Footprints: balancing travel with ecology

It's been ringing in my brain for years, and finally hit a pitch I can't tune out:

How can I ameliorate 

the minor devastation I wreak 
on this precious Earth?

Devastation may sound like an overstatement, but taking responsibility for how my choices impact the environment is one of my deepest values. Especially because nature is my deepest source of joy in Life.

Sunset on the High Sierra Trail, California. 2015

I've asked myself if carbon offsets are a good practice, or an easy penance that allows me to keep sinning. Is it better to focus on efficiency, waste reduction and living a simpler life? If I donate to one of the many charities that plant trees will my donation really become part of Earth's lungs?

The answer is: YES!

Since moving to Dublin in January my partner and I have traveled a lot, voraciously exploring the continent. It's so close! And the Ryanair flights are so cheap! I've been to Turkey, Scotland, the UK, Belgium, Norway, Iceland, and Denmark thus far. I plan to be in Spain, Germany and the UK again before the year is out, at least. 

In truth, my 2015 mileage doesn't outstrip my 2007 carbon footprint, a year I spent ping ponging from LA to the east coast and Chicago monthly in a national management role. Maybe this year just feels bigger because I'm farther afield, and the pleasure of exploring Northern Europe is just so good!*

In the past I've supported groups that lobby or raise awareness, like the Sierra Club Foundation, Nature Conservancy and Rainforest Alliance. I'm not fiery enough to be a grassroots activist myself, so my approach has been to support a group that operates on a national or international basis. I defer to their expertise and become part of a formidable collective political power working on various environmental causes.  

This year I'm aiming to offset my impact more directly: Finding an efficient and effective carbon offset program engaged in reforestation. The amount of information on the web is daunting, and my fear of making the wrong choice is almost paralyzing.** The types of projects that fall under the offset umbrella range from biogas to providing efficient cookstoves to families in developing countries so they stop hacking down forests. Costs range widely, too. Your per ton cost can be $2.50 or $25.00. A publication by US based Carbon.org points out that offsets are a commodity, and "additional benefits, such as habitat preservation, sustainable development, etc., can increase the price of an offset because these additional benefits increase the quality of the surrounding environment and are generally more marketable."

Knowing that my donations are turned into specific actions is the next best thing to getting my hand dirty volunteering. Offsets in direct proportion to my air travel will be a big step. And I am one of many: what I do is what we do, and I am interested to see conservation become a shared practice. We, collectively, can do better, right?

Recyling Center in Zheijang province, China. (Reuters/Stringer).

Here are some things I'm doing to live a simpler life and mind my consumption:

• Public Transit. It turns out train and bus is totally fun. If I do have to rent a car I'm not going solo: road trips are in groups or I rideshare.
• Biking. For the first time in my adult life I am not sucking petroleum for a daily commute. I sold my car when I left the US. (Yes, it was a Prius.) It feels great to be in a city unarmored.
• Urban Recycling:  Every town is differently supported, and it's taken a little research to maximize Dublin's system for household waste.***
• The "Bring Bank". Baffling in a town that consumes more beer than water, I can't recycle glass at home. So I walk glass to the local bottle bank. Turns out I can also bring clothing and textiles. It's not convenient, but I feel good doing it, and it's nice excuse to take a walk.
• Making my own. Buying raw ingredients to make my own nut butters, dressings and trail snacks rather than defaulting to individually packaged goods means there is far less to recycle.
• Pausing on Purchasing. Purging my possessions to move countries has helped make me more selective in what I acquire. So has the price of imports to Ireland. Asking how badly I need it, how long I'll use it, or if I can get it used are all good practices.
• Second-hand. Who doesn't love treasure hunting at a charity shop? I buy second hand goods whenever I can. I've cut that down, too. I haven't bought a new dress or cute shoes just for something "new" to wear every month. 

Train platform, Norway.

There are dozens of tiny things I still do that kind of suck: I drink coffee (and not always Fair Trade organic in my commuter mug). My Pink Lady apples come from a much sunnier country. We have four laptops in my two-person household. The point is progress. I am committed to making a positive impact and foregoing some "conveniences" for the sake of a richer living experience.

