RETURN TO HELL’S CANYON

[SUMMER 2008] I AM RETURNING to the Hells Canyon Overlook. Only a week since my last visit, I am obligated to share the vista with a riding buddy. We bring along our wives, riding “two-up.” I prefer riding solo because I can set my own schedule, respond to my own needs, engage with whoever else happens to motor up on two wheels, and not worry about the precious cargo seated behind me. That said, sometimes the goal of sharing is overwhelming. Hell’s Canyon, spectacular and forbidding, presents that circumstance. So off we paired.

We chronicle at the overlook by arranging four full face helmets atop a sign proclaiming the location and snap what is to be the first of the “four helmet series.”

THE WIVES WALK to the overlook and peer into a canyon so deep that the bottom can barely be seen. I follow and point to the location on the other side where about 160 years back, Jacob and Esther had their verbal altercation. A passer-by is fascinated by this tidbit of "history."

Back toward the parking lot, a motorcycle or two rumbles up. I turn and Randy is immediately engaged with the rider of a black and white Bonneville T-100. A classic British bike updated to current state of the art mechanical standards. A gentleman on a Harley accompanies the man on the Bonnie.

The conversation begins: “How’s the handling?
“Can you ride for a long time?
“Dependability?
“What about your local dealer?”

At some point, the women, having viewed the canyon from all angles, return to our bikes and begin to suit up, perhaps 100 feet from the Bonnie and the Hog.

The conversation continues: “Tire mileage?
“How do you pack for a few nights out?
“Know any other good rides in this area?
“Oh really? So where’re you from?”

Just then, a familiar ka-thunk ka-thunk sound is noticeable. Rumbling into the parking area is a Kawasaki KLR 650. This one is lashed tight with sleeping gear, camping paraphernalia, and Cortex luggage and bags. My second bike is a KLR. It is a do just about anything motorcycle that can travel at freeway speeds or tackle the roughest of unimproved roads. Mine retailed for the equivalent of approximately two-and-a-half weeks salary. New. About the only thing I wouldn’t do on one of these little chargers is what this rider was doing: A Englishman on a bike with California plates coming south from Canada. Destination Guatemala.

“How long you been out?”

“Four years.” He grins. “Off and on.”

“You change out the doohickey on this?” I ask. The doohickey is the slang name for the idle tensioner pulley which is notorious for catastrophic failure on the KLR. They should be replaced as soon as the bike is purchased. I hadn’t done so yet.

“Oh? You have one of these?”

“Yep. At home.”

The Englishman laughed. “Well this is my second KLR. I got 90,000 out of the first one.”

The fellow on the Bonnie, the Harley guy, and we two Beemerphiles were more than suitably impressed.

The Englishman said that he hoped to ride into South America some, but that he gets to Guatemala and finds things fine there, so he goes no further south. “…maybe this year however…”


AFTER A SPELL of talking reciprocally about BMWs, Triumphs, Harleys and now, Kawasakis, clearly, the girls are ready to saddle up. They’ve put on their gear.

But part of what we do when we’re worshipping at the Church of the Open Road is to greet other parishioners – no matter when they arrive at fellowship hour.

In the distance a throaty note become evident. It is nearing. I shoot a glance at my buddy’s passenger and pull out my pocket pad to write the line that would prove to be the conclusion of this journal entry: The passenger, if she’s your wife, doesn’t really give a damn about the bikes other people are using to get to this place.

The newcomer is on a Moto Guzzi, an Italian masterpiece sporting a classic line and a dashing, bright red stripe. The Harley and Bonnie guys, the Brit, my buddy and I greet the newcomer and admire his European iron.

Ten minutes or more pass.

Finally we move toward our bikes and our passengers. I laugh and begin to read from my note aloud: “The passenger, if she’s your wife…”

But I am interrupted: “I hope the next bike is a real piece of crap so we can get the hell out of here.”

It wasn’t. It was a classic BMW, from Medford. A 70s era model, ridden by a fellow with an interesting story to tell…

© 2008
Church of the Open Road Press

HELL’S CANYON OF THE SNAKE RIVER, OREGON / IDAHO

Note: On a trip north back in 2008, I came to Hell’s Canyon of the Snake. It was late in a day when I should have planned with a bit more water, a few more rests, and perhaps, an extra day between where I started and where I had yet to go. I was more tired than safe. I stopped to stretch and view the canyon. Taking off my helmet and letting the cool upslope breeze sweep through my sweaty hair, this little fantasy occurred to me.

