White Sands

“Solitude is fine

but you need someone

to tell that solitude is fine.”

Honoré de Balzac

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After spending a few days in White Sands National Monument in New Mexico I needed to share this picture with you. What a fine place to experience solitude…

Or detonate the first atomic bomb, or drop training missiles…

The approaching storm certainly looked threatening, however no significant precipitation resulted from this warm front. It’s a desert in the end. 10 inches of rain may fall in a year. The mountains in the distance even receive a couple inches of snow.

The dunes of White Sands are mostly composed of gypsum, a white hydrous mineral, very different from other sand dunes of the West. The dunes are white as snow, and have a strange wet feel to it. The sand is deposited by wind from a nearby Lake Lucero.

The Park Service allows camping and hiking in this amazing playground.

Where did you find solitude?

Shine Your Light…

Mammoth Hot Springs, Yellowstone National Park

“Shine your light
and make a positive impact on the world;
there is nothing so honorable as
helping improve the lives of others.”

Roy T. Bennett

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I wish at the end of my days somebody tells me, I had a positive impact on the world. There are many ways to help out others in need. What will you do to make the world a better place?

Black Friday 2018, not a dime spent…

Your Country

“Here is your country. Do not let selfish men or greedy interests skin your country of its beauty, its riches or its romance.”

Theodore Roosevelt

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I wish I could find contemporary quotes that seem worthy printing.

What will people say about us in hundred years?

Brooks Range: Horizons

“I am the lover of uncontained and immortal beauty. In the wilderness, I find something more dear and connate than in streets or villages. In the tranquil landscape, and especially in the distant line of the horizon, man beholds somewhat as beautiful as his own nature.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Summer 2018 seems to go into the record books as a relatively cool and wet one, quite in contrast to the rest of the nation. Nevertheless, there were clear, warm, breezy, and calm days sprinkled into the mix. The constantly changing weather patterns made for great photo opportunities, I think. Rainy days were used for sorting through my images, making pastry, doing laundry, roughly in that order.

On my blueberry and mushroom expeditions, I ended frequently on ridge tops, which offered the best views of the immensity of the Brooks Range, short of being in a bush plane. Haven’t seen a single paraglider, although these hills are just calling for it. Gentle slopes in all directions, no powerlines, no fences… Once in a while a golden eagle or a pair of ravens are cruising along the ridge lines, showing me where the upwinds are. The same hills should make for amazing backcountry skiing, sans the cold… Maybe I will come back in March or April, when the winter temperatures may be bearable, and come to think of it, when there is also sufficient daylight for this activity. At night, I could watch the northern lights.

Endicott Mountains, Brooks Range, Alaska

The oldtimers say September brings cooler, clear days. We shall see. The North Slope has already been blanketed several times with a couple inches of snow.

Wildness

…the most distinctive, and perhaps the most impressive, characteristic of American scenery is its wildness.”

Thomas Cole

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That’s what Thomas Cole wrote in an essay in 1836. Having spent his youth in England, he had an appreciation for the vast landscapes of the West. What would he say today?

Almost unbearable

A Kirlian cloud.

There is no such thing as a Kirlian cloud, but in the days of alternative facts…

Seriously, out of the blue, after a long dark winter there  is more light than darkness. Almost too much. Gone are the days, when it was easy to catch a sunrise, or there was plenty of night time to watch the Northern lights. More light than darkness. Now comes the time of filling the tank. No more frantic reading, excessive cooking and baking. Winter is over. Well, there is still snow coming down, ice on the road, strong winds, but I can feel it, that sun light. It’s going to put an end to another winter.

Aren’t you glad?

Escape from Lucania

Kluane Icefield, Yukon

In 1937, Mount Lucania was the highest unclimbed peak in North America (17,150 ft). The mountain had seen only one attempt, that required a 100 plus mile approach with pack horses, crossing rivers and glaciers, uncharted terrain.  The leader of that failed expedition deemed the mountain “impregnable.” Nevertheless, he brought back photographs, which only motivated Brad Washburn to attempt he mountain, although in a different style.

