Nehaveigur

Category: Nature

  • Pyromaniac

    Trying to light a camp fire when it’s raining and everything is wet is a humbling experience, and not one that practicing in dry conditions prepares you for. Kim Stanley Robinson’s novel Shaman describes the process over more than seven pages without getting tedious. I’m saying that as someone who…

  • Unedited

    Donald E. Carr points out that the sense impressions of one-celled animals are not edited for the brain: “This is philosophically interesting in a rather mournful way, since it means that only the simplest animals perceive the universe as it is.” Annie Dillard: Pilgrim at Tinker’s Creek

  • Arctic Facts

    Here are the facts I found surprising enough to highlight in my copy of Arctic Dreams: Most animals live lives in biological keeping with the earth’s twenty-four-hour period of rotation. They have neither the stamina nor the flexibility, apparently, to adapt to the variable periods of light they encounter in…

  • Arctic Dreams

    Arctic Dreams by Barry Lopez still shows the Soviet Union on its maps of the Arctic. There is no mention of global warming, unthinkable for any contemporary report about the region. That’s because it came out in 1986, but that hardly matters. The important parts are untouched by time. One …

  • Dewdrops

    We’re just raindrops on a window. Jerry Seinfeld

  • Wolf

    Wolf by Jim Harrison is a novel about being outdoors and about traveling. It’s Harrison’s first novel, published in 1971. There is a lot in this book, and in all of Harrison’s writing, that I recognize. For example, it has been some time since I’ve been truly lost in the…

  • Wood Swirl

    A piece of wood that reminded me of van Gogh’s Starry Night. Nature imitating art, once again.

  • The Territory is the Map

  • Three Days by the Lake

    For three days, I went to a small lake in the Sierras. There was a dirt track that went in for 30 minutes. The lake had no designated campsites, but there were a few fire pits. I parked my SUV next to one. I didn’t make a fire, because it…

  • Human Footprint

    Here is an interactive world map that quantifies the human footprint based on population density, infrastructure and other metrics. The truly wild places are in Canada, Greenland, Siberia, North Africa, Brazil, Australia and the Himalayas. The data is from 2020 and I wish the publisher, the Wildlife Conservation Society, updated…

  • Consider the Fish

    Fishing is a bit cruel but also makes me feel closer to nature. Jon Ontario talks about this conundrum here. It’s the same tension David Foster Wallace talks about in Consider the Lobster. Is it all right to boil a sentient creature alive just for our gustatory pleasure? A related…

  • Where the Mountains are Nameless

    There’s a land where the mountains are nameless, And the rivers all run God knows where; There are lives that are erring and aimless, And deaths that just hang by a hair; There are hardships that nobody reckons; There are valleys unpeopled and still; There’s a land – oh, it…

  • Edible Plants in the Sierra Nevada

    While backpacking, I frequently wonder if I could eat the berries I encounter. I know I can eat the blackberries but I’m unsure about everything else. I looked it up, and it turns out that in the Sierra Nevada, where I do most of my backpacking, there are several edible…

  • Outdoor Books

    This is a good list of nature, travel and adventure books compiled by Ken Ilgunas. His personal preferences align more with my own than the supposedly more objective meta-list he compiled from comparable book lists. The top spots in that list are dominated by old travel books, most of them…

  • Hitchhiking

    After hiking through the desert for a week, I was standing on the American side of the Mexican border. I was dusty, tired, needed a change of clothes and above all, a ride. There weren’t many cars passing on the small road where the trail ended. The first one to…

  • Air or Earth

    A gentle reminder that, now more than ever, flying is our punishment for daring to defy gravity. Nein Quarterly (Eric Jarosinski) Air travel is the opposite of freedom. During security screening, you are told where to step and where to look, you and your belongings are searched, and everything has…

  • Star Bowl Spinning Overhead

    Writing by starlight Can’t see the words Fill a page Nothing there Waterfall distant sound Tree against stars Milky Way Juniper Jupiter white rock Wind dying my heart At peace a Friday night Big Dipper sits on the mountain Friends lie in their tents I sit against rock Star bowl…

