I passed Chico’s new music store yesterday, a neon guitar gleaming in the twilight. It reminded me of Guitar Lake in the Sierra Nevada five years ago, an exuberant band of Boy Scouts, and a resulting interminable night wheezing thin air at 13,400 feet elevation on the shoulder of Mt. Whitney with my teenage daughter Ash and her buddy Maya. Did I mention we only had half a liter of water among us? Let me explain. Read More
Living and Writing in the Natural World
The mood of the universe these days
February 27, 2013
Today we got in the mail an envelope postmarked simply “Buckingham Palace” with an enclosed card from the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, aka Will and Kate. On my walk through Bidwell Park the grey, leafless oaks were accented by scores of bright cream and pink flowers of intervening Prunus wild cherry saplings. And on my way to the grocery I listened to Jon Miller and David Fleming on the radio calling the plays of the San Francisco Giants first game of spring training. What do all these things have in common? Read More
Lazarus species 2: "Dawn" Redwood
February 20, 2013
A swarm of redwood species blanketed the Northern Hemisphere from 100 to 20 million years ago. In 1948, most were known and studied only as fossils, the leading authority being Professor Ralph Chaney of Berkeley. He was particularly interested in extinct members of the genus Metasequoia, the last of which had disappeared 30 million years ago. The San Francisco Chronicle’s science writer, Milton Silverman, was in Chaney’s office in January of 1948 when Chaney opened a bulky package covered with Chinese stamps from the day’s mail. Out tumbled a recently-living branch with green needle-leaves, the opposite arrangement of needles identifying it as—Metasequoia! Chaney promptly fainted onto his desk. Read More
Happy Birthday, Mr. Darwin
February 12, 2013
Today is Charles Darwin’s birthday, and hardly anyone has done more for the true understanding of us humans and our world than this good Victorian gentleman. He completed the revolution begun by Copernicus centuries earlier, by establishing clearly that in addition to our planet not being the center of the cosmos, we humans are merely one species of many on the planet, formed by the same processes that form the other species, and in no way exceptional. He established this not by any stroke of genius, but “the old fashioned way,” as the old Smith Barney ad goes. Consider: Read More
A New Year, by China and the Moon
February 8, 2013
Day after tomorrow is the Chinese Lunar New Year, which means tomorrow is New Year’s Eve, and it’s time to be putting up the lanterns and thinking about the menu. The Chinese way of celebrating the new year is very different than our western one, and because of the differences their celebration has survived thousands of years and precipitates the greatest annual human migration on the planet. There’s a good reason for that. Read More
Rhythms of a Human Life
February 5, 2013
A roaring bonfire in the middle of an almond orchard, talk about the stages of life, lots of wine and crystalline stars in the night sky—we must be in California! And so we were this past weekend, as we helped a friend of my wife observe her 60th birthday. A human life, like forests and planets and dreams, has a certain rhythm and track to it, and we were celebrating. Read More
The Second Rung
January 30, 2013
We can’t all be frolicking deep in the High Sierra backcountry every summer. That’s heaven, and I’ve done it, but not all can. Perhaps your experience is limited, perhaps your fitness is not adequate, perhaps you’re too darn old to heft 40 pounds of pack mile after mile (here I raise my hand), maybe you’ve got young kids, or maybe you want to work your way up to the Peak experience. These days of late winter I find myself peeking ahead in the calendar to summer, and thinking that it’s time to start making plans and reserving spots in campgrounds and on trails. What’s available to us in terms of this second rung of outdoor adventures? Read More
Lazarus Species 1: the Coelacanth
January 23, 2013
Three days before Christmas in 1938, Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer received a phone call from a friend who had trawled up a weird fish off the South African coast that morning, and knew she was interested in such things for her museum. She soon arrived by taxi at the dock. "I picked away at the layers of slime to reveal the most beautiful fish I had ever seen," she said. "It was five foot long, a pale mauvy blue with faint flecks of whitish spots; it had an iridescent silver-blue-green sheen all over. It was covered in hard scales, and it had four limb-like fins and a strange puppy dog tail." And oh yes. It had been extinct for 65 million years, she would learn later. Read More
John Muir's Window
January 15, 2013
After tossing for hours last night as I wrestled with things in my head, I opened my eyes, noted it was two in the morning, and glanced out my window. Since I keep the blind levered to allow me unimpeded views outside, I could clearly make out the black lateral branch of our large walnut snaking across gray-black sky, and the branches of the oak behind it. Through the branches shone two large stars (planets, probably) and a myriad of other stars. I felt better, seeing these reminders of the grand spectacle of which I’m merely a very small part. And I thought of the windows in John Muir’s bedroom, which I had stood before three days ago. Read More
Snow Caves and Crampons
January 7, 2013
Yesterday we passed into the Small Cold interval in the traditional Chinese solar calendar, which with the succeeding Great Cold interval comprise the five weeks in the heart of winter. Here in the Sacramento Valley of northern California, it’s easy to maintain the habit of being outdoors that the Taoists of China and our own John Muir so heartily recommend—we rarely deal with snow or sleet. But if you’re in Maine or a similar place, or live at 8,000 feet anywhere, the outdoor life throws you some challenges in the winter. Embrace them. Read More