Photo Shoot Sierra Madre, Carrizo Plain, Mt. Pinos & Reyes Peak

Looking for a clear day and a view for the camera, Jeff Jones (http://lumnos.com/) and I headed to Santa Maria where we turned right towards New Cuyama. Jeff's current project encompasses a range of landscapes from urban to wilderness with the intent of informing on the scope of what is still wild and what perhaps should be. That's my take, Jeff might describe it differently. We turned right again for the dirt road to McPhearson Peak on the Sierra Madre range. Haze prevailed, not a good omen for the professional photographer. For an example of ideal conditions, go to Jeff's site and the photos from the National Arctic National Refuge. It might hurt your eyes, if like me you've grown accustomed to that soft glow in the sky that prevails especially in the summers; haze, fog, and smog or a combination of all three. It's like the mute in a trombone creating another set of tones, but not the ones desired for every song. The bumping road yields many views as it is on the edge of the San Rafael Wilderness. Long views with close details pop into view. Desirable as they are I note the camera gear stays in the cargo bay. Chia sage is abundant here as well as Joshua Tree. I hear explanations of what might be, on a clearer day, in the early hours or maybe the late. Such is the talk of photography perfection. I click my own snaps. At Miranda Pines we survey the campsites but continue to McPhearson Peak. The solar array glistens, the com towers whistle in a breeze and on the ground we spot a fresh track of the black bear making long distance calls? The characteristic trail of bear paws settling into the same spot over and over tells us this bear has reason to return though it's hard to imagine the allure other than to look over the valleys and the long east-west ridge stretching away into the haze. Good choice that bear makes for this pilgrimage. Short sighted, that's the book on bears, but this one has specs.

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Night on the ridge without too much wind and back up to the peak in the morning bags a few photos as grist for the mill. The morning was hazier and smoggier than the night before. We chose to head down the steep Bates Canyon Road and a right turn past New Cuyama put us well on the way to Carrizo Plain, a National Monument (http://www.blm.gov/ca/st/en/fo/bakersfield/Programs/carrizo/goodwin.html). At the left turn by the collapsing house I once saw a flaming Bullocks Oriel. I looked for another chance sighting, but was disappointed. Later at the KCL campground I took photos of a nesting cousin . Unable to shake the haze, our trip became a scouting effort. We saw potential, but nothing to bring out the tripod and lenses for serious efforts.

The thermometer hit 118F (full sun) as we turned for the high ground at Mt. Pinos, thousands of feet higher and much cooler with shade. The two-lane blacktop twists through miles of great potential on a clearer planet. Near Mt. Pinos we found all the Forest Campgrounds closed! Not helpful when on a camping trip, but a dirt road led to a great informal site where you see my hammock hanging. After a night in the woods we made breakfast and lounged until heading down to Frazier Park and back towards Ojai by way of the Lockwood Valley. More great potential, but too much, what? Yeah, haze!

Near Reyes Peak there are more great views and I clicked off some shots of the Ponderosas, pretty sure this is my totem for life. Trimmed up to park specs, they provide a lofty backdrop to our lunch. You might note blue sky above those trees? Haze and horizon share more than the letters belie.

We covered many miles, talked about the future of wilderness and looked many directions...into the haze. Still a great outing.

For a few people who had trouble getting Santa Barbara Fire Song onto their Kindles I put it up on Amazon where for $.99 you can download it like any normal Kindle book. I received advance copies of The Adventures of Frieda and her Friends and my friend Kaan is coming mid-month with more for sale at a launch party we'll hold.

Desert Mystery +Nature Track outing

 Imagine this on the sharply cut bank of a desert wash. What do you suppose it might be? It has the look of something organic although there are no animals evident and no green chlorophyl, so if it is growing it must be fungal.  The length of this splotch is about a foot. So what does that leave us?

This is simply a blown up section of the first photo to provide you with more detail. I continue to think it looks organic and I am still puzzled about it's source. The hole suggests a center of activity, but there was nothing moving. If you have ideas, please do comment hear or email me with your  theory! (nord.nord@gmail.com)

Chia in the foreground growing in a Joshua Tree desert wash. So much chia and somewhat skunky smell I've not noticed where there are smaller quantities.

Lunch for the weary Nature Track adventurers  away from school sitting in a field of cream cups!

Joshua Tree National Park!

This little 2.5 inch squirt (above)was nearly road kill before Brett popped him off the blacktop. This second tortoise (right pic) was tempting fate on the road saved by Brett in the same hour! The law says don't touch except in emergency. Pancaking fits the description.

Joshua Tree is turning into a regular retreat. Last year I visited twice and we were back again.  I especially like the Jumbo Rocks Camp ground where you see the trailer. This location offers a interp trail with skull rock and many other scenic rocks, so it's worth a stop even if you aren't camping! Hiking at Joshua trees is always rewarded with unusual formations and surprises at each turn.  We got one of the last large campsites, required for the Bigfoot. 

