Strawberries Ripening

We had rain again yesterday. I was tempted to go for another hike, but settled for a trip to the Farmer's Market in Del Mar. Patty said Search and Rescue would be glad for that.

Strawberry season is finally here in San Diego, fresh from the Carlsbad Strawberry Fields. The juicy critters always seem to be a little unripe this time of year, so I asked the Strawberry Guy for a hint. Put them in a bag with a banana?

"No", he said, "put them out in the sun".



I think it's working. They've be out about three hours, and they're getting that ripe strawberry smell. M-mmm. Maybe strawberry crepes for dinner. A helluva lot better than Girl Scout cookies for breakfast. I'll try not to think of the Northeast digging themselves out of another snowstorm.

Secret Canyon: A Night to Remember

Yesterday morning, five buddies and I set off for a 16 mile day hike on the Secret Canyon trail down the gorge of Pine Valley Creek in the eastern mountainous area of San Diego. Never mind the difficulty was rated as strenuous, that it was February, and that rain - maybe a thunderstorm with hail - was expected, we were a stalwart band of a mountain climber, a marathoner, a kick boxer, and three strong and experienced hikers. Bring it on!

With a good start at 8:05 AM and overcast weather, Linda Case, her friends Roger and Sharon, my friends Wayne and Kathleen (from the West Highland Way) and I entered this beautiful and rugged canyon.


I noted ours were the only cars in the trail head parking lots, but chalked it off to most people not liking to hike in the rain. Good! We would have the trail all to ourselves.

Besides the hike, I was looking for a couple things along the way, the huge Pine Valley Bridge completed in 1974,


and a never completed flume built in 1895 to bring water from a reservoir in Pine Valley to a tributary of the San Diego River, and then on to the rapidly growing San Diego new town. Sections of the old flume were used to construct our trail into Secret Canyon, a name evidently that refers to its inaccessibility until the trail was built in 1992.


Discarded clothing, backpacks, trash and water bottles became increasingly evident along the trail. Linda climbed down to retrieve a backpack at one point. It contained only a stone from the trail. After putting two and two together we realized the strewn clothing and trash came from "coyotes" and their illegal immigrant clients.


For these first few miles, other than off and on rain, the hike was uneventful. The view down into Pine Valley Creek was spectacular.


Our little group was bonding, and we didn't realize how literal this would be by the end of the trip. Our first clue came with taking a wrong trail down into Nelson Canyon, winding up instead in a maze of "coyote" trails, remnants of migrant camps, and having to bushwhack up through chaparral looking for the hikers' trail. Kathleen, usually a strong hiker, tweaked her knee over the rough terrain, and it became increasingly painful to walk.

The next few hours were spent scrambling rocks, jumping streams, hiking overgrown trails, and trying to sort our hiking trail from the coyote trails. We were soaked from the rain, wet vegetation, and creek crossings, but by 4:30 PM we reached the confluence of Pine Valley and Espinosa Creeks. From here it should be only a mile and a half to two miles out of the canyon, but the trail ended and there was no other visible trail or navigable terrain. We backtracked, checking out three false leads up over the mountain with no luck. Just more "coyote" trails.

Nightfall came by 6:00 and we realized we would be spending the night in the canyon, and what a long night! Wayne and Roger gathered dry grasses to make a dry sleeping palette and we settled down for the night, spooning in a tight bunch to conserve body heat. Eleven hours of off and on cold rain, temperatures that dipped to the 30's, thoughts about how we were going to get ourselves out of the canyon, wondering when family would start to search, hoping beyond hope that relief would come during this wretched, unending night and knowing it wouldn't. Only Roger, the ex-Navy man, slept a bit.


About midnight, we heard voices approaching our bivouac but realized they were Spanish speaking, a "coyote" and about 6-8 illegals who stopped to check us out. It was a scary minute, but Linda was a sheriff and black belt in karate and Wayne was a kick boxer who got his knife in hand just in case. The "coyote" pack was able to convey they were going to Los Angeles to look for work, and we stated simply we were "camping". What must have gone through their minds at six gringos lying on the ground in the cold and rain, and calling it "camping".

