Doug Fine: Author, Journalist, Adventurer, Goat-Herder

Hikes are thought lubricants for me, like showers for some crooners or an outhouse for Aquinas. It’s about varied horizons. New vistas ask the rods and cones in my eyes to send empty-mind invitations to the inspiration parts of my brain. At the same time, the coyote scat and tadpole-filled creeks underfoot, coupled with the shrieking hawks overhead, remind me of my connection to the Planet and renew, to my immense relief, my awareness that I am, despite everything I love about the Digital Age, a proud member of the Animal Kingdom and not some special evolutionary case. On my jaunts, which might occur weekly or daily, I tend to have thoughts like the subject of this Dispatch, which is to say, today I came up with a Crunchy Theory of Everything:

Actually I didn’t realize that I had discovered the elusive Theory of Everything that had evaded the minds of such decent thinkers as Einstein and Bohr, but shortly after returning from a long, canyon-hopping autumnal hike and letting the goats out of the corral for their daily assault on the rose bushes this afternoon, I was at the keyboard and heard myself saying to my sweetheart, in a loving tone: “…first let me explain the Cosmos, then, yes, I do want to check out those organic wool Web sites [for our son’s mittens you want to knit].” (The same five-month-old son, who, at the moment, was testing his maximum vocal decibel level — joyously — because he’d figured out a new shape into which to bend his non-toxically-colored, wooden “chew toy”.)

So, on to explaining the Cosmos.

I and several hundred million of my closest colleagues have noticed that the universe at all levels and scales continually builds up and breaks down. This is how star stuff behaves no matter what organic process you choose to study over time, from the progression of a meteor to the life cycle of a corrupt Presidential administration.

To meet Einstein’s rule that any true theory should be easily explainable to an eight-year-old, I’ll say, “Look at your desk, or the tree from which it came. Termites, rain and other forces will eventually break it down. This will add nutrients to the soil. That soil can be used to grow into a new tree, and that tree might grow old, or might be made into some device to shoot a turkey, or make a bed, or somehow otherwise alter the Cosmos. The one thing you can be sure of, is that the matter in the original tree will regenerate.”

Nothing “goes away.” This has been understood, mathematically, for centuries. Even by Westerners. Law of Conservation of Ballpoint Pens and all that.

The whole universe, on the tiniest and largest of scales, operates with this symmetry. Whether it’s quarks, neutrinos, or incredibly tiny, dimension-morphing strings that hold us together, according to linear accelerators and eccentric physicists seeking tenure, the pattern is the same. Same for our personal lives and the behavior of galaxies.

This has the pleasant side-effect of being extremely comforting to those who fear death: call it reincarnation, call it immortality, whatever your spirituality is, logically the best thing you can do (AKA Sainthood), is to sing the most beautiful song you can in any situation. Because in any action you take, any thought, every breath, you are in fact creating (and also destroying) the universe moving all directions in time simultaneously, and thus you can make (and re-make) all of history be ABAP (As Beautiful As Possible).

Plus you can help “reconstitute the soil” into a lovely, joyous scene in the small universe you actually experience in your personal life, say while milking your goats (which, on a giant scale, might be simply one electron in the soil of some “decayed tree” that will eventually grow up to be a Beatles song.) If you’re really lucky, you might be helping piece together some soil somewhere into the coming of the Messianic Era, if that’s your inclination, simply by taking that extra step to make your life partner feel special and loved with a back massage, or by writing an absolutely heartfelt piece of music. (I used to call this concept of one’s perceptual reality at any given moment his or her “Universe Dome,” and I still like the somewhat Biosphere-y image, but an early editor made me take it out from its putative world debut throughout Not Really An Alaskan Mountain Man.) In any event, the Theory of Everything also helps explain why when you have an idea in Flagstaff, you find people talking about it the next week in Addis Ababa.

Whatever it is you’re doing, if you sing the most beautiful possible internal and external song while doing it in any given moment, you’re saving the world. As Charles Wright so emphatically puts it in his 1971 R&B hit Express Yourself:

Whatever you do, do, do,
Lord, Lord,
Do it Good

Empirical evidence of this for me (get ready to go crunchy, academia), is the amazingly aesthetic crystalline patterns that water assumes upon being frozen when told a loving message, as documented in Masaru Emoto’s book, The Secret Life of Water.

