Stories have a power to move people, to change lives, to create the most outrageous fantasies out of nothing. I thought of this when we visited a place built in the desert on a foundation of stories – or so it seemed to me.

We spent several days in Death Valley over the long Thanksgiving weekend. For the most part, we hiked canyons and climbed dunes. For half a day, though, we toured Scotty’s Castle, a complex built in the 1920’s in the hills on the east side of Death Valley.

There are a lot of stories spun around the castle, like cotton candy around a simple paper cone. It’s hard to know the veracity of spun stories, but you can look at the events surrounding the stories and make a judgment about whether people acted in a way that was consistent with the tale being told.

Scotty, who didn’t own the castle and never really lived in the castle, was a cowboy, who started out as a small boy in Kentucky who didn’t want to go to school. His father thought he ought to work, so at the end of the nineteenth century and at eleven years old, he was sent to Death Valley to join a brother already working in the mines.

Only, the brother wasn’t there anymore when the kid arrived, so he got by as best he could, doing this and that. There weren’t big cities in Death Valley then, just ranches and little mining towns (some even too small to be called towns). The fever of precious metals had infected a lot of people. And gold (or the lust for it) was the deadliest form of the disease.

Scotty became a good enough cowboy to join Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show as a bronco rider, where he toured for a while. After he either got fired or he quit in New York City, he headed back West, where he gained fame as a miner or as a con artist. He told people he was a miner and had found a rich vein of gold in Death Valley, but he’d never reveal the location of this super-secret mine.

Scotty’s flamboyant lifestyle convinced a lot of people that he had found this fabulous mine, but it doesn’t take much reading between the lines to see that he conned a lot of investors out of a lot of money to finance his high living and that the mine probably never existed.

One of the wealthy men that Scotty conned was an engineer-turned-insurance executive from Chicago, called Albert Johnson. After giving Scotty about two thousand dollars (a lot of money at the turn of the twentieth century), Johnson came to Death Valley to see the mine in which he’d been investing. Scotty tried a scheme to divert Johnson, staging an ambush by fake bandits, but it was revealed to be a hoax.

It seemed that Johnson enjoyed Scotty’s stories and the thrill of riding with cowboys so much that he forgave the hoax and the loss of his money. He and Scotty were friends for the next forty years. Johnson started coming out to Death Valley to ride and camp with Scotty every year. After Johnson’s wife started coming along, they decided they needed some place to stay out there that was more civilized than sleeping under the stars.

During the 1920s, Johnson started building not just a house, but a large Spanish villa, with a clock-tower and red-tiled roofs and tiled courtyards. About two millions dollars went into the house (and it was not ever completed). The Johnsons were only there for a month or so every year, but Scotty hung around the property as a sort of caretaker. He gave tours and boasted that the money from his secret gold mine was financing “his” castle.

What did Johnson think about Scotty’s boasting and tall tales? He seems to have enjoyed and even encouraged them. One story has it that Scotty was taking some visitors on a tour through the house when Mr. Johnson arrived. Instead of announcing himself, Johnson joined the tour, where he undoubtedly heard Scotty’s tales of the castle built from the profits of his secret gold mine. Mr. Johnson made very knowledgeable comments about the house during the tour, and someone asked Scotty who this man was; Scotty answered that the man was his banker, and Johnson concurred. Maybe Johnson liked the stories so much that he’d rather live inside them than expose them as lies.

Without Scotty’s stories, that “castle” would never have been built, and Mr. Johnson wouldn’t have had a chance to live inside a dream of the Old West. No one was hurt by it, as I can see. Sometimes the story is better than the reality.

I am currently in the Great Wet North (no snow yet), spending the weekend working at a power plant on the shores of Lake Superior. It's not all the way to the Canadian border, mind you, but it's not far....

For November, the weather is pretty tolerable: that is, it's been overcast and raining intermittantly, not snowing. Yesterday the lake was calm and photogenic, though today it's windy and choppy. It's off season up here: the little towns hereabouts mostly exist for summer tourists. About half the restaurants are closed (though I am happy to report that there is an upscale bakery, only four miles up the road, that has good coffee and pastries). The only other people in my hotel are hunters. Of course, construction of the new waterfront condos up the road apiece seems to be proceeding.

There's nothing to do here, but since I've been working twelve-hour days, I guess that's okay. I'm not missing anything.

Looking forward to coming home to the warm(er) and sunny desert....

