Why I love wild lands

I thought I wrote a poem about why I love wilderness, but this is what the USDA Forest Service posted on one of their websites:

The beauty of the canyon, the vastness of bluebunch wheatgrass waving in the wind, the wild ungulate on the hillside, are just some of the wonders that cause me to love wilderness. The snake in the grass, the innumerable rocks just waiting to twist my ankle the poison ivy along the river trail, the exposed ridges during a summer lightning storm. The jewel that is every flower, the blue sky waiting for the change in weather, the ancestors who walked here before are more of the wonders that I love about our wildernesses.

Hell's Canyon near Deep Creek

And this is what I wrote with the proper formatting:

Why I love Hell's Canyon Wilderness:

The beauty of the canyon,
The vastness of bluebunch wheatgrass waving in the wind,
The wild ungulate on the hillside,
Are just some of the wonders that cause me to love wilderness.

The snake in the grass,
The innumerable rocks just waiting to twist my ankle
The poison ivy along the river trail,
The exposed ridges during a summer lightning storm.

The jewel that is every flower,
The blue sky waiting for the change in weather,
The ancestors who walked here before
Are more of the wonders that I love about our wildernesses.

I suppose it's no big deal. Although I do prefer the way I wrote it over the way the FS published it. Maybe it is just a little quibble.

If English Were Made Official

From a letter to the editor of the Oregonian, sometime ten or fifteen years ago:


To the Editor:

If America is to get with the programme, we need to make English the official language. Nearly all the other former colonies of Britain have honoured her by designating English as the offcial language of usage.

Soon we may be able to motor our lorries to the panel beater, who can check under the boot for a spare tyre, wash the wind screen and check the oil under the bonnet. Whilst the mechanic is under the bonnet we can use the hooter to frighten him.

If we started using English as the official language, would we make as much noise switching to metric as the Brits are making now, or would we use the traditional English measurements? Officially, you may weigh 11 stones and drive 4 leagues to work. And remember there are 12 pennies to the shilling.

If English were declared the official language, which foreign words would be chic to use and which would be verboten?

If you insisted on going to the bathroom instead of the loo or the water closet you might be sent to prison. For such a hideous crime you probably would not want to be in gaol.

The People of the Bush

Boteti sub-district of the Central District of Botswana was a dry, dusty, out of the way place in 1989. With no paved road, no telephones, no electricity, and a six hour drive to the capitol, Gaborone, it was about as remote of a post as one can imagine. The area was sandy, covered with grass in the west, and short, shrubby types of trees in the east part of the district.

One of many magnificent sunsets in Botswana, 1989.

It was here that an American couple were living, she working for the Ministry of Lands as a Drought Relief Technical Officer, in other words, working in community development, and he was a Forestry Officer for the Ministry of Agriculture. They had lived in Letlhakane for a year, and were planning to stay for another year.

The Forestry Officer decided to take a trip to the western villages of the district to view the successes of the recently held National Tree Planting Day. In addition, he was going to inquire as to the need for more trees as well as check on the progress of three village woodlots. Usually, he travelled with a driver who was assigned to his office. There were three or four drivers: Palagabedi, Onkagatsi, Benjamin and Seepeto, but at this time they were all busy. The Forestry Officer was going to have to go it alone.

For several days he travelled west from the populated villages and diamond mining town to the vast open, dotted with tiny settlements along the dry Boteti riverbed. He wanted to get back home on Thursday, and he was hoping that he could do it before it got dark.

Traveling at night could be a terrifying experience in Botswana. There were the ever present bovines, that would wander across the road, or simply decide to stand in the middle of the road for the duration of the night. Then there was the wildlife--ostriches, impala, kudu, that would think nothing of being in the road, without any reflective gear. There were also other drivers. Several stories were told of somebody's vehicle breaking down on the road, and the driver would turn off the lights, not wanting the battery to die, and walk to the nearest village for assistance. Never would the thought occur to someone to pull off of the road.

