The Jaipur Literature Festival Comes to Boulder

I was quite excited when I heard several months ago that the Jaipur Literature Festival would be coming to Boulder. Granted, I'd never heard of it. But I had missed going to hear authors read their work and speak from my New York days, and I figured this was at least worth a shot. Plus, it was free.

The Boulder Public Library

The event was to take place at the Boulder Library, which is one of my favorite places in town. The building is beautiful both inside and out, and I looked forward to having a reason to hang out there for a weekend. I was a little less optimistic when I saw the line-up of speakers, however. I'd heard of only one (Anchee Min) of the hundred or so who would be coming, and for someone who follows literature and publishing as closely as I do, this was rather unusual. I figured these must be pretty obscure writers indeed. I wasn't at all sure I wanted to listen to excerpts from a lot of mediocre books. 

Luckily, that's not really what the Jaipur Literature Festival is about, as it turns out. The connection to literature was actually fairly loose. Instead of talking about books, writers of fiction and non-fiction (and some translators, too) converge to discuss all sorts of topics that they've explored in their books, but the goal is to exchange ideas rather than to promote certain works. The festival started in Jaipur, India eight (I think) years ago and has grown to be tremendously popular there (partially, one can't help but suppose, because it is free). In addition to its yearly visit to India, it has taken place in London and several other cities as well. The JLF had never occurred in the United States before, and a local couple approached the coordinators to suggest that it come to Boulder, thinking it was a pretty long shot but determined to at least propose it. To their surprise, the committee was intrigued and sent some delegates to check out the area. They promptly fell in love and the rest is history. I was a little disappointed to learn that the focus would be less on literature than I'd thought, but I figured it might be an interesting event. 

The JLF took place on Saturday and Sunday. There were talks throughout both days, each lasting about 45 minutes, from 10:00 A.M. through 6:00 P.M. On average, there were three or four talks to choose from for every single time slot - in short, a lot of options. Titles on the program included "Rewilding Our Heart," "Cities and Their Shadows," "First Draft: Between Fact and Fiction," and "Matters of Faith." In other words, they were a little ambiguous. Although the website provided more detailed descriptions of the themes, the prospect of clicking through all of them seemed overwhelming, so I think most people just chose the ones that sounded most intriguing and hoped for the best. Most discussions were led by panels of three to four authors with a mediator, with time for questions from the audience at the end. Having just returned from traveling, I was happy to let our friends Diana and Joel pick the first two talks on Saturday, and Ed and I showed up to attend:  

• Against the Grain: In the Times of Groupspeak - Margo Jefferson, Adrian Molina and Ryan Gattis moderated by David Barsamian
• Twilight Zones - Kai Bird, Simon Sebag Montefiore, and William Dalrymple, moderated by Nur Laiq

Things got off to a rather disastrous start. Against the Grain was (as perhaps we should have expected from the title) disjointed and very poorly mediated. Barsamian is apparently a host on a local, uber-liberal radio show, and he kicked things off by delivering a long, meandering monologue, then asking the panelists if they had anything to say (after failing to introduce any of them). They looked at each other in bewilderment, then, after a few tense moments, delivered monologues of their own. Barsamian had prepared no questions, and the "conversation" was difficult to follow and felt like a waste of time. 
Happily, Twilight Zones (which, as it turned out, was about the Middle East) was fascinating and expertly run. All three panelists were historians, and their conversation, expertly mediated by author and Middle Eastern scholar Nur Laiq, was fascinating.  

I was on my own for Sunday, so I chose to attend: 

• Twice Told Texts: The Inner Life of Translations - Antonio Ruiz-Camacho, Arvind Krishna Mehrotra, Christi Merrill, and Linda Hess, moderated by Arshia Sattar
• Jerusalem - Brian Aivars Catlos, Nur Laiq, and Simon Sebag Montefiore, moderated by Sanjoy Roy

Both sessions, thankfully, bore no resemblance to Against the Grain. The discussion about translation was particularly interesting for me, as it's a subject that I've always found fascinating. Two of the panelists were translators of poetry, which I've always imagined must be the most difficult type of text to work with, and there was plenty of lively debate about whether to translate word-for-word as much as possible, forget the words and try to evoke the meaning of the original poem, or try for something in between. Jerusalem was, predictably, fascinating as well, and I learned a great deal about the history of a city I've often visited but known comparatively little about. One of the panelists was a Medieval historian who teaches at CU, and Nur Laiq, who spends most of her time interviewing Arab youth about their perceptions of current events, sat beside him, so we heard very interesting and diverse information. I was so interested that I bought a copy of Jerusalem (the book) in the JLF gift shop and had it signed by Simon Sebag Montefiore, the third panelist. It's a fairly monstrous tome and I both look forward to, and dread, diving into it. 

There is much talk about having the JLF return next year, and it seemed to me that things went so smoothly that we have a good chance. Overall, it was a wonderful experience, though there were lots of local nuts in the audiences. In Boulder, the local nuts are usually the older generation who have been living here since the '60s and are overly fond of tie-dye and conspiracy theories. Oh well, I suppose they just added to the experience. I encourage anyone and everyone who might be interested to keep tabs on JLF Boulder and to come out next year. Our guest room may even be available. Keep an eye out for recordings of the talks, too; I heard that they will all be posted on the website and will be available for public viewing. 

