applied hedonics

Fri, 22 May 2009 10:12:49 GMT

Tired, but can't seem to sleep. I'm about 4 days off tobacco, and the insomnia is starting to hit pretty hard. I decided to do something with it.

I didn't walk far... especially compared to the long 3am meanders down by the rail yard back when I lived in Junction. The fog is in tonight, but looming overhead: some scattered fingers drag along the asphalt and attendant plants. The moon is nearly new, and the dark is heavy and wet on the road. I caught a chill and sat with it for a while on the steps between Western and Alliance, then wandered back home. I had more thinking to do, but slowly this time. I'm working on slowing things down, turning them over, setting them down, then coming back to them. No reason to rush. Better to sit with things a while - process and reflect with mindfulness and purpose.

I'm done with my degree.
I'm working on love and discipline (counterbalanced with a healthy dose of hedonism).
I'm optimistic on all fronts.
I'm skeptical of all the egocentrism I've been storing up, but not dismissive of it.
I've made some intense connections recently; I'm feeling like more are on the way.
I'm grateful for getting this far.

date-stamp

Mon, 06 Apr 2009 07:47:34 GMT

I just wanted to stop in and date-stamp the following: rapid, deep change is happening. It's personal, it's systemic, and it's vital. The sense of it is overwhelming, and I can't see around the next corner; the tremors are in the tracks.

I have obligations in the morning and I'm cultivating discipline - particularly in regard to taking care of my brain/body - so sleep is in order. I'll make space to write about it later.

busy. realignment.

Tue, 30 Sep 2008 23:26:38 GMT

About a week ago, I put myself on the couch and made it a point to lay there, empty-minded, for about 30 minutes. It was really nice. The novelty of the experience, however, has me a bit worried. I may need to make a it a point to put my ass on the couch more often. October's calendar is looking pretty ugly, but then there's Halloween and a much calmer November.

An ugly economy and a real need to start working on extending community is prompting us to move into a smaller, cheaper place in November. I'll miss the forest (even the spiders and slugs) right outside my window, and the quiet, but not the overcrowded parking lot and higher rent. It'll be good to have two sets of friends within stumbling distance of home, too. To top it off, I see a real garden (to supplement the farm share) in the future.

so, to recap what's in flux:
housing, relationship(s), work, money, other work, and school.

I'm not bitching - I'm down with change, at least in theory. I am definitely feeling that there's been some kind of deep, axial shift in my guts. If nothing else, life is more interesting than it was a month ago.

Yours truly on Google Streetview

Fri, 08 Aug 2008 22:15:27 GMT

Random Googleplex capture! Somebody at the Energy Authority was messing around with Google StreetView and caught me loitering around at Humboldt State's library circle bus stop. I'm standing in front of the pillar kiosk, gabbing on my phone.

(Edit: apparently streetview doesn't want to embed, so you'll have to click on the Map link below.)

View Larger Map

Fat Bush Pics?

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 05:14:16 GMT

LJ pointed out on my dashboard that I haven't updated in like 18 weeks. Ok, I'm shamed. I'll post something.

Ever since gwynny and I ran across a motherlode of red huckleberries up on richy California street I've been obsessed with finding more free berries. Today I hit paydirt (paysoil?) - I found a nice thimbleberry bush on campus today. I ate a handful of sweet red fruit with a tangy finish. There's a couple of thimbleberry and huckleberry bushes producing outside our apt, but the bushes are growing out of a treacherous hillside and I can't get them. Gomez Cat and I watch each morning as birds pick out the ripest berries - just beyond our reach. Luckily our farm share is providing a half-pint of loganberries and raspberries every week.

I was talking to Dr. Pinch about this free berry thing and a plan is hatching for geolocating the fattest Arcata berry bushes in a KML file or on Google maps. Hasn't happened yet, but it might. Maybe we'll be low tech and just post coordinates on a text file. I'm leaning towards the middle road (like usual) and posting fat bush pics on flickr with a georeference.

I finished the socio-spatial poster on sea level rise for Arcata. I've submitted it to a conference and feel pretty good about it, but haven't heard back yet. HSU GIS submitted the work-up we did for the proposed Palomar Pipeline that's slated to cross the Mt. Hood wilderness. 160+ acres of old growth Doug-fir (and some prime Spotted Owl habitat) for a liquid natural gas pipeline is a lousy deal. I hope BARK can block it. LNG - especially Russian LNG - is a dumb idea anyway. Let's increase our dependence on foreign fossil fuels, shall we? Eventually I'll get the Arcata poster up on Snakecharmer.

In other news: I think I fucked up my back doing deadlifts today. Stupid mistake. Fortunately my RC injury in my right shoulder is improving. I like to only have 1 lifting injury at any given time.

glaciers + canoes

Sat, 08 Mar 2008 21:45:31 GMT

This is a climate change and GIS nerd post. You've been warned.

An interesting development for our local student ASPRS chapter - we're looking at adopting a glacier (actually, a remnant snowfield) in the Trinity Alps. There's a glacier monitoring project based out of Portland State - we're hoping to meet with the program managers at a conference in April. As I understand it, they're using thermoimaging and GIS to monitor and model glacial response to climate change. I'm sure there's more to it, but that's the part that got me interested. Apparently, we'd get access to ASTER imaging to do it.

