Heat Dome

You know, it’s already been a hot summer here in the Bay Area.

Actually, it’s been a hot summer all over the world, with new records being set all the time. The NOAA’s July report was, frankly, depressing.

And here we are again, on Labor Day weekend, about to experience another heat dome - and this one will create hotter temperatures than we’ve seen in a long time. What’s really bad about this particular event is the length of time it will be present (over a week in some places), and the fact that it won’t cool off overnight.

Southern California has already been baking for days; the Central Valley has been terrible; and it’s only going to get worse for all of us. Usually, the Bay Area tends to experience more moderate temperatures, since we are situated near the lovely cooling effects of the Pacific Ocean. That won’t be true this weekend or next week, unfortunately. And where we live in Walnut Creek, about 20 miles east of San Francisco, it’s generally hotter anyway (the fog rarely reaches us). It’s looks like we’re in for it.

The thing that makes this kind of heat bearable for humans is that it is extremely dry. Don’t get me wrong - we still have to be careful, especially if we’re outdoors (people die all the time hiking in hot California weather, thinking it’s not that bad). But heat plus humidity? That’s when things get really dangerous. Wet-bulb temperatures are deadly for humans. So in many ways, we are very lucky.

But the bad thing about the dryness is that our vegetation is at record low levels of moisture. That means fire. Many new fires have already started, unfortunately.

Most likely there will be more before this heat dome moves off the West Coast.

Due to the heightened risk of fire, most of our regional and local parks have been closed through Labor Day.

This means that everyone is out walking in the neighborhood, on the sidewalks, and on the streets, and most of us are doing it very early. Tom and I certainly got started early, and it wasn’t long before a fire truck passed us, siren blaring. We looked up, all around, at the open space hills that surround our neighborhood. No smoke, thankfully. We noticed that an older couple walking near us did the exact same thing. It wasn’t long before we heard more sirens, and a family with kids who was near us at the time also did the neck-crane. I realized that this has become normal, when you live in the West. It’s hot? Dry? Windy? You hear sirens? The head starts to move, warily eying the sky. It’s a chronic stressor, in late summer and early autumn.

Our family is lucky. We have air conditioning, and as long as the power stays on (another stressor), we’ll be ok. These sorts of times make me think a lot about the folks that aren’t so lucky. And about the folks who are being told to evacuate their homes, due to approaching fire. All we can do is hope that will never happen to us.

The Mountains Were Calling

So naturally, we had to go!*

Tom and I have always wanted to explore Lassen Volcanic National Park, so when I realized that both the kids would be home this summer and the house might start to seem a bit small with four adults knocking around, I took advantage of the long holiday weekend and booked the two of us a trip up north. We left Friday, driving up through Chico, then traveling across a butte and through Lassen National Forest to get over to Chester, a tiny town at the north tip of Lake Almanor. We stayed at a delightful inn called The Bidwell House, which was about a half hour south of the park entrance; our room came complete with a Japanese soaking tub, which was heaven for tired hiking feet.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me start from the beginning.

You may not know that I totally fangirl over thru-hikers. I’ve never fulfilled my dream of going on a months-long hike - I’ve never known how to make that work, logistically - so I satisfy my adventure cravings by watching PCT/YouTubers every summer as they document their journey from the CA/Mexico border north to the WA/Canada border, a walk of 2,650 miles. When I saw that our drive would take us right through the PCT, I planned for us to stop and take our Friday hike there, giving me a little slice of what it’s like on the trail.

What I had completely forgotten was that starting July 13, 2021, and continuing for four long months into late October of 2021, the Dixie Fire (the largest single fire, not part of a complex, in California’s history, and the second largest overall) burned through nearly one million acres, across five counties (Butte, Plumas, Lassen, Shasta, and Tehama). As we drove west on highway 36, from Tehama into Plumas county and Lassen National Forest, our excited chatter turned to silence as views of lush green forest turned to blackened trunks and stumps. In our Bay Area privilege, we had totally blocked out the memory of red skies and falling ash last summer. Mile after mile we drove, heavy of heart, looking out into the destruction.

We parked the car at the turnout for the trailhead, tied on our hiking shoes, and silently started walking.

