Digging out at Bear Valley

Camp Connell, CA -- The big March storms have passed, and daffodils are actually appearing at the lower elevations.
The temperatures are up into the 50s and 60s, and the snow is melting fast -- except at the highest elevations.
Bear Valley is at 7,030 feet, and they have had a winter to remember. Longtime residents compare it to the big storm years of the early 1980s.
Our son Zack works at the ski resort, another thousand feet up the mountain, and he spent six days straight shoveling snow so the lifts could carry the skiers.
Today we went with friends Gary and Jeri to check out their cabin at the village at Bear Valley.
The pictures tell the story, even when I bounced the camera around a bit.

Won't You Be My Neighbor?

Camp Connell, Ca -- Mar. 25, 2011 -- As of yesterday a neighbor had measured approximately 27 feet of snowfall this winter. And it is still snowing.

Our average, we think, is around 15 feet, so this has been an unusual year.

Long-time locals recall a similar winter in the 1970s, or maybe early 1980s.

Several neighbors have found they have urgent business down the hill, usually in the Bay Area with family or friends. After a certain point snow just becomes, well, snow.

The snow plow operators are worn out, and deserve a break.

I admit I am ready for a real Spring, not one on the calendar only.

But it is still pretty.

The video is very amateurish, shot with my little Flip Video camera. The editing -- such as it is -- is all my fault.

I do hope you notice the music. It was as appropriate as I could find.

Come see us.

Bring a shovel.

Spring Break in the desert

Anza Borrego State Park, California -- Winter means lots of snow in our mountain home, and sand is what we spread on icy roads.,
The desert is not something I really know, despite a few visits over the years.
So when friends Gary and Jeri invited us to explore the desert country that bumps up against the Mexican border we jumped at the chance.It was an easy choice: they provided the giant RV, food, and friendship. We contributed our charming personalities and a few bucks for gas.
Our base in the desert was the giant Anza Borrego State Park, more than 600,000 acres of sand, mountains, hills, dry washes, oases, and lots of things that fly, crawl or run. Plus a lot of snowbirds in their RVs escaping winter, just as we were doing.
Campgrounds in the desert are not like the tree covered plots we know from the mountains or back east. Until you look closely the desert has a lot of sameness to it, and RV camping areas look a lot like RV sales lots. But the neighborhood is quieter, dominated at night by the yowls of coyote off in the brush,and the hoots of owls.
Definitely a lizard of some kind, maybe a Blue-tailed Skink?

At daybreak birds sing including the cooing of dove and western Quail calling their distinct “Chi-CA-go, Chi-CA-go,” sounds. (Seems like a western bird should be saying "Camp CON nel, Camp CON nel" or something more localized.)
Gary and Jeri have been coming to this spot for almost 40 years, and were our tour guides and enthusiastic encouragers when the trails got hot and dusty.
Among the highlights were spotting a group of Big Horn Sheep on the canyon wall and rim, and spotting a rare Red Diamondback Rattlesnake about four feet long who moved slow in the proper direction -- away from us.
The desert is full of life, waiting for you to visit.
The photos tell the story.

A landslide in the sandstone canyon blocked our four-wheel excursion after about 15 miles into the back country. But the tire tracks indicated someone got through!
Big Horn Sheep survive in this remote place. They keep their distance from hikers, and a watchful eye from the rim of the canyon wall.
Pat, Jeri and Gary take a close look at the complex geology. This used to be the bottom of the Salton sea when it was connected to what is now the Sea of Cortez.

The oases near the top of Palm Canyon was almost wiped out by a flash flood a few years ago, but is making a comeback.
Jeri takes a break in the shade, and a chance to dry her boots which were soaked crossing a creek.

Pat enjoying the warm weather and sunshine.
The start of the trail.
Toward the end of a perfect day, the perfect sunset.

Snowmobile excursion to Spicer, Union and Utica

Camp Connell, CA. -- Twenty years ago my friends Ralph Coley and Alan Christie would cross country ski from Highway 4, high in the mountains above where I live, into a trio of reservoirs miles off the highway.
Their annual adventure included hours of slogging along, often in bad weather, sub-freezing temperatures and camping in the cold wet snow. I was tempted, but declined, preferring the comfort of a lodge's roaring fire.

Today, courtesy of my neighbor Bill Minkel's snowmobiles, I retraced their trip in about 30 minutes in reasonable comfort. Our biggest hazard was sunburn.

Sorry Alan and Ralph, but it was a lot easier this way.
(Notice the stop sign which normally stands eight feet above the ground.)

Bill and I met at his house, had a cup of good coffee, hooked up the trailer for the trip up the mountain. The hardest work of the day, with one minor exception, was getting the trailer free from its bed of snow.


Bill managed to flip his machine on its side, but the snow was soft and it was not a big deal.

The forest roads into the reservoirs are not plowed, but they are groomed like a ski slope to make access easier for snowmobiles. We wandered around in the frozen wilderness all day and saw six other people, plus forest service folk digging out directional signs.


No cross country skiers were anywhere to be seen.


Lunch included a nice white wine from Indian Rock winery in Murphys, and a view to die for.

