Pyramid Lake III

Last week Kelly was in Wisconsin visiting her sister so I had a few days to pal around with Ash and Tom. I’d been up to Pyramid Lake a few times but never really made it that far up the east side, which is where the big pyramid lives.

I had some reservations about taking our two chicos truck-camping up a remote desert road in July, but figured if those poor slobs hauled a cannon out there with horses, we could probably manage well enough. Considering the engine overheated 10 or so miles in on the dirt road, and that we had to change a flat, and that Tom went tumbling over the tailgate at one point, and that both kids got acquainted with all kinds of nettles and spider bites, they were eminently good little sports.

related: where do mummies come from? & HWY 50

Pyramid Lake II

A lot of northern Nevada drains into this desert terminus called Pyramid Lake, about an hour north of Reno. The best description I can offer is something between the more arid side of Bear Lake and a miniature, less saline Sea of Cortez. What I mean is it’s phenomenally stark and beautiful. A long cerulean blue mirage that actually is water.

Here’s a photo a friend took up there last year.

Also, if you bought one of those new apple ipads you’ve got a sleeker and slightly doctored (check the exaggerated symmetry in the widescreen version) picture of the place at dusk, probably overlaid with a few desktop icons. All of this has left me wondering about our use of pretty pictures as wallpaper and pegboard for our digital carkeys, frypans, monkeyspanners, and hacksaws, along with all the psychological corollaries, subliminal or explicit, profound or superficial.

For example, how does the act of clicking and dragging my ehowitzer or other tacky virtual furniture across a flat, odorless, digital expanse like this effect my connection with or understanding of an actual desert lake at dusk, or an actual sunflower at close range, or, if you like, puppies, or Sting, or the plastic-silicone-heavy-metal-device itself? Or does this just look like a lot of handwringing and hoodia about ecoporn, commodification, and turning somewheres into nowheres? Maybe try putting your coat rack in front of your bay window, or spreading your T.V., roadmaps, walkman, mailbox and “recycle bin” out on the beach, and then post a report.

Pyramid Lake I

We followed again a broad Indian trail along the shore of the lake to the southward. For a short pace we had room enough in the bottom; but after traveling a short distance, the water swept the foot of precipitous mountains, the peaks of which are about three thousand feet above the lake. The trail wound along the base of these precipices, against which the water dashed below, by a way nearly impracticable for the howitzer.
…
Having advanced only about twelve miles, we encamped in a bottom formed by a ravine, covered with good grass, which was fresh and green. We did not get the howitzer into camp, but were obliged to leave it on the rocks until morning. We saw several flocks of sheep, but did not succeed in killing any.
…
The next morning the snow was rapidly melting under a warm sun. Part of the morning was occupied in bringing up the gun; and, making only nine miles, we encamped on the shore, opposite a very remarkable rock in the lake, which had attracted our attention for many miles. It rose, according to our estimate, six hundred feet above the water; and, from the point we viewed it, presented a pretty exact outline of the great pyramid of Cheops.
…
The elevation of this lake above the sea is four thousand eight hundred and ninety feet, being nearly seven hundred feet higher than the Great Salt Lake, from which it lies nearly west, and distant about eight degrees of longitude. The position and elevation of this lake make it an object of geographical interest. It is the nearest lake to the western rim, as the Great Salt Lake is to the eastern rim, of the Great Basin which lies between the base of the Rocky Mountains and the Sierra Nevada.

-John Charles Frémont & Jessie Benton Frémont
January 13, 1844

Baron Von Bunsen's threatening shoal

[Baron Von Bunsen has a] threatening shoal of books, teeming with hypotheses on aboriginal nations. Egyptian, Indian, and disinterred Assyrian Semites; as also on the locality of Paradise, for which a map is already ordered of Kiepert. Maps on the opinions of people may range from the ship-binding myth on the seashore and the Himalaya to Ararat, and to Aramea Kibotos, even to the Mexican Coxcox; the fanciful productions of fiction, which are known also to the Bible of the Mormons.

-Alexander Von Humboldt
July 4, 1854
In the era of Crystal Palaces

RAD DAD

A couple weeks ago we were in San Francisco with some friends and I found a pretty great little zine in the little consignment corner at City Lights Books.

