Outdoors – Stone Fig

The Moon and the Persimmon Tree

This weekend when I walked out into the fields, I found that the persimmon tree was almost bare of leaves. The fall rains and winds of the last week had carried them away.

However, the hardiest of the fruits still hang onto the branches. The others, already fallen, lie tempting but inedible, in the meadow grass around the base of the tree.

I often wonder if the ‘possums and raccoons – or maybe even the deer – can eat them in this state?

I am sure they don’t mind that they have been lying on the ground, but for my palette the fruits are unripe – and will turn my mouth inside out. I think “astringent” is the term.

The tannins in the unripe fruit cause the skin cells in your mouth to contract – and your entire mouth starts to “pucker.” This is not as in pucker your lips to kiss someone, but an uncomfortable drying sensation in your mouth. You know right away that this is something you do not want to eat again.

But after the first hard frost the fruit is able to ripen. My Father told me so – after I had tasted my first one from the ground. On that cold morning, I will hurry out to the ridge and stand under this tree – or another I know of – and try to reach the fruit – ripened by the frost – and savor its sweet fall nectar.

It tastes like pumpkin but lighter – and more (as Euell Gibbons might have said) ‘woodsy’.

I always make my first bite just a bit of a nibble – in case it is still un-ripe.

CAUTIONS

1.There are four large and bitter seeds in the fruit.. I usually eat the fruit by gently drawing the flesh out of the fruit and spitting out the seeds. I would not advise just popping them in your mouth.

2.Another ‘Caution’ is that if you somehow force yourself to eat a large amount of unripe persimmons, it can form a hard vegetable mass (a Bezoar ‘stone’) in your stomach that will be difficult, if not impossible, to pass through the rest of your digestive system.

The persimmons certainly have a true fall taste to them. I believe they have all the flavors of the rest of the harvest captured in each of the small fruits.

My wife and I have gathered persimmons before, and once we had enough to make some cookies from them. However, the seeds and the skins do make it somewhat difficult to get the flesh out of the fruit and into the mix. But it was worth it, as they were delicious.

One of these days when I am sitting in a brewery (I have picked out the one I will tell) I will recommend they make a seasonal fall beer out of the Virginia Persimmon (Diospyros virginiana) – not the foreign ones that can be bought in the supermarket. (Actually, I have never tried those.)

I think a beverage made from hand-gathered fruits, after the first hard frost, from the edge of the Blue Ridge Mountains, would make an excellent and refreshing drink. And it could have a label calling out its heritage – a ‘possumwood beer. Perhaps that name for the tree in North Carolina tells me what animal enjoys the fruit.

Back to my walk across the fields in the fall.

The afternoon was getting on, and I turned towards home. I would come back and look up into these branches again. I also know that further along there are smaller trees with a history of ‘fruiting.’ After the hard frost comes it will be easy to pick a smooth, round, orange reward from the lower branches. The skin will be wrinkled and dusty after the hard frost. I will turn it over in my hand several times to enjoy the feel and the texture. Then I will pull it open and enjoy not just its flavor, but also the visual as I stand on the edge of a field, on the side of a hill, with the fall colors of the Blue Ridge beyond me.

The cool night air of fall wraps itself around me as I walk home under the clear twilight sky of Virginia. The early moon hangs under the branches of the Persimmon tree. The moon light is washed out by the last of the setting sun. The persimmons, in this celestial light, glow with a promise. Now I only have to wait – and then return.

Thank you, Dave.

My enjoyment of looking up into the night sky began when I was six years old. It was in the early 1950s and my family lived in Newport, Rhode Island. On any clear night you could look up and see the Milky Way spread across the sky. My Dad taught us the names of the stars and the constellations. Most every summer night my brother and I would go outside and look up at the stars. We would tell each other tales of maybe someday getting to them.

During these halcyon days a solar eclipse was due. It was going to be a partial eclipse. From what my Dad told us I was very excited. But my Dad warned me not to look directly at the sun. He told me that it would ruin my eyes.

There were no special sun glasses to wear back then. I think my Dad just knew that we needed to protect our eyes. Perhaps we also heard it on the radio. (We did not have a TV back then. Not many people did.) Public wisdom was to use a stack of film negatives (who has those now?) or to use a candle to smoke a small pane of glass. (the 1950s were a more inventive, but less safe time).