We walked quietly, without talking, except to greet passing hikers. We walked on the designated path through the burned trees. In some places, life was returning - manzanita, snowberry, and hardy grasses seemed to dominate - and along the one creek we crossed, there was a riot of wildflowers. But there was no birdsong, no butterflies, no insects. We reached a high point; as far as we could see, the forest was burned.

It was less a hike and more a prayer. We were deeply, deeply affected. How many times, in this blog, have I written about fire? How many times have I opened the Cal Fire website to be greeted with more statistics about yet another fire? How many times have I turned on the TV news and watched as a family walked back onto their property to find only soot and ash? This one hike made it all real for me. The Dixie Fire was a massive, massive event. Lassen Volcanic Park, we learned later, was 69% burned. The city of Chester, where we stayed, was mostly intact, with the lake nearby, but all around it? Burned. We were constantly faced with the real fact of the fire on our weekend; it was present every moment. And it didn’t end when we left on Monday, either - our trip was bookended by the sorrow of wildfire.

But before we get to that, let’s talk about the good stuff. Because, oh, there was some good stuff. Lassen is a magical place.

After that first sobering hike, we checked in at the hotel, took a soak to wash off the soot, and headed to Lake Almanor to find some dinner. Chester is a one-street town; there’s not a lot of dining or entertainment options available. We managed to find a serviceable dinner of sandwiches and salad at a golf-course grill next to the lake. Afterward, following our innkeeper’s directions (“just drive down the west side, and anywhere there isn’t a house, you can go down to the lake”), we found a rocky beach to explore. From there we could watch people boating and swimming, the cliff swallows catching a sunset meal, and view a snow-capped Mt. Lassen far in the distance, a possible hike for us during the coming weekend.

Saturday morning we drove past the tiny town of Mineral, where we saw a cowboy-hatted caballero leading a horse through a meadow to pasture (postcard perfect!), into the park proper. Immediately after paying the fee ($30 for a week’s access to the park; truly, the NPS is one of the best bargains of all time) we headed into the visitor’s center to talk to a ranger about conditions. This is the first thing we do in any park that is unfamiliar to us, and it is always fruitful. In this case, the ranger showed us a map of the park and explained how most of it was inaccessible due to last year’s fire. Many of the hikes I had planned for us to do were no longer an option. And it turned out that Mt. Lassen still had quite a bit of snow on it. The ranger said, in no uncertain terms, that unless we had experience hiking in snow, it would behoove us to skip it - they had airlifted two people off the mountain the day before in two separate helicopter rescues. Ok! No Mt. Lassen for us, then!

Noticing that a ranger-led talk was starting in ten minutes, we hightailed it up the road to the Sulphur Works, where we learned about the four types of volcanoes and that all four are present in Lassen Volcanic Park. We also saw a bunch of bubbling mud pits. That was way cool.

owlcation.com

The park is huge, so we decided to drive all the way through it and see everything from the road, first, and when we got to the northernmost end, we’d stop at Manzanita Lake and have a hike. We figured we’d have time afterward to stop at all the small, interpretive walks (such as the ‘devastated’ area, resulting from the 1915 eruption of Mt. Lassen) scattered along the road on the way back. But it turned out that the drive to and from Manzanita Lake took more than an hour each way, along a very curvy road with lots of congestion at the marked pull-outs, so we never did get to do all those little interpretive walks. However, we did get a wonderful hike on the backside foothills of Mt. Lassen, from Manzanita Lake up into the subalpine forest, through alpine meadows, past Chaos Crags to Manzanita Creek.

And the flowers, my goodness, the flowers. It’s like we went back in time three months, back to Spring. That was cool, but also these were flowers that I had only heard about or studied, never seen in person before. Alpine flowers! Hardy little souls, blooming in the leanest of soils, after a snowy, cold winter: scarlet gilia, longspur lupine, pine violet, Sierra penstemon… and the trees! Subalpine fir, Jeffrey pine, cedar, alder, and birch. These alpine meadows made me so happy, and I can’t even explain why. Maybe because, despite the state of the world, nature just digs in and survives, even in harsh conditions.

