Raymond Barnett

My buddy Al and I were like teenagers with a new car, though the calendar said we were well into our 70s. It was a sunny September day; two ultra-lightweight kevlar canoes shipped from the Adirondacks of New York were strapped atop my Subaru; and we were zipping up the curves of the deep Feather River Canyon in the Sierra foothills east of Chico. An hour ahead, lakes galore awaited us in the aptly-named Lakes Basin region of the northern Sierra Nevada between Graeagle and Lake Tahoe.

We’d kayaked there last summer, hitting many of the lakes with launch sites accessible by car. But this trip we determined to paddle on Big Bear Lake, a half mile from any road. That meant what in the Adirondacks was called “a carry” of our canoe and gear. Impossible with our 42-pound kayaks from last year. These kevlar vessels today, though, only weighed 12 pounds. But they were 10 feet long, awkward to heft, and the trail was rocky, windy, and choked with tree roots. I’d devised—well, jury-rigged is more descriptive—a carrying rig to mesh me and my canoe on the trail. Would it work?

It’s a strange drive, up the Feather River Canyon. At the start of the drive, coming out of the Central Valley, the rock comprising the canyon walls is granite, beautiful granite much as you see in Yosemite Valley today. But halfway up the canyon, something weird happens. Our beautiful granite disappears, and the canyon walls become a combination of greyish and bluish rocks of entirely different texture, looking very worn and almost “tortured.” What the heck was this all about?  Read More 

“Every excursion that I have made in all my rambling life has been fruitful and delightful, from the smallest indefinite saunter an hour or two in length to the noblest summer’s flight…All the wild world is beautiful, and it matters but little where we go.” –John Muir journal entry, June 1890

Well, I agree with Muir here, of course, but must wonder if Saint John would have added a qualifying comment had he ever gone snorkeling off the coast of Hawaii. For my money, no rambling saunter or excursion ranks higher in the awe and excitement scale than 40 minutes cruising a tropical coastline’s coral reef. Tammy and I recently returned from 10 days exploring the south coast of Maui, immersing ourselves (literally! ) in five different underwater locations, and we still glow with the grandeur of the worlds we explored.

Part of the kick in snorkeling is just how odd and different your new world is. Humans don’t belong underwater; we have to return to the surface to breathe periodically or rig an upward-directed breathing tube on our face (if we’re snorkeling). But stick a mask on and dip below the surface and a breathtakingly beautiful and unexpected world blooms before your eyes. Thousands of creatures are suddenly there, darting and slithering and gliding or sitting in a fantastically-sculpted landscape.

The sheer spectacle is stunning: an entire world that is not apparent from your beach chair  Read More 

Kids certainly complicate—and enliven—your life. Last week Tammy and I found ourselves on the overnight California Zephyr train from Sacramento to Denver. Considered America’s most beautiful train ride, our journey crossed the Sierra Nevada the first day, and the Rockies the second, following the Colorado River 238 miles through gorgeous canyons in Utah and Colorado (Ruby, Gore, Glenwood). After a night in Denver near Union Station, we set out early over the continental divide in our rental car to Steamboat Springs, where we were to meet our daughter Ashlyn near the midpoint of her 3,100-mile backpacking trek along the Continental Divide Trail (CDT) from Mexico to Canada.

She had begun two months earlier at the border in southern New Mexico, hiking with a buddy she’d made two years earlier on the 2,200-mile Appalachian Trail (AT). In the CDT’s first week they found themselves fording the Gila River 200 times one day and nearly as many the next, bulldozing through willow-dominated streamside vegetation that left whipmark gashes on their legs. Several weeks later they hiked through Georgia O’Keeffee’s Ghost Ranch, Read More 

We sloshed through the narrow canyon’s trickle of water, sheer walls rising 40 feet above us on either side. These slot canyons off the Colorado River meander endlessly, but our attention was on the water wetting our Crocs: was it getting warmer? Another curving 25 yards: yes. Distinctly warmer now. Our kayaks and gear were some quarter mile behind us, tied up to bushes along the river’s bank. Another turn, and a solid wall 20 feet tall loomed before us, with a narrow ribbon of—hot!—water snaking down its right side. On the left side: a rickety metal ladder slapped against the wall. I looked at Al: would we trust it? Pondering this, we heard noises from above, beyond the wall. I stepped gingerly onto the first rung, my mind made up. There was clearly a party going on up there!

