The Scourge of Social Media

Social media is the scourge of our times. It has become a place for people to look and sound well-read, well-traveled, humble, engaged, insightful, opinionated, reflective, etc. etc. etc. without any authenticity and without putting in any real effort or energy. And the quest for "likes" is the worst form of external validation, again because it takes so little effort.

Don't get me wrong, I have been a slave to social media myself, and still crave "likes" on my increasingly rare posts. But having (belatedly) become conscious of just how much energy it drains from me, I recently turned most notifications off and have enjoyed the welcome relief so much that I am getting ready to take the next steps of suspending and eventually deleting most, if not all, of my personal social media accounts. Wish me luck!

A defining moment

This 2016 American presidential election is unique. Unlike every other democratic vote (local, state, or national) in every part of the world I have encountered, it is not about issues and policies, regardless of whether those issues and policies themselves were narrow-minded, discriminatory, or downright stupid. (Even the Brexit vote, whether you agreed with the outcome or not, was about issues people on both sides cared deeply about.)

No. This election is – it has become – the purest real-life version of the right vs. wrong battle that we see in Hollywood movies or read about in action hero comics. It no longer matters whether you think Hillary is a hero or an anti-hero – it only matters that the Republican candidate is clearly a villain. And the villain cannot… cannot… be allowed to win.

The Republican candidate is a petulant bully. And like all bullies who are insecure and weak, he only has a sense of self-worth when he puts other people down. And we need to do what we tell our kids to do every day. We need to stand up to this bully. Not by stooping to his level, but by showing him that his opinion does not matter. That we don’t derive our self-worth from him or what he thinks, or says, or does.

His behavior is simply not acceptable for a candidate trying to be president of the country I think of as “home” more and more with each passing year. Not acceptable to a person brought up by a mother who is the strongest, most determined, most passionate, most fiercely independent person I know. Not acceptable to someone who has been, and chooses to be, surrounded by strong women in every aspect of his life. Not acceptable to anyone who has a mother, sister, or daughter. Not. Acceptable.

So, even though I can't vote, I hope everyone who is eligible to do so does. Because this is it. The defining moment. The moment that will determine not only what happens over the next four years, but will very likely shape what this country looks like for several decades to come.

Great job, USTA & CBS

Thank you USTA for a 5th straight Monday finish. Next year, how about scrapping Super Saturday so we actually have a buffer to work with. Or maybe using some of the other courts to finish matches when you know bad weather is coming.

Oh and great job with Arthur Ashe too - good luck putting a roof over that behemoth.

Thank you also, CBS, for scheduling the Djokovic / Murray final in the middle of the workday. Of course it makes more sense to show re-runs of sitcoms in prime time.

A new conservation paradigm

Last November I attended a symposium on human-wildlife conflict in New Hampshire, and noticed that the participants were divided into two camps. On one side were the conservation scientists and biologists who were ardent believers in conservation as a concept and seemed frustrated and perplexed by people who didn't "get it" like they did. On the other side were the more realistic practitioners - people who, after years of working in the trenches, know that all conservation, like politics, is local; that without local communities' active engagement in and ownership of conservation activities, external policy / NGO actions are temporary at best, and completely ineffective at worst.

It still sometimes amazes me that those of us who are passionate about conservation expect everyone else to magically share this passion, when the reality is that people whose livestock is threatened by predation, whose sources of food or firewood are restricted for habitat preservation, or whose economic livelihood is jeopardized by conservation activities need a more compelling reason to care about the species that they're supposed to protect.

Fortunately, the conservation community is becoming increasingly aware of this need to actively engage with local communities. Organizations like Human Wildlife Conflict Collaboration and the African People & Wildlife Fund make this an explicit part of their programmatic activities. But perhaps no organization educates, empowers, and incentivizes people to care about conservation like Rare Conservation. One hopes that this expanding paradigm will one day allow conservation organizations to work with, rather than against, development-focused groups for the betterment of all species.

Sox Win!

Yeah, it's belated, but what the hell! Go White Sox! And they didn't just win. They annihilated. From the last five games of the regular season through the World Series they won sixteen of seventeen games, pitched four consecutive complete games in the AL Championship Series and dominated every team they faced.

To all the Cubs fans who rooted for the Astros against their city team - BOO!

Road Trip, Part XXV

Sunday, June 19: The final item on the agenda was the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in Cleveland, on the shores of Lake Erie. I spent an engrossing four hours in the museum and then left for Chicago around 3 pm. The final three hundred and sixty miles took about six hours and reaching my apartment late that evening brought me back to unpleasant reality and the million things I had to take care of, including a mailbox stuffed to overflowing.

