The Sun Shines Bright

 

Sagehen Station is my second adventure in off-grid, remote living.  I am an admitted junkie with a bad, bad addiction.  My drug of choice is first and foremost a natural and powerfully-beautiful landscape.  Through the 2000s, I lived off-grid and off-highway at 7,000 ft. north of Truckee on 20 acres.  The property's southern border was about 900 ft. of the Little Truckee River.  Life in Sierra County was good, a fine place to call home, and a community I am proud to still be a part of, at least on my visits back.  I moved onto the Sagehen property in 2011 and have called it my home since.

Living off-grid, as far as I'm concerned, means you are your own utility company when it comes to water, sewer and power.  Best if you put it all in yourself, as was the case on my first adventure.  But absolutely necessary are the requirements that you are familiar with and capable of troubleshooting/fixing the technologies that are supporting your life.  It is for this reason that living off-grid is all about the systems.  Today's ramble is about the electricity system.

PHOTOVOLTAICS AND BRIGHT SUNSHINE

Sagehen Station has just over 4 kw of photovoltaic electricity generation comprised of two fixed-rack-mount solar panel arrays.  The newer and more powerful array of 12 panels generates 2.1 kw (175w panels) and the older array of 15 panels generates 1.95 kw (130w panels).  I had the newer array installed last summer shortly after I bought the property.  Having shivered through two stormy, frigid weeks during the previous 2010/2011 winter during a "trial run" of the house (then in escrow), I realized part of the purchase requirements would include the addition of more power generation.  The system, now with two large solar arrays for power generation, seems to run this all-electric home throughout the cold, darker winter months just fine.

BATTERIES, BATTERIES, BATTERIES

To store all this instant, free electricity (free once the solar bill is paid!), Sagehen Station has a large battery bank.  The battery bank is made up of 24 Rolls Surrette CS 17P 4-volt batteries.

Battery specifications can be confusing to understand.
To ease the difficulty, battery manufacturers use a standard unit to rate the capacities of different batteries.  That unit is the amp-hour.  The number to remember is the 20-hr amp-hour (Ah) rate, which provides a usable benchmark across different battery models and manufacturers.  In this case, the 20-hr rate is 546 Ah for each 4-volt battery.  The 24 batteries are wired in two groups of twelve 4-volt batteries each, each group wired in series, resulting in two individual 48-volt banks (each bank has 12 batteries x 4-volts each = 48-volts).  When you wire batteries in series, the voltages add, the amperages stay the same, so the resulting bank capacity expressed in amp-hours is equivalent to the amp-hour rating of each individual battery within the bank.  The two individual banks are then wired together in parallel as they power the 48V positive input leg of the inverter.  Wired in parallel, the bank voltages stay the same but the bank amp-hour capacity adds.  Since each of the two individual 12-battery banks has a 546 Ah rating at 20 hours, the 20-hour amp/hour capacity of the overall system battery bank is just shy of 1,100 Ah (2x546).

Here is Sagehen Station's battery bank:

Each off-grid solar power system has three main components.  We've covered the Generation and Battery components above.  The third component is all of the electrical equipment necessary to channel all that power generation into the battery bank and then to take it back out of the battery bank and convert it into electricity that you can use to power your life, including your lighting, water heating, space heating, cooking, computers, printers, toothbrushes, vacuums, turkey-carving knives, etc.).

OF CHARGE CONTROLLERS AND INVERTERS

Putting power into the battery bank requires Charge Controllers...at Sagehen Station that's the two black boxes bottom-center in the photo at right.  In this case, the charge controllers are manufactured by Outback.  The power being generated by the solar arrays and going through the charge controllers into the battery bank is direct current, or DC.  Then, to get power out of the DC battery bank and into a more standardized form like 120-volt AC (alternating current), the power goes through an Inverter, which is the white box directly above the two charge controllers, the one with the little LCD display in the upper right corner.  This inverter is a Xantrex 5548...a 48-volt inverter capable of handling a maximum load of 5500 watts.  The white boxes on each side of the charge controllers and inverter house various circuit breakers and act as wiring chases (places to connect the ends of wires to each other).

BUT WHAT IF SOMETHING GOES WRONG

If your off-grid hideout is in an environment that occasional throws deadly weather your way, I advise having some type of redundant backup system that can keep you safe and warm in emergencies.

The backup to Sagehen Station's solar power system is a propane generator.  This is a Kohler 8 Kw propane generator.  The generator conductors cable into the inverter, just like the cables from the battery bank.  The inverter switches the house electrical panel feeds back and forth when necessary, either from the batteries or from the generator.  All of this switching can be done automatically, depending on the charge state of the battery bank, or it can be done manually (my recommendation).  I am happy to report that my generator sat idle all winter long, never needing to provide supplemental power. 

