Tag Archives: nature

September 14, 2025 · 1:36 pm

SLAUGHTER OF THE INNOCENTS

As we see the end of summer transition into the colorful Fall tones of forested New England, we watch with horror as Trump rampages over our country’s economy and democracy. It was laughable to see Trump’s so called “summit” with Putin in Alaska. It was pathetic but not surprising to see Trump bow down to Putin but get nothing in return. It was as if Trump had purposely set himself up to be humiliated.

As a nation we are better than this. The amplified political rhetoric, anger, and fear floating around right now does not have to be our future. Heather Cox Richardson and others have spoke eloquently about our sometimes violent past when our country seemed to split apart only to gradually come back together after the dark fever dreams pass and we move into the sunlit uplands of better leadership.

Trump seems to relish pouring gasoline on the simmering fires of our current political passions. He did it again this week after the assassination of podcaster Charlie Kirk. I remembered that Kirk had been interviewed last March by our Governor/podcaster Gavin Newsom. Gavin had just started his new career in podcasting and was learning the ropes of how to do it when he interviewed Kirk. I admired Newsom for the courage of reaching out to the political right so his liberal audience could hear another point of view. Unfortunately, he chose Steve Bannon and Charlie Kirk as his first two guests. The results were a little like watching an energetic teen-ager playing a full game of baseball against a major league team. I listened to Gavin’s interview of Charlie Kirk to try to understand Kirk’s appeal. He was polite, smart, politically savvy, very Christian, and had a great ability to charm his audience. But I felt that he was troubling because he used his appealing ways to put his finger on and exploit points of deep anxiety among parts of our population, especially young men. Even though Gavin seemed unable to keep up with Kirk, I applaud our Governor for letting us hear what was a prominent voice in this rising tide of the young political right. We all need to hear this so we can find better ways to counter the far right’s hateful intolerance.

In the meantime, Putin continues his slaughter of the innocent people of Ukraine. We still get notes and posts from our librarian friends from different parts of Ukraine. Despite Trump’s shameless worshipping of Putin, Vlad-the-Impaler is undeterred in his cruel war against a heroic nation. The Russian military is engaged in a crusade that is nothing short of an apocalypse for the people of Ukraine. In the last few weeks, it has stepped up the number of its attacks on Ukrainian cities and especially Ukrainian civilians to the highest level of the war. Recently, one of our Ukrainian friends posted a beautiful photo of flowers in full bloom. I realized that when you are surrounded by the ugliness of war, simple things like a beautiful flower can be an act of defiance and resistance to the appalling circumstances that the good people of Ukraine now endure. We all seem to need some kind of therapy right now.

Our therapy for the moment is to spend a month in the beautiful Green Mountain state of Vermont. Parts of New England are currently going through one of its worst droughts ever and some areas are under an extreme drought warning. But it sure looks a lot greener than parts of our parched California and the American West.

Occasionally, we tool around the property in an ATV, especially to go to the top of the nearby hill, called the “cocktail lounge”, to have a beer and watch the sunset. But the best way to enjoy the Vermont forests is to stretch our legs and hike.

After my doctor recently recommended that I take my 75-year-old body to the gym, I have become a devoted gym rat in San Francisco along with our son Walker. In coming to rural Vermont, gym rats must become creative. I found that two 1-gallon water jugs make excellent weights for my workout. Two pieces of cord wood work pretty well too. Ellen prefers to do her arm lifts with two bottles of white wine. Whatever works!

We spend a lot of time doing chores around the Farm including cleaning out around new trees with Ellen’s brother John, painting four coats on a new bench, and repelling the return of the dreaded orb weaver spiders. The work never ends.

One of our nieces explained to us that Vermont is maple syrup. We saw lots of examples of sugaring operations on our walks around the forests. The forests are much more developed and managed here than in the “wilder” forests that I’m used to in the American West.

When I travel, I am often fascinated by signs that give a flavor of the local community. Our nearest small town of South Strafford had this sign about “Unconditional Love + Community”. Another nearby town of Norwich celebrated the 70th birthday of the beloved store of Dan and Whits. Finally, the barbershop Walt & Ernies had been in the same location of Hanover, NH since 1938. It is about to move to another nearby location, and all the locals (including me) put their farewell greetings on the wall. I loved the one that said, “Best Mullets Ever”.

