Coastal: Davenport, debris

The Davenport Cement Plant is visible from Davenport Main Beach, and most of the area. It towers above the town like a spooky amusement park ride for ghosts of cities past. Shuttered in 2010, the plant was once the source of many jobs in the area, and the city was founded on whaling by a man (Davenport, naturally) from New Bedford, a leading whaling city once the richest place per capita in the world and one of the highest-grossing fisheries into the 21st century (even if that gross didn’t extend to its residents, many of whom live in poverty).

Beyond the fish (scallops to be precise), New Bedford may seem to have relatively little going for it, and Davenport likewise, with a folk festival and a decent diner leading the list of Good Things in each Semi-Failed Place. The fates of these towns may not bode well for other cities in an age of climate change; anywhere founded on exploitation finds itself at risk of failure.

Still, there are the bright spots, the little hopes: vague plans to turn the old cement plan into a place for housing or hiking, to promote offshore wind research in New Bedford. Two coasts, many plans, an uncertain future we all share. But at least some of us are looking up (at the stars, etc).

A few weeks ago, I sat (looking up, at the clouds) in a parking lot shepherding local families through a beach cleanup at Davenport Main Beach. Parents and children picked up trash–a surprising amount of it, for a small area. Cigarette butts, beer cans, BuzzBalls. A class ring.

The way people treat the beach–as a place to leave things, not find them. As a place to use, not keep. I brought the buckets and grabbers and gloves people used to clean up. I counted up all the items people collected. I bagged the trash from the buckets and threw it in a dumpster. I tried.

A few years ago, I saw a family picnicking in Ocean Beach in San Francisco. When it was time to leave, they gathered up all their trash in a pile and lit it on fire, then left the burning trash pile behind them. This is how some people approach life–as a place to leave dumpster fires behind. And teaching their children to do the same. Others are doing the cleanup, using the grabbers, trying to put things in buckets. To be orderly. To teach their kids the right things.

Sometimes it seems hopeless. After three hours, there were still more cigarette butts to clean up. There was still a man sitting smoking in his car. I gave him a muffin, leftover from those donated by the local bakery for the cleanup. Would he still throw his cigarette butt and muffin wrapper out the window once I left? 

Maybe. But at least I tried. At least I did something. At least I didn’t leave a fire behind. Because, next time, it might not go out.

Desolation

It’s not hard to feel out in the wilderness when you’re out in the wilderness. What about when you’re surrounded?

Recent Supreme Court rulings that insist women must have babies while corporations cannot be regulated (say that five times fast, then barf in a gutter!) create a bad kind of wilderness: one in which people are left alone to falter while corporations grow fat and smoky, burning little bits of themselves up in the atmosphere but not so many they can’t still be profitable.

There’s still wilderness out there: I encountered some recently, the Desolation Wilderness west of Lake Tahoe. I camped for three nights near lakes, swatted mosquitoes, lost the trail, felt perhaps overly relieved that there were still patches of snow up high and water in the lakes, proving that everything isn’t decimated yet.

And yet—driving out to the wilderness, we passed the area ravaged by the Caldor Fire last year. Black tree trunks surrounding lonely chimneys, sole witnesses to houses that used to be. The destruction was extensive yet random: five houses in a row gone, another still there, green siding, surrounded by children’s toys, a perfect place to grow up.

We are building ourselves a wilderness, the Supreme Court is building ourselves a wilderness, not the nice kind where we enjoy hiking and marvel at views, but the bad kind where we are pitted against each other. It’s hard to say we don’t have to listen to them—after all, in the wilderness there is no law but nature. Part of society is agreeing on systems that, at least in theory, make things better for everybody. Make our water safe to drink, our air clean to breathe, our bodies free to live without bearing unwanted fruit.

What do we do when the people in charge aren’t practicing good stewardship? Do we usher them out, a practice for which there seems to be no clear precedent? Do we turn our backs? Do we simply do our own thing, cut down the trees that are dying, make some sunlight for the seedlings growing up in ash?

evergreen trees against blue sky

“If you don’t have regulations, then the only people who will benefit will be those who, with no rules, will make more money,” Marietta Robinson, a former Obama appointee on the Consumer Product Safety Commission who teaches about administrative agencies at George Washington University’s law school, told The New York Times. “But it will be to the great detriment to the rest of us.”

We are in the wilderness, but we are not here alone. There are others. We can make our own rules. To survive, and thrive, together.

makethempay

I don’t always regard my day job as particularly relevant to reality (although it is in many ways!). I do remember my old boss’s Slack status or bio or something along those lines was makethembuy. While that may be the job of a marketer (or anyone in business really???), and necessary if one wants to collect a paycheck, lately I’ve been feeling like making my personal motto into makethempay.