We spent a little time at Manzanita Lake, watching the families on vacation. Then, a long drive out of the park, a long soak in the tub, and off to a surprisingly good dinner on the peninsula in the middle of Lake Almanor. We made sure to get to bed early, since we needed plenty of rest before our biggest hike on Sunday.

Sunday’s hike: Brokeoff Mountain. A remnant of an andesitic stratovolcano within ancient Mount Tehama, part of the Cascade range of Northern California. Over the course of almost four miles, the trail to the top winds through open meadows, over creeks and tree blow-downs, through snow (often the trail is snowed in until August), through forests, then into scattered hemlocks, volcanic sand, and steep fields of volcanic scree, until you climb above the timberline and into the broken rock at the top, all while gaining an elevation of 2500 feet. For the last few months, I’ve been doing regular hikes that range between 8-10 miles with about 2200 feet of elevation, so I was confident that I could do this hike. Tom was skeptical; he works at a desk for a living, and most of his exercise consists of daily walks to and from the BART station, our weekend hikes being challenging enough, thank you. I might have heard him muttering things like “brokedown and brokeass,” however he was game - and by golly, I appreciate a man who is game.

Coffee slurped, drive to the park completed (today, the caballero was leading two haltered horses in an obvious training exercise through the misty meadow), we checked in with the rangers and got the go-ahead - there was very little snow on the trail and conditions were fine. There was nothing for it, then, but to tighten our laces, shoulder our hydration packs, strap on our poles, and get moving. I set a measured pace, resolving not to take pictures at all on the way up. This was difficult as every other step revealed some treasure; on this south-facing slope, the trail was simply overflowing with flowers.

And yes, we climbed over blow-downs. We forded a small valley lake/wide stream. We tramped through snow. We picked our way up steep volcanic slopes. We reached the craggy ledge just below the top and saw Mt. Shasta in the distance. We celebrated at the summit with a young couple from Berkeley and exclaimed over the views. Tom turned to me and said, “I’ve always thought people who climbed mountains were crazy, but now I think there’s something to it.” Frankly, it was one of the best moments of our marriage.

And then on the way down, I took picture after picture of the beautiful scenery. Mountain scenery. The kind of things I needed to store in my memory for the months at home hiking in the completely brown and dry hills near our house. The green trees, the colorful flowers, the mountain streams, the grand views.

But the very best thing happened at the very end of the hike, when we were only steps from the road. We stopped to talk to a hiker going up, and at some point I looked up the hill, and there was a bear. A black bear! Maybe 20, 25 feet off the trail, browsing through the greenery, munching away. A juvenile, probably - a young bear, but older than a cub - a teenaged bear! I could hardly believe my eyes.

Well, that made it a red-letter day for sure, and we rode that high for several hours afterward, through a pizza/salad dinner, and a dessert picnic on the bed in our pj’s.

Unfortunately, on Monday morning, we needed to head out of Chester before the neighborhood 5k fun-run and 4th of July parade began, so our journey home started early. We left the area with a promise to return (we still have more than half the park to explore!) and took off for home in a different direction, south towards Bucks Lake Wilderness, where we stopped for a hike around the lake to an inlet where we were able to dip our toes in the cold mountain water.

But our real reason for going home this direction was to drive through Berry Creek, north of Oroville, to see the aftermath of the 2020 North Complex Fire. Berry Creek was the home of our beloved Camp Okizu, a camp we have been attending as a family, and the kids on their own, for many years. Okizu is a camp for children with cancer and their families, and when Adam was diagnosed with leukemia at age 2, one of the first things our social worker shared with us was information about the camp. We went for the first time as a family when Adam was three (he was too sick that first year to attend). Thereafter, we attended family camp every year in the autumn. It was a wonderful time to share information and stories with other parents who had kids with cancer, and our children made lifelong friends at camp. When Adam was 7, he started attending for a week in the summer by himself. And the truly different and special thing about Okizu is that they run sibling camps, so Rin was able to start going by themselves at age 8 for a week every summer. So, three times a year, without fail, Tom and I made the drive up to Berry Creek; I would drop a kid off, he would go pick them up. Then the other kid a different week. Then all together as a family in the autumn. We LOVED it there. The kids with cancer could do anything anyone else did. There were doctors for those that needed medical assistance and golf carts for those with mobility issues. There was hiking, fishing in one lake, swimming and boating in another lake, a ropes course and zip line up the next hill, a campfire with s’mores and silly camp songs. The cabins were wonderful and the main lodge was the main meeting place, where we ate meals, played games, and made countless friendship bracelets. No devices were allowed. Hammocks and naps were encouraged. All of this was free to us and to every family that attended.