At daylight, with Girl Scout cookies for breakfast, we set out to backtrack to find the main trail and from there, hopefully, find our way out. At 7:50 came that welcome sound of a helicopter, first one from the San Diego Fire Department followed a few minutes later by one from the Sheriff's Department. After checking that we had no injured, we were directed back to that creek confluence to meet up with Search and Rescue. From them, we learned the three ways out of the canyon were impassable due to the recent rains, and they guided us about a quarter mile up the creek, sometimes wading in icy cold water up to the butt, to the helicopter. We were pre-warned a lot of people would be at the landing area and there were - Search and Rescue, Sheriffs, Fire Department, Border Patrol, a Mobile Command Bus, ambulance, ASTRAE, television media, even a bus from the Salvation Army. It looked like they were pretty determined to find us.


Regarding our worry about when some type of search and rescue would come to show us the way out, we learned that Linda's sister, daughter, brother-in-law, and husband set out at 7:50 that night and attempted to hike down the beginning and ending of the trail in the dark. They set off a Border Patrol alarm for illegals and the Border Patrol joined the search for another two hours. About 1:30 AM, the family contacted the sheriff. ASTREA, Fire and Rescue, and even the Coast Guard were contacted for a helicopter at 2:00 AM but the cloud level was too low. By 4:00 AM the volunteer San Diego Sheriff's Search and Rescue showed up with dogs, horses, quads, ambulances, food from the Red Cross for everyone, fuel truck for the helicopters and the complete command post. They popped the doors on the vehicles left at each end of the trails for the dogs to sniff personal items and set off with the dogs on the trail. Unfortunately, the scent was lost after a while due to the rain.

No one could find a sign of us during the night until - guess what - while scouting for us the illegals were apprehended and said they came across some crazy gringos "camping" at about midnight. With that the Border Patrol was able to get an approximate location and the rest is history.

We are grateful to all those involved in getting us out of the canyon, and to those who keep us in shape to have our adventures. To a person, we hikers agreed this was the most physically miserable night of our lives. To that, my daughter added "aren't you glad you have a home and a warm bed". And to that I added, "yes, and what doesn't kill you, makes you better looking".

Fascinating.

OK, we're back to Short Sharp Science.

This morning before work I was reading about how stem cells respond to touch. "Simply expose stem cells to flowing fluid and they turn into blood vessels," the article says and then goes on to explain how stem cells know to develop into bone or muscle or some other kind of tissue. I think those of us who are Star Trek fans would say, "Fascinating."

(By the way, Vicki is an old Air Force buddy of mine. She's married to John, the same guy whose eloquent letter about his return to Viet Nam stirred up such a controversy about censorship on this blog and our local blogroll three years ago. Vicki is an amazing person in her own right - an OR nurse, mom, artist, and student...and she puts up with John! Do check out her blog when you have a minute.)

Life as a hologram and other mundane stuff.

I keep the Short Sharp Science link in our sidebar so I can pop over periodically to see what cool new stuff is being written about in the magazine New Scientist. (I think I originally found the link at Pam's blog.) Now, I'm not a scientist - but I think even if I was, a good bit of the stuff on the Short Sharp Science blog would blow my mind.

For example, this article is especially mind-blowing. Perhaps we all live in a Matrix after all? How do the scientists who postulate these theories - much less prove them - come up with this stuff? Do they eat breakfast and drive to work like the rest of us? I mean, I do my best thinking in the shower each morning; their shower thinking is obviously much more creative and brilliant than mine. Maybe it's their shampoo???

Of course, some of the articles are much more mundane...like this one about the odds of a single man finding an appropriate girlfriend on any given evening. Appropriate for Valentine's Day, no?

By the way, happy Valentine's Day to all!

The snow walked in Charleston last night.

The literal translation of "it snowed" in Russian is "the snow walked". We Russian students back at DLI used to get a big chuckle out of that - and a lot of other translations, to be sure.

Last night, the snow did its once-a-decade walk in Charleston. This morning, on the day before Valentine's Day, it looked like this.



Out back, I had my very own fairy forest.

OK, so I've been dipping in the paint pot a bit. I only messed with the one below a little...

That magnolia was trying its best to not shiver.

Hang on, Magnolia - the sun's coming out! It'll all be gone in an hour.

