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SAME BEAUTY, DIFFERENT BEHOLDER

July 12, 2016

As the Cessna 206 flew northward over the western Brooks Range, dark clouds ahead, I was thinking that we weren’t going to see the caribou migration from the air. We might have to soon turn around, but at least we had already seen spectacular scenery that few are fortunate enough to view.

We had flown to Kotzebue, Alaska, for the express purpose of seeing the caribou migration from the air. The Western Arctic Herd fluctuates in size, now about 275,000. I have seen pictures of the herd bunched together from the air; I have heard stories of having the caribou go through one’s campsite. The chances of being in the right place on the ground, however, are small. The animals may come early, late, or take a different migratory route.

Jared, our pilot, had told us a year ago on a prior visit that it might be possible to see the migration from the air, suggesting we come about the second week in July. We decided to spend six days in Kotzebue. If weather were an issue, or Jared busy, which all pilots are in summer, we would have flexibility. We arrived on the evening of the sixth and walked one block from the airport to their office. Jared had just finished a trip and told us the caribou had migrated 2 weeks earlier this year. Much of the herd was far to the northeast, he said, but a significant number were still due north of us in one of the valleys. He thought we might be able to fly out the next afternoon, proposing a triangular leg that would put us near the first group and then move westward to see the others.

The next day Jared was still busy at 3, and my wife and I were beginning to think we’d wouldn’t go until the following day. Maybe. I have dealt with Alaskan bush pilots for a decade, and things are predictably unpredictable. One needs to expect anything, be ready immediately, and ascribe any untoward event as “It’s Alaska.” We took a short walk down the beach, waiting. At 4:30, we were asked if we were ready; at 5, we were in the air heading north. We were going to try to find the tail end of the migration.

We overflew the valley where the caribou had been the day before, now empty, except for a stunning rainbow, which suggested we might have some sunshine in between showers. I wasn’t expecting much, my long standing philosophy being that seeing wildlife is a gift and not an expectation. We turned east, passing by mountains of the western Brooks Range. I think we saw six rainbows.

Rainbow over the Brooks Range

Not uncommon view in the Brooks

Canyons of the Noatak River.

Suddenly, Jared said, “There are 10.” I didn’t see anything. “There are a few more. Wow, they sure have put on their hiking boots.” My wife then saw them. I hadn’t configured my eyes yet for what I should be seeing from the air. I’ve seen thousands of caribou, but mostly from the ground. I looked and looked.

Then I saw them, a couple of small dots, moving. Then I saw several brown lines on the tundra, animal trails, with a line of brown moving on them. Caribou.

There are about 400 caribou in this picture. The dark lines are animal tracks.

The valley narrowed into a canyon, and the river, its banks, and the narrow sides of the canyon appeared alive. It was. The ground itself was moving, lines and lines of caribou moving east. We weren’t standing still watching them move. We were traveling 80 knots, 1.5 miles a minute, and for at least five minutes we saw lines of caribou.

Everywhere.

Jared banked at a fork in the canyon, and we turned back to a valley where a hill marked the entrance. Flying much lower now, we could see the hill covered with caribou, a sea of brown, some lying on the ground in the 24 hour a day sunlight. It was stunning. I like to take pictures, but from a moving plane through a window, I looked, videoing while looking more carefully with my eyes. If the pictures came out, fine. If they didn’t, well…it’s Alaska, and the scene was now embedded in my brain.

All too soon, we banked away from the caribou, leaving them to their migration, heading south. Nearby, the prior night, Jared had dropped off a guide with 3 Australian clients, telling them to camp by a small, shallow river and hike over to a nearby hill and wait for the caribou. “I hope I was right,” he said.

We approached the camp and overflew it, then banking and landing on a gravel bar near the group. The guide, a young woman, appeared with the three others in tow, young men. She was ecstatic, slapping hands with Jared, saying they had spent much of the night, sun up of course, watching the migration from a quarter mile. The clients seemed more muted. Wow, I thought. What an experience, hours of caribou viewing from the ground.

Ground view about 10 miles from Caribou viewing.

We took off and flew back to Kotzebue, thrilled that on our first full day we saw what we came—and hoped— to see. No, we didn’t see 200,000 caribou in a valley milling around. I’ve seen those pictures, and they are amazing. We saw instead something more subtle, nothing I expected to see, but to me every bit as memorable. We saw miles and miles of caribou on the move, covering the hills, the streams, moving through a valley and a canyon. One doesn’t see that when they are bunched up. We saw a migration. Would I like to see it from the ground? Yeah, I would. But I saw something special.

The next day, we happened to run into one of the Australians in the hotel, not surprising, since there is only one major one in Kotzebue. He said nothing about the caribou, not one word, but spoke about the Wildebeest migration in Tanzania, telling us at least 3 times that we really ought to see it. I’m 3 1/2 times his age, but I get excited about nature like a kid. At 19, he saw something rare and beautiful, but as Steve Prefontaine said, “sacrificed the gift.” His father paid for his trips; the flight alone (not including guides, food, or the trip from Australia) were $6600.

We subsequently took two more flights with Jared, one to Kobuk Valley National Park, where we were dropped off while he flew elsewhere to shuttle a group from one area to another. We had free “ground time,” because he had to be out there anyway, and spent three hours hiking in perhaps the most remote park in the country, quiet, beautiful and alone. Two days later, we flew down to the Seward Peninsula to see Serpentine Hot Springs, part of Bering Land Bridge National Preserve. Jared, very familiar with the area, had never been in the water. Come to think of it, he had never seen such good weather there, either. While we were hiking, looking at the many tors, granite that appeared as the ground above it eroded, he soaked.

Bush growing on sand dune in drainage where there were a remarkable number of wildflowers and a 15 year-old spruce tree.

Western edge of Great Kobuk Sand Dunes

The wind causes changes in the sand, changes in the clouds.

Crop circle effect of wind’s blowing grass. Foot tip for perspective.

Changes in the color and texture of sand occur just like in snow.

We came to see the caribou migration, seeing it in a way I had not expected. Additionally, I got to see Kobuk Valley a second time, with adequate time to explore. And I flew down to Serpentine Hot Springs, a place I hoped some day I might see but figured I never would.

I won’t ever see the Wildebeest migration, although I’m certain it’s remarkable, as are both North American migrations, caribou and crane. Some of the best experiences come not from managing a trip to Tanzania or Alaska, but from managing one’s expectations.

Tags:Alaska hiking and pictures, National Park Odyssey, Outdoor writing
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AGATE: THE CASE FOR A SINGLE PAYER SYSTEM

July 7, 2016

Years ago, in the doctor’s lounge, one of my colleagues said, “I admit it. I make money off CT scan referrals to the center where I invested. I’m greedy.”

While honest, he was not fulfilling a fiduciary duty, a legal obligation to act solely in another party’s interests. Parties owing this duty are called fiduciaries. That meant when I practiced, I had to act in my patient’s best interests. I could not order a test to make money unless the patient needed the test. For example: I might see a patient with classic carpal tunnel syndrome, 5 minute history and exam. Confirmation, if surgery were a consideration, was a nerve conduction velocity, testing to see if the velocity of conduction were decreased through the carpal tunnel of the wrist. I billed either for a simple new patient visit, $95 then, or 2 nerve conduction (NCV) studies, one in each arm, to confirm, $86. I could have billed for both and charged $181, but it was a 5 minute evaluation, and a 5 minute NCV, and that seemed excessive.

