DryStoneGarden

A few months ago, I mentioned that the US Census had sent out a form for our tepee. No one, of course, resides in the tepee; we said zero occupants and mailed it back, but then I guess the census was left to wonder who had filled out the form if no one was living in it. They’ve now sent two separate workers to verify that there really is no one living in it. I suppose a tepee does sound like it could be the home of an anti-census militia activist. Neither of the census workers spoke enough English to even know what a tepee was, and until this weekend we hadn’t found time to put it up yet, so we’ve had some rather long and involved conversations to explain the situation. In a couple of weeks some friends will be coming to visit; we have to just hope the census doesn’t send out a third worker while we have people in the tepee.

Over Memorial Day weekend, Anita and I got in a couple of days of climbing at Lover’s Leap on Highway 50 in the Sierras. It’s one of my favorite places in California.

The rock is easier to climb than it looks because it has a ton of horizontal dikes — veins of quartz and feldspar that erode more slowly than the rest of the rock, leaving lots of positive edges to hold onto and stand on. There were patches of snow at the base of some of the climbs from the big storm last week.

Lover’s Leap is the site of one of the most famous rock climbing videos, a segment of Dan Osman free soloing 400 feet in 4 minutes. Climbing videos can be boring even for climbers, but this one is fun even if you’ve seen it before. Using a rope and climbing with a concern for our mortality, Anita and I took over two hours when we did this climb, about thirty times as slow.

The Tepee in April

Somehow I’ve managed to post nearly a year and a half without mentioning that our yard has a tepee during the dry season. I photographed it several times last year, but I think I needed some time between it and the post about our outdoor shower. I don’t want to sound too feral.
I may not have posted about it here, but the tepee hasn’t escaped the eyes of our government. This week we received census forms addressed to two different residences, one to our house and the other addressed to our tepee. It’s pretty funny to receive official government mail addressed to a tepee, but it’s also rather Big Brotherish, as the tepee hasn’t been up since October. Though maybe that’s just the speed our government works at; a census worker walked the neighborhood last summer, and now we see the fruits of that labor. Maybe we should reply as occupants of the tepee.

Marlborough Sounds, New Zealand

We learned about the unique charms of a tepee while traveling in New Zealand (tepees are surprisingly popular in the northern, sun-belt part of the South Island) where we stayed for several weeks in a tepee overlooking the Marlborough Sounds. It was an ecotourism place called Vanishing Point, and we helped build a larger tepee that was seventeen feet tall and wide enough for beds for eight people. The place was only accessible by boat, and there were other logistical challenges as well, but it was a beautiful place with a panoramic view of the Sounds. Vanishing Point doesn’t have a website anymore, so I think it’s defunct.

A Really Big Tepee Under Construction

Our tepee is much more modest and homemade. Anita sewed two canvas tarps together according to the pattern we saw in New Zealand, and we cut some of our bamboo for the poles. We put carpets and a futon and a little stone table with a candle lantern, and we call it the summer house. When we have house guests we run electricity out to it. One or two people were skeptical beforehand, but everyone leaves singing its praises. There’s something very very nice about a tepee, like it’s the cathedral version of a tent.

The Tepee in May

Manos Arriba!

Here are a few photos of our trip to Baja. We just got back, and we’re still catching up on everything. Apparently, there has been a bit of rain while we were gone. Our plants are happy, but no one else seems to have enjoyed it.
I can’t say I missed it. Baja was great, one of the best trips we’ve taken and definitely our best bicycle tour. We travelled about half the peninsula, from San Ignacio to San Jose del Cabo, cycling about 300 miles and busing through the boring section south of Ciudad Constitucion and the busy section near Cabo; the 150 miles of riding along the Sea of Cortez from Santa Rosalia to south of Lareto was perfect in just about every way. And, the sign of a great trip, at the end we felt ready to come back home but also determined to go back to Baja in the future. We spent a lot of time checking out the Baja plants, so I should have some posts about the desert soon.

Volcan las Tres Virgenes

It’s a big desert down there, so some of the small-format photos don’t do it justice. As always, you can see them at a bigger size if you click on them.

Cemetary South of Santa Rosalia

Playa Ligui and Isla Danzante

Roadside Tire Repair

The Plaza at San Jose del Cabo

Playa Escondida, Bahia Concepcion

Taylors Mistake

Here are some more New Zealand watercolors and drawings I scanned from another one of Anita’s notebooks. These are from an earlier trip, travelling without me. A little random, I know, to post landscape studies of New Zealand while I’m traveling in Mexico, but Mexico posts will have to wait until I get home.

Pohutakawa aka New Zealand Christmas Tree

Willow Tree in Queenstown

Cave Rock, Sumner

Akaroa

The Remarkables

Taylor’s Mistake, Cave Rock, and Akaroa are all near Christchurch. The Remarkables are in the south, near Queenstown.

Te Hapu

I mentioned that we didn’t have a camera with us at Te Hapu; it got edited when we were trying to get everything to fit on our bikes. Instead, Anita carried watercolors and painted landscape studies at the places where we spent a significant amount of time.

Te Nikau

The watercolor of Te Nikau, on the west coast further south than Te Hapu, scanned in a little differently than the others; I’m not sure why. We got a bit stuck there, waiting over a week for the rains to let up enough so we could keep cycling. It was a beautiful place to be stuck — lush rainforest, dramatic cliffs, wild beaches — and I loved the excess of greenery everywhere, but all that vegetation needs a lot of rain, so I came to the conclusion that the west coast might be better seen from a car. We had better weather and better cycling in the northern parts of the island, Te Hapu, Upper Moutere, Abel Tasman, and the Marlborough Sound.

Upper Moutere

Abel Tasman

Marlborough Sound