Dead Tree Walking

One of the most amazing of the trees we saw was almost as we ended the hike.

Closer up, it did look like a dead tree walking!

 

Mt. Whitney 2022: Rule Of Five

 So likely this will be the last post on Whitney for awhile.

It is certainly not that I have exhausted my picture store - oh, there are still plenty of pictures! - as I have my immediate thoughts on it.  It is almost a month in the rearview mirror now, and while the changes are there in me, life is clicking along at a pretty good pace.  Smelling the roses is important, but smelling them only to the exclusion of other things does not move the needle in other areas.

With that said, here are the Mt. Whitney Rule of Five.

1)  You really can do more than you think.

This is probably self evident to my readers, but not always to me:  simply put, I often do not believe myself capable of things and so, do not attempt them. It is remarkable what one can do when effectively one has shut off all other avenues of escape - like, for example, being three days away from civilization and having no other choice but to go up.

2)  Tuning out is really a rather good thing.

Among all the things I did miss during my hike, the world was not one of them.  7.5 days of being "unavailable" to the world and current events was a blessing that I did not fully appreciate until it was forced on me.  True, having beautiful scenery and no other worries helps, but sometimes the world really is too much with us.

3)  We underrate the value of simplicity but forget it is built on complexity.

On one hand, we can get so trapped in the complexities of our lives and our stuff that we cannot accomplish much.  On the other hand, we can so simplify our life that suddenly we do not have the things we need to accomplish much.  All of us carried our homes on our backs for eight days - but that was because it was limited hike and we all had clothing and supplies that made having those few useful things possible.

There is a balance between simplicity and complexity, of having too much and not enough, that we need to keep in mind.

4) Isolating people from their environments makes things work better.

One of the noticeable things on the hike is that - by and large - we all got along pleasantly enough.  When we would interact with other hikers, they were pleasant interactions:  "Hi?  How are you doing?  Where are you headed?  How long have you been on the trail?"  The fact of doing an activity that was enjoyable combined with the fact that almost no-one actually had any idea what was going on "out there"  made for truly enjoyable interactions.  And there was almost an unspoken rule - at least in our group - that the outside world was not to be discussed, at least except for personal adventures.  Yes, once or twice it was violated (it always somehow is), but it really just died there, if for no other reason than no-one else engaged.

I wonder:  Is part of the problem of why in general we so often clash with people because of the fact that all that is around us is telling us how to react instead of ourselves?

5)  The world is big, we are small.

No mystery to most people that think or read those blogs to right, but the world is much bigger - and resilient - than we can possibly imagine.  We get caught up in our small views of world, trapped in cities or urban areas, and come to believe that Nature "out there" is just like Nature "here".  It is in kind, but not in grandeur or size or space.  I hiked 83 miles in a wilderness and still likely saw a very small portion of it, a far smaller portion than I would likely see if I drove 83 miles between one city and another.  Likely in that drive, I would become depressed by the similarity of all the urban centers I passed.  In hiking, I was continually amazed by the variety and scope of the landscape.

Vistas And Views

Random Vistas and Views I have not posted yet from the hike.

Time and Value

(Fire update:  Not as nearly good news today.  The fire jumped the River and fire lines and started a second fire working its way up the canyon, about linear miles from my parents' house.  The fire has actually gotten into some of the structures of the nearest town as well.)

This week  I had need to talk to a lawyer - nothing alarming, just the fact that given all we have been through over the last two years, a will and certain directives (Power of Attorney, Do Not Resuscitate, etcetera) are in order . We had a pleasant initial conversation and later in the day I received the letter of engagement  along with fees for service.  There is a ranking of fees, based on whether one is an attorney, a law student, a paralegal, or a clerk (the caveat, of course, is that none of them "get" all that money; some always goes to firm).  It a helpful tool in terms of speaking with them going forward; knowing the going rate, one can ask the question "Do I really need to talk to them?"

Time and value of course, time and value.

I have a value as defined by my current position, as I have for my previous positions.  It is not just my salary (as our Personnel departments are always quick to tell us), but a combination of salary, benefits, and the other sorts of "extras" that may accrue.  In my daily work life, I do not consider this as much as I should - often I am too eager to do something or get involved when the real question should be "Is this truly worth my time?"  The value of my time gets lost in such a thing of course, because in point of fact I am employed by the company and so at some level, I need to do the work - there is no method for me to "make people use my time wisely" by charging them more.  But neither is there value in doing the sorts of things that - literally - are not worth my time.

