• WineCountry.com Magazine : Feature Article - Hiking and Picnicking in Wine Country
  The Ultimate Hiking and Picnic Spots Above Wine Country
  (tags: wine hiking country autumn outings)
• Amazon.ca Books: Hiking / Cooking, Food & Wine
  Amazon’s list of camping and backcountry cookbooks.
  (tags: cooking food wine hiking trail backpacking backcountry camping recipe cookbook)

• Really cool websites I’ve stumbled upon
  The winehiker hangs five — five whole minutes.
  (tags: cool fun websites winehiker winehiking american trails bay area travel guide wiki eight irresistible principles knots breathing earth time zone)
• It’s our fault
  Have we really become afraid of going outdoors?
  (tags: active advocate animals backcountry backpacking hiking blog earth ecology education environment exercise experience outdoors happiness health hikes influence inspiration learning life lifestyle mountains nature online technology video games toys mall rat snowshoeing tours travel trekking vacation wellness winehiker winehiking)
• Sustainability Dictionary
  (tags: sustainability reference dictionary business environment green education blog earth ecology nature)
• Treehugger
  (tags: environment green blog design sustainability business change climate earth ecology fun health lifestyle nature News outdoors recycle Science tools toys)
• Inhabitat
  (tags: design architecture blog furniture art business ecology environment green life lifestyle recycling sustainability)
• Worldwatch Institute
  (tags: environment sustainability research politics climate earth ecology education ethics green learning life population reference Science technology)
• sustainablog
  (tags: sustainability blog environment green business ecology cool ethics recycling)

I’ve been reading some of the posts on Cutter’s blog. In one of them, Whose fault?, Cutter, with reference to a Nature Conservancy study, examines why there’s been a nine-year decline in visitation to our National Parks. He raises such questions as “Are we distracted too much by toys and technology?” and “Is it a case of today’s generations going soft and lazy?”

Says Cutter:

“We’ve become afraid of the outdoors. And worse, we have no patience for it. In the process, we’re driving out our natural need to remain connected to the outdoors.”

I have heard — yes, even felt — that siren call of the outdoors for so many years that it’s almost hard for me to grasp that most other people don’t hear it. So Is Cutter’s pronouncement true? Sadly, I feel that it is. Just look at today’s trends — we as a global society tend to admire style over substance, as if being fashion-conscious rates higher than exploring our natural surroundings.

As parents, it’s our fault — we’ve failed to honor the relationship with Nature that we once enjoyed as kids. We’ve failed in our commitment to pay it forward.

Nature giveth. Nature also taketh away. Which is why we need to remain connected to Nature.

But time accelerates. It’s not a case of “need to” — we MUST. We must place less emphasis on our supposed need for toys, set them aside often, and realign ourselves with what’s really real out there. We must honor the real and the tangible (the real rock.) We must continually strengthen our natural connection with our one-and-only Mother Earth, and do it as a matter of course — as part of our educational system, and as part of educating each other, young and old.

It’s either that or hurtle pell-mell toward oblivion because we can’t persuade enough of the next generation that this planet — whether in the macrocosm of global warming or the microcosm of local disappearing species — is worth saving. If we as a society choose to lose our connection to Nature, the consequences are deeply foreboding.

Tell your friends to “go take a hike.” Better yet, take them by the hand, and lead them. I can help.

~winehiker

As if I actually have time for surfing websites, much less stumbling upon them…

• American Trails: your national resources for trails and greenways
• The Bay Area Travel Guide from WikiTravel
• The Eight Irresistible Principles of Fun
• I Will Knot!
• Breathing Earth

And, because “timing is everything,” a graphical interactive time zone checker: http://www.timezonecheck.com/

~winehiker

At last Thursday evening’s Merlot event, we tasted six bottles - five from Napa Valley, all from California. While I can’t speak for the other folks present, it was apparent to me that all six could have breathed an hour before tasting them, as all seemed quite tart 10-15 minutes out of the bottle. Nevertheless, we took our time tasting.

I expect a velvety silkiness of body when I taste Merlots, but we didn’t find it in our combined selections. Most of these Merlots were fairly young, alcoholic, from the 2003 vintage, with minimal finish. Many of us had been advised on our purchases by our respective wine merchants, but I’ll have to say that for the $14-$26 price range we spanned, none fit the price. The least expensive wine was the group favorite.