I remember going out into the back yard with a stack of negatives and a piece of glass I had smoked with a candle flame. I remember looking through them both, but the sun was so bright that I had to turn my gaze away. I saw nothing of a solar eclipse, partial or otherwise.

The next partial eclipse I remember trying to observe was in the 1960s. At that time we lived in Morocco. I was 14 years old, but technology had not advanced for me. I was still trying to view the eclipse with negatives and smoked glass. Plus, a friend of mine had an old welder’s mask and we tried that too. We climbed up on the home oil tank and from there climbed over the parapet onto the flat roof of my house. I had already found my way to the roof when I installed a wire antenna for my radio kit.

I will say that the 1960s were not much safer than the 1950s.

I had bought a Newtonian telescope from Sears in the 1980s. I used it to get a better look at the moon and the planets and occasionally a comet. I made a portable, helio-viewer that I could mount over my Newtonian telescope to view sunspots, eclipses, and transits. With this set up I could take pictures of the projection of the sun on the screen I constructed.

The eclipses I have seen in the 2000s have been with better equipment and not viewed from roof tops.

But for April 2024 eclipse I decided to enjoy it without my viewer and screen. I would just look up at it with my new Eclipse viewing glasses. The ones I have are made by Celestron, and I have great faith in them. I sat on one of the patio rocking chairs, put on my special glasses, and looked right up at the sun.

And I could see it without a stack of negatives, or a piece of smoked glass, or a welder’s mask. I could watch the sun being eclipsed while looking right at it.

As I sat in my rocking chair I could hear my father’s voice, “Son, don’t look directly at it.” – and I would turn my head away for a while.

Me – at last – directly viewing a solar eclipse (thanks to my fantastic Eclipse viewing glasses).

A friend of mine, Dave, was kind enough to send me the lead picture in this post. The picture of the April 2024 Solar Eclipse was taken through his telescope. It was shot from his home outside Chicago. Thank you, Dave for sending it to me.

A New Roof

It is a rather low hill, but I navigate my car up the steep one-lane road. I am driving up to one of the trails in the Manassas National Battlefield Park. It has been several years since I have been out to this particular area of the Park. The last time was before Covid.

As I approach the top of the hill, I blow my horn several times. The road goes up and over a ‘blind’ crest, and you cannot see any oncoming traffic until you are both cresting the rise from opposite directions. I want to give anyone coming towards me ample warning.

In the times I have been out here, I have only met one other car at the crest, and it was a close call. So I always blow my horn two or three times as my car climbs to the top.

No other car was coming, but as I drive down the far side I can see there is a car parked in the area of the trailhead. I am surprised to see it and wonder if I will meet the other hikers on the trail. As it was late in the day I know I might as they may be on their way back to their car.

I park my car, and as I get out I am met by the singing of the woodland birds. I recognized the Cardinal easily. I also pick out the Rufus-sided Towee as he calls out ‘drink-your-tea’. The other bird’s songs add to my enjoyment. Several trails go from the parking area out into the open fields that the current contract farmers cut for hay during the year. The first crop of tall grasses has not come up yet, and the broad paths across the fields lay open up to and beyond the location of the ‘lost-and-now-gone’ Portici farm house.

I stand for a moment in the shade of the trees which are just beginning to leaf. As I look up into the afternoon sky a spring breeze ruffles the red and green leaflets that have popped on the oaks and beech trees that cover the area. In the canopy I can see the shadows and shapes of the birds flying among the trees.

As I look towards the fields I am surprised to see the long-cut lumber of a new roof.

What could have been built here and why?

Just beyond the split rail fence and the tangle of vines at the edge of the trees is a small structure. I see the long boards rising above the peak of the roof. The structure is a chinked-log structure which would have been common for rural farm structures until the early 1900s.

To tell the truth during my days as a surveyor in North Carolina I would often come across old log structures out in the woods. They were generally storage sheds for an old and now-disappeared farm. One or two were old tobacco drying barns.

