Posts Tagged ‘nature’
Lookout Bothy, northern most tip of the land
The last visitor’s summary on AllTrails for Lookout Bothy – Rubha Hunish said “super muddy but impeccable views”. Rubha Hunish is a 3.4 mile trail on the northermost tip of Trotternish peninsula (link). On a clear day, one can see the Isle of Lewis across the ocean.
If I were to create a word cloud from the AllTrails reviews of Skye trails, following terms will dominate – “view”, “slippery”, “muddy”, “rocky”, “scramble”, “windy”, “rain”, and “fog”. They don’t distinguish one trail from another. So you have to rely on some other marker. In this case, we relied on our BnB, Woodbine Guest House, owner, Steve. He loved Quirang first and Rubha Hunish next. We did both on the same day since neither on its own was a particularly long trail.
The Rubha Hunish was an evening walk. The days are so very long in Scottish summer that it might well have been afternoon. Our only deadline was a dinner reservation at 7. Scottish Highland hospitality industry recommends dinner reservations. There are not enough restaurants to feed all the tourists who land there. We reached the bothy, the coastguard lookout, in good time. The views were indeed impeccable. And no, we didn’t walk down the cliff to the Hunish. There are paths leading down – I would need to be a goat to walk those.
What happened next was simply incredible. At least it was incredible for me. We ran into a short stretch of boggy land. Because we had taken our Californian weather with us, it wasn’t impossibly muddy that day. What it was instead was a soft ground, you had to move quickly before your feet sank. The trail had disappeared into the boggy grassland, so one had to try a few directions before picking one. Sometimes retracing and starting over became necessary. That jiggy-jaggy near random walk on the bog made return to the trailhead interesting, particularly given that we were targeting a 7 pm dinner. I might have freaked out if we hadn’t especially noted an octogenarian who had crossed this route a little ahead of us. We knew we would make it, whether we would get dinner or not was the only unknown. It turned out that we made dinner time.
Btw, Rubha is Gaelic for “headland” and Hunish is Norse (link) and means “headland of the bear cub” reflecting its shape. It illustrates the Skye’s Norse and Gaelic heritage.
I had gone to Scotland for the crag, the bog and the fog. Between the Quirang and the Lookout Bothy, we experienced the first two. Fog would elude us this trip.
Cuith-Raing (or The Quirang)
Skye is uniquely famous for its crags (and the expansive sky). I would say the same thing for Himalaya, but it is very hard to comprehend the seemingly infinite scale of Himalaya. Skye mountains feel more human scale. I can imagine living in Skye and loving a crag. And getting to know the crag intimately like the back of my hand – across the 1000 hours of sunshine and the remaining 7000 hours of rain, fog and snow.
The mountains in Skye are part of Appalachian-Caledonian Mountains (link). The range was formed 250 Million years ago and is now scattered across continents – eastern United States and Canada, Greenland, Scandinavia, the British Isles, Brittany, the Iberian Peninsula, and the Anti-Atlas Mountains of Morocco. The oldest rocks in Skye are in Sleat peninsula (southernmost point), Lewisian Gneiss from 2.8 billion years ago. The final shapes that we we see today are result of glacial activity in the last ice age about 20,000 years ago (link).
Our BnB, Woodbine, is located in Uig. It is a good ways up from Portree, the commercial center of Skye. It also meant that we were rather close to the Quirang mountain. It took almost no effort to get there. The last few miles are a single track lane with passing places. The parking lot was nearly full by 10 am. If it weren’t summer, when sun rises at 3 am, I would have tried to catch Quirang at sunrise.
The trail The Quirang, it is a 5.2 miles out and back and should take anywhere between 2-3 hours. That assumes you are walking normally on a trial. It will take twice as long, if not longer, if you the kind that is impressed by rocks. As soon as you get off the parking lot, the view opens up and keeps on producing one grand view after another. So you can’t stop snapping pictures. The valleys, the lochs, the ocean, the sheep, sheep poop (I mean the daisies), the rock slides, the streams, the cliffs, the heather, the tranquil pool and the expansive blue sky.
We snapped a few hundred pictures and made only the first mile and back in three hours. Eventually I had to turn around so I could find a public toilet, the landscape (and the crowd) does not allow for a quick duck behind the bushes.