The glacier project complements my 480 project rather well. I'm about 10 hours into an analysis of the social impact of projected sea level rise scenarios on the peninsula communities of Humboldt County. Most of the literature indicates a 1m rise by 2100 under best case scenarios (CO2, CH4, N2O, O3 and black carbon aerosol emissions decrease) and 3m+ by 2100 if we keep our shit up (IPCC scenarios A1B or B2 - insufficient reduction in GHG emissions).* I'm planning on taking a digital elevation map, plotting sea level rise scenarios on it, and overlaying census block data for analysis. It's a lot harder for poor folks to move households (consider the Katrina event), so my hypothesis is that the poor will be hardest hit in the peninsula communities. Yeah, I know, it's obvious heuristically, but telling policymakers something is "obvious" doesn't work as well as pushing a scientific study under their noses. Of course, a lot of times that doesn't work either. It might be moot, though. I'm not sure I'm going to be able to do a good analysis at this point - all the elevation models I've found so far don't have the precision I need to make the project work. I'm wondering if I'm going to have to do measurements myself with a GPS unit; I ain't paying for a LIDAR flyover, that's for sure.

Of course, all bets are off if 1500 sq mile ice sheets keep dropping into the sea. Those models predict as much as a 150+ feet rise in sea level. For reference, that's about the height of the Statue of Liberty.**

Buy a bike...and consider saving up for a good canoe.

* = Hansen, James, et al. 2006. “Global Temperature Change.” Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences 103: 14288-14293.

Incidentally, Hansen (a NASA Climate Scientist) is the same guy that said we have about 10 years to reverse course before we are basically committing to dangerous climate change (catastrophic sea level rise and 60%+ species extinction, etc).

** = Bell, Robin E. 2008. “The Unquiet Ice.” Scientific American 298: 60-67.

the accidental grow house

Fri, 22 Feb 2008 00:26:59 GMT

So a couple of weeks ago I had a PG&E energy auditor come out to my apartment to do an assessment. Basically, I figured that it'd be hypocritical of me to preach energy efficiency without optimizing my own usage. I'll leave it at that since no other energy nerds read my blog here. Ok.

Anyway, Mr. Auditor is pretty impressed with how neuroti..er, efficient our apartment is, but he has one last place to check: the attic. Now, I've never actually been *in* the attic at Presidio Gomez, but I didn't think there would be any real surprises up there. So dude climbs up in the attic and I'm waiting patiently below, and he starts talking about how it's none of his business whether or not someone grows pot, and he smokes the occasional joint himself on the weekend. This strikes me as a bit weird, so I ask him why he's bringing it up. He says that the "grow operation" in the attic should be set up on planks and not on the ceiling - that way the insulation can be left in place. So, apparently the guy that lived in there before us was a grower - that much I knew, but I thought he'd confined it to the 2nd bedroom. Apparently not, and he did such a lousy job moving out his operation that the auditor dude thought that we'd moved the equipment and stashed it with the idea of putting it back after he left. So it appears that the grower had shoveled about 10'x10' square of R39 cellulose insulation off a section of the ceiling and didn't put it back. This pretty much explains why our heating bills suck from November to March.

At least it wasn't more fucking mold.

glassbooth

Sat, 05 Jan 2008 09:21:00 GMT

glassbooth is a useful tool for sorting through the primary presidential candidates. it works in two steps: first, you tell glassbooth what issues matter to you. glassbooth then generates a poll around your issues and matches you to candidates who think (or claim to think) along your lines. this is a decent way to do an end-run around the cult of personality garbage that comes with mass media democracy.

my highest match (94%) was kucinich. progressive environmental policy? check. universal health care? check. equal rights? check. totally unelectable? check.

speaking of unelectable - can't believe huckabee won iowa. don't evangelicals have jobs? who bussed them to caucus? frankly, i'd like to see a california proposition for secession.

glassbooth

A Cold Night in a Dead Tree (2 of 2)

Sun, 23 Dec 2007 07:22:36 GMT

a short note - an introduction by way of apology, i reckon:

i made a real effort to avoid any sort of artistic flourishes with this narrative. my instructor cautions against "spiritual inflation," and i tend to fall prey to that. i tried to inject some of the humor of the situation, but, in retrospect, i neglected to accurately capture some of the misery (and a moment or two of abject terror). next edit, maybe.