  • Napping Outside

    One of my favorite things when I’m out backpacking or canoeing is to take an afternoon nap under a tree somewhere. Karl Heinrich Waggerl wrote about this experience in his Wagrainer Tagebuch (Wagrain diaries). Waggerl was an Austrian writer who is so unknown in the English-speaking world he only has…

  • Meadows

    This is a mountain meadow in Lower Austria. Comparable meadows in the Sierra Nevada have fewer wildflowers and fewer insects, both in terms of absolute count and in terms of the number of species. The advantage Sierra Nevada meadows have is their wilderness, especially those that have never been grazed…

  • Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

    I have known about Annie Dillard for some time but I have never before read anything she has written. In retrospect, that was a mistake. There is no better nature writing than Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. Like Richard Dawkins or Carl Sagan, Dillard possesses an awe of nature that is…

  • Ted Muller

    Personal websites, updated and added to over many years, tend to be more interesting than social media profiles. Klaus Dierks’ website is an example, and Nick Bostrom’s is another. I recently came across Ted Muller’s homepage while searching for information on trails in the Sierra Nevada. The trail reports on…

  • Rattlesnake Creeks

    My neighbor told me about a swimming hole that nobody knows about. “It’s on Rattlesnake Creek,” he said. Armed with this information, I went to Google Maps, only to discover that he had given me an ambiguous address: There are at least a dozen Rattlesnake Creeks in California. What is…

  • Ineffective Alternatives

    I don’t get anything out of cold medications. By the time my symptoms are severe enough that I take something, it’s already too late. The only thing that has ever works for me is rest and giving it time. You may be luckier. If you have a stuffy nose, you…

  • Puddling

    Around a puddle no larger than my hand, I observed three different butterfly species, jostling with bees and other insects. Despite a large lake being only a few feet away, they favored this tiny spot, presumably because of the nutrients it provides.

  • Tree Climbing

    As a kid, I liked to climb a tall fir that stood beside our house. Its branches were spread close and evenly, which made it easy. Because I was climbing close to the trunk, the needles on the outside hid me from my parents’ eyes. One of my favorite parts…

  • Relax About Rain

    Breathable rain jackets get damp on the inside after a few hours of rain. My solution is to not bring a rain jacket if I only expect light rain and if it’s not going to be cold. Getting wet isn’t that bad. If it’s cold or if it will rain…

  • Backpacking Resources

    When preparing for backcountry trips, it’s helpful to know what to expect.

  • When Adventure’s Lost its Meaning

    In the quiet misty morning When the moon has gone to bed When the sparrows stop their singing And the sky is clear and red When the summer’s ceased its gleaming When the corn is past its prime When adventure’s lost its meaning I’ll be homeward bound in time Bind…

  • Using My Phone as a Microscope

    My phone camera beats any magnifying glass. Here are photos of some bugs I encountered on a California beach today. They were 1-5 mm long yet my camera captured them adequately. The background may look like pebbles it’s actually grains of sand.

  • National Park Ideas

    Here are some interesting ideas for new national parks by Ken Ilgunas.

  • California Fires

    Much of California has burned at some point. This map keeps track of historical wildfires.

  • Edward Abbey

    Edward Abbey held views that don’t align with our current political dimensions. He was an environmentalist, he was against immigration, he wanted people to have fewer children, he was pro-gun and as against economic growth. He also is one of my favorite writers, and one of the few miracles I’ve…

  • 30 by 30

    In 2016, Edward O. Wilson proposed that half of Earth‘s surface should be protected similar to a national park. In 2020, California governor Gavin Newsom signed an executive order with the goal of protecting 30% of the state’s surface by 2030 (30 x 30). Given that we’re now halfway between…

  • Unnecessary Backpacking Gear

    There are lots of backpacking gear lists out there, and one day I may post mine. In the meantime, here is some backpacking gear I have considered and decided against:

  • A Great Time to Be Large

    I’d have loved to see Pleistocene megafauna like the mammoth with my own eyes, and maybe one day I will. In the meantime, I am happy in the knowledge that right now, I share the planet with both the largest animal and the largest plant that ever existed.

