Sierra sky

We spent New Year’s Eve day on a 500-mile loop up to the Sierra and back. No snow in the forecast meant safe, easy driving and the expectation of amazing mountain vistas. We drove under overcast skies for more than three hours but when we got to the Sierra Crest the clouds broke, and we were amazed right on schedule.

We took a rather long but scenic route to California Highway 88 by way of Highway 108 and Sonora and Angel’s Camp (alleged home of the Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County.) From there we crossed the crest at Carson Pass, where I snow-camped last winter, and took Highway 89 into Nevada for a few miles before doubling back toward Lake Tahoe on a gorgeous (though tortuous) highway past Heavenly ski area and down into South Lake Tahoe, where we cruised past obscene mobs of tourists and headed back south on the first available thoroughfare, U.S. Highway 50, which we took down to Sacramento and back home to San Jose via Interstates 80 and 680.

Got all that down? Good, there will be a quiz on Friday.

An unfortunate reality of being 7,000 or more feet up in the mountains in the dead of winter is that it’s well-diggers-ass cold outside. Another reality is the roadsides are piled with snow, which makes it sketchy to pull the car over and snap a pic of every splendid scene. Lousy conditions for photography (none of the good stuff is ever visible from the main road), but I made do. Came back with a half-dozen pictures that seemed post-worthy, though all seem to cover the same ground. Well, air.

Before Carson Pass

This feels like the best of the bunch. And it was the first one I took, not far from the Kirkwood ski area.

Clouds dancing

Little wisps of clouds do that dancing-aloft thing.

Caples Lake

Hard to take a bad picture of Caples Lake, especially when the clouds are doing all these shadowy things.

Snowy peak west of Carson Pass

This is a familiar peak west of the Carson Pass Sno-Park. The air up here is amazing. A breath of it feels like adventure.

Clouds and peak

Got some nice clouds behind this peak, but the shot feels just so-so for some reason.

Rock and sky

This is another shot I had high hopes for that came out a bit flat. Probably because I was shooting at the worst time of the day — high noon. The best times are early morning and late afternoon, when the sun illuminates the crags from an angle and gives them a greater sense of depth.

Well, time to ring in the new year. See y’all in 2007.

Memories of 2006

When I posted the outtakes of 2006 last week I knew I was going to have to do some kind of “best of” round-up. Rather than zero in on the exclusively on the most stunning images of the year, I plucked one scene from each month that represented something memorable to me. Without further ado:

January

January 2006

Kathy Wimble, one half of the FOMFOK brain trust, prepares to uncork a bottle of bubbly for First Hike 2006.

February

February 2006

A brimming water trough at Sunol Regional Wilderness, where the winter rains had the creeks gushing and the trails oozing.

March

March 2006

Impressive rock, gorgeous sky on FOMFOK’s annual Pinnacles National Monument hike.

April

April 2006

A llama’s hindquarters at Henry Coe State Park, where I hiked 12 tortuous miles to Mississippi Lake, spent the night and wished I was the llama’s owner.

May

May 2006

Breakfast along a fork of the Coyote Creek in Henry Coe State Park, where I camped out as part of a Sierra Club lightweight-backpacking course.

June

June 2006

Campers watching the fire at Penner Lake, Tahoe National Forest, where I camped out with some kindly backpacking enthusiasts.

July

July 2006

Snow melts into Y Meadow Lake at Emigrant Wilderness, site of an overnight campout.

August

August 2006

Pinot something or other (or not, wine dims the memory) at Sterling Vineyards in the California wine country on another FOMFOK outing.

September

September 2006

A peak called The Watchman at Zion National Park, down the road from a small inn where we shacked up for a week. We have an enlargement of this shot framed in our living room.

October

October 2006

Alpine Lake at Skyline Ridge Open Space Preserve in the Santa Cruz Mountains.

November

Signs of the times

A shed full of park signs at Castle Rock State Park.

December

Clouds swirl at Mission Peak

Rain traveling through the Bay Area creates interesting cloud formations at Mission Peak.

Many thanks to all who helped make this another excellent year. Your suffering will be redeemed in the afterlife.

Live from the hills above San Jose, California

In a little cottage overlooking the sprawling metropolis, we opened gifts.


Melissa’s mom went first.


Melissa's mom is just like her daughter


She’s quite like her daughter: all gifts of jewelry are welcome. (Melissa bought her a pinkie ring from a local antiques shop. I told her now she’s free to be in the Mafia because all the wise guys have pinkie rings).

The gift of victory

One of Mary’s gifts to me (in addition to many color pairs of socks she knitted) was this lovely Detroit Tigers ballcap, which I can wear with the smug reassurance of a Cards fan whose boys crushed ’em in last fall’s World Series .

The best gift of all: a season's worth of early '70s reruns

Melissa greatly appreciates a DVD full of M.A.S.H. reruns from the show’s first season.

