Category Archives: California

Picking Charlotte up and dropping Another Enigma off

July 2, 2013Art, California, FamilySteve Stern

Saturday, I had the opportunity to go with Samantha to pickup Charlotte from a week of Summer Camp. It was forecast to be well over 100° in the Valley and I was worried about the heat, but I needn’t have. Samantha picked me up at the BART station in Richmond, and we drove up to Mountain Camp in her Audi SUV.

Sort of as aside, Audi names their SUV series Q and that always makes me think of World War I Q-ships. During WWI, the British started hiding guns in freighters to surprise German raiders and they called them Q-ships. Over the years, I have taken it to mean a car that is disguised as being milder than it really is. End of sort aside.

I first discovered Yosemite – as an adult, not a child in tow – in my mid-twenties and drove there, alot, one year, especially in the summer. Crossing the Valley, at night, in an un-air conditioned car, stopping to cool off at a Giant Orange every hundred miles was awful. We would arrive worn out. In 2013, we effortlessly glided through the Central Valley in a cocoon of exactly the temperature we wanted. 68° for Samantha and 72° for me.

The camp is at 5500 feet and at that elevation, it was a nice, warm, summer day. Now, I have no idea what I was expecting, but I was surprised at how similar Mountain Camp was to the camps I was sent to as a child and, much later – while in college – spent a summer as a councilor. The same single wall cabins, dirt trampled by hundreds of kids each summer, but this camp also had a ropes course and a climbing wall – a climbing wall that my Granddaughter climbed to the top of – and fencing instructors, and a Lake. A real Lake, a big Lake, with sailboats and ski-boats.

After she showed us around camp, Charlotte said goodbye to her councilor, Chris,

and we drove back through the baking Central Valley, in perfect comfort, to the Bay Area. When we got to Berkeley, where I got back on BART, it was a pleasant 80°. It wasn’t until I got home that I ran into the heat that, I read, is blanketing the West.

I bought a painting of Mike Moore‘s, Another Enigma of the Sheldon Range, before I ever met him. At the time, I was living in an old farm house in Los Altos Hills and Another Enigma hung the end of the entry/livingroom, when I moved, it moved to the wall in my office. Then Another Enigma stayed with Samantha in Berkeley for a while, and now, it moved in with us at 19 LeRoy where it is in the bedroom.

Now Mike and his wife Linda Fleming are having a major retrospective in Santa Fe and Another Enigma is going down there to be in the show. But first we had to get it to their home in Benicia where it will be loaded on the truck to Santa Fe. I rented a van, loaded the painting and drove to an old Art Deco building where Mike and Linda have made a home in a former brewery. It is a great space filled with art and hard to not just wander around in awe.

We dropped off Another Enigma of the Sheldon Range where it was reunited with some old friends and some new acquaintances.

Then it was back home where the heat is still going on.

Fremontia

April 17, 2013Around home, CaliforniaSteve Stern

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.

Death Valley Easter Trip 2013: some other Views

April 15, 2013California, Camping, Death Valley, PhotographySteve Stern

^{JR on the Eureka Dunes by Coco Gonzo}

Last Saturday, Michele and I joined JR at Gina and Courtney’s house for a spectacular dinner followed by their slide show of our Death Valley Easter Trip. Actually, I should say slides shows because we also saw JR’s shots and Michele’s pictures. The slide shows were about an hundred times more fun than it sounds.

First off everybody’s trip was slightly different, meaning that everybody’s point of view was both literally and figuratively different. I wasn’t where Courtney was to see the shot of JR and, if I had been, I might have been looking somewhere else. I know I was looking somewhere else when Gina was demonstrating how windy it was at the edge of Ubehebe Crater.

^{Gina leaning into the wind by Coco Gonzo}

Second, nobody got much in the way of shots of themselves, I didn’t, and it was fun to see pictures of myself (some of them, some were pretty horrifying at how fat I have become).

^{Replacing the top radiator hose by JR}

^{Steve leaving Red Wall canyon by JR}

While I was fretting over the waning light as we crossed over the last Chance Range on our way to camp in North death Valley Wash, JR was looking at the great view down onto Crankshaft Junction.

^{Looking down at Crankshaft Junction from a pass in the Last Chance Range by JR}

He got higher than anybody on the Eureka Dunes and caught the sinuous road leading down to the dunes from the North Death Valley Road.

^{From the highest ridge at Eureka Dunes by JR}

And, on his early morning walks, JR saw and photoed every sunrise and even photoed himself seeing the sunrise.

^{JR from Lake Hill, Upper Panamint Valley by JR}

Lastly, this was a special trip and it was fun to re-live it through the eyes of other people who were on the trip.

Death Valley Easter Trip 2013: Going Home

April 11, 2013California, Camping, Cars, Death ValleySteve Stern

After coming down from Red Wall, we drove to Stove pipe Wells to pick up a couple of beers and then over Towne Pass – 4950, or so, feet – to the Panamint Valley and up the Lake Hill Road to camp in the dark. I’m only calling it Lake Hill Road because that is what the Park Offroad map calls it, but Michele and I used to call it the North Panamint Road and, for awhile, I favored the War Eagle Mine Road after the mine at the end. Anyway, it is an easy road to drive in a car, even in the dark, and offers lots of flat – if somewhat exposed – places to camp, so setting up in the dark is close to effortless. Our last dinner out was a crisp celery salad by Michele and Gina and hearty lentil stew by Courtney and JR (seen here heating the water before starting) .

