George Ball epitomizes the best of higher education. I have been privileged to have him in my life for the last forty-four years. When I met him, my first year in college, I knew I had found my hero. I participated in his “cell” group, I took his classes, and I went to him for sage advice at all sorts of decision points. A rigorous thinker, yet an eternal optimist, Dr. Ball taught me about hospitality in its deepest sense.
He was a challenging teacher. Early in the semester of his “Theological Problems of Modern Man” class I got a test back with a B-. I wasn’t happy about the grade and I was especially unhappy that this person I admired so much didn’t think my work was A quality. So I went and talked to him. I asked him to share an A paper with me. He did and I was able to see instinctively how my work had fallen short. I left feeling good about myself and ready to expand my horizons.
When I got kicked out of the Walla Walla Symphony during my senior year, he helped me move beyond the experience and encouraged me to join the group of music students who sang madrigals on Monday nights instead.
When my parents came, he was the professor I most wanted them to meet.
When I came back to campus to visit, he was the first person I sought out.
He always managed to convey acceptance of who I was, even if we disagreed on something.
And the amazing thing about him was that generations of Whitman students feel the same way about him. I never felt that he had favorites – just that he was able to appreciate each person’s gifts and strengths.
As I have been processing the news of his death on January 1, 2012 at the age of 96, I realize that in my career in higher education, I have subconsciously held him up as the standard to which I aspired. Could I possibly live up to the words that are cited from his commencement speech in 1978:
"Someone will depend upon the care with which all our work is done.
Someone will need the kindness with which all our words could be spoken.
Someone will be fulfilled by the love which all our acts might manifest."
Indeed my own life depended on his wonderful care and his kindness. And the love I have for him has sustained me for years. That love and dedication continues to be expressed by all of us who were lucky enough to know George Ball. That vision continues to inspire me. I hope that he is riding his bicycle across the Elysian Fields with a big smile on his face.

We arrived at the Grand Canyon on the north rim, figuring out as we arrived that they are on mountain standard time (i.e. the same as Pacific daylight time!). As I got my first view of the Grand Canyon, I was ...well... disappointed. In my imagination it was one very large canyon of all red rock with a river running through. In actual fact, the canyon meanders, it is hard to see the river, and there are a lot of lateral canyons so that at any given time what you are seeing is not "the" grand canyon but one of the side canyons. As I looked down into the canyon it reminded me of the green spongy stuff that florists use.

We did a couple of short hikes out to Cape Royal and Port Final the first afternoon. The Cape Royal trail identified the flora along the trail for us which was quite helpful. There is a great view from Cape Royal,




Pinyon pines, ponderosa pines and juniper are all common in this environment. And there were still some wildflowers blooming including the beautiful cliff roses. The trail out to Port Final was a bit dull but the end result was great. Despite some disappointment you can tell I feel just fine!




The next day we hiked into the canyon on the North Kaibab Trail. Park brochures and rangers issue lots of warnings about the difficulties of hiking back up and the impossibility of going to the bottom of the canyon and back up in one day. So we carefully noted the elevation change at different points and headed into the canyon. Very early in our hike we met a man who had hiked up from a base camp near the bottom already by 9am! He had hiked "rim to rim". He looked beat. So we paid attention and went about a half mile beyond the Supai Tunnel for a total of 2.5 miles hiking and 1800 feet of elevation. It was a beautiful hike -- we went through several rock layers including the Kaibab Limestone, Toroweap formation, Coconino Sandstone, hermit shale and the Supai group.You can see several layers in this photo.




We saw beautiful maples and quaking aspens amongst the pines in the upper part of the trail.




I should also mention the less glorious aspect -- this trail is used by mules and horses to carry people down to the Supai Tunnel area and they leave lots of things on the trail. So we enjoyed going a bit beyond the tunnel where the droppings are less!

Then we turned back to hike up. Let’s just say it was really, really steep. And psychologically I really don’t like climbing down first and then up. It is so much harder to gauge how I am feeling. In a technical sense we never got out of Bright Angel Canyon which is the main route down to the river from the north rim.

The next day we drove to the south rim which is 10 miles as the crow flies and 210 miles to drive! As we entered the eastern end of the park we were able to stop at the old observation tower and get a great view of the canyon.