  • You Can’t See Them

    This is a recent text by editing director of Alta Journal, Blaise Zerega: The summit at Heavenly Resort in Lake Tahoe is 10,067 feet up. Standing there atop the Sierra Nevada on a crisp, clear winter day, you’d swear you were gazing across not only the lake but the entirety of the…

  • California: Great for Trees

    Why does California have the tallest, biggest and oldest trees? Coastal redwoods (Sequoia sempervirens) are the tallest trees on Earth, reaching 116 meters. Their range is coastal Northern California. Giant redwoods (Sequoiadendron giganteum) are the most massive trees on Earth, reaching 1,487 cubic meters. Their range is the Western slope…

  • Money or All This

    We’re spending the days between Christmas and New Year at a ranch house on the Eastern slope of Mt Shasta. There are no neighbors apart from two horses who show mild interest whenever the kids run to their enclosure, only to turn away in disappointment when it becomes clear that…

  • Snow Star

  • Geocaching

    Geocaching isn’t as popular as it used to be. Google Trends shows that interest peaked in 2011 and has been at 25% of the peak since then, with a downward trend. Doesn’t matter, lots of things have had more adherents in the past but are still just as good. If…

  • The Wall

    What would I do if I were isolated on an island or on an uninhabited planet? is something I sometimes think about. A lot of the time, this takes the form of making lists of gear that I’d want to bring along in such a scenario. I find this relaxes…

  • Purple Urchins

    These are purple sea urchins in a tide pool on the Mendocino coast.

  • Mushrooms Making Waves

    I believe this is turkey tail mushroom (Trametes versicolor). The water in the background is Bon Tempe Lake in Marin county, California.

  • The Eight Mountains

    What was my father longing for? He, who never managed to stop working. He barely made it to the mountains for a few weeks in summer This is from the movie The Eight Mountains (trailer here), which is based on a novel by Paolo Cognetti. I’ve been wondering about the…

  • Yearning From Above

    I’m on a plane. This morning, I woke up in a Sheraton hotel room and this afternoon I’ll be in a corporate office with a glass wall on one side, a white board with week-old diagrams in blue and green on the other, and my desk in between. Looking out…

  • The Night is Darkening Round Me

    The night is darkening round me, The wild winds coldly blow; But a tyrant spell has bound me And I cannot, cannot go. The giant trees are bending Their bare boughs weighed with snow, And the storm is fast descending And yet I cannot go. Clouds beyond clouds above me,…

  • Spend it Wisely

    Last week, my wife and I packed our kids into the car and drove four hours to a cabin in the Sierra Nevada foothills. Early November is a good time to spend be there if it doesn’t rain. It didn’t, and on one of our walks we even saw a…

  • The Overstory

    The Overstory by Richard Powers is different from any novel I’ve ever read. It’s experimental in the sense that it is composed of multiple tangled stories, much like the canopy of a forest, which is appropriate since it’s a book about trees and how we relate to them. “A book…

  • Outdoor Books

    I don’t get to spend as much time as I’d like out of doors and try to make up for it by reading. Here are my favorite non-fiction outdoor books:

  • Needle Ice

    This is needle ice, which I observed growing out of the ground the morning of September 12th next to a backcountry lake in Yosemite National Park at 9,370 feet. More on the phenomenon here.

