urmilala's blog

Shameless plug

My friend Punit managed to get himself in the newspaper: http://freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070918/BUSINESS01/70918108

This may be my biggest claim to fame since going to the same high school as Nikki Webster.

Songs that build up

Going to the New Pornographers concert on Friday reminded me how much I love songs that build up slowly to a climax. Here are my favourite build up songs:

1. Bleeding Heart Show - New Pornographers (also probably in my top ten favourite songs of all time)
2. Wine Song - Cat Empire
3. Stairway to Heaven - Led Zeppelin
4. The Mariner's Revenge Song - The Decemberists (this song is unusual in that it's the lyrics that create the climax, rather than the music. Colin Meloy is the most creative, articulate lyricist I have heard)
5. Kajra Re - from Bunty Aur Babli

Honourable mentions:

• Turn and Run - Neil Finn
• Come Downstairs and Say Hello - Guster
• I Am John - Loney Dear
• Bohemian Rhapsody - Queen
• John Allen Smith Sails - Okkervil River

Those are the ones that came to mind - I'm sure there's a bunch of good ones I've missed.

Fortunately/unfortunately

I have never been this sick before and it is scary. I have a throat infection and it's really painful to swallow. When I do get something down my body mainly rejects it. There have been more days this week that I've hurled up all my food than days I've kept it down. I've lost 7 pounds in the last 6 days.

And I've been stuck indoors for so many days. It's beautiful outside, the last, precious, precious days of summer, I WANT TO GET OUT...

I was meant to be camping this weekend. We were going to hike out to the meadows on the west side of Mount Rainier and sit amongst the flowers and watch the alpenglow on the glaciers at sunset.

I am really behind at work. I already have a ton of things on my plate, now I'm another week behind from being sick, and I only have a few days to make up the difference before I go on vacation.

That said, wonderful generous acts have come out of this. People have worked from home so they can take care of me and be at my beck and call and spend thirty patient minutes coaxing me to finish a bowl of soup. And then tell me not to thank them.

I wonder about people who get sick who don't have what I have. Lonely people with no friends or family to care for them. Single mothers who still need to send their kids off to school every day and pay the bills. Sweatshop workers who'll get fired if they miss a day. And I think wow. This miserable burping retching bag of flesh really is a lucky bird.

Poetry slam

I've never had much of an appreciation for poetry. Ok - let me be perfectly honest - I've always considered it as the height of self-indulgent emo. When forced to read it at school I always resisted through ruthless reductionism: breaking down the whole, wrenching the meaning and rhetorical device out of every syllable, memorising it for my exam and reducing it to just another thing on the checklist to rote learn. I can name a dozen books that have changed my life, but not a single poem. Maybe Tagore managed to raise a few hairs on the back of my neck, but that's about the extent of my engagement with verse.

Today I happened to attend a poetry slam at Bumbershoot, Seattle's annual music and arts festival. The format is very simple - it's a competition where the poets come on stage and recite their work, and pre-selected members of the audience judge their performances based on delivery and content. In concept it sounds a little too spelling bee, but the result is really amazing. For the first time in my life, I actually truly appreciated and enjoyed poetry.

The poets on stage ranged from a forty-year-old woman from Seattle, to a ragtag group of lefty uni students from Berkeley, to a bunch of underprivileged high school kids. They yelled, they whispered, they punched the air, they grinned knowingly, reciting on everything from Blackbeard the pirate to September 11 to childhood abuse to the art of seducing attractive hippies at Pike Place Market. Whatever the subject, the poetry came straight from the heart, and hearing it from the mouth of the poet was a transcendental experience. It brought all that wordsmithery, which never jumped off the page for me, to life.

I never thought I'd hear myself say the words "we should go to more poetry readings". But that was just incredible.

High Divide: Take Two

A few weekends ago, I did the classic High Divide hike in the Olympic range, a few hours west of Seattle. My excuse for taking this long to get this entry up is that I got a new laptop with Windows Vista, and the Vox bulk uploader only works with XP, and damned if I was going to bother uploading photos three at a time from the web interface. Anyway. It took a few weeks for me to remember that one of my work computers still has XP, so I uploaded them from there. So that's my story.

Back to the point: I actually attempted this hike once last year. That time, I ended up in hospital with a doctor scraping half the Olympic peninsula out of my knee. This was more indicative of my terrible foot-eye coordination than to the demanding nature of the hike, although it is one of the tougher hikes on the peninsula. I vowed to come back this year however, and did so with a trusty gang of friends. This time I amazingly made it through the two days without even tripping over my own feet once - possibly some sort of record.

