The Girls

Having spent most of the past week in the back-country with the girls, I have a good collection of nice pictures of Four Corners scenery.  I also have a few pictures of the girls themselves.  These are two of my favorites.  VSO says that EDO is "photogenic."  The same can be said of VSO, and the picture below comes after a pair of back-to-back, nine-mile, rough-country days.  I think she looks pretty good for a woman who turns 54 this week and has just covered 18 miles of rough country in the past 24 hours.

Ellen Ruin

When we are in the Four Corners, we do go to some of the parks, but we also like driving down secondary and tertiary dirt roads on map-blank sections of BLM land.  We get out and walk up quiet little washes, poking the dirt, listening to canyon wrens, and enjoying the quiet--away from the park mayhem.  Because the Four Corners was once widely and populously inhabited by pueblo-building people, we often notice artifacts on the ground and masonry on the walls.  Yesterday, we discovered, in a no-name wash, a very nice five-room ruin.  We nick-named it the Ellen Ruin because EDO was the hiker who wanted to go in that direction.  We explored the area around the ruin until sunset and then came back to make pictures in the last of the light.

Yucca

The bible—Woody Plants of Utah—says that there is one species of yucca in southwestern Utah (Yucca angustissima).  There are, however, three varieties (var. angustissima, kanabensis, toftiae).  The bible's authors say that field identification is difficult.  On the map, none of the three varieties occurs in Iron County.  Well.  I was definitely in Iron County when I made this picture.  And I didn't make the picture because I was surprised to see it, either.  I made it because I liked it.

Ski Days

It seems like our best ski days are always in December.  We get that early snow storm and a blast of cold weather:  For a week or two we are skiing every day.  Then we have the January drought and the February thaw.  Pretty soon everybody is dreaming of spring.  Anyway, December 2016 has been no exception.  We had the snow and the cold weather.  Yesterday afternoon I set a track at Five Mile.  I brought VSO up at dusk.  I showed her the track, then sat by the fire with a small flask of red wine.  She joined me later and—after spilling most of the wine—we talked about how winter was best between 20 and 30.  Fahrenheit, that is.

Plein Air Scenes

It has been a while since we featured fine art at Rural Ways.  But, we want to remind our reader that we continue to make it.  Actually, VSO has been painting flowers again, which she likes to do when she needs a holiday from the landscape.  Nevertheless, the Homestead remains full of plein air scenes like this one:  A view of the Escalante River canyon.

Lichen

Lichen is one of the few things about which I know little.  (I know about pretty much everything else, although sometimes I can't remember whether Kafka was Czech or German.)  When she was little, EDO liked to tease me by calling it "licha."  I knew she was mispronouncing it, but that was about all I knew.  We were out on a little ridge today and she pointed out how beautiful the lichen were.  She was right.  I think there are at least three of them in the picture, two of which are lighted like neon.  Is my reader a lichenologist?  Genus and species, please.

Sunsets

These short, pre-winter days often end with warm, glowing sunsets.  We climbed up to the edge of the Castle to see it yesterday.  As the sun went down behind us, the gibbous moon came out in front of us.

Sport Climbin'

(Warning:  If you are offended by blog posts featuring the back sides of pretty women, you will want to delete my cookies from your browser.)

For the other two of you, it should be apparent that, today, I let the girls do the work.  With VSO's help I set up a top rope on a little buttress west of town, then I made her do the belaying while I used the camera.  It was EDO's first sport climb.  She did OK.  She needs to relax a little and use her feet, but she tagged the chains.  And it wasn't easy.  Give her credit:  This was the real world:  Real wind, real sun, real rock:  And both parents shouting instruction.

Cmas Tree 2016

We got the tree today.  A big one.  VSO ran the camera so I could run the saw.  The bow saw.  It took some effort.  The thermometer said low 20s, and the wind chill may have pushed it towards the single digits, but by the time I cut through this monster and dragged it to the road I was sorry to be wearing a coat.

In Before Dark

At this time of year, the days are short.  If you aren't headed for the truck by 5p, you're going to be walking in the dark.  When it took us almost three hours of scrambling around in the back-country to find this spot (above) by 3:30p, I wasn't sure we could make it home in the daylight.  Luckily, VSO, who was feeling unwell, had started back an hour before, so it was only EDO that I had to worry about.  I needn't have.  She can hustle when she wants to.  We made it to the truck in 90 minutes.  Not only that, we stopped to open the shutter a few times (below) when the setting sun caught our eye.

