--- Terminus: Golden ---

I took the first E Line from University Station after 8:00 am, transferred to the W Line at Auraria West Station and pulled into Golden Station at 9:45.

                                                                  [Golden Station]

The W Line ends just at the eastern outskirts of Golden at Jeffco (Jefferson County) Government Center. There is a pedestrian bridge over Highway 6 to what looks like apartments and some shops called "Golden Ridge". My destination is the Chimney Gulch Trailhead, which I know to be about two miles west on the south side of the highway, but there is no pavement, so I stayed on the north side and took the 6th Avenue Trail into Golden.

The Jeffco Government Center is an impressive structure with a high central rotunda and grounds that are landscaped into gardens.

                                                       [Jeffco Government Center]

I didn't know how long my hike would take - it proved to be demanding - so I skipped the sightseeing and determined to turn around at 2:00 pm regardless of where I was. I didn't want to be struck on the mountain trail after dark. I will return to Golden when I start back the station-to-station hikes and this building will certainly be one stop.

The walk down through Golden is through parks including one devoted to geology and paleontology - Triceratops Trail - and I see several signs to museums and other points of interest. I'm sure I'll be coming back.

                                                               [6th Avenue Trail]

The North and South Table Mountains are fossil volcanoes that display vertical bluffs of basalt around their rims. (Correction: these mountains are not the actual volcano, but are lava flows that poured from the volcano.)

                                                             [Table Mountains]

                                                          [Triceratops Trail Plaque]

Golden advertises that it's "Where the West Lives" and here's the cowboy and horses to prove it. I did notice a rodeo grounds as the train neared Golden.

I'm not sure what that means, though. There are "Old West" looking buildings aplenty and I'm sure a goodly proportion of the museums are about the Old West, but the people seem pretty modern to me.

I was impressed with how friendly and outgoing the folks in Golden were.

                                                                         [Checkmate]

The statue is called "Checkmate"  and is located in a small park situated on a bridge where 19th Street crosses 6th Avenue.

The iconic "M" on the side of Mount Zion overlooking Golden - a friend once told me that it was where Buffalo Bill Cody was buried. He was wrong. I've also read that it stands for "Mountain" and is there to show Texans what a mountain looks like. Actually, it stands for "Mines' as in "School of Mines' which is a university located in Golden. In 2017, the School of Mines ranks 82nd in the U.S. News and World Report "Best National Universities" and was ranked by QS World University rankings as the top institution in the world for mineral and mining engineering. This school has recently turned it's sites on space as a "final frontier" for natural resources.

                                                                       [The M]

The parking area for the Chimney Gulch Trailhead is on the south side of Highway 6 across from Harry D. Campbell Field. Not knowing about the small culvert cum pedestrian underpass where the intermittent creek that runs down Chimney Gulch passes under Highway 6, I trotted across the busy road, and spent several minutes trying to find the trail. (The underpass is along the small creek on the western side of the sports field.)

                                             [Lookout Mountain from the parking area]

                                          [Highway 6 along the flank of Mount Zion]

I was surprised to see this chunk of rose quartz on the trail. It was much rosier than it looks in the photograph. I left it where it was.

The environment along the lower part of the trail is foothills with grasses and straggly brush and many of the wildlife that I see around Mount Carbon. I didn't see deer but I spotted plenty of droppings.

                                                        [Trail at about 5935 feet]

This trail is described as "difficult" and I would agree but not for any lack of maintenance. The trail is well kept. The difficulty has to do with it's steepness and. perhaps, traffic, although I chose to hike it early on a weekday and did not encounter much mountain bike traffic until later in the afternoon, and even then it was not bad.

All the hikers and biker were friendly, outgoing, and polite. I met three joggers headed up the trail ("Up" - I want to emphasize that word.) I was tired after the two mile hike from the railway station down to the trailhead. Jogging was not even in my range of possibilities.

                                                            [Chimney Gulch Trail]

That's the Coors Brewery to the right.

Chimney Gulch actually is a gulch (in contrast to Harvard Gulch, for instance). It is, in fact, a V-shaped valley with steep walls. It was named for it's appearance after a forest fire ran through it.

                                                                          [Magpie]

I have a hard time getting photos of birds. They will sit there until I get my finger on the "shutter release" button and will fly away. I asked this fellow if he minded if I took his picture and he sat there for a shot. I, of course, thanked him, and paid him $20 (just joking about the $20).

