"Go ahead...feed the animals. We could give a shit."

Here's a video of a waterfall I took in Sequoia in June 2010. Maybe it was Yosemite. I can't recall. You've seen one waterfall - you've seen them all, right?

You've heard, I'm sure, about the three church members from the Mar Gewargis parish, part of the Assyrian Church of the East, who were swept over the falls in Yosemite this past Tuesday. Yep, signs posted...big metal railing barrier. But no...apparently these Middle Easterners couldn't read. I'm guessing, right? I mean, why would they cross over to that little island for a candid?

Now click here to see the Vernal Falls in Yosemite where these three yokels fell over the side. Toward the end you'll see the island that Moe, Larry and Curly just had to get to for that picture.

Wonder how those pictures turned out?

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Cali's a great place to visit...Nature Interlude! Stream in Sequoia.

Take one minute out of your day to relax and listen. It's one minute.

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Happy 40th Birthday, Earth Day!

And thank you, Senator Gaylord Nelsen (D-WI)...the principle founder of Earth Day.

A sequoia seedling, purchased on a trip to the Sequoia National Forest in June 2008 with my brother.

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TGIF! presents...Lee Stetson as John Muir!

My brother and I caught one of the episodes of Ken Burns' The National Parks last night on PBS - this one focused on the relationship between President Teddy Roosevelt and naturalist/preservationist John Muir. Muir's letters, essays, and books recounting his adventures, particularly in California's Sierra Nevada mountains, are well-read. His activism helped to save the Yosemite Valley, Sequoia National Park and other wilderness areas. The Sierra Club, which he founded, is now one of the most important conservation organizations in the United States.

Lee Stetson (above) is one of the most renowned Muir impersonators (are there others?), touring the country reciting Muir's words and continuing Muir's legacy. And Stetson figured prominently in this episode of The National Parks. Though Muir was a Scottish-born American, many people don't realize that his parents were homesteaders in Portage, Wisconsin upon their arrival in the U.S. from Scotland in 1849. Muir even attended the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

While watching, Jas and I were immediately taken back to our visit to Sequoia National Park & Forest in June 2008. As I've stated many times, if you haven't seen the redwoods and sequoias first-hand, pictures do no just. And the euphoria one gets from standing under a 2,000-year-old living thing is just - well, it takes your breath away. Check out Ken Burn' The National Parks' site here.

President Theodore Roosevelt and John Muir shared a common philosophy when it came to nature. Through their friendship, TR worked to preserve more than 170 million acres, mostly in the West, in the forms of national parks and monuments.

This summer, if you haven't already, you should try and get out and visit one the 58 national parks in the U.S. They belong to you. They're part of this country's legacy.

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I just thought it should be there.

The flower I snapped in the Sequoia National Park in June. I just thought it should be right here, on this blog, in this post - now. That's it.

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Fire, Pot and the Sequoia National Park in the news.

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“California is no ordinary state; it is an anomaly, a freak.”

So stated Carey McWilliams, the prolific mid-twentieth-century American author.

While perusing Francis Ford Coppola's site, Zoetrope: All Story, a quarterly magazine devoted to the best new short fiction and one-act plays (I'm thinking of submitting a one-act), I chanced upon John King's article, "The Lure of California: An Introduction" in a back issue and found it particularly pertinent to my life - as I've been struggling to figure out what exactly is my place here.

I've been in California 10 years this past April and have likened Los Angeles to a snow globe. Pick it up and place it in Antarctica and nothing would change. It is not representative of this state. Head south to the beach communities of Huntington, Laguna or Newport; head north to Santa Barbara and the Santa Inez wine country and Big Sur and Monterey, or east to the Sequoia National Forest. When I describe California to people, these are the places I mention - not LA.

If you'd like to read King's article, click on READ MORE! It's interesting.

(WAIT! There's more...)

California defies generalization not just because of its wondrous geographic variety, but because so much of its lure exists in our minds. The Golden State is tarnished and it glows triumphant and no two views are the same: the landscape yields mountains and tule-fogged marshes, pristine coastlines and ravaged hillsides. Earthquake faults hide waiting. There are spiked urban towers that want to be Chicago, and bits of Humboldt County still happy with 1967.