Another year at Burning Man, and in particular, a second year in Red Nose District (RND), a warm and homey place on the playa (albeit with klowns).( Read more... )

I am not the most regular poster to this journal, partly because my "normal" life is both hectic and not particularly worthy of documenting (at least not to me)...and because I travel quite a bit. Most of my travels for work are to unmemorable cities, but occasionally I do go someplace worth describing.

Last week, I spent six days in the Tokyo area. For two days, I attended a conference. This is not as serious as it seems, since many friends also attended (we're all on the same conference circuit, in our little world of mercury) and since our Japanese hosts gave wonderful banquets for us on two evenings.

Before the conference, I visited a company in the Tokyo area with whom I've been collaborating. Two of my contacts at the company had previously visited me in Salt Lake. They volunteered to take me sightseeing one day.

Early on my first full day in Japan, I met the Japanese guys, and we boarded a train leaving Tokyo. It was Monday morning, and the train station was full of workday commuters in suits and ties. They seemed very pleased to be sitting on a train, drinking beer (the Japanese start early on their drinking), not wearing suits, and watching the hustle and bustle of the commuters from the train compartment.

One of the places we visited was a lake in the mountains, about two hours north of Tokyo, called Chuzenji Lake. The lake is surrounded by some old volcanoes, though you might not be able to tell since the slopes are covered with trees. At one end of the lake is a famous waterfall, called Kegon Waterfall, which is 300 feet high. On the side of the falls is a good example of columnar basalt, evidence of old volcanic activity.

We took a cruise around the lake, after visiting the waterfall. Mount Nantai loomed over the lake, shrouded in clouds.

Below the lake, after a bus ride down a winding road that hugged the side of the mountains, there was a complex of shrines and temples famous in Japan. It contained a very old Buddhist temple and several shrines built to the Tokugawa Shoguns, called Nikko Sannai. It's famous for the beautiful carvings and gold detail on the buildings. Here is the entrance to the Toshugo Shrine area.

The area teemed with school children on field trips. They took pictures of tourists like me, taking pictures.

There were many gates that were guarded by deities (in addition to regular guards). The Japanese have hundreds of deities, some of which were explained to me. Here's one and another, guarding gates.

There were several famous carvings in Nikko, including a wood carving of the three monkeys, "Hear-No-Evil", "Speak-No-Evil", "See-No-Evil". There were many other beautiful carvings on the buildings. Motifs that kept recurring were lions and dragons, Buddhist influence that migrated from China.

The shrine/temple area was surround by tall trees with straight, smooth trunks, which seemed a lot like redwoods to me. It was cool in the mossy shade, and lovely to stroll down stone paths. There were lanterns everywhere, mostly made of stone, and standing about four feet high. Most of the lanterns had inscriptions (which I couldn't read), but I gathered that they had been dedicated by various important people in the past. I liked the way the moss grew on them.

One final image of Tokyo. I stayed in the Tokyo harbor area, where there are many bridges. Inexplicably (at least to me) there is also a scale model of the Statue of Liberty (with the Rainbow Bridge and the Tokyo Tower in the background).

This year we had the pleasure of cramming two trips into the week when the kids have spring break. Well, if the schools close, you have to to something with the children, otherwise you'd go nuts. Our friend Lynn and her eight-year-old daughter Cora came down from The Great White North for a week, and we spent four days in the Needles District of Canyonlands National Park. After Lynn and Cora headed back to winter, we headed down to Grand Gulch Primitive Area for four days of backpacking. For pictures and more: ( click here... )

I spent the afternoon and evening with two Japanese guys who came to visit me at work. After asking if we could get a picture taken of the three of us together, one told me that it was really a requirement by the Japanese government that all Japanese tourists take pictures. It was clear he was joking: possibly the best sense of humor I've seen in a native Japanese. Very amusing.

After dinner I drove them up to a high spot to look at the lights of the city, which glimmer and sparkle very nicely. Of course, they took pictures of the lights and of each other standing in front of the lights. Very Japanese.

Now, I wonder what the Japanese government does with all those photos...?

The first thing I wrote this morning was a shopping list. Hmmm. Is this an omen of things to come in 2007? Well, the thing about auspicious events is that you never know if they signified anything at all until time unfolds itself.

For 2007, I will remind myself to have fun, wherever possible. And that is my wish for friends near and far, too.

On our holiday excursion last week, the kids discovered the fun of creating mini-avalanches by whacking tall pine trees loaded with snow on the upper branches. Here's how it worked: you whacked the tree trunk, then waited until the snow cascaded down. Whompf!

Enjoy yourselves, dear friends, wherever life takes you.

