Lake Pepin

Silver ripples on the windy waters.
Sun rising over the tent.
We slept by beautiful lake Pepin.
And arising saw that we had the most magnificent campsite of the trip.
City campground,
Friendly host,
A beach at our doorstep.
And many miles to go.

Revisiting National Parks

Rocky Mountain National Park and Yellowstone are both national parks I had been to before.  I’d spent a month in the Yellowstone area (and a day or two inside the park itself) when I took the Yellowstone Field Course offered by the University of Pittsburgh Honors College back in 1995.  I traveled up into Rocky Mountain National Park a couple of times when the AP U.S. Government grading took place in nearby Fort Collins CO.  In each case, revisiting highlighted some aspects of the park I hadn’t seen previously. 

In Yellowstone we revisited the forgettable Mammoth Hot Springs, but then took the road down the western side of the park past many other hot springs and geyser basins.  I hadn’t seen Old Faithful erupt, and the eruption was worth the wait.  This time the visit was much more Geyser focused, and geysers are neat.  I only wish I had had the good fortune to visit the hot spring someone at Dinosaur told us about – a spring in the camp ground where one could bathe in the heated waters.  Of course, their visit was some decades ago, and it is likely that the Park Service’s ongoing efforts to fence nature off have led to a situation in which this is no longer available.


Rocky Mountain National Park was also approached from the opposite direction – up US 40 from I-70.  We saw a glorious herd of elk as the sun set.  And Sarah thought she lost one of the antique leather gloves she had just purchased as a shop in Georgetown CO.

We were very fortunate to stay that night -- a Friday night -- in the last hotel room available in Estes Park.  It was a fabulous room too -- or rather a suite with two bedrooms, a hot tub, a living room, a fire place.  The next morning after a second round of mini-golf and a swim in the pool, we returned to the parts of the park we had already visited the evening before.  Why?  To search for the glove.  The highlight on this revisit was after we had failed to find the glove, and David, Sarah, Anna, Miriam and I went on a walk off-trail across the alpine tundra, crossing snow drifts and admiring many tiny flowers.  Sarah noticed that two yellow ones that looked the same were actually distinct species with different types of colors on the stem.

And after we left the park, I opened the side door of the van, lifted a couple of pieces of flotsam... and revealed Sarah's glove.  

Two Spontaneous Poems by Sarah

Climbing a rock face isn’t hard to master,

30 to 50 feet up from the ground,

And your brother going faster, faster,

Until you look down, and discover you confidence isn’t to be found.

The Grand Canyon isn’t understandable,

Until you hold the rock in your hand,

Then it is comprehendible,

As it crumbles like hardened sand. 

Sarah's Redwood Walk

A guest post by Sarah Richman



This is the sort of forest that makes you wish your hemline matched the trees – long and belled at the bottom.  It makes you want to dip your toes in with reverence, chilling them in the stream: deep cut and lined with ferns, gracefully still and falling without any movement.  

But the forest though appearing still is not.  For still the air trembles with magic and songs you feel compelled to sing, not because it cannot awe you into silence, or it needs noise and beatification, but because it would make you happy to sing here, and this one wood doesn’t care.  It makes you want to go barefoot, connecting to the magic red earth, red trees, red all in a green wood. The lighting matches the mindset, and the woods, though crossed with smooth paths, cut with holes through huge trunks, seem timeless and untouched.  And what does it matter if they are touched in this wood, because even time stands still while rushing happily within.  

There are bear, but here you don’t fear them. The wood shelters you without closing in as shelters we build to keep out the rain and cold do, but sheltering like an empty cathedral when you have been good, and even bad, for the wood loves and pleases you, so you can love and please it with an unromantic love.  It is not a wood of feelings, but a magic fairy wood that is so huge it is small because you only size what you understand.

Surprised by the Giants

Sequoia National Park was a long drive, and we arrived at night, climbing through hairpin turns in the Sierra Nevada in the deepening darkness.  It was cold in the mountains.  The air conditioner went off, the windows opened, and then closed to keep out the chill.  The moon shone brightly. 

And then, in the window beside the road, the first of the giant Sequoia’s came into view.  Massive.  Orders of magnitude more massive than any other old growth tree.  And as we drove, more and more of them looming out of the darkness in the headlights. 

Why did these trees grow so much larger than others?  A fortuitous climate must surely play a role.  Gigantic size is an advantage in the rough western forests.  The Sequoia are relatively hard to kill with fire – and many of them had scars to attest to their capacity to survive.  Massive and very tall trees have an inherent advantage in fire.  The fire resistant bark protects the tree from blazes on the ground, and its height provides some protection against the efforts of flame to leap into the canopy.  Eternal age also provides the advantage that the very old trees can set seeds for thousands of years, potentially increasing their chances of reproduction.  Yet such age has its drawbacks.  The Sequoia tends not to evolve quickly, which may diminish its ability to respond to threats to which it is not already well adapted.

The campground was in the higher woods above the sequoia grove.  Old growth Ponderosa Pine and Douglas Fir and (perhaps?) Lodgepole Pine provide massive though not sequoia-scale shade.  One tent that night, as the many bear warnings had Patricia concerned about separation from our cubs.  A tent set up by flashlight, children carried to it from the van.

In the morning David asked to go on a walk by the river / creek that ran past the camp ground.  Climbing boulders by small water-falls and riffles.  I joined him, and together we climbed up the trail for a while.  The forest was beautiful, and the trees were old.  But it was sick.  Quite a few of the old firs and pine were dead and others were dying.  Climate change? Bark Beetles?  Drought?

The Sequoia themselves seemed healthier.  Enormous trees.  So much larger than any others that they made old growth pines and firs seem small.  Tall.  Grand.  Wide.  Able to absorb gigantic wounds from forest fires and continue growing.  Able to last for thousands of years.

The walk through the Sequoia was complicated by the need to get the children to a Ranger talk, so I dropped them off, and the walked with Miriam with the backpack down the half mile trail from the main parking lot.  The General Sherman Tree was very very impressive (as billed).  Miriam stopped fussing on the way down.  After we took our pictures we set out on the Congress trail, a two mile loop through the Sequoia grove.

Golden Gate Nanny State?

We arrived at the Golden Gate Bridge just at 9:00 with the view of seeing the sunset while we walked across part of the span.  We saw the bridge and the sunset – both were beautiful -- but not the sunset from the bridge.  The bridge closes to pedestrian traffic at 9:00.  Perhaps this is to prevent night-time suicides from taking the fatal plunge?  If so, it may be justified as a means of protecting the public.  But for us it was unfortunate as it also forecloses many pleasant strolls along that beautiful span in the gathering dusk.