Where a sheep poops, a daisy grows
They say that the Scottish landscape is dotted with sheep. And they are right. From Inverness, we had headed out to Uig in the Isle of Skye. Apparently, the tourism in Isle of Skye has skyrocketed. The culprit is modernization, the island got connected to the mainland by a bridge on A87 in 1995, replacing the ferry-only option. And who would blame the high rate of tourism. Isle of Skye with its perpetual fog laden craggy landscape looks otherwordly.
Skye has ~1000 hours of sunshine annually. That is about a 1 in 8 chance of sunshine. Of course we had taken our California weather with us to Skye for our three days. While it was hot in Perthshire, Skye remained relatively cool during our stay. The first thing that strikes your eye is the green moss like cover on the mountains. As your eyes adjust to the green, you start noticing the white dots. On closer inspection, they appear to move. Soon you realize that you are looking at sheep. They are practically everywhere on the island.
I read in Peter May’s Lewis trilogy that sheep are not too smart and they startle easy. They also like camping on the road to avoid the midges. And one has to be careful driving, so as not to catch a startled sheep. There might have been time when sheep owners tried building barricades for their flock. But they try no more. How else would the sheep be everywhere? I wondered if they are even keeping counts. We noticed some with colors on them – blues and oranges and reds. I guess one needs no more than five colors (link). We didn’t catch any startled sheep. We did catch a number of adorable ones.
If you are hiking on the island, chances are, you are walking with the sheep. You have to especially watch out for their poop. Sheep are everywhere and so is their poop. Scotland is a land of signs. Outside of India, I have never seen as many signs in my life (did we inherit the habit from the Brits?). You can bet seeing a sign forbidding you to step on a daisy. I read that to mean they want you to be careful so you are not stepping on sheep poop.
Skye hikes are popular. There are hundreds of others with you on hikes. But they are surprisingly quiet. I had a near profound experience in Inverness the day before we entered Skye. We were at the Chanonry Point, a piece of land that juts out into the Moray Firth, a piece of land popular with humans for dolphin spotting. There were dozens of us shivering in the wind, waiting for dolphin sighting. And a solitary dolphin did appear and goofed around for over half and hour and amused us all. We all watched. Quietly. Most of us took photos. Quietly. Even the kids watched quietly. I could not but remember my Antarctica trip where the humans chattered louder than that penguins, non-stop.
In the Scottish highlands, even when you don’t see the sheep, you hear them. Particularly the young ones who are persistently calling out their mothers. Baa, Baa, …. the only sound that you hear on your walks along with the sound of the wind.
An ancient forest in Cairngorms National Park
The Romans called Scotland ‘Caledonia’ and Caledonian pine trees are the name for the native Scottish pine. Incidentally, I had first come across the word Caledonia in the Astrix and Obelix comic series. Caledonian pines do not look like Douglas firs. To experience the ancient Caledonian forests today, one has to visit the Cairngorms National Park. Here in Cairngorms, the forest is dominated by regenerated Scottish pine with a native understory of wild berries, juniper, heather and rowan.
The morning after the grand multi-course dinner at the Old Manse of Blair (link), we headed up to Inverness along route A9. Our starting point near Blair Atoll starts to skirt Cairngorms. Aviemore, the heart of Cairngorms, nearly halfway to Inverness, is where we would stop to explore the Cairngorms. The “Big Tree” country Hermitage woods hike (link) with its American Douglas firs and Japanese larches is a beautiful forest but isn’t a native Scottish forest.
Before Aviemore, we stopped at a small town called Kingussie for lunch and to explore the Ruthven Barrack ruins, an important historical site in Jacobite uprising (link). Kingussie itself is not forested. From the on top of the hill where the barrack is situated, one can see the forests. At the top of hill, it was also 80F in shade.
