Seasonal Shifts
New National Monuments, Joshua Tree Tips, Noise in National Parks, Audubon Name Changes, Naughty Topiary and lots more!
howdy
Spring has officially arrived, and I hope that wherever you are, the weather has been mostly kind to you, or at the very least, not dangerous. This week’s bomb cyclone / 12th atmospheric river for California really seemed to do a number on vast swaths of the state.
At the Modern Hiker HQ in Portland, there is some snow threatened in next week’s forecast but we are finally starting to see the sun again. Runners were in shorts this week, although Northwest runners will wear shorts and tank tops in freezing rain in December, so that’s not saying much.
Years of hiking have strengthened my connection to the outdoors, so I tend to take my spring celebration cues from the plants around me. In Southern California, it was the annual online questions of WHAT IS THIS when people posted photos of Marah pods to their Instagram feeds, and the cloudy white blooms of buckbrush ceanothus in Griffith Park and the San Gabriel Mountains.
Here in the Northwest, I’m still learning a lot of the native plants, but in my garden I already know the rhythms in year three. This weekend I was cutting back the fronds on the many, many Western sword ferns in the garden, which always gives me a good chance to take stock on what’s going on in the habitat. Red-flowering currant is one of the first to leaf out and bloom in the spring, and despite our cold and gloomy weather, they were right on schedule. These flowers don’t last very long, but their scent reminds me a lot of California sagebrush after a rain, so it’s a nice reminder of what I still consider my home biome.
The other showy early entrant is my little grove of big leaf lupines. I cut these back down to the ground in late summer and they re-emerge from the otherwise barren soil early. As they grow, when it rains, the star-shaped leaves catch the precipitation and usually hold a single drop in the center like a precious diamond. By summer, they’ll be as tall I am and full of showy bloom stalks. It’s definitely a plant that gets a lot of attention from the people who walk by the house (more on a plant that gets some different attention later in the newsletter).
I’m going to be on the road on and off for the next few weeks and I’m a little bummed I won’t be here to watch the day to day changes, but I’m looking forward to seeing what’s growing and blooming when I get back.
And now, because it’s spring, a poem break courtesy of Mary Oliver. This poem is in her book Twelve Moons and was re-posted by the Poetic Outlaws substack. Hope you enjoy, and happy spring!
Worm Moon by Mary Oliver
I.
In March the earth remembers its own name.
Everywhere the plates of snow are cracking.
The rivers begin to sing. In the sky
the winter stars are sliding away; new stars
appear as, later, small blades of grain
will shine in the dark fields.
And the name of every place
is joyful.
II.
The season of curiosity is everlasting
and the hour for adventure never ends,
but tonight
even the men who walked upon the moon
are lying content
by open windows
where the winds are sweeping over the fields,
over water,
over the naked earth,
into villages, and lonely country houses, and the vast cities
III.
because it is spring;
because once more the moon and the earth are eloping -
a love match that will bring forth fantastic children
who will learn to stand, walk, and finally run
over the surface of earth;
who will believe, for years,
that everything is possible.
IV.
Born of clay,
how shall a man be holy;
born of water,
how shall a man visit the stars;
born of the seasons,
how shall a man live forever?
V.
Soon
the child of the red-spotted newt, the eft,
will enter his life from the tiny egg.
On his delicate legs
he will run through the valleys of moss
down to the leaf mold by the streams,
where lately white snow lay upon the earth
like a deep and lustrous blanket
of moon-fire,
VI.
and probably
everything
is possible.
The Big Story
Something to talk about
Two New Monuments
Well it seems like all the people who thought they had an inside track on the proclamation naming Nevada’s new Avi Kwa Ame National Monument were more than a little off. I started getting pre-emptive press releases late last year, then we were supposed to get the proclamation in early March, then it was supposed to come sometime in April.
President Biden ended up proclaiming Avi Kwa Ame on Tuesday, March 21st—and surprised people by both naming a larger area than was anticipated and by tossing in a bonus national monument, too. Biden also proclaimed 6,600 acres of land inside El Paso, Texas city limits as Castner Range National Monument.
Avi Kwa Ame protects countless indigenous sites and provides an essential wildlife corridor between Nevada’s protected Lake Mead National Recreation Area and the Sloan Canyon National Conservation Area and California’s Mojave National Preserve, Dead Mountain Wilderness, and Castle Mountains and Mojave Trails National Monuments. The New York Times notes it’s the largest monument Biden has proclaimed so far, and is also only the second monument ever created to protect Native history.
Castner Range is the third national monument in Texas, and preserves sweeping fields of poppies, petroglyphs and rock art, and military history—the monument sits on the site of a retired military training site. Castner Range was also named to provide outdoor recreation to the nearby city of El Paso, but Politico notes that the monument still has unexploded munitions on site and the area will require extensive rehabilitation.
When a new national monument is named, the designation change is fast but the actual management plans can take a few years to get into place as the new managers reach out to all the various local stakeholders (for a deep dive, check out this explainer I did on the Antiquities Act). But for now, congratulations to our newest national monuments and all the advocates who have been working for many, many years to make this happen.
