Acknowledgements

The public library is an extraordinary institution. From Washington, Indiana to Brigham City, Utah, I was welcomed with a smile, offered a comfortable place to sit, free Internet access and a clean bathroom. Further, highly visible, green signs announce a library’s location. Special thanks to the Carnegie Library in Washington, Indiana; Great Bend Public Library in Kansas; Estes Park Public Library, Colorado; Great County Public Library in Moab, Utah; and the public library of Brigham City, UT. Two other establishments, while not public libraries provided free internet, clean bathrooms and a cool drink to boot: Robber’s Roost in Torrey, Utah and Latte Da in Lee Vining, California.

To my friends and family who opened their doors to me, fed me, offered me showers and laundry facilities, my deepest thanks. I also greatly appreciated your company after so many hours alone. I have, for the most part left you out of this blog, but our time together has furnished me with another set of stories that I cherish. Thank you.

There were, of course, others along the way who offered help, advice or company: the hiker in the Rockies who alerted me to the gathering storm; my birding companion in Utah; Miguel, his wife and daughter who provided a flashlight, beer and fire the night my tent went for a swim; and a host of incredibly helpful and enthusiastic park rangers who surely aren’t in it for the money. The rangers showed me birds, knew my whereabouts in the backcountry, confirmed locations on my map, and were generally excited and supportive of my spending solo time in the wilderness.

To cricket, my companion, my thanks for starting every time and for not complaining on 10% grades, washboard dirt roads and in 110˚ heat. Cricket went wherever I asked without a hint of trouble—not bad for a ten-year old lady. In that vein, my thanks as well to All Tech Garage in Ballston Spa, NY and Cloverdale Automotive for oil changes and safety checks. She wouldn’t have done as well without you.

Lastly, to all of you who met this crazy idea with encouragement, your support gave me the confidence I needed to drive off alone and keep going. I am profoundly grateful; it was worth every mile.

Homeward/Onward

The idea of home baffled me as much on my return as it did on my setting out. But with goldenrod and asters adorning the roadsides and the days growing shorter, I knew it was time to find home. I packed my car again, then held to the interstates that pulled me south through New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, West Virginia and finally Kentucky.

And while I’m not entirely home, nor am I still on the road. Slowly over the past week my key ring has accumulated first a mailbox key, then work keys, so that I no longer have the freedom of a car key alone.

But before I sign off, here are a few numbers:

To my 38 pounds of books, I added six titles and read, as Steinbeck promised, none. (I will say, in my defense, that the Important Bird Area book, my bird, butterfly and wildflower field guides, and my copy of Road Trip USA were well used.)

In fifty-seven days, I traveled 11,213 miles through twenty-one states. I spent 19 nights in campgrounds and only 3 in motel rooms. I never slept in my car. Twenty-eight friends and family occupied the other days and offered me guest beds, day beds, fold out couches and wonderful company.

I saw 213 species of birds including 39 life birds. Big mammals were more plentiful than I expected and I encountered pronghorn, bison, white tailed and mule deer, elk, moose, and coyote. I found fresh mountain lion scat (poop) and tracks, but alas, no sign of bear.

While I did not keep meticulous records, my average gas mileage was 36.2 mpg. My lowest was 26.9 (auto loop, rocky mountains and road construction); my highest, 43 mpg I achieved cruising across Nebraska on a secondary highway going 65.

There is very little I would have done differently, very few times I felt anxious about being alone. And now, I’m embarking on a new adventure and navigating the challenges from the helm of an 8th grade classroom. Thanks for your company along the way.

Ode to the Robin

Meet the American Robin, Turdus migratorius. You are probably already familiar with it even if you’re not interested in birds. There have been times, I’ll admit, when out birding that I haven’t even lifted my binoculars to look at a robin. But when I’m leading a bird walk and a participant says “its just a robin”, I will sing its praises. “Just look at that dark orange breast, black head and white eye-ring.” Ubiquitous, maybe, the American Robin is a stunning bird.

During breeding season the male’s head becomes dark – nearly black – while his back remains a velvety brown. The white ring around his eye stands out, as do the white tips on his outer tail feathers. And, as a member of the thrush family, he has a lovely song often depicted as “cheerio cheery-me cheerio”

The American Robin was one of the few birds I encountered in every state. And each time I saw one, my admiration grew. I am, of course, familiar with them on the east coast, in our temperate landscape. But when one woke me with its song at eleven thousand feet in the Colorado Rockies, I was astounded. Other members of the thrush family inhabit specific ranges of altitude: the Wood Thrush at the lowest elevations and the Bicknell’s Thrush (in the east) or the Grey-cheeked Thrush (in the west) at the highest. But the robin lives throughout.

My amazement grew when a robin greeted me while I pitched my tent in Capitol Reef National Park. Aside from the small oasis of green that held the campground, we were surrounded by desert.

Robins plied the ground by the Great Salt Lake in search of a meal. They greeted me from rushing streams in the Wasatch Mountains of Utah and the Tetons of Wyoming. At Great Basin National Park in Nevada, I found them in aspen groves at ten thousand feet. I found them in California in the marshes surrounding the saline Mono Lake, in the depths of Kings Canyon, and in the groves of sequoia.

Here was one at my feet as I sat on the lawn at Tassajara Zen Mountain Center, cocking its head to look at me. I found them on the fog-bound Mendocino coast. As I returned east through Wyoming and Nebraska my old friend greeted me along the way.

When I reached home, the robin’s presence no longer surprised me. But I had developed a new respect for the creature, knowing it at last to be a well-adapted traveler, comfortable in many diverse ecosystems. I greeted my old friend as he hopped across my front lawn and raised my binoculars for a closer look.

Graves

I stood above my grandparent’s graves and wasn’t really sure what to do. My grandfather lived to ninety-three and the family that remained were few and scattered. So when I realized I was fifteen miles away from Niles, Michigan where my dad’s parents lay, I had left the interstate and followed the coast of Lake Michigan north to MI 12.

The small gatehouse was locked when I arrived. I contemplated the spreading lawns and stones, calculating how long it would take to find their plot. A flatbed landscaping truck pulled up and a soft-spoken man in a yellow tee-shirt asked if I needed help. His equipment belied his bearing, which was respectful and gentle, one trained in bereavement or at least sensitive to it.

He let me into the office and looked up the plot number on the computer. After consulting a larger map on the wall, he marked the plot on my smaller map. He started to give me directions, then changed his mind and offered to have me follow him. We turned on to a gravel road that looped through the old section until it became two ruts and finally a grass-covered track. There, my last name stared out at me from a stone.

So here I was, standing above them. I hadn’t expected the sensation that they were some how present. A scene from Our Town played out in my head where the dead sit on chairs in rows facing the audience. In contrast to the mourners who have come to burry another villager, they speak slowly, dispassionately.

I stooped to brush grass clippings and bird shit from the stones. My hand came away blackened with unseen grime. My eyes welled with tenderness or loss, I do not know.

I am a trained ecologist. I understand the process of decomposition and the fluid paths of nutrients. I have seen the number of macroinvertebrates in a slice of soil, and understand their work. And I know, too, that my grandparents both were cremated. For years my grandfather kept his wife’s ashes nearby him in a wood laminate box.

But somehow, I felt a connection with these stones, with the flecks of ash beneath, the shards of unburned bone. I looked up at the white oak that shaded their stones and knew it contained them too.

I visited the others in the plot, my great grandfather and his first and second wives and his daughter, my great aunt. I brushed their stones, pinched dead flowers from the geranium at my great aunt’s feet wondering where it had come from.

Too soon, I turned to leave. Reluctant to go straight to the interstate, I followed Rte 12 east through the towns of Edwardsburg, Union and White Pigeon. I smiled at the name, White Pigeon, and turned south to I-90 leaving Michigan and my grandparents behind.

Pilot Car

I first encountered a pilot car as I headed west through Indiana. I came over a hill to find a semi stopped in the middle of my lane. I couldn’t see around it and didn’t know if I was supposed to go around or be patient.