It was kind of disappointing. Would I serve any of the following wines to my friends? Sadly, no.

Paired with our Merlot were a sweet baguette, a soft camembert cheese, and a delectable buttery gouda, which fortunately enhanced the taste of the wines.

About the wines
The wines listed below are ranked top-down, most favorite to least favorite; each is followed by the wine’s heat (alcohol content) and the price per 750ml bottle. In the left column is the actual group score for each wine using my handy-dandy Wine Scoring Sheet, which is based on the 20-point Davis scale. Below the group ranking, I’ve employed the scoring sheet to rank each wine individually.

Group ranking

Winehiker’s ranking

The St. Clement had garnered a Wine & Spirits ranking of 92 points. However, with its musty “bathroom sink” odors, it was off-putting for the group right away. While this wine grew on me, it took all evening, yet still did not significantly stand out from the rest to warrant purchase. The winner, based on consistency, was the Mondavi with its floral, vanilla, and tobacco notes; it did not score very high when scored individually, but it did not score any negatives in the group ranking. The Atalon was closest to offering the rich silkiness of better Merlots and would go best with chocolate; I detected leather and moderate heat in my purchase, the Whitehall Lane.

~winehiker

I mentioned yesterday that I learned a lot of valuable wilderness advice from the teachings of Don Carre. Subsequent to high school I came to admire, and was profoundly influenced by, the writings of Edward Abbey. More than any other, with the possible exception of my own parents, it is the influence of these two men that have endured for me.

I actually met “Cactus Ed” Abbey in the Fall of 1988, six months before his death. He was on a book tour plugging what was to be his final novel, The Fool’s Progress, and I visited a crowded Keppler’s Book Store in Menlo Park to listen to him read from the new book.

Much of Abbey’s work is worth quoting. A few of my favorites appear below.

“There are some good things to be said about walking. Not many, but some. Walking takes longer, for example, than any other known form of locomotion except crawling. Thus it stretches time and prolongs life. Life is already too short to waste on speed. I have a friend who’s always in a hurry; he never gets anywhere. Walking makes the world much bigger and thus more interesting. You have time to observe the details. The utopian technologists foresee a future for us in which distance is annihilated. To be everywhere at once is to be nowhere forever, if you ask me.”
–The Journey Home (1977)

“The love of wilderness is more than a hunger for what is always beyond reach; it is also an expression of loyalty to the earth, the earth which bore us and sustains us, the only home we shall ever know, the only paradise we ever need — if only we had the eyes to see.”
–Down the River (1982)

“According to the current doctrines of mysticoscientism, we human animals are really and actually nothing but ‘organic patterns of nodular energy composed of collocations of infinitesimal points oscillating on the multidimensional coordinates of the space-time continuum’. I’ll have to think about that. Sometime. Meantime, I’m going to gnaw on this sparerib, drink my Blatz beer, and contemplate the a posteriori coordinates of that young blonde over yonder, the one in the tennis skirt, tying her shoelaces.”
–A Voice Crying in the Wilderness: Notes from a Secret Journal (1989)

“Has joy any survival value in the operations of evolution? I suspect that it does; I suspect that the morose and fearful are doomed to quick extinction. Where there is no joy there can be no courage; and without courage all other virtues are useless.”
–Desert Solitaire (1968)

~winehiker

I’m up a little early this morning. Something wasn’t quite right. At 3:00 a.m. I got up, brewed a cup of coffee, and washed some dishes. Then I checked my email, and now I’m a little choked up.

There are moments - in here and out there - real, honest, emotion-inducing moments wherein the eyes well up, the spine tingles, and the captured memories - of such astounding yet fleeting blips in your Life - find themselves inescapably resonating with you long after you’ve left the trail. Be it a tree growing out of a rock and thriving, two rattlesnakes mating, a night filled with horizon-to-horizon meteors, directly making eye contact with a bobcat, or witnessing the profound deeds of extraordinary people - there is nothing like hiking in Nature to bring the best out of people, bring the best out of yourself, and restore balance and harmony to one’s Life.

We need to be thankful that we have such bounty around us that we can escape into when the feeling calls. I for one cannot fathom what it would be like for me to forsake regular visits to the wilderness - even when it’s just the local paved bike path along the creek at lunchtime.

We need to be thankful, too, for the people we choose to surround ourselves with, whether we choose to be with them regularly or choose to regularly acknowledge their presence within us.