  • Insufficiently Fractal

    I’ve just come back from a week of backpacking in the Sierra Nevada. The first day we got altitude sickness, by the second day my lips became so dry they cracked, we didn’t bring enough whiskey to last us beyond the third evening, by the fourth evening all we had…

  • Oh I Am Sick of Brick and Stone

    A wind’s in the heart of me, a fire’s in my heels, I am tired of brick and stone and rumbling wagon-wheels; I hunger for the sea’s edge, the limit of the land, Where the wild old Atlantic is shouting on the sand. Oh I’ll be going, leaving the noises…

  • Long Trails

    The open road still softly calls, like a nearly forgotten song of childhood. I was curious if someone has made a list of long-distance hiking trails, and of course the answer is yes. Worldwide, there are 46 trails longer than 1,000 kilometers that are passing through mostly wild areas with…

  • Fog

    The fog comes on little cat feet. It sits looking over harbor and city on silent haunches and then moves on. Carl Sandburg: Fog

  • The Silent Men Who Do Things

    Have you gazed on naked grandeur where there’s nothing else to gaze on, Set pieces and drop-curtain scenes galore, Big mountains heaved to heaven, which the blinding sunsets blazon, Black canyons where the rapids rip and roar? Have you swept the visioned valley with the green stream streaking through it,…

  • Happiness Only Real When Shared

    Interstate 80 crosses the Sierra Nevada at Donner Pass. One semi-trailer truck follows the next in a near-continuous train, connecting the mighty economy of California with those of the states further East. I was travelling on a different kind of road. The Pacific Crest Trail is a long distance hiking…

  • Two Good Lakes

    I like people but I don’t like crowds. I don’t actually mind crowds either if they don’t cause congestion. Some crowding in a subway station is fine as long as it doesn’t result in me not getting on a train. I don’t mind busy city streets as long as I…

  • One Utopia

    Ken Ilgunas’ utopia for North America: A stable population of 100 million humans (a mostly arbitrary number), mostly clustered in metropolitan areas, eating the best, juiciest lab-grown sirloins, enjoying lives of meaning and leisure, with lots of solar panels and pagan orgies. Now that the land is free of domesticated…

  • Nothing Gold Can Stay

    Nature’s first green is gold Her hardest hue to hold Her early leaf’s a flower But only holds an hour. Then leaf subsides to leaf So Eden sank to grief So dawn goes down to day Nothing gold can stay. Robert Frost

  • Against Binoculars

    I have nothing against birds. It’s impossible to look at one and, based on its appearance and the way it behaves, not ascribe a personality to it. The aggressive and curious way of bluejays reminds me of car salesmen. Even though birds amuse me, I never got into birdwatching, a…

  • Peace Comes Dropping Slow

    I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree, And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made: Nine bean-rows I will have there, a hive for the honeybee, And live alone in the bee-loud glade. And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping…

  • The Woods are Lovely, Dark, and Deep

    Whose woods these are I think I know. His house is in the village, though; He will not see me stopping here To watch his woods fill up with snow. My little horse must think it’s queer To stop without a farmhouse near Between the woods and frozen lake The…

  • Bears

    Talk with backpackers anywhere in the Western United States, and eventually bears will come up. I’ve come across bears a few times and they now make me less anxious than they used to. I knew all along that that black bears aren’t dangerous to hikers who behave sensibly. After discovering…

  • Bicycle Conversion

    Leaving a hardware store, I saw an e-bike unlike any I had seen before chained to a lamppost. It was a standard road bike with two motors added to the frame. They were connected to the rear wheel hub with separate bike chains. The battery was housed in a hard…

  • Into Alaska

    It’s easy to be cynical about YouTube and those who create videos for the platform to make money. Chasing clicks and making videos that make you feel good after having watched them seems to be incompatible. However, there are some channels that redeem the platform. The self-videoing adventurers I admire…

  • Ultralight

    The amount of time I spend researching backpacking gear, reading blogs and reviews and watching YouTube videos about tarps, camping stoves, backpacks, sleeping quilts and footwear is comparable to the time I actually spend using the gears outdoors. I find this embarrassing. I also know I’m not the only one.…

  • The Brotherhood of Mt Shasta

    As you hike the Pacific Crest Trail from Mexico to Canada, for many days you catch glimpses of Mt Shasta between the trees. As you drive through the empty plains of Northern California, it beckons on the horizon. As you take a flight into San Francisco crossing the Sierra Nevada,…