A lighthouse


My dad & stepmom sent this way-cool lighthouse from their wintering grounds in Florida.


Now there’s nothing to do but appreciate all of our Christmas gifts.

Be the gift



Gifts next to the tree, originally uploaded by busybeingborn.

The best thing you can give won’t have any bows or ribbons.

Christmas reminds me that I could be a more giving person, that I could spend more time with the aged, the young, the hungry, the suffering. Not in my nature to be that kind of person.

Yet if you were to ask me “So Tom, how do I start me a blog,” I could give till you’re blue in the face. If you were to ask how to hike off a few extra pounds, how to pick the best of 100 shots from your vacation, how to get a newspaper section to the press on time, you might find me generous to a fault.

I take a lot from the world … I use more fossil fuels than I have any hope of replacing. I eat food irrigated from precious natural water sources; I use products manufactured in distant nations where forests and rivers are being fouled so somebody can turn a buck selling me this stuff at “affordable” prices (which are merely a discount against the cost of repairing the damage down the road).

None of us give back as much as we could, or even what we should. But we should be giving back something. And just as the weight of everything you put in a backpack adds up, the weight of everything we do adds up too.

I don’t think I’m entirely self-deluded to believe that I’ve been doing at least a little bit of good in the world by posting pictures from the outdoors and writing about walking in the woods. At the very least I’m distracting people from further degrading the earth, and at best I’m encouraging them to get out in their own woods and maybe come to realize why we need these wild places.

Want to give something worth having? How about a down payment on giving your great-great-great-great granddaughter a planet as good as the one we’ve got now? You don’t need to be a tree-spiking enviro-terrorist to believe future generations have as much right to a livable planet as we do.

Call that my Christmas wish: that folks wake up and realize we’re not merely taking what’s here today for ourselves, we’re stealing it from those who come after us.

O Christmas Tree, O Christmas Tree

Here’s ours:


Christmas Eve 2006

And here’s ours when I do a little flick of the wrist while clicking on the shutter.

Somethin' shakin...

(I don’t need no holiday for an excuse to play with my toys!)

Everybody please be happy, be safe, kiss those who should be kissed, hug those who should be hugged, and take 10 deep breaths in the name of the Giving, Generous and Forgiving Spirit of Christmas.

Outtakes, 2006

Anybody can do a Greatest Hits of 2006 post; I’m doing a Greatest Misses of 2006. That is, pictures that were almost good enough to post in the past year but for some reason didn’t make the final cut. Let’s check ’em out, month by month:


January

Ohlone Wilderness, January 2006

Along the trial to Murietta Falls on the Ohlone Wilderness Trail from Lake Del Valle in Livermore. This is a section near the top of the Big Burn where many impressive old oaks decorate the hillside.


February

Carson Pass, February 2006


A self-portrait taken after a night spent camping on the snow at Carson Pass in the Sierra. I was in desperate need of a haircut at the time, as the chilly mountain breezes attested.


March

Ed Levin County Park, March 2006

Snow coats the hilltops in our neighborhood after a nasty cold front came through. This is Monument Peak at Ed Levin County Park.


April

Henry Coe State Park, April 2006

A foggy morning at Henry Coe State Park, where I had just spent the night sleeping on the ground as part of a lightweight-backpacking course.


May

Driftwood, May 2006


Melissa’s mom was in town so we took a drive down to the coast. This is a pile of driftwood on the beach next to California Highway One between Half Moon Bay and Santa Cruz.


June

Tahoe National Forest, June 2006


The sky turns interesting colors as night falls near Penner Lake during an overnight backpacking trip to Tahoe National Forest.


July

Emigrant Wilderness, July 2006


Rebecca of calipidder.com and backpackgeartest.org, next to a blazing fire her husband built using wood he chopped with a very large knife, during an overnight backpacking trip to Emigrant Wilderness.


August

Near Carson Pass, August 2006

A stop near Carson Pass in the Sierra, where Melissa and I went for a road trip to warm up for the big miles ahead in our southern Utah vacation.


September

Zion National Park, September 2006

A rocky mount near the entrance to Zion Canyon at Zion National Park, just down the road from a bed & breakfast where we slept for a week between day trips to see all the scenic splendor of the region.


October

Pacific Crest Trail, October 2006

Pacific Crest Trail in the Shasta-Trinity National Forest, where a bunch of outdoor bloggers got together for a long weekend.


November

Fall color, November 2006

Leaves turn at Castle Rock State Park in the Santa Cruz Mountains.


December

Mission Peak, December 2006


Mission Peak along the Horse Heaven Trail, looking out over the San Francisco Bay.

Pretty good year if I do say so.

Previously unpublished

Something different this week: post-worthy pictures that’ve been taking up hard drive space unseen, some of them for several years.