Getting here had been a tale of almost as many twists and turns as this canyon. Back in January, Al asked if I wanted to join him in a “Geology of the Mojave Desert” course, to be held at a field station smack in the middle of that southern California desert. In February, yet (it’s a high desert, quite cold in the winter).

Desert rocks don’t fascinate me as they do Al, but I’d come along for the ride. A jaunt in Al’s new Yaris (mileage equal to a hybrid) 400 miles south to L.A., then another couple of hundred miles due east to the Mojave. While Al was rock-sleuthing, I’d camp and explore nearby Afton Canyon, Read More 

Plotting our first trip out of town in our Chevy Bolt EV (electric vehicle)—and back—was approached like a military campaign. The route to oldest daughter Heather (and our precious grandkids) was as always: over to Hwy 5, south to below Williams, Hwy 505 southeast to Vacaville, then Hwy 80 into San Francisco over the Bay Bridge. A distance of 175 miles or so.

We had charged up the Bolt on the sunny afternoon before we left: somewhere between 200 and 238 miles of sunbeams hummed in the battery, depending on a variety of factors: our speed (faster gave us fewer miles), our smoothness (pronounced acceleration and deceleration ate up miles also), and how much juice we devoted to heating (seat warmers were negligible; making the interior cabin toasty decreased our miles). On the other hand, using the “regenerative braking” paddle on the steering column diverted energy of braking back to the battery. Cool.

While we were happy with the deal we got from the dealer (end of the year, 2018s due in soon), they had prepared us not at all for the task of recharging the vehicle on a trip; not a word of advice or a hint of how to proceed. We googled charging stations,  Read More 

“Every excursion that I have made in all my rambling life has been fruitful and delightful, from the smallest indefinite saunter an hour or two in length to the noblest summer’s flight…All the wild world is beautiful, and it matters but little where we go.” –Muir journal entry June 1890
“One day’s exposure to mountains is better than cartloads of books.” –Journal entry late 1872

Recently a couple of outdoor-loving buddies have told me about opportunities they have to contribute to the education of kids about the natural world. My friend George is a child psychologist in Boston, who’s meeting with New England Aquarium folks to chat about how he might contribute to their excellent already-established youth programs. My friend Richard is the caretaker of a swatch of shortgrass prairie in Oklahoma, with a lodge nearing completion on site. What might they contribute, and how? Did I have any ideas for them?

My guiding principle in these questions has recently become to ask myself: “What would John Muir do?” This determination is a result of several decades of outdoor adventuring in conjunction with a close reading of Muir’s reflections on his own (much more impressive) “saunters”. Never have I encountered a person with a clearer vision of reality and a better understanding of what it means to be fully human than John Muir.

Muir was clear on two things, particularly. First, we are children of the universe, particularly our own planet earth, and to know ourselves we have to know our foundations. This means getting out of cities and away from smartphone screens on regular and frequent sojourns in the natural world that is our home. “Every excursion that I have made in all my rambling life has been fruitful and delightful, from the smallest indefinite saunter an hour or two in length to the noblest summer’s flight…All the wild world is beautiful, and it matters but little where we go.”

Second: we get to know our foundation not through reading books about it, but by experiencing the natural world, what he called “the wild world.”  Read More 

November’s first Tuesday was mainly sunny in Northern California. The heart of our solar system showered an abundance of free energy on my roof, which was promptly captured and converted to electricity by the solar panels we put there this spring (see May 9 blog, The Laggard, Part 1). That electrified sunshine passed to my garage and via a charging port straight into our newly-purchased Chevy Bolt EV (Electric vehicle). By late afternoon, we had 238 miles of juice in the car. We’ve been driving on sunbeams for three weeks now.

And the surprising thing is how extremely enjoyable the Bolt is to drive. I never dreamed saving human civilization on the planet would be so fun. It’s been a kick, for several reasons. First: no gas stations. No standing around like sheep while we all pump explosive material (!?!) into our cars. Did I really do that?