Given the location of this structure, I believe it is supposed to be a re-creation of an era “Spring House.” A Spring House was a small building that was built over or close to a spring of water that bubbled up from the ground. There are a lot of springs in this area of Virginia. The springs often rise as ‘artesian springs’ due to a natural dip of the land below the ground-water level or a “seep” on the side of a hill. In the Spring House the farmer and his family would dig a shallow pit (1 to 2 feet deep) and line it with stone.

Water would collect in the pit and was then allowed to flow out and down the hill to a stream. This would allow the pit to always be full of water. The water just having come out of the ground would be cold, and it would keep the inside of the small structure nice and cool. The farmer would build a shelf of stones in the pit so he and his family could put jugs and jars of milk and cheese and other foods in there to keep it cool and fresh. They might also have built wooden shelves on the walls for preserved fruit and vegetables. The family may have hung meat in the Spring House so it would last longer. It was like a refrigerator.

I am glad to find this new addition to the farming history of the Manassas Battlefield. The Park continues to develop the full story of the men and women who lived there and were witness to the terrible events of two Civil War battles.

The old cemeteries, foundations, trash pits, ponds, old farm equipment (after the Civil War) speak to this farming history. And there are old farm roads – wagon-width – deep in some of the woods.

I start my evening walk toward the old farm cemetery. The sun will set soon. I see the other walkers coming down one of the other paths and heading back to their car. I give them a wave and start my walk up the hill to the cemetery. If they waved back, I did not see them.

A Green Turn

When I pulled this picture out from the stack I thought of where it was and then chuckled.

I was looking at a Green Turn. There is a Green Heron, a Great Blue, and a Yellow Warbler, but there is no Green Tern. Although I know a pond not far from this picture of Chinn Ridge where in Summer I can see a Green Heron fly over. He is as much russet and brown as green. He is an exciting bird, although not as big as the Great Blue Heron.

Here on Chinn Ridge, at the Manassas National Battlefield Park, the path takes a decided turn.

The path goes in straight stretches through low lying areas along the top of the ridge There are Paw-Paw trees (Asimina triloba) to be found in the area of scrub trees, their roots climbing over exposed stone. But as the path slopes gently upward toward a high point on it crest, the understory clears and the large, more magnificent trees reach upward. The Oaks and Tulip Poplars compete as they reach for the sun and their leaves form a shady canopy high over the path.

This picture was taken on a calm, grey Spring day as the trees were first leafing against the sky. Today , in mid-September, the sun streams out of the cloudless sky but underneath as I walk the turn in the path I am shaded by the thick green canopy high overhead. Today is the hottest day of the year. The temperature is 97degrees, and the humidity pushes it higher.

It will only be a short walk today. I may reach this half-mile point in the woods or I might turn back before then. But if I reach this green turn, I know I will feel that I am in a familiar place. I have walked out of the ordinary into a place that is super-ordinary. When I look into the woods, it is open, but in the distance as the ridge falls away it is dark. The leaves move in the slight breeze, and I can see shapes far below me. They move among the trunks of the younger hardwoods, but they seem to stop and linger behind the trunks of the older giants. I know from other walks that where the bottom stream flows there are Sycamores, and the Sun’s reflection is glaring off the stream as it ripples and flows into the far woods and towards the Bay and on down to the ocean.

The water that the stream carries has flowed in and around the roots of the Oak and the Poplar and the Ash and past the Paw-Paw and down beyond the Sycamores.

Soon in the Fall the Paw-Paw ‘apples’ will be mottled and ripe, and I will take one, and say thank you, and turn back to a more real but less green world.

A New Other Place

How new is this place? And do I have a sense of it?

It is not often that I have started these posts with a question. But it seems right at this time.

And I need to ask another question first. What is Sense of Place?

There is discussion within the architectural community of whether a person can design an edifice so that it has sense of place. I believe there is, but as you will notice I have written that use of sense of place in lower case letters.

I believe that sense of place can be designed and built into many things; a memorial like the Vietnam Memorial; The National Cathedral in Washington DC, the Eiffel Tower in Paris, France, Stonehenge in England. These man-made constructions make a statement, and it is in that statement that the edifice can have a sense of place.

But what about Sense of Place (using capital letters)? I believe that this is a person’s inner feeling that draws them into having a strong personal attachment for any location that “moves” them.