One of our urban friends could not understand what we do with our time in out-of-the-way rural Vermont. After all, we do stay in a cabin on a dirt road off a dirt road off a dirt road. But, perhaps surprisingly, our time is almost always occupied with Farm chores, hikes in the green forests, visiting family and friends, cooking meals, buying fresh corn at the local farm stand, staring at the stars, watching the clouds float by, and attending some of the large number of cultural events here in the Upper Valley of Vermont. One of those recent events was a lecture by environmental writer Bill McKibbon. His book The End of Nature was hugely influential, and he continues his work as a public activist in top outlets such as the New Yorker, the New York Times and the Atlantic. We spoke with him later at a dinner after his lecture. We also met our friends there including Jim Nachtway who is one of the great war photographers of our time. This rich cultural mix also includes thriving environmental centers and community supported organic farms such as Cedar Circle which has also become our go to place for a good cup of coffee.

Finally, I wanted to give a shout out to our son Walker. He continues his full-time creative and journalistic work for CBS News. He travels constantly for his job, but we do occasionally see his stories on the news and even sometimes see him in person when he returns to his home in San Francisco. He and his partner Rosa took a much-deserved vacation to Indonesia recently where they visited an increasingly rare healthy coral reef. Rosa, who is a certified scuba diver and Emmy Award winning filmmaker, took this beautiful photograph of Walker floating above the reef during Walker’s first dive. It is a remarkable image of hope and grandeur in our sadly troubled world.

Our next post will be sent from England. It seems like a good time to escape the current sour mood of our country. Hopefully, when we return in November, we will be reinvigorated to take on the challenges ahead. Talk to you soon…

3 Comments

Filed under Uncategorized

Tagged as , , , , , , , ,

May 5, 2025 · 6:09 pm

MAYBE WE CAN GET THROUGH THIS THING?

As we live through interesting times, I obsess on the news and vacillate between despair and hope. Despair is the easy part. We swim in a sea of terrible stories about Trump playing Godzilla destroying our government, our country and the world. Like the movie Godzilla, we are now living through the sequel that is even worse and more destructive than the original. But even Godzilla met a bad ending, and we can only hope that Trump will do the same. Recent milestones included Trump’s “Liberation” Day in which he attempted to destroy the world’s economy with his bizarre tariffs. We also marked his First 100 Days after which Trump’s poll numbers and the US economic system are now in free fall. But while we are in the middle of Trump’s American carnage, it is easy to give in to despair and give up on hope. I really believe that we are better than this.

Another recent milestone was Earth Day which seemed to barely register in the news because of all the Trumpian noise. To celebrate Earth Day and hang on to hope, Ellen and I decided to visit one of the most important environmental success stories of our time, the Klamath River. The river flows between Oregon and Northern California, eventually emptying into the Pacific near Crescent City, CA.

In the Fall of 2024, four dams on the Klamath were finally taken down, after almost 20 years of a fierce water war between the farmers upstream, the Native People downstream, conservation groups, local representatives and the utility company operating the dams. It restored nearly 400 miles of vital habitat for salmon and other species that are essential to the river’s ecosystem and the communities that depend on them. This let salmon migrate upstream for the first time in over 100 years and established new guidelines to achieve a compromise between agricultural needs and Native Tribes. This effort was the largest dam removal and river restoration project ever in the US. In October 2024, the first fall-run Chinook salmon was seen in the Upper Klamath Basin all the way upstream in Oregon.

We visited two of the former dam sites and were amazed by the change. Over 18 years ago I had photographed the entire length of the Klamath for the environmental group International Rivers. We witnessed the damage caused by the dams upstream. We also interviewed and photographed the Native People downstream that were struggling with the loss of the salmon that their people had depended on well into their distant past.

The fact that such a large and diverse group of people could finally come together over restoring the Klamath after so many years should be seen as something to celebrate. The restoration of the river not only affects the river and the people who live near it. It also affects a vast number of forests and marshlands such as the Klamath Marsh National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon and the Tule Lake National Wildlife Refuge in California which we visited. Even though Trump is trying to cut the money that is already allocated for restoration, much of the restoration work is locally funded and will continue despite the weirdo in the White House.

We left the Klamath River Watershed and eventually made our way over the snow-covered Warner Mountains into Cedarville, CA. This is an incredibly beautiful area with the mountains on one side and the vast Great Basin on the other. Located in the seldom visited northeastern corner of California, it feels unique, wonderfully isolated and separate from the rest of the state. When I wandered around the saloon where we had dinner, I noticed an enormous Trump flag with his image and the words “Fight, fight, fight”. I knew I wasn’t in San Francisco anymore and hoped the people who put up the flag don’t get run over by Trump’s madness in the next four years.

The next day we were fortunate to be able to drive through northwestern Nevada on one of the most remote roads in the country. After hours of endless sage brush and Basin and Range country we landed in Gerlach, NV. It’s claim to fame is that once a year it is home to the nearby Burning Man bacchanal in the Black Rock Desert. I am sure the locals love the money that comes with the revelers but probably wonder about their sanity.

