Moominmama's Adventures

Wherein Moominmama communes with the world's tallest trees... Moominmama is camped in a shady grove called the Mill Creek Campground in the Del Norte Coast Redwoods State Park. When I first arrived and strolled around the campgrounds, I was on the lookout for old growth redwoods, the impossibly tall trees for which this area is known. All I found were stumps, giant garage-sized stumps with younger redwoods growing right up next to them. They looked like little families gathered around their felled ancestor. Turns out that's not far from the truth. This part of the redwoods was once heavily logged, and Mill Creek is called that because it once held a mill. Because the redwood tree is incredibly dense at the base, loggers set up platforms attached further up the tree, 10-to-12 feet up, where they could more easily drill, saw and chop.  The cut-off stump responds to the insult by sending out basal sprouts, which grow into genetic copies of the original but still rely on the roots ...

Wherein Moominmama observes granite, trees and trails in Yosemite and compares them to the Granite State... The granite in Yosemite National Park appears to have been scoured clean. Trees may cluster in the valleys and in isolated spots on the top, but there are vast expanses of grey rock overlooking the valleys. Rough to the touch, it seems smooth from a distance, with no space to capture dirt for a wind-blown seed. These features share common factors with the granite in New Hampshire - a combination of underground forces that first formed the granite from magma then shoved it up toward the light of day. Wind and water tore off the other layers of dirt and stone until the granite remained. Then glaciers, like giant scouring pads, ground the sides even steeper and left a detritus of broken rock below. In New Hampshire's White Mountains, it appears the rock broke off in large chunks and left jagged cliffs and plenty of room for soil to collect, allowing plants and trees to grow. The...

In which Moominmama learns how much climate (and culture) can differ on one side of a mountain versus the other... Driving into Carson City on the western edge of Nevada, the snow capped peaks of the Sierra Nevada mountains are a stunning sight after miles of desert. Moominmama had only just settled in when she realized it was a short drive up and over the western hills to get to Lake Tahoe, the second deepest lake (after Crater Lake in Oregon) in the U.S. After hiking along part of the Rubicon trail on the southern rim of the lake, the brilliant colors compelled me to break out my folding kayak. I wanted to be closer to the glittering turquoise near the beaches and the saturated aquamarine further out. The photo at the top was taken from my kayak pointed at the beach. And this photo was taken from the Rubicon trail that runs high along the rocky cliffs. It still doesn't capture the colors! I'd gone from sagebrush to piney woods. I'd gone from the wild west to the wild weal...