When we planned an eight-day visit to Hawai’i’s Big Island in late April, we knew that an eruption cycle in the Kilauea caldera had begun in late 2024–but eruptive episodes last only a few hours and occur days or even weeks apart. So it was by great good luck that we arrived in Volcano on the eve of Episode 45, which began in the middle of the night. We scrambled out of bed, into our clothes, and two miles through the dark to the closest viewpoint in Volcanoes National Park, where we spent hours gazing transfixed at one of our planet’s most primordial and magnificent spectacles.
Another highlight of the trip was an afternoon spent at the Hawaii Tropical Botanical Garden outside Hilo. Surrounded by blooms in a stunning array of colors and shapes, we relished the floral beauty–and saw and heard birds doing the same.
Speaking of birds . . . . On our one prior visit to the Big Island we had hoped to see a Nene Goose, the endemic state bird. We did not. Happily, we saw multiple Nene on several occasions on our recent trip. These handsome birds, thought to have evolved from Canada geese starting around half a million years ago, are the sole survivors of the five goose species that were once found in Hawai’i.
September brought a long-awaited pleasure: a leisurely road trip south and back along the eastern side of Oregon’s Cascade Mountains and California’s Sierra. I’d traveled Highway 395 along the Eastern Sierra twice before, south to north, both times in February, when the peaks were veiled by low clouds and I had neither the time nor the gear to do any exploring. I looked forward to seeing more.
My only previous visit to Yosemite had been to the Valley via the west entrance. Driving in from the east over Tioga Pass, the highest in the Sierra, into the upper park was a thrill. Meadows, lakes, and polished granite domes abounded. And yes, the iconic Half Dome is visible from a few spots in this part of Yosemite as well. We had a lucky day, bracketed by evening storms on both sides, but well spent soaking up the vistas and hiking a few short trails.
Our next stop was Mammoth Lakes, another place I’d never been. We spent a few days hiking and sightseeing, from small spots such as Emerald Lake, tucked away in the John Muir Wilderness, to geological glories such as the Devil’s Postpile, one of the world’s best examples of columnar basalt, and the Minarets, piercing the sky at dusk. (Why, though, are fascinating geological formations so often attributed to the Devil? My home state of Oregon has a bunch of them, from an Elbow to a Cauldron.)
My primary goal was to visit the Ancient Bristlecone Forest in the White Mountains, across the highway from the Sierra. From the Schulman Grove and its wonderful new visitor center to the Patriarch Grove at 11,000 feet of elevation, this home of the world’s oldest trees did not disappoint! Here my traveling partner Z photographs one of the dead trees, which, we learned, are so hard and durable that they don’t decay–they erode. Well worth a 2,029-mile round trip.
Last but not least, we spent a hot but cheerful few hours rambling among the Alabama Hills, which Z had long wanted to visit. These strangely comical, lumpish rock formations are the backdrop of many Western tv shows and movies, including Tremors. Needless to say, we kept a sharp eye out for graboid dust trails.
It’s been–yikes!–half a year since I posted anything, so here’s a quick catch-up, starting with a photo from last week’s visit to one of my favorite places in Portland, the Japanese Garden. The garden has a number of cherry trees, which were in beautiful bloom, but only one Weeping Cherry, this venerable and well-cared-for specimen. It once stood on private property and was slated for destruction, but it was moved to the Japanese Garden, where it continues to flourish. We should all be so lucky.
One adventure of recent months was a week-long trip to Costa Rica with a friend in February. We stayed in a rental bungalow on a hillside above Bijagua de Upala in the north-central highlands, about a 90-minute drive from Liberia. It’s close to Tenorio Volcano National Park, where we had a memorable hike. Another highlight was a three-hour private boat tour of the Cano Negro wetlands reserve, where we saw a great variety of birds and many splendid reptiles: caiman, basilisks, iguanas. Also some tiny bats roosting in crevices in the bark of a tree. Although the roads to Cano Negro are pretty bad and call for slow and careful driving, it’s well worth the effort to see this distinctive piece of Costa Rica’s ecology. Alas, I did not see a tapir on this trip–although my friend may have glimpsed one–but we did see two varieties each of wild sloths and monkeys, and a glorious abundance of bird life, including this Yellow-Fronted Toucan, photographed from our bungalow balcony, who just wouldn’t come any closer.
