A Change in the Wind

The richness of the light of these days: John Muir

Warm and bright, the valley was spanned by fibrous bows of white cloud, heated masses of air from currentless ovens of chambered and bushy rocks lifted by newborn winds and bourne whole or in fragments about the open gulf of the valley...the richness of the light of these days recalls our best mellow autumns and springs. 

John Muir, January 24-26, 1869    

(via my new Twitter stream, Muirtweets)

(image from an astounding HD video posted today on YosemiteBlog)                                                                                        

Reconciling religion and evolution: The Tree of life

From an unpretentious and persuasive visual essay on the most debated movie of the year, The Tree of Life, by Matt Zoller Seitz: 

There is this central notion in all of Malick's films that every individual person is just one tiny part of nature. Not too much more important in the larger scheme of things than an insect, or a blade of grass. It's really not all that radical to state, but it's one American audiences seem to have trouble accepting, because it's anathema to the way we are told we should live our lives. And in this [evolution] sequence Terence Malick has done something quite remarkable, which is that he has reconciled religion and evolution. He has reconciled religion and science. 

That's from the first part of the essay, which Seitz put together with a film editor collaborator. In the second part, which is much more beautiful, because it features the mother in the film, the most beautiful of its characters by about a country mile, he gets specific:

When we hear the mother speaking in voice-over, I think we're hearing Jack's projection of her internal voice, her overwhellming goodness, her unselfishness, her sunbeam warmth. Look at how she dotes on her infant child in this moment near the opening of the movie. She's Mother Earth, much as "The Tree of Life" itself is Mother Earth. 

 

"The Tree of Life" is the most debated movie of the year, because critics love it, by a 40-2 margin, and ordinary people often detest it.

Edward Abbey encounters Los Angeles

Sort of.

In his classic Desert Solitaire, Abbey recounts going to Southern California with some friends from the University of New Mexico. On the way they stopped to roll an old tire into the Grand Canyon. While so engaged, Abbey happened to hear a ranger describe a little-known branch off the main canyon called Havasu. On the spur of the moment he decided to visit, and so he never did make it to L.A. But he talks about it in the Havasu chapter of his great book about the desert, first published in l968:

That was fifteen years ago. And I still have not seen the fabulous city on the Pacific shore. Perhaps I never will. There's something in the prospect southwest from Barstow which makes one hesitate. Although recently, driving my own truck, I did succeed in penetrating as close as San Bernardino. But was hurled back by what appeared to be clouds of mustard gas rolling in from the west on a very broad front. Thus failed again. It may be however that Los Angeles will come to me. Will come to all of us, as it must (they say) to all men. 

Here's what he found (Havasu Falls, by Bryan Chang). 

 

Can't imagine why he changed his mind...

The Grand Canyon of the Colorado: l901

From Our National Parks, published in 1901:

No matter how far you have wandered hitherto, or how many famous gorges and valleys you have seen, this one, the Grand Cañon of the Colorado, will seem as novel to you, as unearthly in the color and grandeur and quantity of its architecture, as if you had found it after death, on some other star; so incomparably lovely and grand and supreme is it above all the other cañons in our fire-moulded, earthquake-shaken, rain-washed, wave-washed, river and glacier sculptured world. It is about six thousand feet deep where you first see it, and from rim to rim ten to fifteen miles wide. Instead of being dependent for interest upon waterfalls, depth, wall sculpture, and beauty of parklike floor, like most other great cañons, it has not waterfalls in sight, and no appreciable floor spaces. The big river has just room enough to flow and roar obscurely, here and there groping its way as best it can, like a weary, murmuring, overladen traveler trying to escape from the tremendous, bewildering labyrinthic abyss, while its roar serves only to deepen the silence.

I wonder -- and so, no doubt, would John Muir -- if that silence remains. 

2010: three or four things not to forget

We can't remember everything. Blessedly. But some things from 2010 are too good to forget: 

Why telling the truth about climate change is good politics, from David Roberts: 

No matter what derangements currently hold sway over American politics, eventually, reality will out. The crazy weather will get worse, ice fields will melt, agriculture will suffer, food shortages will get more severe. Sooner or later, American politics will have to deal with climate change -- that is a certainty.

When that day comes, the party that has spoken honestly about climate change, speaking the truth throughout the waxing and waning of public opinion, will a) look prescient and morally courageous, and b) be trusted by the American people to develop solutions.