Okizu had many close calls with wildfire before, but in August of 2020, the North Complex fire ripped through the area north of Oroville and burned nearly 320,000 acres before being completely contained in December. Camp Okizu was totally destroyed.

We wanted to drive by, even though we knew we wouldn’t be able to go in and see the area where the camp had been. As we left Bucks Lake, and drove south towards Berry Creek, we got quieter and quieter. The scenery changed from verdant forest back to charred stumps. The North Complex fire was two years ago, so in contrast to the Dixie Fire area, the ground was beginning to recover with all kinds of bushy growth. That was good to see, but the scope of the damage was still overwhelming. The front gate of Okizu, once in the middle of dense forest, was now completely bare. Properties that had once contained houses were now empty except for a foundation, and often, a trailer. That, especially, gave me pause. After two years, families are still living in trailers. How can that be?

As if to add insult to injury, our drive out from camp took us past the Oroville Lake Reservoir, and the water level looked impossibly low. How strange, to be one day in territory where water is abundant and snow is still on the ground in July, and the next day in an area that is clearly drought stressed. The drought is never far from our minds at home, where water falling from the sky is an event limited to a month or two in winter; being at the reservoir underlined the need we feel for conservation of resources. Water management in California has a long and sordid history, and I’m not sure how we’re ever going to make it right again. Suffice it to say, between seeing the demise of Okizu with our own eyes, the results of two different enormous fires, and the low water level at Oroville, our hearts were heavy as we headed home from our vacation.

Luckily, a farmstand saved the mood. It may seem trite to say that peaches turned our world around, but the thought of peach pie for 4th of July dessert gave us a much-needed refresher, and when we saw the sign for fresh-picked fruit, you better believe we stopped to get some. The heavenly smell of ripe peaches, warm from the sun, accompanied us the rest of the way home.

A couple of final thoughts.

- We often desire to travel far from home, when something wonderful can exist just down the road. We’ve all been isolated at home for several years now, and a bit out of practice when it comes to leaving our comfort zone. A short trip to a location close to home can be the perfect bridge between that comfort zone and a more ambitious trip. I’m guessing that, no matter where we live, we all have regional, state, or national parks within a day’s drive of home. It’s worthwhile to get out and explore, even if it doesn’t seem exotic. A change of elevation, or microclimate, or even zip code, can be as refreshing and informative as a trip across the planet.

- While this trip was bookended by melancholy, and maybe that doesn’t seem like much of a vacation, the truth is that life is bittersweet. The older I get, the more I appreciate that true joy cannot be felt without a bit of sadness underneath. This is not depressing; on the contrary, it makes the joyful moments even sweeter. I am grateful to have a companion that is always up for an adventure, and likes to laugh, but also doesn’t shy away from the hard parts of life. Denial doesn’t enrich anyone, and it certainly doesn’t promote necessary change.

- Five years ago, I took one of my first classes at Merritt College with Stew Winchester, a true expert in native California plants and the communities in which they thrive. Stew would often share photos of the places he’d been and the flowers he’d seen, using slides and a vintage projector. He’d always ask, “Have any of you been to the Carrizo Plain? Antelope Valley? The Klamath River?” Most of us would shake our heads or dissent. Stew would look around with his eyebrows raised, and simply say, “You gotta go.” He was a firm believer in seeing these wonderful plants in their native environment, thriving in the perfect niche that nature had designed for them. I’ve never forgotten that. I’d like to think I’ve taken it to heart, and tried mightily to just “go,” to see, to learn, to experience, to feel. Being in Lassen checks another box for me, and encourages me to continue exploring. I hope you will, too.

*A famous quote by John Muir. “The mountains are calling, and I must go.”

These Strange Red Days

Well, here we go again.

