Farewell 2012

You brought North America climactic disaster in so many corners.  Nearly the entire map except portions of tropical Mexico and the Pacific northwest suffered from intense heat and prolonged drought.  You brought devastating extra-tropical hurricanes and tornadoes in the least likely months of January and December.  You  gave us a parting gift of much needed rain for California and a normal looking winter near the end of the month for much of the Midwest and Great Lakes, but aside from that we have seen extremes that seem to be getting worse.  Let's hope 2013 is a bit more gentle on us.

That said, life on this rugged continent has always been a bit more tenacious than even its rugged weather.

Christmas Spruce

Just in case I don't find time to post tomorrow, Merry Christmas from American Voyages!  In keeping with our exploration of natural North America, have a living Christmas tree, one that even comes with its own decorative Canadian Shield stand.  

Cedar Lake, Ontario.

That's one fine White Spruce (Picea Glauca).  Next year I will try for a solitary Black Spruce, hopefully from somewhere exotic and southern near the bottom of their range in the Appalachians.  

Christmas is Coming

So why not show a picture from some church somewhere, right?

Part of the courtyard at the mission of San Juan de Capistrano, in the city of the same name in California.  The missions are a great way to see some of old California, and like so many religious foundations around the world are one of the best ways to see into the heart of a people, or at least a people's past.

Saguaros!

This picture, a lovely gift from a friend in Utah, was too good to not pass along here.

No clue where this is from, other than somewhere near Phoenix, Arizona.

Here we have a nice northwestern Sonoran Desert scene, complete with Saguaro cacti (Carnegiea Gigantea) and Green Paloverdes (Parkinsonia Microphylla), along with some blurry other cacti and shrubs.  Saguaros tend to be found in the wetter portions of the Sonoran Desert, where they can establish easily in the double feature winter and summer rains.  They are also a bit cold sensitive, being killed if freezing temperatures persist more than 30 hours or so.  This largely accounts for their distribution in Arizona and Sonora.  Paloverdes are also interesting species, having bark which can act as leaves do and photosynthesize for the plant.  They actually lose their leaves (which are not really big anyway) in summer and grow them back in the wetter winter and spring.

Though the scene above does not look very alive at the moment, in a few months it will be rejuvenated by winter rains and wonderful sunny spring days.  The ground will be green with grasses, flowers will carpet the land as far as the eye can see, and the place will look like an exotic paradise.  Perhaps the best feature of a place like this is the smell, especially right after a rain.  It's so indescribable that you really have to go there and experience it to understand how this might be one of the best smelling places on the planet.

Oh, and nothing is cooler than Saguaros.  They just look awesome.

Humid Subtropical

In my last post I made a half-joke about Lake Erie being the center of a new northern extension of the humid subtropical climate found in the southeastern United States.  So what exactly is "humid subtropical", or even just subtropical for that matter?  In general, a subtropical region is at least one where daytime highs are usually above freezing, even in the coldest months.  More properly, a true subtropical region would not experience even nighttime freezing temperatures, but climactic areas tend to blend with their neighbors in transitional areas.

In the United States, subtropical climates are pretty much kept south of the Ohio river, outside of the higher Appalachian mountains, and curve off in the ends southward into Oklahoma and northward into coastal Connecticut.  That's right, technically speaking, New York City is subtropical.  Yeah, it can snow and get pretty icy there, but I have noticed that even in the coldest years, the snow does not last nearly as long it does back upstate and in the southern Great Lakes (back when it did, anyway) and points north and west.  If you manage to find some of the more natural spaces of New Jersey and Long Island, it will most likely be some pine barrens that will feature an odd conversation piece like a magnolia or two.  Until you hit South Carolina, where palmettos will start to poke up in the underbrush, this scenery will change little along the drier parts of the coastal plain.

Magnolias, Baldcypress, Pines, and company at Jamestown National Historic Site.

How about a bit further inland, past the Appalachians?  Well, the changes will be a bit more subtle.  Evergreen Rhododendrons and Azaleas will start showing up in the more rugged parts, and some of the coniferous trees will disappear until they are replaced by southern species in Tennessee.  As would be the case with developed land on the east coast, though, one would be more likely to notice things like magnolias being planted in increasing frequency the further south one travels.  To my knowledge, the first Southern Magnolia (Magnolia Grandiflora) one can encounter along the main travel routes is in Bowling Green, Kentucky at some hotel parking lot.  Back a few years ago, it stuck out like a sore thumb in a cold March landscape.  Apparently people in Cincinnati have started growing palms in their yards, so the transition zone could be noticeable even further north.

Naturally speaking, a fine indicator of the edge of subtropical land would be the presence of Baldcypress stands along the major rivers.  The furthest northern ones can be found in Indiana and Delaware.  In Arkansas and Virginia they start getting draped with Spanish Moss.  This is probably where the tropical part of subtropical starts making more sense, but again, same-elevation climate transitions are not usually as plain as a line drawn on the map.  In North America, this is especially true.

You see, we have no major east-west mountain ranges here that can block Arctic winter cold fronts.  The fact that warmer weather can even persist so far north at all is largely due to the Gulf of Mexico, which is a sauna that keeps sending heat and humidity north.  In contrast, we also have Hudson Bay, which not only can fight back against the Gulf rather well, but is responsible for maintaining the world's southernmost tundra on our northern half of the planet, right along the coast in Ontario.  About ten thousand years ago and earlier, it was also responsible for maintaining the continental ice sheet across much of Canada and the northern United States.  These days, the Gulf seems to be winning the tug of war, but now and then even during our recent mild years, the frigid north can send hard freezes as far south as Miami and Tampico.  In fact, chilly nights in the lower forties have even been reported in Cuba and Veracruz, places that are definitely well within the limits of true tropical.

Perhaps the northern edge of the subtropical world gets noticed a bit more by someone from northern Ontario.  Heck, I was shocked when I moved to Detroit and first ran into "southern" trees like Tulip trees and hot and steamy Ash tree swamps.  In any event, the next time you take a car trip, you might notice the same subtle changes as you head toward Dixie.

No White Christmas?

This past summer in southern Michigan felt more like a summer somewhere in the mid-elevation southwestern United States.  We had weeks of highs in the upper 90's, along with five day stretches here and there of 100+ temperatures.  What's more, our nights dropped down more than twenty-five degrees lower on many occasions.  The soil caked or looked more like sand, saplings fried in the hot sun, lawns looked dreadful even when watered, and the cacti I planted positively thrived.  About a month ago, I walked along the southern shores of Lake Huron... several hundred feet off shore, on dry land.  Much of the country has experienced intense heat and drought this summer.