Ski Day

Bear Valley, CA -- One of the great advantages of living in the mountains is proximity to a ski resort.
Bear Valley Ski Resort is 20 miles up the road from our house, and the pole that measures snow depth is ten feet tall -- and it disappeared more than a week ago under a blanket of new snow.

So this week when neighbor Bill Minkel called to see if I was interested, the answer was yes.

For a season pass holder I have not gotten in as many days skiing as I expected, only about ten days so far, but you get spoiled when you live this close. If the snow is not perfect, and the crowds minimal, I tend to stay away.

But this was about as perfect a day as you'll ever see.

Nothing fancy on this video clip because I am a determined intermediate skier, preferring groomed runs to powder and moderate slopes to terrifying steeps. And my video skills, even with Bill's help, are minimal. I was going to attach music, an Irish tune "Catch Me If You Can," but could not figure out how to do it.

The first portion is from the top of the mountain, around 8,000 feet, down to the lodge on a blue diamond run called Mokulume. Then a brief break at the lodge (we actually ate inside at the bar) and back to the top of Porridge Bowl, one of the few black diamond runs I am comfortable with.

All in all, a great day.

Lost and found stories

Elizabeth Arrington Strickland -- the grandmother I never knew

Camp Connell, CA - I've been thinking about family a lot lately.

Not the ones close by, who are always on my mind, nor even the extended family spread across the country.

But about ancestors. You know, those people we Americans generally forget after two generations.

I never met my grandparents. All four were dead before I was born. I know one died of "childbirth fever" in her late 20s, two of heart attacks in their 60s, and one of old age -- in her 80s.

What were they like? How did they live? Did they have some characteristics that were passed down in the gene pool? And does it matter?

A lot of wonderful stories are lost that should be saved. And I believe stories from our history help shape our present, and our future.

Besides, there are so many great-great-great stories out there.

For example:

Robert Lamont was a teenager when he became one of the earliest Scots-Irish immigrants to North America. His brother beat him to it, according to the story passed down, because the older brother was forced onto a British ship by a press gang when he made a mistake and hung out on the Antrim docks on the north coast of Ireland. Next thing you know, the brother jumped ship in New York in 1745, liked it better than starving in Ireland, and sent for his mother and brothers. Robert became a weaver and part of a small group of Scots that moved into the heart of Dutch-controlled Upstate New York. They did not always get along with their rich neighbors, and once broke an uncle out of jail in a dispute over taxes.


Hardy Strickland, a namesake without the "Devil"
Devil Hardy Strickland was born into a farming family in North Carolina in 1776. That was his real name, though the story behind it is unclear. As an adult he made his way to north Georgia before the Cherokee were run off. Married his first cousin Priscilla, they had 12 children and he lived to the ripe old age of 96. Family rumor has it that he was too mean to die. He named a son Devil.

Hiram Barry was board in Tidewater Virginia in 1802, but moved on to Knoxville, Tennessee, where lived out his life as a well know printer. He probably knew President Andrew Jackson, since it was a small town, and Hiram lived into his 80s when his obituary praised his as "a venerable citizen." Think of the stories he would have to tell.

Thomas Pruitt was 20 years old when he landed on the Virgina shore from England in 1636. Ten years later he married and they had only six children. He died before the Revolution, still in Virginia, so we'll probably never know whose side he was on in the war between the upstart colonies and Mother England.
++++++++++

Thanks to my mother, who talked about her family, and my grandmother who wrote down the results of her research in the 1930s, I know some things about my grandparents that I never met.

Grandfather Roswell DeEstra LaMont (his father Frenchified the family names) left his New York birthplace, moved west to Michigan and then south to Alabama. He was a journeyman printer, a stout union man who could work almost anywhere, who wandered to pursue his craft and his taste for adventure. He ended up working with other printers, one named Barry and one named Pruitt, in a small town in Alabama after the Civil War. He met and married my grandmother, Mollie, daughter of a printer and a union member as well, who was a tad older. They had one child, and my grandfather stuck around till my father was grown and then hit the road again, staying in touch through letters. He worked in Florida and then Cuba for a few years, where the fishing was good and the sun warm. He had a heart attack in Cuba and came back to Miami to die. He was buried by the International Typographical Union and their symbol is on his headstone.

Mollie Barry's home at 508 Clayton Street, Montgomery
Grandmother Mary Earnest Barry LaMont, known as Mollie, was a child when the Civil War began, and witnessed missing families, orphaned cousins, troops camped in the front yard, and Yankees stealing the chickens when they swept through. Her younger brother John, 5 years old when the war ended, was terrified when the Yankees came by the gate and called him "Johnny Reb." He wondered how they knew his name. Her father re-appeared safely at the end of the war and they settled down in Montgomery.