By “them,” I don’t mean any of my bosses, most of whom have been quite pleasant if occasionally ineffectual (and really, the capitalist machine is optimized to chug on far beyond the influence of any individual, isn’t it?). I mean the fossil fuel companies responsible for creating, covering up and profiting from the climate crisis. So lately I’ve started trying to understand how “we” (anyone!) can make them pay for their decimation of the climate and human rights by ushering in what we really need–that is, a zero-emission economy. Is it possible? Fossil fuel profits ($174 billion in the first three quarters of last year) might give us a start.

Recently, the Philippines Commission on Human Rights found that the world’s largest fossil fuel companies had “engaged in willful obfuscation and obstruction to prevent meaningful climate action.” While obviously true, potential penalties are less clear. As Inside Climate News describes it, “While the commission [sadly! - Ed.] has no power to compel companies or governments to act on its findings, legal experts said its report carries broad implications for other cases.” Part of the forcefulness of the evidence presented came from the way it demonstrates the impact of climate change on specific human rights, like health and food security.

While it’s certainly true that fossil fuel companies’ operations (and all of the activity they enabled, from turning on the lights to driving cars to flying planes) generated this climate crisis, we could also argue that other corporate activities have led to other crises, like those in housing prices (tech companies driving up rents in the Bay Area, for example) or agricultural production (Monsanto’s dedication to developing crop-devastating products needed for successful monocultures, perhaps). I’m also interested in how those contributions should be paid for by corporate actors, especially if considering collective impact instead of individual plaintiffs. (At least Elon’s interested in offering shelter?)

Still, “Pollution is still the largest existential threat to human and planetary health and jeopardizes the sustainability of modern societies,” as Philip Landrigan, a director of the Global Public Health Program and Global Pollution Observatory at Boston College, told Inside Climate News. The publication adds that ”Michael Brauer, a professor at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington… noted that the 9 million annual deaths attributable to pollution were almost unchanged in the past five years.” That makes it certainly seem worthy of large-scale legal action.

Additionally, fossil fuel operations stand ready to continue disrupting human life": even as they consider a shift away from oil and gas, they are moving to a new area: plastic. “More than 60 percent of oil demand is expected to come from plastics and chemicals in the next decade,” according to Inside Climate News’ conversations with Marty Mulvihill, a chemist and co-founder of Safer Made. And even babies can’t avoid them: petrochemicals are being found in pregnant women, in all of our bodies. (Gives a new meaning to the human energy company, eh? There’s a little Chevron in all of us!)

chevron logo used without permission

Anyway, I am not a lawyer or able to advise anyone on how to effectively bring a suit that won’t get bogged down in standing or jurisdiction (THE WORLD, obviously, probably even the solar system?) whatever, but following the tobacco settlement, here are some half-baked ideas I have about how fossil fuel companies should pay:

  • Eliminate oil and gas subsidies (which added up to nearly $6 trillion in 2021), which would raise gas prices. Gas prices already rising due to global conflicts, and expensive gas might be a big driver in getting people to switch to EVs. According to the Yale School of the Environment, “Setting the price of coal, oil, gas to reflect their true cost — say, with a carbon tax — would cut carbon dioxide emissions by around a third, helping to put the world on a path to keeping warming below 1.5 degrees C.” Of course, we’d also need some kind of bridge funding to help people transition from wildly expensive gas to affordable electric. Fund it!

  • Include all true climate costs, including the negative externalities of burning fossil fuels, from $820 billion in health costs to climate costs, in the price of gas. This could bump up the price even more.

  • Eliminate or regulate advertising, including reining in oil companies’ greenwashing. It’s great that you’re making some efforts now (slow clap); when, if ever, will they begin to outweigh your damages? Provide that calculator and we’l talk.

  • Make fossil fuel companies pay for EV subsidies for low-income individuals, home electrification and electric transit. While they’re at it, fund an EV charging station for every gas pump. (Echoes of Appendix D.)

Anyway, they made the money by killing us all (and decimating our resources), and their actions had the most adverse impact on the people who can least afford it. Least they could do is pay it all back, right? 

San Tan, a row: Hiking the same route twice

You know those places that are so much the same that you can’t remember if you’ve been there or not? The same-same parking lot, the same expanse of paved roads, the same adobe-ish strip malls over and over and over. That’s Phoenix, all of it, even some of its mountains. (Not that SoCal and even the greater San Jose area aren’t, also, overly similar in their own ways.)

