This time of year, our backyard is dominated by our Fremontodendron californicum, known to Michele and myself as our Fremontia. It is a native of California but I don’t think that I have ever seen one in the wild (actually, I have not seen very many in captivity). The tree – bush? – is actually much more dominating than the pictures show, let me try again.
It is really rough and stickery up close and I am always amazed at how easily the squirrels negotiate it. Today, the bees were busy tending the Fremontia and
My preference is to drive to the desert, especially the deep desert, during the day. I like watching the subtle change from green to brown, and red, and yellow; from Civilization to the Great Empty. (About twenty years ago, I dropped Michele off at work and drove all day to Page, Arizona, to meet her flight that night. I had a deep feeling of where I was while Michele, having just got off the plane, wasn’t even sure which way was north.) On this trip, we left Bishop at about 10:00 PM after a late dinner and drove south to Big Pine where we turned east to drive into the White Mountains just as a large moon was rising.
When we entered Eureka Valley, it was bright enough to get a sense of the vastness of the valley – really a graben – but not bright enough to easily spot the camping spot I had planned on. What we did find worked great and, after a leisurely breakfast we went south about ten miles on the Eureka Dune Road to the Eureka Dunes (duh!).
JR had already been up since before sunrise and had gone for a long walk and his enthusiasm, added to Gina and Courtney’s. I have been going to the desert – mostly Death Valley, but also The Mojave National Preserve, Anzo Borrego State Park, Northwestern Nevada, and assorted other places like the Moroccan Sahara – since the early 70’s when Iver Iverson introduced me to Death Valley and I Had a religious conversion as my very ex-wife so disparagingly put it. Michele and I got married there. But it has been hard to get friends to share my wonder, my fervor.
Over the years, I have tried, dragging people there with promises of subtle wonders. Their reactions have ranged from This is nice, let’s do it again, I’ll call you, don’t call me. to Ugh? nice, I guess, but windy, to Where are the trees? to Can we go home now? ; but Gina and Courtney were the first people in a long time that caught the excitement that Michele and I share.
Meanwhile, back in Eureka Valley, the Eureka Dunes are the highest dunes in California – which may be akin to being the longest earthworm or heaviest crow, interesting but not very important – at 680 feet above the dry lakebed they sit in (they look smaller because the surrounding Last Chance Range towers over them).
We drove to the west side of the dunes, nearest the highest point and furthest from the crowded parking lot – it was packed, there must have been five cars – on the theory that we would climb to the top. I had climbed to the top, once, over twenty years ago where I ran into a guy who climbed to the almost-top with skis. He was going to ski down the steepest part, but it was a failure (for him, fun to watch for us). Everybody packed lots of water – as the temp was climbing – Gina and Michele brought snacks, and we set off across the dry lakebed to the dunes.
Sand dunes are caused by the wind (in the desert, atleast). The wind scours the desert, picking up sand and dust. On a very windy day, so much is in the air that we can’t see across the valley, but – as the wind bumps up against a mountain and slows down – it looses its carrying capacity, dropping its cargo of sand and dust. Over time – alot of time, one grain of sand at a time – the sand and dust has built a dune 680 feet high and, maybe, a mile long. The shape of the dunes is governed by the shape of the surrounding topography that is slowing down the wind so it has been pretty much the same since the invention of the camera.
When we got into the dunes, we began to see and feel their complexity. In some places, they were hard and in other places almost too soft to get anywhere. Here would be a pattern and over there a smooth wall. On the otherside of a ridge, a valley going all the way down to the lake bed.
And, as we climbed, the changing view of the Eureka Valley and the Last Chance range open up.
I stopped climbing first, choosing, after our snack break to sit on a nice warm ridge and take an afternoon nap while everybody else kept at it.
JR and Michele got the furthest, both of them – as far as I can tell – switching to barefoot sand-walking. At least they were both barefoot when they got back down to my level; JR reporting an equipment malfunction and Michele just seemed to like walking barefoot in warm sand. Then it was time to put the shoes back on, dust the sand from our butts – in my case, atleast – walk back to the cars, drive over the Last Chance Range to Upper Death Valley Wash, and find a place to camp.
For the final part – presumably – of Michele’s 2013 Birthday Extravaganza, we went to see Anne-Sophie Mutter at the, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill designed, Louise M. Davies Symphony Hall in San Francisco.
Before the performance, we went to a new – for us – Thai Restaurant, Lers Ros. It was a little bit of a shock with tastes and textures that were new to both of us (atleast with Thai food). I think the restaurant is the Thai equivalent of the introduction of new Hunan Chinese food into our cultural cuisinescape about 50! years ago. Up until last night, every Thai restaurant we have been to – even in Hong Kong – have been pretty much the same. Some were better than others, but all were rifts on an established theme. The food here is hotter and had more pickled veggies than we are used to in Thai food. It was more interesting than the satisfying comfort of the familiar and we want to go back.
Anne-Sophie Mutter is a German violinist we both love from her – our? – CD’s and she was accompanied by the pianist, Lambert Orkis. But, for Michele and me, Mutter was the reason we were there and she didn’t disappoint. We sat in the $15 seats behind and above the stage and, I think, they were better than most of the seats in the house (except that they are benches and they did get harder over time). We had a great time – Anne-Sophie Mutter was great, Lambert Orkis was a more than pleasant surprise, and the Skidmore, Owings & Merrill building just gets better with age – and, because we do stuff like this so infrequently, it felt very celebratory.