High Divide is meant to be all about the views. The 3000 foot elevation gain gives you amazing vistas of the Olympic mountains, snow-capped still even in summer. Unfortunately, it rained almost the entire weekend and our whole journey was wrapped in thick fog. We looked out off cliff faces only to see a big soup of grey. It was a testament to the magic of the place that it was still an incredibly beautiful hike. We walked through lush, ancient rainforest, green meadows, high barren alpine ridges and past tranquil lakes. And fog is always good for one thing: black and white photography. Hence, in this post I'm going to let my pictures do the talking: a photo-essay, of sorts.

 

Rainforest
The forests of the Olympic peninsula are among the oldest on the planet. Every inch of these woods are teeming with life, from the tallest hemlock to the tiniest little 'shroom.

Meadow
The climb to the high country runs through impossibly green alpine meadows full of flowers and gurgling brooks. I kept breaking into "The hills are alive with the sound of music..."

Wildlife

My first ever bear sighting in the wild! We spent a few minutes watching this guy pottering around the meadow, and our day was made.

Black bear

Camping
We set up camp on a sheltered hill by Heart Lake. That silhouetted photo is of Sean doing his best hungry bear impersonation. There are so many bears out and about in the park that campers have to hang their food on bear wires 12 feet off the ground. Or hungry bears will smell your food and try to join you for an in-tent picnic.

Morning
We had to pack up in the morning in rain and fog. It didn't look like it was going to clear up or blow away very soon, also the tent was turning into a swimming pool, so we just decided to set off. Better out than in.

Raindrops
I got some good raindrop shots.

B/W
And some good dramatic black and whites.

High country
Despite the lack of views, the high country was still undeniably majestic, and still had some snow-covered patches even though it was late summer.

Llamas
We met a guy leading llamas up the mountain.

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Ending
It was good to rest our tired feet at the end (sprinkled with some feats of strength, of course).

Civilisation
The sun came out just as we hit Port Angeles. We consoled ourselves with a good meal at the Cornerhouse, best diner in town.

 

Sub-alpine adventures

Last weekend I organised a backcountry hiking trip in the Alpine Lakes Wilderness. The Alpine Lakes are a beautiful protected area of craggy peaks, lush forest, sub-alpine meadows and cool blue lakes just an hour or two from Seattle - and on the drive there, I thought for the thousandth time how lucky I am to live so close to such things. Our destination was Lake Caroline, a 6 mile (one way) hike that starts just south of the town of Leavenworth (one of my favourite places in the universe... or not). In the way of company I had Astha, Sean, Jon and Punit, all backcountry first-timers who wanted to come along on a warmup hike to get a feel for the weight of the pack and so on before a longer hike in the Olympics that we have planned in a few weeks.

The first couple of miles of the hike went through tall grassy meadows and some rocky sections, with a few foresty bits and stream crossings on the way, and those big peaks always in our peripheral vision (we knew we would have to climb up one eventually that day). Everyone was in good spirits and getting used to their packs well. We stopped for lunch at Little Eightmile Lake and met a friendly chipmunk.

From the first lake, the trail went straight up the side of a hill. We were certainly glad it was slightly overcast, because due to a forest fire a few years ago there was absolutely no cover and full sun would have been brutal. The climb went up and up until it reached a beautiful meadow blooming with alpine flowers.

Getting to Lake Caroline itself was a pretty steep descent. The thought in my mind was that getting up it the next morning was going to be a strain on the old quads. But anyway, the lake was beautiful, and we were the only people there. We found a spot for our tents, made some dinner, and then explored the lake for a bit. It would have been perfect if we weren't getting constantly swarmed by mozzies. Eventually we got sick of constantly swatting and getting bitten and retreated to a tent for some card games and listening to a reading of the latest Economist (thanks, Sean). 

The night got pretty cold, but I slept alright. The only casualty of the night were my favourite pair of hiking pants, which inexplicably got a huge rip in them somewhere between when we stopped hiking and when we went to bed. The next morning we refilled our water bottles and headed back down the mountain the way we came. The meadow looked even more beautiful in the morning sun. Around lunchtime, we stopped at Eightmile Lake, which is a side trail off the main trail to Lake Caroline. By that time it was extremely sunny and we were all hot and sweaty. We ended up jumping into the lake for a swim. It was freezing, but undeniably refreshing and lots of fun. Having dried ourselves off, we set a cracking pace back to the trailhead, and back to civilisation. All in all, a top weekend.