xposted to swinney and myspace

In the days leading up to the trip, I’d kept a close eye on the National Weather Service weather report for Weott, the nearest town to the ridge. NWS predicted clear skies, lows around the mid-30s, with no real chance of precipitation. This was encouraging, but I wasn’t going to take any chances: I packed rain gloves, a rain jacket, and rain pants. We’d resolved to only bring essentials, but considering the fickle weather of the North Coast I decided that it would be foolish to risk exposure despite the NWS predictions. I crammed spare socks, an extra base layer shirt, and dehydrated food into my pack, along with a two-liter Camelback. I lashed a sleeping bag under the pack, and tied a bunch of kale to the back. We’d talked about skipping sleeping bags, but considering the time of year we decided against it – the combination of freezing temperatures and inexperience outweighed minimalism in this case. True to form, I slept through my five a.m. alarm and didn’t make it to Gabe’s place until after seven. We’d made it as far as Eureka, ten miles from his house, when Gabe realized he had Maya’s cell phone. By the time we made it to the trailhead, it was nearly nine-thirty – two and a half hours later than we’d planned. We were going to have to really move to get up the ridge and build the shelter before we lost daylight. I was a bit concerned, but that melted away quickly after we got out of the car. “Check it out,” Gabe said, pointing to the sky. Hanging there in the air, above the old growth Bull Creek redwoods, was a juvenile bald eagle, turning slow circles above the trees. “This is a good sign,” Gabe crowed. We spread the map on the hood of the Escort and got our bearings. “Assuming we make a conservative two miles per hour, we should make the campsite by one p.m. or so, “ I figured out loud. Gabe nodded. We hoisted our packs and crossed Mattole road, then started up Squaw Creek Ridge road, the multi-use trail that would take us most of the way to Hanson Ridge.

Squaw Creek Ridge road is a broad trail maintained for hikers, horseback riders, and mountain bikers. Motorized vehicles are (thankfully) banned from the park interior. The trail meandered slowly uphill for about four and a half miles, all the way to Whiskey Flat - named for the bootleg hooch still that flourished there during the halcyon timber days in the early 20th century. During the ascent, it was clear that we were in old growth redwood country. The Bull Creek watershed is the biggest contiguous old growth redwood forest in the world. It is shrouded in deep shade, even when the sun is bright over the canopy. The canopy is far overhead – 300 feet or more, depending on the conditions. The temperatures are cool to cold, even in the summer months. Shade-loving, tannin-tolerant plants grow in the understory – trillium, redwood sorrel, huckleberry, and all manner of fungi and moss. I am always struck by the quietness of the redwoods, and this hike was no exception. The forest was hushed, other than the occasional distant warbles of thrushes and woodpeckers overhead. The quiet deepens the serenity of the woods; the oldest groves of ancient trees are much like cathedrals, and the silence augments that quality. Sometimes, to turn that image on its ear, I imagine the crash of gnomes playing a game of nine-pin skittles in a far away hollow. The trail itself, along with eroded foot and hoof prints, was the only obvious sign of people on the way up. However, attentive eyes with a bit of training could see that the forest was managed. Small color-coded tassels hung from trees and bushes, a secret semaphore for the backcountry rangers and their crews. Humans and birds were not the only animals in the rainforest; Gabe stopped frequently and pointed out animal scat dropped haphazardly across the trail. Raccoons had relieved themselves there, but the most common sign was from a mushrooms-sick bear who was, Gabe guessed, no more than two or three hours ahead of us. The bear scat was sticky and formless, an almost sure sign that it had chosen the wrong mushroom – an old bolete, maybe, or perhaps it had really screwed up and eaten an Amanita, a fungus that looks as psychedelic as its active ingredient. The Amanita genus is a staple of Siberian shamanic rituals, and is known, used, and somewhat feared around the world for its intensity and poisonous qualities. If that was the case, the creature’s head would be as addled as its colon. I was considering this possibility when we arrived at Whiskey Flat. The pit toilet there had been ransacked and fouled (by people, apparently, since the door had been latched), and the water pump at the creek wasn’t working. Whiskey Flat is around 1600 feet, and the trailhead started around 500 feet – we were hungry and due to get our packs off for a spell. We rested under the largest redwood in the grove, lying back in its shadow and looking up the trunk toward the canopy, a hundred feet or more overhead. From my view below, the tree looked like a monstrous arrow, sunk in earth and forgotten. The sun was high in the southern sky, and it was time to move again. We pulled our packs back on; I felt the weight settle down on my back and hips. After a quick adjustment to the chest strap, we headed up the trail towards the Hanson Ridge road trail, and the mixed Douglas-fir and hardwood forests at the ridge crest 600 feet above us.

The trail climbed swiftly out of the fog-prone watershed valley favored by redwoods and soon we were in a mixed softwood and hardwood forest, dominated by oaks, madrones, and Douglas-firs. It was clear from the sheer size of the trees and their spacing that we were in a healthy climax forest ecosystem. For whatever reason, the logging boom never reached Hanson Ridge. The lack of debris in the understory told the story of healthy burn cycles. Fire is an essential component of this forest: the older trees have thick barks that resist frequent, low-intensity burns, assuring the trees are spaced evenly according to their particular solar needs. Human interference in the fire cycle can contribute to the build-up of debris in the understory, and make for hotter, longer blazes that threaten the big trees when the inevitable fire comes. Near the top of the ridge, we made an abrupt turn onto Hanson Ridge road. Meadows of annual grasses opened up before us, and we skirted the edge of the forest as we make for the ridge camp. We came upon the scene of a recent fire, maybe from this season, and stopped to look at the damage. It was a low intensity burn, enough to clear the ground level and saplings but mild enough to spare the old trees with only a singe of their lower boughs. There is evidence of heavy winds on the ridge as well – fortunately for us.

