Yes, I know the middle sun is larger
Had I named this blog “Annual Tramp,” I would still not have met the time frame of the title. But that was then, and this is now.
Let me begin the resuscitation with an event that was on all our minds last summer, the total solar eclipse. A good friend approached me about joining him on a road trip to a hidden canyon in northern Nevada. The canyon is just below the path of the total eclipse, so it was natural to shape our itinerary to include it. Years ago, dear friends who travel the world to view total solar eclipses emphatically told me that before I leave this earth, I must be sure to see one. I never forgot.
Our route north took us through Alturas where we snagged Highway 395. A couple miles before the Oregon border, we stopped at Stringer’s Orchard Distillery and bought some “craft” gin that would fuel the evenings ahead. By the time we got to John Day, eclipse hubbub was all around. The town buzzed and every ball field and vacant lot was partitioned with stakes and police tape into crisp rows of campsites. My companion, an avid maphead, had identified a specific remote location north of John Day, but when we got there, other eclipse viewers had beaten us to the punch. A bit farther north, several miles up a Forest Service road, we claimed a hilltop site with a sweeping view. Perfect.
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On much of our trip, the sky was murky with fire smoke, but eclipse morning dawned crystalline. Having done some eclipse photography homework, we set up our equipment, then sat and waited. Every source I consulted about photographing an eclipse finished with the same advice: don’t let your photography distract you from the magic of the event. And that is a danger. While the eclipse would last for about four hours, totality would be just over two minutes.
As the remaining slice of sun thinned toward totality, the air chilled. Sunsets have edges – shafts of light here, shadows there – but this was an eerie uniform dusk that evenly dimmed the hundreds of square miles we could see. Going, going, gone. People on our hilltop gasped and called out, and I felt a stirring I checked with a deep swallow and several rapid blinks. Overhead, an astounding jewel radiated needles of pure white light alone in the near total darkness.
Not even the seven-mile long string of cars waiting to get through the lone stop sign in Long Creek could tarnish the day. The friends who advised me to be sure to see a total solar eclipse were right.
A recent day adventure took me back to a special place I hadn’t visited since 2005. Back then, I went there at the insistence of a friend who said the wildflower display there was over the top. This photo confirms his assessment. Once I saw it, I became an evangelist luring anyone who would listen to come see if the scene lived up to my wild claims. No one was disappointed.
It is the Big Sur coastline that puts the Santa Lucia Range on the marquee, but I find most trails on the coast side a bit too confining. I feel as though I am walking between skyscrapers in San Francisco’s Financial District; walled in with a narrow sliver of sky overhead. Hidden on the other side of the Santa Lucias is a wide valley that nearly shames the Garden of Eden.
Like much of the Coast Range, the Santa Lucia’s are steeply corrugated and very rough. But this green valley parted the mountains with a wide twelve-mile long expanse dotted with valley oaks. Every spot was an ideal movie location some idyllic country picnic.
Wherever we chose to roll out our bags, each of us was enchanted with Miter Basin. The rim of the basin is surrounded by 13,000′ peaks, and each recess above holds a mountain lake with its own unique charm. Beautiful fall reds colored a ground-hugging mosaic of alpine flora. Daybreak songs of a coyote choir echoed up and down the granite walls, adding to the mystery and magic.
Our relationship with nature, even when we intentionally seek it, is usually superficial. Unless the scope is wide and the scenery grand, we tend to tune out. We demand grandeur. If we are not perched on the rim of the Grand Canyon or standing beneath the immense monolith of El Capitan, we often don’t take notice. It’s a pity, for we miss so much.
But when I open up to it, photography allows me to witness the extraordinary in places I might otherwise dismiss as ordinary. The nature of beauty I find in “ordinary” places is not vast and grand, but baby grand. The wide angle lens generally stays in the bag and is replaced by a normal or telephoto lens. Morsels of stunning beauty are often at my feet, but it doesn’t come easily to me. I have to leave the house determined to look – really look, and then see. The irony in all this is that the photographs I enjoy most are those intimate portraits of a ho-hum subject, that when abstracted from a cluttered landscape, is simply lovely.
In one of Galen Rowell’s many books about the outdoors and nature photography, I read a surprising and interesting fact about something we can see every day.
I recently wrote a post about adventure; the notion that the urge for it is a greater motivator than we recognize. I suggested that 49ers came to California as much for the adventure as for the prospect of striking it rich. As evidence, I offered the testimony of many who went to a later gold rush: the Klondike in 1898-9. As with the California Gold Rush, virtually everyone returned empty-handed, but most who were interviewed by author Pierre Berton looked back on that time with fondness and satisfaction.
We often buttress our case to do something new and exciting with “reasons,” but more and more, I think the real reason we want to do it is because it is new and exciting; aka an adventure.
I’m not supposed to say that. It’s not PC. “Digger” is a condescending term that was used by early Eurpoean settlers to characterize some of the Native Americans in the Great Basin and in California who dug in the soil for roots and bulbs. One of our native pines inhereted that moniker as its common name, but the modern day arbiters of politeness say no, it must be changed. So, the digger pine has become the gray pine, or the ghost pine, or the foothill pine. I like digger pine. It is a good reminder of just how mean and insensitive we can be.
Whether we know it or not, each of us is on a spiritual journey. It’s just part of the job that comes with the gift of human life. Many people pursue spiritual growth with conscious gusto, seeking out the gurus and the masters for guidance along the path. While I admire anyone’s pursuit of greater spiritual knowledge, I am a little put off by the fact that it has become a thriving commercial industry.
If you have trouble summoning amazement for everyday things, I recommend lying down beneath the stars on a moonless mountain evening. Consider that all those points of light above you are your nearest neighbors in your home galaxy, one of the billions of galaxies in the universe. We measure the distance those nearest of stars in light years. The universe is unimaginably immense. Isn’t amazing that we are even here?
I am never quite sure what the exact recipe is for a great spring wildflower display. While I enjoy botanizing in California’s Coast Range and in the Sierra, I know just enough to be dangerous. I’m likely to concoct some groundless theory and assert it as fact. But based on the significant rainfall we have had thus far, I wonder if this spring could be a memorable one.
Naturally, rain is a must, but there have been many so-so spring blooms after a wet winter; other factors certainly play a part. It makes sense that during the recent drought years viable wildflower seeds have not received enough water to sprout. Perhaps through the sparse blooms of recent springs that seeds have been accumulating waiting for a winter like we are having now. With an average amount of rainfall during the rest of the California winter, maybe we will see a spring bloom like 1997.
Do you buy it? I may be way off base, but it sounds good.