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So concluded one of the most memorable vacations I have ever taken. Twenty-nine days, twelve rolls of film and over five thousand miles later my one thought is that I have to do another road trip soon.

Road Trip, Part XXIV

Saturday, June 18: This was the last full day of my four-week marathon. I had planned on leaving Bethlehem in the morning which would have allowed me to cover the four hundred miles to Strongsville, Ohio on the outskirts of Cleveland before dusk. Unfortunately I woke up very late and was not able to leave before 1.45 pm. But what began as another unremarkable drive ended up being quite the opposite in a couple of hours.

The route from Bethlehem to Cleveland passes through a couple of long tunnels en route and as I approached the first of these – the Blue Mountain Tunnel – I noticed that traffic was backed up and barely moving for several miles. The closer we got the slower the traffic moved until about half a mile from the tunnel it came to a complete standstill. With no option but to wait it out, I did what I thought was the smart thing and shut my engine off.

About half an hour later when the traffic finally began to clear I tried to start my car, but it just wouldn’t start. After five minutes of wasted effort I realised that the best thing to do would be to move the car off onto the shoulder. I duly did so with the help of a couple of people in the car behind mine and spent another ten minutes trying to start the car up before I discovered that I had left my headlights on by mistake. While I was surprised that a mere half-hour had drained the battery, there was no other explanation for my predicament. I was on the phone to the rental company trying to explain the situation and my location to an incredibly stupid customer service representative when a state trooper spotted me and pulled his patrol car up behind me. After I explained my situation to the officer, he told me that he had already radioed ahead for a tow-truck, which showed up about half an hour later and drove me and my car to the nearest repair shop, about fifteen miles away.

While the battery was being recharged, I struck a conversation with a lady whose van was being repaired. She told me one of her front wheels had just fallen off in the middle of the highway without warning, but fortunately, no-one was hurt in the accident. It was only after talking to her for a few minutes that I discovered that this had occurred in the Blue Mountain Tunnel, and had caused the traffic jam on the highway!

In any case, half an hour and $75 later I was on my way again, finally making it to Strongsville around 9 pm.

Road Trip, Part XXIII

Friday, June 17: Left around 4.30 in the afternoon to visit AA in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, less than a hundred miles away. The drive was fairly uneventful, quite a change from the spectacular views I had grown accustomed to. I reached AA’s place in the evening and we went to watch the final Star Wars movie which had released just the previous day. I quite enjoyed the movie – easily the best of the three new prequels. We then spent an hour or so at a nearby bar called Bethlehem Steelworks, named in recognition of the primary industry of Bethlehem. Most of the steel plants have gone, and the town is a shell of its former self but like many other places in the coal-rich steel-producing state of Pennsylvania, it still retains a distinctly blue-collar flavour.

Road Trip, Parts XX - XXII

Tuesday, June 14: Caught up on the sleep that the baby had deprived me of the previous night and didn’t do much else during the day. In the evening AG1 and I drove into New York to meet RR, an old BITSian friend of mine, for dinner and drinks. The night turned out to be longer than we had planned when we got stuck in the Holland Tunnel for over an hour while dropping RR off in Jersey City. Finally got home around 2 am and went straight to bed.

Wednesday, June 15: Today was more of the same. Spent most of the day at home, reading or watching TV. In the afternoon I drove into New York again to meet another friend of mine and returned home in about three hours.

Thursday, June 16: I was supposed to leave for Boston today, but for whatever reason I just didn’t feel like going up there for just one day and then driving back down to Philadelphia. So I cancelled my Boston plans (sorry JR - I would have loved to meet up with you) and AG1 and I went out for dinner instead. Later we tried to catch the new Batman Begins movie but were thwarted by the fact that neither of the two theatres nearby was screening it.

Road Trip, Part XIX

Monday, June 13: I rented my second car at the airport, a white Chevy Classic this time – not as nice or spacious as the Impala but a decent enough car – and headed out to Mahwah in New Jersey where AG1 was staying. It was good to be back in the New York area and I can’t understand people who complain about the traffic and the driving in that city. It always takes me back to the no-holds-barred streets of Calcutta where I learnt the intricate art of getting from point A to point B without losing life or limb, which is probably why I thoroughly enjoy driving in New York.

