Noisy-Diobsud Wilderness: Watson Lakes traverse

Dogs Playing in the Cascades

ManDogsMountain

A preview of my next book project, an extensive survey of the use of dogs by explorers.

Mount Baker Dogs

Wild wolf dog

Up

Heading up Welcome Pass, a trail that gains 2800 vertical feet in a little under 2 miles. It is the quickest way up to the alpine meadows but it is also the most grueling.

I love the alpine mushroom growing in the snow.

Welcome Pass wildflowers

Flower Dogs

It's really hard to get photos of two active and quick dogs like Lupe and Marcos. But every once in a while there is a moment of repose that comes after a long slog up a mountain. It usually comes up in a wide open field, a sanctuary away from it all, a place where nothing happens. In this field of wild flowers, we just stayed still and looked at Mount Baker and Mount Shuksan looming in the distance with the sun reverberating off their glaciers. We all sat still basking in the sunlight with really nothing better to do in the universe.

Dogs of the Explorers

"Indeed, having a mascot, a pickup mutt, has been a long American tradition dating back at least to explorer Alexander Mackenzie’s 1793 cross-continent journey. Lewis and Clark kept along a Newfoundland named Seaman that protected camp and provided companionship while shooing away grizzlies. Having a pickup dog is about as “American” as apple pie. Those of us who travel with dogs know that when one observes nature through the eyes (and noses) of their dogs, they can see all of the details that one would have missed otherwise. And as traveling companions, there is nothing better than a dog, who rarely complains, and is frequently a source of a lot of laughs."

From the forthcoming Pick-Up Dogs: How Two Rescue Dogs Save the West from Being Won

Centerlining

Approaching the centerline strip by strip.

Images from the Future: Shanghai

Welcome to Shanghai
Evaded affection
Pieces of pieces of the heart.
Thank you very much.
--Original poem written on a plastic bag from the fabric market

Shanghai Pudong International Airport

Buttonville

It wasn’t until we went to Buttonville that I finally knew we were in real China. The rugged busyness of this layered hall of fabrics and materials is a reminder of China’s proficient and industrious nature. Although it is a market and not a factory, Buttonville’s buzzing activity is not unlike what one can find in the factories in and around cities like Chongqing, a somewhat unknown Sichuanese city that is home to some 30 million souls, which are like small towns themselves where thousands of workers spend the majority of their time on Earth. The factories have shops and places to drop off kids who, odds are, will also be working there in the future. The China of the 90s was like US during the 1870s up till the early 1900s when it was experiencing a dramatic industrial rise. Everything just happened bigger and quicker in China. A Pyrrhic victory, the Chinese factory masters are the Carnegies, the JP Morgans and the Chases of today and they work deals with bribes to get more and more for themselves, creating bigger gaps between those who have access to the fruits of China’s rise and those who are just manual labor.

Nevertheless, places like Buttonville are humming with activity and I found myself quite at home enjoying the scenery here.

Fabric Market

Note the sign for James Tailor. Shopping for suit material and coats in the Shanghai Fabric Market. A level 5 language task with 0 level Mandarin. Greer’s tailor, Tailor Zhu, made a fine suit for me and it was fun to interact with him.

The Set of Blade Runner

People prone to epileptic seizures from flashing neon lights should avoid travel to Shanghai.

Dwarfed

Everything after China will be boring.