San Tan Mountain, in my recent experience, was not even a mountain (though at 3104 feet, it more than meets the minimum 1000 feet to be a mountain), just a little clump of hills. Hills clumped together like the cars in the greater Phoenix area’s many surrounding parking lots, most of which would be much more likely to visit San Tan Village than San Tan Mountain. Still, the parking lot was busy enough, filled with dust and port-a-potties and a closed ranger station trailer even though a ranger was running around telling every car how to pay for parking because the ranger station was closed. (Just open the ranger station, maybe, so you could stay in the shade and have us come to you so you can tell us the same thing? At least the AC was off, I suppose.)

The same ranger advised us to take the Dynamite trail instead of the Goldmine trail on account of our footwear (running shoes) and the steepness of the gravely Goldmine trail (significant, allegedly). Well, I acknowledge it wouldn’t be very fun to spend a mile and a half slipping downhill when trying to go up. So we Dynamited, it was fine, a little bit of up and down, a lot of cactus, a lot of dusty, a lot of hot, a lot of cactus. Same as going anywhere in Phoenix, really. The difference being on your own feet on a trail you don’t have to see so many cars.

Another difference is Mansel Carter, a prospector buried around San Tan, somewhere I didn’t see because it was up Goldmine. One wonders how many more unmarked graves there are, how many died without any acknowledgement so we could build up all these same-same streets and houses and stores, ever so many more identical boxes sucking up oil from the ground to make energy to power our cooling even as it delivers more heat, the thing this area does not need. As Phoenix set a new heat record of 96 degrees in March (March!), one can’t help but wonder: should we be here at all? Should we leave it to the mountains? Let nature come back and differentiate itself, unpave the assimilating roads and overgrow strip malls with cacti?

SanTan Village, a hellish place

(And when they say prospecting they mean stealing, right?)

According to the Maricopa County website, 2,613,715 people in Maricopa County are affected by drought, up 209.2% since last month. That’s more than half the county’s population. There is no above normal stream flow. Arizona looks quite wet compared to California, though, where 93% of the state is in severe drought (compared with just 29% of Arizona), though maybe Arizona’s drought level is simply higher (lower?) by nature. Perhaps improbably, most of Phoenix’s water comes from snow in the mountains, something the area would seem to have little of. The city, at any rate, seems quite confident in its supply. Should it be?

A woman who was also hiking San Tan wanted to know where I got my shorts. The Nike Store in San Francisco, I think, or maybe Seattle, I don’t know. They’re all the same, right? Or maybe I ordered online, from far away. You could probably get them in San Tan Village, though. 

Anyway. The world is getting hotter, and samer, even as the things we really need are coming (or trying to) from far away, farther and farther away. Can we make them closer? Can we hike our own mountains, build our own somethings, make our own clothing (not me), or simply find ourselves–closer and more meaningfully than ever? Maybe not. But let’s prospect within, not without, and see if it nets us something cooler than a warming planet, something cooler than the hellish same. 

Not so aloha: the myth of pineapple is bittersweet

Pineapple is delicious. It’s a cluster of berries that grow into a multiple fruit, the number of berries often Fibonacci. It’s a symbol of wealth and hospitality. It’s often identified with Hawaii (to the extent that anything with pineapple on it is deemed “Hawaiian”). It’s also a bit of a con.
Pineapple is not native to Hawaii, and it (like other crops) has not always been good for the islands or their people. The plant’s origins are in South America; the Spanish introduced it to Hawaii, making it a plant of colonizers. Maui is currently undergoing extensive reforestation after decades of loss of land to sugar and pineapple plantations. While there may be a place for commercial pineapple cultivation (currently dominated by Costa Rica and the Philippines), Maui may not be it.

It’s strange to consider how places can be so closely identified with things that are not truly of them, reducing the place and the thing associated with it alike to mere specters of themselves.  

It’s almost appallingly easy to be in Hawaii without reckoning with its history, without peeking behind the pineapple. My recent trip to Maui felt more like a family reunion–surrounded by large white Midwestern tourists, the people of my own homeland–than an opportunity to learn about the history of the place I was in.

In Maui, I toured a pineapple plantation. The word “plantation” itself makes me uncomfortable. I know little of the history of slavery in Hawaii. A little bit of research shows that it wasn’t slavery so much as brutal resource exploitation, starting with the sandalwood trade, that led to the disruption of native Hawaiian culture. This mirrors the resource exploitation of land and timber (and of course silver and gold) in California, which disrupted indigenous ways of life and displaced indigenous people, paving the way for their ultimate genocide at the hands of whites. 

The pineapple plantation tour was touristy. It was fun, if a bit shallow. There were a lot of those tour bus jokes that everybody groans at, the type that are so bad I don’t even really remember any. They’re just feel-good ambiance. The tour put a lot of emphasis on the idea that Maui Gold is the only place on Maui where pineapples are grown. It didn’t grapple with the idea of whether pineapples should be grown on Maui at all–if there was better work for the land. There were many mentions of the fact that the workers who plant the pineapple are paid well–$30 an hour, likely rivaling or exceeding any hospitality jobs on the island. So there’s that, at least.