I'd love to hear what you're up to in the comments, too.

California apple orchard.

*There are some great carbon calculators on line that will estimate the tonnage of flights, households, and operating a car. Check out http://treeswaterpeople.org/index.html or http://www.myclimate.org/ to see what you weigh.

**Sites like Charity Navigator shows how much of the donation an organization receives actually go to its stated mission, and help you see if your money is actually where your mouth wants it to be. http://www.charitynavigator.org/

***I've annoyed housemates, coworkers and innocent ride-sharers by asking them what they're doing for (or to) the environment. It turns out some people have different priorities. This year I'm working on a more convincing argument as well as on tolerance. 

Wayfinding: a tour of trailmarkings in eight countries.

We take it for granted that the path will reveal itself as we continue on our way. The exit for the 405 south, the entrance to the supermarket, the blinking person on the sign across the road that beckons us to a safe crossing.

This past August I followed a series of signifiers over 75 km of Norwegian plateau still heavily patched with snow from a hard winter and a very late summer. With the map and compass in my partner’s pocket, I found myself looking ahead, always, for the bright red capital T painted on cairns to confirm the route.

Wayfinding on the Hardanger plateau, Norway.

It was like a game of leapfrog: stood at the edge of a snowfield with one red T just behind me, I’d scan the horizon for the next outcropping the minions of the DNT had tucked into the landscape. Sometimes the red vibrated clearly, especially when the sun was bright behind us. Sometimes the silhouette of artfully arranged rocks was obvious on the ridge. Sometimes I walked forward and scoured the landscape before me, feeling gravity loosen just a bit until I sighted the next marker, and hove my steps to it.

Hiking has long been a part of my life, and this year I’ve had the chance to follow trails in a host of new places. Particularly wet and boggy places, since I’m living in Ireland, and places prone to long-lying snow, since my partner and I have indulged our fascination with the Nordic countries.

Having found my mountain legs in the rocky arid US west the northern European terrain has felt alien at times. The environmental challenges have changed my routine, from the foul weather gear I’ve added to my kit to the measured high-stepping gait I’ve developed to stay balanced on slippery bog grass.

These places also presented me with different conventions of the trail. I had 75 km of Norwegian highlands to muse on the different trail markers I’ve seen. Trail signs have to respond to seasonal changes in weather and terrain, so they tell the hiker about the natural world they’re in. They’re likely to be more elaborate in well-used areas, which says something about how valued the space is to those who use it. They’re also cultural markers: the choices of color, material, and pictures, symbol or word all tell something about the people who’ve put them there and the people who find them.

1. ITALY: 

I found this marker on one of my first hikes abroad, in the Abruzzi region of Italy. It felt comfortably close to my home country, dry and warm like California. Trail markers were low to the ground: no threat of bracken growing over them in the Mediterranean climate. The hills were worn into soft shapes and I could hear bells on the livestock in the distance beyond the trees. I found a few shells and wondered at the age of the hills and distance to the sea. The numbers and letters suggest an interconnected system of trails. (I promise to update the location and trail system when I’m reunited with my journals back in the States).

2. FRANCE:

Near Arles, France.

Outside of Arles we followed this little climber stenciled onto the stones toward a famous mesa where Van Gogh painted. The light of the south of France is as intoxicating as they say and I was driven to tears by the landscape. The jetlag and lack of sleep may also have played a part. Standing in the sun I was bathed in gratitude at being in such an amazing place, and filled with frustration at being so exhausted. At this time I’d yet to try rock climbing. I can only imagine what a day at the crag would be like, followed by a rustic meal and a glass of the local crop.

3. CALIFORNIA, USA:

I have a deep appreciation for the ethos of conservation that is so strong in the western United States, and the way that wildlands are celebrated. My parents took us on summer camping trips in the National Parks as children. We earned junior ranger status for attending ranger talks and making sure camps were litter free. The rusticated Civilian Conservation Corps look is inextricably linked to the outdoors for me. Trail signs in California often express the graphic palette laid out in the 1930s by workers given relief jobs building the National Parks during the depression. The NPS was rolled out just in time to preserve lands that would otherwise be rapidly eaten by industrial concerns and general urban sprawl.