New Jersey, on the other hand, is without a doubt the worst place for drivers who are unfamiliar with the region. Signage is practically non-existent, and even when it is present it is impossibly hard to follow. It took me over an hour and several phone calls to AG1 and AG2 (who, true to form, never seem to answer their cellphones or check their messages) before I got accurate directions to the turn-off from the highway that led to AG1’s house.

Anyway, once he returned from work we went, of all things, furniture-shopping. We visited several showrooms but as this was a preliminary reconnaissance trip, we didn’t end up buying anything. Later that evening AG2 drove in from Long Island and we had dinner at a local restaurant.

Road Trip, Part XVIII

Sunday, June 12: Late in the night I caught a red-eye flight to Atlanta and onward to New York to continue my trip from the other coast. The flight was (surprise, surprise!) late getting in to Atlanta and I missed my connection, finally getting in to La Guardia around 11 am the following day. To make matters worse, an annoying baby in the row behind mine wailed non-stop from San Jose to Atlanta, rendering sleep impossible and reinforcing my conviction that King Herod had the right idea when it came to children. I fail to see why, if pets are required to fly in travel cages in the cargo area, the same rule cannot be extended to babies.

Road Trip, Part XVII

Monday, June 6: Left North Bend after a refreshing night’s sleep and continued along the 101 to San Francisco, about five hundred and thirty miles south. It rained all day again and while the drive was long and tiring, it was an incredible feeling to drive through the giant redwoods of northern California. The mist and gloom among the huge tree trunks lent a strange cathedral-like air to the forest which was heightened by Pachelbel’s soulful Canon in D that, by some divine coincidence, was playing on the car stereo as I passed through.

Nearly eight hours later I found myself stuck in rush hour traffic in Santa Rosa about fifty miles north of San Francisco and in the heart of California’s Sonoma wine country. The remaining sixty-odd miles proceeded to take me well over two hours and I arrived at my friend’s house in Santa Clara around 6.30 pm, a full ten hours after I had left that morning. Needless to say, I was quite tired and went to bed early.

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Here ended the more adventurous part of my road trip west. After returning my rental car the next day (I was really sad to see it go because it had served me so well for the past two weeks) and catching up on backlogged to-do items, I spent the next six days lazing around, stepping out only to meet various friends (CT, SC, EG, HR - it was good to see you guys again) in the Bay area, eat at several excellent restaurants or watch the occasional movie, including a front-and-centre theatre experience of Mr. And Mrs. Smith that would have been supremely boring from any other seat that didn't afford the "view" that the front row provided.

The highlights of the week were a visit to a winery close to nearby Saratoga on Saturday and a tour of the infamous Alcatraz on Sunday, the latter enjoyable not just for its historical significance but also for the hundreds of nesting seabirds that now populate the island.

Road Trip, Part XVI

Sunday, June 5: I had two long days of driving ahead of me, so after a quick breakfast I left from Seattle and headed south toward the US-101. Today’s goal was the Oregon Dunes campground near North Bend, about four hundred miles away.

Under normal circumstances on a highway, this should not have taken more than six or seven hours. Unfortunately, circumstances were anything but normal that day. It absolutely poured pretty much throughout the drive, making visibility and driving extremely difficult. To slow things down further, the Pacific Coast Highway is not a major interstate and the speed limits are much lower, meaning that I was making very poor time indeed.

To compensate for this, the view out to the west over the Pacific was simply breathtaking. Chicago is on the banks of Lake Michigan, a Great Lake that really is more like an inland sea. But there is something majestic and mighty about the Pacific Ocean that somehow intangibly conveys its immeasurable vastness, even from the shoreline. In cloudy, blustery conditions, that feeling is many-times intensified. As a testament to the strong ocean breezes that blow in from the Pacific, trees and shrubs alongside the road all pointed inland, permanently moulded into a windswept shape. There were birds everywhere, but I was not in the best frame of mind to enjoy these and other sights, having to focus on making sure I got to North Bend without incident.

When I finally arrived at the campground and checked in, well past sunset, the rain still hadn’t let up and I wasn’t too keen on camping in those conditions. So I decided to spend the night in my car. After more than an hour of trying unsuccessfully to get comfortable enough to sleep, and mindful of the even longer drive I had ahead of me the following day, I gave up and drove into North Bend to find a motel. After an early dinner and some account-keeping, I went to bed.