But workers in Hawaii didn’t always have it so good (and many likely still don’t). One resource on the history of labor in Hawaii puts it baldly: “while the [sandalwood] trade grew the people of the nation were being ruined.” Missionaries and whaling were also introduced as sandalwood supplies dwindled. The lands of Hawaii were used to cultivate non-native plants that foreign whaling captains expected to eat, and the hearts and minds of Hawaiians were turned away from traditional belief systems to the gospel.

Hawaiian culture was organized around working for the self or the family, not an employer. Sugar plantations changed this, and the conditions were so poor that sugar workers organized a strike. Unfortunately, the owners organized as well, bringing workers from China to cultivate sugar as contract laborers. While the system differed from slavery in the American South, it also had harsh working conditions, bad pay and harsh treatment of workers, including the essential inability to escape the contract labor without being penalized with additional labor. Interestingly and/or ironically, the Civil War disrupted sugar production in the south exacerbating demand for sugar from Hawaii and making already poor working conditions even worse.

I learned that pineapples are washed, in part to see if they float. Pineapples that sink are not kept, opposite of witches. These innocent pineapples can be used for compost or livestock feed, but not shipped to stores. I came home from Maui with three pineapples. I ate one, gave one to a friend, ate another after twisting off the top and putting it in a bag. When it sprouts roots I will put it in water for a while. Then, I will put it in the earth. It’s been cold here, recent–under 40. Much too cold for pineapple. So I might have to raise mine inside. I will have to cover it to protect it from hummingbirds, who will otherwise suck its sweet nectar. In two years, if my tiny Maui Gold pineapple survives, it might grow to bear fruit. Most likely, it won’t take and I’ll toss it. I’ll go to the store to get my pineapple. But part of me will remember trying to grow.

A dense winter fog

I’ve been going to Pogonip for three years now, but I’ve never visited the clubhouse or main meadow where they propose to put in a community garden. I usually go up the spring trail down toward Henry Cowell, or through a place called the Friendship Garden, where I’ve never actually seen a garden. I have seen plenty of trees and grass and, unfortunately, ticks.

One of the cool things about Pogonip, like many other hikes in the Santa Cruz area, is that there are many types of trees. Scrubby live oaks in the more exposed areas; regal redwoods in the places that must get foggy sometimes. The variety never gets tiresome, nor does the view.

Like my experience, my knowledge of pogonip is limited. I just discovered, through a quick Google serach, that pogonip is a dense winter fog containing frozen particles that is formed in deep mountain valleys of the western U.S. I’ve rarely seen fog at Pogonip, but I’ve also rarely been there early in the morning when it might form. Fog keeps the redwoods growing, so it makes sense. I wouldn’t call it a mountain valley, but there are small ravines, places where water flows when the rains come, which is rarely.

Spring Trail, Pogonip, Santa Cruz

Heading toward the Pacific on Spring Trail

To get to my usual trail, I drive up a long residential street. I try to give good distance to the people walking their dogs or biking. It’s quite a hill. The entrance is often busy because the trail is popular. It can be difficult to navigate the narrow entranceway when large groups of walkers are there. Sometimes it seems that these walkers are in a fog of their own; they buzz gossip among themselves, they fail to yield to others.

I typically choose the trails where bikes are not allowed: more pleasant for running. In defiance of the rules, I sometimes let my dog off leash. I splash through small creeks traversing the trail — a few when it rains, one when it doesn’t. I always forget to look back at the ocean when I’m setting out, and am always stunned by its beauty on the way back (as shown above).

It’s funny how easily, instinctively, one chooses a consistent path through areas with so many trails. Is it a fear of getting lost? Is it conviction that you’ve chosen the best path? Or is it simply habit: knowing that with this amount of time, you can travel this distance, complete this run? Whatever it is, I almost always do the same thing at Pogonip, unless I’m with my daughter or dog, in which case any trek is inevitably shorter.
Perhaps it’s not simply that I’m unobservant: winter fog is decreasing: by nearly half in the Central Valley over 30-odd years, according to one study. I’ve not truly been here long enough to notice a difference. But I notice a lack.

Changes in patterns make it hard for us to stick to our own. That might be a good thing, to the extent it drives good change. Makes us want more. It could be a bad thing, to the extent it makes us random, unfocused, unable to notice that things are different — or why. So as I travel the same trails, I’ll keep my eyes open. I’ll look for something different. Something I haven’t noticed yet. I’ll let you know when I find it.

