Watershed Stories

For most of the last sixteen years I lived twelve miles from the divide separating my terminal-basin watershed from that of the Pacific Ocean. I am a mountaineer, striving to live like John Muir did. The high peaks that he climbed at the top of Yosemite's watershed sheltering the living glaciers so intently studied by him were the same ones that I climbed at the top of mine.

I lived so close to that divide that I climbed many of those peaks from my home without the aid of fossil fuel--once I

The Obama Administration creates another job overseas

May 4th, 2011:

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Japanese Nuclear Disaster at Fukushima

I'm not a nuclear expert, but I do specialize in environmental impact avoidance, mitigation, and restoration. So I'm always looking at the relationship between humans and the environment, especially during disasters.

As we watch the nuclear disaster go from bad to worse following the March 11th earthquake and tsunami, I've been shocked and disappointed by the efforts of the media to downplay the risks. It reminds me of the propaganda of the Bush Administration leading up to the Iraq war--easy to see through as B.S., if you are paying attention.

Expert after expert from the nuclear industry has appeared on CNN and the other news networks telling us not to worry, downplaying the disaster with almost a cavalier attitude. It seems like in the absence of reliable information, the one talking point everyone agreed on was to try to avoid saying anything that could cause a panic--regardless of whether panicking was necessary or a good idea.

The news reports go from bad to worse and the information gets revised daily.

John Muir

I aspire to live like John Muir. He really knew what true freedom is. I've read most of his works and attempted to copy some of his adventures (like his first ascent of the Mountaineer's Route on Mt. Whitney and his ascent of Mt. Ritter minus the near-death part). And he was fallible--it is interesting to read some of his stuff on Central Valley irrigated agriculture; and his thoughts on preventing fire have turned out to be harmful in the long run. Following are some of my favorite John Muir quotes.

"I am losing the precious days. I am degenerating into a machine for making money. I am learning nothing in this trivial world of men. I must break away and get out into the mountains and learn the news." --Muir, as quoted by Samuel Hall Young in Alaska Days with John Muir

"No two streams are alike. I fancy I could discriminate between Merced water and all others. Merced water is one thing, Tuolumne another, Kings River another, while town water, deadened and lost, is nothing--not water at all." --August, 1875

"The common purity of Nature is

Apothegms

Nuclear power is "so uneconomical that it is cheaper to write off a newly built nuclear plant than to run it." --Amory Lovins, 1992

A poignant quote in light of Japan's nuclear disaster--not that they needed a man-made disaster on top of two natural ones. Not that anyone needs a technology that is so potentially dangerous in the hands of humans, whether it be the hands of terrorists, governments, or power companies--requiring loss of freedom and excess militarization to lock it up as well as we can against any threat. Now insuring nuclear plants will get even more expensive, and our government will insist on continuing to subsidize it instead of spending the money on safe renewable energy like solar and wind that can come online in a fraction of the time as a nuclear power plant. So, to honor the painful irony of that quote, and celebrate the wondrous insights and inspiration contained in pithy aphorism, I'm reprinting here the apothegms page I used to have on Beyond the Batholith--Essays from the Eastern Sierra, and including new ones as I find them worthy of this page. I hope you enjoy these as much as I do.

apothegm, n. a short, pithy saying; aphorism aphorism, n. a terse saying embodying a general truth or astute observation

"Humanity now appropriates for its own use more than half of Earth's

My Great Great Grandmother - A Mystery

There are some really fascinating genealogy Websites - even the free ones give you some amazing resources. I was recently repeating a search for my oldest ancestors in L.A. to see if anything new popped up--I'd really like to find out where they came from.

Instead, I found something that raises a lot of new questions.

My great great grandmother was Dona Encarnacion Marteniz, who married Ignacio Bilderrain. In searching for her maiden name, I came across a biography of William Richard Rowland. It refers to his mother, a Dona Incarnacion Martinez Rowland.

Water Supply Solution: How California can thrive during the next mega-drought

The main constraints to having sustainable water systems (both human and natural) in California are not technological or economic, but political and social. There is a very simple (simple to lay out but hard to politically follow through) process we need to go through to achieve sustainability. And if the word "sustainability" rubs you or your audience the wrong way, then just replace it with "reliability" which means the same thing over the long term.

Right now we try to "use" every bit of water we can. In a variable climate like California's, and with a water rights system like ours, that is a recipe for disaster--we expand our "needs" in wet years and they must inevitably contract in dry years. This is not sustainable, or reliable, or any way to try to build anything stable. The Westlands (a low-priority water right) should never have been irrigated because