Along came the fall, and with it a return to some rain and moderate temperatures, along with an exceptionally early freeze back in the second week of September.  Things started to level out, but then began looking like the previous winter, with days well above normal and nights not really budging that far from the highs.  Last winter featured January days in the 50's with exceptionally high humidity.  This winter has so far followed suit, with December days regularly seeing 60.  Last winter I felt that I could get away with planting a Needle Palm (Rhapidophyllum Hystrix), but wishful thinking aside, I noticed a few things this fine December 17th when I took a walk outside.  Among my botanical bursts of enthusiasm this year has been a voyage of exploration into the flora of the American southeast.  I took a gamble on growing a Sweetbay Magnolia (Magnolia Virginiana), unprotected and exposed, in the yard.  While there were a few initial hiccups with soil acidity to begin with, and the leaves have fallen off due to overnight freezes, I did notice something curious.

The air temperature near the ground usually tends to be higher than that of the air even a foot above the ground, but not so high as to, say, keep things from freezing in winter.  Winds can still blow and chill even close down to the ground, and one will notice that one's lawn does indeed stop growing this late into the season.  Well, it really has not this year, nor did it last year.  What's more, while the rest of the Magnolia went through its deciduous process (further south, say in Georgia down, they can tend towards being evergreen), new growth has been popping up here in mid-December!  Last year the lilacs did the same thing, stopping only in January and starting back up again in late February.  The Rhododendron looks amazing, and only recently did my last hosta bite the dust.  These past two winters have been experiencing climactic conditions closer to what would be normal for Kentucky or Maryland than Michigan, more humid subtropical than humid continental.

There is, of course, a down side to all of this.  Our water reserves might suffer for it, particularly where the Great Lakes are concerned.  Snow and an intense spring melt usually gives water bodies a chance to recuperate, as if all the moisture is kept safely on the ground until it can be released before getting a chance to evaporate again.  Out west, our Rockies have seen less and less snowfall, and rivers such as the Colorado and Rio Grande have suffered for it.

I-70 eastbound, about 9,000 feet up.  Near Georgetown, Colorado.

Time will tell whether this is a permanent change or not.  For now, those of wanting snow need to head north of the 44 parallel or so.

Beavers...

...don't always build a dam, you know.  Sometimes they prefer lakefront property.

Cedar Lake, Algonquin.

They also seem to have a thing for granite patios.

Ocean Beach, California

Your typical southern California beach scene, with a layer of pollution faintly visible on the horizon, overpriced condominiums, expensive parking, and for some reason an agave in full bloom growing wild on the sand.

It seemed like a pleasant picture, so I thought I would use it.  The title is the location of the beach.  Like many coastal towns, everything is densely packed in and almost no one has a private stretch of ocean front.  Most of the small yards get paved over, and those that do not get planted with palm trees, mostly the tall-growing, salt-tolerant Mexican Fan Palm (Washingtonia Robusta).

The neighboring community of Sunset Cliffs features slightly larger yards, some houses even having pools.  For the most part, however, things are packed as tight as sardines in a can.  Ironically, things here in the seaside high rent district are just as packed here as they are across the border in the slums of Tijuana.  In contrast, densely populated seaside Miami and Fort Lauderdale feature your average size yards and free parking lots, despite space also being a premium in a southern Florida that is otherwise largely too wet and spongy to support much in the way of a city.

The median house price in Fort Lauderdale and Miami closer to the ocean and intercoastal waterway is around $250,000 U.S. currency.  The median house price in San Diego and affiliated towns such as Ocean Beach is $520,000 and more.  Florida, it seems, is the place to get a vacation home, whereas California is the place to live.  Both places have pleasant climates, southern Florida being largely tropical and coastal southern California being what can best be described as "eternal spring", never much deviating from 60-70 year round.  Both places get tons of sunshine.  Florida can present hurricanes, which used to be dealt with by having homes constructed of concrete (it worked).  Coastal southern California can present earthquakes and tsunamis.  Things in general are far more expensive in California than they are in Florida, and yet still the demand for real estate is so much higher in the land of the easy going sunset.  Maybe it is something in the name... people have been attracted to her so strongly for nearly 250 years now.  Southern Florida?  Maybe for the past 70 years or so, once they started cutting down the mangroves.

I happen to like mangroves.  And coconut palms.  And fun Caribbean sea shells.  Still, that crisp Pacific water does feel pretty amazing, and it has a lack of dangerous jellyfish near the beaches in Cali, along with fun things like kelp and sea lions.  To each their own!

Dreaming of Blissful Surroundings

A bit tired to post about much today, but I thought I would keep the momentum going by showing something nice.

An oak savanna in Island Lake State Recreation Area, near Brighton, Michigan.  Oak savannas once covered significant portions of southern Michigan, southern Wisconsin, Indiana, northwest Ohio, and southwestern Ontario.  They are in many ways the meeting of worlds between the eastern mixed forests and the interior grasslands.  In Michigan and Ontario they tend to be inter-mixed with forests, whereas in much of the rest of their area they form more open landscapes.  Early settlers who saw them commented on how beautiful and park-like they looked, even as they were plowing them over into farms and settlements.  These days very few of them remain, but they are often targeted as special conservation areas and have even started to get attention as possible landscape choices for larger properties.  

Classic Mississippi River Crossing

From St. Louis southward the Mississippi looks pretty much like people would imagine it, all wide, muddy, surrounded by flat forested land and big cities and crossed by a number of truss bridges.

So it is here looking south from the I-70 crossing in St. Louis.  This shot even includes an advertisement for a casino riverboat in it (there was a classic one with crowned smokestacks moored to the north but a clear shot would be difficult in heavy traffic).  Of course, north of here, there are many places where the Mississippi looks entirely different, complete with sheer cliffs framing her banks and dark, tannin-stained waters coursing through Canadian Shield granite near her source in Minnesota.  She is a remarkable river which runs through a great cross section of both climates and cultures in the middle of the continent.  She has served as the first great drain for the most recent continental glaciers, has served explorers and settlers as a doorway to the western lands, and ran red with blood in the 1860's.  She is no simple river.  I count every crossing.  To date I am up to 16.