I spent several years studying this concept and wrote my dissertation for my PhD on this concept, but was I able to give a definition that envelopes all the feelings that any person who comes to a place might have – or that all the people have?

At the Vietnam Memorial I believe there is a sense of place in the edifice, as people know where they are and what it was built to represent. It is space, set apart by this nation , and hallowed, dedicated to the men and women who died during the Vietnam War. For me, and I imagine many others, I have Sense of Place at the Memorial, the Wall. It is as much a monument to my mother and father as it is to my brother. I can walk along and read the names of my friends, and people I knew, and my brother, and I am personally moved. I might not have the same feeling anywhere else. It is my feeling; it is different from that of everyone else that walks past and reads their brother’s name or a friend’s name on the wall. We all have a strong feeling, and we respect each other’s attendance at this hallowed ground, but the individual Sense of Place is all mine. I might come in the early morning and play my flute. But that is my response to the place. Others may come, but it is different, with different emotions and different memories. And the sense of place designed into the edifice resonates with and adds to my personal Sense of Place.

And there are many other places that I have – and I imagine that everyone else has – a personal Sense of Place. The woodland trails that I sing on. The roads that I drive. The house that I drive up to. The room in the house where we played. No architect designed the space so it would be memorable. But my memories of that room and that window and of the events that happened there and the sounds coming up from downstairs, they all add up to my Sense of Place for that room.

But what of a new place? My family and I drove out to a farm and vineyard in the high foothills of the Blue Ridge mountains of Virginia. We had never been there before. We were looking forward to being in a new place and looking at a different view and having different thoughts.

We drove up the winding road to the top of the hill. We walked across the gravel parking lot. We went inside and ordered something to drink. We stepped out onto the patio. My world was changed forever.

I had seen these mountains before. I had driven through this valley often. I had climbed to the top of Old Rag and hiked the open trails of Sky Meadow and looked out over these same lands. I have memories of each of these places, some alone and some with friends. On Old Rag, once I met a large black bear at twilight – and that certainly gave me a Sense of Place. I was alone – and so was he.

But now I have this new place. It was a beautiful Fall day. We had lunch, and we talked, and we laughed and took pictures. And when we walked back to the car each of had our own memories of the valley and a fresh “Sense of Place” tied to each other and our memories of the new place.

Picture taken from the plaza at Dirt Farm Brewery in Bluemont, Virginia. The terrace has a terrific view of the Loudon Valley in the eastern foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Website: Home – Dirt Farm Brewing

James and the Flying Horse

First Light.

It is quite a dramatic image. Four hundred years ago a man stands in his workshop, grinding lenses. Using the skills of a ‘Cooper’ (a barrel maker), the old man constructs a tube from wooden slats. He fixes the lenses to the inside of the tube, and on a dark night holds the tube braced against a part of the roof and gazes up at the bright point of light. It is a planet, a ‘wanderer” so called from the ancient Greek planetai. This bright point of light is one of several of the points of light in the night sky that are not fixed in the sky like the stars. They ‘wander’ across the heavens in a path that can be tracked. The man gazes through the tube with its lenses which magnify the object viewed. He is astounded by the beauty of the bright point of light, Jupiter.

This is the “First Light” of the first telescope. It is how I imagine Galileo looking up at Jupiter and seeing its bands and discovering Jupiter has moons.

First light is a meaningful event for a telescope or any instrument that is used to view and study the objects above us and beyond us in the night – or daytime – sky. It is the proof that the telescope or other viewing instrument actually works. When I built a simple helioscope/projector using an inexpensive Newtonian telescope to view the Transit of Venus, my instrument had a “First Light”. It was exciting. I knew the telescope worked but had I constructed the screen perpendicular to the stream of light from the telescope to get a good image? Was the material I used for the projection strong enough to withstand handling and yet thin enough to allow the image of the sun to shine through.

Yes it was. I had achieved First Light.

First Light is the end point of making a telescope and the starting point of using it for observation. It is fully told in the story of the Hale Telescope in Richard Preston’s book First Light. In this book he tells about the construction of the Hale telescope and its use in discoveries in the cosmos.

