For any of you interested in learning about the modern movement to reconnect children with nature, check out this lecture!
Child Advocacy expert Richard Louv, who wrote for the Union Tribune and tours widely promoting getting children connected to nature will be speaking Tuesday, Feb. 24 at Point Loma Nazarene University at 7:00 pm.
Louv wrote the book, Last Child in the Woods: Saving our Children from Nature Deficit Disorder, and it has spurred a National Dialogue among educators, health professionals, parents, developers and conservationists.
In the book, Louv describes the staggering divide between children and the outdoors, and he directly links the lack of nature in the lives of today’s wired generation—he calls it nature-deficit—to some of the most disturbing childhood trends, such as the rises in obesity, attention disorders, and depression.
Tickets are $5 and may be purchased online or by phone before Friday, February 13: 619-849-2297 or at http://www.pointloma.edu/LJML/LJML_Events.htm. Otherwise $10 at the door.
Louv is also Chairman of the Children and Nature Network (http://www.childrenandnature.org/)
I've been checking out the Children and Nature Network (C&NN) website and it's a great source for articles that promote getting kids Outside. And the C&NN doesn't just push ideas and philosophies, their articles provide documented evidence supporting the positive impact Nature has on Children as well as society as a whole.
Here are links to two of my favorite articles on the site, they're topics that I believe are the most relevant to the generation of kids growing up today in good ole sprawling San Diego:
How Children Lost the Right to Roam in Four Generations
The Powerful Link Between Conserving Land and Preserving Health
This is a link to the C&NN Google Maps Application where you can search for Grassroots Programs and Events involving Children and Nature near you.
Richard Louv's Blog: Field Notes from the Future-The Human Relationship with Nature
Saturday, February 7, 2009
Friday, February 6, 2009
Soon to be Medical MacGiver in the Backcountry
I'm taking a Wilderness Medicine class 2 nights a week to become certified as a Wilderness First Responder. So far I've been lucky enough to've gotten by without anything serious happening to me or my kids or my brothers during any of our outings. I was never a Boy Scout, instead of preparedness I've always relied on resourcefulness and luck, and its made life fun. But I've decided I'd like to pursue more jobs as a guide, and in October I plan on applying to the local volunteer Search and Rescue team, its time I learn how to take care of things proper
Couple things that Wildernes Medicine makes me think about...
There are different ways that people experience the Wilderness. Some people have that Thoreau-like relationship where they feel mostly just an awe and splendor at witnessing and participating with Nature. That purely positive and tremendously healing side of the wilderness. Here, Nature is all-encompassing, a grandness, and it is impersonal.
Then there are others, sometimes they are newcomers, who revere and are in awe of Nature, but who stand separate from it. Here Nature is a Giant, separate contender, and not always a good sport. People go outside and they do more than ask to just look at Nature, they try to climb all over it, try to live for a while in places where Death is the landlord. And sometimes Nature, or a Mountain, says "Get off of me. Youre not supposed to be here. Now I'm gong to kill you." and now its man fighting against nature, we've gone out looking for a good fight. To win, to survive, we use all the tools and clothes we've invented and all the strategies and methods we've developed, and we see if we can't manage to hold our own against the whole of Nature who wants us dead. It is always an interesting fight.
It makes me think of Asklepios, the son of Apollo who from birth was a constant affront to Death. Snatched last minute out of his dead mother's belly while roasting in the middle of a raging funeral pyre, he managed to survive an entire childhood alone in the wilderness. Then he studied medicine and was a great healer until he gained enough knowledge to pull off his greatest insult towards Death, bringing the dead back to life. Death sees itself as the unquestionable big winner in the game of life, and here's Asklepios, reversing the decision after the final bell has rung, stealing the victory prize and calling some arbritray do-over. And with what authority? Was it hubris or was it righteous, the idea that man has some sort of "right" to pull himself or any other out of certain death? The question wasn't left hanging very long, Zeus demanded that mortals must follow their own destiny and decidedly fried Asklepios with a thunderbolt.
So here we are, daring through places Nature tells us we can't go, using everthing we have to stop the Mountains from shaking us off their shoulders, to stop the wind and the ice from freezing us, to stop the sun from boiling us. And heaven has made itself clear: It is not on our side. Is it righteousness or is it hubris for man to take up this fight for his survival when he is first of all an intruder? If it is hubris then, is it hubris to ever fight against death? I cannot answer that question yet, until I have spent some time closer to real death and high stakes and remote unforgiving wilderness. But for now I'll be learning everything I can to help make sure me and everyone I know keep making it back home in one piece.