 

Utah Part 4: Driving and driving. And driving and driving. And driving.

The final day of the road trip started early - it was going to be a good twelve to fifteen hours getting back depending on how many stops we made. We were planning to leave Salt Lake City by 8am, which meant that everyone would have to be up by at least 7am. But we hadn't walked up the hill to the Capitol yet, and I'd heard the view of the mountains was pretty good up there, so a few of us got up around 5:45 and headed up the hill for a gander. The sun hadn't peeked up yet, but it was already light and fairly warm. We couldn't get too close to the capitol building, since it was under renovation, but again it looked like all the other state capitol buildings I've seen in the US so no big loss there. The air around the mountains was really hazy so we didn't get too good a look at them, but we saw a couple of nice churches and old buildings on the way down.

The salt flats of Utah

Driving west from Salt Lake City was pretty uneventful. It was just really, really flat. Followed by more flatness. And then more flatness. First stop once we were on the road was the aptly named Bonneville Salt Flats, right on the Utah-Nevada border, a big stretch of stark, flat land covered 6 feet deep in salt. It really was quite a bizarre landscape - I felt like I was on another planet. There was no vegetation anywhere - just hectares and hectares of salt with a highway running through the middle. According to a nearby signpost, the land here is so flat that it perfectly reflects the curvature of the earth. You can actually see the ground curving a little downwards as you look towards the horizon. Apparently on a clear day when you can see the mountains, they look like they're floating on air because you can't see their bases, as they're below the horizon.

Bonneville Salt Flats

Next major stop was in Somewhere, Idaho, in the middle of corn fields. An RV in front of us had caught on fire, and we were stuck in a traffic jam in the middle of nowhere. We ended up taking a side road through random farms and somehow finding our way back to the road we were on.

Idaho farmland

Last big stop was for lunner at Cracker Barrel, probably the most all-American restaurant I've ever been to apart from Ruby's. Jon had a major childhood nostalgia trip - when he was a kid, his family would stop at a Cracker Barrel each way on their annual road trip to Florida, and it was always the highlight of his vacation. To say he was mighty pleased with his meal would be an understatement: to put it in his words: "This is the greatest day of my entire life."

Cracker Barrel!

We got back to Seattle around 11:30, not too shabby, and finished off the trip with a healthy dose of Dick's.

Utah Part 3: Canyon Country

Previously on Utah: The Series...
Jon: Don't stop believing!
Milly: Look, arches!
Spaghetti: Windows Vista... he he.
Astha: Look, even more arches!
Sean: Shit guys, I'm out of water.
Kosta: Yeah, this better be a frigging good arch.
Jon: Don't stop believing!
Sam: I wonder how long I can hide the fact that I got converted to Mormonism. I was alone, and they were just so friendly!
Karl: Sneeeeeeeeggghhh... vroooooommmmm... *stall*

*roll opening credits*

Day 4: The Canyonlands

The Wendy's Baconator

We woke up with ambitious plans to concoct the greatest camping breakfast in history, only to be thwarted by my camp stove running out of gas, and the discovery that the extra canister we picked up from the grocery store was about as useful as an electric blanket in a Utah summer. (Note to self: Coleman canisters and MSR stoves do not fit together.) We decided to stop at the Wendy's in Moab for brekkie instead, a decision I would have resisted slightly more if I'd known that, unlike McDonald's, Wendy's does not have a breakfast menu. Anyway, I sucked it up and ordered a spicy chicken burger and a salad, which seemed like the option my still-awakening stomach would be least perturbed by. Kosta, on the other hand, bravely decided to sample the latest pride of the Wendy's menu: the Baconator. It was large, greasy, large, greasy and greasy. He came to regret it, but I do admire the man for his bravery.

After Kosta's longer than usual restroom break it was onwards to Canyonlands National Park. Two main things struck me immediately about this place: its remoteness, and its scale. Even the entrance is hours from any town, and in contrast to the more well-developed American national parks like Arches, there is pretty much zilch in the way of infrastructure such as piped water. Of course that meant that there was virtually noone there, which suited me just fine. Amazing as some American parks undeniably are, my enjoyment has often been a little dimmed by having to share them with seemingly half the country.

