That super blue moon the other night (January 31, 2018) reminded me of a summer Blue Moon (‘roun’bout July 2004, podner) when I hiked to the top of Mt. Hoffman, in the middle of Yosemite National Park, in the middle of the night, by moonlight. With Aaron and Jason. Around 9pm we started up, at first with flashlights because we were in the middle of boulder fields and trees, but within a mile we were out in the open with nothing but exposed granite and sandy trails around us, completely illuminated by moonlight. From there we ascended to the top of the peak entirely by moonlight. [Read more…]
May Lake High Sierra Camp
The May Lake High Sierra Camp is one of a series of six within Yosemite National Park. They’re a great way to get a wilderness experience without having to pack in food and tents. The camps provide sleeping in canvas tents, and food in a tent dining hall. We’ve gone through the May Lake camp many times in our 30 years of wilderness experiences.
Brian Shoor, who has managed the camp every summer for 14 years, gave me this interview in the summer of 2015. You can find information about the chain of camps, and application information, online. [Read more…]
Summer of Yosemite 2012
It has been my plan to make several trips into the Yosemite wilderness this summer in order to visit some places I’ve never seen before. Most tourists have seen Yosemite “Valley” and many have seen Tuolumne Meadows. Access to the wilderness areas is controlled by a “permitting” process that limits the number of people who may enter on a wilderness trailhead each day. There are a couple dozen trailheads, and they have quotas of one to two dozen camper-hikers per day per trailhead. Once you’re into the wilderness area, you can pretty much go where you desire, as long as you have the energy and the food. [Read more…]
SOTA—Summits On The Air
Since the age of 6, when I visited Estes Park, Colorado, whenever I see any geographical feature more than say 100 meters above me, I climb it. (Provided it’s not a technical climb.) If I can get there without hanging by my fingertips, I go.
Summits On The Air [SOTA] is an organization that operates mostly in Europe and the US, which encourages amateur radio operation from mountain peaks. In many areas these are really just large hills, but here the western mountains of the US, we have many hundreds of peaks that are truly mountains and not just high spots. [Read more…]
Does */* balance exist?
danah boyd explores the question does work/life balance exist? in a recent Apophenia blog post. (I’ve entitled this article “*/* balance” because “*” [pronounced “star”] in programming terms means “fill-in-whatever-you-want,” so “star/star” balance might stand for work:life balance, or work:fun balance or work:family or whatever your particular thing is. Her blog post was triggered by this New York Times article In Web World of 24/7 Stress, Writers Blog Till They Drop. You might also call the article, as they suggest, Death by Blogging.
I have always contended that my method in life was to avoid “work” in favor of something that I enjoy doing. And for me, enjoying means not only that I’m happy, but that I make some sizeable contribution to the welfare of humanity at the same time. So when I label something work, I am referring to something that I really don’t want to do, but have to do for some reason.
And people have always said to me “you’re always working.” But, I actually don’t do very much that I’d classify as work by my definition. I’m fanatically dedicated to what I do, but it’s more often not really work.
So let me say more about balance… [Read more…]