YOU GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR

Sizing and cost considerations for solar electricity systems can be all over the board, and if you ask 10 different "experts" to suggest system components and sizes, you'll likely end the day confused with 10 different recommendations.  And until you live in a solar power home for awhile, you won't know how any particular system is going to respond.  You sort of "sail" a solar home much like you sail a boat...making small adjustments here and there, watching how the system responds, then altering some of those adjustments maybe, all in an effort to get your lifestyle adjusted "with" your system.  With the above caveats, here are some rough guidelines to make general concept decisions with:

Regarding photovoltaic panels, I run this 1,550 sq ft home successfully through the year, including the cold, dark winter months, on 4 Kw of generation capacity.  That's 2.58 watts/sq.ft. of house.  In Truckee, a 2.8 Kw system runs my 1,132 sq ft home (for sale, by the way), which calcs to 2.47 watts/sq.ft.  My lifestyle has grown sensitive to depending on solar electricity, but I burn plenty of lights and operate standard electric appliances in a manner not so different from the average grid user.  Unlike the Sagehen system, the Truckee system does not heat water or power a stovetop.  The two photovoltaic capacities feel very equivalent to each other.  General rule to live pretty normally here in mid-latitude California would be 2.5 watts of photovoltaic generation for every foot of living space.  Midrange current costs for installed photovoltaics, ground-mount, is somewhere around $5.00/watt.  So a 1,000 sq ft home would require 2,500 watts of photovoltaics costing $12,500 (1,000 sq.ft. x 2.5 watts/sq.ft. x $5.00/watt).  You can see that going off-grid is much less painful with a small home.

Battery costs are increasing relative to photovoltaics.  Eight years ago my 1,375 Ah battery bank in Truckee cost about $10,000, not including installation costs (I install and I don't pay myself very well).  Today the same battery bank would run closer to $16,000.  For the Truckee house, that's just over $14.00/sq.ft. at today's prices.  Here at Sagehen, current material costs for the 24 battery Rolls Surrette CS 17P battery bank (1,100 Ah) would be roughly $15,000, again not installed.  That calcs to $10.00/sq.ft.  I'd be happier with a slightly larger battery bank.  So maybe $12.00/sq.ft. is a fair mid-range figure for a really quality battery bank.

Electronics are electronics, and the number of battery charge controllers and the size of the inverter are mostly dictated by the capacity of the photovoltaic generation and size of the battery bank.  One detail to be very aware of, however, is whether or not the inverter you install is a modified sine wave inverter or a pure sine wave inverter.  The former puts out electricity that approximates that from the utility companies, but that includes a few little bumps and hiccups in its flow characteristics.  Some of these irregularities can cause problems for SOME electronic devices like computer printers and LCD readouts.  A pure sine wave inverter provides a perfectly "clean" type of electricity, cleaner than electricity provided by the utility companies, and won't cause problems for any equipment.  And, yes, going the pure sine wave route costs more money.  Both inverters I have experience with are pure sine wave inverters.  I have friends with a modified sine wave system, and they have burned out (literally, as in fire) two gas ranges that had  LCD display panels.

When I installed the Truckee system in 2003, each of the three components - the photovoltaics, the batteries and the electronics - cost roughly the same, or one-third each of the total cost of roughly $28,000 (equipment only).  Today, I believe the photovoltaic component will be a little less than a third, the batteries will definitely be more than a third, and the electronics will be similar to their 2003 price.  For general consideration decisions, then, a fully-functioning, free-standing solar electricity system (no grid power available) is going to run $30-$35 per sq.ft. of living space, or $30,000 for a small home.  The backup generator adds another $5,000 to that.

You can see that solar power is not cheap.  It takes somewhere in the 20-year range to recoup all costs through savings on month-to-month utility company bills.  That's a long time.  But because the systems work so well, they do add instant resale value to any home.  Of course the largest benefit is that solar power makes living far off the grid these days very possible.  And beyond the mere economics of going solar is the extraordinary satisfaction of deriving all of one's household power needs from the sun.  It is good for the environment, and it is good for the heart.  Here at Sagehen Station, the sun shines bright, and the lights and water heater and stove turn that beautiful sunshine into Internet surfing, nighttime reading, delicious meals and long, hot showers.  Electricity costs will go up as fossil fuels take a heavier and heavier toll on our world.  My utility company is our solar system's gentle star, and it won't let me down for a long, long time.

                                                                                                                             -gmm

Josefin's Waltz

It is a mid-April storm day outside and in, a day fraught with fears for some and meaning for others.  23 degrees now at noon, up one degree from early this morning.  At least the blow has eased a bit.  My wind chill is 15 degrees.  Snow is starting to slant through in waves, forming small piles against any vertical surface in its path.