Taking the Road to the End

You know, even if I did gripe about the cultural and environmental damage interstates can cause, they can be pretty fun to travel from end to end.  There is nothing like seeing a mighty multi-lane highway that has passed through many states come to a rather humble end at some traffic lights.  Take a look at Interstate 8 only a few miles from its western terminus:

And then when this huge conduit of southern California traffic is forced to stop, not only by a traffic light, but by the Pacific Ocean:

I-8 is a bit different to begin with.  In a few places it actually serves as part of the US-Mexico border (though the concrete traffic barriers have since been augmented with a rather tall fence) and part of its course runs beneath sea level out in the Imperial Desert.  I-70 ends in a rest stop in Maryland.  I-94 turns into a fork that can take one into a traffic light in Port Huron or out of the United States across the Blue Water Bridge.  I-95 gets swallowed up its predecessor, US 1, and turns into a Miami city street.  Rather ignoble ends for ribbons of concrete that otherwise are given a path by engineering that blasts mountains to bits and drains swamps to keep the path straight.  Then again, one would hardly build a monument for a road without character...

Sugar Pine

Far be it from me to dismiss the western pines when speaking of stately beauty and gracefulness supported by a sturdy frame.  While it is no Eastern White Pine, the Sugar Pine (Pinus Lambertiana) is definitely worthy of such remarks.  In fact, it actually is a "white pine", bearing needles in clusters of five and sadly being a victim of white pine blister rust.

Rim of the World Drive, San Bernardino County, California.

The Sugar Pine has the added distinction of prominently bearing cones which "drip" from its branches.  Its many picturesque qualities have made it the subject of many paintings and photographs, just as the Eastern White Pine was a favorite subject for artists such as the Group of Seven.  An Ansel Adams photograph of a Sugar Pine is prominently featured in the first floor gallery of the Department of the Interior building in Washington, D.C.

Like most trees of the Pacific range forests, the Sugar Pine is huge.  The tallest specimens are over 250 feet tall.  With the possible exception of pre-colonial Eastern White Pines, such specimens mean that this is the most massive pine in the world.  If you want to see one up close and personal, you need to head to southern Oregon, California, or Baja California, where they can be found in abundance when one climbs higher than a mile above sea level.

Taking the Alternate Route

"Thanks to the Interstate Highway System, one can now travel across the country from coast to coast without actually seeing anything."  -Charles Kuralt

How right this man was.  Express highways have transformed not only our travel experiences, but an entire culture.  I had been meaning to write about the concept for some time, especially after I had an experience this summer of seeing the Toronto-North Bay corridor in Ontario pretty much reduced to a rapid transit pathway.  Where before there had been delightful little towns with great roadside restaurants and maple sugar candy shops, 2012 had shown itself to be the year of excessively mowed down forests (to make room for hundreds of yards of clearance on either side of the glorious new double-landed divided highway) and signs that point off an exit toward towns that now exist to travelers only in name.  This, of course, is old news back in the United States, where the transition from interesting federal highways to streamlined interstate took place more than half a century ago.  There, little towns faded out of existence in some cases, along with grand urban cores that diminished as people could now more easily live in distant suburbs and commute further away from, in less time (the brake lights say otherwise), downtown areas.

Fortunately, nostalgia and tourism can often combine in an effective marriage.

In Springfield, Illinois.

US Highway 66, now largely supplanted by I-55, 44, 40, and 15, is one such child of this nuptial blessing, and rightly so the most famous of buried highways.  When the interstates replaced her long, glorious road from Lake Michigan to the Pacific Ocean, many roadside attractions, businesses, and entire communities suffered greatly.  Still, many have survived, enough so that taking the business loop on the modern freeways is definitely a worthwhile experience, if for no other reason than to see the namesake of song lyrics.

Yes, you really can stand on the corner in Winslow, Arizona, but you have to exit I-40 in order to do so.

Tourist traps and affordable hotels aside, heading down the older highways is often the only way to get to travel some of the former great travel paths of the continent.  Much of the emigrant trails of the 19th century have not been replaced by modern interstates, where technological advances in engineering allowed for more direct routes to be carved and blasted through formerly difficult terrain.  Those wishing to get to California or Oregon the more traditional way need to say goodbye to I-80 at Ogallala, Nebraska.  Sure, you don't get to speed along in your car at 80mph or more, but a solid 60 is not horrible, and you can pass by things like, well, this:

Chimney Rock, at Bayard, Nebraska.  US 26 can take you there!

You know, just as people used to, because it was an easier, more pleasant route, and because you could actually see a thing or two on your way out there.  Sometimes the first part does not always hold true, as is the case with US-6 going over, rather than tunneling under, the continental divide, but the second part usually benefits from this.  I doubt I will ever want to drive I-15 in Utah again, not after the fun and dangerous route I got to drive on Utah 2.  The views alone were worth the extra gas.  That said, I actually think I used less gas, because I was not driving like a rabid dog barreling down the interstate.  Something can be said for the old 55mph limit.

California Refilling

Even as much of the country is still recovering from a brutal 2012 of heat and drought, much of non-desert California is experiencing record rainfall, some parts receiving 800% of their normal amounts in mere hours.  Instead of the devastating floods that come with such intense bursts of precipitation, the rain is going to the right areas and recharging aquifers and lakes.  This has been needed for a very long time.

Lake Kaweah, near Visalia, California, Sierra Nevada foothills.  Though the lake is often drained to a lower level for flood control, the sad truth is that many lakes in California have looked like this for a long time.  

If this continues to some degree through the winter, the deserts, which get winter rainfall anyway, will experience a bloom worthy of taking the most skeptical person's breath away.  2013 will be a year of plenty of water for California, hopefully along with a renewed appetite for better water management practices there.

The Ever Landscape-able Eastern White Pine

Among my strong dislikes of artificial landscape elements would be the ever-present use of exotic trees in orderly plantings.  I drove past countless yards today which had proper little rows of Blue Spruce (Picea Pungens) and Lombardy Poplar (Populus Nigra v. Italica) and had to wonder whatever became of the great eastern North American tree rush that conquered the hearts of so many landscapers back in the 17th and 18th centuries.  That said, I passed by just as many Eastern White Pine (Pinus Strobus), and to be fair, such trees are often landscaped to death in their native range, and often well outside of it as well, deep into the Great Plains.  They do make excellent stand-alone specimens for landscaping, though.

Somewhere near Kalkaska, Michigan.  

It's hard not to share a picture like this, or not to make a post about it, even if I have done something similar before.  I mean come on, its so strong, yet graceful...