After brief meeting in Reno, ended the day at our favorite place to stay, Camp Richardson’s in South Lake Tahoe, CA. We have been regularly coming here for over 30 years and think of it as a special place to just chill out. When we are here, we mostly hike, drink coffee, sleep and then get up and do it again the next day.

On the second and third days here, it snowed! It was just a little but enough to make it magical (and cold). Hiking in the thin crust of snow wasn’t hard and the chilled air was really invigorating, especially in the High Sierra. We hiked many of our favorite trails to many of the unique places in the Tahoe Basin. Being here is like a giant reset and we savored the solace of nature and the vast open space of Lake Tahoe.

Fortunately, our last day of driving back to San Francisco was glorious! As always, we were sad to leave. But we really needed a chance take a deep rest before plunging back into resisting the attempted take-over of our government by a looney lunatic.  When we got home, it was interesting to watch a re-run of the classic Western called High Noon with Gary Cooper. It was made in the early 1950s during the time of the Red Scare and Senator Joseph McCarthy. The Hollywood Blacklist affected this movie as the screenwriter had to escape to England. Cooper’s character became iconic as a symbol of an honest Marshall standing up to the outlaw banditos that wanted to kill him and take over the town. The movie image of Cooper became a part of the famous Solidarity campaign in 1989 when they sought to overthrow the Russian Soviet government that had come to repress Poland after WWII.

Perhaps we need to revise this image for our own time as we are learning how to stand in solidarity against a new dictatorship in the White House.

3 Comments

Filed under Uncategorized

Tagged as , , , ,

October 24, 2024 · 5:54 pm

We Came to Vermont. We Broke Things. We Left.

For twelve days, we drove over 3,700 miles with our pedal to metal zooming across the country. Then we stopped at our place in Vermont, for six weeks!  Going from full speed to full stop takes a little adjustment. But we quickly appreciated leaving behind the corporate American road culture and savored the beauty of the New England landscape.

We share 53 acres and a small cabin with two other families in the Vermont woods on a dirt road off a dirt road off a dirt road. One of the great pleasures for a life-long Californian like me is plopping myself into this totally different world. Vermont is a biological transition zone between the boreal forests of the north and the southern deciduous forests. Seventy-eight percent of the state is forested, and that land contains a huge number of animal and plant species.  One of the first things we did after arriving was to go hike in the woods. Every year, I am always surprised by the abundance and diversity of life in these woodlands.

Sometimes nature’s exuberance can be a little annoying. One year we arrived from California just after a colony of wasps had built a GIANT nest right under the wooded deck that we used to enter the house. We can laugh about it now, but at the time it was no fun. This year, a large group of orb weaver spiders decided to spin their webs outside one corner of the cabin. Their prodigious work was astonishing to see. We read that spraying vinegar was a sure-fire way to get rid of them. Unfortunately, the spiders had not read that memo and stuck around for several more nights until they got tired of being drenched.

Shortly after we arrived, Walker and his girlfriend Rosa arrived from San Francisco and Rosa’s Mom Paulina arrived from Mexico City. It was Paulina’s first time in this part of New England, and we felt honored to show her around here after she had shown us around parts of Central Mexico and the Yucatan in 2023. One of the great cultural highlights in this region is Dartmouth College in nearby Hanover, NH. One of the great sites on campus is the Orozco Mural painted in the 1930s by the famous Mexican muralist Jose Clemente Orozco. It is now a National Historic Landmark.

We also traveled to New Hampshire’s Saint-Gaudens National Historic Park which preserves the home, garden and studios of Augustus Saint-Gaudens, one of America’s foremost late 19th and early 20th century sculptors. It too is a National Historic Landmark. We also wanted to show Paulina some of the unknown parts of New England such as a small, abandoned early 19th century cemetery near our property. It was moving to see the headstones of children that had died almost 200 years ago.

Mostly, we wanted to share the astonishing beauty of the New England forests. We spent many days being surprised and awed by nature as we hiked around the woods of Vermont.

After our epic day hikes, we would come back and watch the Democratic National Convention at night. Our heads were still spinning at all our country’s recent political developments, and it was fascinating to hear Paulina’s take on the state of American politics from a Mexican perspective.

 After everyone left, we had the time to observe the small things that mark the time between visits with friends and family and Presidential elections. For a moment, the pounding rain outside turned to hail and piled up like snow before quickly melting. The sky burned red over the fog left by the rain and New England’s recent summer drought seemed broken.