For each pair of eyes that sees what was lost, another takes in the glory that remains. That’s what beckons writers to try and pin down the place on paper—and why writers most often fail. The obvious touchstones are visual—Lake Tahoe, Coit Tower, the Hollywood sign—but how does one define and portray a place that continually reinvents itself, where the possibility of reinvention is perhaps the strongest magnet of all?

Carey McWilliams, the prolific mid-twentieth-century American author who headed east in 1950 to edit The Nation but considered himself a Californian to the end, wrote the most perceptive book about the Pacific Coast domain. In his 1949 study, California: The Great Exception, he argued: “The culture of California has two striking characteristics: the willingness of the people to abandon the old ways, and . . . the inventiveness, the quickness with which something new is devised.” McWilliams was neither the first nor the last writer to marvel at the strange effect California has on the people it attracts, but he may still be the best at describing the state’s constant rush toward change, its boom after boom, each one convincing the inhabitants of a particular era that they live in a time of unique peril and promise.

“California is no ordinary state; it is an anomaly, a freak,” he wrote a century after the first of many subsequent Gold Rushes and before Jack Kerouac or Charles Manson or the state’s robust new governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger. “In California you learn to wait for the next explosion and, when it comes, you run as far and as fast as you can and then dig in until the next explosion splits the air.”

These explosions are a mixed blessing, of course; they leave scars on the psyche and on the terrain, from mountains hollowed out in search of gold to the fertile farmland now buried beneath tract homes. When you see the transformation and remember what existed before, the pain is visceral—as if California is slipping away, lost finally beyond redemption.

And if that sense of rootless slipping is true of the physical terrain, it’s even more true of the culture, which has morphed through the decades in ways that baffled longtime inhabitants (longtime in California being defined as long enough to see changes you dislike). Imagine the trauma for good Iowans transplanted to Los Angeles, earnestly recreating their settled Midwest, when hedonistic Hollywood (de)flowered in the 1920s. California has been on the frontier of cultural and social trends ever since, which is great if you’re the explorer but traumatizing if the new trends clash with your existing values.

What John Steinbeck wrote of droughts in his Salinas Valley applies just as well to the state’s mood swings between a belief that this is the Promised Land and a conviction that the promise is broken once and for all: “it never failed that during the dry years the people forgot about the rich years, and during the wet years they lost all memory of the dry years. It was always that way.”

Always was and still is. In the 1960s, that now-hallowed age of wonder, the double whammy of growth and social disruption led to publications with such names as Cry California and The Destruction of California. Thirty years later, people inculcated with ’60s values looked at the frenzied reverberations of the dot-com boom and saw their own version of the end times. This was true of the Bay Area in particular. “San Francisco has been for most of its 150-year existence both a refuge and an anomaly. Soon it will be neither,” Rebecca Solnit intoned solemnly in 2000’s Hollow City. She warned that “bohemia may well go away altogether” and that “all of San Francisco is being delivered vacant to the brave new technology economy, and altruism and idealism are two of the tenants facing homelessness.”

Fast forward to the present: in November 47 percent of San Francisco’s voters wanted Green Party member Matt Gonzalez to be mayor, suggesting that at least a few bohos and idealists remain. Yet the same San Franciscans who embrace progressive politics vote to ban panhandling; statewide, meanwhile, in the past decade voters have tried to crack down on illegal immigrants and rein in university affirmative action policies, but they also gave their blessing to marijuana use with a doctor’s consent. As for Arnold Schwarzenegger’s election, it is nothing so much as confirmation of the cherished California belief that things would be great—again—if they would just get out of the way. Whoever they are.

All of which is fertile ground for writers, and the soil gets richer with each new element added to what is perhaps the most multicultural society the world has ever seen. But what doesn’t change is the motivation of the migrants. They are drawn not simply by wealth or a good job but because they are seduced—seduced by their own dreams. They imagine this place, their California, will give them a chance to have it all as they define all. “Who can be surprised that the world came to California and still wants to come here?” Richard Rodriguez asked in 1991. “Restless lives are the point of life here . . . the newcomer’s gift to California has always been the audacity of optimism and the assurance that one can forget the past.” Every newcomer who puts down roots keeps that restless spirit alive—and extends it into the future.