That said, how do I measure time and value in the real world?

On our hike, we consumed days covering up to 15 miles a day.  The only value we realized is the value that we derived internally - and I suppose what is more ridiculous, we were paying for the experience so in that sense, we were not accruing financial value, we were expending it.  Most of us were likely on PTO; were we not, not only would we be paying for the privilege, we would be losing money every day we were on the trail.  Even our guides, bless them, likely made not a great deal of money - but if I asked them, they would  tell me this is exactly what they wanted to do.  

And yet, I suspect not one of us regrets going.

Friend of this blog Leigh Tate at Five Acres And A Dream will often comment how, during the high days of the harvest season, her time is almost completely spent in gathering and preserving the harvest.  There is no "cash" value to be realized for such an event, except for the inherent value of knowing where every scrap of food came from and having a larder full for the coming season that is not dependent on delivers making it to the grocery store or supply chains getting snarled.  

But Leigh herself has often said that she does put a value on this - not just the cash value realized from their own independent living, but the value that it contributes to their own life, a value in a lifestyle of their choosing and how they are spending their time - a value, like that of our hiking guides, that is not purely realized on the basis of how much money is coming in for the time spent.

I do not suppose there is a clear answer here, as everyone will ultimately have a different understanding of this issue - for some, time and value should always be monetary and directly linked, for others one weighs more heavily than the other, and for others, they can easily shift back and forth based on the circumstances.  But what struck me as I looked at this list of costing was really the meaningful question to myself:  Not "Am I spending my time wisely?", but rather "Am I valuing what I do based on the time I spend doing it?"

Or asked a different way, do I truly understand the value of the things I am doing and the answer is a clear "No", why am I doing them?  And if that is true, would attaching a per hour cost of such things help me to see more clearly?

Forest Fires (And An Update)

 (Fire Update:  The fire has continued its growth, but fortunately not significantly in the direction of The Ranch.  The potential weather which was a possibility was south of the fire and thus, potential winds and lightning strikes which could have worsened things did not appear.  Grateful for the prayers.  I will say it is jarring to see the fire lines basically outlining the outskirts of the nearby town).

One of the things that we saw evidence of on our hike were previous forest fires.

Forest fires are a reality of lots of places, including Old Home (New Home has had its share as well, which was somewhat surprising to me when I moved here as it was not the sort of place I thought these things happened).  We had seen evidence on our previous hikes and saw some driving in to the Mt. Whitney hike as well as some stands early in the hike on canyons to the west of us.

That I can see, this is only picture I took that perhaps shows fire damage:

I suppose it is understandable of course:  The view of forests after burns are depressing at best.  Sticks raised to the sky with branches stuck out like bare arms on the hillsides that are bare themselves.  Blackened wood that is dead although it fakes the appearance of living.

And that is far away.  They can be even more jarring up close.

Such fires are a tragedy, or so we consider them.  

Part of the tragedy remains purely on us, of course.  We stopped fires from occurring all together and so the more frequent fires that would clear out underbrush and smaller trees were allowed to grow, creating conditions for far more hot, intense fires.  And we actively discouraged any sort of active thinning or logging which might have had some of the same impact (do not read into this that completely logging everything is a solution either; it is just as destructive).

Still, for all of that, the fires would have likely still occurred at some level. And that would also be a necessary thing for the renewal of the forest and the ecosystem.

The forest will recover - but its recovery will be measured in decades, not seasons (see the above paragraph for how we helped extend this period by poor choices).  This is not a tragedy for the forest - it can wait 50 or 100 years to re-establish itself.  

It is a tragedy for us, of course, because most of us will never live to see the forests regrown.  In that sense, we have likely deprived ourselves and at least our children.

I may sound a bit aggravated about this - because I am aggravated.  My father spent almost 10 years clearing brush and cleaning up The Ranch to prevent this sort of thing from happening there, and The Cowboy and The Young Cowboy have continued this work.  You cannot completely eliminate forest fires, but things can be done to lessen their impact.  For many years we did precisely nothing and even now, we are easing our way slowly back into active forest management.  It takes time and effort and appreciation of the land, something too often missing in those that get their view of Nature from streaming media and carefully controlled and managed experiences.

