Same old in the National Parks

The problems of American tourism became painfully clear in a three page article MSNBC ran, titled "National Parks (minus the crowds) - Avoid the taillights and tourists.” I thought perhaps the author would have some well worn advice told through sore feet at a coffee shop in Moab or Whitefish MN. Rather, the author simply reinstated the ironic dualism of cars and nature, apparently only flirting with the irony part. The article briefly circumnavigated the country’s National Park system, offering up the most stunning drives and at one point even daring the term “road trip heaven.” There were offhand mentions of a few hikes and at one point a suggestion of a whitewater motor boat tour.

Unfortunately, not much of the American way has changed since the days of Desert Solitaire. We need more than ever, the spirit of Edward Abbey to shock us out of the numbness of the road trip. Americans, and foreigners in growing number, still swarm our parks through the summer months with salivating cameras desperate to “do” Arches or Yosemite, to make the loop drive in a daze of window bound wonder, much like the author of MSNBC’s article suggests.

Of course to attempt a visit to a National Park for the sake of having “done it” is no different than a birder who chases a rare feather for the sake of crossing it off his list. Can anyone really appreciate a bird of paradise who has never contemplated the hardiness of the chickadee or perceive the ecosystem of the Grand Canyon without giving thought to the complexities of a backyard creek? We know by now that Americans, or anyone living in the age of information, craves constant stimuli, that there is little time to stray far from the car and get your shoes dirty. There will always be roads to help exhaust permeate our parks, that will never change. When Yosemite managers contemplated closing the famed valley to personal vehicles, using instead a fleet of buses, they met with a barrage of protest. People will always drive, as I have, to get to landscapes of interest. It seems only American to have the right.

So we have a demonstrated interest in nature - that’s a positive. Only we rush to see it as if quantity has once and for all trumped quality. The National Park system makes it easy for the masses to taste the experience much like the back cover of a novel offers a glimpse of the story. Perhaps we need a campaign of slow down pull over and park; pulling the “one less car” stickers off all the bikes, slapping them to our asses and forcing one another to go for walk. Maybe a scrape on the knee, or extending a hand to help a friend up a steep slope, or camping away from the car, or even seeing the track of a big cat can really help us wake up. Maybe we would go home and fill up the bird feeder or just take a long look at what our back yards once were.

Idaho

Sitting in the Coffee shop two blocks from home and upwards of two thousand sheep, flanked by collies and men on horseback just trained by for a full five minutes. Not even your suv can help you here.

Craters of The Moon National Monument

The Craters of The Moon National Monument. In the sixties NASA decided to use this huge expanse of lava as a test site for landing on the moon. Today 95% of the area is an undeveloped wilderness of hard lava that many would probably call a wasteland. But once you get out from the visitor center and leave the sinuous, perfect National Park style blacktop behind, a landscape of limber pine, sagebrush and some rare wild flowers reveals itself.
Here lava cooled so fast that the ripples hardened before flattening out. There are areas of seemingly slick rock lumpy, wavy, and flowing like a river in places. There are basins where lava seeped into and extensive caves given away sometimes by a small crack in the ground. The caves are old lava tubes where magma flushed under the ground like trains through a subway system, leaving behind cooled hollows that are now a maze of caverns.
We managed to find one set of caves that I'm sure is frequented by a lot of tourists. But nevertheless it required a semi belly crawl to enter, opening into a damp, spacious cavern we could walk into in some places. My room mate Kyung and another friend named Mike made the trip as well. This was far from spelunking but good fun anyhow.
Kyung atop some blue tinted magma flows. There were some tree molds in this area that looked like fence post holes in the lava that had never been filled. The lava surrounded the trees, burnt them to disintegration and cooled to leave hollows in their place.





This is what I love about Idaho. We came here on an afternoon after work and were in bed by eleven with an incredible set of images to remember.

Mill Lake

I have been itching to get into the high country. This hike to Mill Lake is only a half hour or so out of town but an absolutely beautiful ride under the Boulder the South face of the Boulder Range. The hike was a little sketchy due to the raging creek crossings, somehow managing eleven crossings on logs and one long jump without getting wet. Another AmeriCorps member named Mike went along for the ride.

Random Hailey Enviros

Rain here in Idaho has been the norm this year but we've managed to get out a bit. These pics are from Quigley Canyon and Church Farm not far from Hailey. Church Farm is a conservation easement the Land Trust holds.