Wallace Stegner put it a different way twenty-five years before. “Bigots, we’ve got ’em. Rebellious and intransigent students, we’ve got ’em. Communists, fascists, Birchites, American Nazis, religious cranks, crooks, drunks, junkies, we’ve got ’em . . . California is a place where you find whatever you came looking for, and right next to it that which you most hoped to avoid.”

California’s ultimate lure. Here, anything is possible—except the assurance that other people are like you. Or that you, or anyone else, truly know what might loom next.

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Flower power.

It's a 60's weekend, baby. The Zombies...tonite at The Canyon Club in Agora Hills. Very exciting. Amy's Daffodil, taken in the Sequoia National Forest.

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The Journey IS the Destination #10: Sequoia!

"In every walk with nature one receives far more than he seeks."
- John Muir, 1877

John Muir, founder of the Sierra Club, was one of the first modern preservationists, whose direct activism helped to save the Yosemite Valley and other wilderness areas. His writings and philosophy strongly influenced the formation of the modern environmental movement.

After a wonderful evening at the Exeter Best Western, Jas and I headed into the Sequoia National Park. We knew headed in that this was going to be an amazing leg of our trip. Happily, we were not disappointed. Come with us...and check out what turned out to be one of the most amazing sights we've ever seen.

(Wait! There's more Sequoias...)

Take a look at the map above - near the bottom is where we entered the park and way up at the top you'll see our approximate "finish" point. All told we spent 10 hours in the park, roughly 40 miles inside. No backpacking or hiking - we'd park the car and take pictures, walk around some smaller trails, check out the visitor centers (there's three in all) and eat.

First spring I ever drank out of. That's Jas.

Wikipedia states: Sequoia National Park is a national park in the southern Sierra Nevada. It was established in 1890 as the second U.S. national park, after Yellowstone National Park. The park spans 404,051 acres and contains the highest point in the contiguous 48 United States, Mount Whitney, at 14,505. The park is south of Kings Canyon National Park; the two are administered by the National Park Service as one unit, called Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks.

Our first encounter with the gigantic Sequoia.

Huge bastards, aren't they? We've all seen the pictures. We've seen 20 lumberjacks from 1908 standing shoulder-to-shoulder against a Sequoia and thought, "that's big" - and then forgot about it. You have to see these monsters to appreciate them. Trust me.

Course, Jas took pictures of me and I took pictures of him so here we both are in front of one of the trees.

20 elephants high. The Lodgepole Visitor Center and Village has a great museum that tells you everything you need to know about the park, redwoods, sequoias, history, etc. There's a gift shop, restaurant, campground, picnic areas and general store for camping supplies.

John R. White, the first park super. It's due to his passion and efforts that this park exists today. Lodgepole used to be a thriving mini-city up until 1996 and then the park got wise that the hustle and bustle of a "city" amongst the Sequoia was slowly killing them. The amusement park feel was abandoned and what replaced it, I think, is appropriate.

I forgot John Muir's family had first settled in Wisconsin after emigrating from Scotland. My brother and I and many, many members of our family - both sides - and our friends have such a fondness for nature. We hunt and fish and take vacations "Up North" and wonder at the silence on a lake at night or at the sound of a loon off in the distance. The stars - so many more stars are found "in nature". The smell of pine. The deer or fox or beaver in its natural habitat. It's all quite overwhelming. It's our Church in the woods.

General Sherman, one of the tallest Giant Sequoia trees in the world with a height of about 275 feet and the largest tree in terms of volume, making it the world's largest known single organism by volume.

It's max diameter is 39.5 feet. Stand against a wall and walk 13 passes. Add a half a foot and turn around....that's huge. The tree is believed to be between 2,300 and 2,700 years old.