Oddly enough, very few of them get planted out west, and despite their natural occurrence in Mexico, they are also quite absent there.  As noted, they made appearances into quite a few landscaped European estates in former centuries, and were long celebrated by the British navy as excellent mast trees.  These days I have only really noticed them around in England here and there, but apparently they have made such inroads into parts of eastern Europe that they have naturalized, especially in the Carpathian mountains.  Fitting revenge, I would say, for the sheer number of Norwegian Spruce (Picea All-too-common-a) that we became afflicted with here.

Expanding the Horizon

The very first post on American Voyages defined North America as everything consisting of continental Canada, the United States, and Mexico, but technically speaking, such limits are not really being fair to what North America really encompasses.  In truth, our continental plate extends as far east as half of Iceland and as far west as parts of Russia and Japan.  Now of course, a blog about North American geography, history, etc. would be rather silly if I took some time to cover Hokkaido or Siberia, but my recent reading into everything botanical regarding Florida got me thinking about some of our outlying nearby continental islands, namely Cuba and the Bahamas.

Both places have been historically linked to the rest of North America, in some cases in far stronger ways than with the rest of their Caribbean neighbors.   Cuba was the departure point of choice of Spanish explorers and colonizers for expeditions into Mexico and Florida, and the island was lusted after for years by the United States during the late nineteenth century.  Though the current embargo keeps Cuba at arm's length from the United States, she has decent diplomatic relations with both Canada and Mexico.  The Bahamas pretty much experience economic vitality because of trade and tourism links with the United States.  Both nations feature a climate and biodiversity remarkably similar to that of southern Florida.  I have been fortunate enough to see this up close and personal in the Bahamas, but my only experience thus far of Cuba has been of a few distant glimpses of a mountainous coast from the Straits of Florida.  There are no reasons why we can't occasionally talk about her though, especially since I have some rather controversial posts about language coming up this week.  You know, posts about, gasp, that dreaded Spanish language everyone here seems to be afraid of.

Oh, and for those of us wondering, this would be where North America technically ends down south:

Thanks USGS!  This map and all sorts of fun stuff can be found here.

The Potomac Above Natural Navigation Limits

While searching for some topic photos for the blog tonight I came across this picture, which I think I took at Chain Bridge, which connects Washington with Virginia.

In an earlier post, we got to take a look at the Great Falls of the Potomac, another rocky, somewhat dramatic area for a river that is otherwise usually depicted as serene, flat, and just a nice scenic portion of a larger capital scene.  Like many east coast rivers, the Potomac is indeed a nice, flat, boat-worthy river until it hits the toes of the Appalachian rise.  Like the Nile pinching at its "cataracts", these rivers then narrow into rather rocky affairs that feature little rapids.

Yes, I know this is not the Potomac.  What we see here is the Susquehanna river just north of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. This was taken from US 22 northbound, looking west.  

As seen above, in places where the navigation head is closer to the first great ridges of the Appalachians, the whole affair gets pinched into this sort of scene framed by enclosing mountains.  These features are known as "water gaps".  For the Potomac, this occurs much further upstream than this scene in Washington at Harper's Ferry, where Virginia, Maryland, and West Virginia converge.  Here we have a double gap, where the Shenandoah joins the Potomac.

US 340 looking north upstream the Shenandoah to its confluence, between the mountains, with the Potomac.  The white steeple rising from the left shore is the only sign of Harper's Ferry, WV, that can be seen through the rather dense riparian forests of cottonwoods, ashes, and willows.  

The water gaps and river-worn sections of the Appalachians are excellent places to see the exposed underbelly of eastern North America.  While our vegetated and softened landscape here has nothing on the "naked geology" of the western lands and Mexico, it is far from boring as far as geologists and rockhounds are concerned.  Yeah, we have the classic riverboat scenes, but we also have rougher and swifter patches like this right around the corner.  In some places, they have allowed for dams and mills to be constructed that were responsible for powering and watering the foundations of American industrialization.

Distant Cousins

While the corners of North America can often seem worlds apart in terms of climate and landscape, our continent is notable for having more similarities than differences between its distant ends.  White-tailed Deer (Odocoileus Virginianus) can be found both in Veracruz and central Quebec, various spruces and firs range from Alaska to the Appalachians, and even the rocks beneath us can remind the lonely traveler of a distant home.  Take a look at the scenes below:

Nope, that's not actually Canadian Shield!

While these might seem to have been taken in, say, Maine or Ontario, they were actually snapped (poorly, I know, I had yet to master the art of windshield photography) in central Utah.  The mountains of Utah and neighboring Colorado pull off Boreal artistry rather nicely despite being 1,000 miles south of the true Boreal forest.  Rather than Balsam Fir (Abies Balsamea) and White Spruce (Picea Glauca) we see spires of Subalpine Fir (Abies Lasiocarpa) and Engelmann Spruce (Picea Engelmannii), and the granites, schists, and gabbros of these relatively young mountains are old, but only recently exposed and not nearly as old as the ancient outcrops of the Canadian Shield rocks of the same names.

The western mountains, you see, are youngsters that rose less than 80 million years ago.  The life which thrives on their slopes, however, probably shares common ancestry with lower elevation life in similar climactic areas much further north.  During the last major glaciation, when the Boreal forests were much further south, these forests interacted with the northern versions at much closer proximity.  These days they are a bit more isolated, but serve as a unique southern extension of the northern forests well into central Mexico.  We are blessed and cursed, in a way, to have such a unique continent that features north-south mountain ranges and winters and summers both that can move uncontested far beyond where they can in other parts of the world.  The two worlds of alpine and true Boreal meet in the Canadian Rockies in a strikingly subtle mingling of separately evolved worlds.  Though I have never been to this grand meeting place of north and west, I can imagine that the sensations would be nothing short of incredible and perhaps even something reminiscent of a more unified continent that had to face much colder conditions as a tighter biological entity.  Again though, the differences are not too far apart from one another.  Take a look at a similar stretch of forest:

Taken off of Michigan 35 halfway between Menominee and Escanaba, MI.  

The casual viewer might not even notice a difference, even though the Utah and Michigan scenes are 1,300 miles apart.  With the exception of some aspens, none of the trees are of the same species between the two scenes, and the air in both places has rather different qualities to it.  Still, there is a little bit of Utah in Michigan and a little bit of Michigan in Utah, relations which have common roots in a more severe past.

Blue Water

Nature has long inspired humankind to imitate her beauty.  Though we have managed to produce wonderful gemstones, furs, sounds, and smells synthetically, we tend to long for those things which are naturally produced.  In particular, we have a fondness for color, whether it be the deep reds of a lovely sunset or the brilliance found in gemstones and precious metals.  In some places, natural colors lend their name to entire regions.  In Michigan and Ontario, we have what is known as the "Blue Water" region, your typical eastern Great Lakes industrialized port area so named because of its brilliant blue waters flowing out of Lake Huron into the St. Clair river.