And then this year we have First Light from the new James Webb Space Telescope that sits at a gravitational stable position known as Lagrange Point 2, approximately 1,000,000 miles from Earth.

The James Webb Space Telescope is not only robust, but it is also beautiful. In pictures of the Telescope before it was folded for launch the purity of lights and image seem to rise from its surface to greet the viewer.

What was James Webb Space Telescope’s Frist Light?

It can be seen in an image at the top of this article. This image is admired around the world for its clarity and stunning splendor. The image was published by NASA, ESA, CSA, and STSci (National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the European Space Agency, the Canadian Space Agency, and the Space Telescope Science Institute) with the caption, ‘The Webb telescope‘s image of the galaxy cluster SMACS 0723 includes thousands of galaxies, including the faintest objects ever observed in infrared. The light in the image is 4.6 billion years old.”

According to NASA, SMACS 0723 was chosen as one of the first five ‘targets’ for the James Webb Space Telescope, due to it being a “massive galaxy cluster” an image of which shows the foreground clusters which “magnify and distort light behind them. This creates a deep and detailed view into the extremely distant and faint galaxies beyond.”.

The image shows a cluster of galaxies with one in the upper center dominating. The other galaxies of the cluster are the other large white objects around the center of the picture. The mass of the galaxy, including the mass of its ‘dark matter,’ results in the numerous arcs of lensed galaxies as light from more distant galaxies behind the cluster is refracted and bent by the gravity of the near field cluster into the numerous arcs of light. Many are ‘mirrored’ and are seen as two lensed galaxies connected by a curved arc. These are not different galaxies. They are the single distant galaxy whose light is bent as it passes the galaxy cluster.

But where is the winged horse?

That comes from a separate target of the Webb telescope, Stephan’s Quintet. The Quintet is a compact galaxy group located in the constellation, Pegasus, the Winged Horse. Four of these galaxies are tied by gravity into each other. Each of these four galaxies spins on its own but is held close by the forces of the other four galaxies. In the distant future the four may merge into a single massive galaxy. The fifth galaxy of the Quintet is distant and has less of an effect on the others.

Stephan’s Quintet will be a target of my own star gazing after Pegasus rises to its best viewing position in the sky during the cool nights of October. It is perfect weather for star gazing, less moisture in the atmosphere bringing clear nights.

The image at top is taken from Webb’s First Deep Field (NIRCam Image) (webbtelescope.org)

The image at the bottom is taken from NASA – Stephan’s Quintet

Other sites for information on the James Webb Telescope and it’s First Light may be found at:

Where is NASA’s James Webb Telescope? (popularmechanics.com)

James Webb Space Telescope | NASA

NASA reveals targets of first James Webb telescope images – BGR

James Webb Space Telescope’s ‘jewel-filled’ photo is stunning. But what are we even looking at here? | Live Science

Return for the Swifts

Two years ago (Fire Swifts, 3 July 2020) I wrote about enjoying the flight of Chimney Swifts (Chaetura pelagica) while I sat on my back patio. In summer mornings and evenings I could see a flight of ten to twenty Swifts gliding above my house and over the close-at-hand stand of trees as they sought and caught flying insects that lived in the trees, under the leaves, on the branches and trunks. The Swifts also gobbled up the mosquitoes that liked to breed in the ponds along the stream beneath the trees.

But now the Swifts are mostly gone. Sometimes when I am working in my yard I might hear twittering in he sky. I look up and might see three to five Swifts overhead.

Have I noticed a change in the number of insects I have to swat or other troublesome flying insects? Not so much, but maybe there are more gnats this year than in others.

Where did the Swifts go? I have no idea. But I hope they found a place to their liking and have not just become part of the 5 billion songbirds that we lost since 1970. That comes to a false number average of 60 million birds lost in each of those years. If we were to think of birds as people that is Nine Times the population of the United States lost each year. Now it sounds like a big number.

There are numerous factors that are leading to a decline in the number of songbirds in the United States. These factors include: tall buildings – birds crash into them during their migrations; feral cats – put out of the house at night kill millions of song birds each year; diseases – some of which are suspected of becoming more prevalent due to the warming climate; and habitat destruction – when our towns and cities and suburbs are changed to accommodate our expanding population.