Couple things that Wildernes Medicine makes me think about...
There are different ways that people experience the Wilderness. Some people have that Thoreau-like relationship where they feel mostly just an awe and splendor at witnessing and participating with Nature. That purely positive and tremendously healing side of the wilderness. Here, Nature is all-encompassing, a grandness, and it is impersonal.
Then there are others, sometimes they are newcomers, who revere and are in awe of Nature, but who stand separate from it. Here Nature is a Giant, separate contender, and not always a good sport. People go outside and they do more than ask to just look at Nature, they try to climb all over it, try to live for a while in places where Death is the landlord. And sometimes Nature, or a Mountain, says "Get off of me. Youre not supposed to be here. Now I'm gong to kill you." and now its man fighting against nature, we've gone out looking for a good fight. To win, to survive, we use all the tools and clothes we've invented and all the strategies and methods we've developed, and we see if we can't manage to hold our own against the whole of Nature who wants us dead. It is always an interesting fight.
It makes me think of Asklepios, the son of Apollo who from birth was a constant affront to Death. Snatched last minute out of his dead mother's belly while roasting in the middle of a raging funeral pyre, he managed to survive an entire childhood alone in the wilderness. Then he studied medicine and was a great healer until he gained enough knowledge to pull off his greatest insult towards Death, bringing the dead back to life. Death sees itself as the unquestionable big winner in the game of life, and here's Asklepios, reversing the decision after the final bell has rung, stealing the victory prize and calling some arbritray do-over. And with what authority? Was it hubris or was it righteous, the idea that man has some sort of "right" to pull himself or any other out of certain death? The question wasn't left hanging very long, Zeus demanded that mortals must follow their own destiny and decidedly fried Asklepios with a thunderbolt.
So here we are, daring through places Nature tells us we can't go, using everthing we have to stop the Mountains from shaking us off their shoulders, to stop the wind and the ice from freezing us, to stop the sun from boiling us. And heaven has made itself clear: It is not on our side. Is it righteousness or is it hubris for man to take up this fight for his survival when he is first of all an intruder? If it is hubris then, is it hubris to ever fight against death? I cannot answer that question yet, until I have spent some time closer to real death and high stakes and remote unforgiving wilderness. But for now I'll be learning everything I can to help make sure me and everyone I know keep making it back home in one piece.
Friday, January 30, 2009
Almost Healed
My legs have been jelly since last Saturday after my hike up Villager Peak, and just today I'm barely beginning to feel an inkling of strength. I've been hobbling around like a 90 yr. old all this week and've had to cancel my hiking plans for this weekend. But now that I can tell my injury is almost over I am excited about getting back outside and ending this weirdness of being this put out.
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
The Bat in Alonso's Sheep Afro
Last November I took my 3 brothers Ricky, Andres and Alonso to the Barrett Flume off Highway 94, an aquaduct used to get water through through hills in Dulzura. The flume looks like a waterslide hanging off the edge of the hillside a hundred feet in the air on top of a train trestle. The flume also covered sections of tunnel where you can crawl around and supposedly it’s a herpetologist’s dream because all sorts of snakes fall in all the time and then they can’t get out.
The four of us began our hike by scrambling into one of these tunnels. Immediately it reminded us all of Temple of Doom and we were repeating and laughing "Docta Jones, it feels like I step on fortune cookies" in four different and equally horrible Chinese accents, but the joking ended quick. I had the 3 of them leading the way in the front with a lantern and soon they were moving dead slow through the darkness, stopping, calling back to me and asking over and over "What’s down there, did you see that, how far does this go on?"
The tunnels are around 3 feet tall and covered with cobwebs and shed snake skins, all of us are huge and we barely fit. My brothers were creeped out by all the spiders in their face but they stayed calm enough because they loved the little wild country mice with their funny staring faces and heads as big as their bodies hiding in cracks and watching us giants mosey down their cave. Finally coming out of that first tunnel I show them how short a distance we actually covered and they can’t believe how long it seemed being so afraid and blind in the dark.
We crawl through a couple more tunnels then cross the flume. My brothers feel like their crossing some death rope bridge, they wonder "Will it hold our weight?" and I tell them how my friend Kevin and I climbed down the trestle one time all the way to the bottom and they make me explain to them exactly how, exactly where I put my feet and where I held on and they tried to put together the action movie sequence in their mind.