Road Trip, Part XV

Saturday, June 4: Aside from my week in the Black Hills and Yellowstone, this was easily the highlight of my entire trip. I had forced poor AP to sign us up for a whale-watching trip that took us from Seattle up past the San Juan Islands to the north, where three so-called “pods” of orca had made their home. Orcas are also known as killer whales and there could not be a worse misnomer in the world. Like the much-maligned shark family, orcas are hardly killers; furthermore, they’re not whales at all but a highly intelligent and inquisitive species of dolphin.

As soon as we set out I realised that despite a pleasant forecast the upper deck of a boat out in open sea can get very, very cold and I was glad I had brought my jacket. The ride out to the islands took about three hours but there was plenty of life in, on and above the water to keep me occupied en route. Cormorants diving for fish like feathered arrows, ducks splashing water over themselves, giant seagulls squawking overhead, puffins and gannets sunning themselves on a beachhead and, best of all, a bald eagle perched high in a tree on a passing island. It was a huge advantage to have a volunteer from the Seattle Aquarium on board – a most amazing lady and an inexhaustible fount of knowledge who, by the end of the day, must have been tired of me pestering her with questions about everything I saw.

Whale-watching is a popular tourist attraction in the Seattle area and while I wonder what effect the continual intrusion has on the resident orca pods I can’t deny the inexpressible joy of seeing a group of orca actually swim towards you to find out who or what is knocking on their door, so to speak. Boats that offer whale-watching tours (often with such amusing but vaguely disturbing slogans such as “Whales guaranteed or your money back!”) are under strict orders to not follow the whales, but the whales themselves can approach the boat. Captains are also permitted to communicate with other boats to find out where the pods are and then sail there, shut off the engine and wait for the whales to come. While this all sounds extremely annoying, like a bunch of groupies stalking some touring rock band, I have a strong feeling that the orca are just as entertained by and interested in the proceedings as we are.

Resident orca pods along the Pacific coast are (unimaginatively) named by the letters of the alphabet starting with the A-pod located up in Alaska. The San Juan Islands orcas belong to the J, K and L pods (I wonder where the “I-pod” lives!) and in the course of the day we located and watched the first two. (Apparently the L pod was out fishing in the Pacific Ocean that day.) Many of them swam over to and across or under our boat, almost close enough to touch. We even caught one spy-hopping, a behaviour exhibited by several members of the dolphin and whale families in which they elevate vertically out of the water and “swim on their tails” to better survey their surroundings.

After an indescribably enjoyable and memorable day we stopped for a late lunch in Friday Harbour on San Juan Island and then made our way back to Seattle around sunset. AP can’t have had nearly as much fun as I did but to his credit he didn’t once complain about being abandoned for practically the entire time we were on the water.

Road Trip, Part XIV

Friday, June 3: After an incredibly relaxing two days, I said goodbye to H and K and headed out of Sunnyside towards Seattle, a short one hundred and seventy-five mile drive away. I got lost again trying to get on the highway and almost ran out of gas before finding a gas station in Toppenish, about twenty miles west of Sunnyside.

In Seattle I was staying with AP, a former roommate of mine but since he would be at work until the evening, I passed the time in a downtown coffee shop called Bellino’s whose owners – small world again – had graduated from Northwestern just two years earlier!

When AP returned, we went out for dinner but didn’t stay out too long as we had an early start scheduled for the next day.

Road Trip, Part XIII

Thursday, June 2: Again true to my past visits, I was not left to my own devices the next morning. After a late breakfast I rode a truck with CR, a close friend of the S’, delivering her morning’s harvest of fresh asparagus to a nearby packing plant in Granger. After unloading the truck, CR took me on a quick tour of the plant, which had two manual lines and two automated lines with optical recognition techniques that took me back to a most enjoyable course I had taken and then TA-ed twice at Northwestern.

Sent home with a packet of fresh asparagus, I used the rest of the morning to do two weeks worth of laundry and air out my damp tent and groundsheet before I packed them away.

In the afternoon I helped H and K top off and hose down the wine barrels and clean and test all their bottling equipment. Later, H took me out to the vineyards to show off a pond they had dug – a new addition that served as a water reservoir but was also home to some of the largest frogs I have ever seen. I also met a lady supervising a crew of workers whose ex-husband’s father was – small world – a Bengali from Calcutta!