The insert stove has been blowing hot air all morning, it's firebox radiating and catalytic converter glowing bright.  This main room is up to 64 degrees.  It'll maybe reach 68 or 69 by this evening, especially if the winds lay down.

Alasdair Fraser and Natalie Haas wail out Josefin's Waltz on the stereo, a song I have been working to learn on my guitar.  He on fiddle, she on cello.  They are among the world's very best acoustic players, and their instruments dance back and forth in a swaying tide of emotion.  They play harmonizing variations to the simple melody at the same time, each playing a third or fifth off the melody line.  Yet somehow, when wound together in a lover's embrace, the simple melody manifests itself clear and strong. Close your eyes and it pulls you into its magical darkness where the beauty of existence flows throughout your body until it fills your mind and heart to near bursting.

I am overtaken by emotion.  My skin has grown quite thin in the face of stirring emotion ever since the death of my wife, and today, as it inevitably does on every day like this, however rare now, my thoughts and feelings fly to her.

-- How does one express tears on a page? --

She was light in a dark world, and the simple act of her presence filled rooms with smiles.  So far from perfect, like all of us, she nevertheless could lift spirits young and old with a fleeting grin.  Such an amazing gift.  So unique and rare.  So missed by so many.

Joan and I were married for nine years.  Among the many things she brought to my life, perhaps the most significant is how she untethered whatever psychological restraints and bounds I had grown up with, allowing me for the first time in my life to stand tall and stretch myself into challenges that had seemed until then far beyond me.  She somehow walked me down a path to myself, and having arrived, I know the comfort she showed me manifests itself in my having fully opened to my potentials.  I miss her so.

_____

Like most music we are familiar with, Josefin's Waltz follows a familiar structural pattern.  It has two parts, an "A" part and a "B" part.  Each part has 8 measures, and each part repeats itself twice before the song moves on to the next part.  So, 2xA, then 2xB, then repeat, OK?  The only twist is that after the second "B" part, a "tag" is thrown in before starting back into the "A" part.  The tag, in this case, has 8 measures as well, and carries the melody from the lofted finish of "B" back down to the powerful beckoning of "A."

If you want to picture Josefin's Waltz in your mind, then even though you might not know what this beautiful melody sounds like, try the following:

We'll start with the "A" part.

Here's the scene.  You are looking down on a small valley in the hills, at the foot of a big mountain.  It's early morning before dawn, dark shades of blue and grey blanketing the world with a muting stillness.  The air is thick with a soaking fog.   It's a steep-sided valley, narrow and tight, with grasses covering the hillsides beneath the interspersed stands of oak and pine trees, shadowing all in various hues of gunmetal blue.  A whispering stream runs through the valley floor and beneath an arching bridge of stone. Down near the water's edge sits a squat little structure of rock and timbers.  The surrounding mountain ridges look down upon the valley, hints of the sun's rays teasing the highest pinnacles of granite and snow.  A first glimmer of firelight flicks from inside the dark house, then jumps to and fro on the thick window jambs, until finally settling into a rebellious flicker.

The melody begins, a solo, somber cello, down near the water's edge, just above the riffles and runs of silvery darkness spilling through the mist.  The notes are long and waveringly steady as they roll with the fog.  They lift up over the water and across the bank and berry vines in the first three notes, climbing, still, sailing across the somber forest tops for a note or two and then, with a smooth roll, sweeping left back down past the bridge and mist and over the water again.  A slight lift of the wing, then a drop right down to the surface, rushing over it now, the spray wet against your face.  And then sweeping up toward the warmth of that little flickerlight, the morning awake at last and stretching, looking up to the higher peaks and the brightening day.  Here ends the first repetition of part "A."  That's the first 8 measures.  And then the repeat of "A" all over again, the second time through, only this time, Alasdair's fiddle joins the somber tones of the cello, lifting the melody out of the dark night and into the first warm rays of the sun bright on the snow and rock above.  Trailing the depths behind, soaring up, it too raises its eyes to the bright peaks and the "B" part of the melody just ahead.

The sun's warmth pours down the mountainsides above, liquid illumination spilling into the morning.  The mists dissolve below, but you're already far above the lower slopes of this mountain rampart.  The great pines wave gently, bowing their tops as you pass.  You are a soaring eagle, with the forest spread below now, ice, snow and rock, all your domain.  Your wings are strong, the muscles joyous in their labor.  Soaring, floating, sweeping round and pulling strong, you loft upward, responding to every note unfolding below you.  Then, in acknowledgment of things deeper and broader than you understand, things pulling you back, you spiral down, down, down in a dance of rhythmic power and grace, down over the forest's crown and grasses below, gliding to greet the day's wildflower bloom on the riverbanks ahead.  And alighting at the edge of mud and grass, skipping your penetrating gaze across the silvery flow, you look up and through the warm cottage windows and blink your eyes.  The wood stove glows again.  Day slowly fades into evening, a few hatched wigglers taking wing in the soft light across the water, and then night, and damp, and hushed blue blankets all.

