How many of you knew there was an Illinois River in Oregon? And get this: it has excellent rapids.

The Illinois River is not rafted as often as the Rogue since there is no dam upstream of put-in. The amount of water in the river is directly related to rain. If it rains too much the river can rise to an unsafe level (above 3000 cfs) within a couple of hours. The river can also drop below runnable levels after a few days without rain. This makes a trip challenging to organize since trips are often cancelled due to high water, low water, or potential bad weather. The extremely high quality of this river trip far outweighs the potential of a cancelled trip.

More on the river here.

San Jose has been rainer than Seattle for the past month, which motivated me
to stay out of the mud for a weekend and do something besides hiking for a change.
Melissa was in the mood for a road trip, so we threw some snacks in the car
and got out of town, though not very far away.

I wanted to show Melissa the very cool walk-in campsites at Big Basin Redwoods
State Park, which is one of the premier camping/hiking/big-tree-gaping sites
in the South Bay. When we got there we found that all the campsites were closed
and gated, but the visit wasn’t a total loss.

For one thing, the rains produced a gusher at Sempervirens Fall, which is along
the road to the campgrounds I was scouting.

As usual, the tree canopy was fascinating. And really, really tall. Redwood
forests are utterly amazing. And nice to have right down the road.

Big Basin offers one stop on the Skyline-to-the-Sea Trail, which goes from
Castle Rock State Park to Waddell Beach on the coast. The trail is popular with
backpackers — one of those must-do-expeditions that, in keeping with the work-mad
people of Silicon Valley, can be thru-hiked in three days.

From the park we headed down to the coast to check out Waddell Beach.

Cool patterns in the sand.

Looking back toward the coastline.

Driftwood tossed together in a makeshift shelter. I’m told the surfers hang
out in these things till the waves get big enough to ride.

What did humans ever do to deserve such swell scenery?

Ice plant in bloom.

Them’s the highlights, folks. No hiking next weekend, either; I’m taking a
course on lightweight backpacking that lasts all day Saturday and Sunday. But
maybe by then the monsoon season will start to recede. As soon as that happens,
the wildflowers will go ga-ga, so look for good stuff in the last few weeks
of April.

 

I just don’t feel like leaving. I should, because if there was ever a time to be updating one’s resume and exploring one’s options, this is one of them. So why am I standing pat?

I’ve been a newspaperman for the past 20 years and I’ve always faced the same issue: Most towns have one newspaper that pays a living wage. If you want to stay in the newspaper biz, you either decide the town is nice enough to make up for the paper’s failings, or the paper’s nice enough to make up for the town’s failings.

See, chasing news trains us to be finders of fault. We’re always shaking loose the shortcomings, whether it’s our cats or our corporate overlords. Glass half-empty people, that’s us.

So it’s no small consequence to find yourself believing you’ve found a nice paper in a nice town. That’s what happened to me in the summer of ’99. I took a job at the San Jose Mercury News because it had a solid reputation and I wanted to see the tech boom up close. Since then I’ve taken a liking to both the town and the paper.

So the news comes in this morning that Knight Ridder, our parent company, is being sold to a company that plans to sell the Merc and 11 other KR papers, and a friend asks how this will affect me.

It’s like this: I have no earthly idea how it’ll shake out, and what’s more, I don’t care. I mean that: if some corporate raider buys our paper, cuts our staff, nullifies our union contract and makes our life a living hell, I’ll deal with it then. There could be a stampede for the Merc’s exits, and who’d want to get trampled? And after so many have bailed, couldn’t there be more goodies left for the rest of us?

Maybe, or maybe not. It’s the future, it can’t be seen, only experienced in the present tense.

I was fortunate to be one of those kids in journalism school who was too shy to ask pushy questions of people who didn’t want to answer them. I found a niche on the copy desk, writing headlines, editing stories, laying out pages, figuring out computer systems, making my deadlines. I never got any bylines, never got any credit for breaking big stories, but I never had to ask any mothers how it felt now that their son had just shot up a high school. A fair trade-off.

