Musings

I’m proud to say JCB and I walked a piece of the Pacific Crest Trail, up above 6K feet even!

I admit we got not quite a mile away from Timberline Lodge (or the Wikipedia link), but for flat-landers from the Deep South, slogging through soft snow in sneakies was hard walking, as in soft sand!

Fortunately the rotten snow (maybe fresh last week?) wasn’t very deep, and my feet stayed dry. (Gore-tex in the shoes may have helped, too!)

I’m composing this sitting in front of the huge plate glass windows in the second floor bar looking up at the mountain. Life is darned good.

Posted at 8:51 PM | Comments Off on Tree/Snow line

This evening, I really can’t think of anything finer than watching a campfire through the bubbles in a glass of prosecco with the best of friends.

Today was simply perfect. We hiked upstream along the west bank of the Deschutes, with glittering views of fall color, glimpses of the kayakers, great places to watch and listen to the tumbling river, tasty daypack snacks, lots of companionable silences and some fine conversation. I could have posted any one of over a hundred shots of the river, the flume, the leaves, or a bird or two, and what I came back to as iconic for today were the glistening bubbles.

Many thanks to today’s companions….

Posted at 10:22 PM | Comments Off on Lively bubbles

Today’s wander included an early morning stroll through the last day of one of those street fairs that bring out folks of all types to stop by booths with attractive displays of food, clothing, knickknacks, and the like. In fact, we arrived so early that most people were still setting up. This pizza vendor had the oven going, perhaps for a bit of extra warmth, and someone we did not see left a mink(?) purse on the counter….

The following has no connection to the fine day we had, which also included a great blue heron, several deer, Canada geese, mallards, wonderful views of old lava flows, an extended trip to REI (sale for another week), and the Deschutes itself.

Just had to note this from James Lee Burke’s Crusader’s Cross (2005, p. 87):

• Question: What can dumb and fearful people always be counted on to do?
• Answer: To try to control and manipulate everyone in their environment.
• Question: What is the tactic used by these same dumb people as they try to control others?
• Answer: They lie.

…the thoughts of a worldly police officer (character)….

Posted at 10:22 PM | Comments Off on Wandering Bend

We saw snow today at Santiam Pass, although the cloud cover’s precipitation was rotting it away.

Yes, Grasshopper, Dorothy’s not in Kansas (alternately, me/Georgia) anymore.

Posted at 10:22 PM | 1 Comment »

Backlighting can be your friend!

Posted at 10:22 PM | Comments Off on iPhone photography

Seems like our future, maybe the future of life “as we know it” on this planet, is wrapped up in water. Gotta have water.

Gotta have air, too, but it seems that we can survive long enough to reproduce when we live with polluted air. For example, consider smokers, who deliberately inhale highly polluted air (although other airborne contaminants are more dangerous than the typical modern US ciggy), and modern urban China. No lack of reproductive success with either of those populations.

Food, well, yup, that’s a necessity. But we get our food primarily from agribusiness. And agriculture is without a doubt dependent on water, so our food sources depend on water. too.

By water, I don’t mean simply potable water, or rainfall, or even groundwater. But the big, capital W water: that is, water from anywhere.

If I decided to go into the legal profession, I’d specialize in legal issues associated with water. It ties into human rights, civil rights, group vs individual rights, ownership, distribution control, the whole shebang.

I’m thinking, in fact, that the folks who are specialists in other resources (petroleum products, scarce metals and minerals) are already working to corner markets and build in legal loopholes to give Them advantages in the economics of water. I also figure that The Angler and his ilk have been getting laws changed to help those folks, and that we’ll only find that out sometime in the mist-free future….

At first glance, I was mystified today when I examined our water/sewer bill and discovered we pay over twice as much for sewage (based on how much water we consume, so the volumes are—assumed to be—the same) than for water. But then I figured, I suppose it costs more to make sure sewage doesn’t contaminate, tada!, water, than it does simply to deliver clean water to my house.

