August Album

Usually my season doesn't start until September.  Mid-May to mid-September are generally indoor months for me.  I try not to go out much during that period.  My outdoor season doesn't usually start until sometime after Labor Day.  I was, however, looking around a little at this past month, August 2015.  I ended up walking almost 49 miles in the back-country, and I saw a few good places.  I made a little album.

Yesterday's Bristlecone

I was out yesterday looking around.  It was too hot to hike or anything.  But when I got to the base of this little ridge, I went up anyway.  There was some nice old limber and Douglas fir on the way, and at the top, a bristlecone forest.  I know.  I'm always posting about bristlecone.  But, it's funny, the stuff follows me around.  This one came with a view to the east, a view of a storm building over the Monument.

Bear Valley

I was in Bear Valley the other day.  It is well known for its role as a link in the Old Spanish Trail.  It is not difficult to see why traders from Santa Fe liked it:  It is a good place to recruit the stock after several long weeks on the hoof.  I started wondering what Fray Escalante thought when he got there, so I went to look at his journal.  Unfortunately, the Fathers never saw Bear Valley.  When they got to modern day Scipio, they turned west and made their way to approximately the modern town of Delta, where they turned south again.  To reach Bear Valley from Scipio would have required that they continue south along the Sevier, with the Pavant to the west.

Five Hundred

I'll be the first to admit that greatness is not merely a matter of output, of sheer numbers.  Surely there have been prolific writers and voluminous publishers who have never been nominated for journalism's highest prizes.  So, I don't mean to say that this post—number 500—qualifies Rural Ways for the Pulitzer.  But, it is a fitting time—a rare milestone—to reflect on the quality of this newspaper. 

While the nomination of Rural Ways has not yet been submitted to the prize board, we feel that it is worth reviewing some of the standards set by Joseph Pulitzer.  To start with a couple of technical details, the Pulitzer committee will only consider newspapers that publish at least weekly and that adhere to "the highest journalistic principles."  Check and check.  Beyond that, the committee is looking for "original reporting, good writing, and visual storytelling."  Bingo.  Bingo.  Bingo.  I mean, talk about original:  This newspaper was the first to break the story of can trash in the Parowan Valley.  A story, I might add, that less courageous reporters have yet to take up.  As for good writing, there has been all that stuff about pine trees with Latin names and junk that should leave no doubt about the care and precision with which editors attack pieces filled with flabby useless details that make for long boring and incoherent stories about stuff that nobody would want to read about or anything.  Finally, the visual storytelling at Rural Ways is unmatched anywhere:  Where else can you go to find unique, hard-hitting images of fields and forests, but especially forests?  The visual story told by this post alone should be enough to put us on the short list.

All that being said, and in the interests of journalistic integrity, I should probably point out that the prize is not a sure thing.  Perhaps the biggest question mark involves the issue of how the jury views organizations with a small circulation.  While the number of early subscribers to Rural Ways quickly doubled, and then doubled again, to a confirmed audience of four, the numbers have subsequently tailed off, and the current readership may have fallen back to its core group of one.  As I say, and despite meeting all the other qualifications, it is hard to know what the Pulitzer committee will think of an organization boasting of a readership and a writership composed of the same individual.

 

Big Springs

I've written elsewhere about the era of Forest Service guard stations, and I won't say it all again, but along with serving as the homes and cabins of forest guards or district rangers, some facilities evolved into field stations or work centers.  Last week I was eating brats grilled by a colleague at the Big Springs "Administrative Center," which likely means that it is a place for administrators to conduct administration.  Actually, I don't know what it means, but, as one of the only locations on the Kaibab Plateau with a year-round water source, it has seen centuries of human use.  Many of the old cabins at Big Springs—while still in use by summer research and fire fighting crews—are on the National Register of Historic Places.  A few of them have even been turned into rental units, where members of the public can go for a vacation in the pines, although, to my way of thinking, and as you can see from the picture, the place is just too damned crowded to be restful.

NoGo

The northern goshawk (Accipiter gentilis) is a wide-ranging forest raptor, with habitat throughout the northern hemisphere—Europe, Asia, North America.  Despite its wide range, it is generally considered a sensitive species, with some concern about potential population declines due to loss of habitat.  For that reason, much forest management in northern goshawk (NoGo) habitat over the past several decades has focused on habitat maintenance and improvement.  Some of the best NoGo habitat in North America is found on the Kaibab Plateau in northern Arizona.  I was working there this week, collecting data in a ponderosa pine stand.  At one of my plots, and, as if on cue, I was visited by a local resident.  It squawked at me for 10 or 15 minutes until I went away.

Back to the Pavant

A couple of weeks ago I was in Red Canyon sampling from (mostly) dead bristlecone.  Yesterday I was asked to return.  There was a wildfire working its way up out of Newt Canyon and the incident command wanted to hold it on the ridge above Red Canyon.  They wanted the crews to cut fire line from the road to Beehive Peak, but didn't want them to cut these relatively unique "old growth" trees.  So, I went out with a colleague and flagged bristlecone from Willow Creek Road to the Beehive.

A Little Surprise

In the ski town of Brian Head, Utah, there are two hotels:  The Grand Lodge and the Cedar Breaks Lodge.  They are near each other, just up the road, I don't know, a tenth of a mile?  Between them there is a dense copse of aspen and subalpine fir.  And I mean dense.  A thicket.  You can't even see into the woods.  Yesterday EDO and I were walking between the two hotels.  (We were on the road, defending ourselves on the shoulder, because, this being America, there is no way to walk between motels—even if you can see one from the other.  If you don't want to be run over, you'd better drive.)  As we went, I noticed that the thicket wasn't quite as thick.  Pretty soon I could see a little opening, a path or an old road going up into the woods.  I told EDO that we should try the "short-cut."  She treated my suggestion with derision.  She seems to be under the impression that my "short-cuts" can sometimes turn into something more properly termed a "death-march."  In any case, we went up into the suddenly brightening woods.  We popped out into a little meadow.  With a pond.  And ducks.  There between the hotels.  In the woods.  Invisible from the road.  Invisible from the lodge.  Surrounded by aspen.  And grass.  A little pothole.  A little surprise.  The kind of thing that sort of makes my day.