Flood, deep

My relationship with California started as a relationship of drought, and continued as one of fire. For all of the five years I lived in San Francisco, California was in an unprecedented drought:

Since 2000, the longest duration of drought (D1–D4) in California lasted 376 weeks beginning on December 27, 2011, and ending on March 5th, 2019. The most intense period of drought occurred the week of July 29, 2014, where D4 affected 58.41% of California land. [drought.gov]

Essentially, California was in a drought since just before I arrived in 2012 until well after I left in 2017. Google Photos shows me that on the day starting that peak drought week, I took some blurry photographs as the San Francisco Giants lost to the Pittsburgh Pirates on their way to a third World Series title in five years. Looking back, I see that the Giants’ period of dominance, which helped them get to the fifth-most series wins, came during their state’s worst drought.

Any night game in that stadium is freezing, drought or not.

The year after I left, the Golden State experienced its worst fire ever, destroying a town called Paradise:

The Camp Fire was the deadliest and most destructive wildfire in California's history, and the most expensive natural disaster in the world in 2018. [Wikipedia]

As Paradise burned, I smelled smoke each summer in Oregon and feared not being able to get to (or from) Ashland to see Othello. I had never smelled fire like that before, not in 35 years.

The year after I came back to California, a global pandemic hit and fires turned the sun orange in the Bay Area and destroyed Big Basin, a legendary park. I Googled how to clean up ash (wear a mask, an easy feat in a pandemic; wear pants, wear long sleeves). I contemplated whether we had to move all of our outdoor furniture into the garage (we didn’t). I contemplated whether we should pack a go bag (we did). I scrubbed ash away from our yard furniture and children’s toys and deck and handrails multiple times using a broom, some dish soap, a hose. My dog didn’t want to go outside during the fire. My daughter’s class stayed indoors. Now I know what fire smells like and how to clean up after it too, at least on the outside.

These days, no rain has become normal. But today, it’s raining, and will be for a few days yet. An atmospheric river, it’s called, pelting a sunny beach town with torrential rain. The pitter-patter of these raindrops is unfamiliar enough in this seeming forever-drought that it creates an unsettling atmosphere in the house; my dog is afraid of it and won’t sit by the window. She keeps running up and down the hallway, confused. When the animals sense something’s wrong, what does it mean? Shouldn’t a dog know about rain?

Living in Oregon, rain becomes commonplace. Background noise. It’s a trope that Oregonians don’t use umbrellas, but it’s true–what a hassle. All you need is a good coat. Or even just a hoodie, if you don’t mind getting a little wet. In college, I changed my sopping pants every time I came back from class. I never thought to just wear shorter pants, flood pants, instead of the corduroy flares that dragged on the ground and got soaked. What was I thinking?

What are any of us thinking? The data is in, and clear–our lifestyles are not sustainable. If everyone lived like us, we’d be dead already. The drought would never end, or the rain. We need shorter pants, shorter commutes, smaller lives. We live in unsettling times, constantly setting new records. Hottest days, worst storms. Deadliest fires. But we’re still in long pants, calmly swapping them out, not realizing our fashion sense must change now. 

Even Oregon is drier these days. I remember sweating out 80-degree summer days in college, being shocked that Portlandia didn’t have air conditioning (it didn’t need it, or didn’t used to). Last summer the city hit 116 or something–unthinkable, before. Now, just normal.

As the rain comes down, I think: we need it. The thing Californians say every time. Be careful driving. The oil comes out in the rains, they say. What if the oil had stayed in the ground? Would it be raining now?

Change your pants. Change your oil. Change your commute. Choose life. Drink some rain. Let it fall.

What apple to pick?

If you think apple picking, you might think New England - cider, scarves, boots, leaves changing colors. The apples themselves and maybe apple cider donuts. Dunkin probably has an apple cider offering, right? (Research confirms a donut.)

Most U.S. apples, though, grow in Washington, and the apple originally came from Asia. Minnesota’s famous for its cultivars, including Honeycrisp. New England? Nothing much to speak of but the cider (and the donut). I recently went apple picking in Watsonville, an agricultural area. It was hot, sunny, dusty and at least 80 degrees. I was wearing shorts and sandals (a bad, or at least dirty, move). I paid $20 for not that many apples.

Given its origins, the apple, in a sense, is an invasive species--wholesome, beloved, adoptedly American, but not native to this area. American as apple pie? Chaucer was apparently the first to publish a recipe for the treat, getting the jump on Johnny Appleseed by centuries. It’s not the only way in which America is a lie.