We turned off the main trail and entered a small clearing in the forest on the edge of the meadow. The opening faced southwest, offered shelter from the frigid arctic winds that occasionally hammer the Redwood Coast. Along the western edge of the clearing, an old growth Douglas-fir lay in huge pieces on the hillside. Foresters had cleared many limbs and dumped them in heap near the trunk. “This is our lucky day,” Gabe said to me, surveying the heap of debris that would make our shelter. Looking at the sun’s arc across the southern sky, we both realized how fortunate we were to catch a break like this. “We don’t have much time, man,” Gabe reminded me – “we have to get on this now.” With that, he pulled his hatchet and went to work. I followed suit, using a buck knife to trim small fir boughs to make the loft and ground cover for our shelter. After covering an eight by six foot section of ground with boughs, we decided that we needed to reconsider the orientation of the opening. If we faced it south, our heads would be lower than our feet – an annoying position that would make sleep difficult even for the most exhausted hiker. We took the center spar and reoriented it to the north, and leaned ribs against the spar - spaced evenly about twelve inches apart. We then chopped and hacked at the remaining fir debris, and covered the skeleton to a depth of about two feet. During our excavation of the debris heap, we found miscellaneous trash left by previous campers and the foresters: discarded chainsaw glasses, a forgotten bottle of unopened neon pink Gatorade, and a collection of old beer bottles. We set them aside, and hurried to the edge of the ridge to catch the sunset. It didn’t disappoint us. As the sun dropped behind the ridge across from us, brilliant orange and pink clouds, not unlike the colors of the Gatorade bottle, lit up the Bull Creek watershed below. The light faded quickly, and the temperature began to drop. Our thermometer showed a steady decline from the comparatively balmy 55 to 35 in a matter of an hour. We worked quickly to get a fire going. We scavenged chunks of charred Douglas-fir to make a reflective thermal mass to conserve heat, and gathered more deadfall to build a tipi fire. We’d collected dried Douglas iris leaves, twigs, and other kindling on the chance that the ridge would be wet. It was a good thing we did – there was no tinder to be found on the ridge – it was all too damp from the previous night’s dew. The fire roared to life, we ate, and, with some trepidation, climbed into the shelter after a nip of whiskey for our insides.

“Jesus, this is like sleeping in a Christmas tree,” I exclaimed. The smell of fresh fir was incredibly strong, and somehow comforting. Gabe had already jammed himself into his sleeping bag; I quickly followed suit once I figured out how my bag was positioned. The shelter was a success – it was at least 15 degrees warmer than the open air, which was now hovering around 28 degrees. I wondered about the bear that had preceded us on the trail. It had left scat all the way up the trail, and I wondered just how far away it was. We’d managed to get our food pack about 20 feet off the ground, but a tenacious black bear could reach it with some luck. What about a mushroom crazed black bear? That was my last conscious thought before dropping off to sleep. Both of us woke up about 2am. This was the part I’d dreaded: it’s freezing outside and I have to relieve myself – there is no negotiating with a full bladder. We crawled out into the cold air, and finished our business quickly, stopping just long enough to check the temperature and stand in awe of the thousands of brilliant stars wheeling overhead, framed by the black silhouette of Douglas-firs flanking the clearing.

Morning came early. Debris shelters are warm, but claustrophobic. Once I was done sleeping I couldn’t wait to get out of the damn thing. I woke up Gabe on our way out. We got the fire going despite the frost on the wood, and I tended the fire while Gabe headed down the meadow to fish water from the creek. We ate quickly, drained the dregs of the whiskey and then headed further up the trail to see if we could get a view of the Pacific. We weren’t high enough to see the ocean, but we had stumbled into one of the most remarkable old growth forests I’ve ever seen. Huge tan oaks, madrones, and Douglas-firs dominated the canopy. Near the end of the trail, we came upon the biggest madrone that either of us had ever seen – by an order of magnitude. The ground under the tree was scorched, and withered saplings surrounded it. Already, though, small plants were popping up through the black crust. A small, weathered mound was under the largest bough, marked with a small rock and a large rock, looking out into the valley. Neither Gabe nor I had much to say; we silently headed back down the trail, thinking private thoughts. Back at our campsite, we broke down the shelter and fire pit and mulched the ground with boughs to encourage insects and soil microbes to start rebuilding the compacted soil. We gathered the litter we’d uncovered, and headed down the trail.

The downhill trail was easy compared to the climb the day before. It was less of a hike than a controlled stumble in the steep places, but we made it down the ridge and back to the car safely. I was filthy, exhausted, and genuinely happy. I considered the old Douglas-fir that had provided our shelter, warmth, and medicine the night before and felt a fullness that I can’t really describe. I might call it connection, but that wouldn’t quite capture it. Ultimately, the feeling was about getting out of my own head, being grateful for beauty and luck, and paying attention to the world around me. I certainly wasn’t a woodsman, but I was a small step closer to it than I was two days before. We fell into the car and headed back down the road. Gabe was already making plans for spring – “next time,” he said, “we’re leaving the sleeping bags at home.” I suppressed a shiver.

dan Le sac + scroobius pip

Sat, 22 Dec 2007 06:48:03 GMT

old news, new to me (and possibly you):

vector - feministe - read their blog. at least go read the bit about what happened in nola if you don't already know.

i have this thing i wanna write, but it's still brewing. needs yeast.

