THESE TIMES

"We don't have to get fat,

We don't have to get old.

We don't have information that we have to withhold."

-The Pretenders, "Let the Sun Come In"

Mrs. Ericson and I are doing fine money-wise, but we definitely don't have helicopter rescue money.

That thought arose as I looked up at Aasgard Pass, a muscle-bound stretch of slope that rises from the tourmaline-green shores of Colchuck Lake in the Alpine Lakes Wilderness in the central Cascades, just outside of Leavenworth. That incline of nearly 2,000 feet in two-thirds of a mile loomed like a mocking high school bully, and I wondered whether I sh...