Is Thanksgiving the holiday of fretting? Is there something about this holiday that makes us worry about tiny little details that would be swept under another holiday's rug? Is this a holiday that demands perfection?

I wondered about this today. I had a wonderful Thanksgiving this year: my friend cooked stuffing/dressing (two kinds -- one for inside the turkey and one that was cooked separately), mashed potatoes, and peas. I cooked the turkey, made pies, and made gravy. Both of us got to do the things we liked doing and avoided the things that we didn't like to do. Yet, we still fretted. My friend fretted that the mashed potatoes were too lumpy, while I fretted that the turkey wasn't cooked enough.

The meal turned out well, all in all. Was all that pre-meal fretting misplaced? Would it have happened no matter what? I suspect that the answer to that is 'yes'. On Thanksgiving, perfection is called for. Resist, I say, resist the call to perfection. Instead, enjoy the company of those gathered around the table.

Recently, we spent some time in Nine-Mile Canyon in central Utah. This canyon is more like seventy miles long, but it was originally surveyed by someone using a nine-mile transect.

The canyon appears typical of many Utah canyons: a creek winds along the bottom, which contains cottonwoods and sagebrush. What's not typical of this canyon is the wealth of rock art (AKA petroglyphs) on the canyon walls. The petroglyphs were made by the Fremont Indians, who lived there from about AD 500 to AD 1300 (or later). This canyon has a large concentration of petroglyphs in a very accessible area.

Parts of the canyon bottom are flat and are given over to cattle-grazing and hay production. The creek runs east until it meets the Green River. Much of the canyon bottom is private land, but the rest of the area is administered by the BLM. Currently the BLM is allowing exploration for oil and gas, as well as coal-bed methane extraction in the Nine-Mile Canyon area, which might be the subject of another rant, since it seems unconscionable to me to allow drilling and a steady stream of heavy trucks in a canyon with thousand-year-old rock art.

The road along the canyon bottom is level and well graded (because of all those tanker trucks and flatbeds full of equipment!). Much of the rock art can be spotted from the road. Sometimes a little climbing is required, as here where Alex and Carolyn inspect a panel of petroglyphs (better view here).

The pictures have been pecked or scratched into the rock; sometimes a pattern of dots is apparent, as in this lively-looking person. Many of the glyphs are about food, specifically about sheep, deer, and elk. Sheep bound across the rock canvas, sometime suggesting the tension of the hunt. Occasionally there are images of riders on horseback, which must be later petroglyphs made after the re-introduction of horses to the southwest.

In many of the rock panels, human figures are surrounded by animals. Are these gods or successful hunters? Birds and snakes sometimes feature prominently. Some of the figures are most bizarre: spirits or humans with supernatural powers? Are the panels meant to illustrate myths or leave a literal record of life in the canyon? It's hard to tell, though this glyph, showing a horizontal figure might commemorate someone who was killed.

All the rock panels have stories to tell. The nineteenth-century additions to the rock panels, in contrast, are boring repetitions of someone's name or initials and a date. Maybe an alphabet was a step backward, in some ways. Letters and numbers are a dry and uninteresting way to send a message to the future, as the petroglyphs in Nine-Mile Canyon demonstrate.

Alex: Mom, you're kind of like Mrs. Weasley: even though I'm taller than you, I fear you.

Me: Good.

This just in, courtesy of the Associated Press:
"The average American home now has more television sets than people. That threshold was crossed within the past two years, according to Nielsen Media Research. There are 2.73 TV sets in the typical home and 2.55 people, the researchers said."

We have one television between the four of us. But I know we are atypical. Neither of our kids has a TV in his or her bedroom, and there's no TV in the kitchen. On the other hand, one of my sisters balances out our household. She has at least five televisions (in a four-person household).

How many TVs do you have?

I am slowly gathering together thoughts about Burning Man 2006, an intense weekend. After returning, I was thrust the "normal" routines of work and managing other peoples' lives. Anyway, ( here goes... )

Here is a haiku written for me by Carolyn -- it reflects my love of thrashing about in the kitchen:

Engulfed in a cloud
of steam, she battles, fearless,
the fight for good food

Currently carrying out nightly culinary sieges, as I prep food for Burning Man this weekend. I'm supposed to plan and prepare food for a hundred people each night, on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Pray for me.

Survival. What do you need to survive from day to day? The question does not have a fixed or simple answer, of course. Most days, I seem to need a car and a whole household to make my way in the world. When I travel for business (as I did this week, for example), my needs can be stuffed into a black nylon bag with wheels, which patiently trails after me in airports and carparks.