The trail crossed a dirt drive in one of the neighborhoods on the flank of Lookout Mountain and, at that altitude, Denver was in clear view.

                                                                 [Denver skyline]

                                                                        [Broader view]

Golden is in a broad valley between Lookout Mountain, Mount Zion, and Galbraith Mountains to the south and the two Table Mountains to the north. The main stream is Clear Creek so I'm guessing that it's the culprit. It probably gets pretty uppity during the spring.

Further up the gulch, and not very far, there was still ice in the creeks and across the trail.

                                                                  [Bridge with ice]

                                                                 [Ice and snow]

After a while, I crossed from the straggly plains environs into pinyon and Ponderosa pine forests and, here, I noticed that I was looking down on the tops of those two ancient volcanoes.

                                                                 [Table Mountain]

Unaccountably, my pictures of Windy Saddle didn't take. Maybe my phone froze.  I did get this picture of an engine cylinder head at the top on Lookout Mountain Trail. (?)

                                                                  [Cylinder Head]

A saddle is a ridge between two mountains that divide two deep valleys. In mathematical terms, it's a hyperbolic paraboloid (I'm getting into mathematics next year so I had to throw that in.) This particular saddle is evidently a natural wind tunnel since winds blow there constantly at considerable velocity. The temperature dropped from 62.7 degrees Fahrenheit to 46.9, and I had to put my coat back on.

The forests turned to true montaine habitats and, suddenly, I was unmistakeably in the Rockies. There were lots of tiny finches and they would have nothing to do with my photography. They played "squirrel", staying just on the opposite sides of trees.

I considered continuing to the top of Lookout Mountain but, at 1:30 I thought that if I made it, I would want to look around and rest and I wouldn't be able to do much before 2:00, so I turned around and headed back down.

Did I mention that Golden is in a valley. Once I reached Highway 6 I still had two miles uphill to walk to the train station. The train was waiting for me. I sat down and sent my family a message: "I'm on the train. It's not moving. I don't care."

I don't know how high I hiked. I've seen estimates from 1000 feet to two thousand feet. I measured it at 1430 feet but my phone doesn't have an onboard barometer so the altimeter readings are less accurate. The contours on the Google topographic map places the trailhead at about 5800' and Windy Saddle at about 6900' giving an altitude gain of about 1100'. The summit of Lookout Mountain is at 7377', so, according to that, I ended up somewhere between 1100' and 1577' above the trailhead. 1430' sounds about right.

I've read that you can see seven states from Lookout Mountain....wait, that's the one in Tennessee. I've been there, too. If you're in the South, it's worth visiting. It has the only river that runs it's entire course on top of a mountain. That's what the ads say. It also has one of several deepest gorges east of the Mississippi River. And it's where Neil Gaiman set his final climactic confrontation  in American Gods.

There are two Lookout Mountains in California, one in Idaho, one in New Jersey, one in Oklahoma (there's a mountain in Oklahoma?), three in Oregon, and a Lookout Summit in Washington State. There are probably others. You should check out the one nearest you.

I didn't get to check out the eating places in Golden. I will certainly come back to that in the future.

There's a lot you can't see and experience unless you go there on your feet but a hike like this requires planning and a good constitution. Study the area before you go. What is the weather like? The difference of about a tenth of a mile on the Chimney Gulch trail dropped the temperature 15.8 degrees with a sudden wind that would suck the heat right out of you. Carry snacks and don't forget the water. Dehydration is a serious condition on a trail where there is no phone or Internet coverage. Watch your pace and don't overdo it.

Addendum...My cousin from Georgia and her husband visited me Monday, May 2, 2022 and we drove up Lookout Mountain. It was cloudy but I got a decent shot of Windy Saddle.

--- Language and mathematics ---

This year my dual focus will be language and mathematics, but are those really two different things?

There is an ongoing philosophical debate as to whether numbers have an independent existence "out there" in nature. Is there a property of nature called "one"? Is there really a such a thing as a fraction?

Part of my graduate training was in research methodology. I've done a little research myself, mostly as parts of student teams, but I've mostly been involved with helping others develop their studies. Two of the biggest problems I've seen in studies are reification and reductionism.

Reductionism, in this instance, is the tendency of specialists to see their world from the narrow viewpoint of their own area of expertise. A medical issue will always have psychological, social, and environmental elements so a physiologist looking at diabetes might focus on the blood and pancreas and forget all about these other elements, and that can be useful as long as it is kept up front that his results are only part of the story. But if you have to deal with the reality of diabetes, you'd better not forget the other things.

