Archive
October - December 2011

Thursday, December 22, 2011

   Post-Thanksgiving Workout - A couple of days after Thanksgiving, I did a day hike in the Grand Canyon with hiking buddies John Eastwood and Bill Ferris.  [The photo to the right shows John and Bill hiking over the Tonto trail as it leads to Indian Garden.  Click to see a larger image.]  I decided to ask the editor of the Daily Sun if he'd be interested in a story for his weekly Outdoors column, which runs each Tuesday.  He was enthusiastic and I penned something quite quickly.  He said it would run the next week (so, a bit less than two weeks after Turkey Day).  But, we got a big snowstorm that weekend and he couldn't resist writing up some cross-country skiing story.  And, I got bumped the next week as well.  Finally, the story ran on Tuesday, December 20.  Here is my version, which is slightly different than the one he ran, but with his title:

Walking off the holiday meal Dennis Foster It is a couple of days after Thanksgiving and time to do some serious work to counteract the effects of all that turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce, and, yes, the pumpkin pie.  Living in Flagstaff, there is no better way to do that than to take a day hike in the Grand Canyon.  Especially when the weather is terrific – clear blue skies and balmy inner canyon temperatures. So, along with two hiking buddies, we headed out of town at 7 a.m.  Our plan was to hike down the South Kaibab trail to the Tonto trail, then over to Indian Garden and hike back up to the rim on the Bright Angel trail.  The total distance is about 13.5 miles and each trail segment – South Kaibab, Tonto and Bright Angel – is about 4.5 miles. The temperature was right about freezing when we started down the trail at nine o’clock.  We were in the shade and it stayed cold until we reached Cedar Ridge 1.5 miles down the trail.  The trail was busy with hikers but not crowded like at other times of the year. As we continued down we got to see some of the work that has been done on this trail over the last couple of years.  The improvement on the section through the Redwall is especially noticeable, as the rocky stretches have now been replaced by well formed steps. At eleven o’clock we reached the junction with the Tonto trail.  We headed west and began to contour our way through Pipe Creek canyon.  This trail gets a lot less use and is in a much more primitive state.  Not surprisingly, over the next three hours, until we reached Indian Garden, we only saw two other groups of hikers. Pipe Creek is perennial which makes it a great attraction at any time of the year.  We pulled in here a little after noon and ate our lunch.  The low lying winter sun quickly set behind the South Rim above us, encouraging us to move on.  From here we hiked in the shade of the towering façade of the South Rim nearly all the way to the Bright Angel trail. Just before reaching Indian Garden, the trail passes by the site where Ralph Cameron once had some tent cabins for rent.  I brought along a copy of a photo of these tents that was published in National Geographic in 1914.  We found the little terrace where these tents once stood, along with a few pieces of metal. At Indian Garden there was construction going on at the restrooms along the trail and the day use area was closed.  So, we rested in the campground area, snacking and filling up our water containers.  During the winter, the water faucets along the trail above Indian Garden are turned off, so you need to have all you’ll need when you leave here. We started out of Indian Garden at 2:30 p.m. and within fifteen minutes were back into the shade, permanently.  As we climbed up the trail, it got colder and colder.  By the time I reached the rock with the ancient pictographs, about two miles from the rim, I was back to wearing my fleece jacket and a headband around my ears. I was the last of the group to reach the rim, topping out at just before 5:30 p.m., as the setting sun was casting a dim light that had turned the very top of the north rim purple, signaling the end of a perfect hiking day in the Grand Canyon.  Perhaps a reward is in order.  I wonder if there is still pumpkin pie at home? Dennis Foster lives in Flagstaff and has been an avid hiker in Grand Canyon since 1977. For More Information: Bright Angel, Tonto and Hermit Trails:  For information on these, and other inner canyon trails, there are many trail guides available. Among the most readily available is Scott Thybony's "Official Guide to Hiking Grand Canyon."  You can find this at area bookstores, or online, at the Grand Canyon Association website. Backcountry Permits:  Find information on permits and trip planning at http://www.nps.gov/grca/index.htm Grand Canyon:  To learn more about visiting the Grand Canyon go to www.nps.gov/grca.  Or, you can find information at www.grandcanyonscout.com Click on any picture (except granary closeup) to see a larger image.  I knew this was wrong! On the improved Redwall stretch. Group photo at Pipe Creek. John silhouetted against Isis Temple.  Zoroaster looms over Pipe Creek ... ... and the small granary within!

