Category Archives: Wilderness

Lamarc Col, Muir Pass, Mt. solomons, Charybdis, Mt. Goddard, Echo Col, December, 1976

Posted on December 28, 2014 by gymnosperm

  We had fallen in love with the moonscape of Muir Pass and the improbable hut there while hiking the John Muir Trail in 1966. No vegetation besides hardy buckwheats and lichen can be seen in any direction from this … Continue reading →

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Wild Rogue

Posted on June 25, 2014 by gymnosperm

It had been fourteen years since last running the wilderness section of the Rogue river with my two younger kids then chest high. The first June of the new millennium saw very high flows and few other boaters. The river … Continue reading →

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On Being a Sheepherder and an Ignoramus

Posted on May 11, 2014 by gymnosperm

Most of us these days have never herded sheep. It is an ancient human occupation that afforded lots of time for contemplation and gazing at the stars. The reverie was punctuated by emergencies and predators and the mystique of living … Continue reading →

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Circumnavigating Mount Whitney

Posted on October 3, 2013 by gymnosperm

In five decades of mountaineering in the Sierra Nevada, the wilderness has changed from a wild west dominated by cowboys and pack trains to a highly regulated theme park with lotteries for permits to visit the most desirable locations. With … Continue reading →

Posted in Anthropology, Geography, Geology, Mount Whitney, Wilderness | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment

The Alpine Zone and the Colonization of Land, or Plants Make Dirt

Posted on August 24, 2013 by gymnosperm

There have been several concepts that have no predictive value in an era of reductive science, but nonetheless contain poetic truth. One of these is the notion that the atom is a microcosm of the solar system, the galaxy, and … Continue reading →

Posted in Biology, Geography, Geology, History of Life, Metaphor, Wilderness | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

El Patron, El Sol

Posted on April 2, 2013 by gymnosperm

This is what I will be looking like soon. The wages of a Nordic phenotype who spent his life in the sun. Not so much at the beach, although there too when I was younger. High altitude sun, Radon and … Continue reading →

Posted in Anthropology, Biology, Wilderness | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Half Dome then and Now

Posted on February 25, 2013 by gymnosperm

The first time I went up the cables on Half Dome was in July, 1974. I was skiing the Muir Trail during Christmas vacations, hiking it for the second and third times during the summers, and going to school in … Continue reading →

Posted in Half Dome, Wilderness | Tagged , , | 3 Comments