Bridge Over Troubled Water

This water, Gulf Stream, in Pomfret, Vermont, is no longer troubled, but it certainly was back in August 2011, when tropical Storm Irene ravaged the State.

The Appalachian Trail is very accessible in this area, because it crosses several roads as it undulates up and down over the rocky tree-clad hills between Cloudland and the Chateauguay Wilderness - names to conjure with.

The AT is a trail full of surprises, which is not surprising: after all,  - in 2000+ miles who would expect homogeneity?  

The bridge that was torn away has been rebuilt, two years later. How have hikers been crossing the Gulf Stream for the past 24 months?  I wonder!

VYP: Visit Your Park

OK, so the parks are shut down. We don't know for how long, but they will open again!

When they do open, let's come out in force to support them - all 401 of them, not just the big well-known ones.



Live in Grand Junction or Montrose, Colorado? 
 Here's your nearest national park - Colorado National Monument.

Yes, there are 401 national park properties in the USA, at least one in every State. That means there's at least one near almost everyone.

You can find your nearest park at:  http://www.npca.org/exploring-our-parks/parks/   It's not a federal page, it's the National Parks Conservation Association, a non-profit, so this page is not shut down like the federal pages.

Let's support the parks by visiting them en masse as soon as they reopen!

VYP! Visit Your Park!

Go for it

Talking parks last night in Montpelier, Vermont with Helen, who used to work as an interpretive ranger at the Grand Canyon. She applied for two jobs and got calls on both of them. When I started out I did two internships, then applied for 100 jobs. I took the first one that called, so I don't know how many calls I would have got, but judging by later experience, not many!

I've met people who say: "It's easy to get a ranger job." That's because their particular experience has been quick and easy. There are lots of stories that trend the other way. How about being a seasonal for eleven years before finally landing a permanent job? How about never landing a permanent job despite oodles of experience?

Becoming employed in the national parks, as a ranger or anything else, depends on so many different factors, it's really a crap shoot. Right now the odds are against most of us because of the economic situation of high unemployment, therefore more competition or every job even temporary ones, and also because of the seemingly huge number of veterans vying for these jobs. Veterans get preference.

So, as I go around talking about my book, people ask me about their prospects of becoming a ranger. "Go for it" I say, "With your eyes open. It's not easy but someone has to do it."

By the time I get to Woodstock . . .

. . . the leaves will be changing and the Forest Festival will be in full swing. All the trees will be trying on dresses of red, gold and brown, and discarding any leaves they feel they can do without. The sun will be shining and maybe a soft rain falling to intensify the colors. Have you seen the desert after a rainfall? The shrubs appear clad in previously unknown shades of red, green and yellow.

Now, it's elegant Woodstock Vermont I'm talking about of course, not the Woodstock of rock festival fame - that's in New York State, half a million miles from here.

I'll be donning a ranger hat for a few weeks (well, I take it off at night) to help out during the leaf-peeping d season at Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller National Historic Park, Vermont's only complete National Park property. We also have share in the Appalachian rail, 90 miles in fact, but it is shared with 13 other states. (Can you name them?) And, yes, the AT is part of the National Park Service. . .

. . . as I will be for three weeks. Please come visit me there. It's beautiful (understatement).

Plus, Thursday October 10, at 6:30 pm I'll be putting on a slideshow at the Norman Williams Library in Woodstock (VT) - the show is all about my favorite subject - me! And how I discovered everything I know about the National Park Service - some pretty neat stuff, and nice photos. We could make and evening of it - eat next door at the Woodstock Inn afterwards!

Words of Encouragement

My friend Susan takes me walking on the Blue Ridge Parkway whenever I visit her in North Carolina – which isn’t often! She lives so close to the Parkway land you could throw a stone from her cozy dog-infested cottage onto one of the trails. Not that you’d want to be throwing stones, of course - you might hit a deer.

The Parkway itself is a 469-mile road that wanders along the ridge of the Appalachians through several states. Surrounding it is a total of about 80,000 acres of storied land, full of historic sites and wild trails. I know that I’ve explored only a little of it!

The little I have explored is near Susan’s house. Now, I’m a little older and a little heavier than my sprightly friend, who habitually hikes with a backpack full of rocks in order to maintain her condition. So when Susan suggested we hike up the 5,964-foot Grandfather Mountain near her house I said “Well, I might not make it to the top, but if you can put up with my slow pace, I’ll try.”