The pilot car, for those of you unfamiliar with the phenomenon is a car that works with the flaggers in a construction zone. The sign wired to its trunk or tailgate reads “Pilot Car. Follow Me.” It leads a string of cars through the site, delivers them to the other side, pulls off on to the shoulder, and when the road is clear, pulls a u-turn to pick up the, say, southbound traffic that has been steadily accumulating. The route could be one mile or ten.

For those of you wondering how else this could possibly operate, on the east coast, the flaggers are in either visual or radio contact and the distance between them is a matter of yards instead of miles. No pilot car necessary.

But back in Indiana, the semi had started to move. We crawled through the construction, and at the other end I saw the pilot car, but still was rather confused as to what was going on. The next one I encountered was in Idaho on my way up to the Tetons. Again I pulled out to pass the stopped car, but this time realized what was happening.

By the time I reached road construction coming out of Yosemite Valley, I knew what to do. I put the car in park, rolled down my windows, and turned off the engine. I turned in my seat to find the whole Yosemite Valley before me with half dome peering from the far end. I got out my post cards and wrote one and a half before traffic arrived from the other direction.

In Nevada on my way east two construction sites in a row kept me in cell range long enough to finish a luxuriously long conversation with my mother. Our call ended as the second pilot car arrived. My cell phone began searching for service as the car pulled off on the shoulder to let us pass.

Sometimes though, I did get impatient and grumped at the fifteen minutes of imposed stillness. But impatient or not, I had to wait. So I turned off my engine and wrote, studied the map or leaned my chair back two clicks and listened to my audio book.

Only when the car in front of me began to pull forward did I start my car, wave my thanks to the flagger, and ease through the construction and back to the open road.

King Corn

According to the Department of Agriculture, Iowa produced 19% of the nation’s corn in 2007, and 17% of its soybeans. 18.9 million hogs were raised in Iowa, a state where 89% of the land is used for farmland. I kept to the secondary highways through Iowa, leaving Rte 20 when it turned to interstate, working my way south on Rte 4 to Rte 30, the Lincoln Highway. I drove through allées of corn, patented corn. About ¾ of the fields bore markers with the logo of the company that engineered the seed and sometimes a slogan, Pioneer: technology that yields. A combine surged across a billboard with the message “your combine will sue you for overtime.”

Now and then, tucked back from the road, I encountered long, low barns equipped with ventilation fans and miniature grain elevators. The white sides held no windows. It was the smell that revealed what was inside – these were poultry farms.

Don’t get me wrong, I lived on a farm for seven years, and I’ve raised chickens in my classroom for the past several years. I’m familiar with the ammonia-rich smell of chicken shit. But there was more to the cocktail that emanated from these barns. For one thing it was magnified, the number of chickens in those barns far exceeds the capacity of a normal coop. And there was an insidious layer as well, something chemical that I couldn’t place, something that turned the smell beyond that of a familiar barnyard.

In the past few years I have both read Omnivore’s Dilemma and seen Food Inc. While I’m willing to believe these don’t contain the whole story, the unease I felt in driving across Iowa deepened. I felt the same impulse I do toward soldiers: how can I support these farmers, who are out to make a living, who feed thousands if not millions of people, without condoning their farming practices?

My unease had begun in on the eastern edge of Nebraska. I left Rte 20 and worked my way up to Ponca State Park. A break in the rolling hills of corn revealed a city of cows standing shin deep in churned black earth. They were spread through maybe a hundred small pens, each holding maybe a dozen cattle, or at least this was my impression as I swung my gaze between cows and the road. And, as with the poultry, the bouquet spreading from that farm held many smells besides manure. Driving across Wyoming where range fencing kept cows off the road, I had wanted to stop for steak. In eastern Nebraska and Iowa, I began to contemplate becoming what a friend of mine calls a “restaurant vegetarian,” eating meat only when I know, and am comfortable with, its story.

And all that beef and poultry? It’s fed on corn. As underwriters of Marketplace’s sustainability desk on public radio, Monsanto claims they are “committed to sustainable agriculture: creating hybrid and biotech seeds designed to increase crop yields and conserve natural resources.” Like water. Monsanto is engineering seeds that require less irrigation. Which should be a good thing. But the genetically modified (GM) seeds are illegal in most of Europe, and several African governments including Zambia and Zimbabwe refused UN food aid because it came from donor countries like the US that produces large quantities of GM food. I’m inclined to agree. I find Monsanto’s pledge to sustainability frightening and ironic. Farmers are unable to save the patented seeds and so rely on purchasing them each year along with required fertilizers and pesticides. Is that sustainable?

That night, in Chicago farmer’s market kale and potatoes provided the antidote I needed. Sharing a meal of locally grown produce with dear friends eased my mind and lightened my heart, at least until Marketplace came on.

Night Visitors

Even when I failed to listen to my intuition, ignored the small voice that said just move on, it wasn’t assault that waited. When I reached the Missouri River and Ponca State Park, it was 8:30 pm and already dusk. I drove around the campground looking for a site that wasn’t reserved, that was flat enough, and cursed myself for my indecision. I parked and opened my car door; the humidity hit me like a wall. I walked to the “iron ranger” and danced around the concrete slab, evading mosquitoes while I wrote out a check to Nebraska Game and Parks Commission.

I pitched my tent, slapping mosquitoes away from my ankles and neck, sweltering under a long sleeved shirt and long pants. I brought my sleeping pad, sleeping bag liner and road atlas from the car, briefly considered cooking dinner, thought better of it, and crawled in my tent to plan the next day’s route.

Earlier that morning I had first heard about Bonnie and Clyde, an escaped convict and his female accomplice who were thought to be on a caper by Yellowstone. Though I was nearly a thousand miles away, the possibility of encountering someone wishing me harm still echoed in my head.

Headlights swept my tent and I tensed. Three teens got out of their cars and dove back in ransacking their back seats for bug spray before starting to rehash their days and relationships. They weren’t causing any more trouble than talking in a speaking voice twenty feet away from my tent. I wanted to tell them they could stay as long as they liked but would they please whisper? But that would have involved wading through the mosquitoes. So I got out my headlamp and shone it at them through the mesh of my tent. It had the unintended effect of sending them scampering to their cars and speeding off.

I turned over and began to slow my mind and breath. Headlights swept my tent. I was alert instantly, and didn’t relax until I heard the voices of a woman and two children. They were there, it seemed, to find some cool nocturnal critter in the river. They had flashlights and kept exclaiming “Oh! There’s one. Do you see it? There!” I was torn between wanting to see what was so exciting and wanting them to go away so I could sleep. It was now after ten pm and I had been up since five.

At 3:00 the first thunderstorm came through. It was intense enough that I wondered if I should take refuge in my car. Instead I curled completely onto my three-quarter length insulated pad and tried to go back to sleep. More thunderstorms played across the floodplain dropping pebbles of rain. Lightening illuminated the side of my tent.

At 4:30 the deluge began and set me wondering about how flashy the Missouri River was. Not flashy, I reasoned with myself. Even as high as the river was, it would take an incredible volume of water to raise it even to bank full, and I planned, if the rain allowed, to be gone in an hour. I gave up on sleep and turned on my headlamp to write.

The rain let up about a half hour later and I scrambled to stuff my sleeping bag liner in its sac and roll my sleeping pad. I pulled off the dripping fly and rolled it tight, ringing out excess water. The tent itself was nearly dry. By 5:20 I was on the road, forty-five minutes later, I pulled into an Iowa gas station to wash the sleep and night visitors from my eyes. It was going to be a long day.

History

I have never particularly enjoyed American history, perhaps because my own schooling in it was a dry stone that skipped through time from war to war. I never got my feet wet; I never submerged myself in a way that made history come alive. But driving across the western states, I fell through and submerged. Artifacts on the land brought parts of the story to life and sparked my curiosity.

In Nevada, driving east on Rte 50, I crossed and re-crossed the trail of the Pony Express. A single track, eroded or pounded into a furrow about eighteen inches deep wended across the desert. It was not hard to conjure a galloping horse and weary but determined rider following the track. The pony express operated only eighteen months from April 3, 1860, to late October 1861. It stretched nearly 2,000 miles from St. Joseph, Missouri, to Sacramento, California, a route that relays of riders completed in ten to sixteen days.