Coming off the flume we scramble up a small dry waterfall and then a slide full of boulders. We find a bee hive and some dragonflies and we chase a tiny frog the size of a dime and try to catch it but lose him in some cracks. I work on teaching them some counter-balance climbing techniques and simple route finding through the steeper rocks.
On the way back to the car we go through another tunnel and at the very end of it we see a small brown bat hanging upside down from the low cieling of the tunnel. We wont get out without crawling on all fours and scraping by the bat within an inch of our faces. So we try yelling at him and throwing things next to him trying to scare him off without hurting him. My brothers ask "What do we do?" and I leave it up to them, I tell them I'll do whatever they want to do and I reassure them that first off the bat probably wont bite and even if he does, and if, if he has rabies, then we can still get to the hospital with plenty of time and the only thing that will suck is the needle in the stomach. I assure them that there is no risk of them being seriously hurt, only of having to go through a bunch of pain and time at the hospital.
Alonso takes the lead and makes me so proud he says "We've come this far, its only a bat, lets just go for it, lets go!" So we count to 3 and I plow the way in the front and we all give our war yells, "No turning back!" and we come out of the tunnel still yelling and looking for the bat, its in the middle of us doing loops and then he flies back to the safety of his tunnel. Alonso is still yelling and swatting himself after everybody is done and he explains how the bat had got caught in the hair of his sheep afro. "Did you see that?! I was all like AH, and then it was all like eeeeeeeeee, and the I came out and....OHMYGAWD!"
It was a good adventure, we got to dance with a bat, and we came out rabies-less....win-WIN-win.
The four of us began our hike by scrambling into one of these tunnels. Immediately it reminded us all of Temple of Doom and we were repeating and laughing "Docta Jones, it feels like I step on fortune cookies" in four different and equally horrible Chinese accents, but the joking ended quick. I had the 3 of them leading the way in the front with a lantern and soon they were moving dead slow through the darkness, stopping, calling back to me and asking over and over "What’s down there, did you see that, how far does this go on?"
The tunnels are around 3 feet tall and covered with cobwebs and shed snake skins, all of us are huge and we barely fit. My brothers were creeped out by all the spiders in their face but they stayed calm enough because they loved the little wild country mice with their funny staring faces and heads as big as their bodies hiding in cracks and watching us giants mosey down their cave. Finally coming out of that first tunnel I show them how short a distance we actually covered and they can’t believe how long it seemed being so afraid and blind in the dark.
We crawl through a couple more tunnels then cross the flume. My brothers feel like their crossing some death rope bridge, they wonder "Will it hold our weight?" and I tell them how my friend Kevin and I climbed down the trestle one time all the way to the bottom and they make me explain to them exactly how, exactly where I put my feet and where I held on and they tried to put together the action movie sequence in their mind.
Coming off the flume we scramble up a small dry waterfall and then a slide full of boulders. We find a bee hive and some dragonflies and we chase a tiny frog the size of a dime and try to catch it but lose him in some cracks. I work on teaching them some counter-balance climbing techniques and simple route finding through the steeper rocks.
On the way back to the car we go through another tunnel and at the very end of it we see a small brown bat hanging upside down from the low cieling of the tunnel. We wont get out without crawling on all fours and scraping by the bat within an inch of our faces. So we try yelling at him and throwing things next to him trying to scare him off without hurting him. My brothers ask "What do we do?" and I leave it up to them, I tell them I'll do whatever they want to do and I reassure them that first off the bat probably wont bite and even if he does, and if, if he has rabies, then we can still get to the hospital with plenty of time and the only thing that will suck is the needle in the stomach. I assure them that there is no risk of them being seriously hurt, only of having to go through a bunch of pain and time at the hospital.
Alonso takes the lead and makes me so proud he says "We've come this far, its only a bat, lets just go for it, lets go!" So we count to 3 and I plow the way in the front and we all give our war yells, "No turning back!" and we come out of the tunnel still yelling and looking for the bat, its in the middle of us doing loops and then he flies back to the safety of his tunnel. Alonso is still yelling and swatting himself after everybody is done and he explains how the bat had got caught in the hair of his sheep afro. "Did you see that?! I was all like AH, and then it was all like eeeeeeeeee, and the I came out and....OHMYGAWD!"
