Two states, one day, things read on the way

Gary Snyder has a book/epic poem "Mountains and Rivers Without End," an opus that draws on all his Beat Poet/Zen/Nature crazy wisdom. I thought of that title today, rolling across Utah and Nevada with their respective mountains and deserts and highways (rivers not always evident), without end. Many of the parts of Nevada and Utah that the 80 traverses are the hardest bitten ones: great swatches of possibly inhabitable land. Colorless, hot and dry, they've the look of being filled with snakes, barbed wire, abandoned buildings or ...explosive devises (we read such a warning in the Mojave last week). We crested a hill and saw two white military dirigibles hovering over some treeless ridges. Again: WTF? Thank the advent of Smartphones that you can Google "military blimp" in the middle of seemingly nowhere and find out that these floating behemoths are used to mount radar and are being tested in Utah. Hmmm... All that highway calls for much reading, aloud as to entertain the driver, including facts about the towns we're cruising through. Who knew Rock Springs had such an oppressive and violent past? Likewise a recent New Yorker provided additional information for review of such humans-behaving-badly matters. If you want to get more up to speed on the implications of the recent Supreme Court ruling Shelby v. Holder do read A Critic at Large: The Color of Law, by Louis Menand. Voting rights and the Southern way of life. http://nyr.kr/14AVbO8 



NOW.  It is a chilling review of the horrific obstacles the civil-rights workers endured en route to securing voting rights for African Americans in the 1960s and the very real and troubling politics that are in play today.

On a more positive note, we pit-stopped in Salt Lake City and enjoyed an evening stroll through the 80-acre Liberty Park, so named as its fountains, lake, picnic areas, aviary, tennis courts, trees and lawns were intended for all to enjoy, and indeed a large cross section of the city was happily doing just that on a warm summer evening.

Listening Via @nprmusic: The Mix: Songs Inspired By The Civil Rights Movement http://n.pr/12LEvRg

A List of (Western) Birds: August Road Trip 2012

Jessica Feis photo

I'm a long ways from that college kid who worked summers for the Predatory Bird Research Group helping release Peregrine Falcons back into the wild in The Sierra Nevada. Nonetheless those summers honed my eyes for identifying an eagle or falcon at distance in a glance. So while our Come Ashore adventures didn't include official birding forays, I kept a good pair of binoculars at the ready under the passenger seat as we traveled through two national parks and more national forests and BLM land than I could count. Despite time spent in Yosemite and along the East Side of the Sierra, I did not see a Peregrine this trip. Nonetheless, I was pleased with many of the sightings. Following is a list of birds IDed as we drove, hiked and played our way through California, Nevada, Colorado and Wyoming this August (no real order here albeit vaguely grouped by family):

 

Crow

Raven

Wild Turkey

Turkey Vulture

Ferruginous hawk

Red Tail hawk

Swainson's Hawk

American Kestral

Bald Eagle 

Golden Eagle

Osprey

Great Egret

Great Blue Heron

Magpie

Steller's jay

Scrub Jay

Clark's Nutcracker

Loggerhead Shrike

Western Flycatcher

Western Kingbird

Western Meadowlark 

Brewer's Blackbird

Red-winged Blackbird 

Common Grackle 

Gambols quail

Mourning Dove

Band-tailed pigeon

Cliff Swallow 

Rough Winged Swallow

Cave Swallow

Avocet

Spotted Sandpiper

American Pipit 

Killdeer

Canada Geese

Mallard

Gadwall

White pelican

 Brown Pelican

Western grebe

Pied bill grebe

Sandhill Crane

Cormorant

Common nighthawk

Brown Towhee

Black-chinned hummingbird
Broad-tailed hummingbird

Robin

Chipping Sparrow

Song Sparrow

Pine Siskin 

Dark-eyed junco

Mountain bluebird

American Goldfinch

Lesser Goldfinch

House finch

Yellow-rumped warbler

White-breasted Nuthatch

White-faced Ibis

Coming Ashore: across the West in 10 days

Along Highway 128 in Utah

We just returned from our 'Come Ashore Tour,' 10 days of driving up and over The Sierra Nevada and The Rocky Mountains. As with most every trip I've taken, it took me about 3 or 4 days to really sink into the fact that I could let go of my routine and get into the groove of where next...but once I did, it was a full trip. A trip that included all of it: beautiful views and tired-from-being-on-the-road-too-long eyes, letting go of usual routines and developing new habits (including taking more pictures on Instagram than writing), soaking in hot springs, playing music at a variety of venues including living rooms and music stores, visiting family, discovering the wonders of Airbnb, revisiting former home towns, eating pie at almost every opportunity, cowriting in parks and reading the The New Yorker aloud across Nevada. We saw a good cross section of Western wildlife, including many birds (Ibis, Sandhill Cranes), native mammals (moose (!), bobcat, and at least one 'mystery ungulate), and a few lizards amid a lot of road construction. Amazingly, while there were definitely a good number of U-turns made, we didn't get lost. By the trip's end of course, the trip was the routine...  now it's going to take me a few days to realize I'm home.