Historical markers offered some of the few pull offs on secondary highways, and as such, made good spots to stop and enjoy a brief meal. In Wyoming, driving south on 120 towards the Medicine Bow, I pulled off. The stone marker had been pushed from its foundation, but the message was still clear, and drew my eye to the two-wheel track that stretched off across the rangeland. The track began where the road construction crews left it unaltered, beyond the range fence. Here was the overland route, the Oregon Trail. Was it the passing of so many wagons that rendered the route visible 140 years later? Eight miles west, I learned, the trail crossed the North Platte River. I wondered about the crossing. Likely it was muddy and wet in the right season, churned from wooden wheels, feet and hooves. The festival of abundant water would have balanced the challenge of the crossing. Would pioneers camp along the banks to wash clothes, drink deep and fill water skins and other containers? How much water did they need to carry to cross the dry plains? I learned later that in many places the route followed waterways for exactly this reason, and in fact, water borne diseases were a major cause of death along the route. So much for my celebration of abundant water!

In Nebraska, I encountered the Great Cattle drive over breakfast. Cowboys and Ranchers, I learned from the marker, brought herds from Texas to Montana to replenish the dwindling buffalo. The cattle did quite well – they were still there grazing just beyond the marker. The boundary of the marker held a score or more of brands chiseled into the rock from the nearly six million head of cattle urged along this route.

Three miles east of Chadron, Nebraska, I stopped at the Museum of Fur Trade and was captivated by artifacts from a global obsession with fur: playing cards, hand drawn and unwaxed; a birch bark canoe, large enough to carry four men and their cargo; medicine bottles and sun glasses; bales of buffalo robes. But it was outside that fully piqued my imagination. Dug into a hillside was the sod-roofed housing and trading post of the couple that worked this land. Shelves held items for sale, their prices marked in buffalo robes. The couple’s small living quarters contained a bed, table and hearth, and now, a sign that read, “This is rattlesnake country. Stay Alert.”

Finally I returned to my own overland trail, continuing east against the traffic of time.

Insects

I need to wash my windshield again. All day I’ve been committing murder by 70 mph as the column of insects that inhabit the air smash against my windshield. Most of them I don’t even see, but sometimes the thunk of a beetle leaves a spray of amber fluid or a wing flashes and catapults over my roof with a powder of scales left behind. It’s the butterflies and dragonflies that I mourn the most.

I first fell in love with butterflies at age five. Entering the old bio lab, I turned immediately to the chest on my right, its drawers each no more than three inches high. The lab was a low building, big enough to hold twelve students in a classroom or in the perpendicular wings of the greenhouse. The chest stood in a corner of the greenhouse surrounded by the smells of warm soil and growing things.

Inside lay butterflies. Their wings, yellow, orange, blue, lay spread and pressed between two panes of glass, rimmed in a black frame. I sought out the familiar monarch and swallowtail, and always, I worked toward the iridescent blue Morpho. Holding my hand against the glass, its wings were still visible beyond my fingers. I thought they would dim or dull but they shone on as I tilted the frame back and forth in the light.

I heard a story recently on NPR called the Billion Bug Highway about the multitude of insects that travel the air all the time, mating, pollinating or just dispersing to a less crowded or more favorable location (should the wind send them that way).

And here they are, one splat after another slowly obscuring my view. I grieve their passing with a wrinkle of my forehead and clenched jaw. Then, when I stop for gas, I plunge a squeegee in its bucket and wash them away.

Medicine Bow

Miguel and his wife wrinkled their noses at me when I said I was headed across Wyoming. “There’s nothing there”, they both agreed, “nothing.” Its not nothing exactly, but its one of the reasons I loved crossing Wyoming. Prairie grass, sagebrush, mountains and sky.

Past Rawlins I traded billboards for reduced speed zones and soft shoulders. I headed south on WY 130. I stopped in Saratoga for a map of Medicine Bow National Forest then followed 130 east through the Snowy Range.

Something in me settled as I wound up to 10,000 feet through the no-holds-barred bloom of late summer wildflowers, past Mirror Lake, which held the full panorama of the Medicine Bow mountains. The name Medicine Bow comes from the Ute bands that gathered here to harvest mountain mahogany, which produced exceptional hunting bows and the annual Powwows they held on these grounds. I longed to get out, to hike up into the thin air. I was giddy with a last encounter with the Rockies, with snowfields in August, with one last chance for a rosy finch.

But I couldn’t stay long. Traveling east, the changing time zones had shortened my days to twenty-three hours and I was scheduled to land in Chicago in two days. I walked a half-mile nature loop past a miner’s cabin and an abandoned shaft, past Engleman spruce and pocket gophers. Then I drove on.

Descending through Centennial, WY, my rear view mirror revealed only rolling brown hills. The Medicine Bow was already hidden like a well-kept secret.

Below the Dam

“Excuse me”, I say from the edge of my neighbor’s campsite, “excuse me, but do you have a flashlight I could borrow? Mine is dying and my tent just went for a swim.”

The campgrounds above the dam had been full, it was, after all, a Saturday night in August. But “the guy below the dam” had space and set me up down by the river, signed me in, and sped off on his golf cart with a “so long, girl” cast over his shoulder.

Hungry and tired, I pitched my tent and set up my stove. Half way through warming a can of beans, I looked up to check on my tent. It seemed, oddly, a bit further away than where I’d placed it. When I got closer, I noticed that it was, in fact, floating on the river. I’d neglected to stake it out, and the wind had picked up while I cooked. I grabbed the poles where they crossed at the top, and hauled my tent back to land. Peering inside with my dying flashlight, I found a few puddles, but not the full swamp I’d expected. I pulled out my gear and spread it on the ground to dry, then walked back to my car holding my tent, which threatened to become a box kite with each step I took. I pulled stakes from my car while still holding my tent, found a more or less level spot and pinned the tent, pausing to slam my flashlight against my palm in hopes of eking more out of the battery.

Miguel turns from the grill and comes over. He grabs his Ryobi floodlight powered with the battery of a cordless drill and walks back with me to my site. He checks my stake job and assesses the puddles. “Keep it”, he says, “as long as you need.” This time I’ve pitched the tent into the wind and left the front door wide. I was in Utah, remember, and already the tent was well on its way to dry.

Miguel’s wife and daughter came over to check on me. They offered towels and a comforter, which I declined. “A beer?” offers Miguel and I join them at their campfire while the wind finishes its work.

My birding friend comes to mind. As we had exchanged favorite parts of our trips, he recalled asking for help with a flat tire and how the evening ended with his helpers inviting him to join them for grilled salmon and cold beer.

Tonight I’m up later than usual, enjoying the company and a Miller Genuine Draft – never my first choice – though tonight it tastes fine. I watch the stars spread above. I walk to my now-dry tent, crawl in, and fall asleep smiling.

Utah Desert

I pulled a long haul across Nevada, choosing to take Rte 50 instead of the interstate. It didn’t disappoint: seventy miles an hour and beautiful every sing mile. At Ely, where I’d left 50 for Rte 6 on my way west, I turned north on Rte 93, which ran the long valley parallel to the Schell Creek Range range.

From West Wendover, the Utah desert loomed, a white ghost to the north and east. The state line was painted on the pavement, but also with the buildings. Casinos bumped up against each other on the Nevada side while Utah offered motels and fast food joints. I merged onto I-80 east and passed the turn off for the Bonneville Speedway, a broad expanse of hard-packed, salt desert where, among other landspeed trials, Craig Breedlove set a record traveling 600.601 mph in his jet powered Spirit of America in 1965.

A mist loomed, it seemed, as dense as the fog on the Mendocino coast, and obscuring the sun. But there was no moisture. Wind leaned against my car causing me to steer to the right for miles. My mist, I realized, was salt dust whipped from the desert floor. Ten miles in, the dust settled, but the wind did not. Two motorcycles passed me listing south at a ten-degree angle.

The ground began to glint as slow-formed crystals caught the light. Frost, my mind said, ice, new fallen snow. Along the roadside, tire tracks revealed the depth of the mineral crust. Black stones formed names, patterns, and spirals. Smiley faces and peace signs stood out against the white earth. In one place someone had stopped to dig a hole.