It was a good adventure, we got to dance with a bat, and we came out rabies-less....win-WIN-win.
Saturday, January 24, 2009
Villager Peak (5755 ft.)
Late again, wasn't out of the car and on my way until 11.
I picked up a hitchiker 2 blocks from my house on the bridge before the 5 freeway entrance. He was lanky and dressed in levis from head to toe, his face was clean but dark and worn, and he told me his name was Rafferty and he said he was headed to Tucson, Arizona and he couldn't tell me what for but he gave me the rest of his life story. He used to work on every sort of plane, he was a riveter, but he could work on engines too, and somewhere along the line the Government put a chip in his brain that enabled him to speak every language in the world. He doesn't know why they did that to him, and he said he didn't remember performing any missions but it could be that they were erased. So somewhere along the line, his chip is damaged and now when he speaks in different languages they all come out at the same time and he'll talk for example in "Eskimo-Hungarian-Lebanese" or "Chilean-Japanese" and what he saying will make sense but other people ust dont know those dialects. "So you can see the difficulty I have in communicating with ordinary people who don't have the chip." I drove him as far as the Golden Acorn Casino then turned back around to get on the 79. Rafferty I hope you find your Big Rock Candy Mountain in Tucson! Where dreams go to die!
Villager Peak came into view as I drove down the S-3 into Borrego Springs. Speeding towards it, it seemed to shrink away into the distance the closer and closer I got, it seemed to runaway from me, and I became so anxious and aware of the time I was losing that I'd catch myself staring at the peak and yelling at it to stop running away, instead of looking at the road. Finally I hit S-22 and was headed towards the trailhead where I would retrace a failed 12 mile route from before (I had underestimated the climb and run out of water in august 109 degrees, I turned back only a mile before the summit). Instead, I remembered what I'd read about some Italian climber who'd said something like "Let a drop of water fall from the summit, that is the line I will climb." and I decided to climb in style instead. I did a u-turn on the highway and turned onto a dirt road and drove straight towards the face of the peak, past some trailer camping sites,to the edge of a dry lake bed. A sign said no unauthorized vehicles were permitted to drive on the lake bed so I parked my car and began my hike from there.
I ran across the entire dry lake bed, anxious to get started on my way UP, I couldn't stand wasting any more time moving on flat ground anymore. Dust devils danced and dissolved around the bleached lake bed, egging me on. I still had more than a mile of mazing of washes and rock slides to get through before I'd be on my way UP.
An hour after leaving the car I came to the base of the peak and found what I thought was the steepest route of ridges and started up in what was now a race against time because although this time I'd brought along 2 flashlights, I'd realized that I still had no way to find my way back to the car at night, there being no markers around the lake bed. I came up with the idea that I could use lights on highway as sort of moving fixed stars like a sailor. I took note of the distant reflection that was my car, its position to the highway and to the start of my climb, then tried to formulate a triangle to remember and follow on my way back. I hoped it would be enough to get me near enough to my car in the dark to locate it with the car alarm on my keys.
Sprinting up the ridge I was constantly checking to see how much further I had left to go, trying to calculate if I would make it to the summit and back down in time to find the car. After a while I decided I should just dedicate myself to reaching the peak no matter how late it got, I took my watch off and stuffed it in my pocket and kept up my burning pace. I ditched the helmet I'd brought and my extra jug of water to shed some weight.
The peak kept up to its old tricks, moving further and further away, this time as I approached on foot. As always, what looks like an easy jaunt up a nothing hill turns out to be a death march up a mounatin that felt like it was growing bigger and bigger underneath me. I weaved up boulders and thornbush on a 60 degree incline, occasionally sparking a rock slide but nothing ever serious. I never stopped to eat or rest for more than 2 minutes, eating and drinking on the run. Heat and solitude played the same 20 seconds of a song on repeat over and over in my head all the way up and I couldn't wait to wash them out of my head with something new once I got back to the car radio. During moments of lucidity I took a look around me and smiled at where I was, tromping up a very beautiful very inconvenient piece of the Earth, where only mountain lions and bighorn sheep bother to walk. It refilled my heart with enough gasoline to blast up a dozen Villager Peaks.