Apples originally came from the Tian Shan, the heavenly mountains in China. In the Bible, Eve ate the apple, told to by the serpent; humanity then fell into sin. (At least the apples, cider and donuts are still tasty.) These days, apples are propagated instead of grown from seed, because apples grown from seeds end up very different from their parents. Propagation enables consistency, an attribute humans appreciate.

If one is to Google apple and sustainability one gets, not surprisingly, information about the computer company’s commitment to sustainability. Some of this appears to be genuine: supply chain analysis and the like. Carbon neutrality by 2030. But are we better off with iPads than Macintoshes?

Apple, too, has its problems, most recently firing multiple workers exposing discrimination and misconduct within the organization through the #AppleToo movement. When it’s not possible to speak freely, any Apple becomes not so sweet; the only solace might be in the money, which chafes the soul a bit when one spends it or merely watches the stock price tick up. It’s a crunchy dilemma.


As it does: named for one of the world’s most popular fruits, Apple is now the world’s most valuable company, in part for making devices that help us connect. Apples themselves allow us to connect: over picking, over cider, over pies, over the Honeycrisp that two sad singles grab simultaneously in the grocery store one Saturday night in a meet-cute memorialized in a rom com called, perhaps, Apple Picking, or Pick the Right One, or Sweet as Apple Pie? (I need a better pun.)

The word apple can be used to refer to any fruit. A manzana is a city block. Apples take us through the world. Many, perhaps most, people in the developed world might use an Apple product every day, perhaps more often than they eat apples.

Sustainable apple cultivation requires protection from pests and monitoring of water use. Sustainable lifestyles require--what, exactly? Companies with ambitious sustainability goals that still use of conflict minerals? That still waste immense amounts of food in employee cafeterias? That fire people who speak out about ill treatment?

It’s hard to say where I’m going here. Apples are good to eat. It’s hard not to use Apple products. You can have your iPhone and eat apples too. Organic ones, though, and maybe email Tim cook about 3TG sometime. Using your iPhone, while apple picking, of course.

Another aspect of apple picking is its status as 1) performative labor that 2) allows you to pay to do something that someone else would have been paid to do. I’m no economist, but that seems like big profits for apple growers. Still, it also seems like most apple picking places are small farms that probably aren’t raking in the dough, anyway. Myself, I paid $20 for apples that made some applesauce and let us snack for two weeks--probably not a great financial deal, though they were a little bit extra delicious (but not red).

Is it funny or sad that people will pay to experience the life of people we chronically underpay and mistreat? Here in Santa Cruz, south county is filled with agriculture and with undocumented workers who had to continue working during the COVID-19 pandemic and were disproportionately affected by COVID. I see bumper stickers all the time that say “Have food? Thank a farmworker.” But do we ever really thank them, and how? Certainly not with wages, and not with citizenship. But by paying to do their jobs for them, diverting money from their pockets? Of course!

So: professionals can apparently pick 12,000 pounds of apples in a day; an apple apparently weighs about a third of a pound and thus people must pick 36,000 (!!!) apples a day. According to my rudimentary calculations, that’s 50 apples a minute for a 12-hour day, which doesn’t take into account time spent climbing ladders or moving between trees, and frankly I can’t fathom how many trees it would take to grow 36,000 apples anyway. I don’t think I do anything 50 times a minute at my job except maybe breathe. Maybe type, if inspired. I picked about 10 pounds of apples in two hours, making me an extremely subpar picker who would likely get fired fast.

Is it good to pick apples? Is it sustainable to raise apples? Is it good or sustainable to work at Apple or any major company? It seems that both can be done in sustainable ways. It seems that picking, if you’re good at it, can pay reasonably well, if perhaps not enough to support a family (and certainly not as much as working at Apple). It depends what kind of family you want. It depends what kind of a(A)pple you prefer. It depends on being performative or purposeful.

Crunch.

Visions at sea

Despite its popularity with tourists, Cowell Beach in Santa Cruz received failing grades for water quality from Heal the Bay over the course of many years. More recently, though, the beach has cleaned up its act (literally) and is a better place to swim and play. Lucky for me—I’ve been floating and paddling (with arms, not paddles) its still-murky waters for the past few weeks training for the Santa Cruz Triathlon (sprint distance only, natch).

Open water swimming is an unusual undertaking for me, a person who does not consider herself (myself) much of a swimmer. I don’t swim freestyle (only breaststroke) and I don’t like to put my head in water, for starters. My first few swims began with gasps of uncertainty about my ability to survive, punctuated by regular pauses to breathe. My swim coach (a good hire, as without her I’d likely have been swept out to sea, eaten by sharks, or, most likely, rescued by a teenage lifeguard) explained that it’s a mammalian reflex to the cold, which tracks—even in the pool, I find. My most recent swim is the only time I haven’t spent 200 yards or so sputtering and stopping and restarting again. A metaphor for life, maybe. I still tend to pause at each buoy.

