Delirious Ramblings

Oak Soup

Oak Soup, Coconino National Forest, May 2012

 

There is something strangely liberating about finding water in the woods, something that appeals to the inner rugged individualist in us all, something far older than camelbaks and nalgene bottles. I've been actively seeking these places out for a while now, poking around the geology, looking into shady slot canyons, and places where rainwater might accumulate and persist in punchbowl tinajas for longer than a few days. I've found a few, I guess, and I guard the knowledge jealously. Most are on the topographic maps - the quality ones made in the old days anyway - and marked with blah blah spring or something something tank, but some are not, and those are by far the most precious of all.

 

Oak Soup, Coconino National Forest, May 2012

 

Despite being the high country, there isn't much of it around here, the water I mean. At least not the kind of surface water where anyone besides a tree can get to it. It's there of course, it always has been, but it's uncertain and tough to tease out, especially now that the dry season is advancing. But if you pay attention to the clues you'll sometimes be rewarded with an ephemeral seep and a few liters of black, water-strider and mosquito infested liquid pooled up in the back of a rockface or deep in some marshy hollow.

If you're lucky enough to find it it's best to simply put an X on your topo map, jot the location and date in your journal (you do have one of those, right?) or mark a waypoint in your gps for future reference. This is emergency water, bug-out water, the sort you drink only if you've run dry and have no other choice. And even then, you take only what you absolutely need. Why? Simple: the wildlife needs this water far more than you do. The deer and the birds don't have access to endlessly free-flowing taps, don't have a couple liters of water waiting under the seat of the truck back at the trailhead. For them that stinky black water is the difference between life and death. Better to leave it to them if you can.

I suppose I needn't tell you about the dangers of drinking front and back country water. Filter it with a quality water filter, boil it, or treat it with harsh, nasty tasting chemicals. Or maybe do all three depending on how paranoid you feel. I hear we've become soft, hardly fit to reside in these places, and a dose of the wee beasties that our ancestors would've shrugged off a couple centuries ago tend to have their way with us now.

 

Oak Soup, Coconino National Forest, May 2012

And the clues I spoke of?

Ah, yes. The clues.

It's simple, really: the birds will tell you the secret knowledge of water, the butterflies, the deer, the large green trees, the geology itself. Learn to listen to what they say, follow in their footsteps, and they'll lead you right to it.

The View from a Quiet Place

The View from a Quiet Place, Kachina Peaks Wilderness, May 2012

When I reached the top of the great mountain an ancient bristlecone pine waited there. We stood together in silence, the tree and I, feeling the warmth of the sun, the coolness of the air. Confused by the stillness I asked it what year it was. It could only stare back, unable to comprehend the question. The great circle of time had been revolving very slowly around that quiet place since the birth of the mountain, each day mostly the same as the previous, each year, decade, and century much like the one before. I wondered, did the trees there even know that the Ice had gone, perhaps never to return?

The Annular Eclipse of Ponderosa

Annular Eclipse of Ponderosa, Coconino National Forest, May 2012

Today was the annular solar eclipse. I didn't have a set of those fancy eclipse glasses, smoked glass filter, welder's mask, or even a piece of cardboard and paper to make a pinhole viewer. Instead I made do with what I had at hand: Mount Elden, a ponderosa pine tree, and some gambel oak. The ponderosa proved to be a little too opaque to view the eclipse properly. Oh well, I was an hour and a half early for the show and saw bupkis. The oaks thought it was a very fine afternoon, though.

I was descending the Mount Elden lookout trail when a guy with an empty plastic water bottle came up to me and asked if I could spare any drinking water. It was a hot afternoon and he was looking pretty dry so I gave him some of mine. Of course no good deed can be allowed to go unpunished:  I ran out myself a little while later and had to dry-hike another hour back to the trailhead and my truck. 

The Bradshaws Come to Town

Gladiator Fire Smoke over NAU Campus, Flagstaff AZ, May 2012

Morning Bracken

Bracken Ferns, Coconino National Forest, May 2012

I was poking around the woods south of Flagstaff this morning and caught a community of early season Western Bracken ferns glowing in the sunlight. Bracken ferns are one of my favorite forest plants and I always enjoy being in their presense. Well... except for when you have to walk through a stand of them after a rain or when they are covered with dew, that is.