A Cold Night in a Dead Tree

Wed, 19 Dec 2007 07:58:51 GMT

as promised:

xposted to swinney and myspace

Lao Tzu, the mythic first Taoist master supposedly said, “a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” I’ve been told that it’s a mistranslation; in reality, the proper meaning is more akin to “a journey of a thousand miles begins with the ground beneath you.” If that’s the case – and I believe it is, considering the right-now immediacy of Taoism – then it’s hard to say exactly when our trip up Hanson Ridge really began. There are a few events that could easily be considered our zero mile marker. It might have began at the trailhead, as soon as I stepped out of our borrowed, high-mileage, freakishly reliable Escort onto the rust colored duff. It could be when Gabe and I spotted a juvenile bald eagle floating in lazy circles above our heads – a sight we interpreted as an auspicious beginning to our trip up the ridge. Both of these would make obvious starting points, but, in truth, the beginning was months before, in a scrubby dune forest on the Pacific coast of Humboldt County, California.

Adventures often begin in liminal spaces, and we had a triple dose – it was twilight in late October, and we were picking our way through stumpy trees and scraggly dune brush after a failed fishing expedition at the mouth of the Mad River. Our party – Gabe, his wife Maya, and I – had made an impromptu trip to the river to catch a fish for dinner. We had a late start, the wrong bait, and the fish weren’t striking anyway. Gabe, a reedy six-foot-four Sonoma transplant, was ducking under low hanging branches – scanning the hills for coyotes and other twilight-loving creatures. He was talking about tracking, and, caught up in his own primitive living conversation spiral, shifted gears to natural shelter building. “You know,” he said, “we could spend the night out here. Look at all this grass – all these branches – we could totally build a debris hut. We’d be warm and everything, man. It’d be sweet.” I’d been listening halfheartedly up to this point –not from lack of interest, but from necessity. I’m not by nature much of a multi-tasker, and I was focused on avoiding holes in the trail and stray branches. Gabe’s idea snapped me out of the task at hand. “What, like a tipi or a wickiup?” “No, man, nothing that complicated,” he said. “More like a pile of leaves and grass over a simple frame. It’s small, uncomfortable, dry, and way warmer than a tent.” This idea totally fascinated me. I’ve worked off and on in high tech for years, and I’m an admitted gadget whore, but the ideas of minimalism and efficiency are equally appealing to me.

Normally, I’d dismiss talk of debris shelters out-of-hand; most of my friends are not exactly in touch with the natural world – mistaking repeated viewings of “Man versus Wild” for real survival training. Gabe, however, is a different sort. Gabe grew up in western Sonoma County, the product of a back-to-the-land ethic and the small intentional community where he grew up. He was running around the neighboring forest from the time he was little, and knew more than most about how to live close to the land. I knew that he was getting to be quite adept at making his own bows and arrows, flint knapping, and foraging. Maya, his wife, is also a Sonoma native, and knows her fair share about plants and herbs. My partner Jenn and I have joked that when the zombie apocalypse comes, we’re packing up the cats and heading for Gabe and Maya’s place.

So, after considering the source, I opened my mouth: “yeah, we should totally do it. I need to learn how to do that stuff. You never know when you might need it. Besides, self-reliance is a good thing.” After that point, I’m fairly sure Gabe and I were rabbiting on about different essential woodsy skills, the appropriateness of different sorts of shelters, and related chest thumping, when Maya interrupted. “You guys should do it.” Suddenly, we were through the pale: we’d been called out, and we’d have to back up our talk with action. In my mind, our trip up the ridge started with Maya’s comment.

There are more than a few weekends between October and December, but between school and work neither Gabe nor I could seem to sync our schedules up for an overnighter. Soon, Thanksgiving was looming. It would’ve been easy at that point to dismiss the trip until spring, but there was a question of commitment. If 2007 passed without our shelter camping trip, our ability to follow through would’ve been in serious doubt. To further complicate matters, we’d decided that the trip would make the perfect project for our nature writing class. We’d nervously joked about the silver lining: the more complications, the better the story. The week before Thanksgiving, we sat down and got serious. The only weekend that would work for both of us was the narrow sliver between the end of regular instruction and finals week. That would give us two days and one night in the outdoors, and two days to hammer out a paper for class. It was close, but it was doable – barring any major catastrophe.

Thanksgiving came and went, and the North Coast temperatures began to drop as we neared the winter solstice. Short days at high latitude make for cold, even on the coast. The high humidity of the temperate rainforests turns the dial from cold to aching bones cold. With that in mind, I was beginning to feel some real trepidation about our adventure. After kicking around a few possibilities, we’d settled on a six-and-a-half mile ridge climb in Humboldt Redwoods State Park. The campsite was on an edge forest along Hanson Ridge Multi-Use Trail, and it was up at about 2200 feet. We’d be above the cold fog, but we’d have to contend with a bit more elevation and the possibility of rain followed by clear skies and freezing temperatures – a perfect recipe for hypothermia. Health issues complicated the situation: Gabe had been battling with Lyme disease for several months, which often left him physically and mentally exhausted. I’d injured my right heel while running earlier in the fall, and I’d yet to really push it again. I was somewhat concerned about how well I’d be able to climb a ridge with a pack – short hike or not. Ultimately, my concerns didn’t matter. We’d prepare as best we could, and leave a note on the car and our destination with a work buddy. We were committed, come rain, shine, or Amanita-crazed black bears.

amazing tales of survival

Sat, 15 Dec 2007 21:42:44 GMT

1209070808c
Originally uploaded by christobal

So, for those of you interested in seeing photographic (albeit low quality) evidence of my trip up Hanson Ridge, you should direct your browser to my flickr account.