During last 1000 feet before the summit an old toothache kicked in with the altitude and colder air (below 5000 ft and above 8 or 9000 ft my tooth is fine, weird), blind with pain and out of breath I finally hit the summit. I stayed just long enough to carve my name in the register with a pen that didn't work, and I took only one picture with the camera on timer and hoped that I would come out in it. I had a glance at a sliver of the Salton Sea on the other side of the peak but couldn't make myself care enough to spend 5 extra minutes hiking to a good viewpoint, by now my toothache didn't even let me walk straight. My tooth blowing up trains inside my head, and my small hope for making it back down the mountain before dark, I just needed to get back down as fast as I could.
In my rush down I made my descent following a different set of ridges, and several times I ended up slipping into some loose rock slides and had to backtrack onto one of the main ridges. I never found my helmet or extra water so I began saving my drink for when it would be dark. I also started a lot more serious rock slides on my way down, after every one I would sober up and concentrate on better steps. Better to make it down late and in one piece than battered and dashed on a bunch of boulders and cactuses. I came to terms with having to suffer a much slower and laborous descent in the dark and dedicated myself to slower smarter footwork. It did get dark before I was off the peak, but my salvation I suddenly saw a half dozen campfires starting up around an oasis at the edge of the dry lake bed. I headed staright for it.
Making my way back over the washes, my first flashlight died after half an hour and I was still only a third of the way down the rocks. I recalled getting stuck lost at night with my friends Will and Kevin outside of Alpine two years ago and us finding our way back using a cell phone and holding it to the ground for miles, for 4 hours, following some old tracks in the dark. Covering this much ground covered in boulders and no trail, using my cell phone to find my steps, I wouldn't make it to the car anytime before the middle of the night.
Bless my preparedness for once, the extra flashlight. While I continued heading towards the set of campfires, three times I clearly saw pairs of green eyes in the bush. I always forget what color lions have and I hoped that they were only the coyotes I'd heard earlier. Just to be safe I barked and yelled threats to whatever mountain lions there might've been and gripped my axe ready to swing it at a missile of fangs that I kept imagining leaping at me out of the darkness.
And now the campfires were running away form me too. I had walked for what felt like another hour but the fires were still just as small as when I'd first seen them. They refused to get any bigger and offer me any comfort. Then suddenly I could hear voices in the close distance and gasps and headlights turned to look at me. Turns out the fires had been tiki torches all along, setup by a desert touring company who had a wine and cheese dinner going on for a dozen people under the stars. They had a fancy little camp setup, and they offered me a glass of Pinot Noir and some melted camembert and I promptly accepted, but then something in me told me I had to finish before I could start relaxing, and I wouldn't be finished until I was driving away in my car. I told them I had to go. I thanked them over and over for just having been there and explained how lost I would've been otherwise, I thanked them 2 more times, and I was on my way.
My plan was to follow the tour company's truck tracks back to the trail where I'd left my car. Halfway across the lake my second flashlight began to die. I began running. I used up everything left in me real quick and then decided I'd keep the light off and turn it on every 100 steps or so to make sure I was still on trail. When I turned the light off it was another piece of luck, the lake bed was so white that even under only starlight the wheel tracks that had dried months ago in the mud stood out of like a great black snake against the white. I made the rest of the way back in the dark, worried for a second that somewhere along the way I might follow the wrong set of tracks and end up on some empty side of the lake but I convinced myself I could head towards the moving lights of the highway and I'd be fine. I sang loud underneath the million desert stars, an entire repetoire, until eventually the reflectors on my car shone back from my flashlight and I made a beeline for the nearest gas station to get a celebratory Coke in me and then home, to ice my legs for the next 10 years.
I picked up a hitchiker 2 blocks from my house on the bridge before the 5 freeway entrance. He was lanky and dressed in levis from head to toe, his face was clean but dark and worn, and he told me his name was Rafferty and he said he was headed to Tucson, Arizona and he couldn't tell me what for but he gave me the rest of his life story. He used to work on every sort of plane, he was a riveter, but he could work on engines too, and somewhere along the line the Government put a chip in his brain that enabled him to speak every language in the world. He doesn't know why they did that to him, and he said he didn't remember performing any missions but it could be that they were erased. So somewhere along the line, his chip is damaged and now when he speaks in different languages they all come out at the same time and he'll talk for example in "Eskimo-Hungarian-Lebanese" or "Chilean-Japanese" and what he saying will make sense but other people ust dont know those dialects. "So you can see the difficulty I have in communicating with ordinary people who don't have the chip." I drove him as far as the Golden Acorn Casino then turned back around to get on the 79. Rafferty I hope you find your Big Rock Candy Mountain in Tucson! Where dreams go to die!
