It’s spring time, with weather too nice to stay inside but still too cold and snowy for normal people to head up into the big mountains.   This is the time of year when the lower elevation mountain ranges, such as those found on California’s coast, are at their prime.  With mild weather and abundant wildflowers awaiting, it’s a good time to break out the backpacking gear, unlock the muscles and start working off that winter blubber.  So where should you head?  That mostly depends on where you live, but I’d like to share a favorite spot of mine that has become almost like an annual spring pilgrimage:  Henry Coe State Park near the San Francisco Bay Area.

Those unfamiliar may be forgiven for raising eyebrows of skepticism at the mention of backpacking in or near the San Francisco Bay Area.  After all, one might ask, “How good can the outdoor opportunities be near such a major metropolitan area?”  Anyone asking this question is in for a pleasant surprise.  Henry Coe covers something like 75,000 acres of rugged hills, grassy meadows and flowing streams.  With elevations approaching 4000 feet, there is plenty of challenging terrain but nothing too overpowering on a mild spring day (summers can be iron melting).  So attention weekend warriors, Henry Coe beckons you and accepts your spirit of a tiger but the body a potato.  

With my trusty backpacking companions Dave and Kate, I headed to Henry Coe in mid April. It was 2009, but that is not an important detail–it could have been 1999 or any other year practically.  We decided on a 2 night/3 day itinerary camping first at the base of Blue Ridge at Mexican Flat and the second night at “The Rock”, a special place I first discovered with Dave 12 years ago, during our college days, on our maiden voyage to Henry Coe.  In typical fashion we got a slow start and were on the trail no earlier than 4:45 pm.  The hike from park headquarters to the base of Blue Ridge is fairly easy and mostly downhill, passing Frog Lake and a number of wild turkeys.  I can’t guarantee anyone that they will spot wild turkeys, but I can guarantee that locating Mexican Flat is no easy task.  It is about 3/10 of a mile off trail (feels like twice that) and guarded by poison oak. 

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Here is the scenario: let’s say you live on the West Coast of the United States and one of your best friends is getting married on the East Coast, about 3000 miles away. How do you go about attending the wedding?  If you are normal, you would probably consider the following: airplane, rental car, and hotel. Seems natural, right? Not if you are Darex.  In the summer of 2008, a mutual friend of myself and Darex got married in New York.  While I stuck to the generic airplane/rental car formula,  Darex did not.  His methods were something that I wouldn’t have even thought of, much less attempted.

In order to attend the wedding in New York, Darex bought a one way airplane ticket from his home town of Medford, Oregon to Syracuse, New York.  This seemed logical given that Syracuse was the closest airport to the wedding in Hamilton, New York.  However, when Darex arrived in Dulles Airport (near Washington D.C.) he found that his connecting flight to Syracuse was delayed.  Rather than wait in the airport, he hopped on a different flight to Rochester, NY.  To some this may have seemed illogical-after all Rochester is 127 miles away from Hamilton, whereas Syracuse is only 38 miles from Hamilton.  But Darex saw this not as a problem but as an opportunity to roller blade a greater, more fun distance to the wedding. Read the rest of this entry »

2008 was a year of change.  The United States elected its first minority president.  There was a lot of economic uncertainty, and change was in the air.  I didn’t know how that vibe of change might play out for 2009.  Now it seems safe to say that 2009 is shaping up to be a year of destructive chaos.  The economy started sliding downhill in a hurry, the stock market went into a nosedive, and unemployment figures continue to get worse.   This trouble, the winter of our discontent, has taken its toll on peoples’ personal lives too.  I know many people whose relationships hang by a thread or have already disintegrated.  Some have lost their jobs too, and virtually everyone, myself included, holds investments that have been flayed and eaten alive.  At this point there can be little certainty as to when this storm might pass.  But I hold hope that this process of destructive chaos will morph into a process of creative destruction, a process whereby forced change brings about needed adjustments in our personal lives and in society as a whole.  With this theme in mind I am preparing for a radical change in my own life– just a few weeks ago I opened a letter of congratulations that said I was accepted into the NOAA Corps.

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story by Rebecca Miller

Several weeks ago a local farmer showed up with a baby sloth where I work (the Venezuelan Institute for Scientific Study), asking if we could save the little one.  The mother was dead with no apparent motive in play.  Perhaps the plot had been take the baby from the mother to sell it, but maybe natural causes were to blame.  No one eats sloth, they don’t make good pets, and the fur is rough and not desirable, so the only reason I can think that someone would kill one is to sell the adorable baby to an unsuspecting person who doesn’t know that sloths can be aggressive and do not make good replacements for the family dog.  In any case, there was nothing the farmer could do to shed light on this mystery;   the farmer found the dead mother with the little orphan still clinging to her belly. He brought the baby to us with hopes that a bunch of biologists would know how to take care of her. She was so tiny, so terrified…and so adorable!!

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