And it turns out that regardless of the woes afflicting the newspaper business, people like me are still in demand, still getting nice jobs in nice towns. So long as news exists, somebody willl have to prepare it for public consumption, so I’ll always be able to find work. If they outsource all the copy editing to India, I figure what the heck, I always wanted to see the Taj Mahal, and I’m used to being polite in the company of cattle (Thank you East Bay Regional Park District).

Though the news biz trains us to find fault, it also trains us to be flexible. What seems like the top news of the day at 4 p.m. ends up on an inside page if a plane crash intervenes.

So I’m planning to just ride it out and see what happens. If I end up in Toledo in six months, so be it. It could be a nice town with a nice paper, for all I know.

It snowed again overnight. This morning there was a fluffy two-inch coat of
it on everything.

I was up before sunrise warming up the ol’ digicam. "These are gonna look
great," I thought. But when I downloaded them into the computer they all
had this blue cast suggesting all this might be scenes from somebody’s aquarium.
Then in occurred to me why so many arty photographers go black-and-white in
the snow: it’s mostly white anyway and the non-white parts offer wonderful visual
contrast.

It works better if you know what you’re doing, of course, but my experiments
with black and white came out not too bad, if I do say so.

It was a snowy welcome indeed.

Fenceposts are such trusty bits of architecture. Especially the snow-capped
ones.

Shot this one from the front porch.

Horses don’t mind the snow, though digging through it to find grass to munch
upon is a bit of an annoyance, I suppose.

Snow on a branch says "take my picture!"

If you use the flash the snow really pops against the background.

Daffodil bent down under the weight of the snow. It’ll all be gone in a couple
hours and the flowers’ll be standing up straight again.

One more look at the neighborhood.

Snow can be a bit drab if it has no trees to decorate.

So I’m minding my own business, surfing the Web like I do every morning, and
I look out the window and lo, out the window it’s snowing to beat hell out there.

I didn’t take 5,000-plus digital photos in the past two years for naught: I
knew that this early in the morning my digicam’s automatic flash would produce
some interested effects reflecting off the falling snow. So here are this morning’s
experiments:

Large flakes become large blobs when the flash hits ’em.

This is what they call a dusting. Somewhere in the high Sierra it looks just
like this except there’s 14 feet of snow on top of everything.

"Ice scraper? Why the hell would I need an ice scraper in California?"

I got a breathless phone call yesterday afternoon from Melissa, who reported
it was snowing to beat the band up on our hill. Deskbound in my windowless purgatory
in the bowels of the News Media Industry, I had but one request for my fair
bride: Take Pictures! The snow didn’t last long but it did provide a pretty
good show for awhile. Floyd, the cat, was climbing the window sill trying to
figure out what that stuff was, and where it was coming from.

(A round of drinks to whoever names their punk rock band Windowless Purgatory.)

This morning a faint dusting of snow was evident on the higher peaks nearby.
I was going to hike up there but figured the sun would melt it all long before
I got to the top. More rain is in the forecast today, though, so we could have
some accumulations by tomorrow.

No new pictures this weekend, I’m sorry to report. But I’ll have some doozies next weekend, when I make my first stab at snowshoeing and winter backpacking.

I’ve had the itch to try snowshoeing because it’s so much like hiking. It’s taken me all this time to overcome my primary objection, which is the fact that it must be done in snow. Not that there’s anything wrong with snow, I just like it better floating around in those little “Rosebud” globes.

i wrote a few things about snowcamping at Two-Heel Drive last week, and lo and behold, a guy who’s been doing it all his life (one of my 17 devoted readers) has volunteered to take me along on an overnighter at Carson Pass near Lake Tahoe. He’s gonna show me how to build a snow cave and everything.

The pluses of snow camping:

• No bugs
• No bears
• Very few people
• Gorgeous flake-flocked vistas

The minuses:

• Cold as a well-diggers ass
• Cold as a witch’s tit
• Cold as a stone
• Cold as the grave

Did I mention my issues with cold?

