Tag Archives: water

Of Earth and Altar and Lake

friends, nature, travel, , , , , , ,

Mr. and Mrs. Bread joined us at My Lake for a few days. We canoed and hiked and ate a lot and sat by the fire. On the Lord’s Day we sunned ourselves on the deck while singing hymns to The God of Earth and Altar, praising Him for his Wondrous Love that flows Like a River Glorious.

In the top photo you can see on the left margin the brown needles of a dead tree that was the subject of some discussion between Mrs. B. and me.

There’s a lot of philosophy and theology in a dead tree, did you know? But I spent so much time doing the nature study while barely tackling the philosophizing, that my time-bucket is empty. Maybe next summer I’ll look at it again and write, and figure out what I think.

manzanita

Another dead tree (above), growing out of a hunk of granite that we christened Gumdrop Dome, was more strikingly beautiful. According to G.K. Chesterton, “Anything beautiful always means more than it says.” As I was saying….?

A baby manzanita bush was hugging a rock in a most endearing manner. It’s amazing how often I find a new and lovable manzanita bush in my view.

One night Mrs. B. was working out on paper what she thought about the meaning of things, as the dinner she crafted for us stewed in the oven, and we all enjoyed the fire her mister had built up to a controlled inferno. The thermometer got up past 60 in the daytime but at night dropped to freezing.
Wax Currant – Ribes cereum

Last year Mrs. Bread and I were roughing it alone up there, without our menfolk. I took more pictures then, though now I am finding that so few images in my Lake collection satisfactorily describe the lake itself. Next trip I’ll have to climb to the top of Gumdrop, as I haven’t done in years, and get the wide view with my camera. In the meantime, here’s a picture we took from there Once.

For me the most blessed part of our stay at the cabin was when Mr. Glad and I paddled our blue canoe for a long time, early in the morning when the surface of the water was smooth. The sky was deep blue, and most of the time the only sound was of our paddles dipping. Peace.

California Mountains – Gnarly Patriarchs

mountains, nature, travel, trees, wildflowers, , , , ,

(6th in the “California Mountains” diary of our July 2011 vacation)

If the Bristlecone Pines were humans, I’m pretty sure they would be ascetic saints like Father Seraphim of Sarov or Mary of Egypt, people who lived in the wilderness and had “meat to eat that we know not of.”

Stanleya pinnata; Desert Plume

It was to visit these inspiring creatures that Mr. Glad and I drove up into the White Mountains that rise up east of the Sierra Nevada on the other side of the Owens Valley. The climbing part was a repeat of the previous day’s experience of a quick uphill, and this time it took just 24 miles for us to traverse zones of desert and sagebrush steppe, and come to a land where alpine wildflowers live stunted lives.

Mormon Tea

On the way up through the forbiddingly dry and rugged desert region, waving yellow plumes were the first vegetation to get my attention. Now I know where Dr. Seuss got the images for some of his crazy drawings.

Purple Sage; Salvia dorri

Another drought-tolerant plant we ran across is called Mormon Tea, though it has other common names that aren’t as folksy. It’s a member of the Ephedra family of plants, perhaps milder — and safer? — than the Chinese herb. I didn’t collect any.

The uglier plants passed from view as we entered the steppe zone, and we began to get our eye-fill of gorgeous purple sage, the very flower referred to in the five movie versions of Zane Grey’s novel Riders of the Purple Sage; I haven’t seen the the movies or read the book, but just now learned that there is a Mormon element to that story. This area is geographically part of the Great Basin Desert that covers much of the state of Nevada, and of which Utah’s Great Salt Lake Desert is a part, so the Mormon connection to the natural history makes sense.

Bristlecone Pines grow in other areas of the Great Basin, too, and maybe on less steep roads. The ones in California aren’t on the way to anywhere, but they are well worth the worry of hearing your car’s engine groan a bit on the sharp inclines.

The longevity of these trees is the primary fact one learns right off. Except for cloning plants, the Bristlecones are the oldest living plants. The current oldest one is known to be 4,788 years old, and as many as 19 of them are over 4,000 years old.

Not only are they of great age, but they keep their vitality. While other trees show changes in their DNA or produce fewer cones, the Bristlecones are just as healthy and fruitful at 4,000 years as they were at 1,000.

They have ways of dealing with the severe climate, and with seasons that are harder than usual. How to determine what is a particularly hard year in their habitat seems to me difficult, seeing how they always have to do with very little water, and with freezing temperatures much of the year, and soil that is poor. Some of the oldest trees grow in “soil” that is a form of limestone called dolomite, shallow and infertile white rock. The sun is relentless in summer, and the winds are often brutal.