Almost to the peak of San Jacinto in Palm Springs, California.

I have hiked hundreds of miles in California. Ironically, I have few of snapshots of the blazes and small tree badges that dot the High Sierra Trail, a 75 mile trek from Sequoia to Mount Whitney that I completed last fall. The HST shares intersections with the John Muir Trail, and the sign-posted junctions felt like celebrations. Not least was the junction pointing us to Guitar Lake, where we'd camp for a night before finishing the hike by summitting Mount Whitney.

On the HST I'd noticed blazes notched into the bark, rectangles atop each other that to me looked like a letter i. I learned later that a whole language of blazes commonly used in North America indicates turnings, intersections, and the start and finish of a trail. These blazes are soft in the landscape, and done properly, are meant not to harm the flesh of the tree.

Blazes commonly used in North American.

4. VANCOUVER, BC, CANADA:

I picked up the Baden Powell trail in a suburban neighborhood of West Vancouver. Signage on the sidewalk points you to an address on Panorama Drive to pick up the main trail, and gives you the history of the trail. It was built in 1971 by the Boy Scouts and Girl Guides to mark BC's centennial.

Once amongst the trees a reflective triangular badge dotted the trees, whether standing or fallen. It was much like hiking in the Sierra in California. The trees lent themselves to service. The bright orange badge was always visible in the forest dim, and flashed in the sun. A blue fleur de lis insignia and letters BP kept the builders in mind the whole way.

Walking Deeside, near Aberdeen.

5. SCOTLAND:

The UK has an extensive system of trails that wend through the countryside, some of which have been in use for hundreds of years. The awesomely named right to roam preserves access to private lands for walking. Coming from California I wince a bit when I see one of these paths. Having long heard outrageous debates about public access to beaches in Malibu I'm given to believe that private property trumps roaming back home, and suspect you might be shot. In the British countryside you’ll come across an odd alley-let snug to the side of someone’s back garden, and yes, you are meant to traipse upon it. I’m sure whomever is enjoying the afternoon sunshine doesn’t want to see my scruffy head bobbing along the fence. Perhaps this is a misperception, and in fact they secretly celebrate my roaming.

On a July holiday weekend I drove from Glasgow to the Isle of Skye. The signs on the roadside pointed up the valley toward the Cuillin ridge. Hiking high was steep and rocky. I hitched up with a pair of German women for an afternoon of high stepping near the Storr. On moors the path underfoot was hard to find at times, with thick heather and bog grasses carpeting the land. I had my first site of the white tufts of bog cotton and the purplish glow of heather on Skye. After repeated hard tracking black mud bares itself in spots, and water catches where the plantlife had been tramped down. So different from the bare dry rock of California, I learned in time to distinguish this muddy track as the path.

Isle of Skye, Scotland.

6. IRELAND:

Most of the time when I'm hiking in the Wicklows it's raining, because that's what Ireland does. Hence I seldom pull out a camera. The shot below, taken on Silsean facing Moanbane, was a rare clear spring day.

A good day out in the Wicklow Mountains, Dublin.

I've encountered postings that mark the boundary of the Wicklow area, and a summit marker on our highest peak, Lugnaquilla (it tops out at 925 meters.) Because the flora is low lying and the bare hills leave nothing hidden, the path will show itself on a good day. But as with most mountains, the high peak can create its own weather. Both times I've hiked Lugnaquilla I've had horrid rain, hail and snow, and the visibility plummeted. That sage advice about carrying a map and compass apply. It would be easy to get lost and caught out in bad weather.

7. ICELAND:

The trek started with one foot ankle deep in seawater. After disembarking the skiff we made a harried dash over seaweed tangling on rocky shore to find the cut upland to the pass. The wind was howling and we knew the visibility – and temperatures – were decreasing at the pass high above Vedileysifjordur. We hurried to get the best of the weather we could. Hunkered into my windproof hood I barely noticed the staves of wood springing up from the boggy terrain. In dry conditions the weather-bleached wood was beautiful. I snapped this one on a hill above our camp in Kerlingarfjöll on a stunning afternoon with glacier vistas and jersey-cow snow plains below.