Reification is much more insidious and difficult to guard against - often, it's just ignored.

Science doesn't give truths. It provides models that allow us to understand things that happen in the world and make predictions, but no model is perfect. All models are approximations of reality. A good model preserves as many of the important features of reality as possible so that it's outcomes can be said to be accurate to within certain specified limits. The error can be specified. But there is always error.

We keep models in our heads about how we think the world works. And, hopefully, our models are pretty close to reality. But philosophers and research advisers are there to warn us that the word is not the thing and that the model is not the reality.

And I think that is why some people mistakenly believe that numbers are "real". You can point at a number on a page but that's just ink that's been allowed to soak into paper and dry. To be grammatically correct, "1" is not 1. Fractions are even more problematic. If you break a stick in nature, you don't have two fractional sticks. You just have two sticks, and the "two" only exists in people's heads.

Mathematics is a language, just like English or Spanish or AMSLAN. It has been developed to help us come up with technically correct descriptions about how the world around us works.

In a way, numbers do have a kind of existence, as information, but that existence isn't independent. If there were no minds around to appreciate a zero, there would be no zero. But zero revolutionized our world by allowing us to make very precise "words" to describe very large and very small quantities.

Some machines have parts that must be accurate in size to ,say, 0.01 millimeters, or else the tiny space between the parts would allow enough motion to shake the machine apart. Try expressing 0.01 in Roman numerals (which have no zero).

Our technical understanding of the world, and therefore, our exquisite technology, relies on the language of mathematics, but language it still is.

We have many languages - literary language that allows us to communicate complex messages across both space and time, nonspoken body languages that allow us to communicate exquisitely our emotional intentions, aesthetic languages that let is communicate beauty (and sometimes ugliness)to multitudes. The sciences use the languages of logic and mathematics to communicate ideas with great precision.

Now, as I begin to explore the hard sciences, my first stop will be the "hard language" of mathematics and the softer human spoken languages.

Does mathematics exist "out there"? Well, in fact, it does. As long as there are thinking people "out there", there will be mathematics and I will be carrying it out into the field more and more to explore the intricacies of the world around me.

--- Hard science, soft science ---

"Hard" science is misleading. Social sciences, psychology, history - all that can be vastly more difficult than the "hard sciences". In the laboratory, everything other than what is being observed is controlled (and, often, what is being observed is also controlled, which begs the question, "Is what is being observed a fabrication?"). In the field, things can't be tightly controlled so there is always a lot of what scientists call "error".

"Error" isn't what it sounds like. It isn't "accident" or "misbehaving". The inconvenient fact is that even the purest of chemicals are not absolutely pure and there is no way of knowing exactly what impurities are present. No procedure is absolutely perfect and all we can do is specify how close to perfect it is (we can do that by specifying tolerances and checking to make sure these tolerances are met.)

Tiny imperfections are considered insignificant or negligible. Of course all the tiny imperfections add up, and that's what scientists call "error".

"Soft sciences" including field research in the hard sciences deal with lots of error so results of studies tend to include a lot of involved statistics that generate statements like, "The measurement is accurate within plus or minus ..... ," or "a trend was observed that ....," or "p is less than ...." These are statements of uncertainty.

In contrast, a hard scientist can confidentially tell you that the boiling point of pure water is 100.0 degree centigrade at one atmosphere of pressure. Observations made in the laboratory have very little error and therefore results of laboratory studies can often be reported with considerable certainty. Hard science is "hard" because of the "solidity" of it's results.

Up to now, I've been exploring the soft sciences around the Denver area, but I'm about to shift over to the hard sciences: mathematics, astronomy, physics, chemistry, geology, paleontology, biology. Along the way, you will see why even the hard sciences have their soft spots.

--- Social and language education at the library ---

The Denver Public Library is scattered all over the Denver area with 24 branch libraries in addition to the big, castle-like central library in downtown Denver. In addition to providing books, movies and educational materials to their patrons, they offer many educational experiences.

The end of the year is a transitional event for me because I am changing topics for my adventures, but it's more of a blending than a sharp change. I've been studying social sciences, but now I will turn my attention to language. Obviously, language is social.

When I visit Mi Pueblo Market, I wish I could talk to the checkout person in Spanish.