As I swim, I wonder a lot of things: why am I doing this? (To survive the triathlon.) Why is the water so damn murky? (Sand, I think/hope.) How long can I swim for? (An hour, so far. I don’t know the distance.) Why was this water so dirty? (Bird shit, largely.) How’d I get somewhere so beautiful? (It really is, especially floating far out with the sun over the wharf and the cliffs giving a little glow and the water sparkling with soft waves.)

And then, sometimes, who’s Henry Cowell? I knew of him for many (okay, two) reasons: Henry Cowell Redwood State Park, where I’ve gone for hikes and runs and even a horseback ride, and the Cowell Hay Barn near the entrance to UCSC. But who was he, really?

Turns out Henry Cowell was an early settler (yep, the colonial kind) and successful business type who ran rock and lime quarries in Santa Cruz. Kind of a dick, too, it seems—he busied himself grabbing land to protect and promote his business, including land around the wharf itself (useful in shipping lime around, I suppose). These were allegedly “legal“ efforts, as the state allowed people (settlers) to apply to claim marsh lands (leaving aside the question of whether one can ever truly own private property, much less be granted it when it was stolen from the original occupants).

Anyway, Henry didn’t get that wharf land he was after (too bad) but I guess the city named the beach after him anyway, because when you’re a rich white dude that’s what happens? Cowell’s (often so called by locals, even though the official name is simply Cowell Beach) is a fine place for beginner swimming and surfing alike, as I discovered after struggling to surf elsewhere; it has a very long and flat and gentle motion and it is easy for even a beginner surfer like me to ride waves all the way in. I’m certainly not hanging ten, I’m simply standing on the board and reveling in not falling until I inevitably do.

Like the surfing, the swimming is something I’m still getting the hang of. I’ve been running for a long time, and I have an innate sense of how fast I can run (not very) and how long I can keep up a particular pace (a pretty long time, if it’s the right pace). I have no sense of this sort for swimming, and so in addition to that gasping mammalian diving response I have a tendency to try and swim too fast, too soon, meaning I have to stop and tread water and regroup myself and catch my breath. Once I somehow get to the right state, though I’m not exactly sure what this state or pace really is, I can keep going for a long time. I’m learning to count strokes and try to make 100 without stopping; this is not far, but it feels far when looking out toward a distant buoy.

As I swim, I look deep into the brown and I contemplate everything I’ve mentioned and more. I’m still getting over how this part of the ocean looks brown from beneath, even through the clearest goggles. It’s certainly a far cry from a brightly chlorinated pool, where each stroke skims over tiles outlined in perfect detail, where I can see the minerals edging each drain. Here there’s just brown. And part of me, a deep mammalian part I suppose, can’t help but wonder if a shark or turtle or sea monster lingers behind the murk.

The murk can be a metaphor for environmental endeavors: we see brown and warm right now, and monsters seem to lurk, but there may be a cleaner and brighter if not necessarily cooler feature ahead. All we have to do is face forward, sight our target (the house with the gray roof—thanks coach) and keep swimming.

As businessmen grab for land, for environmental destruction, the rest of us can look out to sea or up the mountain and move, and swim, and say: this is ours and we will not let you take it. I have yet to circle the wharf, but I see that it can be done; if old people wrinkled with time can do it, then I can too, can I not?

Will you join me?

Fire, water

Out in nature at Wilder Ranch, one can also stay inside: the ranch has a fascinating series of pulleys that make power. It’s a type of Pelton wheel, and I’ve seen it demonstrated, by someone who explained how the water comes from springs underground, shoots up and turns the wheels that turn the pulleys that operate the drills and whatever else is hooked up. It’s remarkably loud, but it works, sending a drill bit up and down and making a hole in some wood that might be hard to make otherwise. It even grinds coffee--a lifesaver any morning, on the ranch or elsewhere.

In addition to water the ranch has trees, many kinds--mapped almost two decades ago, and probably different since. As California burns, we can wonder what kind of trees will keep growing in the future, what vegetation will pop up among the ashes, how we will phoenix into the future. Will the rivers that make power keep trees alive? When I run through Wilder Ranch I see only the empty ghosts of rivers, streams parched by lack of rain. Where will the water come from for us or the trees or the wheels? And then sometimes the water is too much, flooding parched or paved ground, overwhelming trees so they float, people so they, well, sadly, die.

Hard not to feel it apocalyptic.

So in the graves of beds at night, wonder what you should climb, what you should swim, where you should go. Turn out the lights a little bit early, drive a little bit less. Think again about the solar panels. Think again about Meatless Monday. Think again about where the water comes from and where the trees will go and how we’ll fight the fire without any of that--water. A cistern squatting in the yard, a way to collect rainwater. Will we drink it? Will we use it to fight?

