I’ve left the Deuce and am installed for a while on my parent’s mini-farm in Ontario. The closest internet is 30 minutes away over rural roads which are alternately snowed over and rained out, in a friendly local library which is usually closed, so I won’t be posting here much until I fly into Victoria on Jan. 7th. Until then, my folk’s phone is 519-986-1834.

2 months ago I was wandering around in rented cars, waking up to the dawn in improvised Forest Service campgrounds, cooking up bacon and eggs and coffee on camp stoves, breaking down my tent then rushing out into the piñon-juniper woodlands with a gps antenna magneted to my bandanna, a compass around my neck and a camera in my hand, documenting the landscapes that were going to become my study sites. I would drive and hike around in a rush to look at things until I decided I had to look at something in particular very slowly. Then I would stare at it. Mostly bushes and trees and soil and water courses. Also hills and valleys. I visited Sierra Vista and Tombstone and Arizona and Flagstaff and Cedar Ridge and Tuba City, and mostly places in between, like Cochise County and the San Pedro River and the Coconino forest and Waputki and the Little Colorado canyon and the rangelands of Navajo Nation. I took a train to New Mexico and did similar things there. Then I took a train home. It was a good time. There was a lot I missed because I was in a hurry to look at semi-arid vegetation, but there was a lot I saw because I was looking for semi-arid vegetation. I wrote about it a bit here.

Because I had a camera in my hand and because New Mexico and especially Arizona are so damn visual, I took a lot of photos. I’ve finally posted some of them up here.

I’m just back from a trip to Chicago, and leaving now for a few days in Ontario. After that I’ll really be settling in to my desk in Ann Arbor.

I’m back from my two-week ramble through the public lands of Arizona and New Mexico. This was an ideal destination for me: I’ve been in the area a few times before, just enough to begin to know what to seek out and what sorts of landscape patterns might be waiting for me, but not nearly enough for it not to seem entirely exotic and impossible to my boreal-based brain. Well, I’ve only now scratched the variations on landscape and vegetation and physiognomy of the great American southwest. But I did get to run down some old leads and spend some really solid time in a couple of regions I’ve long wanted to. And do so with the wonder of ignorance.

And oh yes, I was there to do some research reconnaissance. Looking to see what vegetation pattern looks like from side-on and roots-up instead of from above. I have a lot of digesting to do, but I suspect the trip was successful on that criterion. For sure I had great meetings with people who really do know the ecology of the magnificent semi-arid zones: Dave Breshears (who made time for me the day his right-hand-guy was leaving for a faculty position), Neil Cobb (who made time for me the week he was prepping for his wedding celebration) and Michaela Buenemann (who made time for me in between settling into her new faculty position and road tripping to Dr. Cobb’s wedding celebration). The reflexive generosity of time and ideas that researchers have for each other is one of the things I love about working in the sciences. It seems the best people are the ones who are the most giving of their resources. (Including data! Thanks guys. Thanks also to Dr. Alfredo Huete, whom I now really regret not having been organized enough to ask for a meeting with.)

Thanks also to this guy, whose website drove home the point that, unless it specifically says “no camping”, you can pretty much camp anywhere you want in the southwest. This turned out to be a key idea in my trip. There were a lot of places I wanted to camp, and did. And while I’m at it, thanks also to Enterprise, for not freaking out when I brought some rental cars back with a little dust in the wheel-wells.

Much of the point of being there was to take photos I could later reference while taking the remote-sensing god’s eye view of the same landscapes. So I had my camera in my hand a lot, and I’ll post some photos as I work through them.

I’m leaving today for 2 weeks of field work in Arizona and New Mexico.

I’m doing some field reconnaissance in support of my weird thesis research on self-organizing plant patterns in the semi-desert. That mostly means I’ll be driving around in rental cars, looking to see what the places I’ve been peering at from above actually look like in person. Also camping out in the high desert at night, looking to see what patterns the stars have. I’ll be in the Tucson/Sierra Vista region, then north of Flagstaff and up to the rim of the Canyon, then training into Santa Fe/Los Alamos area. I’m taking the Southwest Chief back to Chicago and Ann Arbor on the 23rd.

Do you see a pattern? I don’t see a pattern.

Well, I’m home in Michigan. I would say it’s been a great summer’s travels, but I’ve got some travels still ahead. Ann Arbor is looking good. I’d best get out there.

The sun has returned to Kootenay Valley, but for days we have been working above the clouds more often than below them. And often in them. Which looks just like clouds do from inside an airplane, except you’re outside walking around in them in a slash-filled clearcut instead of peering through a porthole. The blocks we work in have often been hidden from us until early afternoon, which can make flagging in pieces a bit of a mind game. The view from the clearcuts can likewise be obscure until mid afternoon, being slowly revealed in patches and pieces as the clouds rise and fall and tease apart.

Another novel planting condition: 2 shifts ago we worked on the Canada-US border. As in, right smack on it. It turns out the border is physically delineated by a cut-line running through the mountains, tracking the 49th parallel. If you’ve ever wondered what a line of latitude looks like in person, this is it. From our side of the valley, we could clearly see it running down the mountains on the other side, and across the valley, presumably through the Porthill border station. And, we eventually realized, up our side of the valley and right along the edge of the cut block.

I’ve been joking about how they probably don’t emphasize the “longest undefended border” factoid so much in elementary schools anymore, but this really drove it home. We worked on the physical border for 2 days without even realizing it.