By the time we had reached Aviemore, we had decided to walk a short trail called “An Lochan Uaine (pronounced oo-an-yi, The Green Loch) circular”. The trailhead is at the Glenmore Visitor Center. I was dreading a traffic grid lock but that wasn’t the case. The crowd was reasonable given that the visitor center is right by the popular Reindeer Center. The hiking path essentially takes one to the loch and then loops back. Aside from a short stretch that needed scrambling up a steep hill, the path was accessible all the way. Views included rows upon rows of Caledonian pines, a tranquil meadow, the “mystical” green lake, views of Loch Morlich and at least one gnarly old tree. Here in the forest of Cairngorms, it was remarkably cool. By the time we would get to Inverness, we would also be greeted by thunder and rain.
Sticky toffee pudding in Blair Atholl
I had to try the sticky toffee pudding at The Old Manse of Blair (link) restaurant, a Michelin restaurant in Blair Atholl in Pitlochry. The restaurant sources their ingredients within a 30 mile radius. I haven’t had a sticky toffee pudding before so I can’t compare. I can only say that this was an excellent cake. The interior was moist, the sweet and salty toffee sauce had a delicate burnt caramel flavor. The chef has replaced the more traditional dates in the pudding recipe with parsnips, the later being local to the highlands. If the service staff hadn’t mentioned the parsnips, I might have been left wondering about the woody nutmeg flavor.
Theirs was a prix fixe menu. It had been a while since we had done a multi-course meal. I find the act of sitting for two hours physically taxing. I had requested the service staff that I be allowed to get up and walk about their premises – so I could be more ready for the pudding. They were amused and suggested that we walk as long as we liked. And we did, we were gone for a good thirty minutes. The servers later told us that they were starting to worry if we had skedaddled without paying!
Hermitage woods, Perthshire
Autumn is the best time to visit Perthshire…..
Our first pitstop after leaving Edinburgh was Dunkeld, a cute little town not too far from Edinburgh. The nightime stay was to be at Pitlochry, another cute little town just 9 miles north of Dunkeld. We had planned for an easygoing day, a long lunch followed by rambling along the River Tay or the Hermitage Woods, visiting the Dunkeld cathedral, hugging the last standing Birnam Oak and exploring Beatrix Potter Hilltop house and garden. However, plans do go awry, as they did in our case. The heat wave that was running amok through Europe was also nipping at the heels of Scotland. It was the first clear day since reaching Scotland. Perthshire was well over 80F in shade.
The morning was spent trying to get our rental car and then being anxious around the roundabouts ( anxious is not quite the right word, is there an english word for confused+amused? ) . By the time we had reached Dunkeld, it was well after lunch hour. It was hot and even the Aran bakery fare had wilted under the heat. It was going to be hot well into early evening. So we limited our plans to exploring the shaded “must-see” Hermitage Woods (link).
Perthshire is known as the “big tree country”. Hermitage Woods is the result of tree growing efforts by the Dukes of Atholl. Apparently, seeds were shot from cannons! Douglas firs, first brought over as seeds from North America, grow tall in the Hermitage Woods. And the Dukes were fond of Japanese larch trees. So the firs are interspersed by Japanese Larch and the native trees. The overall appearance looks like mixture of pine and temperate forest. Autumn is the best time to visit Perthshire when the trees turn the color of gold, red, copper and amber.
Ready, steady and waiting to go
This one is not a competition unless one counts competing with other vacationers. But this is a bucket list trip. Soon we will be on a flight heading up towards Scotland. If all goes to plan, this is what happens.
We land in Edinburgh and stay four nights. We explore the city and work off the jetlag. During this period, we also get used to the shifts in weather, set aside work worries and get into the vacation mode. Then we hop on a rental car and start heading towards the Perthshire. We stop at Dunkeld and walk along river Tay. Our first night outside Edinburgh is spent in Pitlochry. Next day, we head up towards Inverness. But before we do, we have the option of checking out Pitlochry, or Kingussie. This is when you wish time would dilate and you could do both. But we prefer lingering. Inverness is a two night stay. And here too, we will have options – Cairngorms or Black Isle. We decided not to drive the breathtaking North Coast 500. From Inverness, we will head out to Uig in the Isle of Skye via Achnasheen and Plockton. We stay in Uig for three nights. In Skye I didn’t give ourselves options to leave the Trotternish Peninsula. After Uig, we catch a ferry to Fort Williams and here again we stay two nights to explore the Glencoe region before heading out to Callander. Along the way, we will find ourselves on the edge of the Rannoch moor. From Callander we head back to Edinburgh for our flight back. Our final sight seeing will be the Doune castle where a reenactment of Monty Python and the Holy Grail “Go and boil your bottoms, sons of a silly person!” may occur.
