Summer is Over

Summer is over.  The sun can still be strong, but the days are shorter, the nights are cooler, and the equinox has passed.  The good part of the year is coming.

VSO Days

VSO has been so successful at the Escalante Canyons Art Festival over the years that I have joked it should be named for her.  Well.  I'm not really joking anymore.  She went over there on Wednesday and won a pair of ribbons in under 48 hours.  First, there was the red ribbon for a studio piece (above).  The next day, she went out and painted the blue-ribbon winner (below).  I don't know what is left but to call it "VSO Days."

CMT

I noticed this tree when I was out with VSO a couple of weeks ago.  I think it is a culturally modified tree or CMT.  The literature I've read suggests that these wounds were made by Native Americans during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as they sought the inner bark and sap of the ponderosa pine for use as adhesive, medicine, and even food during periods of starvation.  There is a collection of these trees on the National Forest:  The ones I've seen are in Joe's Valley and the locals call them "peelers," but I was surprised to find this one in one of the coal canyons between Kenilworth and Sunnyside.  (I don't know why?  I guess they could be anywhere.)  At any rate, I had noticed, when I was there the first time, that there were five or eight other old growth ponderosas in a quarter-mile radius, and I began to wonder if those were also CMTs?  They are not.  At least not that I can tell.  I walked out there again yesterday—it is about 1.5 miles up the canyon—and looked at each of the big yellow-bellied trees, but this was the only peeler.

Sun Block

In some parts of the country, people like to say, "If you don't like the weather, just wait a few minutes and it will change."  I'm not sure that can be said about south central Utah:  Mostly it is sunny all the time.  But, yesterday, I started up Alrad in the sunshine and, by the time I turned around, the wind was blowing 60 MPH and the sky was turning black.  It was strange, though, even with all that violence there was no rain; it was windy, dark, and dry.

Snake on the Freeway

Snake Rock Village is an ancient Fremont habitation site beside Ivie Creek.  It is known as a (former) production center for a certain style of gray pottery.  Because VSO is herself becoming in expert in the manufacture of primitive pottery made from locally harvested clay, she wanted to see it for herself.  So, I took her there.

When the site was documented, in the 1960s, there was a local two-lane road nearby.  But, since then, I-70 has been constructed (it was completed in 1990) nearly on top of the site.  It looks to me like the freeway has so altered the flow of water over and through the area, that most of what was obvious about the site 60 years ago has been altered.  We found the eponymous rock, visible (if you know where to look) to speeding motorists, a few sherds, and a broken stone knife.  Not much else.

GC2 Turns 300

Thousand miles, that is.  On my way back from Wood Hill yesterday, I saw the odometer turn just as I hit the oil on the outskirts of Price.  I stopped on the edge of the neighborhood, under the power line, for a few pictures.  GC2 is our new truck (manufactured in 2006), but it has more miles than thirty-year-old GC1 (~260,000) because we use it for all of our commuting:  When I lived in California, I drove it back and forth across Nevada more than 60 times.  It probably won't run forever, but it is so expensive to replace a 4x4 pick-up that I wouldn't mind getting another 120,000 or so!