One of the projects that Ellen and I did together was to walk, mark, and map the property line all the way around our 53 acres. It took many days to complete, and it was one of the most inspiring and satisfying projects that we have done here at the Farm. We spent our time following lines on a two-dimensional map in a three-dimensional forest. We were aided by a professional map of the property made by our nephew Bart as well as old property deed maps and aerial photo maps. Sometimes, we were aided by discovering old stone walls that followed the property lines. We guessed that some of these walls were, possibly, 200 years old. Barbed wire replaced some of the stone walls in the latter part of the 19th century and often, we would find old trees that had grown around the wire.

An additional challenge was the terrain itself. This part of Vermont is very hilly and hiking this lumpy landscape required strong legs and a lot of motivation. Fortunately, we’re from hilly San Francisco and we hike there every day. Sometimes, we had to ski down the dirt slopes on our shoes and help each other up on the other side. Astonishingly, the people that built these 19th century stone walls didn’t seem intimidated by the steep hills and vertical canyons of Vermont. Hiking these walls gave us a little more insight into the rugged lives of these early Vermont farmers.

We were helped by having good maps and a compass on our phones which allowed us to accurately wander the hills and valleys without getting lost. We were also aided by the app GaiaGPS which allowed us to map our route while being offline. Pink ribbon was how we marked our way on this incredible journey.

Screenshot

As we followed the lines of the property, we were also following lines of history and geography. We deepened our own connection to this place by our current journey over it which also helped us better understand its buried past. As we made our way across the landscape, we also became more a part of it. The land itself became our teacher and our roaming became our solace.

When Ellen’s brother John visited, we quickly got to work doing the chores that need to be done to keep our place going. John taught me how to drive his old tractor and cut the grass in one of the outlying fields. It took more than an hour to do this as the tractor traveled at a very sedate pace fitting its ancient age. I really enjoyed doing that chore as it gave me time to think about the dignity of manual labor, the separation in our country between people working with their hands versus people who work on their screens, Presidential politics, and what to make for dinner that night. Unfortunately, the next time I fired up the tractor, a coupling in the back broke and leaked out all the hydraulic fluid, ending that chore. Undeterred, I jumped on the old sit-down lawn mower to continue mowing but after a few minutes it stopped dead in its tracks with a broken belt. At that moment, I decided I was through with breaking things and went off to read a book.

Between chores, reading, and hiking, we were lucky to have several visitors throughout our time at the Farm. We see Virginia and Michael every year as they live near Hanover, NH. We had a small party at our place celebrating her retirement from teaching photography for many years at Dartmouth College. They brought their friend and celebrated journalist/ war photographer Jim Nachtwey. His career has spanned the globe over decades and the conversation that night was epic. We feel lucky to know them all.

A few days later, Ellen’s best friend from first grade, Deb, flew in with her husband Elliot. She is a retired professor, and he is still a practicing eye doctor who flew his own plane from Rhode Island. We had a non-stop conversation with them for two days and enjoyed every minute of it.

Finally, we first met our friend Lisa during our Fulbright Fellowship in Jerusalem in 2019. She was a US diplomat working at the American embassy and has recently retired. She took a 10-hour train ride from her home in Washington, DC up to Vermont and we spent four days hiking, cooking, site seeing, talking world events and politics, and never running out of fascinating things to discuss.

We only got the internet at the Farm last year. Although we resisted it for a long time, it was a good addition because it allowed us to watch Kamala Harris put down the bully Trump in an amazing political event. This will be the only Presidential debate, and it was good to see how much of a looser he really is. So much depends on this election, but that night Kamala made us proud.

Since Walker’s recent visit to the Farm, he has been on assignment for CBS in Alaska (twice), on the border with Mexico, and in Brazil covering a newly discovered slave ship story. Fortunately, we stay in touch and follow his amazing globetrotting adventures.

The chores never end at the Farm. But one of the benefits is that it gives us a chance to spend time with Ellen’s brother John. Cutting trees and planting trees is a non-stop necessity. John is part of a group called the Vermont Woodlands Association which helps Vermont landowners conserve their forests. We held another delightful Walk in the Woods event with a group of neighbors highlighting John’s sustainability work on his property.

As we were nearing the end of September, the Autumn colors were appearing in the Vermont forests. Soon the leaf peepers would be out in force and the backcountry roads would be thick with tourists. After this long and delightful stay, we experienced the hardest time leaving. After bonding so completely this time with this rural place, it would be difficult to drive back through the corporate American road culture to California. But fortunately, along the way we have several friends we will meet and miles to go before we sleep.

We postponed our departure by one day to watch the Vice-Presidential debate between Tim Walz and JD Vance. I think Vance was a better debater but there was no question that Walz should become the next VP. To be continued…

4 Comments

Filed under Uncategorized

Tagged as , , , , ,