 After finding few queens of the desert at Anza Borrego, we weren't expecting much at Joshua Tree. On the southern approach to the park a winter flood provided enough moisture to produce some attractive blossoms. Up and down the washes we were able to find nearly 40 species of flowers, bushes and cacti in bloom.



Chuparosa is a favorite in its usual red, but on the right is the seldom seen yellow variant too! Always fun to find rare botanical beauty! I shot photos of the amazing fields of chia sage, but my pics were less than inspired. Having heard of large harvests collected by the native Americans I was excited to see for the first time enough chia to merit an effort.

In 29 Palms our lecture and tour on botany and geology scheduled for 30 minute. More than 3.5 hours later we were begging for more. The presenter was most accommodating in answering our numerous questions pertaining to the drying of the desert, Mojave, to the little earthquake pressure ridges. The little boat you see here is a rarity where water was once widely abundant and now evaporated and dwindling.

On the ride home we finally found date shakes at Charley Browns. The man ahead of me declared this to be a fine place if you left your fat/cholesterol/salt/etc. concerns behind. They featured the ever exciting and wildly sought deep fried Twinkies though the brand went out of business a few years ago. At least the sign was there! We also found they offered vegan fare as well as chocolate bacon! So much for the superlatives.

Thanks for coming along for the trip. Let me invite you to suggest Santa Barbara Fire Song (Free)  especially to the young people in your life as another fire season is nearly upon those of us living in SoCal: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/152393

Borrego Springs sits in the center of Anza Borrego State Park in southern California. Shielded by the rocky mountains to the east, this desert area affords pleasant winter weather without the crowds of Palm Springs. The fact that the small village is surrounded by park land and at a distance, BLM land keeps some of the aspiring development in check. We return each year anticipating the desert bloom and the opportunity to hike the many trails exploring canyons and oases with Washingtonian fan palms. The campsite we like has been open each of the last three years when we rolled into camp. In the shot from Inspiration point you might be able to spot our trailer at the left end of the loop.

We shared our recent trip with Brett and Nancy Stearns who take another approach to desert "roughing it" at the Inn. Our own camp is far from our old backpacking trips with easy access to restaurants, markets and shops. The local natural history group provides outings and education and this year a tour of local gardens. Seemed like half the village turned out to visit 6 desert gardens. One has to be brave to let the public in to view the landscaping lovingly developed for personal tastes. Mine don't run towards faux Roman marble statuary, but I didn't take Latin either! The lovely pet cemetery has clear meaning to the owners and bit less for me. The less "gardened up" the more I liked the landscape and there were some nice touches. I'll think twice before inviting everyone to my back yard!

We explored the palm oases and then went looking for the Pumpkin Patch. I got the directions pleasantly confused so we found a few extra hollows and washes that weren't in the day's plan. Along with Stearns, we invited some camping neighbors Jim and Carry from Utah along for the day's field trip. You can read the description over Carole's shoulder (click the photo for detail) of how these accretions form and are emerging from the desert floor. I expected to find modified mud balls and was pleased they are unique and unusual at about 200 pounds apiece an as solid as though cast from concrete!  We bounced on up the sandy wash through BLM land looking for a sand dune. At the proper location we decided it was there, but had a fair amount of flora covering it and not the naked sort we were imagining. Arriving at the highway we noted there was no obvious way to leave the wash and make our way back to Borrego Springs and the wash continued to the Salton Sea. We scaled the side of the wash in the truck and found a legit ramp to the highway!

As for desert bloom, we were rewarded in remote places with the wild  annuals and a few cacti beginning their blossoming. Glorietta Canyon was quiet and offered ghost flowers and a variety of others, all small and in reduced expression given the small amount of rain this year.

Check out my post about my publications for this spring under last month's posts. Also, I would lke to recommend my friend's blog for those of you interested in international travel, essays on burglary, banker's math and other topics of interest. Snow Crash,http://wordspout.blogspot.com/2012/04/bankers-math-part-sept.html  from Richard Sherman of Hawaii.

As the evening shadows lengthened at Anza Borrego, I went wildlife hunting with my Canon (one "n" is correct). With a couple of windy exceptions, it was peaceful time of day with few people interrupting my pursuit of the wily.

Around home, the advantage goes to the hunted as the tangle of chaparral provides a million hidey-holes to disappear into. On the desert, I have more free range. I needed it.

Whale of a time

This spring we returned to Baja for the spring whale watching season. If they were birds we'd say birding, but whaling has connotations of the whale killing industry. Here's the most interesting part of this story. We were in one of the bays that was red with the blood of whales for many square miles. This went on into the middle of the last century. Now the whales come to our boats and bring their babies to be touched by humans! Probably these are not any of the mothers of that earlier era, but they do live long enough to bridge the gap and likely have the memory to go with it. We met the man who had the first "friendly" whale experience, a fisherman spooked by the approaching whales once know as devil fish for their known ability to flip the whalers' boats. He discovered the whales were approaching with no menacing behavior and soon he was taking others to see the whales that approached his fishing boat. A new industry spawned in the 1970s and now thousands of people travel to the lagoons to see the whales where they birth and nurture their young before the long arduous trip north to Alaskan waters.

