The Zen of Being Me.

Virgin River Cattails
It's almost 5 years since I went on this trip to the Colorado river. To mee t various wilderness gods and find out more than a few things about myself. I remember people laughing and telling river stories and talking about this and that, and how the "groover" -- riverspeak for the toilet (an ammo can really, with a toilet seat on top of it) -- always was set up in a place with a great view. Why is it called "groover," someone asks. "Imagine what it would be like if it didn't have a seat; That's the way it used to be," was the response. ... Yeah, imagine that. The stories ... finding sand years later in your gear.

Returning to Flagstaff after the trip I called Jeff Foott on the phone in his room at the Radisson, "I'm on the groover," him; "How's the view," me, repeating the mantra of twelve days on the river. The hotel room after unpacking was an adventure in sand, I unpacked, sand ... the fine pink and brown sand of the Colorado ... spread throughout the room. I moved my gear to my truck, which now had sand. Sand. I went home. Sand everywhere. Invasive; vacuum, clean, more sand.


I just opened a lens filter case in preparation for this weekend's trip to Yosemite and felt that fine sharp texture ... the fine sand of the Colorado. I thought of all the friends I made there.

Tomorrow, Andrew and I will head into what is predicted to be a storm in Yosemite, probably unlike this storm that Jim Fitzgerald and I drove into last year, but this week promises ten feet of snow in the higher elevations, and rain in the valley. Oddly enough, Jim will be there in Camp 4 when we arrive. Andrew and I will hopefully ski, or snowshoe out to Dewey Point. Me, sandy photo gear, cat crap on my glasses, pink sunglasses, and a camera. The joy never ends. Zen.

There's Just No Story ...

really ... Conan O'Brien won't give up the Tonight Show, the surfers don't want to start the Mavericks because it's raining, despite a 20 ft NW swell. If you're wondering, that means it's clench time over at Mavericks, with triple-overheads. Tonight, it's raining in earnest here, and it's keeping me awake. I want to watch the news and see if this apartment falls into the sea. It means a serious snowfall in the Sierras.

I have lived here most of my life, and every year the pundits claim drought ... and time and again the Pacific storm track has proven that it can make up for a a year's deficit in a very short period of time, especially when it's what the call an "El Nino" year. Although the weather gurus are predicting 10-18 inches from this storm, I am just saying it now -- it's could snow a shitload.

I am packing my gear for the weekend.

... Simile

…(Simile)Images of Manhattan from October 2004Shawn Kieltyhttp://shawnkielty.com/NY/manhattan.htm

Copyright 2004, Shawn Kielty, all rights reserved.






Journal entry, October 8 2004 NYC:Did you happen to run up to me on this corner while I was shooting this photo to talk about my camera and photography? I met an attractive woman (a fitness instructor, perhaps) while shooting this picture, and I keep thinking that I should have introduced myself or found some way to stay in contact because – it was a charged conversation about cameras and photography and being an artist in life, about how we have to resort to things like being a fitness instructor or software engineer despite both having fairly accomplished degrees in fine art. It was excellent to talk with someone who was really interested in the same thing that I am. It’s fascinating to me that this small event would somehow define my recent visit to Manhattan.









Originally from the suburbs of San Francisco, award winning Artist Shawn Kielty currently lives in Mesa, AZ. Early in his career Shawn was primarily a Painter and trained at the San Francisco Art Institute, California State University, Hayward and eventually received a MFA degree at Washington State University.

“My first cameras, were the collection of family cameras, a brownie, an original PolaroidTM, and a pocket camera. And then there was the plastic Diana, a cheap camera with a plastic lens that I won at the county fair. From the earliest of large format experiences, shot in an oatmeal box camera, to my current exploration of the 4x5 format, the camera has always been a part of my art experiences. It seems today to be a foregone conclusion that I would focus my attention on photography.“

Shawn has been included in more than 50 national and regional exhibitions, lectured and taught fine art during his career.

We the People ...

Reposted from 1, 8, 10 and 11 July 2008 regarding a backpacking trip in the Kalmiopsis Wilderness in Southern Oregon.

1 July 2008




In a few days I'll be going back to the Charcoal Cathedral. On this trip I may actually miss the Biscuit Fire. I don't know because this is new. Everytime I have been to the Kalmiopsis wilderness, I have seen the result of the Biscuit Fire. I'll be going in to the Illinois river at Pine Flat. It's a fair piece upstream from my last trip. 4 days, 1 old river, 2 old friends, 2 old dogs.

8 July 2008

Day one included a two and a half hour drive from Grants Pass, OR to the Illinois River Trailhead at Briggs Creek near Miami Bar on the Illinois River, and a forty-five minute hike to Panther Creek, where we eeked out a rocky camp. Let's all keep in mind that we are still in the charcoal cathedral.

The camp at Panther Creek, just outside of the Kalmiopsis wilderness.

Next, York Creek Botanical Area, and the trail to the Illinois River near Pine Flat.