(Cue the baleful fiddle solo.)


JACOB AND WIFE AND CHILD AND INFANT stood on the east edge looking west across a five-mile wide abyss. Some six thousand feet below rushed a mute but barely visible Snake River, continuing to carve a project started well before time. One granule after another. And another.

From their vantage point, the immigrants could see no grazeable flats; only scrubby vegetation clinging to life in the crevasses of layered and wind-worn basalt. No place to camp half way down. Not even a trail from anyone who may have come before.

The family had lost a son already. And half their brace of oxen. And nearly every element of their character except perseverance.

Now, at this moment, that, too, disappeared. 

The conversation was short, heated, and ended like this: “Esther, I don’t give a damn in all of tarnation how far back it is…”  

Jacob turned on his well-worn heel and began prodding the surviving oxen back to Illinois.

After a moment, Esther, shaken, but standing at the confluence of utter fatigue and sheer frustration called out: “Jacob, damn you! I told you to stop and ask for directions!”

© 2008
Church of the Open Road Press

INSIDE THE ENVELOPE

Your heart knows the words so you sing along –

sometimes in silence.

WHEN I ENTERED THE ENVELOPE, I was first impressed with the darkness. The room wasn’t dark – just darkened. Mid-day, no lights were on; drapes partially drawn. The outside’s overcast filtered whatever ambient light to the point that I would have turned something on somewhere in the house.

Next, it was the music.

I’m not sure if what I believe is fact of folly. But I’ve been told that sitting next to a waterfall soothes. Angst is dissolved by ionization that occurs when water tumbles over rocks and into a pool releasing electrons from their magnetic orbit and freeing them to course about. These negatively charged electrons do something positive to the body. So, in the vicinity of the waterfall, we are both energized and relaxed.

I attribute this energy and relaxation, in part, to the very sound of falling water. The rush. Its gentle cacophony. Its music.


MOM IS PRESSING 90. Dad, her constant foil, died sixteen years ago. Macular degeneration has effectively stolen her sight. Reading is laborious; television, a chore. Cooking is a problem; cleaning, unsure. A 22-year-old nephew now lives with her doing exactly what 22-year-olds should do. Coming, going, eating, sleeping, coming, going. Living.

Loathe to admit it, essentially, Mom lives alone.


IT TOOK A FEW MOMENTS for my eyes to adjust. I’d driven nearly two hours to Mom’s in the muted daylight. But the inside of the house was dark. Well, darkened.

Inside, music played. Choral music. The Mormon Tabernacle Choir performed on her Bose Wave radio, singing religious and patriotic songs, and show tunes. And standards. They were in the room with her. It’s just that you couldn’t see them in the darkness.

She told me it was the greatest music ever and I located her in the rocker she’d bought for herself as a wedding present back in 1948.

I settled into dad’s old leather chair.


WHEN A CHOIR SINGS – even a good one – it is not the case that you can make out every word that is sung. Like falling water, each syllable is a tiny droplet whispering as it slips into the pool at the base of the falls. The collective effect is a rush. A gentle cacophony. Music.


MOM TURNED ON A TINY MAG-LITE flashlight that she kept at hand. She fumbled with the Bose remote, and then switched the light off. A few minutes later, she rose, went somewhere behind me, switched on another Mag-Lite, did something, switched it off and returned to the rocker. She alternated manipulating the remote and running little inside-the-house errands. Always returning empty-handed to the rocker where she settled for longer and longer moments.

We’d visit a little and then she’d say, “Listen to this one…” And she’d share a tiny bit of history recalled by the song.


IT WAS AS IF she’d been slipped into an envelope: one that was about to be sealed. All that was inside was her life. And the music.

© 2011
Church of the Open Road Press

ULIN’S "THE LOST ART OF READING"

-- A reflection

“Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone, just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had that advantages that you’ve had.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Great Gatsby

AMONG THE MANY REGRETS I’ve earned over the past six decades, the greatest may be my limited exposure to literature. It was by design – a bad choice I’ve repeated throughout life. I graduated from Chico State with a BA having checked out only one book from its marvelous library – and I could not testify under oath that I actually read the thing. While a career in education prompted me to read and read and read a lot, what I read was always in the cause of education. As an elementary school principal, I promoted reading and literacy to parents and students knowing I hadn’t exposed myself to Dickens, Emerson, Ibsen, Kafka, Maugham, Pasternak, Vonnegut, or and of a number of giants whose works come up in conversation with unnerving frequency. I would nod and smile and look for a corner to crawl into.

