Taking Woodstock

Taking Woodstock is a pleasant diversion but not one of Ang Lee's better films. There are two principal problems. First, the main character, Elliot Teichberg, is so bland that it's hard to develop much interest in him. Second, his mother is so patently unpleasant from beginning to end that you can't muster any sympathy for her plight. (Near the end of the film, Elliot asks his father why his father has stayed with his mother for 40 years. His father replies, "Because I love her." This woman is so unlovable that you don't buy it for a second.) Furthermore, any film in which the second-tier characters are the most interesting (e.g., Liev Shreiber as the transvestite ex-Marine Vilma and Eugene Levy as dairy farmer Max Yasgur) is in trouble from the get go.

Handsome Devil

Hickory Horned Devil (Citheronia regalis)

Returning to work after lunch this afternoon (in the rain) I came across this Hickory Horned Devil (Saturniidae[Giant Silkworm and Royal Moths]: Ceratocaminae: Citheronia reglis) crawling through the wet undergrowth. According to David L. Wagner's Caterpillars of Eastern North America, its likely that this handsome devil, a fully-grown, final-instar larva, was wandering in search of a suitable pupation site. The pupa passes the winter in a below-ground cell. The adult that will emerge in the spring is a Regal (or Royal) Walnut Moth.

Hickory Horned Devil (Citheronia regalis); flash drive card for reference

Mushrooms and Summer Night Music

I know it's a little fuzzy; it was getting dark.

Mushrooms

Last evening, my wife and I took a long, out-and-back walk in our favorite local natural area. By the time we were nearing our turn around point, dusk was coming on strong. However, just at that point, we came across this cluster of mushrooms growing astride the trail and the drainage ditch that bordered the trail. These images don't do them justice--they were strikingly orange-red in real life. They were also very small; notice the green acorn partially obscured by one of the larger caps in the upper center of the images. My best guess, after reviewing the images in Mushrooms of Northeastern North America by Alan and Arleen Bessette and David Fisher is that they are of the genus Hygrophorus, but that's a shot in the dark. I didn't collect any to try to do a more careful identification.

Not fuzzy but a little overexposed by the flash.

Summer Night Music

Last evening was cool here, cool enough to open the windows (vs. leaving them closed with the air conditioner running). It was also cool enough to snuggle in bed. So, we pulled-up the shade and opened the south-facing window in our bedroom, and we spooned for a while, my wife behind me, before we fell asleep. There was a gentle breeze, and crickets and katydids lent some background music. In our part of the Mid-Atlantic, the sky is usually bright with city lights, especially when it's cloudy like it was last night, so the leaves of the gigantic and ancient sycamore tree growing outside our house appeared in filigreed brocade silhouette against the matte-gray sky. The last thing I remember my wife saying before we fell asleep was, "This is just perfect."

The Journey Home by Edward Abbey

The Journey Home

I just finished reading The Journey Home, a collection of 22 essays by Edward Abbey (author of the justly lauded Desert Solitaire) originally published in 1977. While Abbey and I are kindred spirits in lamenting the destruction and desecration of the natural world, the collection on the whole is only moderately satisfying.

Abbey is at his best when he combines his deeply personal recollections with a narrative thread. He accomplishes this best in "Hallelujah on the Bum" (retelling his hitchhiking and train-hopping trip from Pennsylvania to the West Coast and back in 1944), "Down the River with Major Powell" (an account of Abbey and two friends' trip down the Green River in Utah 101 years after John Wesley Powell made the first exploratory trip), and the second half of "Mountain Music" (in which Abbey recounts a climb to the knife-edged col between Mt. Wilson and Wilson Peak in Colorado). I also loved the three-page "Shadows from the Big Woods," but that's because it struck a particularly personal chord with me, but does not follow the "personal narrative" pattern of the other three excellent essays.

Slightly less effective are five other essays: "Disorder and Early Sorrow" (a very humorous recounting an ill-advised and ill-fated trip in a passenger car on an abandoned jeep track in Big Bend National Park in 1952), "Death Valley," "Manhattan Twilight, Hoboken Night" (written about the time Abbey spent in Hoboken, NJ, before the city became gentrified), "The Crooked Wood," and "Freedom and Wilderness."