Road Trip, Part XII

Wednesday, June 1: The rain continued through the morning while I had breakfast at a neighbourhood diner called Knuckleheads BBQ and followed me as I drove through northern Montana and into the panhandle of Idaho. As soon as I crossed the state line two things happened simultaneously. A dense mist descended and the mountains of the Bitterroot Range closed in on either side of the road for an eerie but gorgeous drive. When the mist lifted a few miles later, I was able to survey the landscape and I don’t think I could have asked for a more picturesque view. Lush green valleys were cradled by rolling hills fading to a deep purple in the distance, birds circled overhead and along the way I passed the stunningly beautiful town of Couer d’Alene, on the banks of the lake bearing the same name.

It took me about six relaxed hours to drive the nearly four hundred miles to the small town of Sunnyside, in the wine country of Washington’s Yakima Valley, where I was due to spend a couple of days with HS & KS. I managed to lose my way in Sunnyside but in a town that size, the first person I asked for directions knew not only the address but the family as well. The S were not home when I arrived so, after saying hello to their dogs Jill and Marsha and a boisterous young addition called Rocky, I settled down in my car and killed time by updating my accounts and making campsite reservations for a night I was due to halt in Oregon.

When H and K returned I was again treated to the wonderful hospitality that I had come to know and look forward to. After helping K set up equipment in preparation for the weekend’s bottling we had an excellent dinner of paella followed by ice-cream and talked about my trip and the happenings in the vineyards and winery since my last visit more than two years ago.

Road Trip, Part XI

Tuesday, May 31: I bid farewell to Yellowstone. Appropriately, my last images in the park were of a bison herd walking along the road in the morning, the overnight dew glistening on their shaggy coats in the cool morning sun.

My next destination was Missoula, Montana, about three hundred miles to the northwest. While the drive through rolling prairie and pasture was extremely scenic, it poured throughout and I was not a little relieved to reach Missoula around 3 pm in one piece. Contrary to my expectations, Missoula turned out to be quite a large town, partly explained by the fact that the University of Montana is located there. In keeping with the unique nature of this road trip, I was checked into my motel by a desk clerk with a hook for a right hand. While being back in civilisation had its benefits, including a soft, warm bed and television, I now had the unpleasant task of catching up on nearly a week’s worth of missed phone calls and emails which took up the better part of the afternoon, leaving me no time to do much else.

Road Trip, Part X

Monday, May 30: This was by far the best day of my stay at Yellowstone. I drove north and east toward Mammoth Springs and Tower Falls, a route that claimed to pass through wildlife-frequented areas and some of the more spectacular geothermal features of the park. To say that that claim was justified would be an understatement.

Mammoth Springs’ features had fanciful but evocative names like Palette Spring, Cleopatra’s Terrace, Canary Spring, Liberty Cap and Minerva Terrace and each feature more than lived up to its beautiful name. The old Fort Yellowstone, now converted to ranger quarters, is in Mammoth, where a couple of magpies, true to their nature, had made their home near human habitation. Fort Yellowstone also houses a museum where I attended an entertaining talk on G.L. Henderson, Yellowstone’s first interpretive tour guide of the late 19^th century who was responsible for naming many of the features of the park.

Past Mammoth and on the way to Tower Falls I, along with a horde of people that included several ardent nature photographers, spent a happy two hours following one of Yellowstone’s main attractions – a black hear and her yearling cub. Our gradual progress along the road as we followed the bears, and the hushed anticipation and whispered conversations among the spectators gave me the distinct impression of being at some golf tournament watching Tiger Woods prepare for a long eagle putt.

The real spectacle was when the mother headed up the hillside towards us, casually ambled across the road like a bored diva posing for the paparazzi and disappeared in the undergrowth further up the hillside. (I’m convinced she had an awards show to attend.) In all of this her cub was never far behind and was much more inquisitive than his mother, often scurrying up tree trunks to get a better view of us rubberneckers which, of course, allowed us to get a better view of him.

Further on along Tower Road I passed by the remnants of a petrified forest, fossilised remains of trees from thousands of years ago, buried under the ash of ancient volcanic eruptions. Tower Falls itself was every bit as scenic as I had now come to expect but the day was not yet over. There was much more wildlife in store – a beaver sunning himself on some rocks, several deer and elk and another black bear, this time with two cinnamon cubs. (A friendly ranger on hand informed us that the cinnamon colouring is the result of a recessive gene but is fairly common among black bears.)

Since this was my last evening in Yellowstone and I had been living on Maggi and macaroni and cheese for the past three nights, I decided to treat myself to a nice dinner at Mammoth Hotel. I don’t know if it was the view of the sun setting over the mountains, the pair of elk calmly grazing on the front lawn of the hotel or the delicious trout and glass of Chardonnay I consumed but I felt extremely mellow and satisfied as I drove back to Madison that night.