When we go camping, we typically bring our faithful SUV, stuffed to the ceiling with gear: tents, cooking stuff, sleeping bags, chairs, table, etc. Last week we had a decidedly pared-down experience when we went backpacking for five days in canyon country.

What would you take, if you could only take what you could (comfortably) carry on your back? What would you really need?

( Read more... )

One night, I had dinner with an old friend of mine. We worked together at my previous company and I hadn't seen him in five years. It was pleasant to get caught up on the gossip from my old company (nice not to be there, too...). After dinner, we walked to Bourbon Street to see what it was like now. As we walked, we told stories of our previous visits to New Orleans. We each had the college-era story that involved drinking too much in the French Quarter. He even pointed to a part of Bourbon Street that looked familiar: “I think I passed out here,” he said.

Bourbon Street was loud and bright—-as always. And here is how Bourbon Street might look after one too many Hurricanes (here I mean the rum drinks, not the storms). The picture is a product of poor lighting and a slow camera, of course, not too many drinks.

We wandered along part of the street with bars and places selling drinks (beer, rum drinks, etc.) in plastic cups and trinket shops and loud music blaring out into the street, but we thought something was missing. Where were the strip clubs? Where were the female impersonators? Where were the guys standing in the street yelling at you to come in and see the show? We wondered if those had disappeared, if the French Quarter had somehow sanitized itself. Nope. We were just on the wrong end of the street. Soon enough, we found the sleaze that we remembered.

The crowds were not thick on the street. Most people seemed to be tourists like us. Inside the bars and the clubs, though, the crowds were thinner. When we stopped to get a drink, we asked the guy running the place how business was. “Terrible,” he said. “I’m losing money.” So the city is back, but not back to full strength.

I felt that I wanted to join the throngs and have a drink with me as I strolled through the neon forest. Wandering with your rum drink or beer in a plastic cup is totally okay in New Orleans, as this sign illustrates. I think that sums up a lot of the city’s attitude, without which it just wouldn’t be New Orleans.

The conference that I’m attending is the first one in the convention center post-Katrina. Several colleagues have told me that taxi drivers and other locals have thanked them, on hearing that they were with the conference. In the convention center, everything seems in order, but I notice as I walk in front of the convention center that only about 25% of the building is open--the rest is under construction. There are cranes and painters and plastic taped to windows.

Most of the workers appeared to be Hispanics. Walking around last night, I noticed that there were many t-shirts for sale with a Katrina theme, including a t-shirt that spelled out FEMA with the words: “Find Every Mexican Available”. Hmmmm. That had the air of a rant from the residents of the city.

New Orleans is a place where parties happen on the street, particularly in the French Quarter. There are plenty of places that sell beer or daiquiris in plastic cups, which people carry into the street. (This is a bit of a culture shock if you're from Utah.) Last night, after dinner, I and some friends walked through knots of tourists clotted on the streets of the French Quarter. However, the city is definitely not back to full strength. One of the restaurants that we tried to go to last night was only open on weekends. There are more than a few businesses that are closed or under construction. I see "For Rent" and "Help Wanted" signs in many places, like here.

I am doing my best to spend my tourist dollars here. I know this won’t fix many levees or rebuild many houses, but at least our convention is providing jobs for some folks.

The airplane dropped through a layer of clouds as it descended toward New Orleans. For five or ten minutes, as we approached the city from the west, we flew over a watery world. As far as I could see, the scene below was green and brown: brown fingers of water pierced dark, green expanses of trees that looked, from the air, like a fuzzy carpet. Some watercourse were straight, canals that had been punched through the swamps, but most of the water snaked, combining and recombining with other fingers of water, leading to ponds or disintegrating into a helter-skelter collections of islets of trees surrounded by water. The land seemed to be the interloper in this watery world. It must be bewildering, I thought, to be down there. Where are the signposts, the points of navigation? One meandering stream looked like any other, leaving me feeling unsettled.

I arrived at the airport just after seven in the evening. To my surprise, all the shops and restaurants in the terminal were already closed. This made New Orleans, which I'd always thought of as the city that never sleeps, seem like some sleepy small town in the heartland.

I am staying on the river (the Mississippi, of course). From my hotel window, I see the working parts of the river, barges go up and down the river and on the other side are terminals.