Like Three Years of Pregnancy

In October 2006, our hospital's nursing organization decided to seek designation as a Magnet Hospital from the American Nurse Credentialing Center. I volunteered to write the document that would provide the ANCC with evidence that we are in fact Magnet. Fortunately, Pennie (our VP of Nursing) decided that writing 1200+ pages - with attachments, mind you - was a job for more than one woman. Below you see me, Pennie, and Tanya (the other victim - uh, I mean writer), holding the four jump drives that carried our document - all 225 MB of it - off to the four appraisers last week.

The Proud Parents

Here are the beautiful flowers that appeared on my doorstep the next day with a thank you note from Pennie.


And now we wait to hear if the appraisers like our baby well enough to come visit.

West Highland Way, Day 9: In the Footsteps of MacBeth and the Ancients

I dare do all that may become a man;
Who dares do more, is none.
- Shakespeare's Macbeth

Our day started with a steep climb from the floor of Glen Leven to an old military road that will take us almost to Fort William, 15 miles from our guest house in Kinlochleven, so there will be no tarrying around today. Looking back, we had a good view of the town, Riven Leven as it emptied into Loch Leven, the huge pipes coming down the mountain from the Blackwater Reservoir and the mountains of Glencoe in the distance. The weather was a bit overcast, but not raining. Yeah! But then, this is Scotland where you never know what the day will bring.


Following the valley of the Allt Nathrach (stream of the snake), we continued up to the Lairigmore (the great pass) and ruin of an old farmhouse, Tigh-na-sleabhaich (house on the gullied slope). It was all sounding like we were on our way to Mordor. Love those Gaelic names, but I never figured out how to pronounce them like a Celt.

The Lairigmore is a long, isolated mountain pass at 1080' between high bare hills on our left and the munros of the Marmores on our right.


Beyond the Lairigmore, huge swaths of forest plantation had been clear cut leaving the mountain side bare, and we came across another of those signs about a "plant". Not even the English gentleman behind the sign with whom I had been walking for a while knew what "plant in operation" might mean. He was indignant these trees had been cut down in 2007 and no replacements yet planted. The plan was to remove plantation trees and plant native trees. Why cut all these trees and leave the mountain exposed to erosion?


A bit further on we were walking in the footsteps of Macbeth, the last Celtic king of Scotland from 1040-1057. A sign along the path said Macbeth had stayed on the crannog, an ancient artificial island made of stone and timber, in the little lake, Lochan Lunn Da-Brha. I wasn't sure whether to be more excited about Macbeth or that I finally had seen a crannog. I had been looking for one ever since Loch Lomond. I remembered Patty had said once while working on our genealogy we had an ancestor related to Macbeth. Either the crannog was a vacation home for Macbeth or he was trying to get away from some enemies, probably the latter. His stomping ground was more in eastern Scotland.


We left the military road for a path across moorland with a good view of the great Ben Nevis (mountain with its head in the clouds). The Ben is the highest of the Scottish munros and the highest mountain in Great Britain at 4406'. Many a climber has cut their teeth on this mountain before heading to the Himalaya.


The cold wind had picked up across the moorland, and we were hungry, looking for a spot to rest and refresh and finding none due to the narrowness of the track until we came to our most beautiful lunch place of the whole trip. Perhaps our rainy lunch along Loch Lomand comes a close second but this open, emerald green moorland was breathtaking. And dry!


We left the moorland for forest that would last most of the way into Fort William, the towering shape of Ben Nevis growing closer.


Through another fairy forest, and I am looking for an Iron Age fort I knew should be someplace in this area.


There are no signs or trail markers for the fort and I had no conception what an Iron Age fort might look like, but we took a trail off the path skirting the forest for about a half mile until we came to a high exposed hill.


Sure enough, climbing to the top of the hill we could see this was the fort, Dun* Deardail, one of Scotland's vitrified forts. The outside would have had a rubble wall fused by fire into a glassy matrix topped with wooden palisades on top. This photo is taken from inside the fort which is encircled by an earthen mound, and there is our Ben Nevis just beyond the mound, separated from us by the deep Glen Nevis.
* dun = gaelic for fort


I tried to think of when was the Iron Age, but all those prehistoric ages ran together in my mind. I looked it up once home; the Scotland Iron Age was about 750 BC to 500 BC. Our fort here was about 700 BC.