This, then, is Josefin's Waltz.

_____

Seven years she's been gone, now.  Her spirit lives on in two granddaughters who will never fully know her love for them, in the gentle souls of her son and daughter, and all of us who are so blessed to have been shaped into who we are, in part, by this loving and fine woman.

It looks like the sun is breaking through outside.  Everything is looking brighter.

                                                                                                           -gmm

The Path Ahead

As most California places go, Sagehen Station is remote.  As the hawk flies, it is 20 miles to the nearest town, 20 miles to the nearest residence, 20 miles to the closest people.  20 miles is a long way to walk through country like this.  It is the distance that separates me from the next dreaming human each night when I lie in bed.  20 miles if the truck breaks down.  20 miles if I hurt myself or become ill.  It gives me pause once in awhile.

I put a lot of thought into why I am here, and what I hope to get out of life here.  Why choose such isolation, why a landscape with such serious consequences?  Why a place so devoid of other people?

The simple answer is that I come by it honestly.  Admiration for the lone journey has been my companion throughout life...all of my life.  It is a fundamental part of who I am.  I was always fascinated by the stories of adventure in the lore of mountains and oceans...the strong, solitary adventurer deep in the wild, alone, his survival dependent on his skills pressed by the constant test of the environment.  While at school, I admired the pantheistic individualism expressed by Henry David Thoreau, Walt Whitman and all the other wordsmiths of the Romantic Era.  So too, solitary spiritual writers like Thomas Merton at the Abbey of Gethsemani.  I suffered a persistent gnawing for solitude through a couple of long partnerships, despite their deep pleasures.  Yet I likely would have never had a chance to experience a solitary life were it not for the death of my second wife.  But die she did, and with a few scars left in her passing, she gave me an opportunity I would not have chosen, but now relish.

With that opportunity, I am powerless to resist exploring the dream of Sagehen Station.  How could I not embrace it, this chance to really and truly follow one of my heart's strongest curiosities?  The surprise, to me and perhaps others, is that despite knowing the desire plenty well, I don't have a solid vision of where it will lead.  What will a life lived very alone feel like after a year?  After ten?  I don't know.  How might it change who I am?

I believe our lives are shaped by all the events and experiences each of us live.  Emergent from these events and experiences is the unique path each of us finds ourself on.  When I came of age, I fled Southern California and the human decline it represents to me...people living behind double-locked doors, drapes drawn, pretending the ugliness outside their walls doesn't really exist...people spending hours on the freeways (boy, what a euphemism), heart rates elevated, multitasking between their cell phones and iPods.  They don't even know about the qualities in life they have lost.  Perhaps that is the saddest thing.  I see these paths, rushed people busy in their urban entanglements, as sheer hell.  There is hardly a space to look long and hard at a natural vista.  Hardly a space to contemplate who you are and how you fit.  No room for humbleness there.

So far, my path has been fortunate with many years in quiet and beautiful places, some shared with good partners and friends, some alone.  The journey has eased me into a slower pace of moving and thinking, a pace with a focused attentiveness to the world around me.  The longer I am here, the more focused I become on the goings-on outside these walls.  My attention is being pulled in directions more wild.  It is in this sense that I believe landscapes sculpt us over time, and that the landscapes we choose, each one of us, get expressed in who we become.  And in this knowledge lies the power of control, if we are only brave enough to grasp hold.

My path is here, and now, in this place of breathless beauty and vast expanse.  I feel small and insignificant, and it makes me smile.  Now, for me, is Sagehen Station, and forward is a journey into a solitary existence with the natural world, a non-denominational hermitage of sorts.  It fulfills a dream carried through many years.  Perhaps some of my questions will find answers.  Others may disappear.  The spirit around me manifests in the sage and pine, in the canyon and the mountain.  It pulls me in, constantly, an invitation received in every glance.  It is my cathedral for worship, and it is my home.

And over time, I will be shaped further, I hope gently, by this wild place.

                                                                                                                      -gmm

The Hawk And I

March 9, 2012

60 degrees on this amazingly-sweet spring day.  The dishes are done and drying, the bed made, and I have no particular plans other than to enjoy myself.  Outside, the sun is intense on what little snow remains, and the breeze brushes warm in passing.  That springtime sense of clean is everywhere, no dust to be seen.  The greens and browns of the sage and bitterbrush appear saturated with color, the entire landscape an astounding canvas of delight and welcome.  It is a perfect morning to walk...no, to stroll out and about, to see what goings-on are going on.  The open, dry sand of the road heading out through the forest looks more inviting than the hardened snow still on the road up through Sagehen Saddle, so out I walk, the sun on my back, toward a special spot of mine whose shared company is long overdue.