Also, we didn’t forget about the Willow project, Joe.
Modern Hiking
Good stuff from the Modern Hiker site
Get Thee to J Tree
So here’s the deal—this is probably the best time to visit Joshua Tree National Park in terms of weather and wildflowers. But it’s also probably the worst in terms of visitor crowds. Them’s the breaks with seasonal stuff, you know?
But still, if you’re looking for an excuse to visit—and especially if you can swing getting out there during the week—we’ve got a list of some of our favorite visits for first-timers from Cleo Egnal. You’ll definitely want to hit these up before the temperatures rise … and trust me, they’ll be going up sooner than you think!
Keepin’ it Local
And hey, if you can’t make it out to Joshua Tree, there’s always something local to enjoy. In a new trail guide, Andrew Shults revisits a trail he’d previously used only for running, and by slowing down he noticed it’s lack of show-stopping features was actually a major feature in and of itself.
It’s kind of the philosophical core of Modern Hiker—we love all those bucket list hikes that show up on “Best Hikes In Your State dot org” or whatever—but we also love our unsung local favorites and we hope you do, too.
Your Parks
Your Places
Noise from Above
Once when I was exploring the Sequoia National Forest just north of Kernville, we reached an exceptionally beautiful cliff edge and were nearly blasted off of it by the sound of two fighter jets screaming down the canyon at low altitude.
Your outdoor experiences may not be so dramatic, but odds are you’ve probably heard and / or seen more tourist planes flying around your outdoor spaces lately, especially if they happen to be near cities or have some famous landmarks. You’ve long been able to book plane or helicopter fly-overs of the Grand Canyon from Las Vegas, and L.A.’s Griffith Park is experiencing more flights circling the Hollywood Sign these days, but a new court filing charges the National Park Service and Federal Aviation Administration are failing to control flights near San Francisco’s Golden Gate National Recreation Area.
The San Francisco Chronicle notes that even though there was a previous court order to minimize noise and disturbances in national parks with more than 50 flights per year, the agencies submitted rules that allowed as many as 2,548 flights over the Bay Area parks.
Tech Talk
Gadgets, Technology, and Hype
Ugly Shoes Are Cool Now
I had to retire my running shoes this year and when I was shopping around for replacements, I ended up going with a pair of Hoka’s—which apparently are very trendy among runners despite being … let’s be generous and say boldly styled here. I will say, though, the cushioning is lovely and that’s honestly what I’m most focused on when I’m wearing them.
There’s a fun read in The Atlantic that traces this trend through the mid 2010s normcore movement and posits that, by accident, now we Elder Millennials are benefiting from our cooler former selves and enjoying the softer impacts on our now brittle joints.
Wildlife Crossing
Wildlife and the Outdoors
What’s in a Name?
A lot, if you’re the National Audubon Society. Last week, the 26-person board of directors voted to keep its current name after a year of debating whether or not they should continue to use the name of their founder John James Audubon, who enslaved nine people and opposed the abolition movement.
About half a dozen local chapters across the country—including Washington D.C., Madison Wisconsin, Chicago, Seattle, and my own local chapter in Portland, Oregon—have voted to drop ‘Audubon’ from their name, although they will continue to work closely with the national organization.
The Washington Post has a great, even-handed breakdown of the politics around this issue.
Grey Whales Go North
Earlier I told you about the migration of grey whales past Point Reyes Lighthouse, and while you can still see some waterspouts there, the whales are moving north toward the Oregon Coast. Now, for the first time since 2019, Oregon State Parks will host Whale Week—from March 28th through April 2nd.
Volunteer guides and docents will be available at 17 different sites along the coast from 10AM to 1PM every day, and the Depoe Bay Whale Watching Center will be open from 10AM to 4PM Wednesday through Sunday. Learn more about the sites and activities at the Oregon State Parks website.
One More Thing
Oh yeah, before I go …
Behold the Chub Shrub
In case you were looking for some inspiration for your humdrum arborvitae, might I suggest looking toward Lynn Stanek of the Portland suburb Tualitin? According to a story in The Oregonian, she spent 20 years daydreaming about shaping her shrubs into a phallus, and last year after polling her neighbors, she finally went through with it.
She’s kept the shrub decorated in various holiday-appropriate get ups, and by Christmas she said two carloads of people arrived to sing a “bawdy version of ‘O Christmas Tree’” to the shrub. There were other benefits, too:
Stanek points out that she has met more of her neighbors in the past two years than in the 24 years she has lived in her home. The arborvitae has also slowed traffic on the busy street next to her house. “That’s something I couldn’t get done with years of petitions and emails to the mayor,” Stanek said.
If you’ve got the space to do some gardening where you live, I truly hope your garden brings as much joy into the world as Lynn’s does.
Until next time, Happy Trails.
P.S. I’ll be on family vacation next week, so I’m not sure if I’ll be able to do a full weekly newsletter yet. I am planning on putting together a bonus Island of Misfit Stories for paid subscribers, though!