Wilderness.net

Photos by Tom KaffineI've linked to it on many occasions - twice in the post below - but I'm not sure I've ever officially mentioned Wildnerness.net on Cold Splinters before. It's the definitive internet source for America's wilderness areas and has some of the best pictures you can find on the web. Both shots above are from their Boundary Water Canoe Area Wilderness archive. It's also the "only officially-recognized, national, comprehensive, inter-agency database of information about all Bureau of Land Management, Fish and Wildlife Service, Forest Service and National Park Service wilderness areas." I get lost there for hours, so I hope you'll do the same:

Wilderness.net is a website formed in 1996 through a collaborative partnership between the College of Forestry and Conservation's Wilderness Institute at The University of Montana, the Arthur Carhart National Wilderness Training Center and the Aldo Leopold Wilderness Research Institute. The latter two partners are the wilderness training and research arms of the Federal government, respectively. The program is overseen by a working group and steering committee.

MP3: Cat Stevens - Where Do The Children Play

Sawtooth Mountain Wilderness, Idaho

Congress designated the Sawtooth Wilderness in 1972, which now has a total of 217, 099 acres. It's some of the wildest land in the lower 48, boasting 42 peaks over 10,000 feet. Right outside the wilderness area is Ketchum, ID, where Ernest Hemingway blew his brains out. He's buried in the Ketchum town cemetery.Backpacker's Senior Editor, Tracy Ross, wrote an essay called "The Source Of All Things," that recounts her experience going back to the Sawtooths with her father 30 years after he had molested her there as a child. The essay won a National Magazine Award in 2009. It's an intense story, but it's well worth your time to read it.

Juniperus communis

Juniperus communis:

Juniperus communis, the Common Juniper, is a species in the genus Juniperus, in the family Cupressaceae. It has the largest range of any woody plant, throughout the cool temperate Northern Hemisphere from the Arctic south in mountains to around 30°N latitude in North America, Europe and Asia.It is a shrub or small tree, very variable and often a low spreading shrub, but occasionally reaching 10 m tall. Common Juniper has needle-like leaves in whorls of three; the leaves are green, with a single white stomatal band on the inner surface. It is dioecious, with male and female cones on separate plants, which are wind pollinated. The seed cones are berry-like, green ripening in 18 months to purple-black with a blue waxy coating; they are spherical, 4–12 mm diameter, and usually have three (occasionally six) fused scales, each scale with a single seed. The seeds are dispersed when birds eat the cones, digesting the fleshy scales and passing the hard seeds in their droppings. The male cones are yellow, 2–3 mm long, and fall soon after shedding their pollen in March–April.

Youtube: Donovan - Jennifer Juniper

The Art Of Mountain Watching

Spending a season as a fire lookout is one of the most romantic ideas I can think of - the key word being "idea," as I'm not sure I was raised right to be alone for that long. Poet Gary Snyder applied to be a lookout in 1952 and when he asked for the “highest, most remote and most difficult-of-access lookout,” he was put 8,129 feet high, on Crater Mountain in North Cascades National Park. The next summer he was stationed at Sourdough Lookout (pictured above in the 80s) where Philip Whalen and Jack Kerouac would both visit. The National Parks Conservation Association's quarterly magazine, National Parks, has an article this fall entitled "The Art Of Mountain Watching" that profiles the lookout rangers and their history at North Cascades. It's a quick and interesting read from an amazing organization:

When you work as a fire lookout in Washington’s North Cascades National Park, your day begins at 5:30 a.m., when the sun rises over miles of immense glaciated peaks, blasts through your window-walled cabin, and pin-balls off the propane stove, lightning stool, and Osborne Fire Finder, sending diamond light in all directions. There is no snooze button on this “alarm clock,” and even if there were, North Cascades park rangers like Gerry Cook and Kelly Bush wouldn’t push it. There is work to be done: snow must be boiled for drinking water, the cabin must be tidied should a park guest come to visit and, most important, a vast expanse of pristine wilderness needs to be looked after. It is July, fire season in the North Cascades, and despite the early hour, the day is hot, forest dry, and punctured purple clouds brood on the horizon.