I woke up the next morning about the same time as JR (6 AM, or so). JR went for a hike up Lake Hill for his morning constitutional and I sort of meanderingly packed the cars while Michele, Gina, and Courtney slept in.

We were on the road early, waiting until we got to Lone Pine – in the shadow of the Sierras, or what would have been the shadow except that it was morning and the Sierras were to our west – for breakfast.

Then we started north, driving along the Sierra Nevadas. Since we left Minden, Nevada, the elephant in the car – if that is possible with a car full of liberals – has been my poor, abandoned, Range Rover. When ever we had a cell phone signal – which was rarely – I tried calling the garage where it had been towed but all I got was an answering machine. Now that we were back in civilization, I was able to get through.

The poor baby was at Hollar’s Automotive And 4 Wheel Drive and Mr. Hollar said that he did not have good news. He had run a block test to see if I had exhaust gases leaking into the cooling system, which would indicate a blown head gasket, and the poor Rover failed. We are talking about $2,500 failed! I wasn’t really surprised, although I was shocked, three hose failures in a couple of miles indicated something serious is probably wrong. I asked him if it was even worth fixing and he said Well, it depends on how much you love it. My first thought was that anybody who would say that was a pretty good guy to work on a car I did, in fact, have real feelings for.

At some point during the trip, I think just after we abandoned the Rover, Courtney said something along the lines of That Rover put us all through this so it could get to a good repair shop and now it has found it. It reminded me of a similar comment by a fellow Obama campaign worker in 2008, while we were running tallies on voter contacts, I think God made us suffer through Bush so we could get Obama. Both sentiments seem improbable, but then I think of the quote of $4,000 to $7,000 I just got for the same work done here in the Bay Area; I think of how different our country has become under Obama than it was just ten years ago under Bush; I think of all the places the Rover could have blown a head gasket; and I think, Well, maybe they are right.

Part One: Here

Part Two: Here

Part Three: Here

Part Four: Here

Part Five: Here

Death Valley Easter Trip 2013: Red Wall Canyon

April 9, 2013California, Camping, Death Valley, Evolution, PhotographySteve Stern

I woke up early on our last full day in the Death Valley area and went for a short walk. It looked like everybody else was sleeping in and the day was dawning cool and still.

When I got back to camp, I realized that JR hadn’t slept in, just his bag had. He was up earlier than me and had gone for a longer walk. Finally, everybody got up, JR came back to camp, we all caffeinated in our favorite way, and we drove down valley to the closest we could get to Red Wall Canyon. Red Wall is a canyon in the Grapevine Mountains at the top of the third fan from the left in this very much vertical exaggerated screen shot from Google earth. We parked at the bend of the yellow Scotty’s Castle Road.

Our path was up the fan to the reddest looking hole in the mountains. Walking up a fan in the desert is totally different from any other kind of hiking I can think of. Around where we live on the San Francisco Peninsula, or in a forest, or in the Sierras, on those hikes, the cars – usually in an authorized parking lot – disappear when we walk away because, following the trail, we walk around something like trees or a ridge. Walking up the fan to Red Wall, the cars just got smaller. We walk completely in the open across terrain that is both unendingly similar in all directions and radically different every ten feet. There is no trail or, even right path. The Park Rangers encourage hikers to spread out so as not to leave traces and everybody ends up walking their idea of the best way up.

When we stop, we collect, then we spread out again.

As we enter the canyon proper, we start finding shade and places to stop for lunch (lunch for most of us, a place to climb for Courtney).

Deeper into the canyon, the fan gets steeper and narrower.

I am not positive that it is a immutable law of nature but every canyon seems to be graced by a dryfall or a series of dryfalls. Of course Red Wall is no exception. First there was a small dryfall,- almost a step – then, for all practable purposes a dead-end. (I have read that the canyon becomes easy again after the harder dryfall but we turned around there.)

After the turn around, JR took our official group portrait, on a ledge, in front of a distorted rock outcrop.

The ledge, by itself is worth looking at.

These lines are layers of sediment that were laid down in a sea – probably shallow because the rock is red indicating the presence of oxygen – off the west coast of North America. Then, about 15 million years ago, give or take a month, something raised it up¹ so that the ancient seafloor has now become the mountains were are walking through.

Once we turn around, it is all down hill.

1. The something probably being an ancient Plate – the almost completely subducted Farallon Plate – which was once between the Pacific Plate and the North American Plate that are now rubbing together at the San Andres Fault zone.

By the time we get back on the open fan, the day has cooled and we are boogying along.

Very roughly, the fans are composed of flat areas with washed out gullies in between. Going down, it is much easier to see the flat areas which is often referred to as desert pavement and present easy walking. The combination of wind and time – lots of time – has sorted and flattened the rocks and they are often covered in a thin, dark, layer of manganese oxide called desert varnish.

Walking down the fan fast – and it is hard not to walk fast – is a walking meditation. Everything else falls away – atleast for me – but the next step and the direction of the step after that. The cool air, the ease of the walk, the canyon behind us, and the huge space ahead, all contribute to the meditation. It is both relaxing and exhilarating (that’s Gina and Michele in the center of the picture).

Then in the distance are the cars and all is right with the world (if you are into that sort of thing).

Part One: Here

Part Two: Here

Part Three: Here

Part Four: Here

Part Five: Here

Next: Going home here

Steve Stern's Fieldnotes from a Random Walk through Life (with pictures)

Category Archives: California

Picking Charlotte up and dropping Another Enigma off

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Fremontia

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Death Valley Easter Trip 2013: some other Views

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Death Valley Easter Trip 2013: Going Home

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Death Valley Easter Trip 2013: Red Wall Canyon

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