Grandfather Fred Strickland was raised on a North Georgia farm, but in a family that believed in education and wanted to help him go to school. As a teenager, he spent some of his his spare time panning for gold in neighboring streams he knew as a boy. By the time he was ready to apply at Georgia Tech, he had a poke of gold that along with a football scholarship was enough to pay his way in 1899. he was an engineer, inventor, and eventually ran mills in the south. He put all of his children through college, or nursing schools. The Depression took away his job, and when his beloved oldest son died in an airplane crash in the 1930s, he had a heart attack and died soon after. He is buried near his son, not far from today's Atlanta International Airport.
Grandmother Elizabeth Arrington Strickland, pictured at the top, was a native of Alabama who moved slightly north. She met her husband when he was running a mill in Anderson, South Carolina, they were married and quickly had five children. She died of a fever after the birth of her youngest child, and is buried in Anderson. No is left alive who really knows anything about her.


And then there was Bina Mickle.
All I know about Bina Mickle is that the photograph was taken in 1931, apparently in or near Haneyville, Alabama, where my grandmother Barry was born.
And, there is letter surviving from the 1930s in which my grandmother wrote a family member to make sure that Bina was "properly taken care of" in her old age. A return letter assured my grandmother that she was, and there is no further correspondence.
Census records do not indicate the family owned slaves in 1860. Craftsmen and people who lived and worked in towns did not often have slaves, and the woman in the photo does not look 90 years old in any case.

But I will always wonder about her, and why my grandmother cared for her well being.
There has to be a story there.

Football culture -- The anthropology of the South

Camp Connell, CA -- A large number of my relatives -- Auburn fans all -- are enjoying post-BCS syndrome this morning.
For some that means sitting around telling each other "we always knew Auburn was a national champion," despite the fact it has been almost 50 years since Alabama Polytechnic Institute (then called "Auburn" and now named "Auburn University") actually won a championship.
But this is no time to quibble with a great success, and what I thought was a great football game even though I personally matriculated (is that a real word?) at the traditional football power in the south -- the University of Alabama aka The Crimson Tide.
(I went to graduate school at the University of Michigan, but only claim that school when they make it to the top ten rankings or discover a cure for disease...)



Auburn's last-second victory over Oregon will be celebrated for weeks, or years, by most of my relatives.

I take some pleasure in it, mostly because 70% of the New York Times readers picked Oregon to win, as did the columnists for the Los Angeles Times.
It is my humble opinion that people from outside the Southern United States have never really understood the SEC and regional pride that fuels these teams and their supporters.
Take THAT you effete western media snobs and you citified New York Yankees. (There, I feel better already. I have re-affirmed my football southern-ness.)

My father always used to cheer for Auburn or any other Southern school doing battle with universities from "up North." We had "schools" and they had "universities."

He used to say, rather politely, that he "attended" Auburn. He never really explained why he left school, but it later occurred to me that when he mentioned being arrested at a college football game for drinking from a flask under the stands, THAT probably was his memory of college.
It was the Prohibition Era, and he got off lightly.
And he always liked Auburn.

My brother-in-law Roy went to Auburn on the GI bill in the 1950s, and was such a fan he would sneak into games wearing a telephone lineman's belt to walk through the "authorized personnel only" gate when he could not afford tickets. He swore that he hung off a telephone pole to cheer Auburn on.
His support never flagged, even joining and leading his alumni association, something I never even considered. He has waited a long time for this recent victory.

His children adopted his fan-hood. Ben, the eldest, still lives in Alabama, and is a staunch Auburn fan, sending out Facebook messages every few minutes during the game and making sure I know of a web site where I can buy Auburn victory paraphernalia.

My niece Beth is an Auburn-trained engineer living in Colorado. I am sure the mountains were echoing late last night with shouts of joy.

Nephew Philip, who lives and works near my old stomping grounds on Mobile Bay, was unusually quiet until after the game, when he sent a short message: "WDE!" Translation: "War-damn-Eagle."
He is a sensitive soul, and was overcome by emotion.

And my late sister Mary would have been there cheering too, even though she went to the University of Miami. She was a convert, and you know how dedicated they are. She was probably cheering from on high.

May the joy in my Auburn family extend for weeks and months to come.

I, on the other hand, have never been an Auburn fan, or even for that matter a big football fan.

I attended the University of Alabama during the years when Joe Namath was quarterback, undefeated seasons were the norm, and we always went to educational places like New Orleans to play in bowl games. Alabama usually lost those bowl games, but we thought it only fair that the team had a chance to relax on Bourbon Street before the big game. And I furthered my education by closely studying the local culture as expressed in fruity drinks, great gumbo, and a variety of exotic dancers.Crowds seek educational opportunities on Bourbon Street


At Alabama's home games we drank a lot and left at halftime to go to parties because the game was usually wrapped up by then.
I once was hired to tend bar for the Law School students sitting together in the stands. Instead of "Roll Tide" I heard a chorus of "More bourbon!"

I even wrote a editorial once in the college paper saying Coach Bear Bryant was not a god and could not walk on water. No one took it seriously.

Nowadays there is too much money involved in college football for such frivolity and wasteful behavior.

Most of the talk is about how many millions the universities will get from the games, and whether the key players will drop out of college to join a professional team where they will earn even more than the university.

But the good old days still exist in my family.

And my relatives know that I cheer for them, and for one brief moment was actually happy that Auburn won a football game.

(I planned to insert a photograph of Auburn's "War Eagle, " or maybe even the "Tiger" mascot, but the University website charges a fee for that.)