The remoteness of the place is probably linked to how huge it is - you could fit the whole of Arches into the area of Canyonlands about 6 or 7 times. Getting running water to the heart of a place of that size would be a considerable challenge. In fact, the park is so huge that it's divided into three districts - Island in the Sky, the Needles and the Maze - and you can't see more than one section in a single day's visit. We decided to spend our day exploring the Needles area. Just the drive in was enough to give us some idea of the scale of the place, and it was simply breathtaking. We drove past huge spur after huge spur and they just kept coming. After some time we came out on a more flat area and you could see out distances that would be inconceivable in the Pacific Northwest. It was incredible.

Something unfortunate that we quickly discovered about Canyonlands is that to see the really spectacular postcard places, such as Chesler Park, it's quite a hike - about 5 miles one way. Given the stifling heat that was not even an option. Instead, we decided to hike the short Cave Springs trail. When I say short I mean short - around a mile round trip - but it was plenty eventful and gave us lots of shade. The hike started in amongst a cluster of strange, mushroom-shaped rocks that formed natural shady canopies and caves. We came across an old cowboy camp under one of these canopies, complete with picnic tables. Those wild west cowboys knew how to roll. We also saw a bunny rabbit sheltering in the shadows. We then had to climb a rudimentary ladder up onto the tops of the mushrooms, where the trail was obviously more exposed and marked by rock cairns. From this elevation above the shrubline we had an amazing view of our surroundings and I was again floored by the utter vastness of the place. Capturing it on camera was simply impossible so I just stood and enjoyed and was humbled.

From Canyonlands it was back to Salt Lake City to meet back up with Sam. And after a lot of driving, exposure to heat and a heavy dinner I was happy to collapse, showered and sweet-smelling again, back into a comfy hotel bed.

In the next instalment: the marathon cross-country drive from Salt Lake City to Seattle. Will they make it? This blog entry proves that at least one lived to tell the tale.

Utah Part 2: More Arches than you ever thought you wanted to see.

In the last instalment, our heroine was pigging out on campstove-cooked three cheese tortellini in the middle of the Utah wilderness. Her adventure continues herein...

Day 3: Arches National Park

I woke up early next morning to the birds. That's something I really love about camping. I hadn't had a chance to check out the lake the evening before, so I took a short walk down there while I was waiting for the others to wake up. It was a nice enough lake, but too stagnant to seem swimmable. Once the others were up we maintained the theme of roughing it while not really roughing it, with a hearty brekkie of scrambled eggs, bacon, campfire-toasted bread and tea. After that we set off for Arches National Park.

Arches is a pretty surreal-looking place. You drive off the main highway past the visitors' centre up a series of long switchbacks that eventually lead to a big red plateau. Then you round a corner and abruptly come upon a huge, majestic row of towering rocks, almost like a row of big city buildings. It's aptly named Park Avenue and is the first major formation you see coming into the park.

Park Avenue, Arches NP

We spent the entire day exploring Arches, with highlights including the Balanced Rock (as the name suggests, it was a piece of rock whose position on top of another rock seemed impossibly precarious), the North and South Windows (of course, someone just had to call the viewpoint for this "Windows Vista"), and actually finding a spot of shade to eat our picnic lunch. It was a really, really hot day.

We managed to somehow get to Devil's Garden, which is meant to be the most scenic hike at Arches, at the hottest part of the day, around 3:30pm. It was almost 110F (40C) with very little shade to go around. The hike itself was not very strenuous but the heat and dryness were really energy-sapping. We collapsed sweatily at every shady spot we came across. Along the way we saw the massive Landscape Arch, and a stunning view of a huge valley full of rock fins. At the end of the hike was the Double O arch, which was a formation with one arch on top of the other - basically a big rock with two big holes punched out of it. It was pretty cool (and hot - ha ha).

The Devil's Garden hike exhausted us so much that we didn't really feel up to the 3 mile hike to Delicate Arch, the most famous arch in the park. Instead, we went to a more distant viewpoint to take a look, and after that headed out of the park. The drive home was amazing - as we drove through the mountains, we could see a huge storm brewing several kilometres away from us, interspersed with lightning flashes. The clouds were brooding and dramatic, and behind us was a spectacular red sunset. It was simply beautiful - although in the back of my mind I was a little freaked out at the prospect of driving up a narrow, muddy, gravelly mountain road should the storm head our way.

A Utah sunset

Luckily and unluckily, the rain only just caught us as we pulled back into the campsite. We dashed into our respective tents and once again I was glad for the little tent flap verandah on my tent because we were able to cook a hot dinner under it. Having my stove on just outside the tent also warmed it up considerably. We all piled into the boys' tent to eat and chat until the rain subsided. Once it was all clear we came outside and Alex got a campfire going again. We made smores (s'more what?) and marshmallows and hot dogs and talked and looked at the thousands and thousands of stars till late.