Before you start looking for my pictures of the whales, let me stop you right here! The camera we took ran out of battery before we made it to the lagoon! Isn't there electricity in Mexico? Well, there is and we had lovely, electrified rooms with lights and everything including plugs in 110V, but the charger was left home. On a previous sojourn to Baja, I tried taking photos and found my camera was too slow. The other problem is we ...were...too ...close! Whales are large and when they are rubbing the side of the boat with their snout it's difficult to take a photo that looks like much. Maybe a wet leather couch? No, not quite. The whiskers would be a give away! A shot of the blow hole, that might be nice? Have you seen the sea lice in there? Now a spy hopping whale would make a terrific photo, and with a fast shutter release time, fast shutter speed and a camera pointed the right way on a steady platform with the light correct for the contrast of sun, water, and dark whale and you have your super memory photo of your trip! Remember, I failed back there with the battery step. The rest is simply out of my league.

We had a day with more whales at out boats than the guide could remember in the last 15 years. Our boat had I think 6 cow/calf pairs at the boat at once, all of them eager to be touched, petted and kissed. While I didn't do any kissing, I did see an animal-neutral person calling most eagerly to whales and kissing them (my sister). Whale mist from the blow hole did cross my face several times and among the initiated, this is considered the whale version of a kiss. It was lovely and given the option of being kissed by whale lips I suppose it is superior.

Was this worth a repeat trip? Absolutely! Many more whales came to our boats and they stayed longer. One pair seemed loathe to leave us before we had to return to shore. I am still puzzled beyond understanding when I consider their behavior. "Friendly" is the word used in the industry, and maybe that explains it. This is simply a most unusual experience to have a 40 ton mother bring or allow her young to approach our boats. In several cases the mothers nudged or pushed their offspring up to and over to our boats. Sometimes the mothers were comfortable getting attention on one side while the young was on the other. Imagine that with any other large mammal in the wild! Maybe a grizzly? NOT! Simple formula for suicide.

Our fellow travelers were eager to learn and fun to share experiences with. We went with friends and family and had our own party of 6 in a total group of 38. Leaving San Diego, we spent 5 nights and 6 days on the peninsula sight seeing the 600 miles down and back; an agreeable way to travel in a tourist bus. The beach photo is from the Inn where we stayed the first night and the Mission is from San Ignacio at the bottom of our drop down the peninsula. Safety issues were non-existant and especially in the village of San Ignacio we felt welcomed where we watched the local high school troop performing area dances from a broad range of localities in Mexico.

We had one morning for birding that produced one I hadn't even heard of, a reddish egret. I have the photo here, but you likely have to take my word on it. The beak is a little pink, the neck IS reddish and the body is about the color of a blue heron. Cool!



Let me invite you to read on to the blog below about my writing and publishing pursuit that is a big deal for me this spring!

Release of new books!

This spring I am very excited to have a few things published in a short time frame. The first is Santa Barbara Fire Song in Three Parts which was just published this week at Smashwords as an ebook collection of stories about wildfire in Santa Barbara. There is a link on this blog that will take you to Smashwords where you can download a free copy! You can read it on your ereader or iPhone/smart phone or your computer. Each story was written for a different age group from young children to young adult. Last year Jen used these stories to begin a discussion with her class on concerns and understanding of firestorms. Not only is Santa Barbara high profile fire country, so are many parts of the world that didn't expect to be. I wrote Fire Song to help kids wrestle with the experiences as well as enjoy the stories.

I am waiting for my hard copy book: The Adventures of Frieda and her Friends. My great friend Kaan from Turkey asked to publish this book a few years ago. He found an illustrator and a print shop and the book was just published two weeks ago. The illustrations are super. The stories I wrote over a period of years. This is good fun for children using a fairytale mode with frog characters in adventurous situations in nature. My hope is to interest more young people to pursue outdoor experience like my characters! Currently I am expecting Kaan will be bringing copies of the book to Santa Barbara. He has also published a Turkish language version of the book which is very exciting to me for the opportunity to have it presented to kids over there!

My teen/young adult mystery novel of current-era characters reaching back in time to mysteries from the early 20th century.From buried clues and researching through 100 years of faded history, the story unfolds on the north slope of Alaska and comes back to local hidden treasure and surprising revelations. Evangeline as Gel returns from the Fire Song to lead her group of intrepid investigators on their journey, while Brandon escapes his vagrant father to frontier of wild Alaska in the throes of the early 20th Century. I expect to release it in the next month or two on Smashbooks as another ebook.