Pic of the Day: Kilauea

Kilauea is the most active volcano on the planet, being in near constant eruption for decades.

That fact alone explains why they call it The Big Island.

(If you look in the background you can see a small ribbon of road with a vehicle on it. The crater is a bit bigger than you might have expected.)

Pic of the Day: Kilauea

How many places can you go in this world and look down into a smoldering caldera?

Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, for one. This is the prime vent for the Kilauea volcano. Less than a month after this shot was taken an explosion rocked the far wall, initiating a new eruption sequence in the park.

Pic of the Day: Cinder Cones in the Desert

Few people realize that the Mojave Desert, northeast of Los Angeles, features quite a few volcanic cinder cones which were active as recently as 600 years ago.

They appear to be California emissions compliant these days...

High Times

"The mountains are calling and I must go." 

- John Muir 
 

I have for years advocated the idea that the best way to get people to understand one another and understand their place in this universe is to get them out of their normal frame of reference. I travel to learn about other places, other people and other cultures -- getting out and away from the familiar and exploring the options of a place different from my own. It is beyond me why someone would travel all the way to New York City, Times Square, only to eat at The Olive Garden or Bubba Gump. There are fabulous delis and restaurants just across the street from these establishments, and yet the lines continually range to an hour or so wait.

So much of my thinking when it comes to a trip is seeing the new stuff, the unique stuff. And the best place to see that stuff is usually from well above, looking down and gaining a humbling perspective on our world. If you want a feel for New York City's vast scale, look down upon it from the Empire State Building, or 30 Rock. Toronto has its CN Tower. Paris has the Eiffel Tower. Despite an annoying recurrence of acrophobia, I've ascended these and many other towers and buildings to gaze down upon the cities below. But when it comes to views of the world, there's nothing like the summit of a mountain to give you a true feeling of the scale of mother nature, and the small size of man in relativity. I've been fortunate to stand on the edge of the Grand Canyon. I've looked out over the vastness of Mount Etna in Southern Sicily from the edge of the town of Taormina, itself perched atop a spectacular cliff over the Mediterranean Sea. I've seen the lush landscapes of Virginia from atop Skyline Drive through the Shenandoah National Park. And the Rocky Mountains from Deer Ridge. 

It occurred to me recently that 2012 has been a terrific year for my own "perspectives from above". Below are five different places with stunning landscapes of their part of the world. Each has a well-deserved reputation for beauty, as well as a vista that is difficult to duplicate nearly anywhere else in the world -- in other words, unique. The phrase "looking down on" is usually reserved for a dismissiveness or a kind of arrogant egoboost -- but in this case, the phrase means "gaining perspective" -- because looking down at these natural wonders will certainly put you in mind of truly how humble we should be in the face of creation.

JOSHUA TREE NATIONAL PARK - Southern California

This last weekend I was on a short trip up to the Joshua Tree National Park, which is one of the most amazingly special places on Earth. Driving through sections of it are as close as we can get to traveling on another world. The images, the vistas, are so unlike anyplace else you've been that it almost defies description. It's as if you've gone through a temporal hole and found yourself in Bedrock, the stone city of Fred and Wilma Flintstone -- in fact, the rock formations almost look like a setpiece from the 1994 movie (I don't believe they are, but they have that distinct look of a man-made object fabricated from rocks).

Despite a smooth road and ample facilities, a little-visited section of the park is at the summit of one of the peaks overlooking the Morongo Valley. The area is called Keys View, a remarkably modest name for what is, in fact, a spectacular overlook with a view looking down upon a long valley stretching southeast to northwest through the California desert. You cannot see it in this shot, but far to the left down the valley is the Salton Sea, an inland lake easily seen on any map of the state. Directly across from Keys View is the city of Palm Springs and its varied suburbs. So small it's invisible here, tucked back against the base of the mountains on the far side of this shot. The tallest peak, Mt San Jacinto, is ten thousand feet in height. The dark line of hills running through the middle of the valley is a surface manifestation of the dreaded San Andreas Fault -- the hills were thrust up as a result of the two tectonic plates running parallel to each other and forcing the rocks between the two upward to relive the pressure below ground.

MOUNT SAINT HELENS - Southwestern Washington State

Volcanos fascinate me. I've visited Mount St Helens twice now, and the scale of the mountain (and devastation) astound me. When you are standing on at the Johnston Ridge Observation Center, a beautiful vantage point made notorious when, at the onset of the mountain's 1980 eruption, volcanologist David Johnston radioed the chilling words "Vancouver, Vancouver, this is it". Johnston died seconds later as the full blast of the event annihilated the viewpoint. The eruption is one virtually everyone has had seared into their memories. 