Standing on the top of the encircling mound, we could see down to Fort William, straight down into Glen Nevis, and we were directly facing the hulk of Ben Nevis. Seemed like a pretty defensible place to me, but we were verra chilly on this windy hill and this was July. What must it have been like in the middle of winter?


We had another four miles into Fort William but the signs of civilization were becoming evident with car parks, campgrounds, visitor centers, and finally paved road on which we were supposed to walk for the last mile or two into town. After nine days in the wilderness we weren't ready for pavement and we found a forest path detour we hoped would get us to our destination.

Our path was a bit rugged and the rain began, indeed a downpour, a fitting end to our adventure. We had walked ancient footpaths and drove roads, old military roads, farm tracks, railways, across mountains and moors, through thick forests, climbed passes, touched history, and become good buddies in the process. Next year, Patty is coming.


Our thanks to MacsAdventure whose arrangements made this self-guided trip seamless.

West Highland Way, Day 8: The Devil's Staircase

We have nine miles today, not a long walk, and we will be climbing the exposed Devil's Staircase and descending to the little Highland town of Kinlochleven. Now that we've crossed the Rannoch with weather matching the brooding moor, I'm ready for the rain to stop. Enough already. Nobody up there is listening to my petulance as we set off from Kingshouse in a light rain. The only consolation is we get to climb uphill to the highest point on the West Highland Way at the top of the Devil's Staircase.

We walked about three miles through the valley toward Glencoe before turning to ascend the Staircase, a zigzaggy trail built as a military road in 1750 as part of General Wade's plan to keep control of those rebellious Highlanders. The word is the Devil's Staircase got its name from workers who had to carry road building materials up this 1000' ascent.

The wind and cold were punishing but I had to admit the view back toward our Buachaille Etive Mor and farther to the Black Mount beside our Rannoch Moor was incredibly beautiful.


I had no room for whining about the weather. Jan was climbing with knees that measured a day's difficulty by how many Vicodin she needed.


We hung out on the col for our summit picture,


and to take in the views to the north toward the jagged ridgeline of the Mamore peaks where we were headed.


The next six miles were an easy traverse across the flanks of these high hills, then a steep descent into Kinlochleven, so we walked off into the mist.


We were in no hurry to get into Kinlochleven so Kathleen and I hung back taking pictures of the wee flowers and rock gardens of the mountain. All this rain wasn't for nothin'.






I caught one of my favorite pictures of the Port Townsend pair.


Another when they joked about Q-Tips when I asked for a picture with their hats off.


And Sally leaping a small burn*.


*burn = Scottish for stream. Here for more Scottish words.

The skies cleared briefly on our path,


and closed just as quickly, leaving us to lunch again on another wind-blown rock.


We descended through the forest of Coire Mhoraire and across River Leven into the little town of Kinlochleven. It had been an industrial town of aluminum smelting through the twentieth century, but with the smelter now gone the town has reinvented itself as a tourist center and base for outdoor enthusiasts. The town dwellers fill their yard, and I mean fill, with weird little colored statues, a lot of dwarfs, and I regret not getting any pictures of a statue filled yard.


We had a wonderfully luxurious bed and breakfast at Edencoille, also filled with all kinds of little statues and tchotchke. Kathleen and I had the attic room


with a view to these mountains, the River Leven just below the trees.


We had a wonderful and talkative - as Scots are wont to be - hostess who regaled us with tales of the West Highland Way race. Runners have 35 hours to complete what will take us nine, granted leisurely, days. The record for the race is 15 hours for men and 17 hours for women. Elsie's Royal Air Force son is one of the 544 runners who have completed the course in the last 24 years. Elsie told us of a woman who was a frequent guest and who ran the course. The lady came back to the Edencoille after finishing the race and was unable to get out of bed for the next three days and had trouble walking the next two weeks. I asked whether Elsie had taken her to a doctor and she responded, "why no, it was self-inflicted", as though this was something an American would think to do. I like that Scots attitude. Perhaps we would have less self-infliction in the world if we had to take care of the consequences by ourselves.

We made up for the short day walk - 9 miles by now is a short walk - with another couple miles to the Bothy Pub for dinner, set on the banks at the head of Loch Leven. And another Scottish beer. For Jan and me, it has been a 95 mile pub crawl and we love the end of the day beer, tonight a chance to try Three Sisters brewed here in Kinlochleven and named after the mountains of Glencoe.