Villager Peak came into view as I drove down the S-3 into Borrego Springs. Speeding towards it, it seemed to shrink away into the distance the closer and closer I got, it seemed to runaway from me, and I became so anxious and aware of the time I was losing that I'd catch myself staring at the peak and yelling at it to stop running away, instead of looking at the road. Finally I hit S-22 and was headed towards the trailhead where I would retrace a failed 12 mile route from before (I had underestimated the climb and run out of water in august 109 degrees, I turned back only a mile before the summit). Instead, I remembered what I'd read about some Italian climber who'd said something like "Let a drop of water fall from the summit, that is the line I will climb." and I decided to climb in style instead. I did a u-turn on the highway and turned onto a dirt road and drove straight towards the face of the peak, past some trailer camping sites,to the edge of a dry lake bed. A sign said no unauthorized vehicles were permitted to drive on the lake bed so I parked my car and began my hike from there.
I ran across the entire dry lake bed, anxious to get started on my way UP, I couldn't stand wasting any more time moving on flat ground anymore. Dust devils danced and dissolved around the bleached lake bed, egging me on. I still had more than a mile of mazing of washes and rock slides to get through before I'd be on my way UP.
An hour after leaving the car I came to the base of the peak and found what I thought was the steepest route of ridges and started up in what was now a race against time because although this time I'd brought along 2 flashlights, I'd realized that I still had no way to find my way back to the car at night, there being no markers around the lake bed. I came up with the idea that I could use lights on highway as sort of moving fixed stars like a sailor. I took note of the distant reflection that was my car, its position to the highway and to the start of my climb, then tried to formulate a triangle to remember and follow on my way back. I hoped it would be enough to get me near enough to my car in the dark to locate it with the car alarm on my keys.
Sprinting up the ridge I was constantly checking to see how much further I had left to go, trying to calculate if I would make it to the summit and back down in time to find the car. After a while I decided I should just dedicate myself to reaching the peak no matter how late it got, I took my watch off and stuffed it in my pocket and kept up my burning pace. I ditched the helmet I'd brought and my extra jug of water to shed some weight.
The peak kept up to its old tricks, moving further and further away, this time as I approached on foot. As always, what looks like an easy jaunt up a nothing hill turns out to be a death march up a mounatin that felt like it was growing bigger and bigger underneath me. I weaved up boulders and thornbush on a 60 degree incline, occasionally sparking a rock slide but nothing ever serious. I never stopped to eat or rest for more than 2 minutes, eating and drinking on the run. Heat and solitude played the same 20 seconds of a song on repeat over and over in my head all the way up and I couldn't wait to wash them out of my head with something new once I got back to the car radio. During moments of lucidity I took a look around me and smiled at where I was, tromping up a very beautiful very inconvenient piece of the Earth, where only mountain lions and bighorn sheep bother to walk. It refilled my heart with enough gasoline to blast up a dozen Villager Peaks.
During last 1000 feet before the summit an old toothache kicked in with the altitude and colder air (below 5000 ft and above 8 or 9000 ft my tooth is fine, weird), blind with pain and out of breath I finally hit the summit. I stayed just long enough to carve my name in the register with a pen that didn't work, and I took only one picture with the camera on timer and hoped that I would come out in it. I had a glance at a sliver of the Salton Sea on the other side of the peak but couldn't make myself care enough to spend 5 extra minutes hiking to a good viewpoint, by now my toothache didn't even let me walk straight. My tooth blowing up trains inside my head, and my small hope for making it back down the mountain before dark, I just needed to get back down as fast as I could.
In my rush down I made my descent following a different set of ridges, and several times I ended up slipping into some loose rock slides and had to backtrack onto one of the main ridges. I never found my helmet or extra water so I began saving my drink for when it would be dark. I also started a lot more serious rock slides on my way down, after every one I would sober up and concentrate on better steps. Better to make it down late and in one piece than battered and dashed on a bunch of boulders and cactuses. I came to terms with having to suffer a much slower and laborous descent in the dark and dedicated myself to slower smarter footwork. It did get dark before I was off the peak, but my salvation I suddenly saw a half dozen campfires starting up around an oasis at the edge of the dry lake bed. I headed staright for it.