The other day I was meeting a friend for lunch, and I was planning on wearing a pair of jeans that I had just washed for the occasion. But, when I had to leave, my jeans – in the drier – were still damp around the edges. They were warm so I decided to put them on and let them finish drying in situ.
Driving to lunch, in the car, in my damp jeans, I started thinking about my Uncle Wilhelm von Borstel, my maternal grandmother’s younger brother. He was 6’6″ tall and was known as Little Bill because his father’s name was also Wilhelm and stood 6’3″. He was Big Bill and, of course his son became Little Bill even when he grew taller than his father. To me, uncle Wilhelm was more myth than real person.
Typically, around an hundred and twenty years ago, European monarchs had special guards. Wilhelm II, the emperor of Germany – Kaiser in German – had a group of bodyguards called the Garde du Corps Potsdam. To be in Corps, one had to be – at least minor – royalty and over six feet tall. My Uncle Wilhelm qualified and, as his family was impoverished as well as royal, he ended up in the the Potsdam Guards (as my family called it).
One of the stories that I heard growing up was that while Uncle Wilhelm was in the Potsdam Guards, he had to get up at four or five – AM – to put his uniform on. Still damp! The uniform was white suede and – as it dried – it became form fitting. Driving in the car, it didn’t seem like a great way to start the day. Maybe occasionally, in the middle of the day, like I was doing, but not every day. Not at five in the morning. On the other hand, at 6’6″ tall with black-over the knee-boots and a black leather breastplate over the tight, white-suede, cat-suit, Little Bill must have cut an imposing figure. Especially when he was wearing his gold helmet with an eagle on top.
I think that my mother was slightly in love. She was certainly in love with the image: the strikingly good looking young man in the even more impressive uniform. When I turned 16, we took a trip to see him. I think it was a trip in which my mother – who didn’t graduate from highschool – planned to show off her heritage. Uncle Wilhelm had come to the United States after World war I and even though I had met him a couple of times when I was very young, I really didn’t remember him. He was now living in Alturas, about as far north and as far east as we could drive and still be in California.
When we got to Alturas, he didn’t really live in town, but in a trailer, alongside the highway, a little out of town. Oh! and with a huge hole between his trailer and the highway. It turned out that the State was enlarging the highway and he had dug a hole and moved the dirt to a pile behind his trailer. His plan was to sell the dirt back to the State to augment his day job which was, apparently, poaching geese. When we got there, Uncle Wilhelm von Borstel greeted us wearing a pair of loose overalls with the fly unbuttoned and he didn’t change for our afternoon get together. It turned out that he didn’t really like to get up early to put on those damp clothes afterall.
(The picture is Wilhelm looking dashing in his uniform, I don’t think my mother kept any pictures of him, in overalls.)
I went to my ablationist, yesterday and he told me that my ablation procedure is a success and my heart is no longer fibrillating. I realize that I am having a hard time believing – accept may be more accurate – that my heart really has been repaired and I have no idea why (maybe I have become attached to the problem, I hope not). The header that I first wrote said My atrial fibrillation ablation seems to be a success and I had to force myself to make it more positive. Either way, I celebrated by going for a walk at one of my favorite walks, Russian Ridge.
I have been reading John McPhee’s Annals of the Former World about his discovery of the new geology. Like me, he went to college before the plate tectonics revolution and bumped into it while reading about something else (in my case, I was reading about evolution). The last section of the book is Assembling California and, over the last 40 years, the understanding of California’s geological history has changed even more than California has.
Geologists now know that over the last 60 million years, or so, California has been assembled from a series of island arcs (that once were parts of the ocean floor that had been uplifted and exposed above sea level). These island arcs – think Japan against Asia – are being swept into the North American Plate and attaching themselves to North America. (In the process, the Sierra Nevadas got pushed up by the heat generated from the collision.) So, the land that I like to walk at Russian Ridge is the same layers of materials that make up the Pacific ocean floor. It is also to the east of the San Andreas fault, so I am walking on the Pacific Plate, not the North American Plate.
I like that.
I like the walk, too. It starts by slowly climbing around soft, grassy, hills. Last year’s grasses are dry and bent over in clumps in even patterns and this year’s grasses are green and growing between the clumps.
When I cross into the forested area, everything changes.
With the trees covered in moss – that is bright green and growing like crazy – and Spanish Moss which is really a member of the Pineapple family (Bromeliaceae). Then it is back into the sunlight and walking – with a view – back to, the car. An easy two and one half miles.
This time of year, our backyard is dominated by our Fremontodendron californicum, known to Michele and myself as our Fremontia. It is a native of California but I don’t think that I have ever seen one in the wild (actually, I have not seen very many in captivity). The tree – bush? – is actually much more dominating than the pictures show, let me try again.
It is really rough and stickery up close and I am always amazed at how easily the squirrels negotiate it. Today, the bees were busy tending the Fremontia and
Precious Mae was busy at the watering hole.