Trail marker in Kerlingarfjöll , Iceland.

On higher ground ways were marked by massive cairns taller than a man. A guide to the Appalachian Trail notes that “rock cairns can identify a route above treeline and where snow and fog may obscure painted blazes.” These highland routes were used by Icelandic travelers on horse for hundreds of years to make their way through the interior to the annual congress near thingfellir. When we needed to stop we’d often hunker behind the friendly stone hives to block the wind. At times even these dark mounds were swallowed by fog. I was always happy to see them rise out again.

8. NORWAY:

These were not random artful piles of rocks but a nudge to move in a specific direction. The DNT, the Norwegian Trekking Association, has earned their good reputation. In addition to an amazing network of trails for summer hiking and cross country skiing, the DNT maintain a series of mountain huts which are truly blessed outposts when the weather turns foul. In our case, we simply wanted an easy night and the chance to dry our boots after a 20 mile day from our camp just after Stavali to our final hut at Tyssevassbu.

Signposts in Norway point to mountain huts.

The Norwegian mountain huts are justly famed. Stocked with basic provisions and dorm lodging, they function on an honor system. Caretakers stay for spells at some of the huts, but payment for day use and amenities are made by filling out a credit card slip with what you used and sliding it into a safe near the door.

We stopped at Tørehytten on our long day to see if we could rustle a cup of coffee, and shared conversation with a Norwegian man who takes up residence in a hut for three weeks every summer. He was as stocked as the pantry with information about the trail and the landscape, and was keen to trade stories about other travelers and hear where they'd been. He gave us a rundown on the trail users: mostly German, lots of Europeans, and very rarely an American. I was the first one he'd met in two years.

When we were on our way he mentioned that the rivers should mostly be passable by snowbridge, and pulled out a guidebook to give us an estimate of the next leg of our hike. There's nothing like local knowledge when you're finding your way.

The shape of the Earth as we know it.

This morning I woke up with a ravenous soul. The weekend promised a much-needed respite from both the excitement and the drain of spring's rambunctious pace.


I knew exactly what I craved to replenish my inner well: the rich deliciousness of photography. I hungered for texture. For the rhythm of a substance, the flow and dance that all the materials in this world hold when we take the time to stop and look.


After this outward, social, breakneck week I was ready stop and look, and let art's vision fill the hollows in my heart, the welcoming warm space throbbing in my chest.


I looked over gallery listings as I took care of my empty tummy. I'd read about an exhibit of Ansel Adams' work in conjunction with Sierra Club at G2 Gallery months ago, and though I have a date with my dad for a Venice art adventure on the closing weekend of the show, I headed over to Venice.


Ansel's bespectacled face peers up at me from the cover of time magazine (September 3, 1979) in a case in the center of the warm upstairs gallery space that also holds his first Kodak Brownie.

The photos are mostly from the National Parks, and the original 1950 Portfolio Two stands like a monolith in a shadowbox in a corner of the gallery. That goofy smiling image seemed somehow at odds with the resonant black and white forms, the silent landmasses and snowdrifts and leaf prints ringing the room, as well as the exuberant holiness of Walt Whitman's poem* on the folio frontispiece.


You have seen these images. They are as megalithic a cultural phenomenon as the synergy of earth, air, water and light Ansel shot. And they are so humble, too. Just the play of the camera, just the result of light on coated paper, just snapshots. Just.

A picture of Schoodie Point in Maine opens to a great flat stretch of the Atlantic Ocean, articulated in the foreground by rocks below the water's surface. The water cascades from high to low, arcing over the rock, made gentle by the break in the surface level.

Were I there to study photographic technique I'd linger at the forest at Mount Rainier, a perfect composition as far as I can tell.

The texture of a jagged stump where a moth alights for a moment looks like ice floes were caught in the wood long before it split apart, cleaved maybe by the yearly sequence of freeze and thaw in Glacier Bay.

The streaked cliffs of Canyon de Chelly dwarf the millenia old dwellings niched in a pocket in the cliff face, dwarf the trees massed in the foreground. The image is called White House ruins.