Washburn had found three other young climbers. It was his idea to approach the mountain from Valdez, with the help of a bold bush pilot. That expedition turned into one of the greatest epics of mountaineering in Alaska. When Bates and Washburn landed on the Walsh Glacier the landing gear of the plane got stuck in the slushy surface of the glacier. Only after several heroic efforts, which involved ditching all non-essential gear, was the pilot able to take off, and there was no question, he would not come back with the other two climbers or pickup Washburn and Bates.

What would they do? Attempt the mountain, or find the quickest way back to civilization, which was at least 100 miles away?

David Roberts meet with Washburn and Bates, when they were in their nineties and wrote a pretty gripping tale about their adventure, which has everything from 3 left boots and only one right one, to grizzlies, and most of all a close friendship between two young men in dire straits.

They say there is no more terra incognita on this planet. Everything has been mapped. That may be true. But there are still forbidden places on Earth that have seen few or no human foot prints. The Saint Elias range is one of those places: vast, cold, and almost inaccessible. Today, you can take scenic flights across the Kluane Icefield and see endless glaciers and mountains, assuming the weather is cooperating, which is not all that often. Sometimes the glaciers feed raging rivers, sometimes they calf right into the Gulf of Alaska. That was the place, where Washburn and Bates found themselves after being stranded on the Walsh Glacier.
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Island Living

Although I am not living on an island, it sometimes feels like it.

Unless I make the three mile trek to town I hear no human voices. The only footprints around the house are from feathered or furry friends. I don’t mind the isolation, or should I call it insulation? Insulation protects from outside perils.

Without the moon nights have been pitch black. It is a joy to see the sun rise in the morning. Some days there is fog drifting down from the mountains, slowly burning off, giving way to a breath-taking scenery. Those moments make up for the long, dark nights and gray, rainy days.

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“The isolation spins its mysterious cocoon,
focusing the mind on one place, one time, one rhythm

– the turning of the light.

The island knows no other human voices, no other footprints.”

M. L. Stedman

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I have not read Stedman’s “The Light Between Oceans”, which is apparently a novel about a couple living in a remote lighthouse.

”There is something that appeals to the human psyche about lighthouses because of their isolation. Their presence offers up a marvelous set of dichotomies the human imagination likes to explore – darkness and light, safety and danger, stasis and movement, isolation and communication”, she says.

I have read Bob Kull’s “Solitude: Seeking Wisdom in Extremes”, which is a diary about living alone for one year on a remote island off the Patagonian coast. He took his doctoral dissertation very seriously. At age 55, he  traveled to Chile with enough supplies to study the effects of deep wilderness solitude on a human being, himself.

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“We experience the earth as a stranger we know we should protect for pragmatic or ethical reasons, but until we individually transform our consciousness and come to experience non-human beings as family and the earth as our home, we are unlikely to relax our demands for comfort and security and make the changes necessary for our survival, joy, and sense of belonging.

Bob Kull

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His dissertation is available online. It’s an easy and interesting read. You can also learn how much stuff you need to bring to survive for one year on an uninhabited island off Patagonia.

First Snow in the Valley

“I wonder if the snow loves the trees and fields, that it kisses them so gently? And then it covers them up snug, you know, with a white quilt; and perhaps it says, “Go to sleep, darlings, till the summer comes again.”

Lewis Carroll

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The absence of colors during this first brush with winter is striking. Just a few days ago we had azure skies, golden leaves, and a green lawn.

This morning we woke up to gently falling snow flakes and a gray sky. It seems early. Will it stick? Or is this just a spell of winter weather?

What kind of winter will we have? I wish for tons of snow early, no wind, and then the bog freeze. That makes for good skiing and low avalanche danger. It also makes for lots of snow shoveling, difficult driving and numb fingertips. Exactly!

October follies

“The highest form of bliss
is living with a certain degree of folly.”

Desiderius Erasmus

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October has just been amazing. Clear skies, bountiful of sunshine, freezing night temperatures, fall foliage… Almost not enough time to catch your breath.

I know winter is coming. We are loosing 7 minutes of daylight every day. 13 F was the lowest temperature reading so far. Nevertheless, when the sun is out it just feels much warmer.

If I could, I would stop time right now. But I can’t. So I go with the flow and appreciate what I have.