All posts by Steve Stern

Northwestern Nevada: day two, mostly The Blackrock

Camping

There are very few places that go by only part of their name and The. The Blackrock is one of them. I love Death Valley, but it is always Death Valley; The Valley is always Yosemite. Like The Canyon is always the Grand. Maybe – for me – The Escalante for the Grand Staircase National Monument, but there are not many The’s. Even the Bonneville Desert is the Bonneville Saltflats or Desert; The Bonneville always refers to the speed trials.

The Blockrock Playa dominates this part of the world. It is huge and very flat. Big enough and flat enough to drive a car faster than the speed of sound.

Looking down on The Blackrock, it is huge. Being on it, it is almost infinite.  At the south end is the town of Gerlach and when you drive north on the playa – oh! you not only can drive on the playa, there are marked entries and exits – Gerlach disappears by sinking below the horizon. You can actually see the curvature of the earth! Here are a couple of shots but they are weak sauce; it is like trying to understand a Rolling Stone – actually, The Stones – concert by listening to a CD.

 

The last shot by the way was taken about twenty years ago on film and was then scanned. I like to think I am more subtle now. Hummm….maybe not.

One of things that Peter and I talked about – as we drove around was how blogging had changed our photography.  We both think of ourselves as Good Photographers, even Art Photographers – actually, I am speaking for myself here and only imagining for Peter – but we both are Fine Art Photographers. In that we both think about what we are doing and what we are trying to show and we both have a good eye. But, when blogging, and we were both thinking blogging as we went around the Black Rock – we have to tell a story and that means we have to take pictures that push a narrative. We don’t have the luxury of  indulging in 100 pictures of patterns on the desert floor and I think that is a good thing. It is also a thing that will play out later on this trip.

As an aside, in 1988 – man that was long ago! – I had the opportunity to photograph Machu Picchu with nobody around. It was wonderful – wonder filled – and I got some great shots. I also got about 15o shots of stone walls and shadows. I was also chewing coco leaves which may have been a factor, but almost every one of the shots was worth framing as an image. One hundred and fifty shots of stone walls and shadows….On film, five rolls. Jeeeze! End aside.

After the Blackrock, we went back to the Smoke Creek area. It was getting windy and colder and dusty and – most importantly – the light was getting flat. We figured we would drive  down to the Smoke Creek creek to see if we could find a place to camp out of the wind. On the way, we found a couple of hummocks that we decided to walk to. That walk turned out to be a bit longer as we walked past the hummocks and down to the temporary wetland by the edge of the playa.

 

But the light was flat and my imagined picture of the fence running into the water  à la Christo didn’t pan out. Photography is capturing light – especially landscape photography – and without good light, even the most stunning scene looks dull.The grandest vista, flat.

After wandering down to the actual Smoke Creek lookinbg for a sheltered campsite, we went back to a campsite just south of last night’s.

It was warmer than last night and the same immense space but the wind was picking up and the clouds were getting that rounded look which is never a good sign. After sunset, we got a feeble show of color but not much.

To be continued and to see another take on the day from Peter, go here.

 

 

 

 

 

Northwestern Nevada: day two

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For another take on this trip and some beautiful pictures, be sure to check out Peter Kuhlman’s blog. Really! Day one is here and here. My version of day one is below. Now back to the story.

The sun woke us early even though it was still chilly. I peaked out of my bag just long enough to see that it had a nice layer of frost and that Peter was sitting up, taking a picture. Probably of the sunrise, but I wasn’t going to find out this early.  The sun got higher – but still pretty low – the temp got warmer, and we got up. Most of the clouds from yesterday were gone and the day looked very promising.

As we had our morning coffee and tea, looking over the Smoke Creek playa, everything was backlit and the morning was glorious.

We went for a walk up the closest canyon starting by walking through the backlit grass and sage. .

In the canyon, everything was glowing,

 

Especially the blooming sage. (Probably Salvia dorrii which is a mild hallucinogen when smoked. Backlit, it was pretty hallucinogenic without smoking.)

As we got further up canyon, we ran into pools of water and steeper rock.

 

And, as we walked up the canyon, we ran into pools of water and steeper cliffs. As an aside, I completely understand why most Arab flags are green. It is a color that is rare in the desert and it should be respected and honored. End aside.

 

When we had gone about as far as a couple of old men can do without any heroics, we turned around and wandered back to the truck. Back through the grass and lots of hidden rocks.

Then it was down the hill and on to Planet X. Except that – while driving down the dirt road – the steering seemed to lock up while trying to get around a rock. I backed up and tried again and the steering worked fine. Then it locked up again. Again, I backed up and everything was fine. This left me very worried and I was still worried after – at Bruno’s gas station and garage – a mechanic crawled under the front end and said everything was fine.

We pressed on to Planet X.

 

Planet X is a pottery manufacturer – somehow that is not a good descriptor and potter doesn’t seem to work, either, maybe potter and artists –  owned by Rachel and John Bogard. I stop by about once a year and they don’t really know me, but Michele spent a week there taking a painting class, so they sort of know me through her.  We, also, had to stop by because Planet X is one of the obligatory sights and because they always have a big sale around Memorial Day.   And they make some very nice pottery. Here is one of their pots with whole wheat pasta and roasted tomatoes.