Beyond the railroad tracks that paralleled the highway to the south, lay the Dugway Proving Ground, a military test site for chemical and biological weapons. Dugway, which in addition to “protecting national interests” and “rendering danger from chemical/biological agents irrelevant”, cites “fostering environmental stewardship” in its mission. My initial sarcasm burned to anger. I know that the “weapons” testing to the south does not help the surrounding biota. Its presence lent to the eeriness of my crossing.

Then, finally, the now-familiar contours of the Great Salt Lake, and water.

Bristlecone

My mind keeps coming back to the trees – the bristlecone pines. I keep coming back the way their contorted wood stands silver in the dry air for hundreds of years after the needles are gone. How, on those still living, whose buttressed trunks anchor in the talus slope, how one rope of bark covers the living tissue, and rises to one spray of needles. How the young bristlecone, four feet high and already my senior, its growth slowed by wind and winter and lack of rain, holds the promise of age.

I come back to how the wind filled the hollow of my ears and sang there. How, when I reached the talus slope, the now-silent cascade of rock, the wind whipped and buffeted me, challenging me to stand, to root, to stay upright. How they thrive in this wind, call this sere and punishing place home, that they don’t choose any other place to live. How when this one, this great grandmother was released from her cone, the alphabet was born and charioteers maneuvered ancient streets.

I remember how the wind kept me from sitting with them, kept me from staying, turned me back toward the comfort of dinner and a tent stretched out in an aspen grove. How, though I wanted their company, I was glad to leave that place, glad to find a place the wind didn’t pull the moisture from my skin and send me side-stepping for balance with its fingers.

Stone Mother

It was astonishing to come across a lake in the desert, even though I was expecting it. Even though it was my destination. I had held off on breakfast until reaching Pyramid Lake, and then it stretched before me, the mirage of a mirage: water in the desert.

I pulled down a dirt track and parked above the beach. The story of Pyramid Lake mirrors that of Mono Lake. Its one inlet was dammed and partially diverted in the early 1900s to irrigate crops in Fallon, fifty miles to the southeast. Instead of these changes affecting bird and invertebrate populations, it’s the native Lahontan trout, reliant on upstream spawning grounds that are threatened.

But there are other stories as well. This remnant of the ancient Lake Lahontan is much as it was when the great lake subsided after the last glaciation. It is much as it was when John Fremont passed through in 1844, and as it was when the Paiute Tribe approved their constitution in 1936. The shores hold only sagebrush, mustard and a few maintained dirt roads; there are no signs of development along the lake.

There is another story here too, the story of the Stone Mother who wept the lake into being when her husband sent her warring children away. Some stayed with her and they became the Paiute tribe who’s reservation still surrounds the lake. Others he sent west, and she cried for them until her tears formed a lake around her, cried so long she turned to stone, and there she sits today.

And, if you’re reading this from your iPad, you’re seeing yet another story. Pyramid Lake (at Night) a photograph taken by Richard Misrach is the background picture with which the iPad ships.

What other stories are cupped in this bowl of water, sand and sky?

I finish my breakfast and drive along the lake to its southern end and the mouth of the Trukee River. Coots gather here by the hundreds; a Great-blue Heron fishes along the shore. A cloud of white pelicans rests on the water. I turn away, following the irrigation pipes to Fallon and on across Nevada in search of the next story.

Donner Pass

I danced her story once, Tamsen Donner’s. It was part of a series called Portraits of Women. Two of us, students at Connecticut College, were cast in the part. We donned long prairie dresses that covered our necks and wrists, and swirled wide from our ankles when we spun. I have a photograph of the piece: I am flying, horizontal to the ground, gazing outward, or onward, across an imagined prairie, suspended on my friend’s hip.

So they must have carried each other along, those who tried to cross this pass. I came from the west, in a car, speeding along I-80 in search of a campsite for the night. I came in summer, but still my breath condensed in the air. They came in wagons from the east, the Donner Party, in autumn, when the pass was bound in early snow.

She was born in 1801, Tamsen, and set off, at the age of 44 with her second husband, three daughters, and eighty other travelers for San Francisco bay.

Traveling east on the interstate, my thoughts were on a place to spend the night, the falling light, and my turn toward home. A blinking LED road sign announced that the Donner Pass rest area was closed. I passed a sign outlining the Donner ski areas, Donner Pass road and Donner Memorial State Park and was startled into the present.

And she was with me, Tamsen, in her long prairie dress. Shivering out her last night with her fatally wounded husband, while her three daughters, rescued, awaited her arrival in Sacramento. Few in the party survived and tales of cannibalism bring the terror, and cold, and will to survive into focus.

I find a campground well off the freeway and pitch my tent in the glare of my headlights. The yipping of Coyotes wakes me in the night and I smile, curl deeper into my sleeping bag and sleep again. In the morning, wearing a wool hat and down vest, I ease out of the campground and back to the interstate. I shift into low gear and head down the mountain leaving Tamsen, and California, behind.

Cross sections

As I had done twenty years prior, I had traveled across country alone to visit my Ampie Gail. “Ampie” was my attempt at Auntie, in a mouth too young to form the sounds, and “Ampie” she stayed. The week we spent together was a cross section of her life: we visited friends; attended her writers’ group; stopped by the Goodwill and Salvation Army stores in search of bargains; and prepared meals together.

Gail introduced me to Mei, the proprietor of her favorite restaurant, Tian Yuen in Cloverdale, and a close friend. We walked with Mei, her son and nephew in a wilderness area tucked behind a housing development. We paused by a stream and Mei pulled out a red tablecloth for us to sit on. She offered simple sitting instruction, tailored to each of us, and we sat in meditation while the boys threw rocks in the stream. When she broke the silence, Mei lead us in tui na, a form of acupressure massage. We ate at Mei’s restaurant, which offers a delicious sampling of pan-Asian foods, and left with mind and body nourished.

Together, we also embarked on a cross section of northern California. Rte 128 leads west from Cloverdale winding through the vineyards and orchards of Sonoma County before climbing into coastal redwood forest. We pulled into a turn off amid the redwoods and turned off the car. Wood Sorrel bloomed, dark pink, in the shade of the tall trees. We stepped into a circle of trees and stood in silence. Tall and straight, the trees remained supple, dancing lightly in the wind.

We continued west, back into the sunlight and pulled into the Navarro Winery for a tasting. There, I found the juniper in the Muscat blank and the pineapple in the Gewürztraminer. I swirled Navarrouge across my tongue and sought out the spice and berries in the Syrah. I bought a couple bottles, wrapped them in two wool sweaters and a down coat and buried them in my backpack, praying they’d last the three thousand hot miles home.

From the winery, we continued out to the coast. About ten miles inland, the fog began to swirl; by five, it had enveloped the sun. We turned up Rte 1 and headed north to Fort Bragg and the Mendocino Botanic Gardens. The gardens were a well-planned tumult of color and texture. As we ate our lunch on the patio just inside the entrance, I heard a woman comment to her husband “We should have come here before re-doing our lawn!” Decorative grasses mingled with monkey plant and butterfly bush. A kidney of heathers, blooming in a profusion of pinks and purples kept bees busy, while the neighboring plot held cactus and succulents, well spaced in their sandy soil. A covered shed housed fuchsias and begonias, carefully tended and in peak bloom. One begonia, rare in having a scent, smelled of Gewürztraminer, a strange perfume, and only recently familiar.

At the Mendocino Headlands, the wilderness of the sea greeted us with the sky-tossed calls of Western Gulls. Oystercatchers, Ruddy Turnstones and Surfbirds sought out their meal following each retreating wave. We paused to look out over two offshore islands and found them crowned with Pelagic Cormorant and Common Murre colonies. Several cormorants were still on nests.

And then we turned east. Away from the coast, out from under the fog, through redwoods and vineyards. After a night in Cloverdale, I continued my cross section east, through Napa and the snarled rush hour traffic of Sacramento into the foothills and finally the high sierra. I was headed home.

Pacific

One of the things I love about Point Reyes is that the bay that separates the point from the mainland, cradles the San Andreas Fault. Becca and I talked about this as we hiked the two miles to our campsite. Better in a tent here, we decided, than a ten-storey, earthquake-proof building in San Francisco.