One shot of a rock pile in Joshua Tree struck me less for the image than the caption. Joshua Tree was made a National Park in 1994. I went out there for the first time with my high school buddies in 1991. At that time it was still Joshua Tree National Monument. We enjoyed the great outdoors in that way that young folks do, irreverently and lightly and easily, in full joy of the absence of any authority other than the landscape itself, in awe of the desert's stillness and the revelation of an uninterrupted dome of stars from one horizon to the other which commanded our hearts at night. It inspired no undue religiosity and we understood the word "awesome."


Though I've become used to framing spaces like these in geologic time - a slow eroding that eludes the sense of one human's lifetime - yet what a transformation happened in my time when it became Joshua Tree National Park. This brought a ringing awareness of how conservation absolutely happens in the present tense. The whole expanse of it is there for us, for inspiration, education, and recreation.


Ansel's black and white image of the forest at dawn in the Great Smoky Mountains drains the rainbow foliage but replaces color with kinetic energy. The eye ricochets from shape to shape, alighting on one tree top after another. The tree's shapes seem sculpted by sparks, caught fire, as the sun ignites each tiny leaf. They look like bright ashes that, stilled by the camera, promise to dance down when we stop holding our breath.

Ansel talks about the genre of landscape photography in a way that preferences the individual's artistic engagement with what she sees: "a creative experience, in which the fact that it is a landscape, is incidental, perhaps accidental, and secondary in importance to the fact that...a subjective experience was created and expressed."


How lucky I am to have engaged so many of the places Ansel photographed: Sonoma County, Glacier National Park, the Snake River in the shadow of the Grand Tetons. And how proud I am to be part of the Sierra Club. There is probably not a single bone in my body that could be called political, but about the world around me and its beauty I am passionate, and that reverence for nature stirs me to action. On the most basic level, my journey has been self serving, because I love these spaces and how they nourish me. A quote at the entrance to the exhibit said much the same about Ansel: regardless of what he did for us, he did it all for himself.


I knew that today was Earth Day, but I did not realize that Earth Day is the anniversary of Ansel Adam's death, April 22, 1984**. What a beautiful memorial.

G2 Gallery
http://www.theg2gallery.com/


Sierra Club
http://www.sierraclub.org/


*Excerpted from "Starting from Paumanok" by Walt Whitman:


Each is not for its own sake,
I say the whole earth and all the stars in the sky are for religion's sake.


I say no man has ever yet been half devout enough,
None has ever yet adored or worship'd half enough,
None has begun to think how divine he himself is, and how certain the future is.


**A bit about Ansel Adams:


Born in San Francisco in 1902, Ansel chose experiential education over formal schooling, and first visited Yosemite at age 12. His amazing images served to inspire and awe with their beauty, and to gently raise awareness about conservation. His association with the Sierra Club began in 1919, and he later served 34 years on their Board of Directors. He mounted an exhibition in 1955 in collaboration with the Club, and his book Sierra Nevada: the John Muir Trail, was instrumental in moving President Roosevelt to designate King's Canyon National Park in California.

Equinox, equilux

Yesterday marked the autumnal equinox.

I hunger for fall every year, and all that the season symbolizes to me:


Turning inward, nesting, drawing close to family, letting the crispy leaves that are dying on the trees fall, and become mulch for the next growth season.


It's my favorite season of celebration, too: 


My birthday, on the ides of October. 
Halloween, which inspires me equally to revel in cute spookiness and honor the macabre.
Thanksgiving, a day to continue practicing gratitude and welcoming abundance.


This year more than most, with so many things to shed and so much abundance becoming manifest, the equinox seemed to me a pivot point within the ultimate balance: equal parts dark and light. 


I read a little more about the nature of the equinox this year, and realized that, like most "holy days" I actually knew little about what I was celebrating:





"Although the word equinox is often understood to mean "equal day and night," this is not strictly true. For most locations on earth, there are two distinct identifiable days per year when the length of day and night are closest to being equal; those days are referred to as the equiluxes to distinguish them from the equinoxes. Equinoxes are points in time, but equiluxes are days. By convention, equiluxes are the days where sunrise and sunset are closest to being exactly 12 hours apart."*












By the time I understood the equinox, it had already passed. The sun had moved on past the equator, that moment in time was gone. What I was really celebrating was the equilux, and I didn't even know when that was!