Young black bear in the Blue Ridge mountains. Drawing by Jessica Valin

 

Readers, I made it to the top. Susan turned out to have an interesting psychology of motivation. It’s one I’ve encountered before in India.

In 2000, when I went to volunteer at a community near the city of Pune, I was entrusted with a mission from a friend in Burlington, Vermont. She wanted me to track down an old friend of her father’s whom she’d lost touch with.  

So one day during my stay in India, the community’s driver, Shankar, took me in the old jeep to track down this lady in Pune, a large city. The address we had was, apparently, vague, because locating it proved to be a challenge. Shankar kept stopping to ask the way and every time he asked, the reply, with much smiling, positivity and nodding of heads was that our destination was “just around the corner”.

After going around about 20 different corners, it began to dawn on me that these well-meaning people may, or may not, have had some faint idea of which way we needed to go, but they were much more interested in telling us what they thought we wanted to hear – that we were close! They wanted to encourage us.

And so Susan, who refused to sit down at all during the hike - every time I sat down for a rest she stayed on her feet, rocky backpack and all – kept telling me we were nearly there.  Her encouraging “it’s just around the corner” reassurances must have started around the 3,000 foot mark. By the time we reached the top I’d rumbled her, but the strategy had worked, and we summited to enjoy a beautiful view and feelings of accomplishment!

Oh, and back in India, the dear Hindu gods, after laughing at our performance for two hours, finally took pity on Shankar and me. We finally found a street with a name that looked like the one we wanted. I hopped out of the old jeep to accost a playing child: “Do you know a person of this name?” I asked. The answer was not mere encouragement, it was amazingly factual:  “Oh yes, that’s my auntie, she lives here!”

 

 

Think Cool

It's summer in the northern hemisphere! Many parts of North America have been experiencing  hot weather. Is it hotter than other summers, or is it just that when we hit a certain temperature our bodies begin to protest?

How it affects us depends on what we're used to, but we all have our  limits!

My friend Jamie, who works in Joshua Tree National Park in the deserts of southern California, just stopped by to tell me that she observed a temperature of 122 degrees F in the Pinto Basin a few days ago. "Well, that's what the thermometer inside the car said," she explained: "I didn't get out to check." I'm not surprised, 122 would take your breath away.

Here in Vermont it's hovering above 90 degrees daytime, with humidity 50% and more. That's hot and uncomfortable here unless you're on the beach, and Vermont has plenty of wonderful beaches.

What's it like where you are?

Here are two ideas for bringing your body heat down - mind over matter:

1. Reflect on these two questions:

Which two national park units lie north of the Arctic Circle?

What's the largest glacier in Yosemite National Park?

2. Close your eyes and visualize a large bucket of ice water being poured slowly over your head, soaking you from head to foot . . . mmm . . .

Think snow!

My Park Story

The National Mall, Washington DC
- cared for by the National Park Service

The National Parks Conservation Association, which is the voice of the parks, has set up a new web page to gather personal stories about the parks.

Do you have childhood memories of visiting National Parks? Teenage adventures? Did you discover an unexpected story in a park near your home?

Did you fight a fire? Help rescue flooded artifacts? Paint your best picture? Take that stunning photograph that still graces your living room?

You can contribute your story at: myparkstory.org

Turn your special moments into virtual postcards to share with others and with legislators, to let them know that these memories matter. These places matter. These are the Treasures On Your Doorstep!


Artist's Palette, Death Valley National Park, California
 - incomparable and irreplaceable

Time and Tidal Pools

Sully Island, Wales

Unexpected childhood memories exploded around me as I checked the tide tables the other day. It was a kaleidoscope of memories: sailing with the tide; deciding how long we could sit on the beach; being able to walk around the point dry-shod; avoiding mythical jellyfish. But the most vivid flash-back was a recapitulation of my fear of being swept away when crossing the causeway to Sully Island.

This was - still is, I suppose - a somewhat romantically swan-neck shaped stretch of land that lies off my childhood coast. The causeway was exposed for a short time at  every low tide, providing a way to reach the island by foot, but with the turn of the tide the incoming water swept suddenly and fiercely through the narrow gap between land and island. Consequently, our mothers scared us silly with stories of children being swept away by the tide. The result of these stories was that my friends and I never actually dared to walk the causeway ourselves, so it remains to this day on my bucket list

No such worries, thank goodness, hung over me as I checked the tide tables for Cabrillo National Monument. I just wanted to be sure I’d be there when the rock pools were revealed. 