At some point - hopefully September, but it truly may be October or November - I will be able to get back up to The Ranch and hopefully beyond.  I know I am going to be saddened and shocked by what I will see - not just from the destruction, which I predict will be awful, but from the long term impact on the area.  This was an area who depended to a great extent upon some level of logging and tourism due to outdoor recreation.  Both of this will be almost completely gone.

Hopefully not gone in the long term sense of the forest, just gone in the sense of my own lifetime.

One wonders, if we would think in these terms, how much differently we would manage the forests.

A Final Note:  It with sadness that I read Reverend Paul of Way Up North has decided to stop posting.  He has been a long time friend of this blog and I will miss his posts (and his Iditarod updates every year!).  If you have benefitted from his wisdom, you might drop by and let him know.

Trees (Unknown Trees)

 Originally I was going to call this post "Trees", but realized I have posted plenty of pictures of pine and oak and cedars that I knew.  Not so much these.

Frankly, I am not sure what these are.  Lodgepole pines?  Jeffrey Pines?  The altitude seems right and they do not fit the other trees they might be - but I am not sure.

No matter what they are, they were weird and foreign and novel to me.

Even in their deaths, they were unique and beautiful.

Many times I saw a semi dead tree with life still clinging onto it.

Or sometimes, just death.

The bark up close.  Some of it smelled like vanilla.

Their starkness rising from the landscape was noticeable.

Especially at the higher elevations - 10,000 to 12,000 feet - they were almost the only plant.

They made a splendid backdrop to the vistas.

Water

Water was quite plentiful on our hike, and we crossed streams every day.

 

View(s) From The Top

 Four views from the top, actually:

The first is of the Kern River Valley.  Of note to geography enthusiasts, this is where the water flows east on the Sierra Nevadas, not west;

On the way up Mt. Whitney.  Literally above the clouds:

From the top of Mt. Whitney. Pardon the background noise:

This is as we hiked up towards High Desert:

This is on the last day of the hike, as we worked our way along the side of the mountains to Cottonwood Pass:

The Elegance Of Decay

One of the things that confronts one when out in the wilderness is decay.

Decay is everywhere on the trail:  trees that have fallen and are in the process of breaking down, vegetation browning and or decaying, fungi and mushrooms signaling the recycling of nutrients from the soil.

Especially at the higher elevations, decay becomes more noticeable simply because there is less decay.  There is a prohibition that there are to be no campfires beyond 10,500 feet elevation - not so much because of the risk of fire (although it is there), as much as consuming the available deadfall would destroy the soil building process.   Except for the trees, there is very little to create humus.

Interestingly enough, we are not as a species one that sees such decay for what it is:  the re-creation and renewal of life.  We like our scenery vibrant and alive.  Our cities and our yards are filled with organized growth and life; any scene or evidence of decay is quickly moved away by the ubiquitous landscape teams or the Saturday Home Yard Warrior.

Which is a shame, really.  The decay that happens there is no different than the decay that happens here in the mountains, with the same outcome: renewal.

Scattered about in the wilderness, there is a certain elegance in the fallen trees and recycling vegetation.  It is not ugly or unsightly or even out of context:  it blends in beautifully with the scenery around it.  Not once did anyone cry out "Oh look, a dead tree".  Instead, they became part of the overall picture - and in some cases were marveled at.

Trees break down in ways I had not appreciated until I saw them up close.  They break down almost into block like units; one can grab one in one's hand.  The angularity and regularity of the pieces are an odd contrast to the round, smooth bole we see in the trees while living.

Even dead and standing up, the trees remain as sentinels, leaning into each other in a vain attempt to continue to remain above the ground, defying the decay that awaits them.

Fallen, the trees, assume other, fantastical shapes, shapes of animals and mythical creatures that they would never have achieved in their living state.

Sequoias were especially amazing; even in death they continue to change their appearance into unique items of beauty.

Below:  A tree literally growing out of a part that has fallen.  Out of death, life.

It troubles me that we take such things for granted in the real world.  So far removed from nature, we have forgotten the natural processes that make life possible.

But forgetful or not, beyond most of our view and vision, the process continues.