Making my way back over the washes, my first flashlight died after half an hour and I was still only a third of the way down the rocks. I recalled getting stuck lost at night with my friends Will and Kevin outside of Alpine two years ago and us finding our way back using a cell phone and holding it to the ground for miles, for 4 hours, following some old tracks in the dark. Covering this much ground covered in boulders and no trail, using my cell phone to find my steps, I wouldn't make it to the car anytime before the middle of the night.
Bless my preparedness for once, the extra flashlight. While I continued heading towards the set of campfires, three times I clearly saw pairs of green eyes in the bush. I always forget what color lions have and I hoped that they were only the coyotes I'd heard earlier. Just to be safe I barked and yelled threats to whatever mountain lions there might've been and gripped my axe ready to swing it at a missile of fangs that I kept imagining leaping at me out of the darkness.
And now the campfires were running away form me too. I had walked for what felt like another hour but the fires were still just as small as when I'd first seen them. They refused to get any bigger and offer me any comfort. Then suddenly I could hear voices in the close distance and gasps and headlights turned to look at me. Turns out the fires had been tiki torches all along, setup by a desert touring company who had a wine and cheese dinner going on for a dozen people under the stars. They had a fancy little camp setup, and they offered me a glass of Pinot Noir and some melted camembert and I promptly accepted, but then something in me told me I had to finish before I could start relaxing, and I wouldn't be finished until I was driving away in my car. I told them I had to go. I thanked them over and over for just having been there and explained how lost I would've been otherwise, I thanked them 2 more times, and I was on my way.
My plan was to follow the tour company's truck tracks back to the trail where I'd left my car. Halfway across the lake my second flashlight began to die. I began running. I used up everything left in me real quick and then decided I'd keep the light off and turn it on every 100 steps or so to make sure I was still on trail. When I turned the light off it was another piece of luck, the lake bed was so white that even under only starlight the wheel tracks that had dried months ago in the mud stood out of like a great black snake against the white. I made the rest of the way back in the dark, worried for a second that somewhere along the way I might follow the wrong set of tracks and end up on some empty side of the lake but I convinced myself I could head towards the moving lights of the highway and I'd be fine. I sang loud underneath the million desert stars, an entire repetoire, until eventually the reflectors on my car shone back from my flashlight and I made a beeline for the nearest gas station to get a celebratory Coke in me and then home, to ice my legs for the next 10 years.
Saturday, January 17, 2009
No Moon
The kids and I like to go out on hikes at night during the full moon when the blue halfdark is a magic light over the trail and the moon is a glowing bone. This time I decide to take Captain on a night hike without the moon and we go up our usual Cowles Mountain. He starts off on the trail loud singing gibberish and yelling as usual but suddenly he goes quiet and he wont speak aloud. He gets this look on his face, scared and wonderous, not terrorized, but hyperalert and curious, open to danger. Away enough from the parking lot lights the darkness becoes bigger than him and his ears pickup every noise that comes out of the bush and he starts to curl into a sort of defensive crouch, he hears a couple of crickets and he freezes in anticipation but I explain to him they're only singing lovesongs to eachother.
I turn on the flashlight for a while and Captain shines it into the bushes, his eyes wideopen as a lemur and I tell him that with the light on the trail looks like Mars. He moves slower with the flashlight. Light feels more penetrating, too revealing, when you're bringing it into a deep darkness. Captain goes on walking like someone walking cautiously out to sea, halting, instead of giving his usual driven steps. Then we hit two of his favorite boulders and scramble up them with familiarity. It makes him a little more comfortable with the dark.
On a short lookout, Captain asks me to pick him up and show him the lights below the mountain and our car. He's fine by now and he starts hopping from one side of the trail to the other, he's running up steep ends and putting some more distance between me and him. He goes strong for the rest of our hike until the last quarter of the climb when he turns zombie and seems to sleepwalk his way over the trail weaving drunkenly over dips and rocks but always forwards and he never once takes a spill. I carry him for a while and whisper in his ear how proud I am of him and that he's the strongest boy on earth. He licks the side of my face and meows like a cat then collapses asleep.
The very last bit before the top I mention out loud that we were almost there and Captain springs awake, he jumps out of my arms and we race to the top and he wins of course.
We step onto a boulder at the summit to look out over the lights and I show him where his house is. Its time for our traditional ceremonial Peter Pan cockcrow but Captain'll only give a soft, wary, "cacaw...", he is still too shy about breaking the giant silence and calling into the darkness, afraid to hear something from the darkness answer him back.
