This Makes No Sense At All

As we water impoverished Californians followed the PCT into Oregon, and a week or so ago into Washington, we were stunned by the shades of green. First of all, plants covered everything, nothing at all like the sands of the Mojave or the granite of the high Sierra. One of the first things we saw was the bat winged plant. That is my name. It always has three leaves, each one lobed like the wings of a bat. Sometimes the middle leaf would be smaller, like a head, giving an even more bat winged appearance. Scarce initially, as we got into northern Oregon we saw it whenever we saw Thimbleberries (which was often). Eventually it was identified as the Vanilla Leaf plant. I like my name better. Insert to slow down blog thieves: ©2009 backpack45.com - ok to quote if credit given. And the Big Plants. We would walk by some small wet area, and there would be these giant leaved plants. There must have been a half dozen different species with leaves over a foot in diameter. Some of them were p...

I've thought this was true for some time, but decided to do some checking with the wayback machine, etc. After some poking around, decided to expand this to a short history of the online/internet English language sources of Camino de Santiago information. 2000, when I was searching for information, I found two sources. The GoCamino listserv was the best, but the Online Telegraph provided good basic information. Around that time the St. James Yahoo Group existed, but I didn't find it. It was an outshoot of Caminho de Santiago de Compostela website - the Brazilian based site said to founded around 1996, but its first appearance on the wayback machine is Sept 14, 2000. The US based GoCamino listserv was setup by Maryjane Dunn and Linda Davidson, and had a supporting website - Friends of the Road to Santiago . Both the listserv and website ceased to be active in Aug of 2004 as the founders moved on to other interests. GoCamino was reborn as an oakapple.net listserv a few mont...

Toads, slugs, volcanos. People say that Oregon is just a fast long green break on the way to Canada, but that is not the way we found it. Some truly spectacular mountain wilderness areas - The Sisters, Mt. Washington, Mt. Jefferson, Mt. Hood, to mention the main ones. It might have been 100 degrees down in Bend, but we had about a week of hiking most of the day in below 40 weather. Still, the ghostly appearance of 100 foot trees shrouded in the fog is worth seeing. Even Mirror Lake was beautiful, with mist rising off of it, and not a mountain reflection to be seen, not even the far shore. This year we started at highway 58 in Oregon, just past Lake Odell, and finished in Panther Creek Campground, about 3 days into Washington. In Southern California, lizards are always zipping away from your feet at the last minute. In Oregon it was small toads. Their color varied according to the terrain, but all had a faint yellow stripe down the back. Days later we went through a stretch where...

We've been taking digital for five years now, and I finally got back to scanning in a 2004 PCT trip that was originally slides. As I wiled away a few hours doing this, I realized a couple of things. First, how few slides we took on a backpack trip, compared to what we do now. We had to ration ourselves to something like six slides a day. It just cost too much to to more than that, so we missed taking a lot of things I wished we had. The other thing is that I realized that I like the digital images better. The slides are sort of like the streetwalkers we see in the marginal areas of the city. An in your face attraction to them, but over done. The colors are over bright, the contrasts too great. It makes a good show, but the natural look is more to my taste. As I look at this post in 2020, I realize it is sort of a flippant male attitude, joking about women and their appearance. Nowadays I would be more thoughtful, but that was my thought back then, so I will let it stand.  Insert ...

There have been some tragic hiking deaths this last week. Nine seniors died of hypothermia on a guided mountain climbing trip in Japan. The same week two hikers in separate incidents died of hypothermia while hiking in extreme heat near Palm Springs. There were the usual unthinking comments about candidates for the Darwin Awards. I'm not as harsh on those commenters as some might be. Sometimes in serious situations, a joke helps one deal with it. Remember that line where Butch and Sundance are about to leap off this 100 foot high cliff into a river? "You can't swim? Hell, the fall will probably kill you!". What hiker hasn't thought, "there, but for the grace of God, go I". If they haven't, they are a candidate for the Darwin Awards.If you're going to live, you've got to take some chances. Just try to minimize the risk, and learn from your experiences. When I first backpacked with Susan, I hadn't done it in a long time. We were going up...

As long as I'm on a cooking roll, let me pass on this recipe from an old roommate, from whom I learned a fair amount of cooking. One of his more important rules, at least for the single guy trying to make an impression: "If you cook with booze, you can't lose". No booze in this recipe, but its still a winner. For about six people. Leftovers taste good hot or cold. And re the booze; you can certainly serve it with lots of good red wine and a good time will be had by all. 1 big slab of round steak cut into cubes. This was the original recipe. You can't get those big slabs of round steak anymore, so I pick out a big London Broil and have the butcher cut it into bite sized chunks (about 1/2 in square cubes). They tend to make the chunks too big. 1 pint sour cream 8 ounces sliced mushrooms 1 can mushroom soup - the original full sodium variety. one or two big onions, chopped about 1/2 stick of butter about 1/4 - 1/2 can of tomato paste salt, thyme and oregan...

Ready for dessert? Backpacking has given us a great appreciation for good food. We've been making this all year - fall and winter apples & pears, now peaches, plums, you pick the fruit. Always tastes wonderful. Serve with vanilla ice cream. Don't know who to credit for the recipe - it's on an old yellowed newspaper clipping, don't even know the paper. Turn oven to 375 F, have 8x8 inch baking dish ready. Doesn't need to be oiled or buttered. Takes 2 medium sized bowls. In one put five or six cups of fruit cut into bite sizes. Don't need to peel, but seeds aren't good. In the other put 1 cup sugar, 1 cup flour, 1 teaspoon baking powder and 1/2 teaspoon salt. Mix dry ingredients. Pause here to foil those unattributing blog thefts: ©2009 backpack45.com Mix two tablespoons of flour with two or three tablespoons of sugar and pour over the fruit bowl. Mix it all up. Dump the bowl of fruit into the baking dish. Now, add one beaten egg to bowl wi...