After setting up our tent we walked through the fog to the ocean. Here, at last, was the Pacific. Perhaps ironically, at this furthest point in my journey, I had reached a familiar place.

The first time I came to Point Reyes, my mother and I had walked out the long tongue that lies between Tomales Bay and the Pacific. We walked out to see the Tulle elk. One, a bull, had caught the moon in his antlers. On the walk back, my mom hoisted two branches above her head and became an elk herself, which made us both giggle. I have returned many times since, and each time, have found sanctuary in this jut of wilderness and water.

The San Andreas slept peacefully that night, and so did we. In the morning, the fog clung to us, curled our hair, and dripped from the coast pines that lined the trail. The orange faces of monkey plant shone out against the grey.


With the day still young, we reached the car, each of us rested, pacific, from this lull in our traveling. I left Becca at the ferry terminal. She headed across the bay, and I turned north on 101.

18th and Valencia

I took the wrong exit off of Rte 101, and called my friend who directed me through the streets of San Francisco using her i phone. Becca’s mom was my second grade teacher, we took dance lessons together in elementary school and attended elementary school, now twenty-two years later, we are again friends. I picked her up and we headed to Green’s restaurant on the bay.

For a moment, I felt dissected, like light passed through a prism. I had awakened that morning at 5:10, dressed in the dark, and walked to the zendo where I sat for an hour with students, priests and guests. Now I navigated the hills of Divisidaro Street, avoiding the Muni, stopping at traffic lights, and catching up with an old friend. I had migrated from the intense sun of the high desert to the fog-bound coast.

Once operated by San Francisco Zen Center, Greens still maintains a loose affiliation. They buy vegetables from Green Gulch, an organic farm in Marin County and sister temple to Tassajara. Their food is exquisite. For two hours we found ourselves pausing, surprised into silence by a combination of flavors or by the simple sweetness released from a beet.

Back in the Mission District, where we were staying, the effects of a week’s practice lingered. Instead of rising irritation at the Saturday night revelry, I found amusement, and drifted off to sleep sending Cricket well wishes for a safe night.

In the morning, I pulled aside the red curtains to find fog edging between the buildings and obscuring their upper floors. Becca and I dressed and walked up to Tartin, a French patisserie. Already this Sunday morning, the line stretched past four buildings to a white garage door. A man in pink scrubs waited ahead of us; a father, with his curly-haired son strapped to his back, read something on his phone; a pregnant woman maneuvered her three-year old into a stroller while holding a cup of milk and an orange juice. I looked up and saw a bronze Buddha face cupping the arm of a traffic light. His half smile remained unchanged when we left, each carrying a pan au chocolate.

We loaded the car, and eased out of the city. The fog was thinning, but still encircled the crown of the Golden Gate Bridge. I exhaled when we turned off on Rte 1 and headed up the coast to Point Reyes, not realizing I’d been holding my breath.

Cricket and I were back on the road, and for a moment, in delightful company.

Kitchen

Sometimes, Matt said, when I’m preparing green beans, I’m not thinking about taking off their tops, I’m thinking about… Skateboarding.

One of the teachings of Zen is that meditation practice continues outside of the zendo. So when, after three days as a full guest, I began a brief period of guest practice, I continued my meditations in the Tasssajara Kitchen.

This kitchen has seen decades of practice, and its clean and well-kept tools bespeak mindful work. That precedence was the stock from which I prepared my soup. Already the foundation existed. All I did was arrive, ready for whatever might be needed and attend to my task with as much presence as I could.

With a small crew, I peeled and sliced a box of oranges, separating the peel from the flesh with a chef’s knife. The task took my full attention, primarily to keep my fingernails and skin attached while depriving the orange of its. It took attention, working the junction of peel and flesh, neither leaving peel behind nor wasting flesh by cutting too much away.

We worked using what the Zen practitioners call functional speech, which makes room for instructions and questions but eliminates the chatter that causes our minds to move too easily away from the task at hand.

I found, while working silently that I was open to beauty: the heart of a red beet shot through with white rays (beets, 4.5 gallons); the smell of lemon oil released as I chopped the peel (lemon zest, 2.5 cups); the feel of firm beans under cold water (green beans 4.5 gallons, yellow wax beans, 4 gallons).

Of course my mind wandered, not to skateboarding, but all over the country: to conversations, memories, plans. But realizing it was wandering, I brought it back to slicing cabbage (4.5 gallons, half-inch shred) or pitting plums (2 gallons, small chop) or washing my knife, drying it and putting it away.

Every task is set up with the best tools for the job and in a way that is most efficient. Bowls for compost and finished produce are set so each person can reach them easily.

The mindfulness bell rang. We all stopped, put down our knives and vegetables mid-peel. We stretched, brought our minds back to that moment, bowed, and returned to our tasks.

Water Ouzel

As my mother and I sat eating our lunch a mile or two up Tassajara Creek from the village, a little bird landed on a rock that jutted out at the head of a waterfall. I saw it only for a moment, slate-colored, slightly smaller than a robin, with a cocked, triangular tail. “I knew it”, as Mary Oliver says “from the pages of a book; it was a dipper”. 1

I had never seen an American Dipper before, though I had looked several times this summer, waiting by rushing streams, trying to imagine a bird that would call this torrent hospitable. Dippers can swim, using strokes of their wings, twenty feet underwater in currents swift enough to knock me over.

So excited was I to have seen a Dipper, that my chatter startled it off again, and it flew downstream. We walked more slowly then, my mom and I, letting our fleet slide along the bottom to find the surest footing, and relying heavily on our walking staffs for balance.

But the little, agile bird seemed to grow accustomed to our presence, and soon we were able to watch as it landed on rocks mid-stream and bobbed its body with quick bends at the ankle. We watched it land in the water and walk along the bottom, snorkeling, its third, white eyelid drawing closed to protect its eyes from grit and debris. It was making a meal of the stonefly and caddisfly larvae whose cast off casings we had seen earlier along the rocks.

When we got too close or made too sudden a movement, the dipper flew ahead, genuflecting from the top of a rock before continuing to search for lunch.

John Muir loved these “darlings of Nature” he knew as the Water Ouzel, and wrote about his encounters:

“Here I find the little water ouzel as much at home as any linnet in a leafy grove, seeming to take the greater delight in the more boisterous the stream… its song is sweet and low, and all its gentleness, as it flits about the loud uproar, bespeaks strength and peace and joy…. A yet finer bloom is this little bird than the foam bells in eddying pools. Gentle bird, a precious message you bring me. We may miss the meaning of the torrent, but thy sweet voice, only love is in it.2

Our gestures, my mother’s and mine, bespoke joy surely, but our walking in the creek held neither strength nor peace. “Oops, I was talking again,” my mother said as her attention shifted away from her footing. She reached out to catch her balance on a rock and sat mid-creek with a look of surprise and delight. We laughed, startling the Dipper. She levered herself upright with the staff, and we paused then to pick blackberries, sun-warmed, before feeling our way forward again.

1. Mary Oliver, “The Dipper,” Owls and Other Fantasies.
2. John Muir from My First Summer in the Sierra.

Ancient

I entered the zendo, my left foot lifting over the door-sill. I bowed to the altar, and walked to the back for my seat assignment. I had entered Tassajara Zen Mountain Center, tucked in a valley of the Ventana Wilderness just inland from Monterey, California, where my mother is a resident. My arrival coincided with the full moon and its ceremony replaced the usual evening sitting.

I stood at the edge of my zabuton, a three-foot square cushion of padded, black cotton and watched as the officiating priest entered, offered incense and the chanting began.

This, my mother had told me, was the oldest ceremony still practiced. It has been practiced since the time of the Buddha, twenty-five hundred years ago. The ceremony itself is a restating of vows: I will not kill; I will not take what is not given; I will not misuse sexuality; I will not lie; I will not intoxicate body and mind of self or other; I will not slander: I will not praise self at the expense of others; I will not be avaricious; I will not harbor ill will; and I will not abuse the three treasures: Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha.

A resonant monotone of chanting, filled the zendo, our voices muffled briefly as we bowed our heads to the zabuton in a full body bow. Through the ceremony, the repeated offering of incense, the call and response chanting, bells and gongs gave instruction, kept time, and signaled a movement. Their function added simplicity.

