August 24, 2010

Much has changed in the Sierra Nevada since John Muir spent his first summer exploring the range in 1869, working as a shepherd.

Tina Egan, resting atop 8,740-foot-high Ellis Peak in the Sierra Nevada, is a hike leader with Family Nature Summits, an organization of families and individuals who love the outdoors. Click to enlarge.

But enough wildness remains that when I arrived atop Ellis Peak west of Lake Tahoe one day last month, it was easy to understand Muir’s observation, in his book “My First Summer in the Sierra,” that however fascinating were the individual trees, birds, and wildflowers “most impressive of all is the vast glowing countenance of the wilderness in awful, infinite repose.”

Here it was in July, and a dozen of us hiking this day slogged a good part of the time through wet, still-deep snow, happy to be among the abundant pine and fir species of these mountains.

Children and adults at a Family Nature Summit produce a service project each summer. Here, Renee Johns of Texas, left, and Ariel Levy of New York City, dig a post hole for an interpretive nature trail for children produced at the 2010 summit at Lake Tahoe, Tahoe City, California. Click to enlarge

Facing west from the Ellis Peak summit, which is on the California side of the lake, the Granite Chief and Desolation wilderness areas extended far into the distance, higher snow-capped summits rising behind them. The view was not unlike what Muir might have seen from the same vantage point. It made every step of a long hike with some steep ascents worthwhile.

At a time when the country has so many problems, when people are so divided politically, it was a restorative moment, a reminder that the mountains are, if not eternal, certainly enduring. They are enduring enough to provide perspective, enduring enough remind us that we ought not get too worked up about the temporal. That is one of the reasons we hike, no?

I was participating in a Family Nature Summit, an annual gathering of families, several hundred people in all, who each year choose some very special place in North America to spend a week outdoors, with comfy beds at night and good food and company through the day.

Each day of a summit, parents, grandparents, children, couples, even singles, choose among scores of scheduled activities such as hiking, rafting, kayaking, birding, fly-fishing, horseback riding, outdoor photography and nature study, all of them arranged by age-group. Parents may be kayaking while their children are hiking with trained leaders.

My story on Family Nature Summit vacations appears Sunday, August 29, on the cover of the Living section of The Hartford Courant.

August 19, 2010

A good wood cooking fire begins with kindling gathered in the nearby forest. Click to enlarge

Sure, you can use a compact gas grill or a charcoal grill when picnicking or camping. But there is something satisfying about knowing how to cook competently over a wood fire, preferably  a fire made from kindling and firelogs gathered in the woods.

Hartford Courant photographer Steve Dunn photographing a wood cooking fire. Click to enlarge

A campfire of wood is more than just a source of heat, of course, as I point out in my Walkabout column in The Hartford Courant Saturday, August 21. It is a gathering place, too, the hub of a picnic site or a campsite. You can gather around the gas grill, too, I suppose, but, uh, it’s not quite the same.

I spent a couple of hours the other morning building a fire at a picnic spot along Beaver Brook in Barkhamsted, Ct. It wasn’t as quick as lighting briquettes or a gas stove, for sure. I began with kindling gathered nearby, and added larger chunks of hardwood. It took more than an hour to develop a good bed of coals for cooking. But tending the fire, getting it just so, is part of the pleasure of camp cooking over wood.

I made a little vegetable stew in an aluminum foil packet, put some chicken pieces right on the grill and baked a simple camp bread called bannock in a cast iron frying pan. In all, the fire and the cooking took close to two hours, two relaxing hours.

Courant photographer Steve Dunn’s photos accompany the column Saturday. He and I had no trouble wolfing down our wood-fire lunch.

August 11, 2010

At Farmington, Ct.

On a day that would become hot and humid, it was a most pleasant morning in the kayak, the temperature in the low 70s at 7 a.m., the surface of Lake Dunning glass-like. I was the only boater on the lake, as often happens, but my summer paddling company, as always happens, was a glance away.

Lake Dunning in Farmington, Ct., is a quiet, lightly-developed pond. (Click to enlarge.)

The kingfisher appeared first, launching from a tree on the shore and heading across the water, chattering loudly the whole while, as if annoyed, which in fact I suspect is exactly what the chattering is about, if I might ascribe human feelings to an avian creature. Spotted sandpipers bobbed their tails as they walked the shoreline, suddenly darting out over the water, then circling back to shore, and all over again, as they do. The green heron, usually tucked into a leafy refuge over the water, almost impossible to see, stood motionless on a small, protruding, pebbly piece of shoreline, as if to ensure I would not miss it. When I approached it flew no more than 20 feet into a water’s-edge branch, facing me, every detail on display, most notably the rich chestnut color of its neck. Six young mallards passed to my left, no mother in sight, and for the first time this season did not take flight at my appearance. Likewise, the great blue heron tolerated me more than usual as I passed too close to its shoreline perch, the black streaks against white throat, the golden bill, the rufous thighs, each crisply defined in the soft light of a cloudy morning. Passing one of two islands in the lake, a kingbird moved from one branch to another, not 15 feet away. It was as if the whole outing was somehow choreographed, a performance meant to assure me that, no matter how quickly this summer is flying by, no matter that many of the birds will migrate south in coming weeks or months, the show continues, and I should appreciate the moment.