  • A Tall Ship

    I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky, And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by; And the wheel’s kick and the wind’s song and the white sail’s shaking, And a grey mist on the sea’s…

  • Not Man the Less, but Nature More

    There is a pleasure in the pathless woods, There is a rapture on the lonely shore, There is society, where none intrudes, By the deep sea, and music in its roar: I love not man the less, but Nature more George Byron

  • The River: Drowning

    Most winters, the ice was strong enough for skating, as long as you avoided the fast flowing sections where it was much thinner. As a safety precaution, or so I told myself, I would first go out on a sled, reasoning that it’s impossible to fall through the ice that…

  • The River: Boats

    For Christmas, I wanted a kayak. For months, I had been poring over the catalogs of various suppliers, comparing specifications and accessories and looking at the pictures of people in kayaks exploring wild places. Finally Christmas eve arrived. The bell rang, the doors to the drawing room opened, and there…

  • The River: Fishing

    Beneath the surface, there were trout. On hot days they were suspended in the water without moving. My brother, for a few years, was obsessed by fishing and would frequently bring home trout for us to eat. In his room, he had a box with what to seven year old…

  • The Gospel of Nature

    John Burroughs published Time and Change in 1912. Hewas a well known naturalist, corresponding with Teddy Roosevelt, John Muir and others. He has been largely forgotten since, even though much his nature writing is still relevant and insightful today. The following is from The Gospel of Nature, a chapter of…

  • Builds Character

    If a person who has not had enough exercise attempts to backpack, then he will find the going difficult. He might think, “I sweat, I get out of breath, I’m out of shape.” But he is wrong to think the tribulation is uniquely his. Everyone sweats; everyone pants for breath.…

  • Tracking

    Excerpts from Jim Harrison’s third-person autobiography Tracking, which appeared in his collection The Summer He Didn’t Die. About rivers: The last few days in the north he spent most of the time in the woods after packing was done. The water was warmish in August and he was able to…

  • How Not to Eat Well

    People worry a lot about food. Is it authentic? Is it healthy? Is it local? Is it organic? Is it sustainable? Is it The Best? You can see them at the grocery store, checking the labels. I do it myself. The most basic information on a food label is the…

  • Map of California Fossil Sites

    I made an interactive map of California fossil sites based on data by Don Kenney.

  • The First Snowfall

    The snow had begun in the gloaming, And busily all the night Had been heaping field and highway With a silence deep and white. Every pine and fir and hemlock Wore ermine too dear for an earl, And the poorest twig on the elm-tree Was ridged inch deep with pearl.…

  • The Tickle Trunk

    Our canoe was made by the Grumman Aircraft Engineering Corporation from heavy-duty aluminum and weighted 75 pounds. On account of it being late summer, some of the river passages had low water levels and were muddy and we often had to get out of the canoe to push or pull…

  • Tree House

    A tree house, a free house, A secret you and me house, A high up in the leafy branches Cozy as can be house. A street house, a neat house, Be sure and wipe your feet house Is not my kind of house at all – Let’s go live in…

  • Yonder Blue Ridge

    May your trails be dim, lonesome, stony, narrow, winding and only slightly uphill. May the wind bring rain for the slickrock potholes fourteen miles on the other side of yonder blue ridge. May God’s dog serenade your campfire, may the rattlesnake and the screech owl amuse your reverie, may the…

  • Jim Harrison

    I’ve been reading a lot of Jim Harrison lately. It’s an infatuation with his work that began a few years ago but has now reached new heights. I have purchased all of his prose and some of his books of poems. Four of the last five books I’ve read are…

  • Desert Tales

    The number of weird things that happen to a person in the wild is directly proportional to how much time that person spends in the wild Steven Rinella: American Buffalo Desert solitaire I was backpacking through the landscapes of arid southern California while reading Desert Solitaire by Edward Abbey. One…