There was an extraordinary man in my early life who shaped much of the person I am today - the man who first got me out on the trails. His name was Don Carre; he was my music teacher in high school, but also (lucky for me) an avid backpacker who advised our student’s backpacking club. I learned so much from Don about organizing trips, menu planning, wilderness ethics  - even climbing knots. I remember less about playing the tympani for him than I do the fundamental grounding - and desire to be out there - that he left with me.

Don, I’m in here this morning, wishing I had another moment to hike out there with you.

From the San Jose Mercury News, Saturday, September 23, 2006:

1937 - 2006
Compassionate teacher, sensitive musician, devoted husband, avid mountaineer, skilled woodworker, passionate sailor.

Don was born in San Jose to Bill & Helen Carre’, raised on a fruit ranch in Campbell, graduated from Campbell High School and SJSU with a major in music education. He married Carol Carpenter in 1960 and began teaching at Buchser High School in Santa Clara in 1962. He was band director there until 1983, when he taught choral music for a few years.

When computers arrived on the school scene, he switched to that field and ran the computer lab at Santa Clara High until his retirement in 1998. He also initiated the Buchser Backpackers hiking club as an offshoot of his experiences as a leader with the Youth Science Institute summer program.

In retirement, he and Carol completed remodeling their home, spent 6 summers living on a sailboat on the east coast, and enjoyed traveling. He lost his valiant battle with colon cancer on Sept. 12.

In celebration of his life, there will be a gathering of friends and family on Sunday, Sept. 24, 2006 at 1:30 p.m. at the Redwood Estates Pavillion in the Santa Cruz Mtns.

He is survived by his wife Carol, and brothers Bill, Larry, & Bob.

~winehiker

P.S. Thanks to Dave Hibbert for passing along the news.

Being a former precocious preadolescent, I once used to voraciously read Mad magazine. It’s what you did as a boy back in the 1970s before your testicles descended, and hey — I was no different. For 12-year-olds hanging out in our treehouses conveniently away from intruding parents, satire was the urban refuge of the budding cynic, and irreverence was a holy thing. While our across-the-gender-fence peers could have been a continent removed from us reading all the latest Tiger Beat gossip about Bobby Sherman, Donny Osmond, and Tony DeFranco, we were passing around well-thumbed copies of Mad, as well as Cracked and National Lampoon.

We were the Kings of All Boyhood.

True, we were hooked on the brazen impudence, the distorted symbolism, the racy chimera of these puerile rags. But as I continued along the winding trail through the rocky promontories of my postpubescence, I discovered real rock: the writings of Aldo Leopold, John Muir, Wallace Stegner, John Wesley Powell, Rachel Carson, Edward Abbey.

I had already become an avid hiker and backpacker, and was later to adopt a 200-mile-a-week bicycling habit. Not to mention a fondness for wine, if I could afford it, and a desire to taste and breathe all things natural and good. I had developed a deep longing to be out there where I could breathe that sweet and lucid, yet unspoiled, rarefied mountain breeze that continually sang to me with its siren call.

My idealism was wholly influenced by all I read, and I went on to pursue studies in biology, botany, physics, geology, land surveying, and, for a while, a degree in forest science. Later, despite my gravitation to a more technical career path yet still drawn by Abbey’s ornery, magnetic prose, I ventured to the stark red rock vastnesses of the Colorado Plateau to strengthen my connection to what Abbey described so vividly as Bedrock and Paradox.

I kept on reading.

If there’s one absolute Truth that I would learn through this timeline, it’s that one can’t be a writer without first being a reader. It was these readings and experiences that began to shape what my Self was to become. Yet for all that I would ever think, feel, do, and share with others, it became apparent to me that there was only one higher Absolute Truth:

Only rock is real.

Yet my attraction to all things bound to this Rock that we — all species — live our lives upon began, as I’ve intimated, with a love of trees, and a desire for their sound management and preservation.

During my angst-prone pimple-ridden wide-eyed youth, I penned the following poem, a Mad parody of Joyce Kilmer’s oft-quoted World War I-era classic. Some might say that I stole this poem from Mad magazine. All I can tell you is that I was heavily influenced by what I was reading at age 17; I was writing a fair amount of “love and death” poetry at the time.

I’ll let you be the judge.

TREES, I THINK

I think that I shall never see
A poem as lovely as a tree.