I knew some who charged an extensive new patient visit ($165), two NCVs plus sensory conduction (the other way) on both arms with electromyography (EMG) both arms, to see if the muscle were damaged (almost never, these days) done by the tech, while they were seeing another patient, nearly $800. Physician time: 10 minutes. We were paid by amount billed. My wife ran a CT scanner back then, but I did not send patients to her. Her readings of scans were better than other radiologists, but there was an appearance of a conflict of interest had I sent a patient to her. Many colleagues did not have such worries. They invested in CT scanners then sent patients to them, a nationwide practice so bad that the Stark laws, named for the California congressman who introduced them in the late 80s, were passed, limiting referrals by doctors to places in which they had invested.

The Oregon Health Plan is Oregon’s Medicaid plan, Medicaid being a joint federal and state program that helps with medical costs for some with limited income and resources. In 1996, because insurers wouldn’t cover Medicaid services in Eugene, physicians created an IPA, not the beer one, an individual practice association. Each physician ponied up $6000 for a set number of shares; many were not happy about doing it.

For-profit Agate Healthcare bought out the IPA, claiming in 2001 they had covered 30,000 Medicaid patients and had stayed within budget. For-profits do not have a fiduciary responsibility to their patients but rather to their stockholders. Stated another way, costs to cover medical care from beneficiaries are called “Medical Losses,” the amount paid divided by the amount received called the Medical Loss Ratio, a term I dislike, because it has the sense that delivering medical care is bad. Doctors with shares got dividend checks every year and they could buy and sell shares. This is OK. It’s capitalism, and for risking $6000, doctors got some reward.

Agate later contracted with Trillium Healthcare to manage the Plan, and now with 94,000 patients Trillium has rapidly increased their revenues from a quarter to a half billion in the past two years. Over time, stock options, something most of us don’t have, exercise, or even understand, allowed executives to obtain more shares.

Successful companies are often bought by a larger one. Centene, based in Missouri, with $16.1 billion in revenue and $261 million in net income, bought Agate. Yet in 2015, 13,000 Lane County patients still did not have a doctor. Big problem. Eventually, they did, but that’s not “high-quality care” that payers, hospitals, and doctors are often trotting out. There was concern that Agate kept some of the Medicaid money to make them look like a cash cow, a company with a lot of cash on hand.

When the buyout occurred, Agate had marketed themselves well, their share price increasing 600% overnight. My bank pays me 0.15% annually. When Agate was bought for $109 million, the proceeds went to the shareholders, not for medical care for homeless or paying medical debts people had in Lane County, but rather to rich, connected locals, all white and mostly men.

The CEO got $5.7 million, the CFO $4.2 million, and the entire 13 member board of directors received $34.2 million. Another 77 doctors got a total of $41 million; 128 shareholders got $34 million. For a $6000 investment, continuously compounded, the last received a 19% return over 20 years. The whistleblower, an investor, felt he came by his half million “somewhat honestly,” whereas the board, he said, “well, that’s an awful lot of money.” Yeah. It is. But “somewhat”? The letters to the editor blasted the whole lot of them, not that much will change.

From medical loss ratios to “managing ED use and bed days,” for profits have dictated care. We doctors put ourselves here by fee for service and cranking up the service. For profits manage the number of bed days by discharging patients early and denying some care, but in all fairness, I saw many patients who stayed in the hospital with either no visits on the chart during a long weekend, or a bunch of “doing well” with no documentation why they needed continued hospitalization. This isn’t and wasn’t optimal utilization of hospitals. As for denying care, in my day, carotid surgery for asymptomatic narrowing was not indicated, heavily abused, with high complication percentages. I had the data.

There is too much money flying around in medicine, but fiduciary responsibility to patients must not be lost. Fiduciary responsibility to patients often requires one to leave money on the table, rather than taking all the groceries that were supposed to feed everybody. Like not charging $800 for carpal tunnel workups. Or doing unnecessary surgery.

How did the Agate issue become public? The board president, a physician, put out talking points to defend its sale. Who got how much was kept secret; the company hired lawyers to keep the sale results private. The media sued, and all was to be contested in court, because Agate shareholder felt it was private information whereas the media felt the money came from public funds, which indeed it was.

The newspaper knew that prior to the sale of the company, many on the inside bought shares from others who didn’t know what was happening. This is dishonest, but it is the way people work. The paper finally received 218 pages from a disgruntled member whose own share was about a half million (the somewhat honestly guy). He was disgruntled because share owners were asked to fund the legal costs for a minuscule amount, enough to irk him to go public. When you stand to get $5.2 million, a little thing like asking others to pay legal costs tends to annoy people. It’s remarkable how the whole secret house of cards came tumbling down over a buck a share issue.

We need a single payer system. This sort of stuff is what Bernie Sanders railed about all spring.

We need to tax capital gains progressively, so that when somebody makes an investment that grows 6 fold overnight, they will pay a much higher rate. I like 80%, but 70% would be acceptable.

Finally, I noted that every doctor named but one was a surgeon. That one got individually blasted in a letter to the editor. Seemed that he disappeared when a woman’s father was in his final hours. She never forgave him. Would you?

Fiduciary responsibility would have dictated different behavior there, too.

Tags:A different side of medicine, Philosophy
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WHY I LEAD HIKES

July 5, 2016

After I joined the Obsidians, an outdoor club in Eugene with 500 members, I thought it might be interesting to eventually lead a hike or two. One of the women in the club, a dynamo now 75, has led perhaps 500, and strongly encouraged me to lead. I told her I couldn’t lead anything that I hadn’t hiked myself, so I spent my first summer in Oregon soloing many trails in the Willamette and Siuslaw National Forests.

In August, two months after I joined, I led my first hike on the Obsidian Limited Use Trail, requiring a permit, for no more than 30 are allowed in any given day, post the hike online, meet everybody at a given time and place, assign cars and drivers to get to the trailhead, then hike. Somehow, everything worked out fine. The first reason I lead hikes is that the club needs hike leaders.

During the next two years and the 51 hikes I led, some were easy, like in-town ones that required little driving and were on a trail or path that was familiar to everybody. Most, however, were out of town. I had hikes where people were spread out on 2 miles of trail, others where some people were fast and had eaten lunch before the stragglers got to the turn around point. I had hikers who wanted to video the whole trail, some who wanted to photograph, others who used the hike as training, slowing down the group, and one, who was late to the meeting point, joining us at the trailhead and didn’t say one word to me the whole hike. I treated falls, heat exhaustion, and often hiked a mile extra each hike.

We leaders are volunteers, but to hear some talk, one might think that only certain people lead. I got behind two discussing various merits of leaders on an in-town Thanksgiving Day walk. Why, I thought, don’t they lead, if they don’t like a leader’s style? That is what I did. So the second reason why I lead hikes is because I like having control.