Our visit to the south rim was marred, however, by a park service prescribed burn of about 2,000 acres of park land. The smoke was sucked down into the canyon overnight and left us with a lot of haze the next day as we hiked along the rim from Pima Point to Powell Point.




All in all I was left with a sense of ambivalence and frustration with my own limitations. I don’t think I’m ever likely to hike "rim to rim" and really "see" the canyon from the river! And even those who accomplish that feat only see a small part of it. Its very grandeur makes it hard to grasp.

A few weeks ago we spent a morning at Fairyland in Oakland, CA with our granddaughter. It’s a great place for toddlers to run around, learn some traditional fairy tales and to climb on pirate ships and ride a little train.

Today, however, we visited a different Fairyland by hiking the Fairyland Loop Trail in Bryce Canyon National Park. Bryce has incredible rock formations – hoodoos and spires and pinnacles – that fill the Bryce Amphitheater.





The park has named some of them like the tower bridge (see photo) and Queen Victoria!




But it is a great place to exercise one’s own imagination while walking around. There are arches and doorways to peek through, structures that look like castles and cathedrals, and places that look as if perhaps Dr. Seuss had been around. We thought one looked like a medieval statue of the Virgin Mary.




Yesterday we saw one that we dubbed Mount Rushmore:





Of course in actual fact they are the result of millions of years of erosion and weathering eating away at the weaker portion of the limestone that makes up the bulk of the rocks. Very small iron-rich clay particles give the soil its different colors – pink, red, yellow.

I’m hoping in the years ahead to bring my granddaughter to this fairyland too. I wonder what she would see in this.

As I recited the list of parks we would visit to long-suffering friends and family, Zion National Park elicited the most frequent, fervent “O I loved Zion” response. I was afraid I would get here and not like it!

It is a small park and, like Yosemite, much of the action happens on the canyon floor. Zion has successfully instituted a shuttle system which limits car travel to lodge guests driving to the lodge. However this does not keep hordes of people from making their way to popular hiking trails. Even the strenuous ones are crowded.

It isn’t exactly that I’m selfish about space. It is just that a great deal of the pleasure that I get from hiking comes from the sense of solitude in nature. When hiking begins to feel like driving in rush hour traffic, it loses much of its charm!

So we set off at 8:00am to hike the four miles (and 2148 feet of elevation gain!) to Observation Point, hoping to beat the crowds on a Saturday morning. And we succeeded! We made it to Observation Point before 11am, seeing only the three hikers/climbers heading for Mystery Canyon who started before us and one person who came down the trail. Nearly three hours of solitude in this amazing place as we hiked through Echo Canyon (see photo)




Up and around through different shades of sandstone (see photo)





For five blissful minutes we even had the point all to ourselves with incredible views of the entire canyon below.




Then the other hikers started to arrive …

We added a couple of miles on the East Mesa Trail to our trip so that we could enjoy walking “on top” at Zion. Junipers, pinyons, and oaks grow in this area and those miles gave us views of other canyons in the park and snow-covered mountains in the distance.





We only say one group on the Mesa Trail.
Then we rejoined the Observation Trail heading back down and things changed. We passed 105 people in the approximately 1.5 miles between the E. Mesa Trail and the E. Rim Trail, and a total of 168 people coming up the trail. 34 more people overtook us as we came down (we like to stop and look around and take pictures!)

But we had our nearly three hours of solitude at Zion in gorgeous surroundings. This really is a beautiful park!

Arms branching above desert floor
Towering above sister yucca
Your striking silhouette
Years of growth
Winter freezing
Blossoming … branching
Other cacti
Cholla
Barrel
Hedgehog
Yucca
Beavertail
Grow around you
In this not-so-barren landscape.

Kings Canyon and Sequoia National Parks are jointly administered and slightly oddly shaped. Roughly speaking, if the parks are a hand, Kings Canyon is the thumb and fingers and Sequoia is the palm. Both parks include groves of giant sequoia trees and were created, in large part, to save those trees from loggers in the late 19th century.