The Forestry Officer got a late start from Makalamabedi, and after stopping in Motlopi once again, he realized he was running late. He travelled as fast as the sand track would allow him to drive the Toyota Hi-lux pick-up, and as he approached Rakops, he could see a spectacular African sunset happening. He had several hours to go before he returned home.

At the far end of the village of Rakops was a place people would wait to hitch a ride east. In Botswana at this time, in the "bush," it was common courtesy to give people rides who needed them. Private vehicles were infrequent, and public transportation, buses, taxis, were non-existent. There were thirteen people at the hitching spot.

He glanced in his rear view mirror and saw nobody behind him. No surprise. But he did glimpse the continuing spectacular sunset. Thinking that all of the thirteen people weren't waiting for a ride, that maybe some of them were merely waiting to say goodbye to their friends and relatives, he pulled over and after the appropriate greetings asked, "O ya kae?" Where are you going?

The monna magolo, the old man, said they were going to Orapa, and they all wanted a ride. "A re ye," said the Forestry Officer, we go. The women and children started loading their meager belongings into the bed of the small pick-up, and followed their gear into the open back. The old man, and a young twenty something man got into the cab with the driver. Just to be sure he had heard what he thought he heard, he asked the two in the cab with him where they were going, and they again replied Orapa.

A San youngster, Botswana, 1989.

Orapa is a diamond mining town about thirty kilometers northwest of Letlhakane. It is a closed community, with a fence around the area of ten by twenty kilometers. There are guards at the gates and if one doesn't have a good reason for going to Orapa, the guards will turn you away. This group of hitch hikers did not look like they had any reason to go into the town.

Just after they started picking up speed there was a knock on the back panel of the pick-up. Somebody back there wanted to stop. The old man asked the Forestry Officer to stop, and because there was seldom anyone driving these primitive roads, he stopped in the middle of the road. A women in the back jumped out, ran to a nearby rondoval, the traditional circular mud hut with thatched roof, and was quickly returning with a blanket. The driver glance in his rear view mirror to make sure she was settled in, and then focused on the blazing sunset.

Again they were underway, and shortly there was another knock from the back. The driver was becoming a little frustrated. He wanted to make some good distance while it was still light, but with every stop, the seconds, the minutes, where passing quickly, and he would soon be driving in the dark. Once the vehicle stopped, he watched a woman jump out of the back and run down the road. The driver watched, puzzled by her running along the road, but awed by the continuing sunset. Sunsets in Botswana seemed to be more vibrant, longer lasting, larger, than the sunsets he was use to in the United States. The woman picked up some fabric, a scarf, that must have blown off of her head,

Sunset in the Okavango Delta of northern Botswana.

They were off again, zooming along at 60 kilometers an hour. The two passengers were discussing something in a language the driver didn't understand, but he got the impression they were talking about the speedometer.

A short time later, the old man started fishing around in his oversized, well-worn pants. He pulled out a fist-sized amount of crumpled newspaper and opens it up on his lap. He tears off a corner of paper and then sprinkles some of the dried herbs that had been in the paper onto the smaller piece and rolls it into a cigarette. About this time the driver pushes in the cigarette lighter. The old man was fishing in his pockets for matches when the cigarette lighter pops out and the driver hands it to the old man. After the cigarette is lit, there is quite the discussion about the lighter, and the old man pushes the lighter in several times to witness for himself the miracle of fire on the truck.

By the junction of the road to Toromoja, the sky was darkening. The brilliant sunset was fading to dark.  It was becoming harder to see anything outside the headlight beam, and the truck was slowed to about 40 kilometers. By the time they reached Mopipi, it was pitch black.

There was a knock from the back and the driver stopped in downtown Mopipi, population 200. Several women climbed out of the back of the truck along with a child, leaving seven passengers in the back, along with the two men in the cab with the driver.

At the edge of the village there was another knock. The driver thought, what is going on with these people? Couldn't somebody have walked the half kilometer to here? Some of the women in the back got out and squatted. The two passengers in the cab got out, and standing in front of the pick-up, urinated into the headlight beams. Everyone got back into the vehicle and the old man said, "Tsamaya." Go.