10 July 2008


That sign used to say "Entering the Kalmiopsis Wilderness" or something like that. It was torched during the Biscuit Fire.

The Illinois River.

A carnivorous Pitcher Plant in the York Creek Conservation Area

Ummm ... What is this Yellow Flower? Also in York Creek. Michael Parker of Southern Oregon University has helped me to identify this flower as a California coneflower, Rudbechia californica. Thanks Michael.

Jim shooting a picture

11 July 2008


... spent a couple of days in camp along the Illinois river at Pine Flat. Out in the open grassy flat we found the carcass of a bottle rocket that looked recently used. Fear and anger rise. Fear of being trapped by a fire, and anger that someone would take such a high risk over something so foolish. How could anyone be in this charred wilderness and actually consider using fireworks. To any one that would actually think of doing such an insane thing let me say this: Please don't go into the wilderness to shoot off fireworks, please continue to do that only inside your own house, so the damage will be restricted (hopefully) to only your stuff.

I saw a turkey, and a red fox. The red fox made an cranky, angry, loud, scary, run off your enemies, frightful sound. I have never heard a noise like that except maybe the time I heard the racoon lovemaking -- which is ummm ... really noisy. Anyway -- the fox came by the camp during the night to make that same noise while we were sleeping, or so I heard later.


This is Jim wearing the Albert Einstien hat with grass stuffed underneath it to keep the mosquitoes from drilling through the bandana into his head. I'm an advocate of the Albert Einstien hat, which is a bandana with a knot tied in each of the four corners. Any sculptor or physicist will immediate understand how this turns a flat rag into a bowl shaped hat.




The Sierra Designs Light Year in camp.

thewildschool.com

Last night I registered a new domain name. thewildschool.com. I'm not completely sure what I am going to do with it, but I'll think of something.

Your Script ...

Caution: This might get a bit geeky -- but, I still hack a bit to pay for all of this.

Today, I wrote a very short tcl script that executed a mysql query from the command line in a unix shell, spitting back the results less than gracefully. In short it was a quicky hack to provide some functionality, i.e. visibility into a database.

It started like this:

#!/bin/sh \
exec /usr/bin/tclsh "$0" ${1+"$@"}
# end of excerpt

"What is this (regarding these two lines) and ... what's it for?" asks one of my coworkers. I hadn't really thought about it for several years. "It gets around a 32 character magic line length limitation for long path names ... blah, blah, blah. It's habit," I say, "dressed up as good practice." spitting back stuff I was taught by this guy. I went and lookeditup. The truth is ... I have written programs in tcl on various flavors of unix, including SCO and 4.xBSD and HPUX 9.x (these are all pretty archaic systems at this point) and worked in a place with 20 flavors of tcl spread all over a huge system. This was the best way to do it. Now, most of these systems are located in back dusty rooms, running archaic legacy systems, and probably won't be running any of my scripts ... but my scripts will still be up to it.

Solstice with Wolves

Awesome post by Jill Homer.

Hidden Villa

"Hidden Villa is a nonprofit educational organization that uses its organic farm, wilderness, and community to teach and provide opportunities to learn about the environment and social justice. Hidden Villa stretches over 1600 acres of open space in the foothills of the Santa Cruz Mountains, about 40 miles south of San Francisco. Our mission is to inspire a just and sustainable future through our programs, land and legacy." (From the Hidden Valley website)

The mother of my children tells me that she's been buying organic pork and lamb there.

Look Better Almost Naked Challenge.

My friend Saul -- Challenging us to eat better.

A License to Eat

Robert and the North face Mountain 25.

The South Rim.

Chile at the Ahwanee.

The fireplace in the great room at the Ahwahnee Hotel.

Robert and Campfire at Camp 4, January 3, 2010.

North Rim of Yosemite Valley in the Blue Moonlight

Moonlight Sot to Rival Dave Kohr's.

Ravens

Skiing is interesting at least. It is work, real work, even as it gets easier. Cross country sking requires the body to do a bunch of unusual movements. Although we can't really ski very hard, I can see active skiing burning a thousand calories an hour.

I went to Yosemite (again?) this weekend. I've sorta decided to try to do something more formal with the photos I've take, or at least try to apply myself to taking them a bit more seriously. Anyway -- we drove up Saturday morning, taking the Mountain Tent on it's maiden voyage, made camp, and had a bowl of Chili at the Ahwanee.

We had a campfire, and I shot photos of the blue moon, to see if I could rival Dave Kohr's. I also shot phots of the moon lit North wall of the valley above Camp 4 while we stood around the fire.

The tent performed admirably. It was a bit wet ... after spending the night below freezing at Camp 4. The trade offs to keep the tent warm were to seal up the top and have it be a bit more drippy inside from the condensation. Mostly, my nose was cold. I finally put the neck gaiter over it ...