I had spent the morning in an ancient presence as well. After leaving the Sheep Creek Campground and driving out of King’s Canyon, I stopped for breakfast at the Grant Grove and walked among the sequoia. There is a picture of a US cavalry detachment standing ready to defend the General Sherman tree. Ten of them, mounted on horseback, stand abreast and still the trunk is visible on either side. So it is with the Grant tree, forty feet across at is base. But as the early Buddhists practiced the full moon ceremony, the seed of this tree sat sealed in a cone awaiting the fire that would release the cone, allow its scales to open, and its seeds to fall to the ground. Twenty-two hundred years ago, that fire came and the Grant tree seed germinated.

My mother and I left the zendo in the silence that would last through the next day’s breakfast. We climbed the hill to my cabin and sat on the porch, the full moon anchoring us. As we sat, the crickets resumed their songs. These too, I thought, these too are ancient chants.

No Expectations

Its true. I drove through Yosemite without stopping. Some might call it sacrilege, but I think, given how parked cars spilled out of every trailhead lot, and how drivers headed into the valley stopped suddenly or swerved to the margin to snap a photograph, that John Muir himself might well have applauded my decision. Don’t get me wrong; the Tioga Pass Road was well worth the price of admission and the views I had of El Capitan and Half Dome made me laugh in disbelief. But as Cricket and I wound up the road from Fresno to Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks, I knew my choice had been a good one. The village at Grant’s Grove was still too busy for my taste, so I headed in the thirty miles through Sequoia National Forest to the Canyon itself, deep in the Sierras, along the South Fork of the King’s River, and settled in for the night.

I was determined to do a full day hike, ten or fifteen miles at least, during my one full day in the canyon. So I left my campsite as the sky was just beginning to pale, and headed to the Copper Creek trailhead. I switchbacked up and up gaining over two thousand feet in the first few miles. I paused to greet manzanita and ceanothus, two familiar shrubs of the California hills, and a deer that watched from the trail above. At 7000 feet the chaparral gave way to conifers: sequoia and pines whose needles softened my walking. The sun had reached me, and in the growing heat, their shade was welcome.

A couple passed me, headed down, the first people I’d seen in the three hours I’d been hiking. My destination, the saddle, they told me, was buggy, and the basin beyond, which I’d hoped to explore if time allowed, held some of the worst mosquitoes they had ever experienced.

I was surprised to find the news relaxed me. Now I had no expectations. I would climb as high as I could, take my time, watch birds, and let go of the self-imposed pressures of time and mileage. I delighted in the vertical unfolding of spring. Flowers already past their prime in lower elevations were in full bloom here, paintbrush, penstemon and mariposa poppy. Hearing chirping in a knot of shrubs above a small drainage, I waited until a MacGillivray’s warbler hopped up. It hid quickly, and I waited for a second look. In Upper Tent Meadow I looked out to see the first cumulous clouds passing from the far peaks. I knew that I would not reach the saddle before needing to turn back. But somehow, perhaps it was the mosquitoes, it was OK.

I climbed up through the meadow turning often to look out over Avalanche Pass and the Sphinx Crest. The peaks still held snow in the cirques and north-facing slopes. Here I could feel, in the “untrammeled wilderness”, the spirit of the man who strode through these mountains with a crust of bread in his pocket and a plant press in his backpack. Here was the high sierra. And then, as the cumulus clouds towered into thunderheads, I turned and strode down along the path I had come. I watched the pageant of the summer storm unfold without disappointment.

A Story of Water

There is a certain irony to the County Park owned by the city of Los Angeles and leased to Mono County. It was one of the few places in town I saw a green lawn.

Though a number of tributaries carry fresh water to Mono Lake, laid out at the eastern base of the Sierra Nevadas, it loses water only through evaporation. Minerals carried from the mountains remain behind making the water saline, more hospitable to brine flies and brine shrimp than fish. Because of the abundant flies and shrimp, the lake is an important destination for migrating birds; Wilson’s and Red-napped Phalaropes and other shorebirds, come here to double their weight before flying south.

In 1941, Los Angeles began diverting water from the eastern Sierra for city use. Because of the diversions, less fresh water flowed into Mono Lake lowering it from an elevation of 6417’ to its present day level of 6382’ and doubling the salinity. With the system on the brink of collapse, a citizen’s group, The Mono Lake Commission, began a decades long litigation to restore water to the lake. The commission continues to work statewide to educate consumers about water conservation. Did you know that a lawn in LA uses more water to maintain than a swimming pool?

I read a study once that demonstrated that humans are fundamentally, and perhaps evolutionarily drawn to water. The researchers asked participants to rate forest scenes and grasslands compared with those containing lakes, rivers and streams. But the pictures had to be screened carefully – one forest scene was chosen again and again as preferable until the researchers noted, after looking closely, that indeed a stream flowed through the trees.

So was I drawn to Mono Lake. I spent the afternoon walking its shores and bird watching. Wherever I went in town, the lake drew my eye. The tufa towers—built from mineral deposits from underground springs—entranced me, hardened mounds like dribble castles built by children then eroded by the tide. Once underwater, the towers now stand amid blue-eyed grass, paintbrush and willow.

I stayed at the County Park until the sun set behind the mountains and the light left the lake, casting the far shore in mauve and violet. I stayed watching phalaropes spin for their meals and Long-billed Dowitchers probe the alkaline flats with their bills. I stayed to hear the raucous calls of California Gulls as their rookery settled into night. As I walked back to my car Violet-green swallows and bats vied for insects, and then the sprinklers kicked on keeping the green lawn green and sending the tributaries of Mono Lake into the dry dessert air.

Interlude

In case you're one of the folks who is reading this to make sure I haven't fallen into a canyon, been carried off by grizzlies or run away to join the circus, please know that I will be away from my computer until July 31. More then.

Parallax

I remember watching corn-rows disappear into the far horizon as we drove. I don’t know if I sought an explanation or if my father, observing my fascination offered the concept. It was the summer I turned five and my parents and I embarked on a six-week loop around the lower forty-eight.

Parallax: 1. a. Difference or change in the apparent position or direction
of an object as seen from two different points.1

The phenomenon came back to me as I drove across Nevada, nearly causing me vertigo forcing me to re-set my gauge of distance. I followed Rte 50 west to Ely then headed Southwest on Rte 6. Next Gas 164 miles.

I descended from the Egan Range and the White River Valley stretched before me. Basin. I could see the entire length of road until it climbed the Grant Range. I guessed—10 miles? 15? I checked my odometer. Twenty-five miles later I downshifted and headed up. Range.

Each Basin, each range was distinct. My guessing game continued, some stretched 13 miles, 18, 20. Descending from the Grant Range to the tapering foothills of the White Pine Range, there were no signs, no habitations, only the range fencing that stretched on and on. In Railroad Valley the first cut of hay was in, irrigated by the water of Bull Creek. The next valley was the pale silver green of sage. Dried grasses gave the next a yellow cast. So too were the ranges identifiable. Some were toothy and jutted against the sky; others were rounded, eroded, sloping. Some had the clear horizontal layering of sedimentary rock, one showed vertical folds as if fifty-foot-high lengths of crepe paper stretched across its face. At a rest area trashcans huddled in the shade of junipers.

After the Black Rock summit a sign pointed to the Black Rock lava flow and even from the road I could see the tumult of basaltic rock on the otherwise level valley. A coyote jogged across the road in front of me then broke into a sprint, it seemed, for the pure joy of running.

Telephone poles gathered in the distance like an art lesson on perspective. A pronghorn walked across the road in front of me then trotted into the sage. He didn’t hurry; I didn’t touch my break.

I passed the Tonopah Speedway and Airport; Joshua trees marked the entry.
A knife’s edge of snow hung above the next range: the high sierras, 40, maybe, 50 miles away. The space between low, mounded plants grew, and stretches of white and grey sand filled the void until, further on, it was mostly sand. This is a parched landscape. The washes I passed had held ATVs more recently than flowing water. By the road a concrete shell of a building still boasted “Bar and Sluts” over the door, around it lay smaller, equally vacant outbuildings. I turned right and follow 6 toward the peaks and California.