We decided to experience the sequoias by hiking the seven-mile Trail of the Sequoias in the Giant Forest in Sequoia National Park. The trail starts at the General Sherman tree – the “largest known living single stem tree” on the planet. It’s hard to get a sense of its size from a photo but here it is:



Here it is next to me:




The tree is estimated to be 2,300-2,700 years old. The park ranger explained that sequoias are not as tall as the coastal redwoods but are bigger in girth. Sequoias stop growing up at a certain point and grow out after that.

There were some younger sequoias nearby and I asked the ranger about their age. She pointed to one and said that since the CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps) planted that, they knew it was about 75 years old. I was surprised by the rather slow rate of growth. Here is a picture of the 75 year old tree.




Armed with some information about the shape of the needles, the color of the bark, etc we headed out on our loop. We spent the better part of the day gawking at these beautiful trees and reflecting on the length of time it has taken them to reach their size.
Sequoias need fire to reproduce. The trees retain their cones until there is sufficient heat to make the cone open and drop its seeds. And it turns out that the ashes from a fire are the best seed bed for germination. Many of the larger living trees have partially charred trunks from this process.




It isn’t just the trunks that are huge. Many of the branches are too as this shot shows.





The amazing contrast of the red trunks, the green foliage, and the blue sky absorbed us throughout the hike. I am filled with gratitude for the people who fought to save these trees in the early days of eco-activism.

I hadn’t, admittedly, given much thought to rocks before this trip. While intellectually I know that rocks aren’t entirely unchanging, all these years of hearing about the wise man building his house upon the rock have left me with a sense of the permanence of rocks.
But the story of the national parks is, to a large degree, the story of not only how rocks have been formed and changed to sculpt the landscapes we see today but also how they continue to change. We’ve watched thermal forces in action in Yellowstone; seen a projected flow of lava from Mt. Rainier, an active volcano, should it erupt again; enjoyed the volcanic formations at Badlands; and reveled in the lake formed in the aftermath of a huge volcanic eruption at Crater Lake.

We’ve hiked in the Olympic Mountains – rock formed deep below the sea and pushed upwards by the shifting of plates below the sea. We hiked through the glacial moraine at Glacier National Park.

And now we’ve spent a week in the Sierra Nevadas, home to Yosemite, Kings Canyon, and Sequoia National Parks. From the handy “Oh.Rangers” publication I’ve learned some things about this range of mountains which includes Mt. Whitney, the tallest peak in the lower 48 states. The Sierra Nevadas began life about 400 million years ago as an inland sea. As part of the Pacific plate slid under the North American plate, it turned into magma which subsequently cooled and formed into a block of granite. (70-220 million years ago). About 5-10 million years ago, the granite block fractured from pressure within the earth and the Sierra Nevadas rose. (According to the film at Yosemite, they continue to rise about one foot every 1,000 years.) Water carved out v-shaped canyons during this period. Then 2-3 million years ago, glaciers shaped the mountains and carved out U-shaped valleys and glacial lakes. This picture of the Yosemite Valley shows the granite walls and the more spacious valley floor.





We hiked up to Sentinel Dome on the southern wall of Yosemite. Domes are created as rock sloughs off some of its exterior and is left with a round form. We also hiked up to Nevada Falls, near Liberty Cap. This photo shows half-dome, Mt. Broderick, and Liberty Cap – all formations of the granite along Yosemite’s walls.





We also hiked up to Big Baldy in Kings Canyon National Park where the granite shows some great reddish colors. This spot was probably the most peaceful place in all of our hiking. I sat there for a long time!





As we’ve climbed the many rocky trails and near some exceedingly steep precipices, the hymn “on Christ the solid rock I stand” has occasionally gone through my mind. Sometimes the rocks are slippery, sometimes they move, and always the rock is changing even if we can’t perceive it. “Lo, I am doing a new thing. Do you not perceive it?” (Isaiah 43: 19) The rock I stand on continues to shape and be shaped. And that is good news.

vivid memory of blue
lake seen fifty years ago
shape fuzzy surroundings vague
but deep blue etched firmly

revisiting
finding exact vantage point of memory
the blue not quite right
until next day at noon





from volcanic explosion
emerged crater
filled by snow, rain,
thousands of years





Crater Lake

Olympic National Park. 3 distinct biomes. One hike along the Klahhane Ridge with views of the Olympics complete. 1 day left. What to do?