I realized that my utter fascination for the Scottish landscape comes from reading and watching Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories, hundreds of times. Conan Doyle grew up in Edinburgh. The story of the Hound of Baskerville is set in Dartmoor, but when Doyle describes the desolate hills, thick rolling banks of fog, and craggy rocks, I think of Scotland Highlands.
California is five times the size of Scotland. Yet, for such a tiny little place, this trip has been exceptionally challenging to plan. I have been trying for several years now. Any which way you look in Scotland, there are breathtaking mountains and lakes, charming villages, and fantastic food. Everything is must do. Everything is top 10. I first started with reading travel books. Then I hoped that AI would come to rescue. Finally, I had to call up a travel planner, Nordic Visitor, to rescue me. They have taken good care of us, have booked us in adorable B&Bs, kept our city to city travels short, given us time to breathe in-between. We drive a lot more in California on a weekend trip than we would drive on this ten day trip.
Yet, I am anxious. All of Scotland has thunderstorm, rain and wind in common. The mountains are often fog laden. This time of the year is also peak midge season – they swarm. If you aren’t careful, they will suck your blood and leave the sites itchy. Then there are many places that are the exceedingly touristy – I hear of the crowd being described as “gridlock” and “infrastructure failure”. I am a morning person, but I don’t like to head over to the car park first thing in the morning. I can’t share nature with noisy crowds. On the Antarctic trip, I was surrounded by chirpy humans, chirpier than the penguins. My movements were also circumscribed due to the fragility of the environment. I couldn’t get away to find a moment of quiet, I couldn’t listen to the nature undisturbed by the humans even for a single minute. I had felt extremely annoyed.
So, wish me luck this time and more importantly, wish me grace.
Am I developing an obsession for my hands?
A couple of years ago, I had signed up for a video editing class. For fun. I had shot some footage of my hands and had hoped to convert the footage into a short 30s movie in honor of Agnès Varda. That footage has yet to come together. I suspect I had picked my hands for a class project theme because I see them in my peripheral view all the time, whether it is typing, or cooking or gardening. I find my hands interesting. Even when I was a young woman, my veins were prominent. They make my hands looks far more mature for their age. I now know the vein pattern to be like fingerprint, a biometric. The right and left hands are differently patterned and are unique to me.
And now, the joints in my hands have started to hurt. An acupuncture session brings temporary relief and then the hurt comes back. The right hand has been particularly irksome for the last year. I finally decided to go in for a doctor’s visit and surprise, surprise, he diagnosed me with basal thumb arthritis, same as the left hand. Btw, the left hand which is a lot more arthritic, hurts a lot less. The doctor says that is because I am right handed and I am overusing my right hand. The diagnosis came in the same week that I had signed up for my first kickboxing class – while most of the time one is kicking, at times, one is meant to be boxing. I attended the class with braces on my hands and punched air instead. I have also started drawing birds recently. The week of my x-rays, we were focusing on feathers. Bird feathers are attached to their arms. And their primaries are attached to what we call our hands. The primaries generate thrust, propel the bird forward, and facilitate maneuvering. Pretty darn important, won’t you say?
My hummingbirds
My backyard hummingbirds, Anna’s hummingbirds, have turned me into a bird lover. Yes, there are song birds in the garden, but they love to hide. There are migratory birds in the Bay, but they need me to leave my home. My hummingbirds are always there for me. The feeder is right outside my kitchen. I can see them when I want to, and hear them. They are not afraid to approach me. And this kind, Anna’s, don’t migrate away.
This year, I finally decided to take a plunge into bird photography. Unlike full moon (link), hummingbird photography needs a good amount of skill even to get started. I won’t deny that I find the camera infuriatingly complicated. There are so many buttons. And the menu is a mile long. But my hummingbirds are nudging me. I am also learning to draw birds from John Muir Laws (he likes to be called Jack), a learning trajectory that is a lot less steeper than learning to operate a modern DLSR camera.