The paper ran two photos - the group shot and the view of Indian Garden that appear above.  I have added a few others of interest.  Some notes:

The thermometer at Cedar Ridge.  The photo shows that the "reading" was some 58 degrees.  Funny, since that is higher than the forecast high on the rim.  And, it was still early in the morning (9:30 am) and everyone was bundled up.  I'd say it was in the mid to upper 30s, making this 25 degrees too high.  I have often noticed this during the summer, when it will read 90 degrees plus, or even one hundred, when it is clearly not that hot.  So, this must be part of the Park Service's deception plan to discourage hiking in the canyon!  Seems like the Department of Justice has been trying to emulate them!

The granary in Pipe Creek.  The photos above show the view looking back across Pipe Creek, with Zoroaster (and Brahma) in the background.  Quite impressive, especially when you note that there is a tiny granary tucked away under a ledge at the base of the Tapeats.  The close up version is a bit fuzzy, but you can see the dark hole in the middle where the opening is.  In the thumbnail of the bigger picture you can kind of tell where it is, but if you click on it and get the full image, you should be able to see the opening better.  I have hiked by this before, but it was back in the 1980s.  I'll have to look up those old photos some day!

Editor's literary license.  In the published story, the editor inserted, "after taking the shuttle bus to the trailhead," after my comment about starting down the trail at 9 a.m.  That wasn't true, but I can see his interest in describing to the general public how to access the trailhead.  What really happened is that we parked at the nearby picnic area and walked to the trailhead.  That worked out for us as John's wife, Kathy, came along but didn't want to do the whole hike.  She only went down to the top of the Redwall (which is still 4-5 miles round trip) and then drove over to the Bright Angel lodge, where she picked us up.  Sweet deal for us, otherwise we'd have had to budget in another hour, or so, for transit.  Ugh!

More editorial additions.  In the paper version, there are some additional comments from the editor on the icy conditions of the upper couple of miles on these trails.  [Funny, that didn't make it into the web version, nor did my "For More Information" section.  Hmm.]  That was a key attraction to us - absolutely no snow or ice on these trails for our hike even though it was right after Thanksgiving.  We did have some snow fall weeks earlier, but it was all gone for our hike.  I did, however, bring along my Kahtoola micro spikes just in case!

The Cameron tent cabins.  I mentioned these in my story on the backpacking trip from Indian Garden to Hermit published almost exactly a year ago (Back in the saddle).  But, I didn't have room for photos.  So, when we neared the Bright Angel trail, we matched up the old photo I had copied out of the National Geographic Magazine from 1914 (that the Kolbs had taken which was part of their long story in this issue) and scouted out the site...  

     1/2012 update:  The photo I used from this hike didn't really match up perfectly with the old Kolb photo.  So, on a later trip (BA Wash ruins) I spent some time trying to better line up the view.  That is shown above, where I have indicated corresponding physical features with the arrows (blue for the rim and yellow for the big rocks).  The short salmon arrows show where the Plateau Point Trail is today versus back in the early 1900s.  I've used the other salmon arrows to show where Cameron's tent cabins would be today, as well as where the Kolb's photo studio was located.  I have scouted around for any sign of the Kolb residence, but haven't found anything.  You can see another structure in the new photo, which I believe is part of the old power plant.  It could be that the Kolb residence was completely removed with any usable material going into the power plant buildings.  [Click on the photo above to see a bigger image.]

     Another obvious change is that there are now lots of big trees in the Garden Creek drainage.  It used to be that this are flooded rather often, which is why Cameron's facility was well up above the bed.  Indeed, if you wander around the campground area here you will notice a number of retaining walls whose purpose is to divert water away from this area.

     I imagine that Indian Garden was a pretty hot place back in the day!  In fact, the tent cabin site now lies alongside the Tonto trail.  It used to be part of the old Bright Angel trail, which went east out of Indian Garden and then followed a ravine down into Pipe Creek.  Along this old trail there are a few old Indian ruins that I keep meaning to visit.

Friday, December 23, 2011

   On Storage - As I gaze over my rather extensive collection of DVDs, I keep thinking about the future of storage.  I know, it doesn't seem very interesting, but it is to me.  [So is how aluminum is made, but that will have to wait for a later time.]  I can remember the days before we could tape TV shows and there was no such thing as a movie rental business.  I can still remember wanting to watch a new show that was called "Star Truck."  But, I missed seeing it because it was either on too late or it didn't command a sufficient vote to allow watching on our small black and white TV.  It was only years later, when I saw reruns of this show, that I realized it's title was "Star Trek"!  But, with just four channels (plus or minus), shows appearing as reruns wasn't all that common.  So, if you missed something, you just missed it.  Then, along came video tape.