I wrote a trail narrative for my nature writing class, and will be posting it in segments both here and at myspace.

Incidentally, for those of you who don't know me, the reedy albino sasquatch perched on the roof of the hut is Gabe, not me.

me vs. wild / birthday wishes

Sat, 08 Dec 2007 02:07:19 GMT

Tomorrow morning I am heading into southern Humboldt for some "survival camping." This is supposed to be experiential fodder for a nature writing class I'm in right now. It seemed like a good idea in October, but December is looking like a different story. Last weekend, the ridge we're heading for received 5 inches of rain in 48 hours (not unusual in a temperate rain forest*) and the night time temps drop into the 20s - the textbook makings of A+ hypothermia. Ideally, we'll be building debris shelters and gathering food, but it's late in the year and food will be in short supply and the weather will suck. As a contingency, we're taking food and emergency shelter (i.e., a tarp). My trekking partner grew up in an orthodox commune in Sonoma county, flintknaps, and makes his own bows/arrows. He also has Lyme Disease - which has been acting up lately. Whatever happens, we certainly won't die of boredom.

* more temperate rainforest trivia: The tropical rainforest has greater species diversity, but in terms of raw biomass/acre, we Cascadians come out on top. It's tough to compete with 18,600 cubic feet of living wood in a single tree. (more on redwood ecology)

---

Hey Johnny,

I know you read LJ occasionally, so maybe you'll run across this. I hope your birthday is good, wherever you are these days. Get a message to somebody and let us know you're ok, even if you don't want to tell anyone where you're at. Take care of yourself, and call me some time.

...and found!

Thu, 21 Jun 2007 01:47:59 GMT

a happy update on my missing brother:

he showed up at the excalibur looking for the bag he'd forgotten there last week, and they informed him that he'd been tagged as a missing person. LVPD was notified that he had been "found," and he called his girlfriend to let her know he where he was and that he was heading for the bus depot post-haste.

i won't get into details here in a public forum* , but he's had intermittent problems with dissociative behavior in the past, and i think this one just took it up a notch. he's on his way back home to colorado, basically in one piece. thanks for all the concern and help spreading the word. i really appreciate it, and so does the rest of the family.

* (although i might expand on it a bit behind a friends cut later)
(xposted to myspace)

gone missing

Mon, 18 Jun 2007 04:30:02 GMT

this is a long shot, but it's easier than emailing everybody and hoping it makes it through spam filters.

my brother john disappeared in las vegas on june 13. his bag was recovered from his room at the excalibur hotel. last we heard he was heading to the stratosphere to ride a roller coaster or something like that, but we don't know if he made it there or not. a missing person report has been filed with LVPD.

a few of my old friends from reno have migrated down to vegas in the last few years, and maybe you guys might have seen him. others of you know him, and there's a chance that he might come by looking for a place to crash, depending on his state of mind. he's going through a really tough period in his life, and he's had intermittent mental health issues since he was a teenager; i'm concerned that he's in some sort of a dissociative state and wandering vegas - not the best place to be if you're out of sorts. if you see him or hear from him, please leave me a message and ask him to call me, his mom, or his father. thanks.

not my favorite picture, but the best likeness i have of him:

there's a decent chance he's sporting a beard now.

truck boiz: scraper bike.

Thu, 14 Jun 2007 05:37:12 GMT

oakland:

* from: nation of thizzlam

brainworks

Sun, 13 May 2007 19:21:21 GMT

taken from mindmedia, inspired by weebleeds and ellyjonez.

Your Brain Usage Profile:

Auditory : 56%
Visual : 43%
Left : 29%
Right : 70%

christobal, you show a slight right-hemisphere dominance with a moderate preference for auditory processing, an unusual and somewhat paradoxical combination of characteristics.

You are drawn to a random and sometimes nonchalant synthesis of material. You learn as it seems important to a specific situation, and might even develop a resentment of others who attempt to direct your learning down a specific channel.

Your right-hemispheric dominance provides a structure that is only loosely organized and one which processes entire swatches of reality, overlooking details. You are emotional in your reactions and perceptual more than logical in your approach, although you can impose structure and a language base when necessary.

Your auditory preference, on the other hand, implies that you process information sequentially and unidimensionally. This combination of right-brain and auditory modes creates conflict, as you want to process data more rapidly than your natural processes allow.

Your tendency to be creative and free-flowing is accompanied by sufficient ability to organize and be logical, allowing you a reasonable degree of success in a number of different endeavors. You take in information methodically and systematically which can then be synthesized rapidly. In this manner, you manage to function consistently well, although certainly less efficiently than you desire.