Abbey stumbles in the remainder of the 13 contributions when he tries to be a naturalist and when he laments the loss of natural places. He's certainly spot on about his sentiments, but the essays come across as cynical and snide. Some are also outdated, especially "Return to Yosemite: Tree Fuzz vs. Freaks" and the longest contribution, "The Second Rape of the West" about strip mining for coal.

The book's only 239 pages long (in the hardcover edition I read) so it's not a major commitment. Plus, the great essays are gems to be savored.

Late Summer Images

My friend who manipulates photographic images had been in the hospital in July. She fell backward down the stairs and one of her lungs collapsed. While she was in the hospital (she needed surgery to reverse the collapse), the doctors determined that she has a grapefruit-sized bleb (a benign growth) on her lung and probably has had for a long time. So, she'll be back in the hospital for more surgery. In the meantime, she made these images, one from the morning glory vine she has growing in her back yard, and one taken at Higbee Beach on the Delaware Bay shore in southern New Jersey on a recent trip there.

Straddling the Continental Divide: Western New Mexico (May 2009) IX

New Mexico's champion alligator juniper (Juniperus deppeana)

Fort Bayard

On our second last day in New Mexico (May 21), we were somewhat at a loss for things to do because the sky was threatening rain and we didn't want to drive a long distance yet again. I thought about hiking to hot springs along the San Francisco River, but that was an hour's drive northwest on good roads, an indeterminate distance on a dirt road, and then a two mile walk to a location about which I wasn't exactly sure. Too much trouble. So, we decided to go to Ft. Bayard, about 15 miles east of Silver City, for a hike.

Ft. Bayard is an old cavalry fort that was established to fight the Apaches. Later, it became the locus for copper mining operations in the area, all of which have now been shut down or suspended. Then, the fort buildings were converted to a hospital, the current incarnation of the fort. Just south of the hospital complex, the entrance drive enters the Gila National Forest, and provides access to a set of trails in the foothills of the Black Mountains. We decided on a 5.5 mile circuit, including a side trail to New Mexico's champion alligator juniper tree (Juniperus deppeana).

The hike was easy up to the tree, crossing grasslands and low swells on a broad plain. The tree itself is growing alongside a brook in a copse of oak woodland, and it's mighty impressive. Because the prior day had been rainy, and because the day we visited was cloudy and drizzly, there were some nice opportunities for interesting photographs. We also came across numerous clumps of a parasitic plant at the base of the oaks that I couldn't identify on the spot but later determined to be bear corn (a.k.a. squaw root or cancer-root) (Conopholis americana), a member of the Orobanchaceae, or broom-rape family, all the members of which are parasitic.

Bear corn (a.k.a. squaw root or cancer-root) (Conopholis americana)

A fallen tree near the alligator juniper

Half-wet oaks arching over Sullivan Brook

From the juniper grove, we continued the circuit, climbing up into the hills on a deteriorating trail. Eventually, we reached the crest of the hill and passed through a gate in a barbed wire fence. The hike was downhill from there, in every sense of the word. Certainly, we began to descend vertically, but the fence was in place to keep cattle out of the area of the juniper grove. Though we never saw any cattle, their evidence was everywhere, from overgrazed pasture, cowpies too numerous to count, and a badly eroded and severely churned-up trail. The second half of the walk was unpleasant.

Near trail's end, Ft. Bayard, NM

We finally came out of the hills onto the plain again where there were several huge open growing sycamore trees. Our timing was perfect, because it began to rain just as we returned to our car.

Albuquerque

The next day, we checked out of Bear Mountain Lodge and headed back to Albuquerque for our flight home the next morning. En route we drove through the incredibly scenic Iron Creek canyon, but it was raining and we didn't have a chance to stop. The drive to Albuquerque took 5:15, including a stop for a quick lunch along the way.

We checked into our motel near the intersection of I-25 and I-40, then headed over to Old Town to do some final shopping. The store where we had bout some great fetishes in the past was no longer there, but my wife bought an unusual Navajo ring in another store.