     I missed the Betamax wave, thank goodness.  [I also pretty much missed 8-track tapes, too.]  But, eventually a VHS player/recorder was cheap enough to buy, as was the tape.  Now, you could actually tape shows, and buy (or, rent) copies of movies.  And, thus began my video collection.  I taped mostly movies and mostly I never watched them!  Well, in economics we talk about something called a "reservation price," which is what you'd pay just on the off chance you might want to "consume" some good.  So it was with these movies.  I didn't do much insofar as TV shows goes except for the Babylon 5 series.  I taped the original airing (at the slowest speed; 6 episodes to a tape!), and then I taped the reruns on TNT when they picked up the fifth season.  Then I taped them all again when the shows went to the Sci Fi channel and they were aired in letterbox.  Now, I did watch the whole series a couple of times, but not the Sci Fi version.  Of course now I own the DVDs (and have watched them all the way through at least twice).

     The advent of the Laserdisc interested me a lot, but was way too expensive for my tastes.  I can remember another student in grad school musing about being able to buy a multi-disc set of Lawrence of Arabia.  I am pretty sure that was before the restored movie was re-released to theaters in 1989 (which I saw twice within a week).  And, during a film festival on campus one year that featured movies by Orson Welles, I caught a session with Roger Ebert who was using a Laserdisc to go through Citizen Kane practically frame by frame.  Too cool, but still too pricey.

     So, I was quite enthusiastic about the DVD revolution and started to build quite a library of movies.  When blu-ray came along (I decided to give HD DVD a pass) I was leery of replacing my DVDs.  So far I haven't really done that, with a few exceptions.  The blu-ray player does a good job on DVDs - in fact, if you couldn't play a DVD on the blu-ray I am sure I would not have moved that way.  Now, I pretty much only buy blu-ray discs to add to my DVD collection.  [If you click on the picture of my videos, above, you'll see a larger image and can see my copy of the Lost series on blu-ray next to my DVD copy of Repo Man.] 

     But, I wonder why.  It seems to me (and, probably everyone else), that the whole "on-demand" market is just going to get better and better.  Why not just pay $1 every time you want to see your favorite movie rather than pay $20 to own a copy.  I do like the extra features on the discs, and the on-demand services will have to find a way to include that if I am going to switch sooner rather than later.  Still, it makes me think that my lifelong quest to obtain these movies has been for naught.  As it is, I already get sucked into watching a movie on my satellite service even though I own a copy!  Just last night - an hour of Battle: Los Angeles.  I suspect the current generation doesn't feel as compelled to acquire and store movies, books, and music.  My book collection is also too large, although I am loathe to give up any of my really old Grand Canyon tomes.  And, while my music collection isn't that large, there was a time when I had lots of vinyl, and even 45s before that.  Now, you just skip out to iTunes or Google Books and find everything you could want.  Maybe in another 20 years, you won't find home libraries, or video and music collections.  Everyone will just have electronic access and our days of personal storage will be over.  Sort of like in Fahrenheit 451, but in a nice way.  Insert smiley face here.

Tuesday, December 27, 2011

   Why Do We Read? - I was having an interesting conversation with someone about how we just don't remember the things we read.  Especially, the books, et al., that we read for pleasure.  I can often say whether a book was good or not, but can't ever recall any specifics to back up those opinions.  So, what was the point?  Good question.  Yet, I have always liked to read and still do so.  I have lots of books, and plenty of them I will never read despite my best intentions.  Very few have I read more than once.  The short stories of Philip K. Dick come to mind, and I have read parts of the Lord of the Rings more than once (but, I've seen the 3 movies more than that!).  But, those are exceptions to the general rule.  However, I have a hard time giving them up.  I always look at them and think that I might read them again.  But, why?  Well, because I don't remember any of the details.  And, therein lies the dilemma I am wrestling with - why do we read?

     Years ago I read John Kenneth Galbraith's autobiography, A Life in Our Times, which I really liked.  But, why?  Well, I remember it as being well-written (which is true of his books anyway) and full of details about being raised in Canada and ending up at Harvard and working for the price control agency during WWII, as well as doing a study of the value of our strategic bombing during WWII (or, was that in another book?) and working for the Kennedy administration.  But, I clearly don't recall any but the barest of details - the kind you could write out in a paragraph not unlike the one you are reading!  I do remember one specific comment of his that has stuck with me for years (yes, I read it a long time ago).  Once he finished writing a book he would sit down and write up a page, or two, of comments and notes about it so that he wouldn't forget what he had read!  To this day, I do the same with nonfiction books.  In fact, I can't read something of substance without a pen and pencil, pad of paper and sticky notes at the ready.  Consequently, it takes me a long time to read these books, but I have notes to refer to so that I can recall what I learned.