Bracken ferns are a little like aspen, with large underground rootstock networks and many interconnected fronds. And like aspen their root networks can persist for hundreds or thousands of years, making them true Methuselahs. Bracken ferns are also poisonous to livestock and other ungulates, which is why they can grow mostly unmolested year after year.

Walking Code

Navajo Code Talker, Northern Arizona University Campus, May 2012

A simple shot of the R.C. Gorman Navajo Code Talker bronze sculpture on north NAU campus.

Lunch Among the Bristlecones

Bristlecone Pine Snag, Kachina Peaks Wilderness, December 2011

Back in mid-December of 2011 I climbed up to the west summit of Fremont Peak to visit with the Rocky Mountain Bristlecones. It was a beautiful day, I was just beginning to feel strong on the snowshoes again, and it felt great to be up there in the wilderness. I ate my sandwich among the ancient trees and listened to the raucous calls of Clarks Nutcrackers down in the Inner Basin. Later, as I turned to leave I snapped the above photograph. It turned out to be one of the better ones of my 2011-2012 snowshoeing season. The craggy old tree seems to be pointing to something off the left side of the frame, perhaps something that has been gone for a half dozen centuries, something only it remembers.

While I was up there I noticed that someone had worked over one of the dead bristlecones with a saw of some kind. It had a slice of wood cut from its trunk and a couple limbs showed clear evidence of cutting. There have been several dendrochronology studies done over the years using the bristlecones on the Peaks so it was probably an old research site. At least I hope it was a research site... It would be a damned shame for someone to damage one of those old methuselahs for something as short term as firewood or pure maliciousness.

In more recent news, I picked up a new camera the other day courtesy of the IRS: a Canon PowerShot G12. It's another point-n-shoot, although it does have a larger form factor than my current camera. I agonized over making the jump to a DSLR, but as much as I would like one I just couldn't justify the expense and added weight of those big cameras.  I don't have a camera case for the G12 yet so I haven't taken it on any walks in the woods (I won't make that particular mistake again.) In my limited testing the G12 seems to take much sharper pictures than the SX210 IS that's been driving me nuts lately, so I think the G12 was a good purchase. Once I learn more about the G12's personality I'll start hiking with it and I guess we'll see how it does.

The Wind Transformed

The Wind Transformed, Flagstaff, AZ, March 2012

They put up a wind turbine next to one of the buildings on campus a while back. One windy day I was walking through the area and noticed that the turbine was making the most fascinating and eerie wailing sound as the blades spun up and down in response to the gusts. I'm sure the kids driving past on campus thought I was some kind of a nut standing there with my ear pressed against the turbine's metal support tower. I decided that the next time the wind was blowing hard on a weekend morning I'd go back and try to record some audio of that wailing sound.

About three days later another strong storm passed to the north and I returned to the wind turbine with my digital audio recorder. I figured campus security would confront me about the strange little electronic device I was attaching to their fancy turbine, but no one said a thing (which was kind of disappointing).

Anyway, here are three minutes of what the wind sounds like when it's filtered and transformed through a fifty foot metal tower and a spinning electrical generator (3:20, 3.3MB mp3): 

The Wind Transformed - Wind Turbine #1

And here is what it sounded like when the turbine abruptly cut off for some reason about ten minutes later. The wind had been really blowing so I suspect that some safety mechanism kicked in to prevent the generator from spinning its little innards out. Maybe it overheated or something. (1 minute, 1MB mp3) 

The Wind Transformed - Wind Turbine #2

 Kinda freaky sounding, huh? 

One time last May I went up on Mt. Elden during a hellish windstorm and pressed my ear against one of the burned snags left over from the 1977 Radio Fire. The old tree extended up into the screaming jetstream overhead like a giant sonar array and for a second I thought I could hear the sound of waves breaking on some lonely beach all the way down in the Gulf of California. I rushed home and started drafting up a blog post about the experience but the words just wouldn't come together. Maybe one of these days I'll dust off that post and try again...