Standing on the easternmost point of Michigan, looking south into Ontario at what the locals call "chemical valley".

While the scale of the ocean going vessels and industrial landscape manages to attract the attention of both locals and visitors alike, few such viewers never give a second look to the dazzling waters which run through the middle of the hustle and bustle in Port Huron and Sarnia.  Dazzling, of course, hardly can express the intensity of the blue which is the water here.

Pictures do not do it justice, but I thought I would try.  All of these can were taken in Port Huron.  In the shot directly above is downtown Sarnia, Ontario.

The Great Lakes are notable for producing blues in their waters normally reserved for the ocean.  Sediments and bedrocks have been partially responsible for giving us inland seas which can rival the picturesque waters of the Caribbean and South Pacific.  Some locations are better than others for observing the azure majesty, such as the dolomite-floored Bruce Peninsula side of Georgian Bay, or the lovely sandy bottomed shores off of the Leelanau Peninsula in northwestern lower Michigan.  None of these, however, can hold a candle to the gem-quality brilliance of the St. Clair river.  Though they often never give a second thought about their lovely river, the locals were right in calling their home Blue Water country.

A Dry Topic

When I first made my way into the North American west back in the summer of 2008, what impressed me most about the journey was not the impressive vistas or dramatic landscapes.  I was captivated by the desert.  While I had been looking forward to getting through miles of cornfields and surrounding myself in the grandeur of the Rockies, I knew that more flat and dry landscapes were in store for me after all too brief of a taste of the mountains.  However, that trip forever changed many of my perspectives on landscapes and the so-called backwater areas of the continent.

While I did find that the portion of the journey passed far too quickly through the high-altitude spruce-fir forests of the mountains, the High Plains and the deserts of the Colorado Plateau, the two arid frames which bind the mountains, had a charm all their own.  While people such as myself are derided as hopelessly naive of the truth of the matter (you know, us types who love looking at the desert from an air-conditioned home or car), I would have to comment that my fascination of the western dry lands stems not from an appreciation of the exposed geology or blue skies.  Rather, I was taken in by how much life manages to find a way to not only exist, but positively thrive in such a hostile environment.

I-70, Mojave National Preserve.  

To many, a place such as the Mojave is a collection of sand, rocks, strange plants, and insanely high temperatures.  To me it is a wonderful world of those things blended together in something of a divine masterpiece.  To this day, much of the west remains open and free, not yet covered in strip malls or even farms.  While I do not necessarily decry most of what civilization has managed to achieve and build, there is nothing like seeing our world as it has been shaped through years of work without our "improvements".  The desert is still a great frontier where we can encounter a little bit of nature that presents us with enough challenges to not have paved it over.  Tomorrow we will return east and take a look at something where this is still the case among the industrialized and settled eastern part of North America.

Undeveloped Land

Films set in the American west usually feature dramatic settings of canyons, cliffs, and raging rivers, but more often than not, they also get set on a backdrop of wide open spaces.  While your average North American urban dweller might disagree with the statement, there are still many such places on the continent.  In northern Mexico, western United States, or much of Canada, one can go miles without seeing so much as even an animal amounting to more than a squirrel.  While we humans tend to dominate the scene even in places as remote as Antarctica and our moon, one can still easily run out of cellular reception in such places, the only trace of our reach being in the GPS signal which seems to reach us just about anywhere.  Here and there, too, one might encounter a road:

This messy picture was taken along lonely Utah 24, at dusk and with bugs on the windshield.  This is somewhere between I-70 and Hanksville, looking south, and yes, there are no bathrooms in sight.  

Of course, this would be the limit of our development in these places.  A road, after all, is a passage meant to take someone someplace else, and roads such as these are mainly just there to get people away from there.

Beyond that, we have plants and the local geology.  While the areas lacking population, which usually tend to be deserts and grasslands, are perhaps the best places to get lost in such quiet reaches, the truth is that they can be found in any abandoned field, undeveloped woodland, or swampy area.  We have the luxury of having more of these than in most other parts of the world, at least as far as having them close enough to where we live is the case.  Every morning on the way to work, I pass by one of the few remaining Tamarack bogs in southeastern Michigan.  The land is otherwise surrounded by development, but in one marvelous little stretch, we get a glimpse of something older than us.  Again, sometimes even the other creatures of the earth settle down and leave the place quiet; on cold mornings such as these, not a chirp or rustle can be heard, nothing but a breeze moving through the branches and the sun breaking away the fog.

Various religions make usage of simple images to help quiet rather than stimulate the mind.  The icons of some Christian traditions are examples of this.  While some practitioners use them as instruments of prayer and veneration, they are more so meant to invite the viewer into something of a staring contest, helping to quiet distracting thoughts and direct one to a different layer of reality.  So it is with our bits and pieces of undeveloped land, things we have built around and left behind.  Nature can be quite good at giving us breathtaking moments of awe, but it can be just as good at reducing our activity to something more primordial.  That tree or pile of rocks sitting across the street, that field that they sit in?  It might be labeled an undeveloped plot, and it might not be as remarkable as a great vista in a national park, but in some ways it is just as valuable.

Wednesday Filler: That Can't Be There?!

Mountain Press has a series of books covering the geology of various states.  As usual, Michigan has been left missing, but what might come as a bit of a surprise to many is that states not otherwise known for being particularly rocky have made the cut.  Indiana, Nebraska, Florida... each have their own little "roadside geology" books.  So far, I have read the New York and Ohio selections with the intention of making a series of posts on what lies beneath the feet in North America.  Anyway, plans aside, I mention such things because we tend to have misconceptions about what an area has to offer.

Take the below picture, for example:

Now where would we think this is?

Perhaps somewhere out west, in the Rockies, or maybe even in the Adirondacks or some such place.  Certainly it is a mountain scene with all the trappings of something passably northern.

No, this is Big Bear Lake, in none other than heavily urbanized, hot and dusty Southern California.  They have mountains there, you see, with substantial enough elevation to produce climactic zones ranging from the hot and dusty to the nearly Arctic.  The lake sits nicely at about 6,800 feet above sea level, meaning the winter gets regular snowfalls and the summers are lovely, resting in the 70's.