Through it all, the foreground kept pace while the distant ranges held their ground; the middle ground shifted into being only through movement. Parallax.

1. "parallax, n.1" The Oxford English Dictionary.

Through an Ecologist’s Eyes

So often when we think of climate change, the magnificent images of an ice sheet calving or a polar bear adrift dominate our thoughts, but as I hiked up Death Canyon in the Tetons with a dear friend of mine, she began to play out a story far more intricate and complex than the charismatic stories that dominate the news.

I first heard of Clark’s Nutcrackers in an Animal Behavior class in college. They are master cachers who have evolved a mutualistic relationship with the whitebark pine in western montaine systems. The gumminess of the pines’ cones prevents the wind from dispersing their seeds, a common seed dispersal method for most pines. But the Clark’s Nutcrackers are seed-eaters; they pick apart the cones and hide seeds all over their territories. For the most part, the nutcrackers remember their caches, though quite a few are intercepted by grizzlies. The grizzlies find enough of these caches that the pine nuts constitute an important part of their diet, especially as they are fattening up for hibernation. Those left behind by the nutcrackers and bears often germinate and grow into new trees.

So what does this have to do with climate change? The mountain pine beetle, always present here, is no longer being held in check by the sustained cold of winter. More and more larvae are surviving to adulthood, surviving to fly to whitebark pines and gnawing their way into the bark to lay eggs. The adult beetles carry a hitchhiker: the blue-stain fungus, which, both breaks down the trees’ resistance to the pine beetles and, when admitted into the sapwood of the pines, begins to limit and ultimately cut off the supply of water and nutrients that move through the trunk. Eventually the tree dies.

So because of milder winters, the beetles are able to carry the fungus to more trees. The trees are dying, which limits the food supply for Clark’s Nutcracker and Grizzlies. Still, some may ask, “So what?”

It is highly likely that hungry grizzlies, unable to fatten themselves on pine nuts will venture into the valley for Mc Donald’s instead, or trash, or whatever else humans have to offer. Inadvertently, the beetle’s survival may lead to increased grizzly-human interactions. And there’s more. Either because of their growing requirements or the Clark’s caching preferences, the whitebark pine is a pioneer species, meaning it grows in recently disturbed and open spaces. As it becomes established, it anchors the snow pack, causing the snow to melt more slowly and creating the sustainable water supply that we humans depend upon.

I am amazed by this story. The intricacy and complexity of the communities that surrounds us delights me. And I am dismayed by their unraveling at human hands. I wonder, of how many more puzzle pieces are we not yet aware? How many species and interactions will calve from our world without our knowing until we hear the great crash of extinction and it is too late?

Dim Sum

When I was eleven, I flew across country alone for the first time. Leaving my home outside of Philadelphia, a came to visit my aunt in San Francisco for a week. I loved the freedom and adventure of traveling alone – I suppose I still do.

My aunt opened my eyes and taste buds to worlds I had not imagined. We walked in the Japanese Garden, went out for sushi and joined one of her friends for Dim Sum in Chinatown. The restaurant was fairly dark, and carts of mysterious food came again and again by our table, each dish named in a thick accent. I remember the sticky sesame and red bean buns, which I loved, and the duck’s feet, which was one of the few things I refused to try. Years later, when I lived in Brooklyn, I would detour through Chinatown to pick up a red bean bun at my favorite pastry shop.

In many ways, this trip has been like Dim Sum; I’ve gotten small tastes of dishes from which I could make entire meals. I felt that way when I passed up a trip down to Quivara NWR in Kansas in favor of moving on, and again as I hiked out of the Roaring River drainage in the Rocky Mountains, leaving the rest of the park and adjacent National Forest unexplored. And again in southern Utah choosing between Arches, Canyonlands, Capitol Reef, Bryce, Zion, Escalante.

And here again at Antelope Island, a four and a half by fifteen mile long island in the Great Salt Lake. On the island, drove out toward the Fielding Garr Ranch pausing to watch a black-tailed jackrabbit bound into the sage.

The full course would have included at least one night camping on the island and a hike up Frary Peak, its highest point, then another walk on Buffalo Point, a promontory out into the Great Salt Lake. I would have settled into the Visitor’s Center to fully explore the exhibits and watch the film instead of just popping in for the bird checklist.

But I settled for a taste as the cart went by, and hiked up Dolly knob. As I walked, grasshoppers sprang from the trail, their flight the rasp of seedpods dried and tossed by the wind. A pronghorn startled at my approach, turned to watch me for a moment then bunched his muscles to bound over the bench left behind by the ancient lake Bonneville. Near the summit, in the shadow of a 2.7 billion year old outcrop, I settled in to write. Before me stretched the Great Salt Lake. A meadowlark’s liquid song and the scour of an airplane broke the silence. It was a sere landscape, grasses and flower stems browned by the summer sun and little rain. On the updraft from the playa below, I could hear the grunts and bellows of heard of bison. Clouds of dust rose from their rolling and pawing the ground.

Not quite satisfied, I eased across the causeway and onto the next offering.

In search of the Western Wood-peewee

In 1983, after several years of record rainfall, the Great Salt Lake rose. It threatened the city and destroyed the system of dykes at Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge, dykes that corralled the fresh water of the Bear River. In her book Refuge, Terry Tempest Williams chronicled the rise of the Great Salt Lake, and correlated the destruction of the refuge with her mother’s struggle with breast cancer. It was Terry Tempest William’s book that put Bear River on my itinerary. But it was also the birds.

I am a birder—that is I enjoy watching birds, studying their behavior. But my observations are often more than incidental; I’ll go birding, keep a checklist of what I see and work to identify everything I encounter. I keep a life list, a list of bird species I have seen or heard and could identify again. My mother considers herself a bird-watcher, she is less concerned about identification but loves to observe color and behavior, to really sit and watch the birds that surround her. On my trip to Bear River, I met David, a lister. He keeps a year list as well as a life list, does a “big day” each year to see how many birds he can identify in 24 hours in one county. He teaches English and spends his summers wandering the west and fleshing out his year list – checking in with old friends.

I began the day at Bear River with a Yellow-headed Blackbird clicking from his perch on a cattail. The Refuge, I found out, was closed as they paved the autoroute. I was fully aware of the irony of Terry’s book drawing me to a refuge once again closed. The staff was, however, offering guided tours, and I happened to arrive on a day when a tour was available. David and I joined a mother and her 11 year-old son and the two local birders who were leading the tour.

As I waited for the tour, I walked around the half-mile loop outside the visitor’s center. A red fox stalked into the reeds, body frozen. One paw lifted imperceptibly and then he pounced, pounced again, and rooted for his prey. He caught me watching him and bounded into the grasses. A Sora, usually illusive, walked across an opening in the marsh offering me perhaps my first look, though I’d identified them by sound before. A mother Ruddy Duck, blue billed and russet bodied trailed six ducklings.

The van drove out along one of the reconstructed dykes on the south end of the refuge. We stopped for White-Faced Ibis and Wilson’s Phalarope, both life birds. Marsh Wrens worked the reeds and we spied a few of their grass-ball nests. At the first pool of water, Black-necked Stilts, Franklin’s Gulls and Coots, with their red-headed young, probed and dove for food. In the deeper waters, where a channel ran between impoundments, Western, Clark’s and Eared Grebes swam in pairs, preening. A line of White Pelicans edged the horizon. Smaller groups swam toward the shallows herding carp, then circled, trapping the fish and eating as many as their bellies and pouches could hold. On the mud flats, American Avocets, Stilts and Marbled Godwits probed with their long bills.

The van returned to the visitor’s center by noon and David and I tapped our leaders for other local “hotspots” where we could continue our birding. Chris was looking for a Western Wood Peewee to add to his year list. I was just happy to spend the day birding.

We drove up Logan Canyon into the Wasatch-Cache National Forest, winding higher and higher to Tony Glen. The wildflowers, as our leader had promised were at their peak: a profusion of reds, blues yellows and purples. I recognized only a few and could happily have spent the next few hours keying out plants, but that’s another story. Walking around the lake, we added Clark’s Nutcracker, Western Tanager, Red-naped Sapsucker and White-crowned sparrow to our day’s list.