I’m leaving town today, heading for Canada. Once I’m across the border my phone pretty quickly ceases to work, little traitor that it is. I’ll be in Ontario for a couple of days, where I won’t have internet, but my folk’s landline is 519-986-1834. After that I’ll be in BC, where I will have access to email most days, I think.

Last year I went to the Ann Arbor Pow Wow on a whim. I can’t really tell you what it was I liked so much about it, but I sure did. I just sat in the stands and ate overpriced buffalo burgers and watched. Somehow that was really satisfying. Something about the energy and the event felt really right.

Since then I’ve had a dream of spending a good chunk of summer riding from pow wow to pow wow across the US. I haven’t quite been able to figure out when that is going to happen, probably not this summer, but next summer is still a possibility.

The 36th annual is this weekend.

My bff Tim Irvin has just launched a new project: Arctic Inspired

He’s compiling arctic canoeist’s experiences for a non-profit book. Tim is a veteran arctic canoer. I’m really stoked that he’s also planning a major solo trip this summer.

“WHO IS THIS BOOK FOR?
This book is for all those who have travelled in the tundra and been moved by those experiences. It is for all those who are intrigued, but have not yet made the journey, cannot make the journey, or would rather read about black flies than swat them. It is also for the people of the north; in gratitude for the opportunity visitors have had to see, and be inspired by, themselves and their land.”

(If you’re shocked by the beauty of the website compared to other non-profit nascent concepts, it’s because it was made by a couple of my other bff’s over at Pink Sheep Media. Full disclosure: I am an occasional consultant for Pink Sheep in return for couch credit.)

Received a comment on this post regarding one of Michigan’s churches of Yahweh.

I’m back in Ann Arbor and will start on my backlog of emails. It was surprisingly cold back home. I assumed we were in pretty much the same climate, and I think we are, but it seems there are exceptional periods.

I’m going to be in Ontario this week, with my newly extended family. Internet access will be intermittent. And my phone won’t work. My folks are at 519 986 1834.

A sad day: Amtrak is upping the security measures. There goes some of the joy.

My sojourn through the undiscovered south (undiscovered for me) is over, and I’m back in what I have to admit is a winter fairyland. Or was until yesterday afternoon, when it switched up into the standard Michigonian Inter-season Slushyland. I’m excited about the new term etc etc.

Hopefully I’ll write up some text on my trip, but here’s the short version:

New Orleans — very good.
Central Hill Country of Texas/Austin — very good.
Joshua Tree Park in California — very good.

You should go theres.

Most of my photos are still sitting on a laptop in LA or possibly Mexico, but that’s okay because I didn’t take very many good ones. Not because there weren’t good photos to take — Nola is probably ridiculously photogenic if I had got off my photographic ass and tried, I’m just either out of the habit or lost what meager skill I had. I’m voting for a blend of the two. And as for Enchanted Rocks and Joshua Tree, well, duh. Okay, I’ve lost my meager skill.

I’ll be away from the internet for a couple of weeks. Back in A2 on the 3rd. If you’re in NOLA, AZ, NM or Socal look me up.

And now I gotta run for the shuttle bus.

I was curious about chances for hitchhiking in Texas. Digihitch.com has info on “hitchhiking, rail & road travel”. Apparently this makes it the “site of subcultural movement“.

Hitchhiking in Texas can be very different, depending on what region you are in.
* West Texas is practically a world all its own, with long, open highways (I-10, I-20) and small towns. It is possible to get long rides all the way through if on the major interstate highways. Most hitchhikers have no problem standing on the main shoulder of the highway. It’s dry, hot land in the summer, and windy in most areas.
* South Texas (South of San Antonio and Corpus Christi) is also wide open. Getting rides will take longer, and will probably come from Spanish-speaking locals or ranchers in the area.

Or according to someone called Lightfoot:

Never had much problem with cops but had serious problems getting out of El Paso on multiple occasions. The other observation about Texas is that if you’re hitching off the interstate, there aren’t many places to camp because private property rights extend to the side of the road and there are high, unclimbable fences everywhere. It was difficult finding a hidden spot to crash. In the southern parts, there is a noticable Border Patrol and deputy sheriff presence, and they will stop and check you out. They’re not very laid back about it either. Texas people are very humorous and good-hearted but for me it was always a very arduous state to hitch through.

There’s also a google maplet showing truck stops in the various regions. Useful stuff.

update: After watching No Country For Old Men, I am now extra worried about hitchhiking in Texas. Like the man says, “not even a young man like yourself”. On the other hand, I now really want to believe that you can do stealth camping in some of those places. And if I find a bag of money while doing so, I will not take it.

My supervisor leaves today for one of his periodic trips to China. This time he’s going through the northwest, stopping in Urumqi and other points in Xinjiang. He’s also going up to Lhasa, and to get there he’s taking the crazy new Qinghai-Tibet Railway. Politically, culturally, it is as he put it “what it is”. As a train ride, it’s gotta be the coolest most train-fetishistic thing you can do these days.

It’s been a summer season in Victoria, and anyone who knows Victoria or summer doesn’t need to be told that it was a good one. I had a final scooter ride around the weathery pacific peninsula that is a city and ended it with serial coffee drinks at the spiral cafe with my friends. Tonight I’m printing boarding passes, tomorrow it’s the ferry to Vancouver and the plane to Toronto and the car to my folk’s minifarm. Then the Kawasaki dealership is going to fix up my wheel bearings and seals and I’ll ride her back to Michigan in glory and, I’m told, humid heat. Should be in town Sunday or Monday, to sample the summer season in Ann Arbor. I don’t know what that looks like, but I’m looking forward to finding out.

“Life is never either or, its and and and and and.”
– Phillip Roth