The experience of standing in generally the same spot of David Johnston, looking out over a once-green and forested valley which, even three decades later, is a barren desert. The annual rainfall has carved deep channels into the side of the mountain, through the soil thrown down by the volcano's lateral (sideways) blast. A massive landslide, viewable in several videos available to watch at the Visitors' Center right behind you, literally covered the valley below as the entire north flank of the mountain collapsed. The scale is staggering, and a good part of your visit will probably be spent trying to understand the true scope of the scene before you. Our minds just aren't used to thinking of events of this size, so we're tempted to reduce it to a more comprehensible scale.

But, true to its nature, St Helens isn't satisfied to be thought of in our perspective, she requires us to open our minds and deal with her on her own scale.

 THE COLUMBIA RIVER GORGE - Border zone between Washington State and Oregon

Like the other locations in this essay, The Columbia River Gorge has a well-deserved reputation for natural beauty. Multnomah Falls is one of the most picturesque falls in the country, and, oddly enough, the man-made bridge which straddles the cliffs directly in front of the falls adds to the beauty of the scene instead of detracting. That's a very rare occurrence in this world. Normally man's creations mar the scenery, revoking the pristine and raw beauty of nature. Likewise the Vista House, pictured left against the central part of the gorge. It seems to have a well integrated beauty of its own, with a care taken to ensure that despite the indisputable presence of the building. Like the Grand Canyon, care seems to have been taken to ensure that the presence of man doesn't detract from the natural wonder. 

Unfortunately, this cannot be said for the Bonneville Lock and Dam, a giant project which, though necessary for the region's power generation, is a scar across the middle of the gorge. Also unlike the other viewpoints I'm discussing here, the presence of mankind in the gorge is easily and constantly visible, from the dam, to the tankers and freighters traversing the river, to the highway running up the southern shore, the gorge cannot be considered pristine or fully natural, and perhaps its because of the extreme beauty with which it started, the scars inflicted upon it by mankind might diminish but cannot destroy its impact on the eye.

THE PACIFIC COAST HIGHWAY - Central California coast

The central California coast is one of the most spectacular drives in the world, rivaling scenery from around the world for raw beauty and ruggedness. Despite its residence in the most populated state in the Union, the Pacific Coast Highway's journey from Carmel to Cambria is one of stunning overlooks, cute towns, tall forests and seaside flatlands all in the range of a hundred miles. There are few places in this world with this kind of a combination landscape, but without a doubt the premiere views come from the seaside cliffs as you drive the winding road along a narrowly cut notch is the side of the mountain. The Pacific Ocean thunders against the base of the cliff, and the road meanders from hundreds of feet up in some sections, to barely skating above the rocks in others. Along the way there are multiple stopping points to get out, stretch your legs, and marvel at the majestic sights all around.

MOUNT HALEAKALA - Maui, Hawaii

Sunrise atop Mt Haleakala is one of those things that once done stays with you for the rest of your days. The gradual glow appearing in the east. The initial tic of gold, brilliant and bright, along the cloud's edge on the horizon. The absolute grandeur of light as it touches the volcano's valley, which until moments after sunrise has been nothing more than an inky darkness on the far side of the cold metal bar railing. As the sun rises you feel its warmth on your skin, a welcome relief from the cill night air. You're in Hawaii, but you're also at 9,500 feet where the air is cold and thin. Behind you gather perhaps a hundred other pilgrims to this, one of the world's most beautiful moments. Off to one side a singer begins the customary native Hawaiian chant to welcome the new day, adding to the ambiance and authenticity. For an instant you are transported back to Hawaii as it was hundreds of years in the past. Haleakala means "House of the Sun" , and it is easy to see why they felt this way. There is a newness, a pristine beauty and moment when the world itself seems to stop, hold its breath and finally give way to the new day.

The View from Above

ROAD TRIP: Mojave Desert

As I mentioned in my last blog post, there's a time known as “o’dark thirty” -- a time before most sane people crawl out of bed and start their day, usually so-named because it’s not only dark, but will remain that way for hours. Last Saturday, “o’dark thirty” was indeed that: 3:30 am.

I hauled myself out of bed at 3, showered and got dressed in record time. I grabbed my customary thermos of coffee and the camera bag – which I had brilliantly thought to pack up the night before – and left the house. My first stop would be the gas station, followed forty minutes later with a stop to pick up my friend Jim who had, perhaps in a moment of mental deficiency, agreed to accompany me on a photo shoot into the Mojave Desert. The early hour was required because, as any decent photographer will tell you, the best lighting for shooting something like a desert will be either in the just-past sunrise morning or just before sunset. I’ll get into the reason later, but rest assured that were it not for the morning lighting, I would never have succumbed to the alarm’s insistent buzz.