Why ask your waitress of course! Our waitress spoke enthusiastically of her very favorite hike – a hike that left from the Sol Duc trailhead in a part of the park known for its “old growth” forest. She assured us that all the forest was rain forest even though the park distinguishes between the old growth forest and the temperate rain forest near Hoh. 4 miles each way, a waterfall after a mile, 1700 feet of elevation, a rocky trail, and Deer Lake. It sounded doable and fun.

One of those truisms of hiking, traveling (and life) is that it is the journey, the process, that matters more than the destination. This journey had its hilarious moments: After hiking through the Ancient Groves looking at beautiful old trees with only some sunlight coming through, we burst up the trail into the parking lot and found …. no car!





Then it dawned on us that the loop had multiple entry points so we continued the loop to the next parking lot where the Prius faithfully awaited us.

This journey had its painful moments: I tripped and fell as we headed up the rocky trail, bruising my knee and scraping my hands. We stopped to eat energy bars and a yellow jacket attacked my scalp. (I think it was more attracted to the salt in my very sweaty hair than the sugar in the energy bar!) Very painful.


This journey had its interesting moments: Our first fungi of the trip, ferns and moss, a waterfall, sunlight filtering through the forest at lovely angles.





But as we stepped out of the darkness of the forest into the sunlight at the top of the trail it became clear that this journey WAS about the destination – a beautiful, small gem of a lake with the sunlight dancing across the ripples, marshy grasses by its shores, and glimpses of the snow-capped Olympic Mountains beyond.





All the climbing was done and the time to bask in the sun and absorb the beauty had arrived. On this hike, the destination made all the difference.

We headed west from Spokane towards Mount Rainier National Park through the Columbia River basin area. By the time we got to Yakima it was easy to see where were headed as Mt. Rainier – at 14,410 feet – dominates the landscape for miles and miles around. Our route was a bit circuitous due to road closings in the park, but we arrived at the Nisqually entrance (southwest) around 2:30pm.

A beautiful drive through the park brought us to Paradise, the most popular place in the park. We checked in to Paradise Inn and headed out immediately on a trail into the Alpine meadows. Since as recently as mid-August there were a few feet of snow in this part of the park, we were amazed to see the most glorious display of wildflowers we’ve ever seen with the gorgeous mountain rising high above the meadows.





It was sunny and in the mid-60’s and simply stunning.

The next day the sun was gone and so was the mountain – completely shrouded in clouds and fog. We set off on the Skyline Trail anyway, enjoying the flowers and wildlife even in the mist.





We turned back before reaching ridge when we reached a section of snow-covered trail and visibility had dropped to about 30 feet. We returned to the lodge to enjoy hot cider and hot chocolate, read, rest, watch the film at the visitors center and eat our picnic lunch in our room!

We ventured out late in the afternoon in our rain gear to hike some of the Lakes Trail.





The trail went steeply down and the weather got worse and worse. And yet … it was still beautiful with the lupine and paintbrush and rosy spirea and other flowers, water tumbling over the rocks, and douglas fir trees. We did choose to head back to the lodge on the road – a longer but less steep route than the trail.

The next morning there were brief glimpses of the mountain before the clouds settled in.





We took a morning hike to the Nisqually Vista overlooking a glacial moraine. The glacier itself is covered with dirt this time of year but you can see the water melting from underneath.

Our friends Warren and Sharon Ford arrived from Portland midday bringing a picnic lunch. We had a beautiful hike on the other part of the Skyline Trail. Some of the nearby Stevens Ridge was occasionally in the sun. We forded streams, traveled up snowy trails, and were enchanted by the marmots busy munching lupine to prepare for their eight-month hibernation period.





Mt. Rainier was so close that it didn’t seem to be 9,000 feet above us. Climbers leave regularly for Paradise to climb the mountain – about 10,000 try every year and about half make it. We saw groups heading out, laden with their gear. For us it was paradise enough to see the mountain, hike the trails, see some wildlife, and breathe in the scents of the flowers.