This is one of my magic perches.  It is a place I visit infrequently, despite being a place that brings me calm and pleasant, mindful introspection.  I don't want to wear it out.  Its views are unsurpassed by anything my imagination can conjure.  It is stunning to sit here, the warm spring wind coming off the tops of the Jeffrey Pines to my south and west.  I feel like an eagle in flight, soaring over this grand landscape.

Whenever I sit at this spot, this tree-top-height extrusion of rock, and look out over this big country, I feel pulled by the expanse, like I could fall into it as I might a pool of water.  It gives me a surprising sense of belonging.  It is a Spirit Spot for me, a place ripe with powerful suggestions.  But how so or why, I haven't a clue.  Yet I know its regenerative power from experience.  Repeatable experience.  It seems real enough, this renewal I feel when visiting my Spirit Spot, but to give it a name would be to lose the mystery, and thus the reality, of its existence.  So I think of it as spirit and leave it at that.

Spirit, in any of its imagined manifestations from religion to extra sensory perception to ghosts, if it exists at all, is likely an emergent phenomenon, a phenomenon arising out of the interaction of seven billion human thought processors all working at the same time, some in parallel, some in series, and all electrical at their core (our collective consciousness).  As such, it would be as real as your big toe, but existing on a plain so beyond our reality it might as well be in another universe.  Perhaps spirit IS in another universe.

A deep thinker named Stuart Kauffman, at New Mexico's Santa Fe Institute during the 80s and 90s, pioneered the study of emergent phenomena, phenomena that arise when a given network of individual entities, all operating under similar laws, achieves a certain critical complexity of design and interaction.  Kauffman's springboard into this world was his study of Boolian Networks, networks comprised of individual nodes in one of two states, A or B, each with a simple set of operating commands and communication pathways connecting them to adjacent nodes (ie. if path=a-a, A, if path=a-b, B).  Activate a communication path here, a communication path there, a few over here, and not much happens.  But continue to activate more and more communication paths, and there comes a point when, all of a sudden, the addition of one activated pathway more and the whole system goes critical with waves of As and Bs marching back and forth over the network display in surprisingly lawful patterns.  Boolian networks are simple mathematical worlds.  But the underlying laws that have predictive power in these simple worlds apparently hold true as you work deeper and deeper into increasing complexity.  Emergent phenomena exist in some future state of all complex systems...once and if the critical limit of complexity is reached by that system.  This is all a bit thick, so bear with me one minute more.

Examples of emergent phenomena are MOLECULES, emerging out of the random yet lawful interaction of particles...once those interactions reach a certain level of complexity; CELLS, emerging out of molecules, again once those molecules reach a certain density and diversity; CONSCIOUSNESS, emerging out of the interactions of somewhere between 80 billion and 120 billion brain cells all interconnected on a massive biotic electrical grid; and SPIRIT, I suggest, perhaps arising out of the interaction of we seven billion thinkers.  Regarding spirit, maybe seven billion processors isn't nearly enough to go critical.  Maybe it will take 700 billion...we'll never know.  All of these emergent phenomena are lawful to some degree, in that they can be predicted to occur, just not when or how or why.  Here's the take-home point for this discussion...an entity on one level of the emergent phenomena ladder, on one level of interactive complexity, cannot, by law, gain information about the emergent phenomena above it arising out of its participation in its own level.  In other words, each rung of the ladder may know things about the phenomena that are occurring below it on the ladder, but CANNOT gain any information about the phenomena arising on a rung above it.  So say the mathematical laws of the Theory Of Complexity.  OK, just a little more...

Another way to say the same thing is that particles cannot know about molecules, molecules cannot know about cells, cells cannot know about consciousness...and we, these conscious things that we are, amazing conglomerations of organic molecules, cannot know, really know, anything about spirit.  We cannot see it, hear it, touch it, smell it or taste it.  It does not manifest in any way on our floor of the building.  It is mystery.  It requires an elevator key to activate its button before the car will go that high.  But as sure as there is mystery that surrounds us, we intuit that spirit exists.  Maybe our concepts of ghost, of soul, of religion, of God, concepts all uniquely individual, are the human efforts to name those things that may, MAY emerge from the churning network of our seven billion actions, thoughts, dialogues and musings.  Maybe we have a real inkling that a ladder rung is up there above us somewhere.  It is a consistent thought at least, one defined by mystery and the laws of Complexity.