The Dixie Fire (to our north) is now the 3rd largest fire ever in California. We feel terrible for anyone who has had to be evacuated, or lost their home.

Here in the Bay Area, the smoke has finally begun to affect our air quality. Yesterday, we logged in to Purple Air for the first time in 2021. It was necessary, because we could both see and smell smoke. Sure enough, our AQI was quite poor. This means shutting the doors and staying inside as much as possible. It also means that the strange red and grey skies are back.

The light in the house yesterday afternoon was eerie.

And sunsets/sunrises are also different. Beautiful, but not for the right reasons.

The problem with fire here is enormous and won’t be easily solved. I wrote a paper for my summer class that I thought might interest you; the prompt was that we write our paper as a historian, who is asked to consult on a modern environmental issue. I wrote about wildfire. None of this information is new, but I learned a lot by looking at it from a historical perspective, and maybe you will too.

Please click here to view the paper.

Several Items of Interest

Our weather has finally turned, if only temporarily, and the smoke in the sky has (blessedly) lessened. It is such a treat to get outdoors, to hike and to garden! I will never be complacent about clear air again. Today I plan to get the winter garlic and spinach seeds in the ground. I am woefully behind in these tasks. I must admit that the school workload this fall is much heavier than it ever has been before and I am struggling to get through it all! Meanwhile, I am in the process of rethinking my entire garden space, which is a huge project to contemplate and will have to be done in fits and starts. I very much feel an urgency to plant for the future, which will likely be as hot and as smoky as it has been this summer, and at least as dry. This will require me to rethink my plant choices and, in fact, the entire layout of my garden.

I’ve been interested to read several good articles about plant life and fire. The first is from the University of California Botanical Garden in Berkeley.

Here’s the relevant info, though I think it’s worth reading the entire article: “While there are much data pointing to the beneficial effects of fires on plants, especially in regard to acting as an environmental cue for seed germination and in seed dispersal, in general, as for humans, smoke and ash are detrimental to plants. Chemically, more than 100 different compounds have been identified in smoke, including toxic levels of nitrous oxide, sulfur dioxide and ozone. Short-term exposure to smoke (as little as 20 minutes) has been reported to reduce photosynthesis by as much as 50%, as a consequence of both the destruction of chlorophyll, the light-capturing green pigment, and in impeding the movement of carbon dioxide (CO2) into the plant through leaf pores (stomata)” (Dr. Lew Feldman, garden director, UC Berkeley Botanical Garden). He goes on to say that ash may have a beneficial impact on our soil, at least in small quantities, but that it might acidify it slightly. This made me think of how people used to spread their fireplace ashes over the garden to enrich the soil. That usually happened in the fallow season to prepare for the next crop, though. I’m sure we’ll begin to see some studies that help us understand how smoke and ash affect our gardens in the coming years.

image credit: UCANR

The Master Gardeners (also a UC program around here) sent out an interesting email which said, “In our summer issue, featuring Firescaping, we emphasized how ALL plants can burn under the right conditions. California natives are no exception. As a matter of fact some of them are quite flammable. Proper selection and maintenance are key! Considering the current devastating wildfires and extremely unhealthy air stretching over our western states, we'd like to revisit some important features of fire-resistant plants. Look for the following characteristics:

• store water in leaves or stems

• produce very little dead or fine material

• possess extensive, deep root systems for controlling erosion

• maintain high moisture content with limited watering

• grow slowly and need little maintenance

• low growing in form

• contain low levels of volatile oils or resins

• open & loose branching habit with a low volume of total vegetation.”

This also helps me with my plan as I move forward with new garden design. Many home owners around here have basically given up on their gardens, and either “landscape” with rocks or mulch, or just leave dead grass in their expansive front yards. I think we can figure something better out. I have always had multiple goals for our garden: it must feed us, feed the ecosystem, regenerate the soil, conserve resources, and look pretty. The list hasn’t changed, but I now want to add “future climate friendly” as well.