What a beautiful notion to bring to bear on celebration: it is always just a moment in time. It is always about what we are holding in our hearts and minds, what is inspiring our spirits. No matter the season, we get to hold the dark and the light as long as we like.


*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equinox

Two Sunsets

"Sunset was human invention, our perceptual arrangement of light and space into elements of wonder. We looked and wondered. There was a resembling in the air as the unnamed colors and landforms took on definition, a clarity of outline and extent."

-Don DeLillo, Point Omega

"Ask yourself: Why is it that we never find a sunset ugly?"

Source unknown

Wild Life

You don't see a lot of wildlife in the desert. Actually, you do, but it's not the cool lions-taking- down-herds-of-wildabeast kinda wildlife. If you read the guides the NPS ranger hands you when you drive through the kiosk to Death Valley or Arches or any of the Southwest National Parks and Monuments, you will be advised to "sit still, and look closely" at the rocks, the flat, empty desert, and wait for the tiny movements to register on your darting retinas.

It's true, the desert has more life than I realized. I am a 'stay on the trail' nazi, and I had the good fortune to learn, in Arches, about the biological crust. To you and me, it's just dirt. Dirt that looks like it's been pattered by rain then dried out. It looks a bit like a confection, frothy and light. It is where algae and little stuff like that thrive, and apparently, like moon soil, will hold a footprint (assuming 1000 more following do not stamp it out) for hundreds of years. In exchange, though, the soil's given up it's life. This gave me license to further nag my hiking companion to stay on the trail, and to turn up my nose at the family who, father, mother, son and son, each wore a few hundred dollars worth of technical hiking gear but did not have the eco-etiquette not to wander off the trail to eat their lunch, amidst the echoing death wails of the invisible algae they imprinted with their Vasques.

Growing up in Los Angeles, wildlife is conveniently sequested in the LA Zoo in Griffith Park. In fact, GP also has what's known as the Old Zoo, a loop of black barred cages, smaller than a cubicle, draconian, short and dank, with tiny holes at the back where lithe animals could shimmy out to their 'backyards' for feeding or a respite from the public eye. Thankfully empty and incredibly eerie, they are artfully decorated by local gang members, and were used by more sophisticated artists in the late 90s for an installation series. The cages allow us to pity our unenlightened forebears, and congratulate ourselves for our humane treatment of animals in modern times.

Driving to Griffith Park for a walk under the eucalyptus, I saw a uniformed man standing streetside. Just standing there. On the sidewalk! As we all know, no one walks in LA, and no one, certainly, has the free time or the shamelessness to just stand there on the street doing nothing(Sidewalks are for homeless people, for god's sake, and even an actor auditioning for the part wouldn't do it on Los Feliz Blvd). A white Ford truck was parked oddly by the large yellow apartment building, and there was a small cage at his feet. Animal Regulation. I tracked the line of his gaze, and saw a really agitated skunk huddling in a corner against the yellow enclosing wall of the apartment building. That is what wildlife becomes in the city. A nuisance, a pest. He didn't stand a chance.

Beyond the park, Griffith or National, the smaller highways overflow with animals. I had actually seen a few deer in my previous 30 years: on my regular Friday hike to Five Points in GP, years ago, before the most recent spate of fires that took out all the flora and probably a share of the fauna, I spooked three deer in the ravine where the fire road banks around to the northeast. A friend of mine lived up in the hills above Burbank in a posh place with a tennis court in a development that butts directly into the dry mustard covered hillside. Driving home late one night, a stately buck caught in the glare of my headlamps turned tail and bashed itself into a chain link fence between two properties. He was darting for the wild hillsides, naturally, and was caught out, trapped into civilization.

If you stop and look closely, you will notice the wild life wherever you are. The great songbirds of the east, I hear, no longer grace the eastern forests. But in the quiet of morning in my poolside Hollywood apartment, a graceful cooing bounces from the cypress trees. I sit still, letting the birdsong and the whir of the pool filter motor have their collision symphony, in those few still moments before the city's life drowns it all out.