A Walk in the Woods

I just read A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson (he also wrote a Brief History of Everything), and it was awesome. It was pretty hilarious, especially the beginning and I appreciated his novice take on hiking and the wilderness in general.
The book is non-fiction and about his attempt to hike the entirety of the Appalachian Trail. His hiking companion is a recovering alcoholic/drug addict high school buddy he hadn't seen in years. Katz (as his friend is called) was the last person in the world you'd want to go hiking with, but that made for a funny story.
He goes expounds upon the many dangers associated with leaving the suburbs and heading off into the wilderness, and contemplates all the ways he could die, from bears to serial killers, to exposure. I totally reccommend this book to anyone who has a sense of humor, and enjoys the irony of humans trying to adapt back into the wild.

The Great Basin Bristlecone Pine

Bristlecone Pine

Have you ever wondered where the oldest trees on earth reside? Or maybe what kind of tree they are? It seems as though lots of us (including myself) just assumed they were the giant redwoods (something like lodgepole pines, or the giant Sequoias). But that's not true. I was listening to an NPR show the other day and heard a story, a sad but true one, about the oldest tree (and thus oldest living thing) ever discovered on earth. After a little additional digging I got the whole scoop.
The story starts in eastern Nevada, in a group of mountains called the Snake Range. I happen to be intimately familiar with these mountains because I spent the better part of a month exploring them over the course of two summers while teaching SJSU field camp. Anyway, the highest peak in the range is Mt. Wheeler. It is located within the boundary of what is now called Great Basin National Park (where we camped). It also includes Lehman Caves which are pretty cool.
High up on Mt. Wheeler there is a grove, or group  of Great Basin Bristlecone Pines that resided on the harsh and unfriendly slope of the mountain. Unlike how they sound, bristlecone pines don't really look like pine trees. They are gnarled, and appear dead for the most part. They have this tortured look about them as if someone took a regular tree and bent and twisted it into a grotesque sculpture and then stripped it of its green. But at the same time, they are incredibly beautiful too. I have had many opportunities to see bristlecones up close and while they are ugly in a way, they have a regal defiance about them, that makes them...extraordinary. They are old but brave. They are bombarded by freezing cold, blazing sun, very little water and nutrient poor soils, yet they patiently eek out a living  in a little patch of barren earth they have called home for hundreds or thousands of years.
Getting back to my point though, there was one particular tree in this grove on Mt. Wheeler named Prometheus. Notice I said "was". This is the sad part of the story. As it goes a grad-student from the University of South Carolina was doing some climate work for his thesis. His name was (is, he's still alive) Donald Currey. Part of his project was drilling cores into these old trees to get information about the climate over the past few millenia by a process called dendrochronology. He claims that while he was trying to drill a core into Prometheus his drill broke. He immediately became concerned because he didn't have another one, and if he didn't get his sample he would have to wait a whole year to get back out in the field and collect the data. Apparently he consulted the Forest Service (it wasn't a national park yet) and they shrugged and basically said, "Well, just chop it down. There are a bunch more trees up there. One won't make a difference." So that's what he did. It was only afterward (according to Currey), as he was tracing the rings of the tree back through time that he realized how ancient the tree was. But by then it was obviously too late.
How old was this gnarly old tree? Best estimates put it at 4862 years old, but it may have been over 5000.
It's hard to imagine that tree sitting up on that slope for five thousand years. It's hard to imagine that 'Prometheus' had already been living for three thousand years before Jesus was (supposedly) born! Or even more incredible think of this, it was a sapling when animals like cave lions still roamed the earth!
It's amazing that one man was able to do in just a few minutes what thousands of years of natural adversity and lightning were unable to. It's really sad too.

A slice of Old Prometheus

And that's the story of the oldest living thing ever discovered on earth, from beginning to tragic end. One good thing did come of this disaster however. Since the discovery of the bristlecone pines extreem age, they are now protected by the government through the National Parks Service and other means. Old Prometheus may be gone, but if you'd like to see his buddies, other trees he spent thousands of years with, you can still head out to Great Basin NP, climb up Mt. Wheeler and say hello.