Cover art by Fernando Martí

It's been several years since I've picked up a 'zine, and even longer, if ever, since I'd read one cover to cover. But this one's all stories, essays, interviews, resources, and art about "anarchism and parenting," or more generally, about being a "radical parent." Thomas Moniz has been doing these for 5 years (17 editions) and there’s also a blog.

In other fatherly news: we’ve got Tom walking now, sort of. Ash is into rub-on tattoos and the A-Team.

¡recordando los alamos / remembering the cottonwoods!

yeah. hullo. hi. it’s been a while, right? let me start w/ a short update. a couple weeks ago we drove out to Utah to stay w/ my mom and visit the cottonwood canyons of our youth.

a couple highlights: trespassing through a big hole in the chain-link into the abandoned plant nursery up the road. Ash found some big concrete platforms for showing off her skills. Tom putting on the charm at the west bank of Bell Canyon’s lower reservoir. geese at the east bank.


otherwise, I’ve been trying to tie up the last of spring semester’s loose ends and get our garden in. today I think we’re about there. the books are mostly put away. and a couple hours ago I opened the fridge and drank the last half liter of flat coke left over from finals.

this is our first crack at planter boxes; our backyard is mostly stone and clay. the wood is mainly pallets that Ash and I scrounged from behind strip malls and stuff, some old fenceboards too. I’d been holding out for some free topsoil on craigslist, since buying dirt feels a little like buying zucchini (lonely), or bottled water (sucker). I was finally able to get some great composted horse manure from a friend in town, who loaded about a yard into our truck to take home.

here’s Ash and Dirtlips working on their garden. it’s mostly a milpa deal (corn, squash, beans), with some carrots in the corner. because, as Kelly pointed out, kids love pulling those long orange spikes out of the dirt.

when you get home you're really going to be funny about my own mask.
i wear it.
i'm crazy 'bout this.
this mask and i wear it.
i love you.
and i go sledding with it.

-ASH

madrugada: to Thomas Serrano, turning one & singing

from behind your bedroom door
in the dark of this too early morning
hooting, hissing, drumming the wall
with your heels, rolling

all your words come now:
dog. daddy. cracker. ball.
sssssssssssssssssssssssss
sounds we attached to things, and that you accept

air: just stuff we made up. not like before
when you would blow your wet speech
bubbles of curdled milk, painting
sleeves, pillows, her neck, everything

foamy white, like some insane depression-era comic
about a frustrated mime:

"howzat?"
"speak up kid!"
"lettuces? why din't ya' say so?"

flick'r

related: neighborhood killer

zeros & ones on donner pass

P.S. - check out Treeblog's festival of the trees 44, where this post is linked in the good company of 50 or so others.

new year roundup (& 300th post)

I've painted my door with ram's blood and have been hiding out from the flood of confessional new years resolution blog postings, which I hope have by now run their course 'round the internets. so it's looking like a safe time for me to make my own confession: aside from a new 52-week regimen for a prescription toenail fungus treatment, and a 6 week sugar fast (again), I have no real resolutions, hobbies, or interests for 2010. wait, we've started planning a couple road trips for the spring. does that count?

but, Kelly helped me set up this google analytics* thing a couple months ago and I've just been checking the results. in case you're curious, here are some of the search terms that have routed people over to fish without faces (for an average visit time of 50 seconds):

when did shasta the liger die
judgment of the birds
animal magnetism fish
clothed capybara
costa rica bird list
costa rica fish list
fish birdhouse
the glad menagerie
austin nv, serbian christmas
barnacle goose eating during lent
hallelujah I'm a bum hallelujah bum again hallelujah give us a whiskey
how to hunt mountain lions without dogs
fish with people faces
taxidermy toucan pelican
virtual diorama

*if you're not familiar, google analytics is like a lobster pot/fishweir or a kind of surveillance camera you can set up to find out stuff about who in the world is visiting your blog. if you're running a boutique for home-knit apple sweaters or selling ad space for teeth whiteners this is strictly commercial. but if you're just whistling into the dark vacuum of cyberspace it's more of a simple curiosity.

the imperfect paradise

"It's true," the man said with a melancholy air, his gaze fixed on the flames dancing in the fireplace that winter night; "in Paradise there are friends, music, some books. The only bad thing about going to Heaven is that from there you can't look up."
-Augusto Monterroso




related: arcadia &c., fire in the fishtank, the salamander, January 2008

ok. this is the last stolen(lazy) fable I'll be posting here. promise.
...oh, and a belated happy new year.