A Friendly Marmot

As I was descending from Mt. Whitney (You can see Guitar Lake in the background), I saw a flash of movement. It was a marmot, the first one I had seen since we started hiking 5 days prior.  I took a picture from far away, hoping I would not disturb him:

I moved in closer, and he still seemed uninterested in me:

This is less than 6 feet away.  Apparently he was hoping I would be a potential food handout.  When I was clear I was just there for the picture, he went on his way.

 

A Moment

By Day Five of the hike, as you may recall, we were deep into our movement to Mt. Whitney.  The day before we had fought our way down through brush and and rain; the morning was a slow movement upward before lunch, followed by a quicker move upward.

The hike after lunch saw us begin to stretch out over the trail.  I suppose, in retrospect, this was not a big concern to our guides:  the trail was clear, we had a known destination, and the big push would be the following day, when we scaled Mt. Whitney.  We marched along in our clusters as we began to string ourselves out based on speed and drive.

And then, after lunch, it started to rain.

I was more or less on my own when the rain hit;  I had both moved ahead of those in the rear as well as falling behind those in the front. I struggled into my rain poncho, kindly lent to me by D the guide - by this point I had the practice of getting my head through, arms through, back over the pack, and tucked in almost to an art - and continued on through the sputtering rain.

The rain that day was not the rain of the previous day, a steady slow drizzle that invaded every crack and seam and pooled water on the crown of my hat. Instead it was the on-again/off-again intensity of a shower, something that I am much more familiar with thanks to life in New Home.  It was a cold rain but not overwhelmingly in its intensity.

I hiked through the trees and along the edge of meadows as the rain increased and decreased in its intensity, broken up by the trees that sheltered the trail.  At some points I simply stopped and stepped into the cover of a tree as the rain intensified.  For some reason this was not something we had done previously on the hike; we had to simply walk through the rain.  In this case I was on my own with a limited time table; why, I thought, get even more wet?

The silence of the High Sierras was deafening at the best of times.  Absent were the sounds of insects and birds that fill the lower lands.  Occasionally one would hear one, but it was a rather rare experience which frankly surprised me:  after all, this is a place where people are very much absent by and large.  Would wildlife not thrive? 

Apparently not; I walked alone in the dripping rain and light wind with only the crunch of my shoes and my hiking poles to break the silence.

The rain sputtered in and out and finally fell to an almost inaudible patter, and I was now alone in a wet and uniquely barren wasteland punctuated with green and brown. I stopped to just drink in the silence and and the landscape, something that I had been less than diligent about doing more frequently - being part of a group on a hike does not often leave such opportunities as you are part of a line moving forward and if you stop, the line stops.  I stood along the trail with granite sand and dust beneath my feet and boulders on every side and the sequoias around me, tall sentinels seemingly of another age dripping with wet sky as they have for thousands of year.

And then, for one brief instant, I was utterly lost to myself.

 

In that moment there was no separation between me and the world around me. I was not a person walking through the landscape, I was part of the landscape:  the rocks beneath my feet running to the roots of the earth, the trees striving to reach the sky for light and the depths for water, the very air around me, dripping with water that meant life and renewal for all of this.  For that moment there was simply no time, just the sense of one ageless moment.

And then, just like that, it was gone.  I was again a hiker, moving through the wilderness to which I was a foreigner.

I knew enough from reading about such moments experienced by others that to try to recreate the moment would be as foolish as it was useless.  They come and go at their own discretion; we are but helpless to accept the experience.

What was it?  I suspect Christian mystics like St. John of the Cross and Teresa of Avila and Brother Lawrence of the Resurrection would say it was a moment of union with God.  I am not so arrogant to presume such an event would ever happen to me (although perhaps it was). The easier term for me is actually from Buddhist thought:  satori, or the moment of enlightenment.  But perhaps if satori is actually realizing one's place in God's creation, that might very well work.

Not that I was enlightened at all, of course:  One could almost feel the thought coming - and then it was gone.  But, perhaps, that is enlightenment.

I trudged on, neither trying to recreate the thought nor dwell on it excessively lest I spoil it too much with questions that had no answers.  It happened; there are many people to whom such a thing never happens, I suspect.

Mt. Whitney hove into view as I continued along.  The peak and I shared a glimpse as we made of sight of each other:  I for the first time, it (undoubtedly) one more sighting of hundreds of thousands of would-be summit seekers.

If it had knowledge into my moment in the trees and rocks - perhaps more meaningful to me than my climb the following day - it refused to answer.