Le Retour de la Neige

Apparently a year has gone by since American Voyages has come into existence, and the thought only really occurred to me because we had our first snow of the year here in southeastern Michigan, the same thing last year being the inspiration for the blog.  In this time, the focus of the blog has shifted a bit from the natural world to a bit more history and politics than I had intended to cover, but the best intellectual constructs in human culture are usually the result of organic development.  History and geography, of course, are very much interrelated.  While people have migrated, fought wars, and developed cultures over ideas, more often than not they settled, sued for peace, and changed cultures because of "background" things like geology, zoology, and botany.  Yes, the Puritans came to New England because they wanted religious freedom, but they really showed up there because the New World really was new.  Our continent contained, and contains, many unique wonders that made them consider settlement here.  I firmly believe that our shared drive as humans, despite cultural differences, is a desire for exploration and growth.  This blog is, and will remain, dedicated to this thrill of discovery regarding our new world that is still new after 500 years.

That said, I still get the odd question over e-mail, most of which get tossed my way when I say something provocative about history and politics.  Here's one:

Q: Just where do you stand politically?  I could take your ideas a bit better if I knew where they were coming from.

A: Everyone has a bias when coming to a conclusion about something.  While objective truth does indeed exist, we also have to remember that we view it through an imperfect lens of human experience.  When we debate politics and culture, it would be wise to remember this, and not just label the "other side" as stupid or responsible for bringing about the apocalypse.  In the wake of the recent American election, we are seeing this in spades from every camp out there.  In some ways, this is good.  Such camps are a sign that democracy is functioning as it should, and that free development of ideas and attempts at self and societal improvements are flowing around without the need for tyrannical oversight.  We have a free society in the United States, Canada, and even, despite what everyone might think, Mexico.  On the other hand... "If we do not hang together, we shall all hang separately. "  Benjamin Franklin said that when he noticed that the other founding fathers were being diverse to the point of polarization.

Anyway, where is my camp?

My camp is anywhere where all life, human or otherwise, is properly respected.  My camp is where individuals have the right to self-determination inasmuch as it does not negatively impact the lives of others in the same regard.  You can pretty much guess where I stand on a lot of issues from those two statements, but if I need to be more specific, I am not best labeled as either conservative or liberal.  Being a Canadian, I could not vote last week, but I would have been hard pressed to favor either presidential candidate.  Both have skewed ideas about what the above statements mean, and exist largely to curry favor with private interest groups or their own agendas.

I do find the present political climate hopeful though; now that Mr. Obama can no longer run again for president (term limits are a very, very good thing), both he and his opposition can more freely find the common ground they need to find to keep us walking in the right direction.  As a result, I am very interested and following very closely the current path of John Boehner.  He and the president, as respective men of repute and importance in their parties, have the chance to do remarkable things in American politics.  Likewise, in my home state of Michigan, I wish I could somehow merge the drives and agendas of the current governor, Rick Snyder, with those of the former, Jennifer Granholm.  The best of both of these leaders have been very good things for Michigan, in my opinion far outweighing the worst of them.  In Canada, I am finding growing respect for Mr. Harper, while I am positively giddy about the prospect of a Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, because if he is even half the man his father was, he will rank among the best world leaders we have ever had.  In Mexico, well, let's just say I hope that the PRI learns to grow up, and that no one is making deals with the cartels.  Really, I just hope we can stop buying drugs here north of the border, because brother is it ever screwing with things south of it.

In short, I am hopeful for the future.  I truly believe that we have a beautiful continent full of beautiful people, and I don't give a damn whether they say si, yes, or oui to what I think.  I prefer being able to do all three!

Bring on the new day!

The Most Powerful Lake in the World

On this day in 1975 a freighter sank to the bottom of Lake Superior, taking with it a huge load of taconite and the lives of 29 crew members.  The Edmund Fitzgerald was an amazing ship that people living along the various rivers of the St. Lawrence seaway would run to go see.  Her captain and crew were no strangers to the fact that even the largest of ships could be taken by an aggressive sea, and were perhaps on edge for some of the journey so late into the fall in such an expanse of water so far north.  They radioed that they had difficulty on the trip from Duluth that was meant for Detroit and Toledo, but gave no indication of being in mortal danger either.  Only minutes before she sank, Captain McSorley radioed that his crew was holding its own despite the great waves and winds of Gichigami giving him a hard time.  Then there was nothing.  No bodies were ever found, and the ship lay broken 530 feet below the surface.  Some have suggested that the ship hit an unmarked shoal, others suggested that a rogue wave broke the vessel in two.  Still others have claimed that a design flaw was responsible.

Whatever the truth of the matter might be, the fact remains that she was sailing on Lake Superior, a body of water that more than rivals some of the most dangerous parts of the oceans in sheer ferocity.  Superior does have shoals, some of which suddenly rise to within feet of the surface even while they are surrounded by well over hundreds of feet of water.  Gitchigami (Gitchee Gumee), as the Ojibwe call Superior, is the powerful remains of the North American ice sheet embraced and cradled by some of the oldest rock in the world, parts of the Canadian Shield rippling with muscles of iron and granite that have withstood over a billion years of erosion.  She bears hurricane force winds that blow with all the force of a Sandy or Katrina.  She rolls along waves that can engulf entire ships.  She is blue and gray and bitterly cold even after a hot summer.  She makes her own weather, and both moderates and intensifies the local climate of her shores.  She is home to some of the mightiest Lake Trout (Salvelinus Namaycush) on the planet, weighing over a hundred pounds.  However, she is also gentle...

Taken at Pictured Rocks National Seashore, Miner's Beach.  

Her irons and granites are complimented by amethysts, agates, and various other lovely rocks and minerals.  Her shores are adorned by the southern boreal forest, a peppering of birches, pines, spruces, and fir.  Her waters remain pure, a lovely piece of art left to us by nature these thousands of years after her birth from the glaciers.

She serves as a reminder to us that while we may indeed be fertile, multiply, and come to have dominion over the earth, we are never her ultimate masters.  Fortunately, though such lessons are learned painfully when disaster strikes as in the case of the loss of a great ship, Gichigami tends to inspire more than frighten.  The first born living among her figured she was a divine spirit.  The first French folk, including some Jesuits, who came to see her beating upon the ancient rocks for the first time with their astonished eyes were awestruck.  These days, there are exploiters who want to channel her to the arid western reaches of the continent, most of whom have never even seen her in a photograph.  That said, there are just as many people who have seen her that would just as soon die before letting her be channeled away.  Gichigami, it seems, continues to have a powerful effect on those who would love her... or even come to fear her.

What is "Le Nord"?