In the north of Grant Grove stands the General Grant, named after Ulysses S. Grant in 1867, Union Army general and the 18th President of the United States (1869-1877). It is 268 ft. high, with a maximum diameter of 40 ft. - 2nd largest of all Giant Sequoias, the largest within the Grant Grove and third largest tree in the world (by volume).

President Calvin Coolidge proclaimed it the "Nation's Christmas Tree" in 1926. In 1956, President Dwight D. Eisenhower declared the tree a "National Shrine", a memorial to those who died in war...and the only living object to be so declared. Once thought to be well over 2,000 years old, recent estimates point to a much younger age closer to 1,650 years.

Within the Grant Grove is this tree. Read the story below.

‘One day I was full of life. My sap was rich and I was strong. From seed to tree I grew so tall. Through wind and rain I could not fall. But now my branches suffer and my leaves don’t offer poetry to men of song...Oh, Lord I lay me down. No life’s left to be found. There’s nothing left for me.’*

*Brian Wilson and Jack Rieley, from “A Day in The Life Of A Tree”, [1971], Brother Publishing Co., (BMI)/Wixen Music Publishing, Inc.

The Brian Wilson lyric above is appropriate for this area. We felt like we were in a cemetary. Converse Basin is a sequoia grove located in Kings Canyon National Park in the Sierra Nevada in eastern California. It includes the Boole tree, the sixth largest tree in the world. Purchased by Charles Porter Converse in 1868, the basin contained the largest grove of sequoia trees, but most were logged between 1892 and 1918. Now only perhaps 60 large specimens survive out of thousands. If you can read the diagram below, you'll be able to get a feel what the lumber operation was like which stood on this spot over one hundred years ago.

Initially, a 54-mile flume was built to transport wood from the mountain mills to the drying yards and box factory in Sanger, an engineering feat completed in just over a year. For several years, millions of board feet of lumber — cedars, firs and pines, as well as redwoods — went down the flume, but the venture never showed a profit. Giant sequoia wood is soft and brittle and it becomes more so as the tree ages. The sheer size and weight of the trees often caused them to shatter as they fell upon the forest floor - leaving a dead, useless tree. Some trees were brought down with the help of blasting powder, which also destroyed a good portion of the tree. Hundreds of men worked the logging operations and traces of their presence can still be seen. The original mill site can easily be located from the remaining logs and skidways that fed into the mill. Logging was a dangerous occupation and accidents and deaths were common. Wooden coffins carrying the dead were sent down the flume to be buried in the Sanger Cemetery. The living also rode the flume. It was used as both a mode of transportation and as an early day amusement ride. The steep grade provided many with the thrill of a lifetime. A railroad was eventually built. It helped transport logs, but increased expenses.

By 1896, the company was in dire straits. A new Converse Basin mill was built, but the company continued to falter. It was sold to the Hume-Bennett Lumber Company in late 1905. The new owners made improvements and reached full production in 1910, but soon discovered that logging sequoias was not profitable. In 1935, Hume sold the mountain property to the U.S. Forest Service for an average price of $14.93 per acre.

Just before Jas stepped into this tree, he yelled out, "Stop. Don't move." We're hunters and "stop" means stop and shut up. He saw this deer coming up the hill to the right of the tree and snapped off this picture. She saw us and continued meandering around the back of the tree and back down the hill.

Luckily we had our bow and arrows with us and let off a couple when her back was turned. Mmmm. Nothing like Sequoia mulie. Whoo! I'm kidding. We missed her.

The park - and all that was in it - left Jason and I quite breathless. So much so that we were reluctant to return to civilization.

Seen enough Sequoia for a lifetime? If you were with us, you might disagree. One more shot? Goodbye Sequoia National Park. You were everything we'd thought you'd be and more. Jas and I are already talking about a trip back to do some hardcore backpacking and tent camping.

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El Capitan State Park near Santa Barbara

A guy I work with stayed in this park last weekend with his wife and baby boy. It's about 10 minutes north of Santa Barbara. Not in the tent shelters but the cabins. I like the tents below. I think I wanna try this. Brother Jason is coming in for Solstice in June. Might hit the Sequoia National Park as well.

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