Remake

I really wanted to remake this 75-year-old picture today.  But I had a little trouble finding it.  The valley is full of pavement and faux-lux "cabins" now.  One can hardly pull over without having some motorized Californian pushing you into the ditch.  I just could not find the corrals.  When I did, I knew I had it.

Black Friday

I rarely visit the Pine Valley Ranger District.  It has become too urban—loud, busy, and trashy.  But, I had some time this week and a couple of things I wanted to see.  I was on Little Pinto Creek at sunset today, and I was mostly by myself—just one other vehicle passed me on the way out.  I guess the loud people were in the shops, or at home buying things on the internet.  The biggest holiday in America.

Retirees

A number of years ago, we may have done some sport climbing, or gotten out the ropes for a little mild mountaineering.  But, when it stopped being fun, we retired.  What we do now is mostly fourth-class scrambling, with the occassional fifth-class move thrown in.  Unfortunately the waterfall we wanted to get past today required a little more commitment, so we were forced to retrieve the aging hardware in the hopes that it would protect us on a 40-foot wall.

I'm not a good lead climber, and we were going to give the sharp end to VSO, but she was a little uncertain about setting up an anchor at the top.  In the event, I went first.  It was inelegant, to say the least, but I eventually battered my way to the chains and got ready to belay the girls.  EDO came first, and we asked her merely to unclip; VSO followed and did the cleaning.  With all three of us up, we proceeded through a beautiful, narrow canyon.  After a quarter mile of hiking, we encountered a second waterfall that would have required an additional belay.  Given the hour, and our general inexperience, we called it a day.

We went back to the first fall and rappelled to the valley floor.  We hiked to the road in the growing dark, and I was relieved not to be on a second climb with darkness closing in.  On a side note:  I generally post pictures of EDO or of the beautiful canyons of southern Utah, but today I was compelled to feature VSO.  The sun was obscured and the canyon was dim, but she provided her own glow.  She was beautiful.  A super model.  Literally.  The camera was drawn to her.

Subterranean

Speaking of pictures.  I made many pictures last week, too.  Not on the ridge, but in the canyon.  These were two of my favorites.

Funny Pictures

It is funny how pictures work.  They are, after all, merely a record of a millisecond of light reaching the CCD (formerly the paper) through an aperture.  But, sometimes they tell a false story.  Like this pair:  EDO running across the stage:  An apparently fake backdrop of a southern Utah landscape with a goofy teenager crossing to the curtain at left.  But, of course, there is nothing actually funny or fake or false about it.  The two of us were simply out hiking the ridge.  Or were we?

Mistake Corrected

Last summer I found an aspen carving that had me stumped.  If my reader was paying attention, it seemed that I had discovered evidence of (potentially) an American visitor to the Markagunt in 1819.  This would have predated William Ashley, and many of the men he made famous, such as Jed Smith, who could not have been near the plateau prior to 1820 or so.  I was thinking a lot about the problem this week, and decided that I needed better data:  Tree age data for one.  So I went out there today to collect it.  I immediately discovered that I had simply made a mistake.  The date—1819—which seemed so clear, and so uniform, is actually composed of six digits, not four.  Here they are:  181903.  The 18 is the day of the month.  The year is 1903.  I see it now, and it seems obvious.  Unfortunately, while 1819 was too early for Ashley or Smith, 1903 was much too late:  They were both gone by 1840.

Windy Ridge

The wind was strong today.  Almost violent.  We climbed steeply to a ridge above the boy scout camp.  There, among another grove of bristlecones, we were buffeted to the point of drunken staggering.  But it was good.  Good views of the Markagunt and beyond.

Back Country Traffic

It took a fair amount of effort to reach this little slot canyon.  First we dragged a boat-load (literally) of gear up the Paria River.  Then, after a pleasant night in camp, we hiked a long way.  And that is all I'm going to say about it.  As you can see, the canyon has plenty of traffic already:  VSO, EDO, and Reader 3.

Ridge Bagging

EDO has, of late, become more goal oriented.  When we go out to the canyons she likes to get to the top.  A few years ago she might ask if she could stop to play with sticks and pine cones, and I would go to the top by myself.  Now, she is right on my heels.  Last week we went for a very serious thrashing but failed to reach the top—just could not pull it off and were stuck on exceptionally steep ground.  This week was similarly difficult, but we topped out on a very nice ridge, full of ancient trees:  bristlecone, Utah juniper, and two-needle pinyon.