At 5:00, we headed back to the motel and got dressed for an early dinner at Zinc Wine Bar and Bistro. Our prix fix meals ($29.00 each) were superb, from appetizer to dessert.

Straddling the Continental Divide: Western New Mexico,(May 2009) VIII

Ring muhly (Muhlenbergia torreyi) at the edge of the pinion-juniper woodlands
Bear Mountain Lodge, Silver City, NM

Short Detour

On Tuesday morning, May 19, 2009, before we explored the cultural resources of central Silver City, we accompanied the volunteer naturalist at Bear Mountain Lodge on a guided tour of one of the lodge grounds' trails. The driest, sandiest, and most exposed portions of the the trail were bordered with a strikingly unusual grass (at least for this Easterner): ring muhly (Muhlenbergia torreyi). The grass obviously gets started from a single plant in the center, then the center dies back and the grass expands outward from the origin. It has a an umistakable growth form that can spread for dozens of feet.


The Catwalk

One of the main reasons we wanted to visit the Silver City area was to walk The Catwalk National Recreation Trail in the Gila National Forest. After we finished birding at The Nature Conservancy's Gila River Farm on Wednesday morning, May 20, we drove a half-hour north on US 180 to the town of Glenwood, where we turned east off the main road and drove five miles to The Catwalk trailhead.

The Catwalk is a trail developed through Whitewater Creek canyon that replaced a pipeline originally built in the 1800 to provide a dependable source of water for mining and refining operations near Glenwood. Workers who created the original trail penetrated a mile into the canyon to install pipe. Where the creekbed filled the entire canyon bottom, the workers bolted the pipeline to the canyon walls and installed a metal grate on top to allow them to walk up into the canyon to service the pipe. The grating was narrow and precarious, hence the nickname "catwalk." Over the years, floods have washed out most (but not all) traces of the original pipeline and walk, but the Forest Service has rebuilt and modernized the popular trail, making it among the most popular attractions in southwestern New Mexico.


When we arrived, the skies threatened rain, but we had driven over an hour north of Silver City, and we didn't want to waste all that time just to come back another day. So, we began walking the trail. The walk begins as a rocky footpath, but quickly reaches the steel grating affixed to the canyon walls. When we reached the suspended section, we asked a couple leaving the walk to take our pictures, then we quickly moved on into the canyon. The walk was disconcerting but exhilarating as the creek roared and foamed under our feet. After a few hundred yards, the metal grating ended and the trail continued up into the canyon as a rocky footpath with occasional wooden steps in the steepest sections. At its upper end, the trail terminated under a huge overhang of rock, with the creek surging among gigantic boulders below. (It is possible to continue up the canyon on the Whitewater Creek Trail into the Gila Wilderness.) That day, a group of high school kids was wading and swimming in the creek despite the cloudy skies and cool temperatures.

Whitewater Creek near the terminus of The Catwalk Trail

Just as we reached the upper end of the trail, it began to rain. We decided to wait to see if it would stop, but after 10 minutes, with no end in sight, we started back down the trail. We stopped every place there was a rocky overhang in the cliff to get out of the rain, waiting at one point for 20 minutes, mashed up against the rock in a really uncomfortable position as the rain poured down.

Finally, the rain let up a bit and we continued down the trail. We encountered a couple and their dog (the guy was tall, slender, and very good looking) equipped with rain gear.

Naturally, by the time we reached the parking lot, the rain had stopped. As we sat in the car eating our lunch, a car pulled up and disgorded two bedraggled looking backpackers who plodded up toward the trailhead, headed for a backcountry trip in the Gila Wilderness. While I yearned to accompany them, I thought about backpacking in the rain in the mountains and gave the whole concept another thought. (It ended up raining for the next several days, so they probably had a soggy trek.) I recognized the person driving the car that had brought the backpakers to the trailhead--it was the woman who had taken our picture as we first entered The Catwalk. I expressed surprise at seeing her again, and she said that she was an artist who lived in Glenwood, and that she had seen the two backpakers walking past her house. She took pity on them and drove them the five miles to the trailhead. Glenwood sounds like a nice community.

Two more birds on this trip (neither "life listers"): Canyon Wren (Catherpes mexicanus) and American Dipper (Cinclus mexicanus).