A hawk cries out overhead, pulling me back to the land.  The breeze stirs again, long wisps of hair dancing across my cheek.  I let myself soar over the world, a spirit in thought, riding the tail of the hawk over tree tops now far below.  We glide west against the wind, circling up, then again, higher still, always west toward the Mono Craters ahead.  And then a hard right bank off the broad white slopes below and down through the Dry Creek drainage toward Mono Lake's still waters.  The older Jeffreys stand like flags above the green plain, stalwarts from a long-ago war not of our time.  Right again now and up over the shimmering sand flats, heated air spiraling us back up to the sun above.  And then down across Cowtrack Mountain, the wild horses kicking and prancing at Gaspipe Spring below.  I am grounded here, a part of this landscape.  My particles (my!) mix with those of the hawk and the trees and sage and wind and snow-capped peaks, all in the warm spring dance of a single moment.  The hawk and I, these trees, the sage, the wild horses, we are each a manifest phenomenon arising out of the particle soup of our reality.  But on the larger scale of Spirit, we are all particles in the underlying soup of life, a soup out of which what phenomena arise our imaginations can only ponder.   Phenomena, for sure, more distant than our eyes can see, more extraordinary than our minds can create.

                                                                                                                                     -gmm

The Tablelands of the Glass Mountains

Sagehen Station straddles a ridgeback that runs south from Hwy. 120 East at Sagehen Summit up into the Glass Mountain Highlands.  To the west of this saddle lies the Mono Basin, a sweeping landscape surrounding the 750,000 year old form of Mono Lake, one of North America's most ancient lake beds, and the 40,000 year old Mono Craters, the youngest mountain "range" on the continent.  The Mono Basin is a summertime tourist thoroughfare.   It's roads and coffee shops fill with anglers pursuing trout in one of several front-country lakes or streams, with Sierra backcountry adventurers seeking the remote pleasures earned by individual sweat and toil, and with Yosemite visitors from far-off lands.  It is a place of motion and commotion.

Dropping east from this saddle is a land of a quieter nature, a land of stillness and distance.  It is a land of sweeping forms cut through with shadowed fissures, of sage-carpetted steppes and aspen-cloaked canyons, pine-studded ridges and granite monoliths.  It is a land that whispers in the wind.  Few travel here to listen, fewer still to explore.  These are the Tablelands, a vast plateau flowing north off the heights of Glass Mountain down into the yawning expanse of the Adobe Valley, home of wild horse and sage grouse.  A landscape that pulls at you with an unknowable force.

Several deep canyons cut through this sweeping landscape, stretching their fingers north to Hwy. 120, the only paved road to brave this empty country...Dexter Canyon, Wet Canyon, Taylor Canyon, McGee Canyon, Black Canyon, Klondike Canyon.  Within these abrupt canyon walls flow tranquil streams of clear spring water through shimmering aspen groves and hushed forest glades.  Several isolated meadows with resplendent blooms of alpine shooting star, lupine, indian paintbrush, penstemon and iris are sprinkled throughout this rugged terrain...Johnny Meadow, Sentinel Meadow, Wild Horse Meadow, Wet Meadow, Sawmill Meadow, Dry Creek Meadow.  Jewels each, these canyons, groves and meadows are home to hawk and eagle, tanager and bluebird, bear, deer, coyote, bobcat and mountain lion.

With the hulking Inyo/White mountains to the east and the mighty Sierra Nevada to the west, both popular visitor attractions, the Glass Mountain Tablelands represent one of the least traveled and least known corridors in California.  They are a silent treasure in no particular hurry to be discovered, but one we, writer, photographer and reader, will explore together in the coming seasons.

                               
                                                                                                                                              -gmm                        

A Day On The Slopes

I wake up to 26 degrees and sunny skies.  It's going to be a warm one today, mid-forties.  Having noticed yesterday that the snow down at the trailer was consolidating pretty well, and after thinking about how it might be doing the same on the east face of Crater Mountain, I decided last night that maybe making the trek in to the backside of the Craters might result in some February spring skiing.  I like to eat big breakfasts on days like this, when I know I might be putting out a lot of energy.  But I had a big one yesterday (eggs, venison chili and toast), so I lighten things up a bit with a bowl of corn grits, molasses, maple syrup, walnuts and milk.

This has become one of my favorite cereal breakfasts of late.  I cook about three-morning's-worth of grits, and then have it handy for a quick microwave breakfast again in a day or two.  With a couple of oranges and three cups of coffee chasing it all down, I'm ready for the road.

Having left my skis and boots in the camper at the trailhead (along with various climbing gear, ice skates, roller skis), all I need is my daypack, lunch and ski poles.  I grab the trash at the last minute, too.  If the skiing isn't happening, maybe I'll end up in town.

I throw my bike on the back of the four-wheeler for the trip out, anticipating a ride of sorts with friend Michael in a couple of days.  The snowmobile transport was abandoned a week ago as more and more open patches of road sand appeared, so now the four-wheeler is my main squeeze.  It's a sturdy little machine, and saves me much grief during the shoulder seasons of backcountry life.