I carry him the rest of the way down like I promised him I would. He wants me to jump over every boulder and I do as many as I can and I hear him his little teeth clack every time and he gives a little grunt of satisfaction and commands "again....again" quieter and quieter each time as he falls bak asleep. He goes in and out of sleep, spilling gibberish and drooling the same way I do in when I sleep and he's out cold all the way home into his bed.
I turn on the flashlight for a while and Captain shines it into the bushes, his eyes wideopen as a lemur and I tell him that with the light on the trail looks like Mars. He moves slower with the flashlight. Light feels more penetrating, too revealing, when you're bringing it into a deep darkness. Captain goes on walking like someone walking cautiously out to sea, halting, instead of giving his usual driven steps. Then we hit two of his favorite boulders and scramble up them with familiarity. It makes him a little more comfortable with the dark.
On a short lookout, Captain asks me to pick him up and show him the lights below the mountain and our car. He's fine by now and he starts hopping from one side of the trail to the other, he's running up steep ends and putting some more distance between me and him. He goes strong for the rest of our hike until the last quarter of the climb when he turns zombie and seems to sleepwalk his way over the trail weaving drunkenly over dips and rocks but always forwards and he never once takes a spill. I carry him for a while and whisper in his ear how proud I am of him and that he's the strongest boy on earth. He licks the side of my face and meows like a cat then collapses asleep.
The very last bit before the top I mention out loud that we were almost there and Captain springs awake, he jumps out of my arms and we race to the top and he wins of course.
We step onto a boulder at the summit to look out over the lights and I show him where his house is. Its time for our traditional ceremonial Peter Pan cockcrow but Captain'll only give a soft, wary, "cacaw...", he is still too shy about breaking the giant silence and calling into the darkness, afraid to hear something from the darkness answer him back.
I carry him the rest of the way down like I promised him I would. He wants me to jump over every boulder and I do as many as I can and I hear him his little teeth clack every time and he gives a little grunt of satisfaction and commands "again....again" quieter and quieter each time as he falls bak asleep. He goes in and out of sleep, spilling gibberish and drooling the same way I do in when I sleep and he's out cold all the way home into his bed.
Thursday, January 15, 2009
Volunteering
The main purpose of me keeping this journal that you enjoy so much is to raise money for Big City Mountaineers, a non-profit that gives at-risk youth life-changing experiences in the wilderness. Here in San Diego, there is another non-profit group called Inner City Outings that works out of the Sierra Club taking different groups of kids on all types of outdoor trips.
I really believe in the impact and importance of giving kids these life-changing experiences that they don't have the chance of having on their own. On top of raising money , I want to be become involved in the same kinds of programs I'm raising money for so tonight I attended my first ICO meeting and have begun the process of becoming a Volunteer Assistant, and eventually after the required training, I will become a Trip Leader. I'll be volunteering on my first trip this February 7th to Mountain Palm Canyon, on a desert hike through palm oasises.
Some of the stories I heard at the volunteer meeting, about kids who've lived their entire lives in San Diego and've never been to the beach going into the ocean for the first time and yelling in surprise, "Its salty!", about kids who started out on a hike too cool to smile or look like they were having a good time and by the end of the trip laughing and interested in everything on the trail and asking "What kind of a job can I do where I ge to be outside all day?", these are the kinds of stories that prove I'm raising money for something that really works, and that motivate me to train and fundraise as hard as I can.
I really believe in the impact and importance of giving kids these life-changing experiences that they don't have the chance of having on their own. On top of raising money , I want to be become involved in the same kinds of programs I'm raising money for so tonight I attended my first ICO meeting and have begun the process of becoming a Volunteer Assistant, and eventually after the required training, I will become a Trip Leader. I'll be volunteering on my first trip this February 7th to Mountain Palm Canyon, on a desert hike through palm oasises.
Some of the stories I heard at the volunteer meeting, about kids who've lived their entire lives in San Diego and've never been to the beach going into the ocean for the first time and yelling in surprise, "Its salty!", about kids who started out on a hike too cool to smile or look like they were having a good time and by the end of the trip laughing and interested in everything on the trail and asking "What kind of a job can I do where I ge to be outside all day?", these are the kinds of stories that prove I'm raising money for something that really works, and that motivate me to train and fundraise as hard as I can.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