     For books I use in my teaching that is not the case.  Forgetting what I read, that is.  I read them over and over, if not in their entirety, then at least major sections/chapters.  I take voluminous notes and often have put together PowerPoint slide shows to draw out the details for my students.  Of course, what my students do is read them once and don't take notes and forget what they've read pretty much as soon as they put the book down.  But, that's not really their fault, is it?  And, clearly, our educational establishment would never think to require the level of effort necessary to insure that students actually understood what they have read.  But, that is the topic for another blog.

     As I noted in my previous blog (On Storage), I have a lot of DVDs.  And, I watch them.  Frequently and repetitively in some cases.  And, I am sure that I remember more from a movie (even one I have only seen once) then I have from the most recent novel I have read.  And, that got me to thinking about whether we could have a world without a written language, or perhaps only one we use infrequently.

     For example, the signs on the highway almost always have a picture of an airplane when the airport exit is coming up.  I suppose we could say that signs posting numbers don't count anyway (speed limits, highway numbers, etc.).  But, in the far off future, we may be doing everything by voice anyway . . .

     Well, that illustrates the idea.  It just seems to me that written content will become increasingly obsolete.  Funny thing for me to claim, since I like to write!  So, from books-on-tape, to pictures on the McDonald's cash register, I can easily imagine that the written word will get scarcer and scarcer.  When we can just verbalize our requests for information and get it back in a spoken, or visual, manner, what will be left to write?  And, will we still read?

Tuesday, December 27, 2011

   Advice for Ron Paul - The Iowa caucuses are just a few days away.  Earlier for this election year than in years past.  In fact, I participated in the caucuses in 1976, when I was in my senior year at Drake University.  Great fun, but clearly they were held while school was in session.  Anyway, the expectation is that Ron Paul will win, or finish a close second.  He has spent a great deal of time, energy and effort in this state.  The question is, what will he do with his showing to ratchet up to the next level.  Most pundits keep saying that he is maxed out at about 20% approval among voters and if he doesn't change his style, I would agree.

     But, unlike most pundits, I like Ron Paul.  It takes a while and you really have to listen to his message carefully, but if you do, you may find he is the most sensible candidate in the race.  Yet, his opponents have hijacked the narrative on him as a crazy person.  That is not only unfair, it is just laying the groundwork for what the Dems would say should Paul win the nomination.  But, I don't think he can win the nomination, but can change his tack to further his cause.  To wit . . .

Demote foreign policy as a campaign issue.  The hullabaloo mostly comes from Ron Paul's foreign policy.  So, why not just refuse to go down that road?  Indeed, there is virtually nothing in his Plan to Restore America that deals with foreign policy.  Acknowledge that fundamental international relationships are not likely to change under a Ron Paul term (or, two).  Maybe something like getting rid of half the military installations around the world would be enough.  If absolutely nothing changes in the foreign policy arena, but enormous advance is made on the domestic front, it wouldn't bother me.  It's still much better than what we're likely to get.  Maybe even an acceptable foreign policy wonk for VP would help in this regard - I saw a news bit on Condi Rice that made me think this could be the right choice!

Focus on specific domestic issues.  The next step should be a shortened explicit wish list for domestic policies that are practicable in a first term.  Once outlined, it can become the point of discussion, argument and debate.  List the 2 specific cabinet offices to get rid of - Energy and Education probably, although Commerce, Agriculture, Labor and Transportation are also on my list.  Tout the fact that you're leaving Homeland Security in for now.  When it comes to the Fed, the call for an audit is a good start, but it probably best not to push the envelope on his proposal to End the Fed.  Simplify his tax reduction proposals and get them out front and center.  Finally, he has a specific list of regulations that should be eliminated.  He should focus on his plan for regulatory reform that will reduce the regulatory bias that is present in government anyway.

Angle for the Convention.  The GOP Convention is probably the last stop on the Ron Paul train.  I think that he should use his voter support to leverage a prime time spot at the convention, where he can lay out a modest agenda for President Romney to follow after he beats Obama -  End those departments, cut taxes, keep federal spending to no more than X% of GDP, place a sunset on all regulations, etc.  This is the best way to insure that the agenda doesn't die with the end of his campaign.  Getting a Marco Rubio on the ticket as veep may also insure that the cause has some longevity.

dfoster@kaibabjournal.com