In the next instalment of Utah: The Series: our intrepid protagonists explore the vastness of the Canyonlands.

Utah Part 1: Hijinks in Mormon Country.

A bunch of friends and I took a couple of days off last week to go road tripping and spend the 4th of July in Utah.

The reaction I am used to by now when I tell people this: *blank stare* "Utah? Why the hell Utah?"

Most people's impression of Utah is a big, red (in politics and landscape) desert full of pious Mormons. Why would you spend two days of your oh-so-precious vacation time in such a place? I had the same impression till the first time I visited Utah about a month ago, when I went to Zion National Park and found out just how incredibly beautiful this state is. That single weekend was enough to make me fall head over heels for the place and want to come back again for more exploring.

The road to Utah

Day 0: The journey begins

We set off from Seattle on Tuesday afternoon, the seven of us crammed into two cars with all our paraphernalia, but in high spirits nonetheless. It was a pretty tiring 7 or 8 hour drive to our stop for the night - Boise, the capital city of Idaho. By the time we got there it was well past 1am. I think Kosta and Sean were just glad to get to Boise in one piece - the last time they attempted this drive as interns a couple of years ago, they ended up stuck in Somewhere, Oregon in the middle of the night with a melted car.

Day 1: Boise/Salt Lake City

We spent a couple of hours the next morning exploring the city centre of Boise. It was nice enough, with rustic buildings (most seemed to be faux-rustic), a memorial park by the river, and the state capitol. I swear these American capitol buildings come out of a DIY-kit or something. I've seen 4 and they've all looked exactly the same.

We then set off for Salt Lake City, the capital of Utah and the world headquarters of the Mormon church. The first thing you notice when you drive into SLC is the ring of mountains that surrounds it, and the first thing you notice when you walk the streets is the cleanliness. For a medium-sized city, it's unnaturally clean. And quiet - almost to the point of being dead. We actually walked by what looked like an abandoned police station.

The centrepiece of Salt Lake City is Temple Square, a huge green leafy area that (among other things) contains the Salt Lake Temple (the largest and most important Mormon temple in the world), the Tabernacle church/auditorium, the Mormon office tower and two visitors' centres. We did a tour of the square and got a good look at everything bar the temple, which you have to be a baptised Mormon to enter. After dinner at what seemed like the only restaurant open in the entire city, we plomped ourselves down in a nearby park to watch the 4th of July fireworks, sing the bits of "the Star Spangled Banner" that we knew, and listen to Jon amuse himself with statements such as "Stay the course", "Support our troops" and "Mission accomplished".

Day 2: The road to Moab

And then there were 6. Sam stayed behind in SLC, while the rest of us drove on further south towards Moab, the main outpost town for Arches and Canyonlands National Parks. We had a campsite booked in the Manti Lasal national forest, high in the mountains east of Moab. The road up to the campsite provided plenty of excitement. The views were great, first winding along the Colorado river and surrounded by towering cliffs, then later climbing higher into the mountains and providing an amazing view of Castle Valley below.

About halfway along the road to the campsite, we came across a band of about 6 horses blocking our path. We spent half an hour just trying to coax them out of the way with food, water and so on. I kept getting scared that Spaghets was going to get kicked. Once we finally got past them we drove further along another five minutes only to come across another roadblock, bovine this time. Luckily, cows are not horses and moved out of the way with very little effort on our part.

Our campsite at Lake Warner was really nice. We were right next a grassy meadow which led on to a small lake (not swimmable, but pleasant nonetheless). Deer and songbirds were rife. We set up camp and ate like kings thanks to my camping stove - three cheese tortellini, yum. Spaghetti started a camp fire and we sat around drinking some beers and singing. I was most impressed with Jon's ability to sing the whole of Bohemian Rhapsody - all parts - without missing a beat. I think this is where Jon and Kosta's obsession with the 80's Journey song "Don't Stop Believing" also arose. To the others' mortification this became the de facto theme song of our trip.

Oh, just a side note, the pit restroom at the campsite was ridiculously clean and sweet-smelling. They must have had about four Glade Plug-ins there - I guess those campground hosts didn't have much else to do for a month in the middle of nowhere. Anyway, it was a pleasure to pee in there.

That's all for now - days 3, 4 and 5 in my next post. My full trip album is here.