Second: EV’s are silent and clean. No more clatter and sputtering as an engine warms up and struggles to move the vehicle. No more engine! No more oil to keep track of and maybe drip under the car. We depress the pedal, and the EV pulls away effortlessly, eagerly, smooth as silk.

Third: Remember those scenes in Star Wars when Hans Solo jumps the Millennium Falcon into hyperspace, leaving the stodgy craft of the Empire far behind? Our Bolt EV can’t do Solo’s “.5 past light speed,” but it does go from zero to 60 mph in 6.5 seconds. Seriously.  Read More 

Though my train trip from California to the east coast and back was full of pleasures (old high school and college friends; the vast American landscape; new acquaintances on the train; a roomful of Monets at Chicago’s Art Institute; a Nats-Giants game in WDC; a plethora of Georgia O’Keeffes at the National Gallery, plus several of Alfred Stieglitz’s (in)famous photos of her), I must admit that among the highlights were my two kayak trips, the first on the Potomac into Chesapeake Bay, the second into the Manchac Swamp west of New Orleans.

I had followed the Potomac River out my train window for several hours and well over a hundred miles upon awakening on the overnighter from Chicago and drawing closer to the nation’s capital. It is a placid river in its youth, flowing amongst densely wooded banks in West Virginia. At Harper’s Ferry the equally scenic Shenandoah joins it, flowing up from Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley on the west side of the Blue Ridge mountains. On a river packed with history, its Harper’s Ferry phase stands out.

Thomas Jefferson sat on a rock outside of town overlooking the Potomac here in October of 1783 on his way to Philadelphia with daughter Patsy. You can sit on “Jefferson’s Rock” these days and it’s still a fine view, tho hardly “perhaps one of the most stupendous scenes in nature” as Jefferson described it.

Several years later George Washington passed through,  Read More 

After a marvelous college-roommate reunion, I boarded Amtrak's Crescent route in Greenville, South Carolina (home of the Swamp Rabbit Trail, which I bicycled along the Reedy River) and headed for New Orleans in a long day of riding the rails. The Crescent here traverses the cradle of two distinctly American phenomena: folk music of gospel, jazz, blues, country; and the Civil Rights Movement, both amply represented in the small and large towns I passed through this day.

Which set me to wondering about the connection between art and tragedy. In town after town, the legacy of slavery and poverty seemed intertwined with epochal musicians. Coincidence? Or the bitter yet beautiful fruits of struggle?

In several stops we were at the curiously nondescript depot of Atlanta, Georgia, hometown of Martin Luther King, Jr., who would challenge the entire nation in his speeches and marches. The nearby village of Villa Rica was the birthplace of Thomas Dorsey, the father of gospel music, whose Take my Hand, Precious Lord was sung at the funerals of both MLK and Lyndon Baines Johnson.

Soon we entered Alabama, the first stop of Anniston being the site where a bus packed with black and white Freedom Riders was firebombed in the summer of 1961. Then came Birmingham,  Read More 

What a quandary presented itself early this summer. I love my biennial reunion of college roommates; we graduated from Yale 50 years ago. But I hate getting from California back to the East Coast, site of our get-togethers. All can agree that airplane travel since 9/11 is no fun: long lines, removing a ridiculous list of clothing articles, more long lines, cramped seats in flying boxes of metal 40,000 feet above the ground (which has never seemed an entirely good idea to me), during which time you face yet more lines if you require a restroom.

And that’s when everything works out. On my return flight two years ago from the reunion, a storm grounded flights out of my Dallas connection, leaving me and several thousand frustrated travelers scrambling to nab overnight hotel rooms and alternate flights the next day (all on our own efforts and own dime, of course, since storms are an “Act of God”). Yikes.

This summer I found a solution to my quandary. A mode of travel that eliminates security clearances and lines anywhere in the process, gives you nothing but spacious and comfortable quarters, and permits you unexcelled viewing of the entire vast, diverse country we are privileged to call home. All at little or no expense above airlines, and but a modest additional investment in time. I took a train. Read More