Bear Jaw

Bear Jaw Canyon, Kachina Peaks Wilderness, April 2012

I continued my wilderness exploration project over the weekend with an eight mile bushwhack up into the northeast quadrant of the Kachina Peaks Wilderness. It was a warm day and leaving the snowshoes, heavy winter boots and most of the cold weather gear at home was a welcome change. It felt kind of strange to be traveling so light and so fast again after months of creeping along on snowshoes.

The above picture is from a ridge looking south up at Bear Jaw canyon, one of the three large canyons on the north side of the San Francisco Peaks. Rees Peak is the rounded mountain on the left and Aubineau is on the right with the snowfields. Humphreys Peak, the tallest point on San Francisco Mountain (and in Arizona) is just out of frame to right of the snag. The Bear Jaw trail - which is how most people tour this part of the mountain - descends Rees from the waterline road about mid-mountain and then drops into Bear Jaw canyon before heading west towards the trailhead a couple miles away.

 

Elk or Deer Skeleton, Kachina Peaks Wilderness, April 2012

At one point during my hike I came upon the sun-bleached partial remains of a deer or elk lying hidden in the rocks and last year's grass. I looked around the area for the rest of the skeleton but found only a few scattered leg bones and a scapula or two. The head was notably absent.

My search of the immediate vicinity also turned up:

• Two discarded water bottles like you'd purchase at a convenience store.
• A faded Tropicana orange juice container with a couple of fingers of juice lingering at the bottom.
• An empty container of Skoal chewing tobacco.

After hunters field dress (actually, I think it's called "boning out") their kill this is often all that remains. I haven't found many of these sites during my explorations into the KPW. I have my own theories and opinions on why that is, but I guess I will keep them to myself.

 

Looking North, Kachina Peaks Wilderness, April 2012

The above shot shows the view looking roughly north from just short of where I was forced to stop climbing due to the snow getting too deep for regular hiking boots. I'm pretty sure this clearing is where the 1995 Bear Jaw Fire stopped its westward advance around the mountain. I shudder to think what the north side of the Peaks would look like had it continued. Judging by the plethora of young pines, firs, and aspen coming up throughout the area it seems to be recovering nicely. If the Schultz Fire burn area comes back even half as well I think old San Francisco Mountain will do just fine.

 

Bear Jaw Fire Recovery, Kachina Peaks Wilderness, April 2012

On the way back to my truck I was working my way slowly through the thick conifer and aspen forest above the old burn when I began to get a very strong feeling that something was following me. My father, who spent many years working outdoors for the Forest Service, once told me that you should pay attention to those odd feelings when you're in the woods. I stopped several times to listen and scan the forest behind me. Once I even doubled-back to see if I could see what it was, but there was nothing. Just a very creepy feeling that something was back there. After a while the feeling went away and I moved on.

There may be a smallish city only a dozen or so miles away and zillions of forest visitors each year from the mega-city down south, but this mountain can still be very wild when she wants to be.

Planetary Conjunction

Jupiter/Venus/Moon Conjunction, Coconino National Forest, March 2012

Here's a shot of the celestial spheres tripping the light fantastic back on March 24th, taken from the forest north of the San Francisco Peaks. Venus is the bright star on top with Jupiter directly below it. The crescent moon is off to the lower right with the bright limb pointing downward towards the sun below the horizon. This is a neat arrangement and (at least for me) looking at it helps drive home the fact that we're all just tiny specks joyriding around the universe on a big old planet, spinning 'round and gyrating madly back and forth across the ecliptic while other planets do the same all around us.

Fly me to the moon
Let me play among the stars
Let me see what spring is like
On Jupiter and Mars.

Yeah, you can hear Ol' Blue Eyes singing that, right?

Anyway, it's a little known fact that the night sky is 54% more interesting when you observe it from the backcountry. It's been clinically proven that a strong dose of wilderness stargazing induces philosophical thoughts and tendencies in nine of ten study subjects. It's true. When you look up at those luminous points  from some vantage point surrounded by dark trees and unseen wild critters your head just naturally fills with all kinds of deep ponderings. You know: Are we alone? Is there anyone up there looking back? What the hell were you thinking when you put that pouch of Mountain House beef stew in your backpack?