Postcards from the Big Island

My first visit. I hope to return before too long.

We stayed on the west coast near Captain Cook, up the road from Pebbles Beach. Ancient trails extend north and south from the beach, across lava flows from Mauna Loa. Lava flows are a dominant feature of Hawaii, which of course is still growing, although apparently there is a new baby island on the way in a few hundred thousand years...

Pu'uhonua O Honaunau National Historical Park. Wikipedia: "The historical park preserves the site where, up until the early 19th century, Hawaiians who broke a kapu (one of the ancient laws) could avoid certain death by fleeing to this place of refuge or puʻuhonua. The offender would be absolved by a priest and freed to leave. Defeated warriors and non-combatants could also find refuge here during times of battle. The grounds just outside the Great Wall that encloses the puʻuhonua were home to several generations of powerful chiefs."

Kilauea Iki Trail / Crater. An awesome hike across the floor of a crater that last erupted in 1959, right next door to the active crater at Kilauea. The native ʻōhiʻa lehua tree is trying its best to colonize every nook and cranny.

Makuala O'oma Trail. Fantastic trail through the cloud forest above Kona. The native hāpuʻu tree fern is abundant here, lending a Jurassic Park quality to the place. Invasive ginger plants are a real problem, though their flowers are pretty and fragrant.

Mangos of many varieties and awesome smoothies can be had at the South Kona Fruit Stand. Don't miss it.

South Point, the southern-most point in the United States, is thought to be the first place of landing and settlement of the original Polynesian voyagers to Hawaii. It's a pretty windswept and bleak part of the island, but apparently the fishing is good.

Economic malaise and blame

This post from Paul Romer sums up my own impression of current macroeconomic conditions in the United States, which are not all that bad but widely perceived to be so, and for which it is predicted that Biden will be blamed by the voters even though little of it is his fault or under his control. The Fed appears to be planning to make matters worse. Grrr.

Carson Pass country, again

Last week MK and I camped for a couple nights up at Woods Lake CG. I try to go every year, and this year for the third time I hiked what may be my favorite "day hike" in the Sierras: From Woods Lake up to Lake Winnemucca, then to Round Top and 4th of July Lakes, down into the Summit City Canyon, up to Forestdale Divide, and finally returning around the base of Elephant's Back to Woods Lake. "Day hike" is in scare quotes because this is a 16.5 mile round trip, with a total elevation gain of somewhere around 3,000 feet– a combo that pushes my physical limits, at least at my current level of non-conditioning. That said, the vistas and abundant and diverse wildflowers and other plants are breathtaking nearly every step of the way. Along the deep, rugged, and spectacular Summit City Canyon, you are alone in the wilderness– we encountered not another human soul after Round Top until we reached the Pacific Crest Trail at Forestdale many miles later.

Photos can't really do it justice, but here a few snapshots with the Pixel anyway. The lichen picture is a cheat, having been taken near the Meiss Col on the other side of Highway 88... but such lichens!

Granite

A few pictures taken along the Murphy Creek Trail in Yosemite a couple weeks ago. Please click on the photos to see what they really look like... Blogger has trouble with B&W for some reason...

Two novels about old ladies

Two older women, each formidable in her own manner, are at the center of gravity of two NYRB re-issues that I recently read and highly recommend: Elizabeth Taylor's Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont (1971) and Joan Chase's During the Reign of the Queen of Persia (1983). That similarity notwithstanding, the two novels could hardly be more different in tone and style. Mrs. Palfrey is a near-perfect comedy of manners, gentle and sad but with just the right touch of acid. Mrs. Palfrey herself is a widow who has just moved into a small London residential hotel for older folks of limited means. Loneliness afflicts every character, including Mrs. Palfrey. What she does about it constitutes a small act of heroism, laughable on its face but brave and audacious in its context. Taylor's descriptive writing is crisp and concise, and the dialogue pitch-perfect. An unexpected delight.

The "Queen of Persia" character in Chase's novel is the embittered, aging matriarch of a family of daughters and granddaughters living on and around the family farm estate in 1950s Ohio. Loneliness is not their problem– as often as not, hell is other people, including one's mother or sisters. The novel is narrated collectively– sometimes permutationally– in the first-person plural by the four granddaughters, two each by two of the daughters. This odd contrivance works brilliantly and somehow adds to the unsettled mood created by the nonlinear arc of the story through time. The introduction tells us that Faulkner was a major influence on Chase, and that certainly comes through, but her strikingly unconventional metaphors and lyrical, crowded descriptions are a style all her own.

During the Reign is unquestionably a book about women and girls– mothers, daughters, and sisters; the handful of men in the story inhabit the peripheries and range from kind and ineffectual to menacing. Like the women, the men are a source of curiosity for the granddaughters, who observe the grownups warily throughout the book. A vibrant, angry, poetic, and haunted novel. 

Do read them both!

Ackerson Meadow flowers

I recently spent three nights car camping with a couple of good friends/colleagues at the quite pleasant Dimond O National Forest campground just outside the western edge of Yosemite. About this time every year we head up to Yosemite for a couple of killer day hikes, and this time was no different. Something new for me was taking a little time to ramble around a small bit of Ackerson Meadow, a big chunk of which was added to Yosemite NP not long ago, and some of which spans Evergreen Rd. on the way to Dimond O. 

Right now views of the meadow are dominated by the vibrant colors of blue-violet lupines, emerald bracken ferns, and golden yellow madias. But if you seek out the edges of damp depressions and look down at the ground, you'll see some amazing itsy flowers. I took a few pictures with my phone.

The first photo features the aptly named yellow-lipped pansy monkeyflower (Diplacus pulchellus) as well as Downingia montana (the latter was I think misidentified by my Seek app as a different downingia... Seek is amazing, but is often overconfident in its plant IDs... then again, all of my plant IDs are provisional!). The second shot is more of the downingia, a splendid little flower. Finally, a not very good shot of another tiny monkey, Erythranthe filicaulis. 

Beautiful Clintonia

Mingus on states' rights

In honor of Justice Alito's "opinion." Lyrics here.