Leading, however, is work. It’s easier to show up at a hike and just do it, without having to organize it, write a description of what is expected, field phone calls from members or non-members who often would have such questions answered if they logged on to the site and read the description, ensure that the people going can do the hike and have adequate equipment, worry about drivers, know where everybody is, make sure the hike moves along, take care of any problems, and get everybody back to the trailhead safely.

I want those on my hikes to know what to expect. We leave promptly, I give the approximate speed on the trail, regrouping points, the lunch stop, and when we can expect to get back home. If you want to hang loose and walk around in the woods, I’m not your hike leader. If you want to see some good backcountry where not many people go, cover some ground, and get home at a specific quoted time, I am.

I put Obsidian Loop on the schedule for 1 July this year, figuring the hot June would take care of the snow. The Forest Service told me the snow level was at 5200 feet. I had done a hike in early June to 5600 feet, encountering only one small patch of snow. I suspected there might not be much snow left, but to be sure, I scouted the hike 5 days prior. Scouting is a full days’ work. I’m doing the whole hike, including the drive. I had to buy a permit, then a few days later drove to the trailhead, the last 20 miles on a winding, curving, narrow road. Finally, I hiked the loop, 12 miles—solo. There was a lot of snow, although not as much as two years before. I got off trail several times and navigated by GPS. It was a difficult day. The Obsidian Trail is beautiful, but it takes a lot out of people— some is on volcanic rock, a lot of snow was present in this instance, there were six stream crossings, some of which were deep. Still, I was glad I did it, because I knew exactly what we could and could not do. I returned home fine, but I put on the trip description that we might be doing an out and back to Obsidian Falls, and to be prepared for snow. Two people cancelled. One other, who had been on the waiting list, joined, and I was glad to see him, for I knew he was a good hiker.

This is the Obsidian Trail after a snowy winter, 3 July 2014. No trail visible, and one either knows the route or uses GPS.

Friday, eleven of us met, driving up in three cars. We always carpool. I had a good group, and we got an earlier start on the trail than I had hoped. We stop at trail junctions, and as leader, I usually am not in front but somewhere in the middle, trying to have a sense where the front and back are, who is fast, who isn’t, and anything else I observe. When we reached the first regrouping point, I discovered that one of our hikers had continued on, which was clearly not something we do. I hoped he would go directly up the proper trail to the Falls, because there were side trails that could be taken.

Obsidian Falls from above. The passage here was the area I was most concerned about, for it was on a 45 degree snow field where sliding was dangerous.

From here on, I led from the front, because I knew the trail and wanted to keep the group together. When we reached the Falls, I saw the missing person and went down to talk to him. I first quietly asked him how he was, and when he told me he was fine, told him firmly that we waited at trail junctions. He hadn’t heard me say that, but I had, and others on the hike could verify that, and in any case it’s a Club rule. I had been worried about his well-being and a bit angry, but I kept my anger in check and he apologized.

100 meters off trail, we came down this area, some choosing to glissade.

After lunch, I thought with less snow, we could complete the loop, and we did, slowly coming back down off trail through snow, my navigating by GPS and memory I had of the trail, which I knew ran near a creek. More than once, I was concerned about not knowing exactly where I was, despite having been in the area five days earlier, but yet I knew we were going the right direction. The map on the GPS was off by 400 meters. Eventually, we finished the loop and hiked almost 4 miles to the cars. For the second time in 5 days, I had to drive back down the winding road, tired, back to town.

People loved the hike. One called it his favorite, another said he wanted to do anything I led, and a third said “That is what I call a hike.” That’s a good day. They aren’t all that way. Why do I lead hikes? My third reason: Had I not decided to do this hike, no Obsidian–indeed, no person–would have seen the vast stretches of snow in the Three Sisters Wilderness that we saw on 1 July 2016. Nobody would have glissaded, nobody would have seen a lake emerge from its winter ice, nobody would have seen the Winter Wren calling, and nobody would have known what they had missed.

Lake emerging from ice at 6800′ elevation.

Nobody saw this area that day but us. Middle Sister in the right center.

Winter Wren. Interestingly, five days earlier there was one on this root ball, so a nest is probably nearby.

Tags:Outdoor writing, Philosophy
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TEMAGAMI

June 21, 2016

Fifty-two years ago this August. On the sixth, to be exact. Ten days of my life, beginning by being trucked up past Lake Nipissing, further north than I had ever been at the time, to a wild place called Temagami.

I had long forgotten about Temagami, and I would not have remembered it had it not been for Camp Pathfinder’s 100th anniversary and reunion I attended in 2013. I wanted to see the place where I learned canoe tripping, which I’ve continued the past 50 years. I was glad to go to the reunion; while I don’t plan to return, I made the trip once, and that was a gift to myself. I got a chance to canoe again in Algonquin Park, which I did not expect to do at all, and I discovered at 64 I could still carry a 90 pound canoe on my shoulders for a mile, without stopping.

And survive. The guy with me was ten years younger, a big advantage. He took the stern, and I was happy in the bow. The first carry was a lift-over, and the second one was his. Right away, we had a problem. We were not about to carry the entire weight on our neck. We were used to lashing paddles to the bow seat and carrying thwart, and putting the weight on our shoulders. Neither of us had lashed since then, but it wasn’t like it was rocket science. We alternated portages and had a great day trip. I needed to wash the muck off, so I had to swim again in Source Lake. I couldn’t believe how cold the water was, although only I had changed.

It was a lot easier when I was 18. Algonquin was a lot wilder back then, too. When I drove into the Park, I stopped at the Canoe Lake store to use a pay phone and could barely orient myself. There was a huge restaurant on the second floor, and the launch point, which used to be a sand beach, was paved over. We kids used to shoulder our packs without help when we landed at the Canoe Lake store, because we were young, full of testosterone and wanted to show off.

Pathfinder has listed online all the trips ever taken from 1959 to the present, and my name is on twenty-five of them during the 1960s. As I looked through the ones in 1964, one called “Temagami” popped up. Wow, Temagami. When certain names of wild country appear, my brain goes somewhere Up North, where the lakes have no cabins, the horizons are tree-lined, the shores rocky, the rivers free flowing, and one hears campfires crackling, the banging of pots, the chopping of wood, the rain on the tent at night, and the haunting call of the loon.

Temagami.

Temagami was one of the wildest places I would ever canoe until I ran the Nahanni River in the Northwest Territories in 1985. The Nahanni, Yukon, and the Brooks Range in Alaska are more remote, but Temagami was remote enough. It hadn’t been done by the camp before, so we campers were honored to be chosen; the head man was the director of tripping. We were going for 10 days, north, a wonderful word, north of Lake Nipissing to the 45th parallel, which for me was like being in the Arctic. We knew the lakes were big, the portages long and not well maintained, and the campsites few. What we didn’t know was it would rain every day, and back then, neither rain gear nor canvas tents was very good.

