so here we are again

As regular listeners might have guessed by the break in blog service, James did indeed make it out and we had a fine old week catching up and exploring new parts of San Francisco and California.

I then had one day in SF to try and do all the things I meant to do before leaving (visit Chinatown, another Halprin plaza, Coit Tower, sort out fieldtrip and M.Ed stuff, buy train tickets, buy sandels, go out to Palo Alto with Rachel and visit Emine) and today I’m heading on the train out to Scaramento for the EDRA (Environmental Design and Research Association) conference.

I offer below, a few place related highlights of the last week or so (I think I’ll have to come back and put the images in later, I’m a bit tight for time at the moment).

PS. Sacramento. A bit boring compared to other places I’ve been here. And the hotel charges stupid money for internet access. boo!

living it up in Soda Springs

We were offered use of a holiday lodge by the lecturer I met in Davis so we stayed at Soda Springs in the Sierra Nevada mountains for a few days. Lovely house: Scandinavian style, woodburning stove, dead squirrel in the double garage. It’s a 1990s ‘estate’ of very upmarket holiday homes with spacious plots and curved roads in coniferous woodland.

 

Soda Springs is a cross-country skiing resort so it was like a ghost town midweek mid-May, and we found the whole area had shut up shop somewhat (Tess, remember Licon Ray!). Still snow on the hills (we were at about 6,000ft), but not enough to ski and too much to walk on the mountain trails.

We enjoyed some fantastic diner food (61 omelette options), tried walking in snow, watched the UEFA cup final in a bar in Truckee and stocked our woodburning stove.

arrested decline

From Lake Tahoe we headed south on amazing scenic expansive highways and turned left to the genuine ghost town of Bodie, set 8000ft high in the hills towards Nevada. Bodie was one of the capitals of the gold rush, in its heyday the second largest town in California. Changes in industry and a couple of bad fires in the first part of the twentieth century meant it was eventually deserted in the 1940s, with only about 5% of its buildings still standing.

Since then it’s been protected as a state historic park, and managed in a state of ‘arrested decline’. There’s almost no visitor facilities, no fibreglass figures, no interpretation panels, no reconstructions. Instead you make your way round the 200 or so wooden buildings, from shacks to salons, peering through dusty windows into even dustier rooms. Everything has been left ‘as left’ more than sixty years ago, sometimes relatively in order, more often chairs upturned, broken chandelier glass on the pool table, or cleared out.

 

The non-domestic buildings – shops, diners, the hotel – generally had more contents intact, though some parts of town had been burnt down and disappeared altogether including the Chinatown and the prostitutes’ street.

 

The ‘arrested decline’ policy is an interesting one, and one most historic tourist attractions are not bold enough to follow. It calls for restraint. Information is simply provided in a standard leaflet, inevitably there are questions unanswered. Some intervention must be gently, carefully carried out to keep verandas safe and buildings secure.

But it allows the place to speak for itself, and to speak differently to different visitors. While information provides a framework of understanding; watching, touching, moving and quietness gives space for the imagination. Curiosity and unanswered questions lead you round the settlement, engaging thoughts and emotions. It’s a viscal, sensory experience; made intriguing by the mystery of the left traces of human activity. And mournful. Dusty beds, empty rooms, the bleak landscape. Of course this is in part a sentimental response to loss, to evidence of loss, that places and people that are busy and full of life do change, do die, do empty. But that’s history, that’s part of why history is important. Bodie, and being in Bodie, gives space and time to engage emotionally with this change. If you are ever in this part of the world, go and visit.

it’s tufa-tastic!

Mono Lake is an environmental disaster and a spookily beautiful place. A lot has been written about the history of the lake and the devastation of water rights granted to Los Angeles, about the campaign and restoration project. It’s interesting. What’s also interesting is just how bio-diverse and important to wildlife this lake is despite being entirely toxic to fish. And if, like me, you like weird natural landscapes then the shoreline of tufa towers (calcium plus carbonate and alkali) with the sharp blue of the lake and snow capped mountains on the skyline is a good place to get your fix.

We tried to find the black fissures but they eluded us.

water, dark, paddles and a big bridge

A few hours after James arrived we applied emergency jet lag defence treatment and whisked him to Pier 40 and a twilight canoeing expedition. We paddled on the east side of the SF shoreline, down Mission Creak, behind the ballpark, under a very low metal tram bridge with a tram going over it, and then back on ourselves and under one of the piers of the enormous Bay Bridge that links SF to Oakland. And from sunset to twilight to complete dark. It’s a wonderful view of downtown; the mosaic lights of the skyscrapers, the floodlight effect of the glow of the Bay bridge way above us, and the searchlight sweeps of the container ships. Also a feeling of being small in a large landscape, a pinpick of light and movement against vertiginous masses of engineering, architecture and harbour activity. And of being a bit giddy, a bit adventurous, a bit tired and a lot glad to see James.

top wildlife sighting so far.

James and I drove back from Mono Lake to SF over the Tioga pass, including a quick detour into Yosemite valley and we saw a bear! OK, we saw a crowd of people lined up with cameras on the side of a winding road and then we saw the bear, so it didn’t really count as an entirely in the nature eyeball to eyeball encounter. But it was still a bear!

 

Eating grass.