Natural Disasters and Place Attachment
Plus, Walking like a Monk, Coyotes in the City, Better hiking on the Apple Watch, a Mount Whitney Poo Problem, and more
howdy
When you get this newsletter, I’ll be on the trails around Carson City, Nevada, getting a feel for the capital city, hopefully getting a little taste of fall color, and checking out the new trail system that connects the state’s capitol building to the Pacific Crest Trail (I wrote about a fun thing Nevada is doing to sponsor some thru-hikers earlier in the year).
And of course, on Sunday I’ll be in Los Angeles for the Autry Museum’s block party (come visit me from 1-2PM please!). I’m really looking forward to seeing some old friends and hitting up some of my favorite old haunts (and trails) while I’m there, and I’ll be adding to my native plant tattoo collection, too.
One thing I am not exactly looking forward to, though, is seeing the new burn scars. Between the Line Fire in the San Bernardino Mountains and the Bridge Fire in the San Gabriels, almost 94,000 acres have burned in the Transverse Ranges this year. As is becoming the norm, these fires are often burning areas that have already been burned. With a hotter, drier climate, the native vegetation—which has evolved to deal with fires, but not like these—is having a tougher and tougher time bouncing back. And of course, there’s also the recreational effect—some of these areas were either still closed to hikers from previous fires or had just re-opened.
In many cases, we won’t know the full extent of the damage to the trail networks for many months or even years. The Bridge Fire appears to have affected the upper
East Fork of the San Gabriel River, home to the spectacular Bridge to Nowhere hike. Like you, I have many wonderful memories attached to that area—it’s one of the first trails I had to exercise some route-finding on, with varying degrees of success (and not, like, wandering out of the canyon, but figuring out which of the several dozen use trails was the actual trail). I took my brother and future sister-in-law here, and may have failed to recognize some early signs of dehydration. My future husband and I took our dog here and learned the hard way about the importance of foot coverings for canines. And if I sit and think about it, I can still feel exactly how refreshing and invigorating that ice-cold water can be rushing around a tired, dirty, sweaty body.
Which is all to say that I totally understand the sense of mourning and loss going on in the Southern California outdoor community right now. And it seems like this particular community is affected more frequently than a lot of others, which can start to feel like a perpetual bummer.
A few years back, when the Woolsey Fire tore through more than 80% of the Santa Monica Mountain National Recreation Area, I was on a plane heading north and drove past another small fire burning in Griffith Park. I sat with a lot of these same feelings and wrote what I think is a long-view optimistic piece for my fellow hikers. If you’re bummed about the burns … or floods or landslides or forest die-offs or whatever is affecting the trails near you … I think it’s still worth reading today.
Modern Hiking
Good stuff from the Modern Hiker site
We’ve got a few new trail guides added to the site this week, including a short but sweet trek to a bona fide hot spring just outside the fancy mansions of Montecito and a compelling forest-bathing nature walk in the Berkeley Hills. I’d say you could heat up in one and cool down in the other, and that would be true if and only if you could get between the two locations quickly. Oh well!
Your Parks
Your Places
Another Poop Problem on Mount Whitney
Mount Whitney is, of course, the tallest mountain in the Lower 48 states. It is a beautiful area and a challenging hike … for me to poop on. OK, sorry about that, but that is the voice I had in my head while reading a San Francisco Chronicle about hikers leaving their WAG bags on the mountain instead of packing them out like they’re supposed to.
For those that don’t know, the WAG bag (Waste Alleviating Gel) are distributed to hikers when they pick up their permits. Because the trail to Mount Whitney is heavily trafficked and in a fragile alpine environment, human waste left behind can have a huge impact. So hikers are asked to poop in these bags and bring everything back down with them. I can tell you from experience that this process is a little odd at first, but really not that big of a deal—but pooping in the bag and then just leaving it there is really not helping. Kind of like hikers who take their dogs on the trail and scoop the poop, but leave the bag on the trail. Don’t do that!
Oregon’s Highway of Waterfalls
Did you know Oregon had a “Highway of Waterfalls”? I did not! But the good people at The Oregonian’s Peak Northwest podcast sure do, and their latest episode talks all about State Highway 138, which meanders from Interstate 5 toward the northern entrance of Crater Lake National Park, offering up some spectacular waterfall side trips, campgrounds, and volcanic hikes along the way. This is a great reminder that it has been way too long since I’ve been back to Crater Lake, and this is a side trip I need to put on my to-do list.
Check out the podcast on The Oregonian’s page, or look for Peak Northwest on your favorite podcast app.
Tech Talk
Gadgets, Technology, and Hype
AllTrails Goes Apple Watch
The AllTrails mobile app has been given a big ol’ update this week, with a new app specifically designed for the Apple Watch. If you have an Apple Watch, you can install the new watch-specific app and use that instead of the app on your phone. The Watch app is able to track and record an activity, provide turn by turn directions on an existing route, and function as a compass, too. You won’t be able to view maps on the watch, though.
For instructions on how to get the app working properly on your watch, check out this guide from AllTrails.
The Beauty of a Silent Walk
If you’re not on TikTok, you may not be aware that an L.A.-based influencer has just discovered walking in silence, and it’s a hot new trend, I guess. I feel like this comes up every few months, now, as Internet continues to atrophy our collective memory, but if more folks can discover the very real mental health benefits of walking around outside without additional forms of distraction or entertainment, I’m all for it.
You know this already, because you read this newsletter and are also probably some stripe of hiker, but a quick New York Times piece on this trend highlights some of those benefits, including:
· Walking 10 minutes a day may lead to a longer life
· A 30-minute walk in an urban park reduces negative rumination
· Walking of all kinds has been shown to increase creativity and decrease depression
and more! So, if you can’t get out for a hike, leave the earbuds (and preferably even the phone) at home and take a nice half hour stroll. It’ll be worth it!
Wildlife Crossing
Wildlife and the Outdoors
San Franciscans Getting Uncomfortable Around Coyotes
In an article in the Wall Street Journal, it appears that some San Franciscans are so concerned about coyote activity in the city they’re considering buying guns. Or, OK, that’s true for at least one person interviewed in this article, which details the seeming uptick in coyote activity and aggression in neighborhoods and parks throughout the city. Anecdotal evidence of attacks on small dogs and threatening behavior has some citizens calling for sterilization, relocation, or even extermination of the charismatic canids—although the article does speak to biologists who say that those strategies don’t work with coyotes and are also illegal in California.
The better solutions? Following leash laws, taking care to not habituate coyotes to human presence and food, and generally just remembering that coyotes are wild animals and not cute, smart wild dogs (which is tough, I get it—years ago I saw a coyote using a water fountain in Griffith Park and I still think about how impressive that was).
One More Thing
Oh yeah, before I go …
Mustached Rangers Tackle AI Art
If you’ve been reading this newsletter for a while, you probably know my stance on AI-generated “art.” So it was fun to see this virtual garbage being called out by a pair of strikingly similar-looking mustached rangers at West Virginia’s New River Gorge National Park and Preserve, who apparently have been getting people coming in with AI-generated views of the park and asking where the photos were taken.
Speaking of, have y’all heard of model collapse and synthetic data?
Anyway, stop using AI to make fake images of beautiful places in nature and how about go see one in person, instead?
Until next time,
Happy Trails.