It was going to be another hour, at least, to home in Letlhakane, but the road was straight and flat the entire way. The vegetation consisted entirely of mophane, a shrub in the legume family; definately a monoculture of shrubs. The mophane was densely spaced, and uniformly three to four meters tall. In the dark it looked very homogenous. There would be Orapa to deal with, but none of it's lights were visible when there was another knock from the back.

Argh!

How many stops are they going to make, thought the driver, now thoroughly frustrated. The women and children in the back were getting out, handing their bags out one at a time. The young man and the old man in the cab both slid out and closed the door behind them. Everyone was getting out of the vehicle. Suddenly, the old man was next to the driver's side door, and through the open window clasps his hands, bows slightly, and says, "Danki, rra." Thank you, sir.

In the dark, all of his riders stepped into the bush and quickly disappeared. The Forestry Officer got out of the vehicle and peered into the darkness. He reached into the cab and turned the engine off, then the headlights. It was dark and quiet. His nine passengers had disappeared, quietly into the dark, all nine of them. They knew where they were going--home. He looked up and down the road. It appeared just like the other hundred kilometers before and after the stop. No signs. No lights. Nothing that he recognized would indicate that this was a place to stop to let somebody head home. And there were nine people, women, children and an old man walking in the dark to some shelter somewhere.

As the Peace Corps Volunteer stood there in the dark, he tried to ponder the meaning of life. He looked up to the stars spread out from horizon to zenith and into infinity; he looked into the bush, up and down the darkened road; and thought he lived in an awesome place.

The slow drive into Letlhakane was somewhat of a denouement of the final part of his trip to west Boteti. It was good to see his spouse and catch up with all the news, but something was rattling around in his mind--who were they? What were they doing? Where were they going? Are they doing okay? What became of them? How did they know where to go?

They were questions he continues to find the answers to.

Skiing on Mount Emily

A video of a recent ski off of the ridgetop on the Mount Emily Recreation Area in northeast Oregon:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qb3NERPP8Xs&list=UU9APyQYJnUbgH5887kBLiPQ&feature=c4-overview&noredirect=1

Cheers.

Happy Birthday, George Washington Carver!

He could have added fortune to fame, but caring for neither, he found happiness and honor in being helpful to the world.--Inscription from the gravestone of George Washington Carver

In 1964, his family had just moved from the big city to a small town in western Colorado. The town library was a very small fraction of the size of the big city library. His junior high school library was in an almost closet sized room off of the office of the principal.

He liked reading all sorts of books, but his favorites seemed to be biographies of inventors and other scientists. He had read books on Galileo, and Edison, and Einstein. So while he was perusing the small library in his small school in the small western Colorado town he noticed one book with the label on the spine that said, "George Washington Carver." He pulled it off the shelf and casually flipped through it, then, while replacing the book back on the shelf, wondered--who would name their child after a President of the United States?

A few weeks later, he checked out the biography of George Washington Carver. It turned out that there was more than scientific discoveries in the book. There was philosophy and words to live by:

"It is not the style of clothes one wears, neither the kind of automobiles one drives, nor the amount of money one has in the bank, that counts. These mean nothing. It is simply service that measures success." -- George Washington Carver

From: http://uspsstamps.tumblr.com/post/27049602788/happy-birthday-george-washington-carver-born-on

Years later he and his spouse, on a road trip across the United States, stopped in Diamond, Missouri and visited the birthplace of Carver.

Carver was born to a slave named Mary in the month of January, 1864. That's all that is known.  Mary had no known last name, and she was owned by a couple named Carver. As George was growing up he would introduce himself as "Carver's George." George Washington Carver was able to overcome numerous hardships, and racism that was prevalent throughout the US during his life.

George Washington Carver went on to study in Kansas and Iowa, and then became a professor at Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. Carter is famously known for developing over 100 new products from the peanut plant. With a greater need for peanuts, farmers were then encouraged to rotate their crops, from a continuous growing of cotton, to every other year planting peanuts, allowing the soil to rest and providing nitrogen to the depleted soils.