Looking at the literary landscape now, I realize I am not alone in my choice to remain un-schooled in literature. It seems many of my baby-boomer brethren have also found other things to do more timely than picking up a good book and getting lost in it: Super Bowls, talk radio, video games, gardening, souped up cars, March Madness, mountain climbing, cable television, Twitter. Even motorcycle riding – gasp! The list of diversions is endless. But of these diversions, perhaps the greatest is work.

Real reading… demands space, because [it draws] us back from the primacy of the instant, it restores time to us in a fundamental way.

David L. Ulin (page 80)

My long-day work in school administration provided me with all the excuse I needed to remain ungrounded in letters.

THE OTHER DAY, quite by accident, I picked up an essay at my local independent bookstore – The Book Seller (46 miles away) in Grass Valley, California. I didn’t know anything about the author, but the title seemed to align with the content of three posts I’d made to this blog in the past few weeks. In The Lost Art of Reading, critic and essayist David L. Ulin lays out an indisputable case for finding the time and the space to read. Book critic for the LA Times, Mr. Ulin’s essay speaks to issues of disconnectedness and engagement; of wisdom and folly; and of the power of literature to impact people over time. He draws upon his love of books, the dominance of technology in his day-to-day, his interest in world circumstance and his life as the father of a fifteen-year-old to argue for balance in the demands placed upon all of us – and how reading can easily take a back seat to life. His “call to arms” essay is intensely gratifying. It prompts me to want to make up some lost literary time.


WHY SHARE THIS? I believe the discourse in our country – and our fundamental understanding of the tenets of our democracy are sacrificed when the bulk of the population – like me – doesn’t take time to immerse ourselves in the timeless thinking of others. When we do not engage in a conversation with the greats, when the last thing we heard we take as gospel, when we believe that those who are lettered are somehow elitists, when the immediate takes precedence over the greater good, the greater good suffers. Ulin suggests:

“If we frame every situation in terms of right and wrong, we never have to wrestle with complexity; if we define the world in narrow bands of black and white, we don’t have to parse out endless shades of gray.” (page 94)

“We regain the world by withdrawing from it just a little, by stepping back from the noise, the tumult, to discover our reflections in another mind. As we do, we join a broader conversation, by which we transcend ourselves and are enlarged.” (page 151)


READING THAT FITZGERALD QUOTE the first time, I focused on those with whom I disagree and think how foolish they are. Reading again, I realize that the quote is about me. I came to understand that I am responsible for the advantages I’ve not had. Concurrently, I realized that I can do something about it.

“Hand me that copy of Dante.”

And here again is what reading has to offer: the blurring of the boundaries that divide us, that keep us separate and apart.

Ulin, (page 148)

RESOURCES AND NOTES:

Ulin, David L. The Lost Art of Reading; Why Books Matter in a Distracted Time, Seattle: Sasquatch Books, 2010. $12.95 – Please see your local, independent bookshop.

"The Book Seller" is located at 107 Mill Street, Grass Valley, CA. (530) 272-2131.


PREVIOUS POSTS that may relate:

Literacy Deficit: What? http://thechurchoftheopenroad.blogspot.com/2011/01/literacy-americas-deficit.html

Literacy Deficit: So What? http://thechurchoftheopenroad.blogspot.com/2011/01/literacy-americas-deficit-so-what.html

Literacy Deficit: Now What? http://thechurchoftheopenroad.blogspot.com/2011/01/literacy-americas-deficit-now-what.html

The whirlwind’s spent before the morning ends;

The storm will pass before the day is done.

Who made them, wind and storm? Heaven and earth.

If heaven itself cannot storm for long,

What matters, then, the storms of man?

Lao Tse in Tao Te Ching

as quoted by Ulin page 151, adding the comment:

“2500 years after [Lao Tse] lived and died.”

© 2011
Church of the Open Road Press

GAS STATION DRAMA

DATELINE LINCOLN, CALIFORNIA – a February day in 2008

SHE WAS HUDDLED behind the steering wheel of her aging Hyundai Elantra. Her eyes peered over the dash, but through the steering wheel. I saw a tea-cup sized Maltese pace from her lap to the seat back and then to her lap again. Slowly the driver’s side door opened and the woman clambered out. Her face immediately clouded in confusion. The filler neck on the car was on the side opposite the gas pump.