Our not very offroad vehicle

Leaving the house I find my neighborhood gas station and pull in. The roads are empty, and the station itself has an eerily silent air to it as I get out and pump the gas. Normally abuzz with activity, it almost possesses a post-apocalyptic silence. The only sounds are those I’m making as I remove the gas cap, insert the nozzle and the pump comes to life. It’s a strange moment. Not even the attendant is visible inside the min-market, adding to my sense of solitude. Resisting the urge to get back in the car and head home I fill up the tank, replace the cap and, as I get into the car, spy the attendant now stocking the beer refrigerator towards the back of the market. At least I’m not quite as alone as my imagination was insisting.

Road Trip buddy Jim

There's a reality in the Los Angeles metro area that not matter what time you get on a freeway there will be traffic. At 3:30 on a Saturday morning this is put to a lie. While I was never quite really the only car on the road, we moved at what I could be describe as "full speed" the entire way to Diamond Bar to pick up my friend Jim. And sure enough, despite having budgeted forty minutes for the drive (which normally requires a solid hour if not more), a half hour later I pull into the driveway outside Jim’s house. calling him discreetly on his cellphone so as not to wake the rest of his family. Jim's up and ready, and soon we’re on the 210 freeway headed east with our eventual destination being a drive down Kelbaker Road and a section of Route 66. It's among the most remote yet historic parts of the California desert. Full of photographic targets, including ghost towns, long straight patches of empty highway, train rails (and frequent trains), and a surprising number of volcanic lava flows and cinder cones. Few people realize that the Mojave was an active lava field as recently as 800 years ago. The desert has preserved the terrain as if the flows were mere decades ago instead of centuries. It makes for a dramatic setting, particularly if the lighting is right…the colors in the lava and surrounding terrain are stunning.

We get to Ludlow in a couple of hours, arriving just before sunrise, which is precisely the timing I had been planning. We opt for breakfast at the Ludlow Cafe, an authentic old-style cafe echoing nicely an era some fifty years ago when the entire town was moved a quarter mile or so to the west when Interstate 40 was completed. For some very obscure reason the interstate highway commission couldn't be bothered to place the offramp near enough the town, so the town itself moved. It's a striking visual of a desert community struggling to hold on within just a few hundred feet of the old town's corpse. One has to wonder at the seemingly inept and inconsiderate planning that went into such a design. The stories of the multitude of towns destroyed when Route 66 was replaced by the interstate are manifold, but surely Ludlow should have been spared the planning commission's absurdity.

Old Ludlow, slowly crumbling away

But -- and this is important for our day -- the ruins of the old town are perfect fodder for my Nikons. After a quick breakfast and pleasant exchange with the restaurant's only waitress (at this time in the morning), we head east along Route 66, which parallels I-40 for six miles more or less, passing through the previously mentioned ruins of old Ludlow. We pause for a few minutes in this area for me to grab some shots by the early morning light. It's a strange and somewhat eerie sensation with the quite active roar of 40 in the air and the sound of a BNSF freight train rumbling by. Your ears and eyes don't quite agree on where you are, conveying to your brain the conflicting visuals of a dead town with the sounds of a busy town. It just doesn't seem to match up, and the mind rebels. I finish up with a few shots of the ruins and of the train -- just to make peace with that part of my brain -- and we're off again.

Route 66 is in good condition in this part of the desert, and we make good time. I take the twin gifts of an empty straight road to have a little fun with the car, getting our speed up a little faster than the CHP would prefer, but there are few cruisers on this part of the California Highway system and we can open the car up a bit more safely than we could on 40. In fact, once we leave Ludlow other cars are scarce, and we encounter only two for the next hour. There are more trains than automobiles in these parts.

A tree grows in the desert

Our first stop comes ten miles or so down the road, where the town of Bagdad once stood, or at least in the vicinity. The only marker is a dirt road which branches out into the desert toward a field of four large rock formations which seem to be the only markers between the road and the distant mountains to the south. Jim and I both estimate that the boulders are maybe two or three lies out, and the mountains at least fifteen. The desert messes with your sense of distance, and objects that seem to be just a few miles away may indeed be multiples of that. In this case we decide not to drive out to the boulders, first because it's a deceptive distance, and second because, to be honest, a sports car is probably not the best offroad vehicle. I'm sure my wife and our mechanic would agree, so after Jim takes a few minutes to walk over to the railroad tracks to greet in incoming train -- our second of the morning -- we continue on down the road, stopping briefly at a solitary tree which grows out here -- according to the internet it stands where a gas station once sat, and was spared the bulldozer which claimed the man-made elements of the stop. I don't know if it's true or not, but the tree still seems to be thriving in an area mostly marked by tumbleweeds.

Jim explores the lava field

Our third stop is next to a lava field. Jim takes advantage and rapidly climbs his way to the top for the view. I wander around the base of the black rocks, marveling at the otherworldly feel. If the sky were a different color you could easily convince yourself the rocks were of an extraterrestrial origin or perhaps a setpiece for an episode of the Twilight Zone in which someone is marooned upon a lonely planet. I wonder if Hollywood had ever visited this place, conveniently next to the road, and decide not. The ground in a little valley behind the rocks appears to be pristine. We decide to leave it that way and move on. As most landscape photographers will tell you, take only pictures and leave nature alone.