Read: "The Art Of Mountain Watching"MP3: Neil Young - Lookout Joe

WWII 103rd Cactus Division Patch

I got my second WWII 103rd Cactus Division patch in the mail yesterday (the first one was dirty as can be) and boy does it look good. I tend to dig the ones that have no writing on them, so as soon as Kalen revs up the ol' sewing machine, this'll be on the front pocket of an old khaki Woolrich vest that I found in Cold Spring a few weekends back after hiking Breakneck Ridge.Find tons more old patches on Ebay.Read: 103rd Infantry Division on Wikipedia

Repost: The Last American Man

I listened to the This American Life with Eustance Conway last night before going to bed (it focuses on Eustace and his brother's journey across the country on horseback) and decided it'd be a good idea to post this again. Read this book if you haven't already. It's really wonderful.Before Elizabeth Gilbert wrote the ubiquitous Eat, Pray, Love, she wrote a fantastic book about a guy named Eustace Conway called The Last American Man. Conway is a naturalist who moved out of his house when he was 17 years old to live in a teepee. From there, he bought a plot of land in North Carolina that he named Turtle Island and has been living the "old fashioned" way ever since.There's mountains more to the story than that, but the interesting part of this book is how Gilbert focuses on Eustace the person, not Eustace the mountain man. The Last American Man is not about what tools Eustace uses to make a barn or how Eustace catches the squirrels that he eats for dinner. The book is a sad chicken and egg story about a guy's exile from his family life and the modern world and his extreme obsession with a forgotten way of life. Eustace is one of the most incredible, brutal, and intense men you'll ever read about. His story reminds us of how difficult it is to simply go into the woods and "live off the land." There are papers to be signed and lots of money to be made...Eustace on This American Life (I highly recommend listening to this)Eustace on The Today ShowMP3: Gillian Welch - I Had A Real Good Mother And Father

Nas Chompas

BRAVELY DONE: Your artwork has a strong Northwest vibe; lots of pine trees, rickety ships and friendly bears, are you from these parts?NAS: Not originally. I’m from San Diego but moved up here a few years back. I think it’s pretty accurate to say that everything I’ve made since the move has changed a lot. I fell in love with the general Pacific Northwest and it never seems to get old to me.

Shelter

For my birthday, Daniel got me a copy of Shelter, a book from the early 70s that celebrates the "imagination, resourcefulness, and exuberance of human habitat." It's basically a scrapbook of yurts, treehouses, tents, domes and all the other types of "green" dwellings that you can build when you leave the city and head for the hills. It's put together like the hodgepodge of newspaper clippings that a psycho killer keeps on the wall of his dingy apartment in the movies. It's big like a newspaper with lots of writing, tons of pictures and absolutely no order whatsoever. Even Edward Abbey digs on it:

"How very fine it is to leaf through a 176-page book on architecture - from baliwicks to zomes - and find no places, no pyramids or temples, no cathedrals, skyscrapers, Kremlins or Pentagons in sight..instead, a book of homes, habitations for human beings in all their infinite variety."

Lloyd Kahn, the book's editor, has a few of these things that you can buy here.Thanks Daniel.

Bemidji Woolen Mills

bm07_88I was reading 10Engines yesterday when I came across the image above, a Scotch Cap from Bemidji Woolen Mills. I spent my summers at camp up in Bemidji, MN and we used to ask our counselors to get us these hats when they would go into town. Sometimes they'd come back with them, sometimes they'd be empty handed and reek of cheap beer from The Squirrel's Nest. My dark green version was perfect for cold nights in front of the lake, learning to play "Run Around" on a newly purchased black Washburn guitar that was twice my size. Puberty was a long long way off.On my first day of college in Boulder, Colorado, I was walking through Farrand Field and spotted someone with a blaze orange version. I got closer, dude's face got clearer, and by the time I was near enough to start the small talk I had prepared in my head on the walk over, I realized it was a friend of mine from camp that had helped teach me guitar chords on Lake Plantagenet. It had been many years since I had seen him and he was playing frisbee with his cousin, another camp buddy, so the three of us chatted for a few minutes about those summers and the merits of looking like Elmer Fudd. I saw those guys all the time for the next four years. Good first day of college.I'm not a very fashionable guy and I sure as hell don't know much about any of the latest clothing trends, so I'll probably look a complete idiot in this hat now, but what the hell. It's a damn fine thing to keep your head warm when the sun goes down.

The Hunt

NYT:

A wolf hunt is set to begin in Idaho on Tuesday if a federal judge does not stop it. It would be the first time in decades that hunters have been allowed to pursue the gray wolf, an animal that has come to symbolize tensions over how people interact with wilderness in the West.On Monday, the judge, Donald W. Molloy of Federal District Court, will hold a hearing to determine whether to issue an injunction sought by wildlife advocates against the hunt and reopen the question of returning the wolf to the endangered list.Gray wolves were taken off the list five months ago, after being protected under federal law for more than 30 years. More than 6,000 hunters in Idaho have bought licenses for the chance to participate in the hunt, in which wildlife officials will allow 220 wolves to be killed. In 2008, the population stood at about 850. Montana will allow 75 animals to be killed, starting Sept. 15.

And the debate rolls on. MP3: Jerry Garcia - To Lay Me Down