In the morning it was icy on the outside of the tent, we opted for coffee with breakfast over at the Yosemite Lodge, a decision I always regret. The food is kinda sucky, but the place was warm anyway. Then we went up to Badger Pass for a ski. We skied out the Glacier Point road for about two miles and back. We struggled with the wax for Robert's skis, slippy skis, slippy snow, sticky klister, sticky snow, I didn't have the exact wax for mixed corn snow with glisteny crap, alternating repeatedly. Welcome to California. Just a short side note ... Saul, those skis rock!! I had no problems.

The ravens followed us up the trail, looking to see if we dropped anything, any food, anything shiny. Maybe they remembered me from two weeks ago when I think I might have dropped some turkey jerkey. I keep waiting to see if they will lead me to some game. I've heard that ravens can tell when men are hunting, and pay more attention to them. It's all about the food for those ravens, it's like they have a license to eat. It's all about the food for me too.

Once back -- we broke camp and headed for food. We ate, a couple of times, and I'm stil hungry, I think I'll be extra hungry tomorrow too. Skiing is like ... a license to eat.

This is Disturbing ...

This is pretty disgusting, and seems to me to be cause for real alarm.

"The company says its processed beef, a mashlike substance frozen into blocks or chips, is used in a majority of the hamburger sold nationwide. But it has remained little known outside industry and government circles. Federal officials agreed to the company’s request that the ammonia be classified as a “processing agent” and not an ingredient that would be listed on labels."

Happy New Year

2009 was a great year. It started in Mesa, Arizona with a missing toenail followed by a fall in the parking lot in Flagstaff Arizona at the WFR training at the Northern Arizona University Outdoor School.

February was snow in Joshua Tree with some friends and a snow storm in Yosemite (Jim Fitzgerald barely escaped). This was your basic run of the mill religious experience.

Yosemite Valley with 2-4 feet of new snow is standard postcard stuff for some one with a camera. One gains serious street cred around the valley for being the person staying in a tent. On the final day when the sun came out -- I wandered from one photo emergency to the next.

March began in Yosemite ...

and included hikes on the Willamette River in Oregon and a summit on San Bruno Mountain, a hike at Purisma Creek, and included my first outdoor climbing -- bouldering at Glen Canyon Park. There was a great trip to shoot photos at the Colusa National Wildlife Refuge.

April, it seems -- wasn't that exciting ... Archery, mostly, and training at the gym, and a short trip to Monterey to visit my son, and I injured my foot in some new shoes (3).

May. Again Yosemite was profoundly beautiful. Half Dome attempt number 1. Thunderstorm and tragedy on the trail. Katrin Lehmann (a stranger to me) disappears from the trail on the day we are there. I take a hike out to the point in Point Reyes and the Elk Preserve with my friend John.


June. I am going to go ahead and quote myself, which I never do, regarding my June trip to the Superstition Wilderness, just a few miles East of Phoenix, Arizona:

To be in a place of such glorious beauty, such austerity, difficulty ...
well it's sublime; profoundly good. To be back on this side, reasonably intact,
is also good. To see an end to the thorns, the 105 degree temps, the humidity.
To rest, to prepare to do it again, to have bragging rights or a good story to
tell, is all good stuff.I spent two days in the Superstition wilderness last
weekend. The Happy Hiking Guy (Chris Raye) and I hiked from the Peralta trailhead to Le Barge Spring in a big ugly loop. It was largely uneventful, just two guys in the
desert sun, a shitload of wilderness, and 16 miles of pain.

There was cycling, and archery, and one absolutely fatal for the camera event involving a video of incoming arrors and a perfect shot.


July. Half Dome attempt #2, the moonlight fiasco. 2 0f 4 of us summitted -- I broke my foot. Half Dome 2, Shawn 1 (I summited when I was 20).

In August, I sat on my ass with my foot up. I started physical therapy. I threw a good going away party for my friends Angel and Narinya. We ate clams and oysters and slightly burnt ribs. And everyone came. Awesome. I think I must have started a new job.

September. Never mind. There was a deer hunting trip to Sonora pass and Bridgeport.

In October there was a trip to Yosemite and a stay at Housekeeping Camp. Helen, Andrew, and Cat all summited Half Dome without me. It was a great trip for me, and I seriously enjoyed the good company, and Helen McGiver the cook, and Cat getting lost in the camp, quote when I told her the site number, "good to know." Travel to Eugene, Oregon to celebrate my friend Mark's 50th birthday. Crazy party!



November. Carson Pass Snowshoeing. I actually saw Lake Tahoe for the first time in about 1o years.

Pescadero Creek hike with bobcats and Green Chili Soup at Duarte's.

December. Skiing. More Yosemite. Badger pass, Bear Valley, Carson City and a hike in Kings Valley, somewhere in Nevada. Hooked up with some old friends. Made some new ones.

I am thinking, 2009 was a good year. A very effing good year. I made friends, I lived well.

So -- let's all do it again next year! Happy New Year! Play hard ... and ... "Stay thirsty ..."