As I started writing, a few memories returned. I don’t know how many are true, half a century plus two years later, but I’m assuming the best. Lake Temagami, our jumping off point, was the first “big lake” I had ever paddled. Kneeling in the bow, for Pathfinder campers never sat, was the only time my knees ever hurt from the force of the waves. I came right down on the ribs and planking, stroking into a strong headwind. We had to pull into shore to dump water out of the canoe, for the waves often came right over the gunwales of our Old Town, loaded with 3 people 3 packs, with little freeboard. I was about to write that it was the only time that happened, but over the years, I’ve had to go to shore several times to dump water out of the canoe to keep packs drier.

I don’t remember many campsites, only that they were primitive. Back then my boots were wet the whole time, and most of my clothes were, too. That was before rain suits. To this day, wet boots and wet feet don’t bother me. I actually feel less at home in the woods with dry feet. I remember one site where we were camped by a roaring falls. It rained the whole night. I woke with a puddle of water under the foot of my sleeping bag, tried to remove as much as I could, figuring the bag would be soaked the next morning.

When I awoke, the spot was dry. Go figure. Maybe I had been dreaming.

Makobe Lake was the furthest north we went, and I can still remember the black spruces dotting the shores and the horizon. I thought I was so far north then. Now, I live at that latitude. On the penultimate day, the Sun, the glorious Sun, broke through the clouds, a raven called, we answered in kind, and all was right with the world. I don’t know if that was on Larn or Ostergut, but that’s what the lakes were called back then. Never forgot them.

I never saw and never will see Temagami again. For some things in life it’s actually better not to go back. I did look online, and the portage known as Fat Man’s Misery, which I am very proud to have done, even if only with a pack, now has many more trees. I prefer my imperfect memory of wondering how our staff got canoes down that carry.

The following year, I would transition from a superb bow man to a third man, lowest of the staff on a trip, paddling in the stern. It would be three years before I would be in charge, wearing the red bandanna. My last summer, my last trip, as a camper, wasn’t in Algonquin. It was to wild Temagami further north, where the haunting whistle of CN trains carried us back at the end of our trip..

Today, Pathfinder sends month-long trips to Hudson’s Bay. They’ve even done the Bloodvein River, which makes me a little jealous. But not much. I’m thrilled that young guys and gals are out in that country. I hope there will always be wild country for them—and folks like me— to test themselves in. It might still be Temagami, Quetico, Ile à la Crosse, Aichilik, Kobuk: any name that evoke black spruce, muskeg, the Canadian Shield, rivers running wild and free, and a land like no other.

Tags:Canoe Trips
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DROUGHT MONITOR—IRRELEVANT. FACTS—IRRELEVANT

June 3, 2016

I have been quiet about the depressing primary season. I kept hoping, starry-eyed, that there would be an honest, thoughtful discussion about the many serious issues that face the country today. Instead, when I did listen, I heard a litany of racism, xenophobia, simplistic solutions, and inane slogans. An incredibly boorish, impolite, narcissistic man who doesn’t listen, talks over people, and screams without thinking has a high probability of becoming president, because his boorishness resonates with many. The House Speaker can work with Mr. Trump, and the other side is too busy squabbling to deal with the clear and present danger. The boor is telling crowds what they want to hear, even if 85-95% is not true, according to fact checking. Facts don’t matter much in America these days. Repetition of lies wins. How people look and sound is more important than what they have to say. Tweets matter. Nerdy stuff about water on a third-rate blog changes nothing.

The Republicans sowed the wind and the country is now reaping the whirlwind. The nastiest people in the Party couldn’t stop Trump, and too many Democrats tend to stay home when they don’t get their way. Or, worse, they decide purity matters and cast their vote for a perfect candidate who has no chance of getting elected. How did McCarthy work out in 1968, Nader in 2000?

Worse, a third party candidate like Gary Johnson could siphon off enough votes to throw the election into the House, where the Republicans will pick the president. I wonder how many have thought of that scenario.

If fewer than 540 people in Florida had changed their vote from Nader to Gore in 2000, we wouldn’t have elected Bush. Had the Democrats united in 1968, Nixon’s secret plan to end the Vietnam War wouldn’t have occurred, I doubt there would have been the Christmas bombing, and we wouldn’t have had Watergate. I am going to be “taught a lesson” by the purists: they will teach me what happens when the Republicans control the Court, Congress, and the country. When we are at war, in debt from emergency authorizations, have destroyed public education, sold off the national parks, wildlife refuges, and the wilderness, and gutted safety standards, yes, they will have taught me a lesson.

When Medicare is privatized and Social Security is removed, I will survive. When Roe vs. Wade is overturned, and birth control is made illegal, I will be asked for money. I always am. But few will listen to my ideas or thoughts. Want my thoughts without reading further? Unite and work to extend voting hours and days, push vote-by-mail, and get every last voter on our side out. Every one.

OK, back to Mr. Trump, who said that there was no drought in California. Oh, some were quick to say that California has to allocate water better and at the proper price. But California is in drought. Not only is 86% of the state in D1-D4 categories, only 6% of the state is not in drought, and those 9000 sq mi are in the far northwestern part of the state. A fifth of the state is in D4, exceptional drought. Drought is about measurement and science, not about what one states. Trump is dead wrong, but people believe him. He said it, people believe it, and that settles it. California does have a water allocation problem, but that only exacerbates the 5 year drought that shows no signs of abating, after two other multiyear droughts since 2000. Two of those years, San Francisco had zero and 0.01 inches rainfall in January, which had never occurred once, let alone two years in a row.

The economists who deal with California’s water problem invoke the market, but they don’t factor in the price of endangered species and are curiously silent about the quarter million homes and businesses in California that lack water meters. The law mandating water meters doesn’t fully take place until 2025. Not metering water is about as stupid as charging people $30 a month for gasoline and letting them use all they want. Incredibly, Bakersfield and Fresno have actively resisted meters. What century are they living in?

Because of groundwater use, the Central Valley is sinking: near Mendota, 9 meters, 29 feet, from 1925 to 1977. Many places have sunk a meter between 2006 and 2010. This affects the canals, which must be repaired because of shifting. Ground water pumping has changed the aquifer from deep to shallow, which gets more irrigation recharge with salts, making the water less useful.

Some crops are more water intensive than others, and as the climate changes, we need to change what is being grown. Or, people like Tom Selleck may try to get truckloads of water from elsewhere hauled to their property. Mr. Selleck got off cheaply for his “me first” approach, paying the P.I. (probably not Magnum, I would guess) who caught him $22,000. He denies ever receiving letters telling him he was out of compliance. Ignorance of the law is not justifiable, but he’s famous.

Trump is good at telling people what they want to hear, even if it flies in the face of science and common sense. Sarah Palin at least admitted California needs water: she just thought it could be obtained from the ocean and placed in reservoirs. Are the voters that dumb? One example.*

Trump could have been presidential: he could have taken the high road and said that we are now seeing the “new normal” of climate in the western US—higher temperatures, less rainfall, more extreme events— and offered solutions. We need to meter water, for money drives use. We need to harvest rainwater, not let all run into the ocean or evaporate. We need to have better ability to fix leaks, be they in houses or canals. We need to change our usage at home and regionally. Neither lawns nor golf courses belong in arid regions. We need to consider desalination if it can be done safely and with renewable energy. That is a tall order. Mr. Trump could have said that climate is going to change what happens in California, and the citizens must start preparing for it. Instead, he catered to what people want to hear: everything is fine, if only the Democrats, the environmentalists, and “Big Government” would get out of the way.