Tomorrow, some ancient history and a beautiful last day.

West Highland Way, Day 7: Crossing the Rannoch Moor

The mist rose and died away, and showed us that country lying as waste as the sea; only the moor fowl and the pewees crying upon it, and far over to the east, a herd of deer, moving like dots. Much of it was red with heather; much of the rest broken up with bogs and hags and peaty pools; some had been burnt black in a heath fire; and in another place there was quite a forest of dead firs, standing like skeletons. A wearier-looking desert man never saw; but at least it was clear of troops, which was our point.

- David Balfour and Alan Brech crossing the Rannoch Moor, 1751, in Robert Louis Stevenson's Kidnapped

What a difference a day makes with this moody Scottish weather. Yesterday was dry, this morning cold, rainy, and windy, and I am excited. I have been looking forward to crossing the Rannoch ever since the kilted Mr. Montgomery in the Glasgow cathedral told me about this boggy moor with remnants of an ice age forest. Today we get to cross ten miles of this wild and desolate moor in the rain and wind, what more could a person want in life? Our guide books warn there is "no help or shelter" in the Moor. My mind's eye envisions Colin Firth riding toward us from the distance, black great coat billowing out behind, offering a hand up on his mount.

We left the comfort of our inn and skirted the west end of Lake Tulla, past campers who spent the night in a sloggy field, silently feeling grateful for our warm, dry bed the night before. We ascended on drove track through forest to the saddle in the Black Mount, that stretch of mountains that edges the moor from Glen Orchy to Glen Coe in the north, and onto the high plateau of the Rannoch Moor.


We were in one of the wildest places in Scotland, created 20,000 years ago by a glacier moving toward the east and on retreat leaving behind boulders, lochs,


hundreds of these little lochans, and a region inhospitable to humans.




Strange rivers seemed to flow from nowhere to nowhere.


I could understand why Sir Walter Scott called the MacGregors of this area "children of the mist".


It was off and on driving rain, mostly on, and only occasionally could I pull my camera out of my jacket. The reader will recall my Gore Tex boots were history left behind in Tyndrum, and my light hikers were soaked through to the metatarsals. I wore only a light hiking shirt under my rain jacket. Where was my brain when I got up this morning? Probably on Colin Firth. During one break in the rain, I turned to snap a shot of Kathleen with that ever present smile and her comments when passing by of "lovin' it".


Finding a lunch spot was not easy task. We had a choice between one exposed spot or another exposed spot, finally settling on one of those gigantic boulders dropped off by the glacier. We had walked separately most of the day. The isolation of the moor and the brooding weather were conducive to introspection and I was overwhelmed with this experience of walking one of the wonders of the earth in this perfect weather.


A couple miles from our destination Buachaille Etive Mor ("the great herdsman of Etive"), the most photographed mountain in Scotland, loomed into view.


For a short time, the weather cleared and the beautiful colors of the moor and mountain shone through.




Here is an incredible picture of the Buachaille (pronounced "Boochall", the 'ch' as in Loch) in winter.

The mountain stands guard at the junction of Glen Etive and Glen Coe and our Inn for the night sits close to the base. Kingshouse was built in the 1600's and got its name from the days after Culloden when the Duke of Cumberland used the building as barracks for his soldiers while they captured or killed any remaining Jacobites in the Highlands. I definitely did not get good vibes from this place even though the view from a lounge window is listed as one of the ten most beautiful in the world, up there with Victoria Falls.


Glen Coe extends east from our inn and I had hoped to make a visit to the beautiful valley and walk the land of the Glen Coe massacre in 1692. Thirty eight MacDonald clansmen were murdered by government soldiers under the command of a Campbell after extending their Highlander hospitality.

The visit to Glencoe would have to come another time. The weather wasn't going to let us have more sunshine and by the time we reached the Kingshouse we were in another downpour. Even so, Sally went out and walked another 2-3 miles after Jan, Kathleen and I settled in, content to take in the view out the window. That woman was on another level from us mortal walkers. Just as a warm up for the trip she had walked a 36 mile day hike - yes, day hike - in Washington mountains.


Tomorrow, we climb the Devil's Staircase.