I believe the main reason that I do not see my Chimney Swifts wheeling overhead in the early morning and at twilight is because of habitat destruction.

Was there some forest that was cut down in my neighborhood? No; the last large tract of timbered grazing area in my town was destroyed and filled with houses in the 1990s. Swifts might live in hollowed out trees that happened to stand in an old forest.

Audubon tells a story of when we was cataloguing and painting the birds of North America of finding a tall, hollowed out sycamore tree in Kentucky. He stepped inside and found it filled with Chimney Swifts which had made nests on the interior walls of their “chimney”.

My Swifts had no such palatial home as I believe they nested in an old brick chimney of a boiler/heater for a small hotel on the highway near my house. When the motel was torn down to make way for a gas station and store, the chimney was torn down. This was the same time that my Swifts disappeared. I have made the assumption that the Swifts nested in the old chimney.

Is there a way to bring the Swifts back to the area of my neighborhood?

I think there is.

A quick search of the internet (searching “Swift Tower”) turns up initiatives by individuals, groups and communities to maintain a healthy and helpful population of the insect-eating Swifts. The individuals and groups do not build free standing brick chimneys. They build stand alone “Swift Towers”. Several State Audubon societies have articles on building Swift Towers on both private and public lands. There are links on these pages to other organizations as well, including designs for the towers. As one article states, if you are asked what you are building, just tell them it’s a bird house.

And what of my small population of Swifts. I will approach the company that is building the gas station, and tell them the story of my neighborhood Swifts. And I will ask them if they would build a Swift Tower to replace the old chimney.

And for my City I plan to attend a council meeting and ask that they consider requesting that any companies that are tearing down old establishments that have chimneys to replace that chimney with a Swift Tower.

I think the twittering I hear in the mornings and evenings is worth that little bit of effort.

Audubon Society of Western Pennsylvania (ASWP) is supporting Chimney Swift protection through a variety of approaches. We have installed nearly 150 Chimney Swift towers to provide breeding habitats for these birds. Audubon’s Chimney Swift Tower Program | Audubon Society of Western PA (aswp.org)

John James Audubon’s experience in visiting a large dead sycamore tree filled with the nests of Chimney Swifts is provided at American Swift | John James Audubon’s Birds of America. He estimated their number to be 9,000.

To read more information about the decline of our songbird population see the 2019 study as published in Science magazine. It may be found at – Nearly 3 Billion Birds Gone | Birds, Cornell Lab of Ornithology and Where Have the Songbirds Gone? | NASA Applied Sciences

Ride in Death Valley

I have alluded in several posts that I traveled for my work. I was an engineer in the federal government and served several agencies. My work usually involved environmental compliance and land/real estate management for those agencies. My work often took me to California and New Mexico. When I would go out to the west coast which was generally once a year, I would usually stay at least a week and sometimes two in order to meet with personnel from the several installations that I had cognizance or purview over.

My agenda for a two-week trip included visits and discussions with installations in San Diego, Los Angeles, a large installation in the California desert. This desert installation was close to Death Valley and as I had to drive up to Los Angeles for my next site visit, on the Saturday I was traveling I decided to drive up the east side of the Sierra Nevada Mountains and see what there was to see. This route took me past Death Valley. I had never seen it, so I decided to make a stop and see it.

I started driving north on CA-395. This was all strange territory to me not only being from the east coast, but it was the rocks, the shapes, the plants, and the different birds that intrigued me. As I drove north, I came to a place called the Alabama Hills. The formations looked like giant stones had been dumped out onto the ground. The tumbled formations of rocks were intriguing. I found a place to park and climbed on the rocks while looking for the fish-filled brooks and pools that the signs implied were round there. The hills of stone looked like an old movie set, and were actually used in numerous westerns since the formations were so striking.

I left the Alabama Hills and continued north on CA-395. Soon I was in a dust storm as the wind was blowing in from the east across what I learned was Owen’s Dry Lake. At one time it had been a fresh water lake feed by the Owens River. The Owens River was used to support agriculture in the valley, and later it was diverted to supply Los Angeles with water. I stopped and looked out over the sandy flats that had once been covered in water. The alkali dust drove me back into my car.