After checking into my hotel, I went for a walk in search of dinner, since I had missed lunch during my day of travel. It was only about 80 F outside, but humid. The humidity felt like a wet cloth plastered over my face. The thick air clogged my lungs. Ah, the Gulf Coast. I am glad I live in the desert.

This morning I walked into the French Quarter, past the Starbucks (Eeeew, Starbucks in the Vieux Carré) to Jackson Square. I sat outside at Café du Monde to watch the world walk by. At this time of the morning, the café was full of tourists: gray-haired couples, families with children, conventioneers like myself. It's good to see the tourists--New Orleans needs them. The city sits under sea level in the steamy swamp of the Mississippi delta. I'm not sure what else New Orleans has to offer to the world except a certain attitude and style... which I don't mean to diminish. One of the things that I've always liked about the French Quarter was that it wasn't a sugar-coated, managed experience (you have to got to Disney World for that). A certain amount of grit and garbage lie beneath the surface here-and that's fine with me.

Here's something that I suspect will not excite many people besides me: the new poet laureate of the US was annouced today, Donald Hall. I had not read any of his poems before this, but I have read and admired a text on writing that he wrote (it’s called "Writing Well"). What I liked about his book on writing was how he emphasized finding your voice and writing what you believed—-even in something so prosaic as a college essay.

I listened to an interview with him on NPR today. He told the interviewer how he started with images or events and then worked—-sometimes for years—-to be able to find the words to describe them properly. I feel that way about many of the things that I attempt to write. I wonder how long it will take to capture the elusive thought and put it on paper in a way that is true to what’s in my head. It’s inspiring somehow to know that other writers go through a similar process.

I read the few poems that I coild find on the web today—-actually, I read them out loud at dinner to the kids. I may be the only person in the country who feels the need to celebrate—-in some small way-—a new poet laureate. I love language a lot, and I’m in awe of people who can take words and make them into...what? I’m not sure what metaphor to use... make them into a mirror that reflects an emotion or a memory or that opens a window into a new way of looking at things.

( Here is one of his poems... )

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, JUDY!

You're known by many names, but the essence of you remains a bundle of swellness.

I was in Katowice, Poland, which is in "coal country" in southern Poland--well, if I went there, there was probably coal. My impression of Poland was of a country in transition. In Katowice, there was a mixture of very old architecture, old and tawdry-looking Communist-era architecture, and very new buildings. Cars on the street were pretty much the same as you might see in Germany (according to my German friend). And, of course, everyone was talking on cell phones. There was construction everywhere, both in Katowice and in Krakow.

After the conference was finished, I took the train to Krakow with three friends. The train was old and creaky, but ran on time. The countryside was green, mostly wooded, with some smaller farms here and there.

In Krakow, we started at the old market square (called Rylek Glowny...though it's not pronounced the way it looks). This was the place to stroll. Horse-drawn carriages trotted through the square, separating tourists from their zlotne (local currency). Around the edges of the square, under colored umbrellas, were many, many beergardens. Large groups of school children swarmed, shepherded by their teachers. There was a statue which seemed to be the place to have your picture taken (note the construction going on behind it). A large piece of modern art was popular with children, who liked to climb in the open end; approaching from behind, we thought perhaps it was some Communist-era head of Lenin, but no. The square is defined by several large churches, like this one.

From the old market square, we walked down to Wawel Castle, which stands on a hill. The castle was started in the eleventh century and added to over many centuries. I liked the mix of styles and the interesting walls and towers.

From the castle grounds, we looked down on the Vistula River. Below the castle were limestone caves; there's a legend that a dragon lived in the cave (eating virgins, natch). Only a small part of the caves were open, accessed by a narrow circular brick stairway that went down, down, down into the cave, called the Dragon's Den. (Okay, maybe it's just me who likes caves....) Outside the cave, there was a statue of the dragon, which was rigged to spout flames periodically, to the delight of the crowds of children there.

After our touristing, we walked back to the market square and had beers, while the world strolled by.

The next day, it was time to leave Poland. Going through Passport Control at the tiny Katowice Airport, the man at the desk spent some time studying my passport, flipping through all the pages. Finally, he looked up at me and said, "How did you come to Poland?" It turned out that there was no stamp in my passport from my arrival, and there should have been. He frowned a bit, then worked out a solution: since no one had stamped my passport on the way into Poland, he wouldn't stamp it either. Thus, while I enjoyed my time in Poland, I wasn't really there (officially).

After Poland, I have a day to kill in Frankfurt, before heading home. If everything goes well with three plane flights (how likely is that?), I should be home in the wee hours of Saturday morning. Jet lag, here I come.