Unfortunately, the last two attempts to learn Spanish has been frustrating. I didn't have this much trouble learning German or AMSLAN. I realize that new languages are harder to pick up as a person gets older, but I can tell from my past attempts that Spanish should be an easy language, so next year will be one more (last?) attempt to learn Spanish.

The Denver Public Library offers many tools for learning new languages and I will be using it. Specific to Spanish, not only are there books, books on tape, and movies in Spanish, but they have bilingual events. Looking at their online calendar  for next year, I see weekly bilingual guitar lessons offered by the Valdez-Perry Branch and the Schlessman Family Branch offers weekly Spanish conversation groups. And there have been many single events in the past.

I will have to develop a basic conversational grasp of Spanish before I can make much use of these learning tools, but they're something to look forward to.

Does your local public library have a website? Check it out. You may be surprised about how much your library offers.

--- A trip to Asia ---

There is a lot of Asian influence in Denver. I've visited the little Buddhist temple on Estes Street near Bear Creek and the Domo Japanese Restaurant between Auraria West station and 10th Street and Osage Station. I plan to check out Sakura Square when I visit the Union Station area early next year.

Many of the Vietnamese refuges, after the Vietnam War settled around Denver and, after the release of Japanese-Americans from internment camps, Governor Ralph Carr welcomed them to settle in Colorado. There are neighborhoods in Denver that have a decidedly Asian flavor. Some of the local branches of the Denver Public Library, like the Bear Creek Branch, have significant holdings in the Vietnamese language.

I took a trip Tuesday down Alameda to the area on Federal called "Little Saigon".

                                                               [Little Saigon sign]

I walked through the Denver University campus to University Station. I'm almost at 200 pounds and I'm avoiding bus rides as much as I can and the campus in always nice for a visit. A short train ride to Alameda Station and a bus ride to Bryant Street brought me to the Denver Buddhist Cultural Society. When I was planning my trip, I looked around the neighborhood and noticed this building across the street...

                                                                 [Justice for All]

It looked interesting so I decided to check it out. It's a large building with many legal organizations, pretty much independent of each other. Whereas it did look like it would be a useful place for someone looking for legal assistance, I would have had to knock on every door in the building to get an idea of what goes on there. If you need legal assistance, I would advise checking them out on the Internet before visiting.

So, to the cultural center...

                                                [Denver Buddhist Cultural Society]

...which was closed and posted, so I didn't learn much there.

So, on to Federal Boulevard. I had told Coryn that I would make a side trip to the Mi Pueblo Market on Knox Court. On the way I met a couple of nice ladies trying to ride herd on a covey of small pooches who were spreading out in all directions. I helped them get the dogs together and continued to the market. On the way back to Federal, I spotted this mural on the Casa Resource Center building on Alameda.

                                                 [Entrance to the Far East Shopping Center]

                                                                       [Foo dog]

                                                              [From the upper level]

The Far East Center is a shopping area in Little Saigon that has markets, gift stores, restaurants, jewelry stores, beauty shops, and other businesses. I visited the Truong An Far East Asian Gifts for a little shopping. The folks there were friendly and didn't mind talking. The shop is packed with all kinds of food items, clothes, and knickknacks. With my backpack, I felt like a very dangerous bull in a China shop. I managed to look around and get out without damaging anything.

Then I walked across to the China Jade Restaurant for a tasty plate of steamed dumplings. I've eaten here before with my family and have found their excellent reputation for dim sum to be completely deserved.

I have also visited the Little Saigon Supermarket next door. If you can figure out what you're looking at, this is a great place for finding exotic food items.

After what turned out to be a shopping expedition, I caught a bus back to Alameda Station, a train back to University Station, and a bus home.

Much Asian architecture in the United States has a pagoda look to it. Are there any Asian-style structures in your area? Even the small southern town of Selma, Alabama had seven Chinese Restaurants during the twenty years I lived there.

Japanese gardens have a minimalist style emphasizing rock, water, and sky. Are there any Asian gardens near you? Can you figure out the symbolism embodied in the landscaping before you research it?

--- Auraria West to Osage ---

This was a very short hike. The light rail station is just at the very edge of Auraria campus near Colfax. The Domo is on the first block across Colfax, and the 10th Street and Osage Station is just a few blocks further. All in all, I doubt if Auraria West Station is two miles from 10th Street and Osage, but this hike is packed with interesting places.

