will just break in. We are living in an apocalyptic  Stephen King Novel every day but according to the liberal media, just smoke some more weed get your twelve-year-old a sex change and nothing to see here folks!

Maybe the liberal news thinks crime is at not an an all-time high because we have defunded the police and there is no one to report carjacking, car chases and shootings? And it’s totally normal in our cities to have junkies just shooting up heroin in front of kids on our city streets. But nope. No crime here! Just Hunter Biden smoking some crack on the steps of the White House. Nothing to see here Folks!

I’m watching this in the morning on CNN and I’m thinking are we living in a parallel universe? How is this true life?

And then fake news CNN has the gall to show this lady on the news who is stuck somewhere because she bought an Allegiant flight and they’re only giving her $100 credit for her flight. Listen, Karen, you just bought the Big Lots of plane tickets. You should be happy they’re giving you any money back at all! If you buy the Kia of plane tickets and a national emergency happens don’t be surprised when you get stuck in Dallas.

And this is why I hike. I need the zen of the forest to hide away from all the realities of today’s world.