Clearly their youth is renewed not by superfoods and a friendly environment but by a meager diet and suffering — and yes, by their genetic predisposition to “behaviors” that conserve nutrients and strength. For example, instead of dropping needles and replacing them every year or two, they hold their needles for up to 45 years, and it requires less energy to renew the old ones than to grow completely new ones.

If they suffer unusually severe drought or stress, they put some limbs into dormancy so that they can keep producing the maximum number of cones. If we compare them to humans, they are fertile even longer than the biblical patriarchs, or our mother in the faith, Sarah.

The white rock actually reflects some of the sun so that more moisture is retained in the soil, and the trees tend to live relatively far apart from each other in their forests, so they don’t have to compete for light and food. In this way they are the opposite of redwood trees, which need the moisture that collects between trees in the grove if they are going to be their healthiest.

These trees make me think of Bible verses about youth being renewed, but also the ones about hoary heads and the dignity of age. The old and weather-worn patriarchs have a beauty of a sort we don’t see in young upstarts or in overfed and coddled 20-somethings. Even in death the wood is so dense that it remains for centuries and doesn’t decay, much as some saints’ bodies remain incorrupt.

I so love the Bristlecones! I can’t figure out all that they are telling me, but I know it’s something about God and the Christian life. Maybe if I grow really old I will understand more.

The main grove is at 10,000 ft. elevation. After walking the loop trail there we decided to get in the car again and crunch over gravel up another 1,000 feet in a cloud of dust to the Patriarch Grove. It’s only twelve miles, but takes at least 45 minutes. The next installment of this series will tell what I saw there.

California Mountains – Snow in Springtime

nature, trees, wildflowers, , , , , , , , , ,

Spring was a happening thing in the high Sierra. Last winter extended well into June, and on at least one date that month the snowpack was the highest on record. This means that at the end of July when we were there, quite a bit of snow was still melting.

Leopard Lily

From our trailhead at nearly 10,000 feet, we only ascended another 1,000 feet or so, but the difference in the flora was notable. Higher up, the flowers and shrubs were still in bud; the snow hadn’t been gone long.

Willow buds
Mountain Pennyroyal in bud

 


The violent weight of snow had deformed this cluster of trees in such a symmetric way as to be artistic.

 

Spearhead Lake

 

Rosy Sedum with Buttercups

At the highest elevations, every lovely bloom seems like a miracle, when you consider how much of the year the plants are just roots or seeds under the snow, how quickly they are required to respond to the light and warmth and come into their glory.

In some places they were sprouting out of a puddle where snow had likely been lying a few days previous, like in this low place I had to hop over to reach a spot overlooking Long Lake. You can see Mr. G. in the distance ready to spread out our picnic of cheese and crackers.

Around us and at our feet hot pink penstemon was making for a brilliant contrast with the midnight blue water and the granite rocks.

 

California Mountains – Rivers and a Song

agriculture, nature, travel, , , , , ,

(This is the 3rd installment of my July vacation travelogue.)

Lake Tahoe sits on the California-Nevada state line, and the rivers in the surrounding mountains form the setting of the ballad “Darcy Farrow.” Ian and Sylvia were singing this song the first time I heard it, and I still think their rendition is the best. I heard many examples on YouTube while looking for one to post here.

As we drove down the highway south from the lake, we weren’t far from “where the Walker runs down to the Carson Valley plain,” and in fact we crossed all three rivers mentioned in the tale, the Truckee, the Carson, and the Walker. We even listened to Ian and Sylvia sing from the CD player at one point in our journey.

Of course I don’t like that Young Vandy put a bullet through his brain, but in comparing this story with other traditional songs I find I like it better than ones where the young man instead kills his beloved by accident or out of anger.

These rivers descend toward the east from from the northern Sierras and always refresh my mind as I watch them from the car. The Walker stays close to the highway longer than the others, and where it flows through desert-like terrain it captivates me by the contrast it gives to the sagebrush-covered banks. It’s fast and furious and carrying a lot of irrigation for the green fields of alfalfa grown farther east where the land flattens out. I recall those expanses of green and the beautiful Nevada cattle ranches in the shadow of the mountains — but we didn’t go that way this trip.

Four years ago we visited this area, and I wrote hasty notes in my journal as we sped along through ever changing layers of conifers, sagebrush, aspens and meadows, trying to preserve the moments of beauty. I didn’t get to catch my own photo of the rivers on either trip, but I found this one on the Web.

And below is one of ours, showing the mountains where the heavy snowpack from last winter is still melting and filling the rivers with icy water. On Hwy. 395 this far north the elevation is still above 5,000 feet so the summer temperatures don’t get extreme. The cattle looked content, and I know I was.