Melissa’s brother asked if perhaps I couldn’t get the same effect by sticking my head in the freezer. Sure, but nobody wants to see my pictures of frozen peas.

Oh, I forgot one of the pluses: The need to acquire more gear: thermal underwear, goose-down jacket, zero-degree goose-down sleeping bag, waterproof cover for the sleeping bag, waterproof snow pants, waterproof snow mittens.

All you have to do to have an enjoyable snow-camping outing is to stay dry. The challenge being that any human encounter with snow causes it to melt, and any exertion through snow causes people to sweat. It’s as if all the forces of nature are conspiring to convince you that the best place to be in the winter is indoors in front of a warm fire.

But that is not the hearty pioneer spirit that built America. Snow-camping is a patriotic duty, right up there with sitting on juries and forgetting the verses of the “Star Spangled Banner” they never sing at football games.

And if it proves too arduous, I can always stand in front of my open freezer.

I read this the other day and it stuck with me: the media are in the business of flattering their audiences.

Another way of saying it is: they tell people what they want to hear.

They all do it. First, they research a market and find out what people think. Then they tailor a media program around telling those people things they already believe are true.

Which would you rather be told:

a) All the stuff you already know is correct;

or

b) You’re dumb as a rock and all us smart people will set you straight.

Most prefer “a” (though there is money to be made in “b” — in all the “Dummies” books, for example.)

It’s been my experience that every point of view has compelling counter-arguments. My other experience is that every ideology obliges me to ignore these counterarguments, no matter how compelling. That’s why I’ve begun to tune out the ideological media — their goal is to turn a buck by flattering my prejudices, telling me everything I already believe true is gospel and everybody else is an idiot. I go through life finding out I’m wrong at least as often as I’m right, so I don’t need anybody telling me how gall-durn smart I am, or how gall-durn stupid everybody else is.

This is money to be made in the media telling “both sides.” That’s essentially what all mainstream newspapers and newscasts are trying to do. But “both sides” don’t add up to reality.
We don’t live on a two-sided coin; we live on a planet.

Because it’s got nowhere to go but up.

The saying goes you should never write when you’re drunk. A subcategory of that might be: never write when you feel like crap.

There is good news to report. Yesterday’s raging river of snot has become today’s gurgling forest stream of snot. My sneezes are no longer waking all the dogs in the neighborhood (though the cat is glaring at me more than usual).

Just another nasty cold to ruin any hope of ringing in the new year. Then again, we never ring in the new year. It’s like St. Patrick’s Day to those of us with the alcoholism gene: amateur night.

The bad news is no hiking pictures this week. But the weather around here has been so nasty the past few days that going out and having an invigorating outdoors experience would be an affront to those who got their exercise by digging mud out of their flooded stores and businesses. Much of the wine country was under water yesterday, and there’s a new storm coming in today.

Well, I hear the couch calling again. Sitting upright too long is just what my cold wants, and I’m not going to give it the satisfaction.

I started out Christmas Eve morning at the foot of Mission Peak and ended
it in a lighthouse in the San Francisco Bay.

It was a 24-hour vacation, which might strike some folks as overly abbreviated
but hey, these days we take our vacations where we can find ’em.

In occurred to me Saturday morning that I had climbed Mission Peak dozens of
times since the last time I snapped any pictures up there, so I took my camera
along this time in case something interesting happened. The hike was much like
all the rest I’ve done there — Mission Peak isn’t really a hike, it’s a a hill
climb. You huff, puff and sweat your way to the top, then casually coast downhill
to the bottom (A hike is something bigger, more complex, less brutal.) But I
did find a few good frames.

I got to the top before I took any pictures (I was trying to see I could improve
on previous times; I couldn’t). The pole with the eyepieces must be shot to
prove you were up there. We had a nice carpet of white cloud layer to dress
up the surroundings. That’s Mount Diablo way off in the background to the right.