You prefer the abstract and are a theoretician at heart while retaining the ability to be practical. You find the symbolism in a great deal of what you encounter and are something of a "mystic."

With regards to your lifestyle, you have the mentality which would be good as a philosopher, writer, journalist, or instructor, or possibly as a systems designer or social worker. Perhaps most important is your ability to "listen to your inner voice" as a mode of skipping over unnecessary steps to achieve your goals.

---

a couple of the observations are spot-on: tagging me as a mystic, prone to favor abstraction and theory over mechanics, and frustration with my inability to process data as quickly as i would like. there's a lot there that explains my rejection of Platonism and my obsessions with ecology, relativism, and system dynamics. i like that it picked up on the dichotomy of my linear learning style and my right-brained synthetic processes; that particular combination can be really frustrating.

tangent: i've been working through lee smolin's the life of the cosmos, which deals heavily with relativism as an underpinning of his (proto)theory of cosmological natural selection. if you're a fan of atheism, evolution, cosmology, ecology, or quantum physics you should find this book and read it.

i've also got a diatribe brewing about humanity's approaching evolutionary bottleneck, but i haven't decided whether to post it here. i think about it every time i see a michael franti "stayhuman" bumper sticker. will we? do we even have a say in the matter at this point?

music list and the sunshine phalanx

Fri, 20 Apr 2007 23:10:17 GMT

those who know me well know that i have a mild ocd that prompts me to compulsively make lists and wash dishes. the dishes are washed, so that leaves the list:

recently:

andrew weatherall : bulletcatcher's apprentice ep
gary numan : pleasure principle
killing joke : discography
deerhoof : discography
lcd soundsystem : sound of silver
andrew bird : armchair apocrypha*
andrew bird : the mysterious production of eggs
daturah : daturah
various : raga for peter walker
super furry animals : phantom power
vector lovers : capsule for one
mono : walking cloud and deep red sky, flag fluttered and the sun shined
the fall : the frenz experiment
joanna newsom : discography
opeth : blackwater park
xn. : ideas without numbers
rex + songs ohia : split seven

* i am fully on the bird bandwagon. the up side to discovering him late in the game is five back albums' worth of material to root around in while i wait for the new stuff.

that's all i got right now. spring on the redwood coast: grey rainsoaked days spaced by bright sun and high clouds. hiking season is upon us! we've already hatched a plot to return to the turkey crossing near petrolia and then hike in the lost coast wilderness between the ocean and the king range. i have a weakness for the transitional seasons. summer plans: cross the mojave for a mexican wedding! good things are stacking up around here lately. well, always, but i've been noticing them more lately.

Thu, 22 Mar 2007 06:07:54 GMT

happy spring, folks.

brief update from behind the redwood curtain

Wed, 14 Mar 2007 04:55:49 GMT

1. the redwood transit system is a sensory bomb. the stink on the morning bus is palpable: stale smoke, sharp stench of drunks' puke, dog shit ground into boot heels, and the cheese-funk of hippie drifter dreads. there are lots of sounds as well: endless babble from the mild tourette's cases, slackjawed boasting from the babythug contingent, snores from the winco night shift guy. i don't mind the sights so much: wan junkies wrapped in filthy tee shirts, shiny new-eyed babies, three-fingered fishermen with salt-and-pepper whiskers (highlights by high life, i'm guessing). it is a filthy, fascinating show.

2. i forgot.

3. day 2 of 27 straight. saving the world = death by exhaustion. apologies to those who should've heard from me by now. i'm feeling a bit walking-dead right now. rest assured that you're in my thoughts.

4. the cat has ringworm, probably. gross.

5. mariokart + bed now.

borges

Mon, 05 Feb 2007 02:17:12 GMT

(with apologies to the estate of j.l. borges if this is not in the public domain; i doubt borges himself would care)

Delia Elena San Marco
Jorge Luis Borges

We said goodbye on one of the corners of the Plaza del Once.*

From the sidewalk on the other side of the street I turned and looked back; you had turned, and you waved goodbye.

A river of vehicles and people ran between us; it was five o'clock on no particular afternoon. How was I to know that that river was the sad Acheron, which no one may cross twice?

Then we lost sight of each other, and a year later you were dead.

And now I search out that memory and gaze at it and think that it was false, that under the trivial farewell there lay an infinite separation.

Last night I did not go out after dinner. To try to understand these things, I reread the last lesson that Plato put in his teacher's mouth. I read that the soul can flee when the flesh dies.

And now I am not sure whether the truth lies in the ominous later interpretation or in the innocent farewell.

Because if the soul doesn't die, we are right to lay no stress on our good-byes.

To say good-bye is to deny separation; it is to say Today we play at going our own ways, but we'll see each other tomorrow. Men invented farewells because they somehow knew themselves to be immortal, even while seeing themselves as contingent and ephemeral.

One day we will pick up this uncertain conversation again, Delia - on the bank of what river? - and we will ask ourselves where we were once, in a city that vanished into the plains, Borges and Delia.

the system

Tue, 30 Jan 2007 04:21:33 GMT

I am beginning to get my head around the prison-industrial complex a bit now that my brother is in the belly of the beast.

