I'm (mostly) here!
This site is now running on a new host and a new blogging system. Much of the old content survived the transition – but I seem to have temporarily lost many 2007 posts and photographs, and links within the site are hosed. Ah, well.
I hope to spend some additional time tweaking the converted site over the next few days, so thanks in advance for your patience.
IMPORTANT: If you subscribe to the site’s RSS feed your current subscription will no longer work. Please subscribe to the new RSS URL: feed://outside.danmitchell.org/feed/atom/
BTW: I have no idea why the posting date is wrong… but I’ll work on it.
BTW#2: The previous site has been temporarily archived at outside.danmitchell.net.
What is Fun?
A post at favorite oboe player’s blog got me thinking about the notion of fun today and why I love to do things that are sometimes quite hard and challenging:
I don’t always go to movies to have fun. I don’t go to concerts to have fun either. I have fun when I go to Disneyland. (And I admit I love Disneyland … sorry to those of you who don’t get it! I become a little kid the minute I walk through that gate!)
I go to movies, concerts and operas to be moved. I go to learn something new. I go to somehow be changed. I go for a variety of reasons, but fun isn’t usually one of them. (Okay, maybe when I go to see goofy movies, but those are fairly rare for me.)
I want to be left with something when I am done with whatever event I’m attending. I love it when, days later, I’m still thinking about what I saw or heard. And I want to feel something … even if it’s anger. I don’t like to walk away thinking, “Whatever” or “So what?”
It occurs to me that is pretty much why I’m willing to carry a large, heavy backpack up and down over high and difficult mountain passes, sometimes for more than a week at a time. If the definition of fun is “smiling broadly or laughing outloud because, gee, I’m just plain having a good old time,” then backpacking, most of the time, doesn’t qualify. (Though sometimes, with the right group of friends, sitting around in the evening doing whatever it is we do does qualify as plain old fun!)
But the experiences do teach me (often about myself), move me, stay on my mind, and most certainly leave me changed in ways that are worth any amount of sweat and pain.
Well, almost any amount… :-)
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Two Riders, Calero Hills
Two Riders. Calero Hills, California. June 2, 2007. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell.
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Three Trees and Trail, Calero Hills
Three Trees and Trail. Calero Hills, California. June 2, 2007. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell. [G Dan Mitchell Photography]
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Purisima Creek Redwoods Park and More…
At Two-Heel Drive today, an extensive post about hiking at Purisima Creek Redwoods Open Space Preserve. And the best part? The prettiest photo of an outhouse I’ve ever seen. Really. Follow the link to the article to see what I mean.
Deep in the woods at Purisima. Summertime’s upon us in Silicon Valley and I’ve finally gotten it into my had that it’s not necessary to spend every weekend sweating through dusty trails on hills that have gone from green to brown. Along the Santa Cruz Mountains nearest the Pacific Ocean, everything’s green as all get out — heck, there’s even mud on the trails in a few parks.
One such park is Purisima Creek Redwoods Open Space Preserve, a few thousand acres of second-growth redwood forest that is one of the coolest hiking locales in these parts, temperature-wise and vibe-wise. It’s on Highway 35, Skyline Boulevard, west of San Mateo, a bit of a haul from San Jose at over 30 miles, but worth the drive… [Two-Heel Drive]
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A Couple Noteworthy Two-Heel Drive Posts
Tom of Two-Heel Drive shared a couple of posts that caught my eye yesterday. First, he reports that…
The Walkies. Elizabeth King, keeper of the Walktopia blog, dropped me an e-mail this morning reporting she had named Two-Heel Drive the Best Hiking Blog…
Congratulations, Tom!
Then, he tips his dusty and a bit sweaty hiking hat to one of my favorite Pacific Coast (heck, American) authors, Wallace Stegner and includes some of Stegner’s words about the value of wilderness…
Found this link to his “Wilderness Letter” at the WTA blog.
Something will have gone out of us as a people if we ever let the remaining wilderness be destroyed; if we permit the last virgin forests to be turned into comic books and plastic cigarette cases; if we drive the few remaining members of the wild species into zoos or to extinction; if we pollute the last clear air and dirty the last clean streams and push our paved roads through the last of the silence, so that never again will Americans be free in their own country from the noise, the exhausts, the stinks of human and automotive waste. And so that never again can we have the chance to see ourselves single, separate, vertical and individual in the world, part of the environment of trees and rocks and soil, brother to the other animals, part of the natural world and competent to belong in it. Without any remaining wilderness we are committed wholly, without chance for even momentary reflection and rest, to a headlong drive into our technological termite-life, the Brave New World of a completely man-controlled environment. We need wilderness preserved–as much of it as is still left, and as many kinds–because it was the challenge against which our character as a people was formed. The reminder and the reassurance that it is still there is good for our spiritual health even if we never once in ten years set foot in it. It is good for us when we are young, because of the incomparable sanity it can bring briefly, as vacation and rest, into our insane lives. It is important to us when we are old simply because it is there–important, that is, simply as an idea.
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In John Muir's Footsteps
A Santa Cruz couple are hoping to restore some popularity to one of the classic early views of Yosemite, reopening a 19th century door on what Muir came to regard as a holy vista — the “sanctum sanctorum of the Sierra.”
Donna and Peter Thomas, a husband-and-wife team of artists who spend most of their time producing hand-bound fine-press books, have rewalked a long-forgotten trail from San Francisco to Yosemite that Muir took, also mostly on foot, for his first Sierra visit in 1868. The couple spent two days last week on the last — and certainly most spectacular — segment of the trail into the valley, the culmination of a guidebook they’re writing to help others follow Muir’s footsteps.
Eventually, they’d like to see directional signs and even overnight accommodations along the 300-mile route they are calling “John Muir’s trans-California ramble” — as reminders of the continuing power of Muir’s legacy and his infectious love of Northern California’s outdoors.
“In 20 years, hundreds of people could be doing at least parts of this trip, maybe thousands,” Peter Thomas said as he and his wife walked the last portion with a Chronicle reporter and photographer.
The <a href="In John Muir’s Footsteps“full article is worth a read… and the whole trail sounds like it might be worth the walk!
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Putting their lives on the line to keep others safe in Yosemite
Putting their lives on the line to keep others safe in Yosemite
A story in SFGate about Yosemite Search and Rescue:
Once little more than a rag-tag group of climbers who volunteered to help rangers in emergencies, a separate search and rescue program was established by the park service in Yosemite in 1974. It is now a force of at least a dozen highly trained technicians, with support from 20 expert rock climbers, nearly 100 park rangers and dozens of specialists — from scuba divers to search dogs — who are on call when circumstances demand.
There is plenty of demand. There were 219 search and rescue operations in Yosemite National Park last year, 216 in 2005 and 207 in 2004. That’s approximately 40 more missions every year than a decade ago, park officials said.</blockquot>
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Three Trees, Calero Hills
Three Trees. Calero Hills, California. June 2, 2007. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell. (Sales)
A photograph from my National Trails Day hike.
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Dan's Outside 
Random Collection of Weekend Stuff
Outdoorsy thoughts on this early June weekend… that I’m spending indoors.
About others in the blogging world…
OK, I’m done now. Back to grading. :-)
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June 10, 2007 Posted by gdanmitchell | Commentary | Comments Off on Random Collection of Weekend Stuff