Return to Palli

Last year when Rural Ways was at Arapahoe Basin, we found that the best skiing was at Pallavicini.  Benson struck a pose for me under the double snag to left of Main Street (above).  When we were there today, the ONLY place to ski was at Pallavicini, so we went back.  Benson didn't like it much the first time around, but I convinced him to return by promising that I would make him famous with the camera.  Here he is under the double snags earlier today (below).  Wish him Happy Birthday, he's a leap year baby.

The Ultimate Narcissist

We don't do much resort skiing at Rural Ways anymore, but one of the trends I have noticed the past couple of times I've been out is the growing use of the helmet cam.  Today, Benson and I were at Breckenridge and we noticed a bunch of punks collecting footage of their exploits on some "blue square" and "black diamond" runs at the resort.  Um.  Is that fun to watch later?  It isn't really that much fun to watch right now.  Are you really going to upload it to U-tub, or whatever, simply to bore the world?  When I mentioned this to Benson, he explained (pictured above) that it might be OK if they were hucking 60 feet of air, but even that is only interesting one time.

Shortly after this discussion, I was skiing alone (while Benson explored the trees) when I noticed the world's ultimate narcissist.  This guy went past me on his snowboard, but instead of carrying the camera mounted to his helmet, he had it mounted on the end of a pole.  The pole was extended in front of him with the lens pointed backwards so that he could film himself face first as he poked down the run.  What are you doing?  Are you going to take that home so you can watch yourself watch yourself?  Surely not even the guy's mother will be interested in this video.  I guess the only thing that would be better is to wear the helmet cam, too.  Then you could watch yourself watch yourself watching yourself.

Lund, Utah

Lund, Utah used to be the Union Pacific Railroad station closest to Cedar City and some of the surrounding national parks.  A popular way to visit those parks 50, 70, or 100 years ago was often by rail and tour bus.  Lund was the starting point for the Utah Parks Company's bus tours of Zion, Bryce, and the Grand Canyon until, perhaps, the 1960s.  As a result, Lund was, for a time, something of a town.  There was a depot, a store, a gas station, and a few houses.  The railroad even stationed several of its employees in company houses out by the tracks.

When I stopped in Lund last week, it was obvious that only one structure was occupied.  I guess that makes it a ghost town.  The depot is gone; the store is still there, but is boarded up and sagging; and I wouldn't recommend arriving in Lund with an empty gas tank.  The very tidy and well built company houses still appear to be in good shape, but they have been heavily vandalized.  It is too bad.  There is not much to do in Lund, but I still like to imagine living there in the 1930s:  Watching the trains come and go, listening to the wind in the sagebrush, and enjoying the unobstructed views.

Starts

On 6 February, the seeds we ordered from J. L. Hudson arrived.  On 7 February, I started 36 plugs of mountain mahogany (Cerocarpus montanus) and 36 plugs of Palmer's penstemon (Penstemon palmeri).  The mountain mahogany seeds (pictured) were funny little javelin shaped things with a curlicue tail.  I planted one seed per plug with the point down and the curlicue up.  The penstemon seeds were non-descript black lumps no larger than the head of a pin.  I liberally scattered up to five or six penstemon seeds per plug.  As of today (19 February), I have about five germinants, all mountain mahogany.

On 9 February, I started 31 plugs of pinyon pine (Pinus edulis).  They are supposed to be relatively easy to germinate, but nothing has sprouted yet, ten days later.  On 16 February, I started 36 plugs of sweet marjoram (Origanum majorana) and attempted to do the same with 36 plugs of Greek oregano (Origanum heracleoticum).  Unfortunately, I made an error opening the packet and the oregano seeds were so tiny that I lost them.  My only hope is that some of them were lost on the plugs themselves.  I'll have to wait to see if anything germinates from that side of the flat.

In this game, patience is a virtue, and I certainly need to wait a few weeks before providing a full germination report.  The problem is that Valerie planted a bunch of stuff in a flat next to mine around the same time as I did.  As of last count, she had 66 germinants.  There has never been any doubt that she is more talented than I am, but how do the seeds know that?  My only consolation is that I gave her the sunnier window and a little bit of a head start.  That way, if I have a complete germination failure, I can always play the martyr.

Driving in the Snow

When we left for Brian Head yesterday afternoon, the roads were dry.  We drove to the top of the neighborhood on the Navajo side of the resort and started skiing through the woods.  As we started skiing, the skies started snowing.  We messed around for about an hour and by the time we were ready to head back to the truck, the snowing had become a pelting.  I mean, it was coming down at two-inches an hour.  It was like being on the losing side of a cosmic snowball fight.  Back at the truck, the roads were no longer dry.  In fact, on the way out of the neighborhood the low visibility coupled with the fresh snow on the ground made for some true winter driving conditions.

Unfortunately, true winter driving conditions and the typical Brian Head patron are not a good mix.  Between the resort and The Homestead (~12 or 15 miles) we encountered five accidents, two cops, two plows, an ambulance, and a paramedic.  It was mayhem.  We stopped twice to offer help.  The first stop was for a non-English speaking couple from San Diego.  They were trying to find their lodge, but were spending most of the day in a snow bank.  I helped free the vehicle a couple of times, but gave up after they buried it for the third time.  (It was one of those silly new sport ute looking things.  I have no idea what those things are, but it was totally not made for driving outside of a warm parking garage.)  We got the folks into the Chev and delivered them to their lodge.  I went in and talked to the front desk guys about the location of their vehicle and asked if they could send someone up for the luggage.  They assured me that they would take care of their guests.