Now, this hike-inspired thought I had today amidst the scenery pictured above is what we call “Theoretical Physics.” So upon hearing it on the porch swing over tea and amidst goats when I returned from the hike and had mostly finished typing it up, my sweetheart told me in no uncertain terms that I could without qualification now call myself a physicist. “Add it to your bio,” she told me.

Me, who in college dropped a class in the nick of time called, “Physics for Poets” (honestly). The math was too counter-intuitive for me when we got to Relativity. (“What if just one of the twins was subject to friction?” I asked a TA who spoke only Mandarin.) But my sweetheart makes some mean tea, which earns anyone credence, and anyway she pointed out that a lot of extremely smart people have been working for a long time for a Theory of Everything. They’ve got us into I think 18 dimensions at last count, and still no one’s declared victory, until now.

And a Theory of Everything, even if it simply points out the painfully obvious (that everything you can possibly point to, from the subatomic to the visibly physical, to the wave form to the galactic to the behavioral to the social to the literary to the athletic to the lyrical [with the possible exception of the rate of deterioration of my hiking boots, whose soles don’t seem to regenerate as per theory], behaves exactly the same way and thus operates according to the same cyclical principles as a tree growing from an acorn and returning to soil, even if it’s scattered soil and part of it has become a desk or a wine case), is still physics. So I’m a physicist. Even if I wore a physics dunce cap as recently as university.

But I’m not hard on myself about my earlier academic confusion. I agree with Einstein that an eight-year-old should be able to understand any true theory. In fact, I would add that, “it should also make you say, ‘Oh, yeah, I kind of realized that all along.’” That’s why I’m a “Theoretical Physicist,” and why we have those math savant grunts, the “Applied Physicists.” Calculation geeks. So, people who understand formulae, I implore ye, please create the calculus that explains the rates and factors that prove the above (or don’t), that show (or don’t) how this simple observation of universal symmetry in fact unifies Relativity and Quantum Theory. I’m particularly interested in how or if this recursive pattern originally started (that is to say, what was here before Creation), and meanwhile I’ll await contact from the Nobel Committee. In my acceptance speech, if I remember, I’ll talk about how this sure is a lucrative reward for taking a hike on an autumn afternoon.

I hope The Committee calls soon. I have some Ranch fencing jobs ahead of me in the coming months and materials costs are only increasing. Even local, sustainable materials, especially if you don‘t have the time, skills or inclination to gather them all yourself.

What I’m really saying is, “organic, sustainable, non-sprawl, Green, solar-influenced construction (and contracting of all kinds – plumbing, electrical) is a growth field,” in my opinion. I sure hope so.

As I prepare to post this Dispatch, my sweetheart has passed by and I have said to her not three second ago, “Thanks for making lunch (note: Miso Soup and goat cheese) while I was explaining the universe.”

“Thanks for explaining the universe,” she said sweetly.

If the math adds up.

In conclusion, I should say I realize that explaining the universe should by most any standard satisfy my current effort (you might say mantra), to be satisfied with one significant creative accomplishment per day (along with one ranch task).

But in the end what made me really happy today was dancing around the Ranch house to Groove Armada with my sweetheart and our five-month-old son while the sky turned lavender near dusk and garlic bulbs roasted in the oven, awaiting mixing with the second batch of cheese we made with Natalie The Goat’s milk.

Samuel Johnson, I think it was, said that to be happy at home is the ultimate result of all ambition. This is so true for me that I hardly ever need to leave, but for hikes (atomically) and email (virtually).

In other words, I guess what I’m saying is that describing the organic poetry of the universe is all well and good, but it don’t mean a thing if your life ain’t got that love shwing. If you’re not secreting, most of the time, a perfect balance of dopamine and the other chemicals that determine your mood, that determine your overall view of the Cosmos whose poetry you’re figuring out, that determine if you’re singing the most beautiful tune possible at any given moment.

Here on the Funky Butte Ranch, the tune sounds mighty sweet to me at equilibrium. But I don’t take my word for it. I can tell from the behavior of the Ranch dogs. Dog tails are emotional meters that don’t lie. One of our hounds is wigging hers in her sleep as the humans dance. I don’t even care that she’s technically not allowed on that pillow chair.

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