The next road to the east, in the direction of the dry lake bed, had a sign that said to me, Turn here for Death Valley. Who had not heard of that tortuous place? We had played cowboys back in the east and roamed an imaginary Death Valley. From countless Saturday matinees we knew it as the driest and the hottest place the United States, if not the entire planet.

I followed the road to the east, not knowing what I might find. The road, CA-190, draped around the east side of the dry lake. I stopped on that far side and got out of my car to look at it again. I could see more now as the wind was blowing at my back. The dust was no longer blowing into my face as it had been at my first stop. I drove on toward Death Valley. And now, about every mile or so, I saw a car pulled to the opposite side of the road with a bicycle rack on top. As I saw more and more of these cars I realized there was probably a bike rally or a race going on.

On the south side of CA-109 I saw the crest of a volcanic dike or a collapsed volcanic lava tube now exposed and weathered. I stopped and walked along one. It looked like a great place for rattlesnakes and scorpions, so I kept a respectful distance. I set up my camera tripod and took several pictures to send to Geology professor including the self-portrait above. Then I packed my camera gear and continued on my way.

By the time I reached Father Crowley Point, I had seen a dozen cars with bike racks along the road. At the parking lot for Father Crowley Overlook there were several more parked. I stopped to ask what was going on.

I was told yes, there was a bike race. It was the famed and feared Whitney Classic. This race starts at Badwater Basin on the east side of Death Valley. The course crosses the Valley and then ascends on the road I was on to the top of the Darwin Plateau, and on past Owens Dry Lake. The race continues into the foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains and then climbs to the Whitney Portals. The race is 136 miles long and includes an elevation rise 14,704 feet, nearly a 3-mile gain in elevation.

My plan to visit the floor of Death Valley was breaking down. I had to be in Los Angeles that night for a business meeting the following day. We would work the weekend when I got there. But I started my descent into Death Valley. As I went down I began to see the lead groups of bikers passing me as they went up the road. I realized that I would likely get stuck behind larger groups of racers who were following the leaders. If I got behind them, they would slow down or block my exit from the park. It could cost me hours of lost time. I found a wide spot in the road and turned around to go back to the top of the plateau.

The Wilson Classic is an endurance bike race. I was glad to have seen the edges of it. And I was glad to have glimpsed Death Valley from the height of Father Crowley Point. And I had gotten out and marveled at the lava dike which was only a part a small part of this tortuous and wonderous terrain. Perhaps on my next trip I will go up to the verdant forests of the Whitney Portals and listen to the babble of Lone Pine Creek.

Death Valley as seen from the area of he Father Crowley Overlook; photo by Daniel Perez posted to Google Earth.

Three Photographs

What do three photographs have to do with each other. These three have no people in them, at least none that you can see. But in each of these photographs I can see multitudes of friends and fellow travelers. I want to rehabilitate that term. It a good phrase in which to capture the idea of someone well-met while you are on the road.

The term, fellow travelers, in its best use is when I apply it to the young and old, and the men and women I met while backpacking in Europe and when driving across America around the time I took these three pictures.

In Europe most of our travel was by train and we would meet and link up with a small group of people, two others, maybe four, and travel with them for a day or two or maybe a week. They were our traveling companions. They might not be going to our ultimate destination, but for the moment – or for the week – we were thrown together in a train car or in a City – and we talked and planned and laughed as the woods and houses and fields flashed by or as we strolled in a city park.

And if they were well-met, they were lively and jovial, and we wanted also to be a “Hail-fellow, Well-met”. You would share your lunch of tomatoes and cheese and bread, and they would add sausage and at the end perhaps a cigarette. You might go drinking together at night, and later stand on a street corner and rather loudly sing some song you just learned. You may sit up the night in a train compartment talking of places you’ve been and places you intend to go. And they would rise and fall with their own ideas, and the next day with a hearty handshake and a slap on the back or maybe a kiss you would part never to see each other again. But later, telling the story of that train ride you remember your adventures, and wonder when you will have a chance to smoke the cigar they had given you.

It was someone with whom to spend some time when you were on a trip abroad, alone. Cigarettes play a role in this picture, but I will say there is no more deadly habit. If you smoke, stop now and never take it up again. Ask me why I had 5 bypasses. I will tell you it was the cigarettes. It was part of my old life. It is not part of my new life. And it does not need to be part of yours.