Failed Fourteener

As Ed's friend Dave said to his son over our consolation breakfast in Boulder at 10:30 on Friday morning, "It's not about making it to the top, it's about making the right decisions." That about sums up our experience attempting to climb Long's Peak yesterday. We stayed low, but we also stayed alive.

Beautiful Long's Peak. The bare rock face is known as "the diamond."

Ed has been dying to climb Long's, something he hasn't done since his days as a camper at Cheley. He and his old camp friend Dave, who lives in Denver, planned together for several days, checking the weather, discussing our packing list, etc. Dave wanted to bring his ten-year-old son along, and so the two of them planned to sleep in the parking lot and get an extra-early start on Friday morning, just in case it took Jack longer to make the ascent. We planned to meet them at a feature called the Keyhole over halfway up and continue together from there. Ed and Dave checked in with each other on Thursday night and agreed that the chance of precipitation didn't worry them too much; there was a 25% chance, but there always seems to be a 25% chance.

Ed and I woke up at about 3:15 A.M. on Friday morning, dressed, and headed out the door. The trailhead isn't all that far away, and we were hiking by 4:50. It was, of course, pitch black (there wasn't even much of a moon), and so we hiked by the light of our headlamps, sometimes chatting and sometimes just enjoying the feel of the dark, silent forest around us. At some point, Ed asked if I was seeing raindrops. We were still under the cover of trees at this point, and after looking carefully I realized that I was seeing a drop intercept the beam of my headlamp every few seconds. I was surprised--I had been admiring the view of the stars in the cloudless sky not long before from the parking lot--but not too worried since the "rain" was barely noticeable.

The picture changed pretty dramatically by the time we got above treeline, though. We were about halfway up, and the sky had lightened enough to show us a mountain range cloaked in thick clouds. Worryingly, it was clear that the weather was headed our way. It was getting colder, too. I'd stripped down to a long-sleeved shirt, but since the rain had turned into pelting little ice balls, I called for a stop and reached down into my backpack to extract my raincoat. Out of the corner of both eyes, I saw a bright flash. "Was that lightning?" I asked nervously. A few moments later, we heard a boom. "I think that was about five seconds," Ed said. Yikes. Not right on top of us, but the storm was headed our way and we were above treeline, setting us up to be lightning rods.

Note the white streaks whipping by Dave - ice balls!

We waited for a while to see whether it would clear up or get worse. The ice balls (I maintain that they were not snowflakes) continued to abrade my face and standing still was making me colder and colder. A thick, white layer was accumulating on the ground. Right around the time we heard a second boom of thunder, a group passed by us, headed back down the trail. They weren't taking any chances, they told us. Ed was pretty sure we should throw in the towel, too, but he was worried about Dave and Jack. Phone calls to them were not going through, and he finally managed to get a text message off but receive no response. I was pretty sure no knowledgeable mountaineer would stick around on top of a mountain with his kid in tow in a lightning storm, but Ed was worried they were waiting for us. Finally, after another five minutes of indecision (and another rumble of thunder), we agreed that I'd start for the car while Ed went up the trail to try to find them. I wasn't thrilled about this, but I'd forgotten to bring hand warmers and my gloves were soaked through. I was eager to put my numbing hands in front of the car's heating vents.

Our intended route

The day was predicted to be beautiful after about 9:00 A.M., and it did start to clear as I got lower and lower. Still, it was too late in the day to attempt to summit Long's (afternoon thunderstorms are the norm around here, so it's important to summit early), and we wouldn't have been able to get to the top even if things had cleared up earlier. The ascent requires lots of scrambling over boulders and shimmying along narrow rock passages, which are a little dicey when dry and not to be attempted when wet. I passed hikers headed up as I went down and nearly all of them quizzed me on the conditions up above. Although my report was grim, no one seemed to worried since they were all going to Chasm Lake, which is under the treeline. Several told me that they'd passed a steady stream of would-be Long's hikers sadly trudging back to their cars.

I was thrilled to reach the parking lot and crank up the heat in the car. Ed, Dave, and Jack appeared about 45 minutes later. When they'd gotten Ed's text they had already been on their way down, as it turned out, and so Ed had joined them for the rest of the descent. Disappointed but resigned, we drove into Boulder for a massive breakfast and pity party.

Oh well.

The nice thing about living here is that we have easy access to Long's, and distance won't prevent us from going back for another attempt any time. It may be too late this season, though, so we'll have to be patient. (It is definitely possible to climb in winter when there's a thick layer of snow covering everything, but that requires a great deal of technical climbing and gear and is a whole different ballgame.) One of the most disappointing parts about the day was missing out on the views, both of the land spread below us and the mountains looming in front of us, which is one of my favorite parts of climbing. Everything was just too cloudy this time. But I look forward to many more attempts of Long's and of Colorado's other high-elevation playgrounds, some of which will certainly end in failure but some of which will make me feel as though I'm on top of the world.