The town of Amboy in the distance

As I mention above, the area was volcanically active as recently as 800 years in the past. Amboy Crater was one of the most recent, and its cinder cone rises dramatically a couple hundred feet over the desert sand. It's a few miles west of the struggling town of Amboy, where the world-famous Roy's sign still stands in defiance of changing times. I am surprised to find a full-blown rest stop and parking lot off to the side of the highway where you can park and picnic, hike through the desert to the crater, or use the restrooms. My last pass through these facilities may have been there, but the road to access them was gravel, so I left well enough alone. In this case, we stop for a short break before heading towards Kelbaker Road. We decide not to stop in Amboy because already we're running a bit behind schedule and Jim needs to be back in LA by 1. We zoom on by -- though I've included a shot from a previous expedition so you can see what Amboy looks like. 

Roy's Cafe in Amboy

We find Kelbaker Road and it's smooth sailing. We encounter quite a few more cars and motorcycles on this stretch of road, most of which consider my Maximum Speeds to be inadequate. Go figure. I gun the engine, making it clear I could move faster if I wanted to, but this only eggs on a younger guy in a hopped up Corolla (wtf?), so I slow down and wait for him to pass. He doesn't, preferring instead to ride my bumper, so I actively pull off to the side and let him rocket on by. I don't mind driving fast, but I'm not going to race anyone and risk all of our lives on his dumb move.

The otherworldly granite wall just north of I-40 on Kelbaker Road

Now that we're off to the side of the road though, Jim and I decide to talk a short walk to take pictures of a spectacular wall of granite just northwest. You can see these rocks from I-40, and a short trip on Kelbaker Road brings you much closer as it winds to the east, skirting them in a pass between the granite and another mountainous structure of a completely different type and coloration. These are the sort of things which make the desert so fascinating to me. You have to wonder what would create such vastly different topologies within a short distance of each other. As you drive Kelbaker, the visuals are indeed stunning, ranging from granite, to sand dunes, to volcanic within the space of thirty miles.

Kelso's modern Post Office

Again relatively alone on the road we roll down the windows and let the outside air blast the cabin. It's a refreshing feeling, though I have to crank up the heater a bit to keep us from catching too much of a chill. Oddly, the temperature outside is just over seventy, but it feels much colder as it swirls through the car.

Time is getting short, but we decide to make a couple more stops. Deep in the middle of the Mojave, almost exactly halfway between interstate 15 and interstate 40, sits Kelso Depot. It's an oasis of sorts, originally constructed as a rail yard during the second world war. An old post office, restrooms and the surprisingly large train depot (which contains, among other things, a restaurant) are worth a few minutes so we oblige. The visitor's center is in very good condition, and offers a history of the depot and the railway's impact on Southern California.

Road Trip - Mojave Desert

Again we take off, heading North towards the town of Baker, familiar to millions as the main stopover between the city of Barstow and the Nevada state line. Baker is famous as the gateway to the Death Valley, as well as proud owner of the world's largest thermometer (thankfully not a medical one). As we make our way there we stop for two brief photo ops along the road. The first is to take pictures of more cinder cones to the east, an area I personally refer to as 'the four sisters" since there are four cinder cones lined up together. It's a spectacular view, and the colors of the rock have a red-black hue that makes them ideal for the sorts of pictures I want to take. As we stand alongside the road we note three four-wheel-drive vehicles come out of a nearby dirt road and head towards Baker. They're the only cars we see or have seen for nearly 45 minutes, pretty much since leaving Kelso. There's a calm serenity however, and we lean back against the car and just take it all in.

Eons, not hours

There's a beauty in the desert, a feeling of ancient grandeur. We tend to become so wrapped up on our daily lives that the sale of time escapes us in the focus on the next few hours or days. Out here, though, time is measured in eons. It forces you, through both scale and wonder, to look at things not from a momentary perspective, but from one of a vaster framework in which our lives themselves are short and insignificant…that each moment must be appreciated and enjoyed because, really, the world works independently of our artificial constraints. It forces you to back away from our own sensibilities and accept and become part of something much larger than yourself, where you can bellow fruitlessly against the world or you can step back and nakedly accept that you need to be part of the greater whole, not the other way around. It's a difficult lesson to swallow. 

Jim and I stand in awe for a few minutes longer before climbing back in the car and heading home. And, encountering traffic and realizing we're going to be late, I can feel the moment pass and I once again am reduced to my much smaller human world of timeframes, traffic and limited horizons.

It's a difficult lesson to swallow, indeed.