These three pictures represent the time when I was driving across country as a young man to go to Vietnam. I was not in the jungle, I served off the coast in the Navy. Later I would go and wander across northern and eastern Europe for a Summer. The pictures are before that time when I was driving West across the Untied States. The middle picture shows that, an open road. I probably took that somewhere in Oklahoma when there were hills in the distance and places that I had never been and would only pass through this once. I stopped and went to a small diner and had corned beef on rye, and I wrote about it.

The old “farm” house back home was torn down and rebuilt closer to the River. That’s on the right. Times there are not forgotten. Christmases. Trees with tinsel. Fruit baskets. Summers spent crabbing and rowing on the River. And we would wade out through the now gone fields of ell-grass, and swim.

The picture on the left is Hawaii when my ship passed through. I had time to see Hanauma Bay before it was crowded with other people who wanted to see that bit of paradise. I wonder if the Parrotfish I followed knew this or if its descendants know it now. I swam out on a calm afternoon over the reef and looked down the far side where dwell the Octopus and the needle toothed Shark. And I swam back with the image of the darkness where the light did not penetrate.

So go out. Travel, and rejoice in your adventures with the people that you will meet.

Young Man/Old Man

The tree has stood here for generations. Its wrinkled features speak of Springs and hot Summers and Winter storms and Fall Hurricanes rolling out of the Sea.

Yet here it stands. Right where the mountain man had stopped over 300 years before, and leaning on his staff he paused to look out to the Sea beyond the valley – and he has stayed here – still thinking. His hand clutches the shaft of his staff. You can see his fingertips curling around from the back of the shaft as he rests his temple against his hand. His hair is blown upwards and back as he stares stonily out towards the distant Sea.

The years have washed soil and stones and leaves out of the hills above so that the man’s shoulders and torso and hips and legs are now buried deep below. Yet still he stands and looks outward and wonders. When he decides, will he rise up and tear his roots from deep within the earth and walk these hills again?

These are tales of the deep woods.

The young man pushed out by his tribe,

Walked toward the sound of the Sea.

He crossed mountain peak and fast glacial stream.

He forded broad rivers.

He climbed stones as if they were steps to the top of the ridge.

And from his new vantage point he could see the great Sea before him.

He leaned his head on his staff and he wept, because he had found Ocean, his mother.

What would he say to her when she saw him and rose up? Would she be in a fury? Would she rejoice that he had found his way back to her?

He leaned on his staff, for a year, and another, and another ten and then a hundred and then more.

He stands there still wondering how he will be greeted when he reaches the rolling wave and the murmur of shale rolling in the retreating wave.

What will he say that he has accomplished? Who will he say that he has helped? Has he made his path a better place? Has the world benefited from his life?

He leaps up and leaves his body behind, still, standing, staring.

His spirit goes out and back along his path to correct what he has damaged.

When he sees a tired person sitting next to the road, the wind blows down and refreshes the weary. The rain falls upon the parched . The sun shines on the lonely.

The young man in the wind and rain and sunshine is rebuilding his story.

And he will smile.

One day he will return to this tree and shake loose the binding roots and finish his walk to the Sea and be greeted with joy.

This is one of the trees that I remember. There are many others. These are the trees I see while I am in the woods. They speak to me as the warm spring rains patter down on their budding branches. When the Summer storm whips the limbs and branches, they howl with strength. When the Winter winds bring snow and ice that crackles on the branches when the sun returns and when I cross the snowy field to visit them, they moan and creak like an old gate on rusted hinges.. The trees are always with me, they are everywhere. They are of many ages, and they always welcome me to the deep forest and woods by the lane.

Some have forgotten how to leaf and bud and leaf, but still stand as a home for birds and squirrels and the members of the fourth kingdom, the fungus that returns the tree to the soil. Some have fallen in the wind. Some have fallen to the ax. But they all live on in my memory and in the memory of all who visited them and touched their bark, or played in their shade, or picked up their Fall leaf form the ground. Or watched a bird fly among its branches.

They are our friends. Each has its story. You must listen to hear it being told.