To wit, this picture of my brother’s daughter Hannah, at my Mom’s place on Christmas Day 1998:

Hannah, Christmas


I had just bought my first digital camera a few months before so this counts as one of the first digital pictures I ever took. Kids this cute can overcome extraordinary expressions of photographic ineptitude.

The rest of this week’s pictures are quite a bit newer: late 2003 to late 2005. I think a large number of the pictures I took with my old camera got either erased or misplaced, an error for which ensuing generations of humans will be genuinely thankful.


Here’s a picture of one of our late great cats, Eldridge, who thoughtfully posed with a pumpkin for Halloween in October of 2003.


Happy Halloween

I’ve got about a dozen other shots of him not posing. He does have the expression which says we oughta be damn grateful for his cooperation.


Next up, a tail light from an early ’50s Cadillac, seen at an antique-car show in Pleasanton in March 2004.


Caddy


Caddy tail fins got to be so much more expressive as the decade wore on.

Here’s a shot from one of my first walks on dirt, at Ed Levin County Park in the summer of 2004:

At Ed Levin County Park


I wouldn’t have much of a portfolio if it weren’t for California’s golden hills and blue skies.

If you ever walk through downtown San Jose, this is a sight you’ll see every 20 minutes or so:


Jet on final approach

These jets fly incredibly close to the buildings downtown. I’m guessing the people flying in on the jets wave to their co-workers in their cubicles. This one’s from September of 2004.


Falling water at Uvas Canyon County Park in January 2005.

Waterfall


Uvas Canyon is the best place in Santa Clara County to see waterfalls.


Something I’m also thankful for: expressive, though expired, trees.


Impressive stump

This one’s at Del Valle Regional Park in Livermore, early spring 2005.


Here’s a shot along the trail at Pinnacles National Monument later in the spring of 2005:


Yellow wildflowers


The Pinnacles are an impressive rock formation, but there’s quite a bit of non-rock things to see. The wildflowers go crazy every spring.


Next up: The beach at Andrew Molera State Park in Big Sur, south of Carmel, where I camped out in the summer of 2005.

California coastline

The ocean’s blue is sublime down this way.


Speaking of sublime, it’s an apt adjective for the view of San Francisco Bay from Angel Island State Park, seen here in the summer of 2005.


San Francisco Bay

While we’re on the subject of San Francisco, here’s a shot of the downtown as seen through a chain-link fence on a crystal-clear late-autumn day in the fall of 2005.


The city behind a fence

I couldn’t help thinking this must be what the Financial District always looks like to the homeless who sleep on the city’s sidewalks.

Plucking these pix from the archives was no small task — I had to give myself credit for having already posted most of the good ones.

Power in numbers

I think I can say I have officially joined the Wave of the Future, which means:

  • We had a swell union contract in which the company paid all our health insurance premiums. The new one which we’ll be voting on soon obliges us to pay 20 percent of these premiums.
  • Our new contract also changes the way vacation pay is accrued in a way that will cost me $5,000 if I stay at the paper beyond the next couple years.
  • Our new contract freezes our pension and switches to a 401k. If I reduce my takehome pay by 6 percent, the company will match half of it. So instead of the company contributing to my pension fund — managed by financial professionals — I reduce my standard of living by another 6 percent and become wholly dependent on my ability to play the financial markets for the next 30 years. Good thing I majored in journalism.

Somebody at work mentioned a theory on why my employer decided to tell everybody we were subject to layoff rather than just those whose jobs were actually at risk: to ensure everybody felt the anxiety, to increase the likelihood that our union would accept these concessions. A hard-nosed tactic, for sure.

A lot of this sounds like a kick in the teeth — and I’ll definitely be buying fewer camping toys in the near future — but I’m working in a troubled industry: we know there will always be a demand for news, but these days we’re deeply unsure how to turn a buck tapping that demand. Until we figure that out there will probably be more demands for concessions, more anxiety over lost jobs, more of the bosses playing hardball. And more newsies sucking it up. Not like we’ve got much choice: The paper going broke is not useful to any of us.

Sometimes I wonder how much good a union is doing me, personally. Unions do help slackers keep their jobs and make it harder for the bosses to reward the workhorses. But I learned one thing on this latest contract negotiation: in tough times people have to band together to protect their interests.

Our company had a laundry list of far harsher concessions it could have imposed at will on a non-union shop. Management abandoned those ideas in the interest of getting what it needed most: us to pony up more of the cost of health care. Frankly, this was only fair.

Perhaps the greatest concession on the company’s part was accepting our union’s right to have a say in who does what jobs. Companies don’t hate unions because they demand better wages and benefits: they hate unions because unions challenge their power to do as they damn well please. Perfectly understandable from a manager’s standpoint.

In the current environment there is simply no way that I could’ve negotiated a better deal than the one our union negotiated. One copy editor has one copy editor’s sway. Which ain’t much.

Sure, unions are a pain in the ass, but sometimes they save your ass.