Next topic to ponder: how better to use graywater (more on this in the southwest than these parts: examples from Arizona and New Mexico), a practice promoted in a leaflet included with our water/sewer bill. Someone who goes to the trouble of toting their shower water out to plants was lauded. We use our dish water on outdoor plants, but the shower water goes down the drain (for now). As I understood it (maybe this is now incorrect: note to self, check on this), we couldn’t directly pipe our graywater into the yard, but we can carry it out there. Some people use graywater (sometimes greywater) for flushing, and I guess that may not be a violation.

Rather twisted logic there, no?

So, would the agribusiness water demand drop if we consumed significantly less grain (takes lots of water to grow and process) replacing it with non-starchy vegetables (as diet specialists recommend would improve our health)?—veggies sold only minimally processed?

Posted at 5:30 PM | Comments Off on Water, water…

(Borrowing from jcb) AFLAC auditions at Piedmont Park this morning….

I’m enjoying that the NYTimes has (finally) unlocked their editorial content (and much of their archives). Not that I agree with their various voices, but I think they have good, thoughtful people writing their regular opinion columns, and that makes reading them worthwhile.

David Brooks’s piece from yesterday presents data I had not seen before; I reserve my conclusions for a while, though. What is useful is which sub-demographic represents the group who ends up voting. I’m not sure that we won’t see that we get a load of new voters from a group that tips things in unanticipated ways. Anyway, too bad Brooks resorts to a cheap shot at John Edwards for his final line.

BTW, are Brooks’s “high school educated women in the Midwest” pretty much equivalent to Janet Elder’s Wal-Mart women….

Now that the GM strike is over (pending affirmation by the membership), thoughtfulness is mandatory in any reasonable analysis. I kept thinking as I read/heard coverage of the strike issues that what it all comes down to is that GM has to make vehicles that sell. The most commanding components for most buyers are something that has to do with function/aesthetic and price, probably in either order depending on the buyer, the vehicle, and the particular moment the query is made. So, non-striking GM people need to come up with designs that will sell, and lineworkers need to do their part to allow the price to fit the market. Lest I sound pro-management, those folks should have had a pile of fine anthropologists and economists on their staff for decades giving them feedback on the ways of the world (note that I didn’t add: that they remain too ignorant of). Since GM’s market is global, they can’t think just or even primarily US/North America…for any of it—not just labor, but also design and all the rest.

PS Please don’t confuse musings with rants. Or I hope that’s true!

Posted at 7:15 PM | 2 Comments »

At least once a season, we try to attend a Braves game. I always enjoy the bits that aren’t broadcast, like the maintenance crew smoothing the field, and the chintzy advertising gimmicks, like this modified Mini Cooper with a Delta logo and airplane tail above the bumper (lower left).

Posted at 10:58 PM | Comments Off on Braves win!

Lake Superior greeted us with light breezes and lovely views of the Pictured Rocks meeting the water and sky, as we hiked in what’s called the Chapel–Mosquito area. We squeezed in the hike before the assault of Labor Day visitors, and actually met only a few other hiking parties as we worked our way around the Grand Portal Point area.

I have no recollection of ever taking the tourist boat that leaves from Munising (probably deemed too expensive), but I think the time to do that is late afternoon, to catch the best light on the banded sandstone.

Two turkeys on the roadside down by Star (east of Shingleton) ignored us as we drove by on our way “out”, and a pheasant (the same one I saw several weeks ago?) clucked our return.

It’s a bird’s life.

Posted at 10:22 PM | 1 Comment »

I know that’s an oxymoron, but that’s what we found.

Took a drive north of Laketon (only one house remaining), crossing the Tahquamenon at Danaher (two houses there, but too new to be part of the original town) yesterday afternoon. Encountered few vehicles, but did have to remove brush left by sloppy loggers, perhaps (sigh) as part of a road-widening project from one stretch of the road for our fine low-clearance aerodynamic vehicle (not really a woods critter).

This puddle was the only standing water left in this huge swamp-basin. Like the Sleeper Lake fire area east of here, the dry spell has lowered the water table. Indeed, I understand that the Sleeper Fire is burning below the ground surface more than above ground, and has become, at least in part, what they call a bog fire.

Posted at 10:22 PM | Comments Off on Dry swamp