I share with you the single, even remotely political conversation I had during our recent “12 days in the wilderness” expedition. We portaged the gear around an old dam which has crumbled into the river, it’s bones now maintaining a threat to canoes. While we were portaging, my brother-in-law decided that we could risk taking the boats solo through a channel on the far side of the river. We did so and then Ken engaged the four young one’s in the party in “rapids play” below the dam where he would pick a point of boiled up water and run right into it. The canoe would take off like a shot, swamping and capsize were very real outcomes but neither of those things mattered in the circumstances. So, while Ken was playing with the kids, I entered into a conversation with an athletic looking guy, shaved head and expertly equipped, who, with his family and two Maine Guides (these are certified watermen…you have to pay them, feed them and take their advice), had grabbed the campsite at the carry site (an objective we’d had as well but it is first come, first served). We mostly talked about rivers and moose and camping with kids and stuff. He asked me what else I did and I told him that I was going to Kansas City and would be working with wounded warriors at Ft. Riley for the next 6 months. He allowed that he worked for the Sec’y of Defense at the Pentagon, was a graduate of the War College (the one for general officers) and lived in Alexandria. I’m not sure if he is active duty or a civilian employee. Anyway, I did ask him how working for his new boss was and how it compared to his old boss. And he correctly ascertained that I was interested in the understanding of “boss” to include the Commander in Chief and the administration generally. First he had sincere and considered compliments for Sec’y. Gates (his immediate boss). And then he said that the previous boss (in the expanded definition sense) were not missed…that they were comprised of concretists whose minds and decisions were immovable, that they wouldn’t listen to jackshit from anyone no matter how expert and qualified they might be to speak to this or that matter at hand which might or might not involve the country’s best interests or perhaps the life or death of children and other living things. Of course you know all this because you’ve been paying attention and I guess I knew this too and may even been asking a kind of rhetorical question in the first place (though I didn’t let on and was ever so diplomatic and skillful in the posing – if he’d been a rabid hawk, I think I would have found him out and would have listened politely to what he had to say). However, I thought you would be reassured to hear this coming as it does straight from the mouth of a horse involved every day on big DoD work.