Every now and then I label my posts with particular labels that might not necessarily be self-explanatory at first glance.  Whenever I speak about French-Canadians, Canada, or the parts of the United States that pass for Canada (another such label), I usually mark such posts with "Le Nord".  Le Nord is French for "The North", and as with most geographical labels that place culture ahead of actual geography, the designation can be somewhat misleading.  What is "north" to an Ontarian or a Michigander might be a joke to some Cree fellow from far northern Quebec.  What would the opposite of north be?  South?  Would some fellow from Biloxi not consider someone from Louisville to be nearly a "northerner"?  Fortunately for such brazen label lords such as myself, cultural regions are only part of a greater recipe that can make geographical soup.

An area's landscape, its geology, flora, fauna, climate, and all such things conspiring to make the familiar smells and sensations of what is unique to every environment on earth have as much to do with what makes a place a place as its history, culture, and residents.  Le Nord, as such, is a place that combines the rugged majesty of the Canadian Shield, with its black lakes, boreal forests, sandy soils, and cold, dry air with English, French, Cree, and Algonquin speaking people who mostly live in Canada, with a few being found in the United States as well.  I thought about making a map to delineate where such a region would be, but as labels usually fall under the category of several logical fallacies, and since there are exceptions to geographical definitions, a map fell out of the question.  Instead, where you can find the below landscape, you can usually find "Le Nord".

Now, pictured there we have one of those black lakes, a shoreline peppered with granitic boulders, and lovely balsam fir and eastern white pine.  You can find this sort of scenery in the Adirondacks, northern Michigan through Minnesota, Manitoba, Ontario, and points eastward, a pretty diverse set of places.  Yet in nearly each of them you can find little towns that look like this:

That was taken in Mattawa, Ontario, a small town which looks a bit like Munising, Michigan, or Madawaska, Maine.  Sure, two of the four have pretty significant French-Canadian populations, but the cultural association is pretty much just incidental to the fact that most of the boreal parts of the world have long since been passed over as favorable for agriculture, large cities, and the other trappings of modern civilization.  French-Canadian culture has endured because it happened to be concentrated in such environments.  In 1763, Britain had a choice of getting Canada or Guadeloupe, a Caribbean island that at the time was worth more than all of France's North American possessions.  For numerous reasons, Canada was the prize that Britain settled for.  This would have normally meant mass deportations of all the French inhabitants of such lands, but owing to the need to keep the 13 colonies to the south bounded in, and because the land was not exactly a prize in the eyes of colonial settlers, French-Canadian culture remained, except on suitable land in the St. Lawrence valley further upstream where they had not yet settled in large numbers.  Again, Canada is what Britain simply settled for.  The real crowns of the empire were in the 13 colonies, Caribbean, and India.

In the next two centuries, French and First Born alike would be joined by other immigrants looking to reap the riches of an otherwise rugged land.  In keeping with their predecessors, though, these newcomers never really mowed over as much of the landscape as those further south did.  Yes, people farm in Le Nord, but that is only because a farm is one of many choices of a living in this place.  Many harvest the bounty of the land in mineral, timber, and other natural resources.  Large corporations do exploit the land here, but more than often the majority of people in these places are in it for themselves.  Much of the land still looks a bit wild and natural as a result.  That's what Le Nord is, really.  A place where some people live for living, where resources could be exploited by tend to get ignored for easier circumstances elsewhere, and where life continues largely unaffected by a modern pace of consumption and life.  Mattawa has fast food, wifi, and is not entirely off the beaten path away from larger cities with big box stores and huge malls, but it, and places like it, is not dominated by such things as much as it is set in a backdrop of a land where it is easy to remember that environment is more than just the most visible things.

Who were the Jesuits of New France?

Ever since the first of the second born of this continent arrived here, religious transformation of the continent had been at the forefront of a new destiny for North America.  The Spanish and French would bring with them an exclusive Roman Catholicism.  The English, Dutch, Swedes, and Danes would bring with them a Protestantism that excluded this Catholicism in return.  The Russians would bring their Orthodox Christianity.  In any case, the soldiers and merchants came hand in hand with various missionaries.  Nearly all of them were as concerned with replacing as much of the culture as the religions of the peoples they encountered.  The loving message of Christian transformation for the world, sadly, often came hand in hand with a pointed gun.  The missionaries would cry out "shame, shame" or at least shake their heads in silent disapproval, but nothing really changed as a result of their weak disputes with colonial domination.

One group, however, was quite different.

Ever since their foundation in 1534, the Jesuits were drawing some of the keenest and brilliant minds in Europe into their world.  These men were scientists, philosophers, politicians, artists, even warriors, but they all shared an intense zeal for spreading their faith and love of Jesus Christ to others.  They were explorers as well, just as much concerned with evangelization as with roaming about the world and embracing its beauty and offerings.  Very often, this brought them into conflicts not only with non-Catholics Christians, but also with the other missionary orders within the Catholic Church.  By the early 1600's, such was the negative attention that they had received that other missionaries made active efforts to keep them out of new territories.  One notable exception was New France.

The Franciscans in Quebec were finding that the rough country and alien cultures of the Algonquins and Montagnais were a far cry from the so-called civilized frontiers of the Arab and Oriental worlds that they had thus far been called upon to engage in conversion efforts.  Though they had started to gain experience with the first born of North America in Mexico, such evangelization efforts in the Spanish New World were augmented with steel and gun-smoke.  French efforts to colonize and economize on the New World were an altogether different affair; the native peoples were trading partners rather than subjects, and the missionaries were warned not to get in the way of the bottom line.  As the Jesuits were certainly available, willing, and capable of engaging cultures on their own terms, the Franciscans called them in for assistance.  Pretty soon, they were running the missionary effort, as well as the exploratory and diplomatic efforts on behalf of the French expedition.  They were among the first Europeans to learn the languages of the first born, and among the only to report back to the mother countries about a richness to cultures otherwise considered savage and backward.  They did, however, heavily impact any people they came across.  New France, from Quebec to Louisiane, as well as the deserts of northern Mexico and the southwestern United States, and the upper Missouri river basin were all regions that bore the mark of passing Jesuits: native peoples who had a somewhat neutral meeting with Europeans.  Their churches still stand and are in use, monuments to healthy missionary efforts:

http://www.sanxaviermission.org/

Feast of the North American Martyrs

On this day in the Roman Catholic Church are commemorated the Jesuit martyrs of New France.  Each of them endured a pretty brutal death at the hands of the Haudenosaunee, who at the time were mortal enemies of the Wendat and French.

