The start of the new year wasn’t that different for me than the end of the old. Both were on the trail, and near the end of each hike I came across herds of swift deer and views of stunning sunsets.

Today’s hike took me eight miles north of my apartment in south Boulder to a three-mile loop trail up and over Hogback Ridge. From its name I expected the trail would be rocky rather than muddy, and it was. They don’t call it Hogback Ridge because of raising pigs there. A hogback ridge is studded with rock outcroppings, like this:
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By the time my doctor cleared me to resume normal activities yesterday afternoon — the most important thing was for me being able to hike again — it was too late to hit the trail. And at noon today his nurse told me that I am not anemic from losing too much blood after the operation — that all my blood counts are normal.

So this afternoon was the first chance I have had to go hiking since before Thanksgiving. And I took full advantage of it, celebrating the end of the year in true Mendosa fashion — on the trail.

My expectations were low. I thought that it would be as cold has it has been during the past few weeks. It wasn’t; the day was so warm that most of the time I didn’t even wear my gloves. I thought that a winter hike would offer nothing to photograph; also wrong. I thought that I might not have the energy to complete the hike that I intended; and that count not have been more wrong.
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When I lived in East Africa, I had to learn Swahili to communication with most of the people I met on safari. While many people in Nairobi understood English, few people in the countryside did.

But almost all of them knew Swahili as their second language after their tribal tongue. Swahili is the lingua franca of much of East Africa and the Congo, spoken today by about 80 million people.

Even in Nairobi my gardener, Etore, who was a member of the Luo tribe (like Barack Obama’s father), didn’t know English. I learned enough Swahili to communicate with him and with the people I met in the bush, although I never became fluent in that language and long ago forgot almost all that I learned.
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When I lived in Kenya from 1965 to 1968, on a clear day I could see a solitary peak shimmering with snow and ice just 90 miles to the north. I often saw it from my office on the sixth floor of the Jeevan Bharati Building on Harambee Avenue in downtown Nairobi. My office was a block away from the American Embassy, which terrorists destroyed in 1998, killing and injuring thousands of people.

The peak is Mount Kenya, which at 17,058 feet is the highest in Kenya and the second highest in Africa (after Mount Kilimanjaro). The first book that I ever read about Kenya was Facing Mount Kenya, Jomo Kenyatta’s 1938 anthropological study about his Kikuyu people of central Kenya. He wrote it while studying at the London School of Economics, long before he became the country’s first leader upon independence in 1963.
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Of the thousands of photographs that I took during the four years that I lived in Africa, none continue to give me more pleasure that this one that I took of my friend Igor chasing away an elephant.

I guess that I like it so much because this interaction between a human and the biggest land animal is on its face so ridiculous. And yet it worked.

Igor Lupekine was my closest friend during the three years that I lived in Kenya. An avid outdoorsman, Igor took my wife and me on many safaris in East Africa. He was also the most international man I ever knew. Born in Egypt of Russian parents, Igor obtained his Ph.D. in England, taught for most of his life in Africa, and retired to Andorra.
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As I continue to recover from surgery for my enlarge prostate a couple of days before Thanksgiving, my doctor firmly says to stay off the trails. With the sub-zero weather and snow that we have been experiencing in Boulder I wouldn’t have gone hiking in the mountains anyway. And besides, it’s too early to bring out my snowshoes.

But at least I can review my photographs and start to share some of those that I took in Africa years ago. When I returned to the States in 1969 after living there for four years, I brought back more than 10,000 35mm slides that I had taken with my single-lens reflex camera. Pictures in those days were, of course, all analog. But recently I selected a couple of hundred of my favorite shots for a local camera store to scan in as TIFFs.
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If you have seen as many movies as I have — and I haven’t seen very many — you have often seen the American Humane Society’s disclaimer that, “No animals were harmed” in the making of this film.

Likewise, no calories were burned in the shooting of this picture. If you have read many of my articles, you will know that I rarely use the passive voice, but I had to do that here for symmetry with the quotation.

Because of my operation a couple of weeks ago and all the blood that I have lost, I am still feeling rather weak. So I am making sure to get a lot of sleep and got up late this morning.
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Tomorrow’s weather prediction is for less than nothing.

In other words, they expect that the temperature will drop to -1 degrees F. as a big snow storm moves in tonight. It’s currently 47 degrees.

I made sure to get out for a walk today. So did everyone else. We all went down to the Pearl Street Mall.

This is the vibrant heart of my town and has been since 1976 when they closed Pearl Street between 11th and 15th Streets to vehicle traffic (except on cross streets). That opened it up to to pedestrians, buskers, and independent shops of all sorts.
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The Centennial Trail is too easy. It it is absolutely level. And besides, it’s paved.

But today it suited my needs perfectly. “No climbing for two weeks,” says my doctor. And the fact that the trail is paved means I could forgo the dubious pleasure of scraping mud off my boots when I came back to my apartment.

It’s an attractive and pleasant place to walk, so I took it a lot when I first moved to Boulder, when the arthritis in my knee made climbing out of the question.
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The sunset over Tantra Lake tonight was quite different from Monday’s. Snow was the difference.

Yesterday we had the first snow storm of the season. It dropped more than seven inches on us here in Boulder. The cloud cover was too heavy yesterday for any sunset here. The dense clouds continued today — until lifting just enough for this spectacular sunset.

The temperature dropped down to 8 degrees this morning, but warmed up into the 40s this evening.

About 90 percent of the lake is frozen over. The Canada geese congregate around the water kept open by the aerator.
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