This is an election where the Democrats, environmentalists, and “Big Government” may all lose.

And this time, I won’t likely live to see the damage from another bad president get repaired.

*2006 AP polls showed that a majority of Americans were unable to name more than one of the protections guaranteed in the first Amendment of the Constitution — which include speech, assembly, religion, press and “redress of grievance.” Just 1 in 1000 could name all of these five freedoms. However, 22% were able to come up with the name of every member of the Simpson family. Author’s note: I never once watched the show.

Tags:General writing, Philosophy
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TRAIL MEMORY

May 28, 2016

We were descending Marys Peak in the Coast Range to the cars, the last part of the hike’s being on a service road used to oversee the Corvallis watershed. No vehicles were present, and from the blowdowns on the road, none had been there for some time. After about a mile, there was a trail heading off into the roadside brush, with a sign: “Trail Closed due to Operations in Area”.

The person hiking with me said, “Was that the way we went up?”

“No,” I replied. “We entered about a half mile further.”

Three Sisters from Marys Peak (April 2014)

I am no longer surprised by these comments. I was the trip leader, and there is no way I would take a group past a sign saying “Trail Closed.” The trail we had taken 3 hours earlier ascended immediately in forest and this one stayed low and in brush. But, as I have learned, what is sometimes obvious to me isn’t obvious to others.

“Where was that hike where I got so exhausted with the pack I was carrying that I fell?”

“Browder Ridge.” I know where on the trail it occurred, too.

Browder Ridge Summit with Mt. Jefferson in distance (2014)

“What mountain were we trying to climb last fall when we turned around because of weather?”

“Crescent Mountain.” I know exactly where we turned around, and I will see it in a week when we go there.

Crescent Mountain, on a day people did not belong at the top. We turned around (2015).

Crescent Mountain in June 2014, with lake of same name below. It is about 5 miles and 2100′ vertical to the summit, where there was once an lookout.

Mt. Washington (far left) and The Sisters from upper meadows of Crescent Mountain

Granted, many of these hikes I have done before, but after one time doing them, I have a sense in my mind of the trail. I’ve only hiked Middle Pyramid once, but I can visualize the bottom of the trail, the open area with the cliffs high overhead, and the gradual climb up through the cliffs to the top. My memory is good enough to help me as trip leader. I am not a Jon Krakauer, who saved his life on Mt. Everest during the 1996 disaster, because when the storm hit, he had a sense of where the trail was and how to get back to shelter on the South Col.

View down from summit of Middle Pyramid, 2014

Author, summit of Middle Pyramid. It’s a little more than 2 miles but climbs steeply.

I think trail memory is both natural and observational. I remember trails without usually thinking about it. I am not as good at remembering steep ascents or descents, perhaps because I tend to hold my speed constant on them, so they don’t stand out so much.

This isn’t to say I haven’t gotten turned around a few times in my life. In 1998, on the Appalachian Trail, I rested sitting on a rock, and when I got up, retraced my steps about a mile before I realized the traffic I was hearing was a road I had previously crossed. There was no road the way I was supposed to be going, and bells were going off in my head that something wasn’t right. That was deeply embarrassing and likely due to fatigue.

In 2006, on Isle Royale, I was hiking at night back to Windigo after a wolf had visited my campsite. It was late, but I wasn’t going to stay there with a wolf in the vicinity. I knew that wolves didn’t attack healthy humans, but knowing that intellectually and being alone ten trail miles from the nearest person were two very different things. It was time to sleep, not hike, but I was going, sunset or not.

Or what passed for sunset under thick clouds that promised snow.

In any case, with a small light, that I hoped would keep working, I went around a blowdown and continued. But something didn’t seem right. I had walked around a lot of the blowdown, maybe too much, and I couldn’t say for sure that the trail I was seeing was similar to where I had just been. Jon Krakuer might have known. But I had a sense—an uneasiness—that I was going the wrong way. I stopped, found my compass, and took a bearing roughly the direction I was headed. It should have been northeast; it was southwest. I turned around and walked back to the blowdown, confirming my error, and found the trail sooner on the other side, eventually making it to Windigo.

Young moose, Isle Royale, taken from the campsite where 2 hours later I would see the wolf. 10 May 2006.

I’ve been cultivating these senses lately. I’ve been slow to do this, because I am mostly a linear, analytical person who hasn’t much believed in them. As I have spent more time in the woods as I got older, I started realizing if I weren’t sure where I was, it was wise to admit—out loud—that I was lost and do whatever was necessary to get myself on track again, usually meaning backtracking, sometimes back to the beginning and quitting the trip. Trail memory is fine, unless I am on a trail that I have not trod. I did that on Burntside Lake in 1992, when my map didn’t quite show where I entered the lake, but I reasoned the distance was short so that I would soon be navigating by my other maps. That didn’t work, I was lost, and I backtracked the whole way. I felt stupid, but at least I didn’t compound my mistake by continuing.

The last time I really messed up was on Mt. Pisgah, practically in Eugene’s city limits. I hadn’t lived in Eugene at the time, and Pisgah is famous for two things: a large network of trails and even more poison oak. The first time I climbed it, I thought I found a different route back to the parking lot. I soon realized that the trail was not going there, or the Sun had moved its position in the sky. Finally, I realized I was descending to a different parking lot. Once there, I walked to a road I thought would take me where I wanted to go. After a mile, I admitted I had no idea where I was, retraced my steps, and took a chance that a trail along the base of the mountain would get me back. Had it not, I would have backtracked to the summit and down the trail I originally ascended.

Getting lost still embarrasses me, but I learn from it. With GPS, I am able to know where I am and can try a different route. Still, GPS is sometimes not enough to counter a sense that one’s direction is wrong. GPS is also dependent upon not only battery power, but having a good connection with satellites. Such connections may disappear In deep woods, and especially canyons.

Trail memory is also useful on those winter nights or difficult times in life, when one wants to escape civilization and find solitude in those hundreds—no, thousands—of trails across the continent. I can go there in my mind: climb, breathe the air, hear the birds, see the flowers, and be alone. I get great pleasure at looking at maps and saying to myself, “I’ve been out there. I know what it looks like.”

High Desert from the top of the canyon overlooking the Owyhee River, 2016.

Tags:National Park Odyssey, Outdoor writing, Philosophy
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LISTENING TO “NO”

May 23, 2016

For the third time on the trip, I had missed out hearing about something important going on, and I was annoyed. The latest buzz I heard near my tent was about a hike somewhere up on the ridge behind us. Who set that up? Why didn’t I know about it? I wondered.

A dozen of us from the Obsidian hiking club out of Eugene were rafting the Owyhee River in southeastern Oregon, a remote river few have heard of. For river guides, the Owyhee is one they want on their resume. The prior four years, winter had not delivered a snowpack sufficient to produce enough meltwater to support rafting, but this year’s winter had been good, the river runnable; indeed, our guides had taken four groups down the Owyhee already. The snowpack, however, disappeared under April temperatures that were again 30 degrees above normal. We had been told our mid-May trip was in jeopardy, and given the rapid fall in river flow, were certain we wouldn’t be able to do the trip. Unexpected rain came, however, and the river flow stayed over 1000 CFS (cubic feet per second), slightly more than the 800 CFS necessary to run the rapids. Not many would follow us in 2016.