A Question of Ethics

I have been a little apprehensive about writing this blog because I feel like I might be taken the wrong way. But at the same time I think it's an interesting enough question to throw out there and see what people think. So here I go.

Would it be ethically wrong to throw all our trash and nuclear waste into space?

I think it would solve a lot of problems such as pollution of water sources, the lack of space for landfills in urban areas, and the question of what to do with radioactive material. When I see photos of rivers in India and China choked with plastic bags and Styrofoam and little kids bathing in it it's just horrible. I feel bad for the people (even though it's their own fault) and for the flora and fauna that are obviously being devastated. Launching it out into the cosmos seems like a fine method to get it out of the way. But I have a hard time evaluating the impact all the trash on the planet would have on our solar system, or even if it would. I mean space is HUGE! The probability of us (or anyone else for that matter) accidentally running into a previously tossed bundle of trash has got to be really small. And the odds of finding again previously discarded interplanetary trash (without the use of GPS or calculations) seems like it would be impossible. I t just doesn't seem like the maximum amount of refuse we could produce here on earth for the next 500 or 1,000 years would "put a dent in space" so to speak. But maybe it would? And who knows maybe in the distant future some alien race would find one of our trash heaps floating past Proxima Centauri and come looking for us. Our bundles of plastic bottles and uranium could be like calling cards floating through the universe saying "Hey! We're here! And we're slobs!" It seems like such a good idea except for the fact it just sounds wrong doesn't it?

I get a nagging feeling that there is something wrong with the idea, like I'm saying "lets dump it in the ocean. No one will notice." (Except that space is MUCH bigger). I start thinking tossing our garbage into the cosmos is an "easy" way out of our problems, and that it's unethical somehow. Why bring re-usable bags to the store when plastic ones are easier and you can just send them off to Jupiter when you are done with them? It seems cruel. I mean what did space ever do to us? We made a mess of the earth, and now instead of taking responsibility for our mistakes we decide to make a mess of the entire solar system? (Again, if that's even possible.) Would it be less bad if we launched everything into the sun instead of just into empty space? Maybe it would give the sun extra fuel to burn longer. (OK I realize that was completely ridiculous, all of the garbage on the planet wouldn't do a darn thing to the Sun, but that's kind of my point...)

On top of that I wonder is throwing garbage into interstellar space more wrong than burying it beneath the ground? And if so, why? Every year the population is growing, and every year so is our waste production. Recycling and reusing are great, but the largest increases in populations occur where these methods are impractical and too expensive. You could argue that transporting all our trash into space would be equally as costly, and you may be right. I have no idea. But if it wasn't too expensive, do you think ethically, it would be OK to do it?
Tell me what you think!!!

It's a Miracle!

"It's a miracle!" I shouted silently to myself the other day as I exited Whole Foods. What had I done that was so miraculous? Well, not only do I own a re-usable grocery bag, but it was in my car as I headed to the store, and I finally remembered to bring it into the store with me to use at the check out!!!! Holy canoli right!?! And as an added bonus at Whole Foods they give you a 5 cent refund for each bag you bring in and use! Isn't that neato? (I donated my nickel to "Canter", a non-profit group that is working with Whole Foods to provide housing and care for retired race horses.) Gosh golly, I just felt like a million bucks. I felt like a good citizen when the cashier asked "Paper or plastic?" and I said "Oh, neither. I have my own bag right here in my purse!" I felt like I was saving the environment and helping a fellow mammal. All because of a nylon grocery bag! Hopefully this is the beginning of a new trend for me:)

As a side note, I got to wondering about what is worse to use paper or plastic bags. It turns out that they are equally bad for the environment, but in different ways. So to argue against plastic in favor of paper bags is just ignorant. For just a few interesting facts about paper bags check out this website.