Oh, dear! she must have thought. What to do?

I had just inserted the vapor recovery devise into the top of my cherished BMW RT’s plastic tank.


THE GAS STATION is easily accessible from state route 65. Just wheel right in and slide in next to a pump. But with the filler neck on the wrong side, the woman arranged a “do-over.” She backed up the ramp toward the highway continuing until her plastic sheathed rear bumper protruded into the traffic lane – the 55 mph traffic lane.

There, she paused. Caught her wits. Reasoned.

If I came in forward and the pump was on the wrong side, if I turn around and back in, then the pump will be on the right side.

Shifting, she lurched forward past the entry to the filling station. There she stopped. Pushed the gear selector into “R,” and began backing against the flow of the traffic lane and down the ramp into the service station. Vehicles on the state route braked and evaded. A Hollywood-style crash scene was avoided.

More reason ruled the day. If the other side of the pump was wrong the first time, then the opposite side of the pump should be just right.

Calamitously, the “right side” was now the side on which I was parked dispensing petrol into my beloved RT. I kept one eye on the nozzle and one eye on what appeared to be impending doom. I never caught the woman looking using a rear-view mirror. Judging from the condition of her sedan, it appeared she preferred a system similar to Braille over the confusing use of mirrors in which: “Objects may be closer than they appear.”

Back she crept. I prayed she could feel the difference between the gas pedal and the brake pedal, however, red lights never illuminated on the approaching Elantra.

I pictured Sean Connery at the end of a James Bond film. Brassy, dramatic music pulsed through my helmet – music no one else could likely hear. Time was of the essence. I squeezed the gas trigger a bit tighter. Too tight and the gas backs up and the pump shuts off. Too loose and before it’s full, I’m flattened. I planned an escape route. I thanked God I’d paid the bike’s insurance premium and month ago. If she wipes out the bike, I resign myself, I can take the proceeds and use it as a down payment on one of those new GS Adventure models that guys ride around the world on.

The nozzle clicked off. I slammed it to the pump and, without snapping the filler cap shut, straddled the motorcycle and walked it backwards. The encroaching Elantra stopped – as did the soundtrack. Atop where I’d filled, the woman placed the Hyundai in park. She rubbed Tea Cup, the Maltese, on his or her curious little head, and exited the vehicle.

Within moments, there was an audible gasp. The filler neck was again, impossibly, opposite the pump.

“How in the world did that happen?”


I OFFERED A PRAYER of thanksgiving to Saint Christopher (patron saint of travelers and just about everyone else, according to Wikipedia) as I left the filling station. In my rear-view mirror, I saw the gentle woman getting back into the old Hyundai. As yet, unfueled.

© 2008
Church of the Open Road Press

A WALK IN THE (LOCAL) WOODS

A THROWBACK OAK WOODLAND lies a mile or so from the house. Open space. Prime for development. Perfect for infill, so that subdivisions to the south and east can be connected by boulevards and streetlights to shopping and services to the west.

But, thanks to a down economy and the unsustainable over-reach of easy credit, here is where the development ends. At least for the time being, the oak woodland is preserved. Not protected preserved formally for this is not a park. I can run my dogs off leash – this morning much to the chagrin of a passel of wild turkeys.

BUT PROTECTED PRESERVED just as well, because money is tight. I’m okay with that. A paved path leads west, but quickly gives way to a traditional trail.

DIRT SLICING through grasslands. The cool, heavy morning air carries the din of a freeway, only a few hundred yards north. But a few moments walking around and one is apt to forget the noise.

AN EARLY SUN highlights the waxy, yellow green leaves of the canyon live oak. Several dot the area along with many Quercus cousins: black oak, blue oak and scrub. Their derelict sticks and branches are ripe for tossing and fetching.

A WINDSTORM a decade or so back, felled a valley oak. “Rainbow Shelf Fungus,” arranging itself so much like an Anasazi cliff dwelling, patiently works on the felled wood. Within the century, this hulk will return to the soil.  (Dig a close up of this remarkable fungi by clicking on the picture - then clicking on it again. -ed.)