The prior night had been the most special of the trip, I thought. We camped in Green Dragon Canyon, a narrow chasm 1000 feet deep, maybe 50 yards on either side of the river before the cliffs began. I often stared at the river, the walls, and the narrow patch of sky, saying how lucky I was. One couldn’t have a better camp, and the next morning’s thunderstorm, echoing off the walls, echoed my thoughts.

View from my tent, Green Dragon Canyon, Owyhee River

On this, our last full day on the Owyhee, we camped in a gorge with sedimentary rocks and compressed ash forming spires and faces and cats, orange columns below basalt rims on either side. The upper rim was 1600’ above us, and I had heard the hike was going to the rim. I came over to a group of 5 that was about to leave and asked to join. Unfortunately, I didn’t have any other details. That was a bad oversight on my part, for 1600 feet vertical is a major hike to take in late afternoon.

The ridge we climbed. I stopped about two-thirds of the way to the bottom of the upper rock ledge.

The pace at the outset was fast, very fast, too fast, and I fell behind, surprised. One man dropped out within a minute. Then I looked down and saw squirming bodies that looked like crushed mice. And blood. And intestines. A large Chukar suddenly flew off to my right. I then realized I was seeing dying young birds that had just been stepped on by the hikers ahead of me. I called out and they came back, in time to see the young birds struggle one last time before thankfully dying quickly.

One of the hikers, a woman, stood there in shock, her mouth open, totally appalled. She had been in the lead group. Another man said, “They are an introduced species,” as if that had anything to do with the fact that fast hikers, bent on speed and little else, had just killed birds in their home in a place we all loved and wanted to protect. Some protection.

The woman replied, “So am I.” She had been born in Japan and lived there 12 years.

Normally, I don’t think of omens, but this was not a good one. The hikers, including the woman, continued as if nothing had happened, a blistering pace up the ridge, barely switching back at all. I was not on a steep trail, which I can handle, but scree, large rocks, and nothing to hang on. My walking stick didn’t come with me on the trip. My stick had been my paddle.

The four regrouped periodically, and I caught up, just in time for them to go higher and faster. Wow, they were good. Then again, I had been in the kayak all day and had worked hard. Up I went, now 50 yards behind, well below the fourth hiker, grabbing rocks, bushes, anything I could. I gained 100 meters elevation, 125, then 150, puffing. I looked up at the receding group, and suddenly I heard a “NO” come from me. I spoke the word audibly.

I stopped. It had been a few weeks since I last vocalized a NO in the woods. It occurred on a solo scouting trip past Young Rock on my way to Moon Point, outside of Oakridge, Oregon. I had gone several miles and up nearly 3000 feet, through snow, over some difficult blowdowns, a few streams, until I encountered a trio of fallen giants that I couldn’t go neither up and around nor down and around. Or through. I was less than a half mile from my destination, but I said NO and turned around.

Near where I said “NO” by Young’s Rock

NO sounds bad. Negativity is not nice. It means quit, failure, didn’t do it, wasn’t good enough, all those things.

It also can mean one has wisdom.

I did not like where I was, perched on the side of a ridge at a 45 degree angle. On my own, given enough time, I could probably get to the top. I didn’t know that the top they were going to was only another 75-100 meters. I am literal, and the top of the ridge was 500 meters above our camp. Then I had to come down this stuff. No matter; all I knew was that I was not going further. I listen to my “NO.”

I turned and stared in sudden wonder at the Owyhee, far below me. I could see the last rapids we had done and the ones we would run the following morning, our last day on the river. That probably would be the last time I would ever see the river, although I am as cautious about saying the last time as I am saying the next time. I may have extraordinary luck, or I may die. Stuff happens.

But what I saw as a result of my “NO” was a beautiful scene below me. There are different kinds of orange, and for those who don’t appreciate the distinction, it is worth running the Owyhee, for the river is colored by geologic events that happened millions of years ago and by flowers that happened to bloom in the past week.

I would be careful on the way down, both for my sake and the sake of the locals.

The Owyhee River from where I stopped.

Sunset on the Owyhee

“Cat Rock”, Shiprock at sunset.

View upstream, where we saw eight Bighorns earlier that day

One of the Bighorns. Picture taken from a kayak being moved by the current.

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JUXTAPOSITION

May 15, 2016

I found interesting a juxtaposition of articles in the newspaper about excessive classroom size in Eugene, and bonuses paid to Oregon football coaches 3 seasons ago. The University (UO) paid $688,000 in bonuses, $490,000 for an insurance policy that was supposed to cover their cost, but apparently didn’t, and finally accepted a settlement of $242,000, lawyer fees not stated, meaning it cost UO at least $936,000 that year for football staff bonuses.

They didn’t win a national championship.

I knew Eugene was a big football town, but I underestimated how big. The head coach makes $3.5 million; the rest of the coaching staff altogether makes another $3.5—before bonuses. The Science Factory, a small children’s museum near Autzen Stadium, gets a significant portion of its income from renting space on their lawn for tailgaters during home games. That’s “trickle down.” For $7, a child can spend several hours in the exhibit hall with a lot of cool exhibitions. Plus, there is a planetarium show where kids and parents learn about the night sky. They can find the North Star, which escaped slaves knew 150 years ago, and which very few Americans can find today. Yet, 40% believe in astrology, and some wonder how Trump might become president. Education matters.

For “$29 and up” (well into three figures for decent seats), one can see the Ducks play my alma mater Colorado in football this year, stay 3 hours, likely longer, because TV timeouts have lengthened the game considerably. Parking is a minimum of $10, a mile from the stadium. I don’t know what food costs. You won’t learn about the night sky, except that we light it up so much, wasting electricity, because we light the sky and the ground, that many have never seen the Milky Way. Football may be played any night of the week. The concept of “school night” has disappeared, along with the stars.

The local school district had many complaints about classroom size, a surrogate measure of educational quality. I find that interesting, because when I was young, our classes had about 30 students. Research has shown that large classroom size doesn’t mean bad outcomes. Granted, it is a different world today. We didn’t have cell phones when I was in school. The teacher’s rule was law, and if we disobeyed, our parents believed the teacher, not us. We had standardized tests, but they didn’t count for promotion. “A”s were given for results, not effort. We lined up for polio vaccination in school, rather than cite medical or religious reasons not to get it. We all knew somebody with polio. Science eradicated the disease.

Diversity is prominent today, along with a change in gender dominance. I grew up when boys were better students. Schools didn’t push girls as hard. Today, girls are pushed to excel, and do, but boys in general are falling behind, an unfortunate observation I made where I volunteered. Parents question exam grades and the difficulty of the material. I tutored a student in chemistry, whose parents were teachers who felt the material too difficult. It was analytical chemistry for high school. We learned how to write, both the action and the content.