I’d hoped, of course, that there would be
A tree still left for me to see.

Some lumber firm from out of town
Has chopped the whole damned forest down.

But I’ll show up those stupid chumps!
I’ll go and write a poem called “Stumps!”

~winehiker

I went out for my usual Tuesday after-work bike ride with a few riders from work. It was a sultry warm afternoon, in the mid-80’s. Not too uncomfortable for a moderately-paced group such as ours.

We hadn’t gone far yet — just a couple hundred yards or so up the nearby paved bike path that I often walk during lunch (see Phoebe on a Fencepost for a related story). There was a woman running ahead of us in the same direction, and as we approached her - me in the lead - she quite suddenly looked down toward the side of the trail. I followed her gaze to what appeared to be a small branch lying there.

Except that it wasn’t a branch at all.

As I passed, I saw the spade-shaped head, the diamond-back pattern, the darting tongue, and the rattle itself; I counted seven buttons as I rolled by.

Being in the sun, perhaps the bike path was too warm for this 30-inch buzzworm, a pit viper species common to California and known to biologists and Latin scholars as Crotalus viridis oreganos, or Northern Pacific Rattlesnake. While apparently sluggish from the radiant heat of the asphalt, he seemed alert to our passing, yet was stretched out to his full length and hence not coiled to strike; neither was his signature tail sending a warning.

Nevertheless, a rattlesnake at close range is still a rattlesnake. We momentarily picked up our pace — rider and runner alike. Still, Mr. Buzzworm could have easily gone for a little nibble on our ankles as we passed. It’s a wonder that he didn’t.

But we didn’t stop to ask why.

~winehiker

I’ve camped with folks who really love the JetBoil system. Others have endorsed JetBoil’s products online. It’s true that the JetBoil stove can certainly can put a hot steaming mug of caffeinated goodness in one’s hand very quickly on a cold morning.

However, the JetBoil system uses a proprietary propane/iso-butane fuel mix; on their website, they state “we cannot claim safe operation with any canister other than our Jetpower brand of fuel.”

Their fuel canisters are not refillable, either, being designed only for one-time use. Yes, they are recyclable, but who among us knows off the top of their head where they can go nearby to recycle these canisters? This type of helpful information does not appear to be present on the JetBoil website.

Years ago I made a commitment to not buy disposable/nonrefillable products if there were alternative products available. Products that are disposable or are not designed to be reused merely clog the landfills and enlarge the aggregate ecological footprint, our per capita impact on the Earth.

Therefore, when recently replacing my trusty old Coleman stove, I did not purchase a JetBoil system.

I wrote to the JetBoil folks and asked the question, “Do you plan to produce a fuel canister that is refillable and/or can the JetBoil connect to a larger fuel distribution system such as a one-gallon propane tank?”

This morning I received the following response from Kristen Headley at JetBoil Customer Service:

“At this time our canisters are not refillable. However the canisters can be recycled anywhere that will recycle steel products. When recycling we do recommend that you puncture the canisters before sending them to be recycled. This can be done with a common can opener.”

Ms. Headley’s response is quite disappointing, if not also shocking. It tells me nothing that I don’t already know, plus it evades my question. Apparently JetBoil does not plan to adopt a universal system that allows for reuse. It is also not clear to me why I should puncture the fuel canister prior to recycling. Quite frankly, the last thing I’m willing to do is to puncture a pressurized fuel canister. In fact, the Northeast Recycling Council, a non-profit organization, advises the public that “The individual consumer should never attempt to puncture, incinerate or otherwise vent [a] fuel canister except through its normal intended use.”

The NERC goes on to state, “…the canister may be recycled in some communities if accepted in the recycling program or at the household hazardous waste collection site.”

There’s two big IFs wrapped up in this problem of recycling nonrefillable fuel canisters. Most people will have to drive to one location to buy their proprietary one-size-does-not-fit-all fuel canister, then drive to another location to recycle those same canisters — IF they can find one within a reasonable distance and IF that recycling location accepts spent fuel canisters. To say nothing of using more gasoline to accomplish these tasks, most people will, I’m afraid, just throw their spent canisters away, thereby adding to the landfill problem.

Until JetBoil and other campstove manufacturers adopt product policies that incorporate zero waste and a more open design approach to fuel type, canister reuse, and fuel distribution systems, I cannot in good conscience buy or endorse their nonrefillable products.

~winehiker