View from the Office

This week we've been working in the high elevation (10,000 feet) spruce-fir stands of southern Utah. There is, of course, no lack of fir, in this case subalpine fir (Abies lasiocarpa), which is taking over the world, so the species of interest is spruce, Engelmann spruce (Picea engelmannii). With their thin soils and short growing seasons, Utah's high plateaus do not grow spruce quickly, but they can grow 'em long and large. I found a number of specimens, or their stumps, that were almost 40 inches in diameter and more than 300 years old. While I would guess that an Engelmann spruce could live to 400, anything over 300 years is beginning to exhibit signs of decadence. The trees in these stands are starting to blow over, break off, and fall down. It puts a lot of wood on the forest floor. With about five inches of snow on top of all that downed wood, the reconnaissance conditions this week were treacherous. I found that they were frequently putting me on the forest floor, too.

Mistakes Were Made

We drove as far as we could and left the Chev in a patch of tumbleweed. The plan was for me to return it to our basecamp later in the day before my final hike to the river. That was the second mistake. The first mistake was loading my backpack with certain necessities—the tent, for example—that did not include the kettle.

We made our slow way down the tributary canyon with a number of stops to make adjustments to what everyone was carrying, especially EDO who had an uncomfortable old backpack that wasn't fitting her very well. (Do I need to count that as a mistake, too?) After about two miles, I started to make encouraging noises to the girls about how we were most of the way there. Um. No. The three miles I had in my mind turned out (for some strange reason like reality) to be just over five. By the time we reached our river camp, it was after 2pm. We were all tired.

This was the point at which the first two mistakes came into sharp focus. One, we didn't have the gear we needed. Two, my plan to make a quick round-trip to basecamp to collect the gear we needed was looking like a 10 mile death march late in the day. VSO suggested making do with what we had, but I felt that the missing items were critical. (Did I mention that my sleeping bag was in waiting for me in basecamp?)

Anyway, I'll spare my three readers the story of my agonies, but let's just say that I was back in our river camp after the sun was down but before it was dark. It was a rough 15-mile day for the old man, but it seemed like we had all the necessary gear at that point. (Fortunately the missing spoons were replaced by utensils carved from a juniper branch.)

Our family experiment in backpacking came with some mistakes. But, it put us in one of the more spectacular places I've ever been. (And, actually, that is saying something.) The girls loved it, too. We'll have to fix some problems if we want to go back, but, for a few hours, it was worth it.

Coyote Bounty

There is a bounty on coyotes in Utah. It is $50. The bounty was introduced as part of the Mule Deer Protection Act (MDPA) of 2012. The MDPA came with $500,000 to be used against coyotes. (Because, well, coyotes eat, among other things, mule deer.) By my calculations, that money would pay for 10,000 coyotes. Dead coyotes. Scalped coyotes. To collect your money, you need to turn in a pair of ears (paws work, too). So, the best way to get your cash is to scalp your coyotes. Like the ones in the picture above. 13 scalped coyotes. Dumped in view of the Love's truck stop. Worth $650. Good money in my world. I wonder if I can get in the coyote business? I've always been lucky when it comes to killin'. Of course, I'd need a coyote rifle, some ammunition, and gas in the truck. I wonder what that will cost. Besides, then I'd have to find some coyotes. Live ones. With ears and everything.

Beauty

Climbed with VSO to the ridge of red hoodoos above Bowery Creek. After that we went and cut a load of firewood. She looks good for all that, doesn't she? Better'n me.

Got a Dinette Set?

We were on the south side of Cedar City the other day, returning Tiger's ladder. Down near his house I noticed a big box under construction in a sea of parking lots. "Boulevard Home Furnishings," the sign said. (Or something like that. Maybe it was "Freeway Mattresses." Who knows?) "My Gosh," I shouted at VSO, sitting next to me. "Is Cedar City big enough to keep a Costco-sized mattress store in business?" "And sofas, . . . and dinette sets," she replied.

As my reader knows, our sofa was on the way to the dump in the back of Don Evan's pick-up truck when he decided to stop at our house. So we don't have any experience buying sofas from big boxes. Our mattress was, likewise, acquired from Deseret Industries. Each of these furnishings has lasted for more than ten years. Which brings me back to the question: Can a small town like Cedar City consume that much furniture?

I was still pondering this question when I pulled into an old gravel pit on the north side of Cedar City. It is a common dump site now, and people use the area to jettison everything from auto parts to yard waste. I go there once a week to pick chunks of broken concrete that I use for pavers at The Homestead. When I got there this time, I found a sofa. A nice, white sofa; nicer than ours. The only problem with it was its styling. It was horribly unattractive.

Well, I thought. That is how you do it: Sell furniture so ugly that we will want to throw it in the gravel pit. Then, sell us more.

A History of the Pines

OK, now that we’ve got the entire team involved, this is turning into a long story . . . and a lot of research. From what I can tell, Meriwether Lewis was the first white person to observe the lodgepole pine. This was, perhaps, in Wyoming, where the tree grows straight and slender. But, I am speculating to some extent here because Lewis never used the word "lodgepole." In fact, in all his journals, he named only three "pines"—white, balsam, spruce—and I'm not sure which species these really are. The spruce pine, for example, grows only in Georgia or Florida, so Meriwether Lewis didn't see one of those on his exploration. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that he saw lodgepole, ponderosa, pinyon, whitebark, and western white pine. He may even have seen the shore pine when he reached the Pacific: "[The] species grows in low grounds, and in places frequently overflown by the tide, seldom rising higher than thirty-five feet, and not more than from two and a half to four in diameter . . . ."