Back then, however, we called one black student integration. We had bullying, fights, and more deaths in motor vehicle accidents. Gays were quiet. They must shake their heads today when they hear that being gay is a choice. Back then, you stayed quiet. Smoking cigarettes in the bathroom was bad; we didn’t know what transgender was.

We liked our sports, too, but we didn’t worship them. Our football stadium seated maybe 1000, not the 12,000 a town in Texas is going to build for $60 million. Goodness, the whole city of Wilmington couldn’t find a venue that sat 12,000. It was only football, for heaven’s sake. We didn’t have a state basketball or football championship. We didn’t rank our sports teams nationally, and there wasn’t a McDonald’s All-American team, because McDonald’s had barely opened restaurants.

Sports at colleges weren’t big business. There was a time when freshmen couldn’t play varsity, only on a freshman team. Athletes didn’t leave early for the pros. In 1971, Roger Staubach was MVP of the Super Bowl and made $50K a year. Now, the average salary is twice that per game, called by “Business Insider” magazine as “Poorly paid.”

We can find money for a new stadium, and for the world track and field championships—in Eugene—the whole state is going to have the lodging tax increased. Thirteen of the $100+ million cost will go for trophies and a gala gathering place, but we don’t have money to house the homeless, get meningitis vaccine for students, or hire more teachers. Additionally, the UO blew nearly a million buying out the contract of the last president.

Some still say that children are our future, but state of the art stadiums trump state of the art schools. I see license plate frames with “Duck Athletic Fund Supporter.” I have never seen one with “UO Scholarship Supporter,” or “Eugene Public Schools Donor.” People have the right to send their money where they wish, of course. It’s America. It’s just that football stadiums are used fewer than a dozen times a year and schools 180 days a year, often more. Furthermore, football is harmful to the brain, and I haven’t heard of any significant changes in the game. Schools are built to increase the intelligence in the brain. Our priorities are backward.

Lack of support of public education is part of both the dumbing down of America, an anti-science agenda supporting for profit and religious schools. The Other Side calls higher education “liberal bastions.” There are plenty of conservatives in those schools, but liberal arts tends to mean liberal thinking—the search for truth, new ideas, and extolling intelligence. Instead, the Republican standard bearer is bashing two and not offering anything regarding the third.

I’m perhaps a cantankerous grouch, but one who embraces the changes in the world, questioning changes that I don’t think are improving it. Those families and groups who support education tend to have children who are successful in life, success being defined by a career that is considered honorable and important. We all know the stereotypes who succeed; their families believe with education an individual has a strong chance to succeed in life.

Football

72,788 NCAA Players

16,175 Draft Eligible

256 Drafted.

The NCAA says the probability is 1.6%, but when compared to the number of NCAA players, it is 0.35%, and being drafted does not guarantee playing, let alone succeeding.

We need to pay teachers appropriately, making teaching a profession many aspire to become. Let’s expect much from our teachers, but give them training, support and respect they deserve. We should make teaching a profession the best and brightest aspire to become. We’re running out of time to fix the problems that will end humanity in a century or less. Education may or may not succeed; nothing else comes close, not even a national championship in football.

Tags:General writing, Philosophy
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TRANSIT (OF MERCURY)

May 10, 2016

I have shown many the night and daytime sky. Twenty years ago, I went to a conference in Palm Desert, during which time Saturn’s rings happened to be edge-on, an occurrence every fourteen and a half years. I was driving, so I took my telescope, set it up in the parking lot the first night and had maybe 5 takers. The second night, I had 30. The fourth and final night, I had a continuous line. People were thrilled. One woman almost cried when she realized she was looking at Saturn. Another guy told me about his childhood, when he once knew the planets and stars. He finished looking and got back in line. Loved that trip. It had been nearly 4 years since I last did a telescope-aided “star party,” when I showed maybe 50 people the 2012 transit of Venus across the Sun, an exceedingly rare event that won’t be seen again until 2117.

TRANSIT OF VENUS, 5 JUNE 2012

Mercury transits the Sun as well as Venus, about 13-14 times a century, but I had never seen one. I looked during the November 1999 transit, when I was a grad student in Las Cruces, New Mexico, but I had no telescope, and binoculars were insufficient. This time, I was prepared with my telescope, Mylar solar filter designed for it, and camera, with which I would shoot the transit, using a solar filter designed for binoculars that could be held over a camera lens. I put the event on the Obsidian hike schedule, where it appeared as a “class”. Where asked, “number of people allowed to join,” I wrote “100.” Exactly 6 eventually signed up, including me, and one of them cancelled. I decided to set up just south of Autzen Stadium at 7:30, during which time the transit would be well underway. From Eugene, the transit started before sunrise.

I knew of two other local sites where people had telescopes, one downtown, the other on Skinner Butte, a wooded hill 300 feet above the city, near the Willamette River. I hoped I might have several visitors, since my site was near a dog park and a lot of walkers were out, but it was quiet. I arrived with my wife at 7:30, and one of the Obsidians joined us about 20 minutes later. It was quiet, except in the celestial arena, where interesting things were happening.

Once I had the telescope focused on the Sun, I saw Mercury immediately. It was small, but compared to the sunspot near it, the planet was a sharply defined black sphere. I shot pictures of it using high power, letting the camera gradually get the Sun into focus.

Mercury is below the sunspot in the lower middle of the picture.

A few came by, but they were either wearing earphones and couldn’t hear me or not interested. Four other Obsidians came and kept us company. I don’t push people to view something in the sky. I will tell them what I am doing, and if they seem interested, I suggest they take a look. Some are very interested, some not; a woman with two dogs was more interested in showing her dogs than she was in Mercury. She never made one move to come over and look. People have their reasons.

Perhaps it was just as well. I hadn’t read up on transits. That’s inexcusable for me, and I’m a bit ashamed that I didn’t prepare my lesson plan. Kepler predicted the first known transits of Mercury and Venus, incredibly occurring within a month of each other in 1631, but ironically and sadly, he died the year before. His predictions were not only verified (he said to check a day on either side of the prediction, because he didn’t trust his calculations), but were within 5 hours of the correct time.

Why did it all matter? In the 17th century, we knew the relative distances the planets were from each other but not the Sun-Earth distance. Knowing that distance, known as an astronomical unit (AU), would allow us to know all the distances. The path of a planet’s crossing the Sun is different depending upon one’s location. In other words, the path will be a different chord on the circle of the Sun for observers in different locations. By knowing the location and the chords, one can determine the distance from the Earth to the Sun, an astronomical unit (AU).

At 11:30, four hours after arrival, we saw Mercury near the edge of the Sun. It then became internally tangent to the Sun (third contact). Finally, there was a slight irregularity, a little hole, on the edge of the Sun. Mercury was continuing on its orbit, in several days becoming visible in morning twilight.

Mercury approaching the edge of the Sun.

After I posted my pictures on Facebook, some of which were actually decent, I saw in “trending news” something about the transit, referring to it as an “astrological event.” Worse, it was accompanied by a NASA picture. I posted a scathing comment about the inability of so many people to know the difference between astrology and astronomy, and the distressingly large number of Americans who believe in astrology. I later deleted the comment.