It’s a strange thing encountering a stranger and joining in travel for a short time. We knew only each other’s first names and broadest geographies: I from Massachusetts, he from Wisconsin. And yet, we both shared a passion for birding and for writing. We had read many of the same books. At the end of the day, after stopping twice to look for a Dipper, we shook hands and headed our separate ways. I headed into Mantua (Man-ua) to the reservoir where grebes nested on their mats of floating grass. Along the edge, Western Kingbirds and Lazuli Buntings claimed power lines and willows.

I’ll admit, I tallied my list over dinner: 65 species, 6 life birds. We never did find the Wood-peewee.

photo: http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Western_Wood-Pewee/id

Gift of the Desert, II

I am a woman, traveling alone. When I first began hiking alone, I was often afraid, of men, mostly. Of rape. But as I spent more time alone in the backcountry, I began to celebrate that solitude, long for it.

Instead of celebration, however, I find that my aloneness is most often met with amazement or dismay. Hiking down from the saddle in the Rockies, I met a couple, and stood aside as they climbed up. “And there’s another behind you, I expect” was the man’s greeting.

Camped in the Arapaho National Forest in Colorado, I passed a woman gathering firewood. (She was camping with a man.)
“Just you alone in that tent?”
“Yep.”
“Do you do this a lot?”
“This summer, I am.”
“You don’t… have any problems?”

While I have not encountered anyone who wished me physical harm, I find the expectation of harm toxic. Encountered suspicions gnaw at my confidence and remind me that my solo travels are unusual, unexpected and, some would suggest, unsafe. I’m not afraid, but I’m also not dumb. My family knows my plan; when I’m out for a hike I’ve usually let a ranger know where I am. You won’t find my planned route on this blog. When I sign into a campsite or trail register, I use my first initial: “J” could be Jason as easily as Jennifer.

***

I rise early from my campsite in the apricot orchard. The sun has not yet crested the reef and the valley holds the cool of night. I follow a trail, switchbacking up and up. White-throated Swifts’ calls, like fingers plucking comb tines, echo off of the canyon walls. I reach the mouth of the hanging canyon and step into sunlight. I raise my arms above my head in greeting and welcome the warmth. Down through the canyon, I find evidence of yesterday’s rain. A pothole cups water, reflects sky. At the base of side canyons sand holds the shape of running water, carved like muscles into channels, deltas and fans. Here, the water ran, and here, and here. A Rock Wren edges nervously to a puddle and drinks. The trail follows the wash then rises above the canyon floor onto the slickrock. I sit in the shade of a Juniper. Rooted to the rock, I breathe in and out; I loose water. I do not think safe or unsafe, should or should not. I simply am. I drink and spill a few drops on the ground in thanks.

This is why I woke early: to sit tall and alone in the desert; to understand that I am not separate from the vastness that surrounds me, from the ancient seabed that supports me; to sit open eyed and open-hearted to what this landscape has to offer—patterns of light and shadow, unwary movements of animals, the slow passage of time. This is the second gift of the desert: Solitude.

Gift of the Desert, I

When I began this blog, I didn’t know I’d signed up to describe Capitol Reef. Driving along Rte 24 I began to understand why my father is passionate about geology. The road parallels the Waterpocket Fold, and I stopped to gawk; huge slabs of rock stories high thrust out of the earth like a line of spears aimed to stop the oncoming cavalry.

Driving through the reef itself, I shook my head in disbelief and wonder at the spires, cliffs, domes, fins, hoodoos, and chimneys all layered in red, green, grey and white. In places they rose three thousand feed above the valley floor where the Fremont River wove a thread of lushness. At Fruita, an historic Mormon settlement, the confluence of the Fremont and Sulphur Creek offered enough water to sustain orchards: apricot, pear and apple. I bought a bag of apricots, Apricots! In the desert! and savored each juicy mouthful.

I found a trail to a band of petroglyphs and hiked out through the canyon. A Towee sang, but otherwise the land was still and quiet. Clouds massed overhead. I crushed a sage leaf between my finger and thumb and brought the scent to my nose.

I had the petroglyphs to myself, miraculously. Horned faces hung above me looking down, a bighorn sheep leapt from one absent rock to another, bear prints crossed a sinewy line of river. But there were other markings too, names of travelers beginning in 1902, bullet holes riddled one spiral shaped glyph and other shapes, mocking the ancient ones and mutating them. My stomach tightened in anger and grief.

Thunder rumbled overhead: my cue to hike out, and fast. At the first flash of lightening, I began to count hoping I had time to reach my car, and looking for a safe place in case I didn’t. I saw the rain before I felt it, moving in sheets across the canyon – the sound undistinguishable from wind in the cottonwood leaves, but the leaves were still. I reached my car peppered with the first thick drops.

Have you ever smelled the desert in a summer thunderstorm? The bruised sage I had smelled earlier infused every inch of the land around me and mingled with the scents of juniper and grateful soil. It is the smell of things coming alive, of reckless abandon, of elation.

The storm was brief, enough to make the washes run, but not to fill them. Enough to send Black-throated Sparrows flitting from shrub to shrub across the desert. I ate another apricot, window down and rain splashing in. What a gift, water in the desert.

And the Challenges?

By the time I secured a campsite and drove into Moab it was 101˚. I wanted to check my email, find a cold beer and do as all desert dwellers do during the heat of the day: hide. The Grand County Library was lovely and after decompressing my camp fuel, so that it wouldn’t explode in the heat of my car, I found a desk and settled in.

By four, hunger and an urge, or perhaps a responsibility to see Arches National Park drove me back into the heat. Arches is lovely, the curve of red rock against Utah blue. It was also crowded. I pulled into the Windows parking lot: CO, NH, OH, CA, NY, NY and on. Tour buses idled to maintain their cool interiors. I filed out along the third of a mile trail as part of a herd who snapped pictures of each other, trail signs, and of course the arches. North Window silhouetted a father and daughter in bright tee-shirts.

I moved on. A spur trail lead to Turret Arch on the same manicured trail, edged in sandstone, with level sandstone steps where necessary. I turned left and followed the primitive trail, a footpath marked with cairns and the passage of hundreds of feet. At South Window, I settled into the shade and began to see time: the slow wearing away of stone by wind and water as German, Korean and French bounced off the canyon walls above.

The trail lead around the arches and below them, then wove back through the desert to the parking lot. Violet-green Swallows swooped overhead. I reveled in the illusion of solitude and arrived back at my car still restless, but glad, at least, that I’d come.

Where waters begin

The wind woke me, roaring in the trees overhead and sending my backcountry permit slapping against my tent. I rolled over to write, hoping the wind would die down as morning warmed.

By 6:45 I was on the trail watching the sun light ease into the valley. Still short of breath on the ascent, I paused often, turning to face the immensity of space surrounding me. Ruby-crowned Kinglets flitted in the trees overhead, alpine sunflowers lifted their faces to the rising sun, a White-crowned sparrow flew across the path then sang from the top of an alpine willow. Waterfalls poured from under lingering snow banks, the roaring water audible over the wind.

I climbed higher. Conifers gave way to willow shrubs, and long-stemmed wildflowers to low, matted species. Moss campion bloomed atop its cushion of leaves, and Colorado columbine danced in rock crevices. American Pipits bobbed their way across the tundra in search of food.

I reached the bottom of a snowfield, rocks and gravel lined its margins: the snow too recently retreated to have allowed plants to emerge. My hiking poles dug in and slowly I worked up the slope, my feet less sure on the loose ground.

The saddle opened up above me, a gently rounded expanse of alpine buttercups nodding in the wind. Vegetation had erased the trail, marked now only by cairns, which rested on scattered boulders. I crossed the saddle and sat, lifting my binoculars. On the falling slope of Fairchild Mountain five bighorn ewes grazed. Three were gray, the color of the surrounding rock, only their white rumps and movement distinguished them. The other two were lighter, buff and beige. As I watched two lambs leaped from a higher outcrop and ran, stone to stone, to join their mothers. They tore around the group inciting play among the older sheep, who bucked and danced in return.

Behind the sheep hung the high peaks of the Rockies, still etched in snow. Snow that as it melted would run to the Pacific, the Atlantic. When I crossed the divide tomorrow, the rivers I followed would flow west.