THE TRAIL TRACES A CREEK, its channel the carving itself deeper into the decomposed granite and sand that makes up the base of the area’s soil. At points the water gouges the soft soils creating ten-to-fifteen foot cliffs ready to collapse into the current. Standing too close will result in a twisted ankle and damaged ego and camera

NEARBY, A BLACKBERRY BRAMBLE can’t decide whether this February morning is the end of last autumn or the beginning of next spring.

TWO BLUE OAKS are married for eternity undoubtedly the result of two (or more) acorns sprouting in concert with one another. The result is a heritage tree that invites little boys to climb on its branches in the summer.

A VOLUNTEER APPLE has decided that it is, indeed spring. Three days ago, these blossoms were not even buds. Shows us what 70 degrees in February pre-tells.

ANOTHER VOLUNTEER, not native to this area: pyracantha. Mom told me these occur because a drunken jay will swallow the intoxicating berries and then poop them out all over the neighborhood. Who am I to argue with mom?  Truth be told, as a seven-year-old, I kinda enjoyed it when mom used the term "poop."

THOSE WHO WENT BEFORE knew the value of this pristine land. The area is dotted with a half dozen car bodies left by folks conservative enough with their own dollar that they saw value in leaving these rusting hulks here rather than having them hauled off for recycle or paying for admittance to the land fill. Others follow, firing a few rounds into the carcasses to ensure that the damned things are dead.  Not right sure when this modern-day dinosaur will "return to the soil."

THE POND IS NOT NATURAL, either. But on a calm mid-winter morning, its glass surface is home to a pair of mallards, a small committee of Canadian geese, a cormorant who’d staked out the floating end of a half-sunk log, and a snowy egret who is more than a little aware of our advance.

 THOSE WHO WENT BEFORE knew the value of this pristine land.  It seems to me that the Indians who preceded us in this area were able to live meagerly within the means provided.  Ironic that within footsteps of this site, huge, huge homes loom - each with a huge, huge mortgage not necessarily to be paid in strictly monetary terms.  An exposed slab of granite ‘neath a partial canopy of oak provided area Maidu maidens with space for grinding and leaching acorns as well as gossip and song.


AN EARLY MORNING HOUR in these woods highlight the upside of a down economy and I hope this land will remain open for years to come.  But then, I know better...

© 2011
Church of the Open Road Press

SMOKIN’ THE NRA’S WEED

Just a comment...

A DECADE OR SO BACK, a couple of high school kids in Colorado, because they’d been bullied, entered their high school and began firing. I personally know a counselor who sat with one parent through the ordeal of linking each locked-down student with each student’s parent or guardian. “It will be all right,” the counselor told the mom. “It will be all right.” When all was said and done that day, it wasn’t all right for about a dozen parents. The mom was one of them.

A month ago, a Congresswoman was shot through the head and six of her constituents murdered as she conducted the most democratic of all practices in this republic: conversing with her public.

Then yesterday, a person whom I consider a colleague, although I never had the opportunity to work with him, was gunned down in the office of the Placerville area school where he served as a principal.

In response to these incidents, those who believe that guns are too readily available rally to restrict our access to weaponry. Those who oppose gun controls spout about “our freedoms” and “our second amendment rights.”


THE CHURCH OF THE OPEN ROAD respectfully screams: “Wait a minute!”  To those wishing to disarm the country, you have to be smart enough to realize that in a free society, we can’t outlaw much of anything. That’s why we will never win the war on drugs. That’s why there’ll always be prostitutes in the vicinity of cheap motels. That’s why declaring abortion illegal will be an act of futility. None of these things will go away. Neither will guns.


HOWEVER:  To the South Dakota legislator who writes a bill requiring all citizens over the age of 21 to own a fire arm the Church would suggest: this canard comparing forcible gun ownership to the recent requirement that folks obtain health insurance is simply stupid to the point of being dangerous. Not everybody needs a gun. But everybody gets ill or suffers physical injury from time to time. If you want to repair the health legislation, propose something.

To the southern California Republican who stated that the primary reason for the second amendment is to allow the people to protect themselves from their government, understand that as their elected representative YOU are charged with protecting the people from their government. If you don’t understand that, please step down.

To those who would suggest that if a citizen with a gun in Tucson or in Placerville had been on the scene the outcome might have been much different, I must say I agree. There would have been much more injury and much more death – not less. And when the police arrived, whom might they choose to take out?


THE FULL TEXT OF THE SECOND AMENDMENT begins with the clause: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State…”

The boys in Colorado, the young man in Arizona and the assailant in Placerville have yet to be linked to a well-regulated militia of any sort. So how do we justify their gun ownership?