Here are two shots, two months apart – late winter when the tree is bare and early spring with new leaves on the crepe myrtle. Both are taken during evening when the sun is low on the horizon. My regular feeder has feet for them to sit on, and they do like sitting. But sitting hummingbirds don’t make for good pictures. So this feeder comes out when I plan to shoot. I put the tripod in my kitchen and shoot in between cooking.
Spring walks on the coast
Our coastal parks are either Redwoods or beaches or clifftops by the beaches. The trails may skirt the Pacific ocean or start off at the sea level and climb up an adjacent cliff, or climb up the Santa Cruz mountains.
This spring, after a lot of deliberation, we bought a convertible, a car that my spouse and I have discussed with adoration for the last three decades. We now are proud owners of a little two seater, a Miata. It feels purpose built for the mountain roads that separate the valley from the Pacific coast. We have been walking the mountain trails these last several years, but now the drive to the trailhead is part of being out in nature. Driving in a convertible is the equivalent of walking in nature. You can hear the birds, smell the petrichor and be awash in the dappled sunlight. Much like I deliberate over the trail properties, now I deliberate over the drive properties. Is the road narrow or twisty enough to allow us to slow down? Is there an alternate county road to the highway? Will the road give the Miata bumper a chin rash?
Post Miata, a number of our hikes have started off on the coast. One stayed on the beach, one climbed into the Redwood forest, and a few that climbed the dead cliffs covered with scraggy vegetation.
7 hikes, 35 miles, a ramble on rambles
A winter ramble
I was feeling restless this Monday. Even though it was a working day, I decided to go out on a short afternoon hike. Further inland from where we are, the tule fog had descended on the central valley and was squatting for solid 3 weeks and counting. Here in the Bay Area, the sun was up, but it didn’t carry warmth. The morning dew was still lingering and I noticed spider webs. There were so many that the grassland looked covered in dandelion tufts. I go to this park often, I am sure I have been over couple dozen times in the last three years and the web tufts managed to surprise and delight me.
The grassland itself presented diversity this early in the winter – the fallen leaves, dry grass from last season, new generation of grass, moss and other shrubs existed side by side. I chose a trail I take less often and came across a large deer family and this afternoon, they chose not to run away upon seeing me. Later, on the same trail, I found my local oyster mushroom foraging patch!
Read the rest of this entry »A blue oak woodland in summer
Blue oaks are native to California and are endemic. Meaning, they should be everywhere in California and be nowhere else. They aren’t as easy to spot as their name would have you think. Blue oak aren’t blue. Describing oak leaves as blueish-green may help when the light is just right. Describing the leaves as leathery doesn’t help in California where most of the vegetation tends to have leathery leaves. I would have to walk around with an acorn+leaf chart to match them. Our most common oaks, are the coastal oak (bristly tips) and the valley oak (have lobes). The valley oak grows tall and has twisted branches and lends a queen like elegance to the landscape. The coastal oak often look like they have fought hard to survive, a sherpa who can keep climbing forever. Blue oaks have been elusive to me in Bay Area preserves and parks. Rangers tell me that most of the existing blue oaks are on private lands.
Last weekend we found ourselves on such a private land, the regenerative Paicines (Pai-seen-us) Ranch. We had gone looking for astrophotography opportunities. During our stay, we learned about their Blue Oak forest and I had to take a look. When you live in California long enough, oaks become as fascinating as the Redwoods. One year, we noticed the coastal oaks in our neighborhood masting (link). I want to find acorn flour so I can make flatbread but I don’t want to start with harvesting acorns even when the trees are masting. This trip, the cottage we stayed at, the Cheese Cottage, was next to a large Valley Oak specimen. The cottage’s patio was high up enough that I was practically sitting in a tree house. It allowed me to notice the oak galls up close.
Here are few photos of the blue oak woodland. I present them in black and white. By the time we explored the woodland, the sun was high up and the shadows were stark. It is the end of summer here and the grasses had turned into straw color. The leaves were covered in dust. If it were spring, the woodland floor would have been covered in blue lupines, and the blue dicks and my photographs would have wanted to reflect all that color.
The fascinating Sitka spruce
I recently heard a joke and this is how it goes: “What do you do if you are lost in the Icelandic forests?” You just stand up!