Now, the Mono Craters aren't exactly a skiing mecca.  Access can be interesting and the mid-season snow conditions change rapidly under the intense sunshine.  

Good fortune is with me.  It isn't too bad today, as I'm able to drive in south from Mono Mills for over a mile-and-a-half before the snow gets edgy.  That leaves less than a mile to traverse up through the Jeffery Pines to the base of the big face.

Much patient weaving from snow patch to snow patch, in and around the big Jefferies, is required to reach the open slope.  The trees on these steeper sections seem to have been spared somewhat from the brutal clear cutting this world-class forest endured during the Bodie mining boom.  Fine Jefferies stand tall with open spaces between, allowing plentiful sunshine to reach the pumice sand and pine needle floor.

I screw up a bit pushing too far south while approaching the slope base, and waste some time and effort wrestling with some sage bushes that are popping out of the snow.  It seems once you get off track and pushed in a direction that you don't really want to go, it is difficult to correct course.  When I eventually emerge onto the open slope half way up, however, I realize my efforts are well worth it.  This looks like fun.

It takes another 45 minutes to reach the top of the slope and onto the saddle that separates this debris cone from the next one to the north.  It is a lovely spot, with impressive views west to the Sierras:

...and east to the Inyo/Whites:

I'll admit it right now - the snow isn't great.  Once up on the saddle, it becomes clear that the aspects that see more of the suns rays are in much better shape than the deeper parts of the face that look out to the east.  I enjoy several turns where the saddle sweeps over onto the south-facing edge of the main wall, but once the open ground and trees push me over into the center of the bigger face, the crusties begin to fight each turn, and before I know it I launch out over my ski tips with arms outstretched into a superman impersonation soaring downslope, ending in a soft face plant.  Not near so bad to experience this humiliation solo.  Maybe that's why I'm up here all alone.

Several more turns bring me to the bottom of the open slope, still fighting crusty conditions, but better now in amongst the big trees.  Shooting through the lower-angled forest is a joy, linking shallow turns around the massive trunks.  After digging into the pumice on a turn or two, it's time to de-ski.  I hoof it back down to the waiting camper in about 15 minutes and enjoy a warm beer in the sun.

Rolling down the sand-and-snow road, the camper swaying from side to side, I smile to myself while relishing this physical stupor.  Nothing epic about this day at all, no bottomless pow, no sugary corn, no necklace of linked turns unzipping down the center of Monache Face.  No, none of that.  Just plenty of good, solid outdoor adventure with miles alone and smiles to share.

                                                                                                                   -gmm

:-)

Treat It With Respect

Cold.  Bitter, arctic cold.  The kind of cold that isn't stopped by winter clothing.  The kind of cold that kills, quickly and impersonally.  Get your timing wrong with the elements, these elements, and serious trouble becomes your reality.  The temps plummet, the winds howl, and a landscape that appears reasonably tame becomes very, very hostile.

Mono County Sheriff Search and Rescue Report January 9/10, 2010

A Mono County resident has been found deceased after what appears to be an ill-fated attempt to reach his remote home at Sagehen Meadows.  Mono Sheriff Officials report that the SAR team responded to the Sagehen Summit to look for 60-year-old Robert Lane.  Lane lived alone off of Highway 120 East near Sagehen Summit.  During the winter the highway is closed off and Sheriff officials say that the home is only accessible by snowmobile.  Sheriff Officials say that the search team found Lane's unoccupied vehicle stuck in a snowdrift on 120 near Big Sand Flat.  The two searchers made it to the man's house, but Lane wasn't there either.  On Sunday morning the SAR team and Mono deputies set out on snowmobiles and in the county snowcat to begin search for the missing man.  At about noon, searchers found Lane lying in the snow about a mile from his vehicle.  The cause of death remains under investigation.

Monday, January 13, 2012

There's a cold weather front pouring into this low pressure.  It's 22 degrees outside.  Through the window I see spindrift blowing horizontally across the open plateau of the front yard.  There are few obstacles to slow the gale sweeping up out of the Adobe Valley.  I head down the steps with my shoulder tipped to the wind.  It feels raw outside.  But under a heavy, felt cowboy hat and full-head balaclava, and wrapped in a 200-weight fleece top, synthetic down sweater and Filson duster, I'm reasonably warm.   Longjohns under fleece-lined pants add what they can.   So out I walk, not quite sure to where.

I end up heading down the road and north through the burned forest into the deer bedding grounds.   It is much warmer here amongst the trees, and as I creep closer to where I often see large numbers of deer, the air grows still.  These third-generation Jeffery pines grow dense, with many small clearings between, each one carpeted in deep needle duff.  Snow flakes settle lazily to the soft forest floor.   It is an inviting spot, and one, I know, that often provides shelter to many deer.   Today, all is quiet.