Limpets cling like - well -limpets!

 The pools provide a glimpse into another land, another life, more exotic than any Welsh island. It’s a glimpse of the underwater world of kelp and crabs, fish, limpets and anemones. A miscellany of these creatures is marooned twice daily in the rock pools of the Monument, which sits on Point Loma in San Diego, the southern tip of southern California.



 

Jewels among sand.

Magic spirals

 

 

 

 

Is there, I wondered, a panic in the underwater world as the tide begins to go out, a panic similar to ours at the thought of being swept away at Sully Island?  It’s SpongeBob scenario: “The tide is turning” whisper the hermit crabs, “Better scuttle out to sea”. “The tide is turning” gulp the anemones, “Better take cover”. “The tide is turning” burble the fish. “Don’t get caught – the tourists will ogle you!”

 And ogle I did – who could resist?



With a hundred others, I wandered and marveled at the creatures living at the edge of the Pacific. Life on the edge is always both exciting and dangerous. Rock pool and causeway, both are ever-changing, ephemeral, and sometimes explosive, like childhood memories.



Life on the edge: a boulder sits on the very brink of the Pacific.

 

Illustrator

I was at my wit's end trying to find someone who could draw attractive line drawings from my photos of various "Treasures". Then a friend suggested I try the Center for Cartoon Studies in White River Junction, Vermont.

That's how I found Melanie Gillman, the artist who  drew most of the pictures in Treasures On Your Doorstep.

Here's a link to her continuing story: As The Crow Flies"

http://www.melaniegillman.com/


And one to the Center for Cartoon Studies

http://www.teachingcomics.org/


Downtown White River Junction has become quite a vibrant place these days, with several coffee bars, restaurants and cool shops as well as the cartoon college, a theater, and summer railroad jaunts, not to mention the old steam train in the rail yard.

I think I found a treasure of an illustrator!

Take a look at the book to see if you agree.

The Heart Of the World

Colorado National Monument is hoping to upgrade itself to the status of a National Park – a higher level of protection. It could hardly offer a higher level of delight!

 

Twenty-three miles of amazingly engineered road, mostly built by the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) in the 1930s, but not completed until 1950, wind their way along canyon edge up into the blue Colorado sky. Overlooks provide lofty viewpoints and short hikes among juniper and pinon pine trees. Wild flowers decorated the landscape when I visited in May. Long, and no doubt rewarding, wilderness hikes await adventurers.

Rimrock Drive snakes its scenic way through the Monument.

 

The Monument lies between Fruita and Grand Junction CO, just off Interstate 70. It owes its existence to the untiring efforts of one man, John Otto, who, arriving there in 1907, thought the area too beautiful, too magnificent to be overlooked. He explored, developed trails, lobbied and eventually saw the Monument created in 1911. Ah! The power of the individual!

It's an excellent road for cycling.

 

 

 

Treasures On Your Doorstep Paperback Now Available!

The news today is that I’ve published Treasures On Your Doorstep as a paperback. So far it’s available from Amazon.com: just go to Amazon and search by title.

 

There’s also a Kindle version e-book.

 

For me, this publication is a huge landmark in a long journey: first the inspiration, then the research, then the writing and the tussle with publishing. All along, however, I believed that this book should be out there in the world, inspiring people to appreciate and visit the wonderful treasures of the National Park system of the USA. Now it is and now it’s time to spread the word!

 

I hope you’ll enjoy it yourself, and perhaps buy some copies as gifts for your friends, and tell lots of people about Treasures on Your Doorstep.

nps.gov is the go-to place for park information!



Get current information form the nps.gov website
 if you want to enjoy your park visit!



It happened again the other day. An couple of agitated people came into the visitor center upset because the ranger hadn’t turned up for the advertised program.  They were brandishing a piece of paper.

“We checked on line and even printed it out,” they explained.

That was helpful. Ranger Sue thought she knew what had happened. “Oh dear” she said, “That does sound frustrating. May I take a look at that paper?”

It wasn’t the information she wanted to look at, it was the url.

There it was at the bottom of the page. It wasn’t the Park’s web page. They’d picked up erroneous or outdated information posted by someone else.

Every national park property has a web page, and its url always begins with “nps.gov”. 

There are many copy-cat pages. Well-intentioned people may set up a site giving information about a national park site, copy the information from the official page but then never update it.  There’s nothing the park service can do about it – people can post what they like on the Internet.

So, be warned, and always make sure that you get your park information from nps.gov!