I became disheartened when I heard from a friend that not one classroom he knew of, and he was recently a teacher, had kids go outside and see REAL (caps his) science in the REAL sky. He continued: “The kids who looked through my scopes today were awestruck at seeing a live event right before their eyes and experiencing the size of the solar system via this transit. Heard lots of ‘wows’ and ‘cools.’ Funny, I never heard that when they were watching a video on a Smartboard.”

I would have loved to have shown the transit at a school. Had I tried, however, the first thing I would likely have heard would have been, “Who are you?” (now, one has to be somebody, not just an experienced amateur astronomer). Then I would have heard how busy teachers are, require fingerprinting and have a background check. Yet, in 60 minutes of having 100 kids look at Mercury’s crossing the Sun, I bet more of them would remember this day than the day they would have at school. It would stay with many, just like when I talk about eclipses, people remember days in school where they made pinhole cameras to view a partial eclipse. I could have made trig, geometry and space exploration come alive. Instead, I showed this to 10 other people. Ten. And I told passersby what I was doing.

Still, the fact that only 10 others saw it with me was immaterial. I made my choice; they made theirs. We will have to wait until November 2019 for another chance here. Climatologically, that is a cloudy time in Oregon. Whether I would go elsewhere to see it is not clear. I enjoyed this transit more than I thought I would, and if eastern Oregon were clear, it might be worth a trip.

Nah. Definitely will be worth it.

Mercury almost at the edge of the Sun.

Talking to Evelyn N. of the Obsidians about the Transit. Photo courtesy of David Lodeesen.

Tags:Outdoor writing, Philosophy
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BAD DECISION

May 3, 2016

I put fourteen people, counting myself, at unnecessary risk the other night. And I think I am the only one who knows that.

The Obsidian Hiking Club has a monthly full Moon hike to the top of nearby Mt. Pisgah. Taking the most direct route, one climbs 1000 feet in 1.3 miles. It is a popular hike near Eugene, the trail good, if a bit too wide, and the views of a moonrise or a sunset are stunning.

The woman who had led the hike for some time still wants to lead the solstice hikes, but she asked me if I would be willing to lead the other ones. It’s no big deal, really. The hike is easy to organize, people show up, we collect $1 from members and $2 for non-members, and I decide the route. We go to the top, look at the sights, and come down. Anybody who wants to leave early can, and the leader just makes sure everybody gets down without difficulty.

What can go wrong? There is a saying in bridge when a contract is a sure thing, look for what could possibly go wrong.

People can get hurt by tripping, having heart attacks, heat stroke, hypothermia, and anything that can happen in the outdoors.

Like getting struck by lightning.

Two days before the hike, we had had very warm weather for April, and I suspect most thought the hike would be perfect for viewing an April moonrise. I had noted the GFS weather model showed a low pressure system moving up from the south. This was a little unusual, but the model was consistent, and with hot, moderately moist air over us, a low pressure system could trigger thunderstorms. Thunderstorms are unlikely in Oregon, but they do occur.

Sure enough, the day of the hike, there was a chance of thunderstorms that evening, and I started wondering how this might affect the hike. At 3 pm, four hours prior to meeting at the trailhead, it was sunny. Two hours later, it had clouded over; although the clouds didn’t look threatening, the weather was changing. I drove to the trailhead at 6 and looked at the radar, which showed a narrow line of precipitation 250 miles long, from Redding north to Roseburg, heading our way. I knew from the NWS discussion that the storms were moving at 35-40 mph. The wind had picked up, too, but the sky, while cloudy, was not showing any overt signs of thunderstorms.

People began to arrive, and we had all 14 just before 7. I was concerned about the weather and voiced my concerns. Nobody seemed concerned, but I didn’t ask, either. I said I would be looking at the radar and the sky, and at the first clap of thunder, we would turn around. That’s stupid. We are about to do an unimportant out and back hike, and if there is a significant possibility of thunder, we should not begin.

As we climbed the mountain, I figured an hour for the whole hike, since we wouldn’t see either a moonrise or a sunset, I hoped we would miss the storms coming up from the south, one of which was significant on radar. I saw rain to our west, the storms appearing to be at least 10 miles away, moving north. That was good news, and we stayed several minutes on the summit, along with maybe a dozen other people. The sky to the south did not appear threatening, but on the radar the next storm was closer, still 60 miles away.

As we started down, all was fine until we heard thunder to our northwest. The clouds to the west had become thunderstorms, and we felt a little rain. I told people to spread out, which at this stage was perhaps helpful, but we were on an open trail, and there wasn’t a lot we could do other than to keep moving. We descended to the trailhead in 20 minutes, much to my relief, but nobody else seemed concerned. Everybody got off the mountain, and I heard no complaints.

Except from my own conscience. What was I thinking?

I could rationalize. The storms fired to our northwest, we were not in the path of the main body, and the radar showed that consistently. But we easily could have been. And had we been, we would have been rained on for the hike up, before thunder occurred right over the top of us. The storm in the south could have arrived sooner. Thirty minutes later, when I got home, it started to rain heavily, and there was some thunder. We missed the main thunderstorms by about a half hour. That’s too close.

In short, it wasn’t smart hiking Pisgah that night just to do the hike. I felt an internal pressure to do it, and that was wrong. Had I cancelled the hike, some might have been annoyed or disappointed, having made the effort to get out there, but there would have been zero risk of being struck by lightning. Telling people that I would have us to turn around were there thunder was not good strategy. We were on an open trail, and it would take us at least 15 minutes to get back down. As it turned out, when we did hear thunder, we were on our way down, and not in a good position.

Had anything bad occurred, I had no defense. I was the leader. I know weather better than most, both reading the sky and understanding the models, soundings, and forecast discussions. I knew the situation wasn’t good; I discussed it with the group. And yet I still went. It is this concatenation of small events that leads to major disasters. The fact that we got away with it and people had a good hike was irrelevant. I took a chance that I didn’t need to take. We weren’t trying to rescue ourselves from some situation and had to continue, thunder or no. We were doing a hike to see a full Moon, which we weren’t going to see. Worse, we were going to one of the higher places around. It was a bad decision.

I have cancelled trips before because of weather, both on the trail and beforehand. On the trail, I looked at the distance we had to cover, noted the weather and called the trip. Nobody complained. It was a good decision. Before another trip, I cancelled, because I didn’t like going into the mountains to do a difficult 12 miler with possible snow when it was raining hard in the valley and 45 degrees–hypothermia weather. That was also a good decision. This one on Pisgah was not.

Nobody has commented adversely to me, even when I stated my concerns. Maybe they are being polite. Politeness is a virtue, but there are times when one needs to stand up and say, “No, I am not doing this hike. I do not like the weather, and I will not take the risk.” And leave.

Tags:Outdoor writing
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Boreal B[l]og

Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

SAME BEAUTY, DIFFERENT BEHOLDER

AGATE: THE CASE FOR A SINGLE PAYER SYSTEM

WHY I LEAD HIKES

TEMAGAMI

DROUGHT MONITOR—IRRELEVANT. FACTS—IRRELEVANT

TRAIL MEMORY

LISTENING TO “NO”

JUXTAPOSITION

TRANSIT (OF MERCURY)

BAD DECISION

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