Big Wood River

Last week when the sun briefly shone I traveled south to see the Big Wood River cut through a sage brush canyon . The area is called sheep bridge after the above, dilapidated and shottily refurbished suspension bridge. I only had the guts to go several feet out on it as it groaned, cracked and bent under each footstep. Planks had been nailed slopppily, provididng little structural support. I could see water between the cracks. Although the trail seemed well worn by hooves and it would seem could hold the bodies of many sheep, the sight of the dark, swelling water below and the visions of Indiana Jones kept me close to the bank.

Trout Friendly Police

In many respects this has become my life. The trout seem to bounce around the walls of my skull at night. During the day it can consume me, my phone calls, emails, thoughts, strategies and plans revolve around making friends with trout and the folks who collectively have the power to save or destroy them. The logo has me wrapped up like a burrito, a pig in a green blanket. I'm the trout friendly cop on the block, I can't help it. For the summer it is most of my mission. It has sent me smack into Idaho's Aspen or Jackson Hole--Sun Valley. I've seen houses and properties that haven't been imagined in most of America. Lofty modern homes with cement floors of radiating heat, decks overlooking the river, sprawling post and beam spreads whose floor plans are like drunken characters of the alphabet. There are outdoor covered porches, like lavish living rooms without walls, beautiful furniture, fire place and rustic mantle, elk hanging over the scene next to a silver grill station flanked by stainless steel counters, fresh flowers on the table to entertain the bees. And that's just standard. There are folks with native plants arranged in their gardens, water conscious drip irrigation systems to make any Portland homeowner drool in green envy. And then there is the "wretched excess" which people at the office call it. The mansions plopped on the canyons like expensive manure, astroturf green lawns, blue spruce twenty feet tall that came on huge trucks special ordered to the fancy of the second homeowner who may get the chance to pat themselves on the back for their foofoo lawn a few times a year. There is Arnold Schw....not gonna try's house with a pool like a lake sandwiched between public land-hummers, private jets, spas, violently overpriced restaurants as one reviewer put it. And still it can be flipped, and you have the hungry surface, the renters, the day laborers, the young and the interns like myself, loving that mountains stand so close and at that at every moment there are lessons on how and how not to live.

North Fork of the Big Wood River

Last weekend I was a little desperate to get into the mountains after nearly two weeks and a thousand miles of just sagebrush. The North Fork of the Big Wood River begins as a trickle on the alpine slopes of the Boulder Mountains. I didn't make it that far with the snow sheets still in place, but was able to lodge myself in the middle of nowhere quite easily. Only two signatures on the trail log were marked 09, and beyond an old avalanche slide that spread down from a steep slope to the river, no one had yet stepped.




I know this is predator scat of some sort, with the white hairs and all but cougar or wolf I cannot tell.

Greenhorn Gulch and Lyon's Marsh

The sun that blazed for the first week and a half in the Wood River Valley gave in to thunderheads, boiling in the mountains, advancing their anvils over the plains like the heads of curious snails. This past week has been Portland weather with a dash of thunder. It has made for a couple of interesting scenes, from the dramatic clouds above to the red-winged black birds I caught in a marsh near my house.

Gooding's City of Rocks

On a Friday morning I packed all my gear ready for the rocks. After work it was only an hour and a half through the Camas prairie and into the sage brushed Bennet Hills, separating the Prairie from the large depression of the snake river plain stretching east to west across Idaho like a thick smile.

Miles of sometimes rugged, rattling roads gave way to a view down a pillared canyon and then topping a ridge, an expanse of hoodoos and eroded rock, hunched or erect, twisted and broken, awash in sun, dotted the hills as they sloped off toward the river plain.

My plan consisted of backpacking into one of the canyons, but the quiet breeze and the occasional gurgle of a meadowlark left that classic feel of sagebrush desolation and I realized I was far enough out as it was. I used the truck instead as a base camp and tracked off toward the largest canyon I could see, flanked by yellow balsamroot which reached willowed bottoms of water aching to move.


The sun sank in a quiet fury the way it often does in the desert, ushered down with the occasional mourning dove and screech owl. I could sit on a rock perch and watch it for hours, while in the east the dark had taken hold. These are the kind of spots that make the west great. No t-shirts, shot glasses or National Park calendars here.