Road Trip, Part IX

Sunday, May 29: Broke camp at Bridge Bay in the morning and drove south and west towards West Thumb, stopping at various geysers that served as an opening act for the main show of the day – Old Faithful.

Unlike the majority of geysers Old Faithful, as its name implies, erupts at surprisingly regular intervals about seventy-four minutes apart. It is also one of the largest geysers at Yellowstone, blowing steam and vapour to a height of more than a hundred and forty feet over several minutes.

There was already a large crowd gathered around the geyser before I arrived and I found it faintly amusing that so many people (including me) were waiting patiently for what was essentially a hole in the ground to blow off some steam. (I counted licence plates from no less than twelve states in just one section of the parking lot.)

When the geyser erupted though it was certainly a spectacular sight. Great billowing clouds of steam accompanied a hissing sound that a knot of very annoyed king cobras would have been proud of. And before I knew it, a plume of warm, moist air and fine spray of water fogged up my sunglasses, my camera and camcorder lenses and made further viewing impossible.

What is most fascinating about geysers is the subterranean mechanism that causes them. Three components need to be present for geysers to exist: an abundant water supply, an intense heat source and some ingenious plumbing. While the first two are fairly common, geyser-capable underground plumbing needs to be both water-tight and able to withstand high pressure. This is far rarer, but does make for a great show when present.

The rest of the day was not as much fun as the previous day, primarily due to several large groups of tourists that swarmed all over the park and made peace and quiet hard to come by. But I still enjoyed watching a young elk graze, gradually shedding his thick winter coat, his new antlers still covered with life-giving velvet as they grew in preparation for the battles of the summer mating season.

Bear tracks in a patch of cement. The peaceful solitude of a man fly-fishing in the Gibbon River. The discovery that many of vibrant hues that make geothermal features so beautiful are temperature-dependent and come from minute bacteria and algae that live in the warm, mineral-rich waters. Of such small pleasures is life made.

That evening, after I set up camp at Madison and had dinner, I went for an excellent ranger program that dealt with what the ranger called “Yellowstone University.” The phrase was literal as well as figurative, referring to actual credit courses that are offered over the summer and the incredible amount of learning that a few days in the park imparts to any visitor.

Road Trip, Part VIII

Saturday, May 28: My schedule for the next four mornings was fairly uniform. I’d wake up cold but refreshed around 6.30, hop into my car, drive to the nearest campground with shower facilities (“nearest” meant a five-mile roundtrip the first two days and more than twenty miles the next two but it was absolutely worth it!), pay three dollars for a supremely refreshing hot shower, return to my campsite, have a quick breakfast of coffee and peanut butter & jelly bagels and head out. The rest of the days however could not have been more different. I think of them as journeys of aesthetics, geology and zoology, each day more spectacular and memorable than the last.

Saturday morning over breakfast I had a long conversation with a neighbouring camper, a seventy-year-old man named Miller who had driven all the way from South Carolina and was on his way to Prosser, in Washington to attend his granddaughter’s high-school graduation in three weeks. I was amazed at his enthusiasm and his ability to withstand the rigours of a four-thousand mile road trip at his age but it’s a typically American characteristic that I admire.

After he left I wandered around the campground for a while. All around me other campers had brought gigantic coolers packed with what seemed like enough food to keep an army going for several days, large stoves and grills, camp-chairs and tables, insect repellent torches and so on. In comparison my gear looked quite spartan, although living out of the trunk of a car doesn’t quite qualify as backcountry camping.

The walk around the campground brought me to a trail that led out alongside Yellowstone Lake, a gigantic water body that spans more than a hundred and thirty square miles. On the trail I was followed by an inquisitive pine marten for more than half an hour. He came quite close to me on several occasions and from the determined way that he re-marked his territory on several tree trunks by the path, I gathered that I was trespassing and he was merely making sure that I was passing through and not usurping his land.

Along the trail I also noticed copious quantities of bison dung and deer droppings and many cloven-hoofed tracks, the smaller ones made, I presume, by deer and the larger, deeper ones by bison. The dung was especially abundant in certain patches of dried grass and I could only conclude that those soft patches were their sleeping quarters (evidently with “attached bathrooms”).