The summit looks out over the sprawl that is Fremont. It looks comparatively
beautiful up here.

You’ll notice the greening of the hillsides. In the Bay Area, we don’t really
have winter — we have a really, really long spring that starts in November
and lasts till April.

Some of the ubiquitous Mission Peak cattle were a bit testy. This large Angus
bull was walking along near the trail, making these loud grunting noises. Earlier
on the way up I had to intimidate rather large cow to get her to back off. She
seemed to be wanting to challenge me for coming between her and a stretch of
fresh green grass. I yelled "HEY, GET BACK" really loud and this seemed
to remind her that the proper role of a cow in the universe is to be cowed.
She backed off.

A nice view of the summit. It’s always nice on the way back down.

I’ve passed this point countless times but for some reason it felt like it
need to be photographed this time.

So later down the trail there were cows and calves all over the place. I noticed
this mama had a calf nursing, so I sidled around behind her and waited for the
little guy to do something cute. Well, he looked right at me with that "Got
Milk?" gape of his and made the whole morning even more worthwhile.

Almost neglected the required tree picture. I believe this one is merely dormant
vs. actually dead; sorry to disappoint.

One last look at the peak. It seems a million miles away till you’ve climbed
it a few times.

On to the Lighthouse

I got back home, got cleaned up and got ready for another adventure: a night
at the East Brother Light Station in San
Francisco Bay. Melissa heard about this place on TV last fall and decided that
instead of lavishing gifts on each other for Christmas, we oughta just rent
a room here for the night on Christmas Eve. Well, it was $320 a night, the most
I’ve ever shelled out for a one-night stay, but worth every penny.

Only way to get to the light station is by boat — an open motor launch. The
skipper picks up the guests outside a cafe at the San Pablo Yacht Harbor, which
has seen better days but has very picturesque views of decaying pickup trucks
and rusty auto parts.

The parking lot was full of mud, and the first creature to greet us was a thick-furred,
grouchy old cur. Melissa adores dogs but she’s known enough hard cases over
the years to see that this guy was not to be trifled with. He answered her sweet
talk with a low growl. We kept our distance.

The cafe has four more tough-looking canines on the roof. Word has it this
old marina was run rampant with druggies, criminals and other examples of human
scum but some former Special Forces guy moved in, started adopting these hard-luck
dogs and eventually ran off all the troublemakers. They dogs were accustomed
to having people around so they didin’t give us any grief, but I wouldn’t provoke
any of them.

This is about the prettiest picture of the marina I could come up with. Many
of the boats compare favorably to the S.S. Minnow of Gilligan’s Island fame.
The hardscrabble aura of the place must be a taste of adventure travel for the
the light station’s upper-middle-class clientele.

Elan is our skipper. He and smiling young woman named Katie are the innkeepers,
hired by the company that refurbished the light station and installed a Bed
& Breakfast. His boat looks to be an aluminum-hulled launch that might’ve
been used by the Navy to ferry admirals to their flagships. It’s small but rides
the waves pretty smoothly. It’s a wonderful ride in good weather. Less so when
it rains.

The station is on that island over there to the right.

Elan parks the boat next to this ladder; which we climb to get to the station.
Katie, right, and her sister await our arrival.

Here’s the old light station. There’s a working light rotating in that cupola
at the top of the old building.

This big tank is a cistern holding all the island’s drinking water, which is
supplied by the rain.

A view of the grounds from the light tower. Those big red things jutting up
on the roof of that building are fog horns. They are loud enough to wake the
dead.

 

The dinner table awaits the guests. Six of us stay here for the night.

A Christmas tree, of course.

Games for the guests. I took this one because of "Man Bites Dog,"
some kind of "headline" game.

The setting sun puts on quite a show.

I took this without a tripod — how’s that for holding still for one-eighth
of a second?

Our room, where we awoke to find the island fogged in.

Katie shares happy regards as we depart.

One last look at the island. There’s something to be said for a gray Christmas
(like perhaps, "sure am glad I brought my raincoat along").