Surrounded by Talent

As if living with one famous artist were not enough, EDO has decided that she wants to learn a little about line and perspective.  For her first lesson, she sketched the living room at The Homestead.  She captured it, don't you think?  For those who are not sure:  The sketch is above; the real thing is below.

Colonized

I wore these old Adidas running shoes in the creek one day in August.  Afterwards, I left them on the front porch to dry in the sun.  When I brought them into the house, I noticed that they were full of sticky spider webs that had collected leaves.  Today, I tried to clean out the leaves.  After some sweeping with a paper-towel and some banging on the side of the trash can, I reached in and felt something soft and rolly-polly.  It was a black widow spider.  Yikes.  I looked at the other shoe.  Inside was a second black widow, even larger than the first.  Word to the wise:  If your shoes have been on the porch, you may want to look them over before you put them on.

Nuthatch

Along with the five-needle pines come the nuthatches.  Like this one:  A red-breasted nuthatch (Sitta canadensis) hanging around to see what I am doing.  The funny thing about a nuthatch, if you watch it closely, is that it will walk down the stem of a tree, head pointed at the ground.  The funny thing about this particular nuthatch is that it has a little triangle of wind ruffled feathers on its shoulder.

A Botanical First

At the end of September, while descending to the North Fork of North Creek from the south ridge of the canyon, a colleague noticed the telltale bottle brush branching habit of a bristlecone pine on a steep north-facing ledge.  It was the first time, to my knowledge, that Great Basin Bristlecone Pine (Pinus longaeva) has been identified in the Tushar Range of central Utah.  I subsequently returned to the area last week to confirm the presence of several small groves of GBBP on five sub-ridges of the main ridge separating the North Fork of North Creek from the South Fork.  A botanical first.

Tamed

I don't much like deer.  Most country people don't, I guess.  Deer are like rats:  A nuisance.  Pests.  Eating the hay; eating the orchard; eating the garden; jumping out into the road at all hours—broken headlights and dented fenders.  City people, on the other hand, like to look at deer:  Jerk their eyes away from the TV, see a deer out the window.  Awesome!  "I saw Dancing With the Stars and Bambi in the same evening."

Anyway, I think the best way to see deer is to feed them.  This little herd, in a rural development for Las Vegas people on the Markagunt Plateau, seemed to think that I might have a head of lettuce to distribute.  "Sorry.  I'm simply here to load some firewood.  Whoever has been feeding you is in 'the cabin,' watching TV.  Now, go away."

Blue Ribbon

VSO was a competitor at last week's plein air paint-out in Escalante.  This year, the organizers hosted three separate contests:  the main plein air, a nocturne, and a one-day "Public Lands" competition.  VSO's main submission was one of the best I've ever seen, but it was inexplicably passed over.  On the other hand, the judges avoided having me look into their affairs by awarding her a blue ribbon for the Public Lands contest.  First place for this one, painted in the rain.

The Car Turns Two Hundred Thousand

Miles, that is.  When the legendary Sable died, we replaced it with a Saturn Vue.  Though made by a subsidiary of General Motors, our mechanic says the Vue was built with a Honda motor and drive-train.  Whatever its provenance, the car has been reliable.  Today it began counting towards three hundred thousand miles.  I was at mile marker 59 on the freeway when it turned.  Along with the Chev, which just returned from 10 days in Escalante, we're a 420,600 family.

Helicopters

I generally hate helicopters.  Has anyone noticed how loud they are?  But.  I guess, like any hypocrite, I don't mind so much when they benefit me.  In August, I walked out to the southwest summit of Shelley Baldy.  It took at least half a day and hammered my knees for eight miles.  This week, when Seven Bravo Sierra was going that way, I wasn't above catching a ride.

Tree Pictures

Yesterday it was aspen; today it is fir.  Dead fir.  They make the most interesting pictures.

Smoke Fatigue

For 30 years we've been telling the American public that fire in the woods is normal, fire in the woods is good, fire in the woods is natural.  And it is.  And no one disagrees.  Until the fire starts.  Even then, it is OK for a while.  But, eventually, smoke fatigue sets in.  Everybody is tired of the smoke.  And I don't blame them.  Though I've been a Briggsan from day one, I can see that, after five weeks of steady smoking, public patience is thin.  Fingers crossed for Tuesday through Thursday then:  Snow in the forecast.

Aspenfest

This is Roctoberfest weekend at Brian Head.  Which is fine.  But, along with EDO, I was able to tear myself away from the beer trailer for a few minutes in the woods.  Aspenfest.  To paraphrase Larry the Cable Guy:  That is beautiful right there, I don't care who you are.