Creek Running North

I wondered if any of them were looking down at this broad expanse of dark, wondering if anyone was looking up at them from within it.

Believe it or not I wonder that exact thing when I look out of plane windows.  But I wasn’t on any of the planes you saw last week.

charles beat me to that comment.  flying by day, there is at least a chance i can recognize what we are flying over, and i wonder at seeing so many landscapes, even from way up there.  at night—i wonder about the small clusters of light below, and the dark places between.

Welcome back.

Beautiful words…

The cactus is making the peace sign! 

Beautiful stars.

A sky like that has the same effect on me as espresso.

Welcome back!

I lay out on the sand at night by the South Fork Yuba River last weekend, thinking similar thoughts.  Saw a number of meteors and satellites, and was curious if the space station denizens were observing by its absence the dark swath of the relatively unpopulated northern Sierra Nevada, where I lay.  Perhaps not quite the contrast of the East Mojave adjacent to Vegas, but noticeable, I would think.  The next morning, my charming camping neighbor Olga asked me what we were seeing when we looked up at night and saw the Milky Way.  As I went into a spiel about our galaxy, what it was, and our peripheral position in the outer portion of one of the spiral arms, I was reminded of Arthur C. Clarke’s Nightfall and the imponderable brilliance that we would be subject to if we were located closer to the galactic core with its abundance of globular clusters and super-clusters.  Would make Vegas look like small potatoes, indeed, and that annoying glow from over the eastern horizon from Cima Dome would be, well, unnecessary.

You are wrong so rarely, Fred, that I find I cannot resist the impulse to correct you.

Asimov wrote Nightfall.

Welcome back!

You can have one of the two Mojave rattlers we saw this spring.  I want to keep the other ;).  Oh, and we still have one Mojave reptile living with us (a lovely little collared lizard.) But you’d have to fight 10 year old Gracie for her.

I can’t wait until it’s cool enough to return.

Your desert stay may have been rattler-free, but the hills above San Mateo weren’t.  Here’s part of an e-mail from a friend (a symphony violist):

I just got back from a week in Kaiser Hospital where I landed after a baby rattlesnake bit me on the knuckle of my left hand Labor Day morning while I was weeding right up near the house in the back yard! I’m going to be fine, but the inside of my entire left arm is the color of liver and very swollen. The discoloration and swelling extends all the way down my left side to my hip, and I’ll be off of work at least another two weeks at home. It may take weeks, but a full recovery, including playing the viola, is anticipated.

Yikes.  And that from a “baby.”

On a lighter note, here’s a recursion challenge—it’s a fill-in-the-blanks one:

An immensity of stars, this earth insignificant and fleeting.

An immensity of ________, this ________ insignificant and fleeting.

For me, the blanks would read “ice cream,” “ice creeam,” and “coronary,” but I’m sure CRN’s erudite readers will be able to come up with some better ones.

That’s pretty much why I always take off my wedding ring when I hike on Mount Diablo, where I HAVE seen rattlers. The ring is platinum, and I imagine a nip on the left arm could cause me to lose my ring finger from edemic strangulation before the paramedics could find a way to cut the ring, especially as I’d likely be six miles’ walk from a phone.

Of course, as I don’t want Becky to worry about the snakes, I tell her it’s because Diablo is infested with gorgeous hikers.

The babies, incidentally, are rumored to have the strongest venom.

When I lived in rural Connecticut, the big worry hiking in the spring was running into baby copperheads, which were rumored to be both fearless and much more venomous.  Never ran into one, but a few friends did. 

I appreciate venomous snakes - but from a distance.

Glad to hear your friend is okay, Sherwood.

Hey Chris - You know what?  Last night as I lay down in bed (no stars) and reviewed my day, I said “Dang it!  You know what - I think Asimov wrote Nightfall, not Clarke!” Was too lazy to get up and check, though - said to myself, “If I was wrong, I bet Chris corrects me.” Well, waddayaknow!  Sorry, all those prolific 50’s and 60’s science fiction writers/science popularizers are blending together now, although back in the day I’m sure I could have recited them chapter and verse WITH correct attribution. 

On an un-related note (although at least peripherally related to this thread re the desert), have you read Michelle Nijhuis’ recent article in High Country News called “Bonfire of the Superweeds”?  About Sonoran Desert invasion by buffelgrass, mostly, with extensive quotage and field visits with Julio Betancourt.  Mentions the Sahara mustard threat to the Mojave only in passing, as possibly a worse threat even than buffelgrass.  If you haven’t seen it, I can get an e-copy, since I’m a subscriber, and pass it on.  It’s an excellent, albeit depressing piece.

And finally, the reason, as I understand it, why baby rattlers’ bites can be more dangerous than adults’, is that that they don’t have control over how much venom they inject.  Adults can release “appropriate” amounts, and reserve high doses for taking prey, as opposed to defense.

Chris:  in fact I was on one of those planes (on my way to Yurp for a work thang) and while admiring the desert from Way Up There, I did indeed wave at you.

I remember encountering a baby rattler on a walk up in Cotati one day.  It was sunning itself in the middle of a road, and I tried to persuade it to move to the edge so it wouldn’t get run over. I hadn’t realized I was playing with such a big fire (though I knew it was at least kinda stupid). It had that baby cuteness even if it was a rattler.  It moved, finally.

snakes first; sky second.

Fortunately i didn’t see any rattlesnakes in my travels in Southeastern Arizona over the last ten days.  That people were being bitten there at a record rate may stem more from the human population’s lack of common sense and inability to pay attention (especially in operating motor vehicles--no wonder they have high insurance rates there), than from any increase in rattler aggression.  I did see snakes while in the midwest, particularly a rather fiendish copperhead; as MBW suggests: copperheads, which were rumored to be both fearless and much more venomous. During the eight day span of the tour in the Ozarks there were multiple snake sightings on the festival sites including some young adult rattlesnakes (one was killed {in the location of the ticket boxoffice where lots of people would be walking around 24/7} that measured 44” with four rattles) and several copperheads (largest spotted was 30"+), but none seemed threatening or even dangerous for the most part. 

It wasn’t until i was heading back to St Louis to catch the plane for Denver that i had my experience.  Stopping over at a friend’s farm for the night, we took a morning walk along his lake shore.  A copperhead came swimming towards us, and continued to come at us.  It was perhaps 2.5 feet long and showed no fear of us at all.  My friend (wisely now i see) carries a snake hook at all times and used it to pick up the snake and throw it back in to the lake hoping it would just swim off.  It didn’t, time and time again coming right at us.  This wasn’t cool.  My friend finally had had enough and threw the snake up against some rocks and then pummeled it with some other rocks.  His rule was that his survival, and those of the many guests who show up at this remote lake, need not to be assaulted by “stupid snakes.”

Sky pilots:  Of all the flights i had this summer, one of this morning’s was the very best.  For some poorly explained reason (seemed to have something to do with so many flights being cancelled in the South and Midwest that needed to get people to Vegas, and too many military flights yada yada), the segment of my flight from Tucson to Las Vegas required the plane to head northeast and then west back towards LV.  This took us over the Grand Canyon, and damn, that was an amazing and spectacular flight experience.  What a landscape, what a singular planetary (solar system?) wonder, what dramatic emotions are nourished and inspired by that view.  I looked down, constantly wondering if people on the river, or in the canyon on trails, or along the rims at the various points, wished they were up in the plane at that moment, as much as part of me wished i was down in there then as well.  I hope i have more chances to catch that aerial view in my lifetime.

you get it across so well.