After the Lewis and Clark expedition, the next note we have is from about 20 years later when David Douglas began his work for the Royal Horticultural Society of London. He started collecting in 1823 at Fort Vancouver on the Columbia River. (David Douglas was one of the greatest explorer/botanists in North American history. He collected more than 500 species of trees and plants in the early 19th century, including the Douglas fir, which is named for him. He died young in Hawaii—killed by a bull in a bull trap.) As Kass mentioned in his comment about the Oregon coast, the first thing Douglas found was the shore pine. He gave it the scientific name Pinus contorta. Here is his description of the leaves: “Leaves in pairs, rounded on the back, concave on the inner side, rigid, acute, 2 to 2 ½ inches long, having a very short ragged or ciliated sheath.” For the branches, this is his description: “Branches drooping, greatly twisted in every direction, remarkably tough, the younger ones covered by acuminate chaffy brown scales.”

There you have it. I think that is the answer. The first written botanical record of the lodgepole pine calls it “contorta” because its branches are twisted, not its needles. That is not quite the end of the story though. It is not clear to me that either Meriwether Lewis or David Douglas recognized that the twisted shore pine and the skinny lodgepole pine were the same species. It wasn’t until 1871 that another giant of botany, George Engelmann, showed that the Rocky Mountain lodgepole pine (Pinus contorta var latifolia) was a variety of the shore pine (Pinus contorta var contorta).

Overlook

Like she has for each of the last ten years, VSO competed in the Escalante Canyons Art Festival's plein air competition. And, like she has for about eight of the past ten years, she took home an award. This year, it was for a painting she called "Overlook" (pictured above). The painting was purchased by a collector on the spot, so it never made it to the wall of The Homestead. Which is disappointing. But, on the other hand, when you're married to one of the best painters in the state, you never lack for fine art to enjoy by the fire each night. (Yeah. I'm bragging. But, the need to bathe in reflected glory is a common affliction of the talentless.) In any case, this week she has been channeling Maynard Dixon on a series of dramatic oil sketches of Wildcat Point. They are aggressive. There is no other way to put it. I'm looking forward to what she does with the final product.

White Fir

It's that time of the year again. As my reader knows, I spend most of my free time in October and November foraging on the plateau for firewood. Mostly I manage it, but I'm not always satisfied with the result. Sometimes I spend an inordinate amount of time carrying the wood across three acres of downed brush; sometimes I bring home a truckload of punky junk with all the BTUs of a paper grocery sack; and sometimes I cut white fir in the creek. This week, I've been stuck with all three. I found a pretty good dead tree not too far from the road, but it was leaning over Center Creek. I didn't know what species it was—it can be hard to tell when there are no branches or needles—but I thought I could drop it onto a gravel bar where I could buck it up. Not too many seconds after the chain punctured the bark, I had an answer to both of my questions. If you kick a chunk of bark off the stem of a white fir (Abies concolor), you will find that it has both reddish and whitish coloring. It reminds me of a cross section of peanut butter and jelly. As the first piece of peanut butter and jelly bark flew off the subject tree, my sub-conscious registered "white fir." At the same instant, my sub-conscious registered the lack of resistance on the tip of my bar. POP. The tree simply broke where I was cutting it and sent me running through a thicket of alder and wild rose to get away from the flying butt. The tree missed me, but it didn't miss the creek. When I went back to buck it up, I had to stand in the water. Then I had to carry all those rotten pieces across three acres of alder and wild rose to the Chev. By the time I had a truck load (with all the BTUs of a paper grocery sack), I was so tired that I could barely drive home. Is it normal for a grown man to need a two hour nap each day?

A Reader Writes

After our post on lodgepole pine (Pinus contorta) we got a comment from Jess Clark regarding the origins of the tree's scientific name. The comment ended with a question: Are lodgepole needles twisted? And, could that be the reason for the species name, contorta? This is the kind of question that we love at Rural Ways. It shows that our readers are beginning to think like foresters. It is, of course, widely acknowledged that forestry is at the apex of the natural sciences, and, indeed, may be at the pinnacle of all learning. There is, surely, no one who knows more about how the world works than a forester. Be that as it may, the question about the shape of the needles had us stumped. You see, we don't have lodgepole pine in southern Utah, so there was no way to gather a sample of its leaves in order to analyze their shape. We had to resort to the internet for a clear look at the needles. The picture, above, was provided by Oregon State, and shows some fairly straight needles. There is a slight twist to a few of them but it is not pronounced. While we are still open to the possibility that needle shape had something to do with the species name, the evidence at this point seems to be against it.

Extending the Extension Ladder

After being gone again for part of the summer, it was finally time to make some progress on the trim painting job I'd begun earlier. As I noted in July, part of the delay was the lack of a suitable ladder. Tiger loaned me a pretty good one, but it still wasn't enough to reach the peak. So, my in-laws encouraged me to try this set-up: You back the Chev up to the wall and then put the ladder in the bed of the truck. If that doesn't work, you put it on the roof. By the time I got up there with the paint, the wind had picked up (they didn't tell me about the 40 MPH forecast). With my sewing machine leg going and the springs on the truck rocking, it was more like a trapeze than a ladder. Do you think they want to get rid of me?