The next group (of three vehicles) had one large jeep high-centered on a huge snowbank and the other two vehicles stopped on the road for fear of moving.  They asked if I could tow them off the snowbank.  I might have tried, but it would have been an uphill drag and one of the guys wisely noted that I would probably end up slipping without tire chains.  So, they waved us off, which was probably a good thing.  A few minutes later, on the steepest part of the descent, we fetched up behind a slow moving sherriff with his lights flashing.  He stopped, along with another cop, at what appeared to be a pretty bad accident.  They were fully blocking the downhill lane, and I waited for them to clear the oncoming lane and signal that it was safe to go around.

There were a couple of vehicles on the hill behind me and I soon discovered that if you are driving a Cadillac Escalade from California none of the rules about emergency vehicles apply to you.  As I slowed to a stop and started to get out of the Chev to communicate with the sherriff, the Cadillac pulled into the oncoming lane, passed all of us, barreled down into the cops and skidded past on the opposing shoulder.  (Unfortunately, Ellen immediately heard some less than edifying commentary from me about a certain kind of person, and I heard Valerie explaining that I was stressed.)  It is one of those situations where you shouldn't actually hope that someone will meet their demise, but you sort of hope that someone will meet their demise.

In any case, we made it home in about an hour, and were amazed to find the road snow-packed all the way to Parowan.  There are probably two lessons to be learned from our apres ski adventure.  One, it may be poor judgment on my part to stop and try to help people.  I may be adding risk to what my family is experiencing, and sometimes you just really can't mitigate the effect of people's behavior no matter what you do.  Two, exceedingly foolish, not to mention dangerous, behavior is directly correlated to the fanciness of the California sport ute.  The more expensive the vehicle the more likely it is that its operator will be unfamiliar with the normal consequences of their own foolishness.

The Books of Boyce

I was in a bookstore the other day standing in front of a rack of books when I suddenly thought of Ronald Boyce.  Boyce is gone now, but I remember Dee Benson saying that when Boyce was working at the federal district court in Salt Lake, the other judges would save themselves (or their clerks) a trip to the library by stopping in to ask him to help resolve a case.  He was, according to Benson, a comprehensive encyclopedia of criminal law—and not just American law either, but he knew details from every jurisdiction in the world.

That story may be apocryphal, but it is certainly true that when Professor Boyce passed away his widow donated his entire personal library to the University of Utah.  When the library staff arrived to catalog the collection, they discovered that the Boyce home was bulging with books—there were tens of thousands of volumes.  I remember thinking at the time that the total equaled one book for every day of Boyce's life.  Even more remarkably, his family testified that he'd read every book.  I'd hate to think that the house was full of books only about crime.  Better to think that Boyce was a polymath, and that he read books about everything there is.  Anyway, in his honor, I've added his textbook to my reading list for the month.  Boyce may have had it memorized, but I'll need to see the actual printed pages.

The Prototype

Those who read Rural Ways each day know that we have a big problem with deer.  Actually, deer are probably an issue everywhere, but at The Homestead we would almost certainly lose EVERY living green plant to the deer during the spring and fall browsing seasons.  So, something must be done.  We've sprayed, and covered, and, of course, fenced.  Nothing has been fool-proof . . . until now.  Pictured above is the prototype of a new weapon in the war against deer.  As you can see, it is primarily a defensive weapon, but defensiveness is really our only option.

The prototype tree cage is six feet tall and two feet wide.  It was built in two hinged pieces, which are bolted together.  Remove the bolts and the two sides fold flat.  Thus, it can be stored during the summer when the herd has migrated to the plateau.  In the picture, the prototype is not anchored, because the ground is frozen, but when properly deployed this fall, it will have at least two anchors so that it cannot be blown or pushed over.

The only problem with the prototype is its cost.  The materials alone were around $50, and then it took several hours to assemble.  That might be fine if we had just one small tree to protect, but we've got at least a dozen.  The task now is to move from the prototype to a production model that, ideally, can be built for about half as much.  Most of the tree cages that we used this past fall were ad hoc constructions using old fencing wire.  Those are far cheaper to deploy, but they are fiddly, ugly, and difficult to disassemble.  Hopefully we can improve on the old model without spending thousands.

Trees with Bad Character

At Rural Ways we have some experience with tree cutting and removal.  Unfortunately, most of the experience has been bad.  Nevertheless, Tiger recently asked me to help him remove a tree at his house.  He was aware of my poor track record, but must have felt that I had learned from my mistakes.  The tree in question, pictured above, was a relatively small silver maple (Acer saccharinum), and Tiger first asked me for my opinion of the tree.  It was a request that he soon regretted.  I went on at length about the poor form, weak wood, and shallow roots of silver maple trees in general, and of this silver maple tree in particular.  Tiger soon noted that he'd got my point, and he started the chainsaw to drown me out.  From that time on, things went pretty well.  We had the tree on the ground in less than an hour, and there was no bodily injury or property damage to speak of.  As I packed up my tools to go home, however, I couldn't resist mentioning that I thought Tiger would be much happier with his life now that the tree—with all of its poor character traits—was gone.  I'm sure he just rolled his eyes.

Seed Production and Dissemination

We were skiing through a stand of spruce seedlings on the plateau the other day and I was suprised to see many of them bearing cones.  They struck me as too juvenile to be engaged in seed production.  So, I looked it up.  The book answer is that these spruces can be so slow growing as to be 40 years old by the time they reach five feet in height.  Many of these have not reached five feet, and I doubt that many of them are 40 years old either, but they may not be as young as they look.  In any case, can my alert reader name the species based on the size of the cone?  The answer is here.