Carter also worked on sweet potatoes, cowpeas, soybeans, and other crops developing dyes, paints, lubricants, mayonnaise, and other products.

There is a sense felt that Carver was to the early twentieth century what Nelson Mandela became in the late twentieth century. Maybe this is hyperbole. Maybe. But the obstacles, the resistance, the hardships that he faced throughout his life failed to create fear and hate in his heart.

"One of the things that has helped me as much as any other, is not how long I am going to live but how much I can do while living." -- George Washington Carver

George Washington Carver did not let the haters spoil his life. He rose above those feelings to achieve things which benefited all of humankind. And now the young boy who moved to that small town in western Colorado years ago, has grown and tried, sometimes not very well, to live as Carver had lived. Are there heros in your life? Are there people in your life who overcome all hurdles to rise above the fray?

A few more quotes by George Washington Carver:

"Day after day, I spent in the woods alone in order to collect my floral beauties, and put them in my little garden I had hidden in brush not far from the house, as it was considered foolishness in the neighborhood to waste time on flowers." -- George Washington Carver

"One reason I never patent my products is that if I did it would take so much time, I would get nothing else done. But mainly I don't want my discoveries to benefit specific favored persons." -- George Washington Carver

From: http://www.biography.com/people/george-washington-carver-9240299

"Ninety-nine percent of the failures come from people who have a habit of making excuses." -- George Washington Carver

"Nothing is more beautiful than the loveliness of the woods before sunrise." -- George Washington Carver

Happy birthday, George! You still rise above the rest.

Thirty Kilometers On Skis!

He had puzzled over the thought of seeing how long of a ski he could do. Most of the time he would be skiing with friends who had other things to do, or would tire before he did, and the skiing would be truncated. There had been times in the past, most recently on 23 December 2013, where, as a solo skier, he had gone twenty kilometers. And it always seemed he was skiing alone when he would do the longer distances.

So he had been contemplating for several months going the distance. Could he do thirty kilometers? Then one morning his spouse suggested that he go skiing that day. Could he do it? The ski area wasn't open and the last grooming of the trails had been a couple days before.

He left home at about 8 a.m. and headed for the hill. Fog and slippery road surfaces caused doubts to enter his mind. He arrived at Anthony Lakes nordic area and started skiing just after 9, with cloudy, snowy conditions prevailing. He was skeptical, as is his wont. The groomed surface was broken by previous skiers, and had formed small, hard edges that could take a skier down if they weren't paying attention.

Nobody was around. He had the entire ski area to himself. Within twenty minutes of leaving the car the weather cleared, snow fall had stopped, and the sun was shinning brightly. The mountains were exalted and every little pile of misplaced snow was kept low. The conditions were fast, and the wax was blue.

Maybe he could do it.

The sun was almost above the shoulder of Gunsight Mountain as he skied the first few kilometers.

He skied all the main trails once, clocking the first ten kilometers at one hour and thirty minutes. Certainly not a racers time, but respectable for him, he of recreational skiing. After a short break where he downed some water and a banana, he committed to the second round doing all the trails in the opposite direction of his first loop, and it took him about one hour and forty minutes. He was wearing out. And this was the distance he had always stopped at, usually feeling tired and worn out.

He took a lunch break of a few minutes, just enough to down a bagel and a banana,and drink some water. And the third ten kilometers took almost two hours. But the thirty kilometers were under his belt and he felt a small sense of victory, or accomplishment in the knowledge that he could do it. He did do it. Thirty kilometers, and he did not feel too bad. In fact, on the drive home he started contemplating a forty kilometer day.

Map and elevation profile of the thirty kilometer ski at Anthony Lakes Nordic Center, 22 January 2014.

Wax or No-wax Cross Country Skis

He has been nordic skiing for thirty-five years, almost exclusively on wax skis. He seems to prefer them to no-wax skis, also known as waxless skis, and he mentioned it to others that he skis with. Their reply was, well, you need to try no-wax skis before you can really judge.