 

To be continued….and check out Peter’s Blog for a different take on the trip and some very nice pictures.

On the Road to northwestern Nevada

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Sunday morning, I left to meet Peter Kuhlman  at Bruno’s Country Club Casino in Gerlach, Nevada. There are several ways to get to Gerlach from the Bay Area and they all start out on the freeway and end up on gravel or seldom used tarmac. Taking pictures of the drive to northern – actually northwestern – Nevada – explains it all. For the first half or more of the trip, when I want to take a picture, I have to find an overcrossing where I can pull off the highway; then, as I get closer, I pull over to the side of the road to take a shot; then, when I am almost where I want to go, I just stop in the middle of the road – get out – and take the picture.

But, way before I stopped in the middle of the road, I ran into snow going over the Sierras. Snow in the Sierras on Memorial Day – come on! In retrospect, I should have expected snow – it was raining the Bay Area the day before – but it did surprise me. Still, it wasn’t sticking so I decided to take a backroad route that Mike Moore had recommended. I got off the freeway at Truckee. It was a great suggestion, taking me through Sierraville California and by Sierra Vally for the first time.

 

It continued to snow all the way to Sierraville but the snow never stuck and, then, I then dropped below the snow line and skirted Sierra Valley. Watching shower spots – for lack of a better word – move across the valley. As I left the valley, I began to get concerned. The snow ahead of me looked lower than I expected.

On Saturday, the weather forecast was for possible snow on Saturday and Saturday night in Gerlach, but clearing on Sunday. I was confident that it was accurate, loosing my confidence only as the roads got narrower and less used. I kept looking ahead where it was snowing and thinking of alternate plans to camping out in the – in my now active imagination – rain or snow, or worse, cold, almost snow.

Finally, just as I was getting to Sand Pass overlooking the Smoke Creek Desert, the sun broke out.

At Sand Pass, I looked ahead and saw lots of blue sky and even more running down the west side of the Smoke Creek, past an old, long abandoned, farm; I was sure the weather would work out. On to Bruno’s to meet Peter.

But Peter wasn’t at the bar where I was sure I would find him because I was a couple of minutes late. At the bar, I nursed a drink; sure that Peter was going to show up any minute. Finally, an hour after our meeting time, I got worried and went out to check my phone. When I had arrived at Bruno’s, I had checked all the cars in the parking lot for Idaho plates, what I hadn’t noticed was the car parked across the street, parked the other way. It turned out to be Peter, waiting for me outside of Bruno’s watching the road for my arrival. My backroad entry with 60 miles of gravel roads brought me in the back way and had had thrown him off.

After loading up the Range Rover, we drove back to the Smoke creek and then up a dirt road that took us through fields of wild grasses – all backlit  – to a great spot overlooking the desert. Dinner was marinated chicken thighs  from Ikeda’s Country Market with roasted potatoes and greens.

After sunset, it turned even colder and we climbed into our bags early for a – hopefully – nice sleep.  To be continued….

 

 

 

 

Israel in the West Bank

Americana, Current Affairs, Politics, Uncategorized

Listening to Bibi Netanyahu’s speech – OK, not really listening to it, just listening to stuff about it like Congress fawning over him – just puts me in a rage. I grew up in a family that thought Israel was the greatest. Bringing democracy to the heathens, making the desert bloom, blah, blah, blah. I am not sure when I started to think that Israel was doing evil – maybe it started when I realized that Making the desert bloom. was another way of saying that We are using everybody’s water, including the Palestinians, it was almost certainly by the time I learned that Palestinians children were being killed at a rate of over seven times that of Israeli children1 – but I do now. And I don’t use that term lightly.

For sure, I don’t use that term lightly. Using it opens me up to too many charges. Charges of being a self hating Jew; charges of being an anti-Semite. Because anybody who disagrees with Israel must be an anti-Semite. It puts me in the company of alot of haters that I find abhorrent. But – the bottom line is – what Israel is doing and what they have been doing is evil.

I don’t think that Americans have any idea what is going on with the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and I don’t think we want to know.

It’s not just that the Israelis are building settlements in the west bank, it is – to protect those settlements – that they have to control Palestinian movement and access in the West Bank. Like all occupiers, to stay safe, the Israelis have to completely dominate and control the Palestinians. They have to maintain a full press occupation of the West Bank. Of course that leads to harassment both institutional and ad-hoc.  Alain Salomon and Katia Solomon have a Op Ed in the New York Times that gives a chilling description of going through an Israeli checkpoint near Ramallah. They say As we entered this narrow space I looked at the barbed wire further on. We are Jewish, and began to weep. How was it possible that our own people, who have gone through such suffering, can inflict this ordeal, intended to humiliate and intimidate another people?

Towns like Hebron have been turned into virtual jails.

And – very importantly – what Israel is doing will lead to failure for Israel. Thoughtful Jews like Emily Hauser and Rabbi Brant Rosen know that as do a huge number of Israelis in Israel. It is sad that our Congress doesn’t seem to.

1. According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Interestingly – but depressingly – the American Press reports those killings at a ratio of about seven times – for the New York Times – to twelve times – for ABC Television -more for the Israeli children so we dobn’t know more Palestinians are being killed.