Back out on the road, I start down again toward the west but stop and reconsider.  The first deep chills are getting a foothold through my layers, and the afternoon light is dimming fast beneath the storm cover.  I turn back, knowing the house is just a ten minute walk away.  Emerging from the forest onto the open plateau, I turn into the wind and up the driveway.  The cold, raw and bitter, hits hard, so I tip my head to drop the bill of my hat, shielding my face.  My gloved hands are stuffed deep into the duster.  The chills quickly grow into a rising tide of cold.   Shivering cold.  All-consuming cold.  It comes on surprisingly fast, just a few paces up my drive.  The wind stings my checks and forehead, and instantly freezes the moisture my covered nose exhales through the balaclava.   Even after making the turn in the driveway, the cold blast continues head-on.  I swim through this arctic fury toward the warm house just a minute away, thinking "What would it be like to be a mile or two out in this weather, in this place."

It would be desperate. 

                                       -gmm

Seeing Far

Seeing is an act that connects the viewer with the viewed.  On the physical level, it is an exchange of photons, bouncing off the objects in our world and hitting our retinas in the wavelengths our eyes have evolved to take best advantage of.  On a visceral level, however, seeing is an emotional exchange of information that informs our sense of self-identity.

Seeing far - seeing big, dramatic landscapes, seeing stretches of land that dwarf the human scale - these are, for me,  the most powerful and humbling of human experiences.  I have sought these sights my entire life, or at least for as long as I can remember.  There is something to the distance, something in the sheer quantity, that speaks in a tongue I long to understand.

This view of Paoha and Negit Islands, Mono Lake, taken from the northern slopes of Sagehen Peak yesterday afternoon, creates a powerful sense of belonging in me.  I am made small by this luxuriant expanse.  I am reacquainted with my frail humanness and confronted by my life's transience in the face of this 750,000-year-old landform.  I am nothing more than a fleeting witness to time eternal, a momentary flash across the screen of this cinema.  Yet, without my act of observation (and yours), this Basin becomes meaningless, an infinity that passes silent into some unknown, unknowable eternal future.  The knowledge of this exchange, of this reliance upon each other, in some hidden yet palpable dimension, grounds me in this moment.  It helps me be at home, both in this landscape and within myself.

This was my view yesterday as I "commuted" to town and an evening potluck and music jamm.  I see this same perspective every trip to town (couple times each week), but yesterday's caught my attention like few others.  Why should that be?  Some low clouds, a setting sun, a dusting of snow...what is this thing that stirs inside me in the presence of such moments?  What substance does my witness to this spectacle create?  Awe?  Subservience?  Love?  Are these feelings solid stuff, any less so than the pine trees, rock and ice that direct the sun's particles to my eye?

I fancy it is part a reflection of my Scottish heritage, this yearning for wide open spaces.  (I also fancy my heritage is, in fact, Scottish...something I'd rather take for granted and leave it at that.)  And deeper, perhaps the identification of this living DNA with a genetic ancestry that "feels" familiar in these sweeping spaces, and therefore secure.  What I do know, a certainty I have lived with for my entire adult life, is that I am a being of the mountains, a witness to the power of earth and sky combined on a scale to dwarf my fleeting presence.  With many questions and few answers, I have embarked on a journey of discovery and understanding through a palette of grand landscapes indeed.  Here in the Glass Mountains, I have arrived home at last.

                                               -gmm

Good Morning and Welcome!

Good morning and welcome to Sagehen Station, a stopping point for wanderers and vagabonds to sample the flavor of a life lived alone, far removed from the bustle of contemporary West Coast madness.  Sagehen Station is located at an elevation of 8,300 feet in the Glass Mountains of the Inyo National Forest.

This is a place on the edge of things.  Sitting at the northern border of the world's largest Jeffery Pine forest, just east of North America's youngest mountain range (the Mono Craters), just south of North America's oldest lakebed (Mono Lake), and betwixt two of the mightiest mountain systems on the continent, Sagehen Station is influenced by and enjoys a taste of all of this amazing topography.

First and foremost, it is a place of stunning visual delight.  To the east stand the hulking Inyo-White Mountains, North America's highest desert mountain range.

To the west the mighty Sierra Nevada, Galen Rowell's Range of Light.

And here between, mostly unnoticed and largely unappreciated, is Sagehen Station, my home.

Having the opportunity to greet these landscapes on a daily basis is a blessing.  How and why I landed here are stories for another day.  Just know, when those days arrive, these same landscapes will still be here, sharing their beauty and peace with my soul...and few others.

                                                                                                         -gmm