On the writing front, I’ve just had my first look at the layout and illustration sketches for the MG adaptation I wrote of David Barrie’s wonderful natural-history book Supernavigators. When the adaptation comes out from Tra Publishing, it’s going to be gorgeous. And soon I’ll be diving into the revising and polishing phase of my MG adaptation of Loren Grush’s The Six, about our first six women astronauts.
A total solar eclipse will cross much of North America next week. I’d thought about driving to south-central Texas–the closest point at which I could intersect the path of totality–but I’ve dropped the idea. Much as I would love experiencing another eclipse, I had a perfect one an hour from home in 2017. I decided I didn’t want to drive for 30 hours, park myself by the side of a dusty road (along with who knows how many other drivers), and hope that the 50-50 weather would let the eclipse be seen. All respect to the eclipse chasers who manage to see as many as possible, but I’m happy with the one total eclipse I’ve seen in my life.
Finally, a few of my favorite recent reads: The Silver Wind and The Rift by Nina Allan, both of which bring an oblique and ambiguous touch to science-fictional themes; Haruki Murakami’s Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, a weird and compelling novel that to me suggested elements both of the same author’s later novel 1Q84 and the unsettling 2004 Japanese horror film Marebito; and Gone: A Search for What Remains of the World’s Extinct Creatures, by naturalist Michael Blencowe, whose account of his travels to see the preserved relics of creatures such as the Great Auk, Steller’s Sea Cow, and (of course) the Dodo, includes fascinating details about the animals, their discoverers and exploiters, and the author’s own feelings about the natural world and what we are making of it.
Mid-October saw us back at the Oregon coast for a couple of days. Z’s cousins invited us to join them at their beach house south of Newport, and the four of us enjoyed lots of conversation, an evening out watching the harbor’s resident sea lions and eating delicious seafood, and a couple of long walks on this:
We also spent a tranquil couple of hours in our kayaks, paddling the winding stream of Beaver Creek Natural Area. Fall color hadn’t settled onto the trees yet, and it was warm for the season. We saw a lot of bird activity, and I had a lucky glimpse of a five-inch-long Rough-skinned Newt just strolling along the surface of a submerged log as I glided above.
The ocean air was glorious, but as soon as we passed through the mountains on our homeward trip, our eyes began to sting. In our absence, the central Willamette Valley had become blanketed with the all-too-familiar acrid scent and dingy look of smoke-laden air. For several days Portland and the area to the south had air quality high in the “unhealthy” range due to smoke from wildfires in the region. Fortunately, rain–of which we’d had no measurable amount since June–finally arrived at the end of the week, bringing relief to our lungs. And, I hope, help for the firefighters.
Throughout September and early October, summer seemed to have been weirdly extended, leading to a minor case of “time out of joint” on my part. The arrival of autumnal gloom and rain at last thrilled me. More, please.
As the fourth week of September began, Z and I set off on a three-day road trip to the Central Cascades. We drove to Bend by way of Madras, where we had a terrific meal at La Posada, a Mexican place that has never let us down; we eat there any time we pass through that part of Oregon.
After checking into our motel room in Bend, we headed over to the Oregon Badlands Wilderness, about which I had just learned. We set out on a 5-mile, late-afternoon hike. Once we’d gotten past the litter of rusted cans that lined the first half-mile of the trail, the place was quietly beautiful, if less dramatic than the term badlands might suggest: a gently rolling landscape of sand and rock, dotted with desert trees and tree clusters. Several seasonal ponds were almost dry, but there was water here and there in a few channels. We passed just one big feature: a ridge of piled-high lava rocks. The hike took longer than expected due to our leisurely pace and the slowness of walking in deep, loose sand, but we arrived back at the trailhead not long after darkness had fallen and the coyotes had started to yip.
Finishing a hike rather late
We spent the next day driving the 82-mile loop of the McKenzie-Santiam Scenic Byway, which passes through several types of mountain forest and multiple lava fields, as well as along several rushing rivers. We took in the view from Scott Lake and walked the lava trails at Dee Wright Observatory, a handsome little belvedere perched atop McKenzie Pass.
Dee Wright Observatory
On the final day we returned to the northern part of the loop to explore the Head of Metolius and Camp Sherman before spending the afternoon in our kayaks on Suttle Lake. After that we headed home by way of Stayton and Silverton so as to turn the trip into a loop and enjoy a country drive. The perfect weather all three days made it an ideal end-of-summer outing.