He claimed he had, in the distant past, rented, and used loaner no-wax skis, and he wasn't impressed. He would just stick with his wax skis, thank you very much.

Then he took his wax skis into the shop for a tune-up, and the technician pointed out that both skis were showing wear under the binding. In fact, said the technician, I would not chance skiing around Crater Lake with these skis. So our protagonist bought a pair of skis at the shop, the only ones available, which, to his dismay, were no-wax. Had there been more time, he would have shopped around, and purchased wax skis, but time was not there.

He skied on no-wax skis in March, April, and again in December. A three day trip around Crater Lake gave him quite a bit of experience on no-wax skis. He climbed to Tam McArthur Rim in the Three Sisters Wilderness Area, and shredded the back-country of the Elkhorn Mountains of northeast Oregon with no-wax skis.

"It could have been wax skis!" In the bowels of Broken Top, Three Sisters Wilderness Area.

And after all that, he insist that wax skis are better.

You may be wondering why? For those how are not nordic skiers, this may be an esoteric exercise in minute details of unimportance. But for this skier, it feels that the entire world should be made aware of the differences.

There is the story of a local skier packing, getting on the plane, and zooming to the Scandinavian countries with the intention of skiing long distances in many of the races they have there. He had packed his no-wax skis, and once he arrived in Finland, was ridiculed, mocked, and came in last place everywhere he skied. Apparently, the source of nordic skiing doesn't take kindly to no-wax skis.

So, let's compare wax skis, verses no-wax skis.

1)  The skier has more control with wax skis.

What kind of wax you use depends on the type of snow, the terrain and the temperature. The skier has total control on what type of wax to choose, and use. A person using a no-wax ski has no options. Whatever the base of the ski is, is what the skier has to use. There is no option for a no-wax skier. They are stuck with the base that they have, and have no recourse on changing anything with respect to their bases.

2)  The wax ski is faster.

Many times, skiing with somebody who uses no-wax skis, they will step aside so the wax ski user can zip down the hill before them. They know that a wax ski will, as a general rule, be faster than a no-wax ski on the downhill. You want to be faster? Use a wax ski. There is something wrong with having a rough surface on the base of your ski when you are trying to make progress. Imagine a surface made of sandpaper on the base of a ski. This is akin to the no-wax surfaces of some skis.

3)  The wax ski is quieter.

Under certain conditions, such as hard pack, groomed trails, and icy conditions, no-wax skis will be louder than wax skis. You can hear them. Wax skis are quieter, and allow the skier to concentrate on the sounds of the wilderness instead of the sounds of their skis.

4)  The wax ski is gentler.

Under many of the same conditions as above, the no-wax ski will make a vibrating feeling on the skiers foot. This may be nice for some people, but for the skier who is looking for a smooth ride, wax skis are the way to go. No-wax skis give the skier a vibrating feeling on their feet. Not a good thing when you're trying to feel the wilds that you are skiing through.

5)  No-wax skis are a misnomer.

No-wax, or waxless skis actually require a base treatment at times. A recent ski trip with a no-wax ski user had him "waxing" several times because the snow was sticking to his ski bases. The treatments are usually in a bottle or can whereby the skier spreads the compound over the base of the ski and usually waits for the treatment to dry before putting the skis back on the snow.

The view from Tam McArthur Rim, the edge of Broken Top on the left, South, Middle and North Sister.

Wax skis are the way to go. Applying wax to the base of the ski is not difficult, and the result is a much better ski trip. Try it.

And he will persist in using his wax skis, while his no-wax skis gather dust in the garage.

Nordic Skiing at Anthony Lakes

A video taken by a local skier from a recent trip to the nearby mountains. Currently, this is one of only four ski areas in all of Oregon to be open. It is rumoured that they also have better snow than several of the ski areas that are open.

The start is at the top of College Extension, After the flash, the rest of the trip is on the trail known as College and past the Gunsight Trail, where some other skiers are relaxing in the powder.