Yes. And speaking of devastation, Wall Street deserves every lump it got last year, and more, wrote John Cassidy in The New Yorker, in a devastatingly solid piece that might actually have an effect, called What Good is Wall Street? 

Think of all the profits produced by businesses operating in the U.S. as a cake. Twenty-five years ago, the slice taken by financial firms was about a seventh of the whole. Last year, it was more than a quarter. (In 2006, at the peak of the boom, it was about a third.) In other words, during a period in which American companies have created iPhones, Home Depot, and Lipitor, the best place to work has been in an industry that doesn’t design, build, or sell a single tangible thing.

A poet wrote probably the best book of last year -- and it's a love story! 

We said farewell and I left his room. But something drew me back. He had fallen into a light sleep. I stood there and looked at him. So peaceful, like an ancient child. He opened his eyes and smiled. "Back so soon?" And then again to sleep.

So my last image was as the first. A sleeping youth cloaked in light, who opened his eyes with a smile of recognition for someone who had never been a stranger. 

And, speaking of rock and roll, it's a form still capable of greatness, as we heard from The National: 

  The National - High Violet - 02 - Sorrow by yovizna

If this is damnation, I don't want to be saved

Damnation Creek Trail, Redwood NP, originally uploaded by lindsay_kaun.

A ridiculously good tree picture, via the mind-blowing Treeporn site.

The Southern Lights...

...from astronaut Bruce Wheeler's perspective. 

Does it matter that this astonishing image comes via Twitter' -- or Twitpik?  

Not to me. Like it like that. For more on the mission, here's a report from Discover.

How to send a camera soaring

Colin Rich demonstrates, right here in Ventura County. 

Somehow he makes sending single-handedly a camera halfway to space look absurdly easy, all the while revealing the astonishing beauty of this little corner of the universe. Wow. 

Pacific Star II from Colin Rich on Vimeo.

Love is the engine, but love is not remembered

So writes Charles Bowden, in the award-winning Some of the Dead Are Still Breathing. 

This is an "environmental" book, but I don't believe Bowden ever mentions that word. Yet unlike nearly every other book about nature I can think save a couple written by John Muir or Edward Abbey, this "environmental" book does bring up "love" and/or "sex" quite frequently...and even bawdily. 

Bowden writes:

Love is the engine, the only thing that matters, the sensation that moves the planet down some path that makes today look less than tomorrow. And love is not remembered. The wars, the rich, the blues men beating their women, the long drag off that joint, the killing ground, these get remembered. Along with famines, plague, and those other two horsemen riding death through the duly recorded pages. But not love. It simply moves things. All the forgotten mothers. And lovers. And eager lips facing down history and reaching for warmth amid the cold stars of midnight. 

I believe this. But I cannot clearly tell you what love is. 

Bowden is not being sentimental here; in another passage, he mocks those scientists who would attempt to chalk up every quirk of every creature's behavior by "evolution" or "instinct." He's simply puzzled -- and fascinated by love. Reading this book about the natural world, one wonders: why is this so rare?  

I believe in the future: Charles Bowden

Orion magazine recently named Some of the Dead are Still Breathing, by Charles Bowden, its enviro book of the year. 

The commendation's mention of the risks Bowden ventured motivated me to pick it up. Haven't gotten far, but I'm impressed by its almost recklessly free style. Here's a memorable passage from early on: 

My beliefs are dull and dismissed out of hand.

I believe that resources are limited and that no existing or imagined energy system can sidestep this fact. 

I believe that the increase in human numbers inhales ever more resources.

I believe no energy system will deliver the punch of our declining fossil fuels at the same price. 

I believe that no energy system will solve our problems since the problems come from within us and not from our turbines. 

I believe in red wine. And the scent of women. And the nuzzle of all dogs of all ages. 

I believe political systems create no resources but devour them at varying rates. 

I believe the politics or right and left matter no at all to the bird on the wing or the trees dying on the hillsides. 

I believe in the future because the future is here and I am a part of it. 

I believe. Not wonder. Not doubt. Not know. I believe. 

I believe in the dead city. I believe in the nest. 

I also believe in the late quartets of Beethoven and Gershwin's "Summertime."

Oh, my God, do I believe.