While working on a paper a couple of days ago, my attention wandered to a squirrel in our front garden. The squirrels (mostly fox squirrels) are very active this time of year, collecting the enormous acorns from our valley oak tree, and burying them mostly in my pots of bulbs, which is very annoying. One particular squirrel has figured out a path from our fence to our gate to our roof, and s/he goes back and forth constantly. I was watching her when suddenly she dropped down flat onto her belly on the fence. I was worried that she was sick or dying, but when I looked it up, it turns out this is a defensive posture. According to Geography Realm, “the act of lying flat hides the lighter colored belly of a squirrel. The fur color on the outer side of a squirrel evolved to help the squirrel blend in with its environment…  the posture of lying flat on a surface also helps to protect the vital organs of a squirrel should it be attacked.” We have several kinds of flying predators around here, day and night, so I wonder if the squirrel saw a hawk and immediately dropped? She stayed there for about ten minutes, and then went back to her usual pattern of roof-gate-fence. There is another squirrel who tends to hang out in the back garden, who is missing a foot. I’m hoping these are all signs that the predators are becoming more numerous in our yard. We often hear owls at night, quite close, and since we have a perennial family of rats living in the compost, we are hoping that their numbers are being thinned by them. We can use all the help we can get!

I heard a sparrow in the garden yesterday, which made me realize that I hadn’t heard one in quite a while. That led me to wonder if sparrows migrate.

image credit: UC Santa Cruz

Well, it turns out, they do. Here in central/northern California, the year-round temperature is fairly mild, so we don’t often think about things migrating. It doesn’t seem as neccessary as it would from say, Michigan to Florida. But there are lots of things that migrate to escape colder temperatures, or to find food, or to breed in different places. It turns out that golden-crowned sparrows (like the one pictured above) spend winters in the Bay Area, and head north to Alaska to breed in the spring and summer. According to study published by PRBO, “Each bird, which weighs approximately 30 grams, migrated from 1600 to 2400 miles one-way to their breeding grounds. Their individual breeding locations spanned approximately 750 miles along the coast of Alaska, and their north migration averaged only 29 days while southbound migration averaged nearly twice that (53 days).” This kind of distance blows my mind. White-crowned sparrows (also commonly seen and heard in my garden in the wintertime) also make this kind of migration each year. “Breeders in mountains mostly migrate to wintering grounds in lowland southern California and south into Mexico, departing in September and returning in April and May. Coastal breeders mostly present year-round; not migratory (Mewaldt et al. 1968). Other individuals winter elsewhere in California lowlands and foothills and migrate to Canada and Alaska in April and May; often return to same wintering sites the following September or October (Mewaldt 1976). In montane habitats, fairly widespread in fall, but descend below heavy snows for winter and spring (Grinnell and Miller 1944)” (CA Dep’t of Fish and Wildlife). So do song sparrows. “Song Sparrows are resident throughout much of their range, although the northernmost populations are migratory. Resident populations extend as far north as coastal Alaska. The wintering range stretches across the southern United States and dips into northern Mexico. Birds at high altitudes may also descend into the lowlands during the winter” (Birdweb).

I’m glad to have the sparrows back in residence! They contribute beautiful songs during the dawn chorus, and I enjoy the music.

Lastly, have you seen the new David Attenborough documentary? I found it very compelling. What a career this man has had, and what amazing things he has seen! I love that he considers this documentary his “witness statement.” It is not an easy thing to watch, as he lays both history and the future of the environment out in plain language. But I believe that we, too, are witnesses. And as such, we cannot turn away from this. It enrages me that the political debates include few questions about climate, and are often phrased “do you believe?” or “what will you eliminate?” Let’s get past all that. Let’s start asking, “what is your plan to DO? how will that look? how will we all be included?“ Let’s be honest about what it will cost. The truth is, it will cost us everything; it will be enormously expensive, far more than Covid has been. But it must be done. I would encourage everyone to start accepting and facing what’s to come, and vote accordingly (though I will readily concede that from a climate perspective, there is no perfect candidate; so ask yourself, which candidate will get us further faster?).

On that note, I’m off to plant garlic. What’s happening in your garden this weekend?

No Words

the car this morning

smoke layer

10:30 am in our living room

orange glow

dining room, 10:30 am

looking north

Just a couple words: We are ok - the nearest fire to us is 44 miles away. But a lot of people are not ok, clearly. Our hearts are heavy for our home state and for the entire west coast.