On my return to the campsite, I got in my car and drove out north toward Canyon Village and then west to Norris, stopping at several beautifully scenic viewpoints on the way. I took photographs of many waterfalls along the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone River at such locations as Artist’s Point and Inspiration Point. I watched bison, Canadian geese, some species of teal and several ravens for many happy hours. I stared at an osprey eyrie perched precariously on a rock spire jutting out of the canyon floor long and hard, inordinately excited at having found one (the brochure said they were very hard to spot) and being able to share an all-too-brief hour in the life of the chick and its mother.

I walked trails that took me to the thundering tops of the Upper and Lower Falls. I wondered at the breathtaking diversity of Yellowstone’s geothermal formations –orchestras of glutinous mud pots playing what sounded like a complicated work by Beethoven to perfection, iridescent springs in a dazzling array of every imaginable colour in the spectrum and gurgling hot springs and geysers, spewing plumes of vapour, hydrogen sulphide and other equally noxious gases. Speaking of colours, it is the sulphur gives Yellowstone National Park its name, although the numerous mineral compounds gave canyon walls a range of colours from a pale yellow to a deep, rich red.

Returning to camp that evening lugging my cameras, camcorder and binoculars, I remember feeling extremely happy with the fact that for the first time on a trip I hadn’t forgotten to pack anything critical. Of course in less than forty-eight hours I was cursing the fact that I hadn’t brought a tripod, but for the moment I was perfectly satisfied.

Road Trip, Part VII

Friday, May 27: Woke up early after an uncomfortably cold night in the sleeping bag. I was cursing my stupidity at not having tested it before taking it on a long trip like this until I realised that I hadn’t completely zipped it up near my feet. Slightly mollified by this, I broke camp and headed out of the Black Hills toward Yellowstone National Park, with a brief detour to Devil’s Tower.

The awesome, nearly-vertical monolith is in Wyoming, about a hundred miles from Custer and rises over twelve hundred feet above the Belle Fourche River. Once hidden below the earth’s surface, erosion has stripped away the softer layers to reveal Devil’s Tower. The English name evokes very different images from the Lakota Sioux name of Bear’s Lodge, a sacred place of worship that is still visited by Native American tribes every summer.

These days, Devil’s Tower is also very popular with rock-climbers for its sheer faces and vertical-crack-laden hexagonal columned structure and I saw several such maniacs scaling the monument during my walk along the trail encircling it. I also stumbled into a territorial dispute between two squirrels on the trail and their constant chatter and lightning-quick skirmishes were most entertaining!

Mindful of the nearly four hundred miles of driving that remained in the day, I pressed on, passing through the cities of Gillette, Sheridan and Greybull and several protected areas, including Shoshone and Bighorn National Forests. I climbed nearly seven thousand feet and came all the way back down before ascending again into Yellowstone, which is at an elevation of more than eight thousand feet. The drive was extremely scenic but tiring, as I had to keep a close eye on the road to navigate the many hairpin bends in the mountains.

It was well past sunset when I finally reached the East entrance of Yellowstone National Park and the thirty-mile drive to my campground took more than an hour because the road was under repair for first five miles. On the way I noticed white smoke rising from several locations which I thought were campfires until the pungent smell of hydrogen sulphide hit my nostrils and I remembered that Yellowstone was known for its highly active geothermal features, including the famous Old Faithful geyser.

The main motorable roads in Yellowstone are shaped in a rough figure-eight, of which the bottom section is hexagonal and the top section is square. I was due to spend all four nights of the Memorial Day weekend in Yellowstone, so I had made reservations at two campgrounds in the southern section of the “eight.” The first two nights I camped at Bridge Bay, on Yellowstone Lake and closest to the East entrance followed by two nights at Madison, at the opposite end of the Park.

At nine thousand feet above sea-level, there were still several areas with snow on the ground and night-time temperatures dropped to near-zero levels. Still, no wind meant that I got my tent up in no time and after a quick dinner I crawled into the warmth of my sleeping bag, tired after a long day of driving.

Road Trip, Part VI

Thursday, May 26: Most of the day was spent underground, exploring two cave systems in the Black Hills area which are each over a hundred miles long. Wind Cave is named for a strong whistling wind that streams in or out (depending on the prevailing pressure difference between the outside and the inside of the cave) of the small natural opening of the cave system. According to ancient Lakota Sioux legend, all the bison of the American prairie were blown out the bowels of the Earth from the mouth of Wind Cave, and the shape of natural entrance does look uncannily like the head of a bison. A mere thirty miles due northwest, Jewel Cave is more conventional, with larger rooms and expected mineral formations like stalactites and stalagmites and is named for several brilliant formations of feldspar and nailshead spar that resemble so many clusters of sparkling precious stones.