“Why, to protect myself from the tyranny of my government!” according to the NRA.

Paranoia is “a chronic psychosis characterized by systemized delusions of persecution.” We are told that frequent users of marijuana suffer from such delusions. The “protecting myself from the tyranny of my government” rant is textbook paranoia.

We are blessed with the most stable democracy the world has ever seen whether or not you or I are particularly enamored with whoever happens to hold the highest office. We don’t need protection from our government. But, apparently, Gabby Giffords needed protection from “us.”


IT IS TIME FOR THE AMERICAN PUBLIC TO QUIT SMOKING THE NRA’S WEED and to have an honest national discussion about firearms, their place in our society and the juxtaposition of a national right to bear arms against many innocent individuals’ right to life itself.

THE BATHTUB RING

INSIDE FOLSOM LAKE’S POOL

The Lord raised his hands high above the American River 
and said, "Dam it.” 
And they did.

- as told by the author’s father far too many times

AESTHETICALLY, I like a lake but I don’t much care for a reservoir. Lakes are pools of water that naturally fill an impression. The level of the water doesn’t change from season to season. Lakes provide habitat for fish and amphibians. Ringed with riparian plant life, they afford shelter to birds and small mammals and provide water for the greater beasts of the field. Eventually, a lake will silt in and form a meadow as nature’s form constantly evolves. Nothin’ like a good lake for a picnic, a paddle or a skinny-dip on a moonlit night.

Reservoirs, on the other hand, are messy creations of man that while providing water for irrigation and flood protection for cities and recreation and fishing, come with dams which disrupt nature and, when water released in the summer and fall is not replenished in the winter and spring display ugly “bathtub rings” evidencing man’s disdain for the order of things. Or so I thought.

You can observe a lot of things by just watchin’.

- Peter Lawrence “Yogi” Berra

RECENTLY, FROM THE RATTLESNAKE BAR boat launching ramp – well above the reservoir’s pool – I traipsed below the bathtub ring of a depleted Folsom Lake. On display was something a little more complex simple than simple devastation.  More interesting, too.

Or is it a rock on a moonscape?

AN "ERRATIC."  Normally reserved for weathered chunks of granite left in a flat field after an ice floe melts, here's a rounded hunk of something sitting atop a plane of alluvium in an area of dry lake bottom.

Eocene Overpass

AN ARCH worn through a conglomerate with an ancient mudflow base.

A concrete example of...

CLOSE UP OF ANCIENT ROCKS from what once was a riverbed – note their water-worn rounded-to-smooth appearance – after having been overtaken by that mudflow. You remember the one: in the late Cretaceous?

THE "BATHTUB RING" viewed next to some decomposing granite. Something in granite dissolves under contact with water.

You're so vein...

A LAYER OF SOMETHING covered the metamorphic rock when it was once horizontal. Another layer of metamorphic rock piled on top. Years pass. The whole thing tilts because tectonic pressures - the origins of which are in the mid-Atlantic. Folsom Dam is constructed. The topsoil and plant life goes away. What remains is a peek at geologic history. Cool!

In looking at Peterson's "Rocks and Minerals," the vein in the above photo may be "dolomitic marble" - common to Placer County - formed through heat and pressure applied to sediments of "fairly pure carbonates." Metamorphosed (my word, not theirs) sandstone - which, I believe becomes granite - is found on either side. Originally formed undersea, close examination of the larger veins originating in this manner may show fossils that are evidenced by traces of white in the pink marble, but in a sample this thin, probably none are to be found. On the other hand, it might just be a crack filled with compacted mud from after when these rocks were inundated by Folsom Lake.

A NOT-SO-RARE MINERAL DEPOSIT (mainly bauxite) from the latter idiotic period.




A TRIP TO THE REGION below the waterline proves to be a nice look back at the past 100 million years or so – and a pleasant way to spend a mid-winter afternoon.

###

RESOURCES:

Plough, Frederick H., Rocks and Minerals (a Peterson Field Guide), Houghton Mifflin Company, 1988

Storer, Tracy I. and Robert L. Usinger, Sierra Nevada Natural History, University of California Press, 1963 et seq.

Van der Ven, William, Up the Lake with a Paddle (volume 1 – Sierra Foothills and Sacramento Region), Fine Edge Productions, 1998.

© 2011
Church of the Open Road Press