Four hikers who went into the deep wilderness off the Appalachian Trail
are stranded and succumbing to
hypothermia. Rescuers from the NPS are stepping up efforts to rescue them. Three rangers, one a medic, set out by
ATV and on foot to reach the three-sided shelter where the four are stranded.
Death Valley, Be Not Proud
Or maybe it should be, because it’s an amazing place to visit. The
Times runs a piece about the lowest place in the country, a place that is normally dun and dreary and hot as
Georgia asphalt in the oven. On broil. On the surface of the sun.
But today, due to heavy rains the valley is an phantasmagoric explosion of color as wildflowers burst forth like a
botanists’ wet dream (and an allergy sufferer’s nightmare – achoo!). One National Park Service botanist is calling it
the bloom of the century…and he’s not talking about Orlando (da dum psh! I’ll be here all night folks! Don’t forget to
tip your waitresses.)
thebackpacker.com
Here’s something. Thebackpacker.com is an elegant, well-designed
site dedicated to, guess what? backpacking. Aside from solid gear and photos sections, the site has tips
& how-to’s, inspirations, anecdotes and detailed trip reports. If you’re looking for a hike this weekend and
need some partners, you can check out the community area and see who’s going where. They list them by state. Quite
nice.
I’ll post more about the contents as I get into them myself, but for know,
give it a whirl.
Book Review: The Future of Ice
Gretel Ehrlich is a traveler AND a writer.
Although I’m not sure which comes first since she is so exceedingly good at both. I got a copy of her recent book,
The Future of Ice after reading an article a while back in the New Yorker about a trip to Greenland where she
ruminates with furious eloquence on the potential catastrophe of global warming. The people of the North, we know, are
already suffering the consequences of a warming earth. Whether or not this warming is caused by humans (some
conservatives suggest it is not; most of us are like, duh!), you can’t deny the warming is taking place, that lives are
being affected. Ehrlich has the facts at hand. The science is there.
This is a book about the meaning of deep cold to our species, but not just in an evolutionary Darwinian way, but how
the cold creates who we are, how it shapes the earth we live on and how the cold manifests itself in our character and
behavior. You may not dig the message about global warming, but you can’t deny the writing is superb. As for me, I have
a deep fondness for the types of places she describes, the ice sheets, the glaciers, the gaping sprawl of a place like
Greenland. This is a fine book.
Best of the Southwest
I talked in our last podcast about the National Geo Adventure
story on lake Powell. There are some
incredible photos in the piece that reveal how much Lake Powell has receded since the beginning of the drought in the
Southwest. So I figured I’d post the
pictures when they came up on the Web and, lo, they have. Check them out and marvel at how much the scenery has
changed because of the low water, but how beautiful some of the canyons are that were so recently underwater.