Auraria West Station is my last station-to-station hike for a while. Next month, I start exploring the light rail termini. Alameda is the last station to transfer to other lines to the north and east. Auraria West is on the line that continues to Union Station and it is also where the W Line, which heads west to Golden, splits off.

As mentioned above, it is right on the border of the Auraria campus, which is shared by three colleges: Community College of Denver, Metropolitan State University of Denver, and the University of Colorado - Denver.

                                                              [Auraria West Station]

I've been through Auraria West Station several times. It's on the way to the Human Services offices in the Castro Building and the W Line serves the Golden area.

Frankly, the area isn't that impressive from the station, but there are some suggestive sights. I've heard of and seen the back of the Domo Restaurant from the light rail. It doesn't look like much from the back of the building but it has a good reputation. I can also see this building from the station - it looks like an old Spanish mission.

                                                      [Saint Cajetan's from the station]

As I walk around the parking area, I realize that it is on the Auraria Campus. Reaching Colfax, I saw a trail heading back onto the campus and I took that and am almost immediately at the Ninth Street Historic Park.

When the early settlers moved up stream from the short lived Montana City, they established a settlement called "Auraria". The name made plain the people's interest - gold.  It was founded in 1858, three weeks before William Larimer staked out the future Denver City across Cherry Creek. The settlers, lead by William Greeneberry Russell, was a group from Georgia, and the town was named after Auraria, Georgia.

I keep finding ties back to my homeland. Before I retired, I had left the Southeastern United States exactly four time, once on a construction ministry trip to Great Falls, Montana, and three times to Denver. I guess it was only natural that I would end up in Denver, and I keep finding all these links back to Georgia and Alabama.

The Ninth Street Historic Park has preserved a section of old Auraria - a row of houses that now serve as administrative buildings and museums for the Auraria Campus. The buildings display a variety of styles from the late 1800s and early 1900s and each has a plaque out front that provides a little of the history. Here are pictures of some of the buildings.

                                                        [Ninth Street Historic Park]

After wandering around the park a while, I made a beeline for the big Spanish style building and found that it was, indeed, an old church, built in 1920, which is now a part of the college campus. On the day I visited, they were having a blood drive but the registration crew told me quite a lot about the building. There are some interesting stained glass windows there.

                                                              [Saint Cajetan's]

They also told me a little about the chapel across the way, which was my next stop.

                                                            [Emmanuel Gallery]

The oldest religious structure still standing in Denver, the Emmanuel Chapel was built in 1876. First an Episcopal chapel, the building later became a Jewish synagogue, as indicated by the inscription now over the door, and is now an art gallery. It was hosting an exhibition by the German artist Aram Bartholl on the day of my visit.

His work is very modernistic and strikingly "clean". The gallery was spacious, white, and neon. He's worth looking up (hint: there's a Wikipedia article.)

Locals make great tour guides if you know how to talk to them. The folks at the art gallery directed me toward the student union building, an old, massive brewery called "Tivoli". The Tivoli Brewing Company, still in operation, was founded in 1859 in this huge brick building that looks like something right out of a Charles Dickens novel.

                                                           [Tivoli Brewing Company]

After another pass through the Ninth Street Historic Park, I left the campus, crossed Colfax, and walked to the Domo Japanese Restaurant, which is a reconstruction of a Japanese farmhouse. Restaurant, museum, gardens, and cultural center, it was an experience meal. The authentic Japanese food was served in an authentic manner in an authentic setting complete with tree stumps for seats. It made me happy.

                                                   [The Domo Japanese Restaurant]

After a big bowl of ramen and three sides (I don't know what they were, and I didn't ask. They were tasty.), I looked around the gardens, made a donation for the Myamar refuges, and headed down Osage toward Lincoln Park, a large green with a water park (closed for the winter) and a mural by Emanuel Martinez, that contains both modern and ancient symbols. It's called "La Alma" (The Soul, painted in 1978.

                                                                         [La Alma]

10th Street and Osage Station was close by. On the way back to University Station, I took the opportunity of taking pictures of the light rail reflected in upper stories of buildings as it passed on the elevated track just south of Broadway Station.

                                                               [Reflected train]

Does your town have any old buildings open to the public? One of my past hometowns, Selma, Alabama, had over 1000 antebellum structures. Old homes are great places to get in touch with past cultures.

I'll probably be making more trips to old Auraria. College campuses have always attracted me - they're like sprawling indoor-outdoor museums providing exhibitions in just about every field of interest, events, and many peoplewatching opportunities.