They are commemorated in two shrines, one in Auriesville, New York, and a grander one in Midland, Ontario, which rises over a reconstructed Wendat village.  Love them or hate them, these people had a significant role in the development of North America, particularly in the conversion to Christianity of the first born sons and daughters of this land.  Together with Matteo Ricci, who worked as a missionary in China, they are largely responsible for helping to form centuries of Jesuit missionaries.  The Society of Jesus, through the experiences and sacrifices of these missionaries, learned how to carefully introduce their religion to a culture that might otherwise be somewhat worlds away from it.

So how is this for a crazy idea?  Let's spend the next week looking at what they did.

In the meantime, enjoy this fictional, but somewhat accurate, clip of a movie that spoils the ending for you.  Hint: Mortally speaking, it was not the most pleasant of endings.

On This Day...

...in 1812, Canadian forces consisting of British regulars, Upper Canadian militia, and Mohawk warriors repelled an American invasion force more than twice their number at Queenston Heights atop the Niagara Escarpment on the Niagara River.  Among the causalities at the battle was Sir Isaac Brock:

"The Death of General Brock at the Battle of Queenston Heights" by John David Kelley, 1896.  Courtesy Library and Archives Canada, C-000273.  

Despite the victory, which ensured that American forces would never achieve the quick peace and take over of Canada that they had hoped for, Brock's death would prove to be rather devastating for any hopes of a dominant Canadian position through the rest of the war.  Canada would survive, at least, if kept north of the Great Lakes.  The battle, especially in Ontario, has remained one of the high holy points of English Canadian history, a moment of triumph over American domination.  Like much of the War of 1812, the battle has also been romanticized a bit too much by Canadians, and neglected for mention in American history texts, but then, none of us were there, and our nations certainly have interesting ways of dealing with the present and future by imagining the past to be what we wish it to be.  Was Queenston Heights important?  Absolutely.  Was it, and the dramatic death of Brock, a deciding factor in the drive to keep the war going for both sides? Not nearly as much as it was the hearts and causes for all the people involved.  Wars are not glorious so much as they are crucial for understanding our consciousness of self as societies; what do we really fight for?

Rest in peace, Sir Isaac.  Your monument, the monument of all those on both sides who fell with you, stands in testament to your contribution to the history of two young and growing nations.

Opinion: Columbus Day?

Today the banks are closed, the mail is not being delivered, and some people will watch a news story about a statue of some Genoan who sailed for Spain looking for China a long time ago.  Some other people, generally more uppity about these sorts of things, will cite that today we celebrate half a millennium of genocide, cultural and physical enslavement, and all the other bad things that have happened since 1492.  These people regret that Europeans ever made contact with the West Indies that year.

I am not one of them.

What happened in 1492 did not destroy the New World.  The will and actions of individuals did that.  Did the discovery of a pair of continents with exploitable resources and peoples open up the gateways to domination by these people?  Yes, absolutely.  All the same though, Europeans, as with ALL humans, were pretty good at these things even before they made contact with the New World.  Let's be honest here, on that note: Native Americans are hardly innocent noble savages, no matter how much we would want them to be as a part of our common imagination.  Aztecs, Mayans, Incas, Haudenausonee, Crow, Commanches, etc... they were pretty rough cultures to be a part of, or worse, to be a neighbour to.  No one is entirely innocent.

Did some truly terrible things happen?  Yes, they certainly did.  I dare anyone to visit Washita in Oklahoma and not feel some sort of compassion, dread, or sorrow.  While away from the battlefield and in the comforts of one's armchair, Washita and other such slaughters of North America's first born can be rationalized away in the greater context of history and circumstance, witnessing the places where elders and children were mercilessly killed and horses shot simply for being beloved animals of the Cheyenne... I have problems even just typing this... well let's just say that the heart is moved.

All the same, I noted that such people were the first born of this continent.  Regardless of the actions of others, we must not fall into logical fallacy and blame entire peoples for atrocities.  The fact of the matter is that North America is now home to so many peoples.  This continent is a very diverse place; it was even before European contact.  There is no such thing as an "Indian", namely because there are so many different cultures and language groups present among the first born here.  Now that new generations have come, should we ask them all to go back to the rest of the world simply because they wanted to live in harmony and peace in a land where origins contribute to destiny, rather than dominate it?

I am a North American, even if my roots are European.  I think I first really came to know this when I returned home from living in London back in 2003 and looked down onto the shores of Labrador from my plane.  I saw the waves of the cold northwestern Atlantic beating down on the ancient granite of the Canadian Shield, and I knew then that I was home.  When I spent six weeks in Mexico refreshing my Spanish language skills back in 2008, I still felt at home among the pine-covered mountains of Morelos.  When I have traveled out into the truly divine wonders of the West, I have still felt at home.  Should we condemn the second child for the sake of the first?  I am sorry that the first born was screwed out of an inheritance.  That was wrong.  But I am just as much in love with my homeland, from the jungles to the tundra, as my brothers and sisters of a different mother are.

Today is a day for reflection, for all the good and ill that has come of life here in this New World since that year (even if Basques, Celts, Norse, and East Asians probably had been here before then).  Think about discovery, think about atrocity, think about a new chapter in the history of humanity.  Think about so many of the peoples of the earth making a destiny for themselves set apart from their accident of birth and instead built around what they can make of themselves.  Such are the hopes and dreams of Canadians, Americans, and Mexicans, no matter what their last name might be.  Columbus Day is a good thing.  

Oh, and by the way, today is also Canadian Thanksgiving.  Yes, we have one too, and yes, it is largely about the same reason: thankfulness for the bounty of the land.  While we don't have an iconography dominated by puritans and scantily clad native stereotypes, we do have turkey and stuffing.  If this blog makes it to next year, count on an extended history of it then.

Parks in the News: A Memorial for Margaret

On the first day of this year, Margaret Anderson, a ranger at Mount Rainier National Park was gunned down by a shooting suspect fleeing the Seattle metropolitan area.  In memory of her passing and service, a grove of Pacific Silver Fir (Abies Amabilis) have been planted near where she was killed.  The full story can be found here:

http://www.thenewstribune.com/2012/10/04/2320937/fitting-memorial-honors-mount.html

While monuments and memorials are often man made, something just seems really right for the more lasting beauty of nature to stand in memory of one who spent a life in service to her cause.  Even after the trees have fallen, their seedlings and those beyond them will live on even as the memory of Margaret fades.  May your trees grow tall, Margaret!

The last ranger to fall in the line of duty before Margaret was Kris Eggle, also gunned down, on August 9, 2002 in Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument on the Mexican border in Arizona.