First off - it is not easy to figure out where exactly he is at any given time. According to Colorado DOC, there's an online locater for inmates once they've been processed through intake and assigned to their initial* facility. Prior to intake, however, inmates are usually in county jails waiting for processing. The county does not let inmates or their families know if they intend to transfer the inmate to another facility in the same (or different) county. Incoming mail is sorted and examined for contraband, and can delay mail delivery to inmates for over a week. If an inmate is transfered during this time, his or her mail is not forwarded.

Contact between the inmate and family/friends is limited to plate-glass teleconferencing or video conferences. Phone calls by the inmate are routed through the DOC (county doesn't always allow outgoing calls) and are placed collect at high rates. It's difficult to coordinate phone calls between the inside and outside as well.

I understand the need for security and surveillance in contact between the inmate and the outside world. However, it also seems like mitigating factors should be considered - the nature of the crime, previous or current involvement with organized crime, etc. I figure that two factors must come into play:
1. treating all inmates the same cuts down on accusations of bias, and
2. it allows for the isolation and institutionalization of the inmates - getting them into "the system," where the DOC becomes very much home, and contact with the outside world is anomalous and foreign.

I haven't heard from him directly since before sentencing, but family tells me that he's adjusting - reading, working out, sobering up, etc. I know any real rehabilitation will have to come of his own will and desire - the prison system hardly even pays lip service to rehab, especially in a red state. He has no shortage of will; it is simply a matter of direction.

* I say initial because it is very rare for an inmate to spend any real length of time at a particular facility. Ostensibly this is because of security measures (preventing networking - particularly by gangs), but it also serves the purpose of keeping inmates uncomfortable and insecure in their environment.

cal berkeley vs. the oaks (and the city, students, wavy gravy, and so on)

Sat, 27 Jan 2007 06:20:34 GMT

the powers-that-be at uc berkeley think cutting down a grove of old coast live oaks is a good idea. apparently they need to build an athletic training center on the grove site, and have promised to plant three oak saplings for every mature oak they fell. this sounds well and good, but greenwash usually does.

1. all trees are not created equal. a mature oak is a keystone in its ecosystem - providing food and habitat for many other species. a young oak cannot provide the same services.
2. cal does not need to build their athletic facility on the grove site - several alternative sites have been proposed that meet the university's needs as well as the needs of the city of berkeley.
3. the city has an environmental ordinance that forbids the felling of a coast live oak that is more than six inches in diameter at chest height. uc berkeley claims that as a state entity they are exempt from the local ordinances - essentially thumbing their noses at the city.

tangental:
this whole affair is turning into a PR debacle for cal - good. there is a pervasive attitude in academic administrators in this state that they are beholden to no one other than themselves and their respective boards of regents - this seems to hold true for both the CSU and UC systems. it is (long past) time for students, staff, and faculty to join with citizens of the community at-large and hold the administrations of offending institutions accountable for their lack of vision and stewardship. they work for us - not for themselves.

a grassroots effort to save the cal oaks grove is underway; you can find out more at save oaks. this issue goes beyond berkeley - it's about intelligent, conscious community planning. the east bay (and califas in general) has enough sprawl and concrete - preservation of the last remaining bay area green belts and habitat islands is critical.

Mon, 22 Jan 2007 00:22:11 GMT

as requested by physedluver, a friends list
1. Can you cook?
2. What would you do if you were stuck in an elevator?
3. What talent do you wish you had?
4. Favorite place?
5. Favorite vegetable?
6. What was the last book you read?
7. Are you Dirty or Clean?
8. Any Tattoos and/or Piercings?
9. Worst Habit?

HERE COMES THE FUN ...
1. How did we meet?
2. What's your philosophy on life?
3. Negative or Optimistic?
4. What was your dream growing up?
5. What is the best thing that ever happened to you?
6. What was your first impression of me?
7. Tell me one weird fact about you:
8. Whats your favorite memory of us?
9. Tell me your favorite joke:
10. Have you ever kept anything from me?
11. What do you think of me as a Person?
12. Do you think I'm sane or insane?
13. Would you cry for me if I died?
14. Would you be my crime partner or my conscience?
15. If you could change anything about me, would you?
16. How do you fall asleep?
17. Ever gotten angry with me?
18. Would you go on a blind date if I set you up?
19. If you had one day to live, what would you do?
20. A million bucks.. what would you do with it?
21. What is your worst fear?
22. Favorite thing to do in your spare time?
23. Can you sing or dance?
24. In one word, how would you describe me? Be honest....
25. Will you repost this so I can fill it out ?

***

*(img courtesy of sarracenia northwest)

i met the most beautiful carnivorous plants last night: cape sundews (Drosera capensis)! i was fired up about growing some of my own, but after some interwebbing i discovered that they won't live happily in our heavily shaded apt without grow lamps. fortunately, grow lamps aren't hard to come by in humboldt county. the sundew was a good find for me - d. capensis is supposed to be easier to care for than our native cobra plants, and i'd like a biological control for our summer medfly problems here in presidio gomez.

G-D FAQ

Thu, 18 Jan 2007 02:44:01 GMT

via michaelallroy -

the offical god FAQ.

...for you reductionists et al.

*(please ask fatamerican to reprint this)