Wind Cave is home to a unique formation called “boxwork,” formed when calcite dissolved in water penetrated cracks in the limestone that is the major component of the structure. When the slightly acidic water eroded the limestone, the calcite fins remained behind in upside-down geometric pigeonhole or post-office box shapes that give the formation its name. Also unique to Wind Cave – its dry interior, unlike the dripping-wet, humid atmosphere associated with most caves.

Perhaps the most fascinating thing about the cave systems is how they are neatly arranged around the Black Hills, both the caves and the hills being created during an ancient subterranean upheaval. It is entirely conceivable that the two cave systems are connected, and form part of a larger system that completely surrounds the hills.

That evening, in anticipation of clement weather, I finally checked out of the motel and moved to Sylvan Lake campground in Custer State Park. Pitching my tent in windy conditions proved a tad trickier than when I had practised it in the comfortable and windless confines of my apartment but I got the better of it after a fifteen-minute struggle. Dinner that night was a hot bowl of Maggi, the inaugural meal on my camping stove.

Road Trip, Part V

Wednesday, May 25: This was when my trip started in earnest. In the morning I drove north to Mount Rushmore, with a plan to return to the motel in a couple of hours to watch the Liverpool-AC Milan UEFA Champions League final on TV.

Mount Rushmore by day was impressive but not spectacular. I suppose it falls in the category of things one has to do, like going to see the Taj Mahal or the Mona Lisa, because to not do it would be even more ridiculous. But the real highlights of the day were watching Liverpool recover from 0-3 after half-time to win the Champions League on penalties (go Reds!) followed by drives to Crazy Horse Mountain and through Custer State Park.

South Dakota in general and the Black Hills (Paha Sapa in Lakota Sioux) in particular are steeped in Native American history, as the last bastion of several Sioux tribes in their fight to protect their lands from US possession. The Battle of Little Big Horn involving Sioux Chief Crazy Horse and Lt. Colonel George Custer took place here in 1876. So did the massacre at Wounded Knee in 1890 in which several hundred Sioux, including Chiefs Big Foot and Sitting Bull, were killed in what was virtually the Sioux’s final stand against US troops.

To commemorate Crazy Horse’s contributions in the Sioux fight for independence, a memorial on the lines of Mount Rushmore is under construction at Thunderhead Mountain a few miles south. When finished it will be much larger than the more famous presidential heads, but funding has continually been a problem. Begun in 1948, it is still far from being finished, depending solely on voluntary donations to keep the project alive.

The memorial housed a museum that was a solemn reminder that while history is inevitably written by the victors, there are always two sides to the story. There is something mystic about the Native American peoples that resonates with anyone who loves nature. I spent quite a while in the museum trying to get a sense for the history of the region and its proud people and regretted not having done any background reading before the trip.

Leaving Thunderhead Mountain, I headed into Custer State Park along the incredibly scenic Needles Highway, named for strange slender rock formations that occurred intermittently along the road. In a couple of places, the road tunnelled through a hillside and the tunnels were so narrow that there were barely a few inches of room on either side of the car as I passed through. I drove by picturesque Sylvan Lake (left) and Legion Lake, spending a large part of the time bird-watching – a pair of mallard ducks, several finches and other species that I, regrettably, was unable to identify.

In the southern parts of the park, I encountered mule deer, white-tailed deer, pronghorn antelope, bighorn sheep, burro (a species of wild donkey), prairie dogs and the inevitable bison, stopping to take pictures as often as the road would allow. For the first time during the trip I realised that while driving alone is enjoyable, it makes nature-watching that much harder. This problem would become even more acute in Yellowstone, where the abundant wildlife constantly battled with the road for my attention.

I had planned on checking out of the Best Western and moving to a campground that night, but another spell of heavy rain changed my mind fairly quickly. While at Mount Rushmore earlier in the day, I had noticed a sign advertising a night-time ceremony followed by the illumination of the monument. I was intrigued, as I had never heard this mentioned in any account of Rushmore. So, since the visitor fee is valid for the entire day, after another satisfying dinner at Captain’s Table, I returned to the memorial. While I (intentionally) missed most of the half-hour ceremony, I was just in time for the US national anthem and the lighting of the memorial. I must admit the illuminated view of Mount Rushmore in the dark, cool surroundings was far more memorable than my morning visit.