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Ups and Downs in Kings Canyon

Kings Canyon National Park boasts many odd distinctions. It’s the least-visited national park, despite being huddled between the well known and popular Sequoia and Yosemite National Parks. It reaches deeper than the Grand Canyon and features peaks above 12,000 feet. In 2006, analysis found that Sequoia and Kings Canyon trees sequestered more carbon than visitors caused by coming to the park--something that may not be possible if trees burn.

But the park doesn’t let its underdog status bother it, treating visitors to breathtaking scenes as they climb through the foothills, montane and alpine zones. Whether taking in the rush of Mist Falls or simply struggling a bit to breathe at the top of Glen Pass (11,969 feet), Kings Canyon treats visitors like royalty. Trekking out to Rae Lakes is a more challenging but also more rewarding experience than simply driving along 180.

There are parallels between Kings Canyon and Yosemite. People have fed bears, acculturating them to humans and putting them at risk. The mere pad of hiking boots on the trail kicks up dust and wears down rock. Though it pales in comparison to the import of raging forest fires exacerbated by anthropogenic climate change, the impact of humans on the landscape is real.

My own experience along the Rae Lakes Loop in Kings Canyon was transformative. Spending the day watching trees and peaks and sky instead of my own face moving blandly on a screen started to open up parts of my mind that had sunk into themselves, canyoned, perhaps, in the perpetual stress state induced by constant movement. Being in stillness reveals just how conditioned our brains are to notice movement and, attendantly, just how stressful it is to watch movement all day on a screen.

The first night of the trip, we stayed in Upper Paradise Valley, where a bear visited our campsite --twice. The Lower Paradise Valley campground had already been closed due to bear activity, and it would appear upper is on its way. Campers chased the bear away by banging pans, yelling, and throwing rocks, influencing the land again as humans.

On the second day, we hiked slowly up and up to Rae Lakes, an impressive expanse of pristine lakes. When I hike, I often think about the people who built and maintain the trails. It can feel hard enough to simply walk along them, what about carving them out of sheer granite, or moving boulders to make boundaries? We encountered several California Conservation Corps groups performing trail maintenance, moving buckets of sand from river to trail--a seemingly fruitless endeavor, perhaps, but still somehow methodical and, ultimately, physically productive, unlike the work of pushing pixels all day long.

It turns out that, much like most anything else, trail building had a profit motive as well. According to a history of Big Trees State Park, “The initial trail-building impetus in the southern Sierra was not so much to get into the mountains as to get across them,” to reach exploitable resources. Once built, trails “opened up the southern flank of the high Sierra to sheepmen, hunters, mineral prospectors, and anyone else interested in looking at the country.” 

The history continues, noting (my emphasis added in bold), “These new people [the Caucasian settlers] valued not nuts, berries, and game, but pasturelands, timber, and minerals. The new people saw nature not as a part of the same psychological world as that of humanity, but instead as something provided for their consumption and use. The new people sought not stability and equilibrium, but instead had a strong predisposition towards change, even if it involved total consumption of the places and resources at their disposal.”

During our trek to Rae Lakes, we met a family hiking along. Father, mother, son. The father told us that he’s a climate scientist and can easily see that many trees have died off due to warming since his previous hike along the John Muir Trail three years previous. His observation inspired me to track my own trips more closely, researching where I’ve been and aiming to understand climate change there. As we hiked up Glen Pass, shivering a bit in the altitude, I started thinking about writing this piece, starting this section of my website, tracking climate change on my own.

Despite sore feet and muscles and mediocre rehydrated food, I was happy during the camping trip in a way I’m not in my “normal” life sitting at a computer for hours a day. There was little negotiation, no constant one-upping, and no need to present myself in a way that dominated someone else. I didn’t have to come up with a better idea or with a politically savvy strategy. There were no winners and losers, there was just us and nature. (This ignores, of course, that nature is, in a way, losing.) Just the trail and the ongoing footsteps. Just keep moving.

Now that I’m back, I’m aiming to start this climate project and just keep it moving, chronicling new parks as I visit them and old ones as I gather information about climate change there. I recommend visiting Kings Canyon and hiking the JMT for the beauty, and to see the trees before more of them die off. If you can, I suppose you should get there in an electric car, or offset your emissions somehow, the emissions-generating process of getting to some spots ironically contributing to their not-so-slow demise.

As temperatures climb and waters flood and people die, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed. But one of the most important things we can do is bear witness. Say what’s happening. Say it loud and clearly. That’s what I’m trying to do here. Will you listen?