Downy birch (Betula pubescens) was the backbone of Iceland’s native forests. It covered 20% of Iceland prior to Norse settlement in 9th century. Over harvesting and free range sheep grazing has left Iceland devoid of its native forests. While Iceland appears beautiful to a visitor and is on bucket list of every hiker, Iceland’s soil erosion is described as catastrophic. The seedlings that come up against the soil quality odds have a further hard time surviving sheep grazing. Those that do survive struggle to grow into trees with a vertical form and grow as shrubs instead. In places where reforestation is afoot, Sitka spruce (Picea sitchensis) are coming to rescue. The Sitka spruce can withstand far adverse conditions than the native birch, including standing up to coastal salt and high wind. So, they are being planted first and when they mature, the more delicate species are grown in the nooks protected by Sitka spruce. To learn more about Iceland’s reforestation challenges, go on to watch “How do you grow trees in a treeless land?” (link)
For me, Sitka spruce is a memory switch. It reminds me of a trip to Alaska where I had fly-fished for salmon standing in waist deep glacial waters while watching a bear mom catch salmon for her two toddlers.
Soon after I had seen the Sitka spruce first hand, Gordon Hempton had referred to Sitka Spruce as nature’s largest violin. Gordon describes the recording event on his website: “I’ve positioned my microphone system that replicates 3-D human hearing inside a giant Sitka spruce log. This tree grew in the nearby rain forest and then floated down the Bogachiel River before coming to a rest (temporarily) at Rialto Beach. The wood of this tree species has special properties that make it ideal for crafting violins, guitars, and other acoustic instruments because the wood produces a sound when exposed to the slightest vibration. But here, instead of a bow drawn across violin strings, the sound of distant surf is powerful enough to cause this Sitka log to produce its own deep, harmonic concert.”
He had shared with some of us the sound this violin produces. I am musically challenged, to me it had sounded more like united heartbeats of creatures that had congregated by the ocean, hearts fluttering in mild anxiety, in heightened anticipation…
A deeply satisfying walk
Yesterday, we visited Henry Coe State Park, after a span of nearly 18 years. It was a deeply satisfying early spring hike, with seasonal creek crossings, lunch by a lake, and sighting of abundant early blooms.
Henry Coe is second largest State Park in California at 89,000 acres. The bigger one, Anza Borrego, is over six times larger at 600,000 acres. Starting from Henry Coe HQ, we followed the Monument trail to Hobb’s road, met with the seasonal Little Coyote Creek for the first time on our way to Frog lake, had lunch at Frog lake while watching a large family fishing, then followed the Frog lake trail to Middle Ridge trail, then Fish trail to another Little Coyote Creek crossing, all the way to Corral trail and back to HQ.
Read the rest of this entry »A slug rises
A headline caught my eye a few weeks ago – Assembly Bill(AB 1850) passed recognizing the banana slug as the official state slug. It took a bill – not scientists! A slug joined other well known symbols, like the California grizzly bear and the California poppy. That is when I looked up the list of California State symbols and learned about the lesser known symbols such as the California quail (1932) and Golden trout (1947). Call me silly, but I was expecting to find weed on the list. Anyways, I adore this slug, it is yellow, it is large, and it lives on our forest floors. They are caretakers of the giant Redwoods, our state tree. They eat plants that compete with the Redwood seedlings but never the Redwood seedlings. Somehow they know that these little Redwood seedlings one day will become the giants that will give them back the moist forest floor.
Read the rest of this entry »A new year hike on the Ice
I am no stranger to hiking through poor visibility (Mindego Hill, San Bruno). The sensory deprivation where you disengage and simply focus on the action of walking can bring mental quiet and a new appreciation of an otherwise familiar environment. Here on Antartica, the environment is brand new. Walking on snow and ice with the bulky jacket, boots, and life vest was proving to be an act of controlled slipping while alternately sweating and freezing. There was no rookery at the site, which meant no guano and no smell. Photographs were already proving to be difficult due to lack of familiar objects that define the scale of the environment, like the trees or rivers. So don’t judge. Here is what the camera saw over the course of a two mile hike, climbing perhaps 200 ft.
Read the rest of this entry »
Locomotoring 