Tales from UT-OH! The Ten Questions People Most Frequently Ask Bone… The Interview

June 3, 2026June 2, 2026 / Curt Mekemson / 1 Comment

Bone has been in many tough situations in his life; he can handle tough questions. Here he rests on top of a saguaro cactus in Arizona looking for ICE agents. His lack of official papers, or even a birth certificate, can cause problems at times. –Curt

Q: Do you really talk? We’re speaking ethics here, Bone. Blogging is about transparency. That means honesty.

A. Are you crazy? Have you ever heard a bone talk? Of course I don’t talk. I just think out loud.

Q: Curt sometimes refers to you as he. Does this mean you are a male bone?

A. No. He makes assumptions, lots of them. He was showing me to a biologist at a writers’ conference in San Francisco and she suggested I have my DNA tested. “Just cut a small chip off of it,” she said nonchalantly. “You can determine its sex and breed.”

“Just cut a small chip off of it!” Outrageous! I am not some it to have chips cut out of. Besides, I lead a rich fantasy life and have no desire to know whether I am male or female. Call me she, he, or Bone, but never it.

Um, I think Bone is definitely a male. –Curt

Q: You have traveled all over the world and met thousands of people. How do they usually react to you?

A. With befuddlement. You should have seen the look on the face of the customs agent in New Zealand who tried to seize me as ‘animal matter.’ But emotions run the gamut. There was a Japanese man who got off a tour bus at Yellowstone National Park and wanted to hold me for good luck. Soon there were 40 other Japanese handing me around, oohing, and taking photos. I was thrilled. On the opposite side, I know a woman who refuses to touch me, like I have cooties. “I don’t know where Bone has been,” she states primly. Not surprisingly, there is also jealousy. “I want to be you and travel the world,” a good friend in Sacramento told me.

Some people act like I have cooties. This woman almost dropped me and then washed her hands! –Bone

Peggy and Curt’s niece, Christina, on the other hand, show the proper way to treat me. —Bone

Q: What is your favorite thing to do?

A. Visit graveyards; there are lots of old bones there. My favorite grave is Smokey Bear’s in Capitan, New Mexico. I once stood on his tombstone for ten minutes trying to communicate but all I could get was something about ‘growling and a prowling and a sniffing the air.’ A close second is the grave of Calamity Jane in Deadwood, South Dakota. What a woman! These are difficult choices, though, when you toss in the likes of Hemingway, Daniel Boone and Billy the Kid. On the light side I once visited Ben and Jerry’s graveyard of discarded ice cream flavors in Vermont. My spookiest experience was a visit to the Capela dos Ossos, the Chapel of Bones, in Evora, Portugal, where an estimated 5,000 corpses were dug up to decorate the walls of the chapel. Those folks definitely have a skeleton in their closet, lots of them. The skulls kept whispering, “Join us, Bone.” I ran.

Bone has a special fondness for unusual graves. Here he hangs out with Billy the Kid in New Mexico. Has he been in a gunfight? Are those bloodstains on his vest? -Curt

The camera broke when Curt tried to take a photo in the Chapel of Bones but here is my all time favorite sculpture at Burning Man, the Bone Tree. -Bone

BTW, I married the lovely Bonetta at Burning Man in 2013. -Bone

Q: So, what’s your second most favorite?

A. Too hard; I am a dilettante dabbler, but here are a few.

Wandering, of course, anywhere and everywhere and by all modes: bikes, kayaks, rafts, skis, backpacks, sailboats, planes, helicopters, trains, cars, RVs, etc. I’ve been to all 50 states in the US and to over 50 countries worldwide.
Visiting wild, remote and beautiful natural areas. I started life wandering the Sierra Nevada Mountains, John Muir’s Range of Light. I’ve been to the majority of National Parks.
Seeking out the strange such as ghosts and aliens (I’ve been to Roswell four times and Area 51 once).
Attending unique events like Burning Man.
Meeting weird people.

Bone backpacking on the John Muir Trail. -Curt

Bone, Curt and Tom Lovering at 10th and R Street Fox and Goose Restaurant in Sacramento. Tom owned the Alpine West backpacking and wilderness specialty store at this location when he and Curt discovered Bone in 1977. (Photo by Peggy Mekemson.)

Q: Tom Lovering and Curt ‘discovered’ you in 1977 when backpacking south of Lake Tahoe. You have wandered extensively with both. Which do you like best?

A. Eeyore, the jackass who can’t keep track of his tail. We’re traveling companions and he saved me from being strung up and buried on Boothill in Tombstone, Arizona. I’d robbed a bank, cheated at cards and hung out with women of questionable character. (This is what I mean by having a rich fantasy life. It’s also known as evasion.)

I was in deep trouble in Tombstone. Wyatt Earp had arrested me for robbing a bank and Doc Holiday was checking me for weapons. -Bone

My life as Bone was in serious jeopardy. -Bone

Odds were I was going to end up on Boothill, along with Billy Clanton. -Bone

But then, the ever brave Eeyore came to my rescue! I hopped on his back and we went riding off into the sunset while leaping over large rocks.

Q: Which of your journeys has been most memorable?

A. I would have to say traveling the length of Africa in the back of a truck from the Sahara Desert in the north to Cape Town in the south with Tom. Almost falling off the back of a riverboat into a piranha infested section of the Amazon River would have to be a close second. I was perched on the back railing doing a photo shoot with Peggy. And then, of course, there was the 10,000-mile bike trip with Curt in 1989 and hiking 750 miles down the Pacific Crest Trail with him to celebrate his 75th Birthday in 2018.

Bone on photo shoot barely escapes falling off the edge into the piranha infested waters of the Amazon. “I was falling off when Curt leapt across the boat and grabbed me.”

I was much smarter when I rafted down the Colorado. I wore a life jacket! -Bone

That didn’t protect me from pirates. The dreaded pirate Steve held a knife to my throat and demanded to know where I buried my treasure. -Bone

Q: You are often seen scrambling over rocks in remote sections of the Southwestern United States. What’s that all about?

A. I’ve developed a fondness for Native American rock art. It resonates with my bone-like nature. It’s also another excuse to go wandering around in the outdoors. Plus, some of those places might be haunted and it is a great place to look for UFOs. A number of petroglyphs look amazingly like aliens. Finally, wandering in the desert is known to be good for the soul. Ask the Prophets of yore.

How can this guy and his strange dog not be aliens? -Curt

Q: Ah, being a born-again bone, do you have any insights into the great unknown?

A. Ommmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

Q: Finally, and this may be a little sensitive, but do you always run around naked?

A. What kind of a question is that? Do you think I am uncivilized? For shame. I am the epitome of haute couture! A bow and arrow toting, card-carrying NRA member in Montana has designed and made me two leather vests. What’s more, a 90 plus year old woman in Kansas going on 20 with a crush on Johnny Depp and a room devoted to the Egyptian gods, has made me a kilt and several other outfits. Face it; I am hot stuff, clothed or naked. I may take up a modeling career.

Rod Hilton fashions a new leather vest for bone. — My Bahamian/Canadian friend makes me a new vest in the wilds of Montana. –Bone

Bone, wearing his newly made kilt, fights off a ferocious sea monster in a scene straight out of ‘Pirates of the Caribbean.’ –Curt

Next post I’ll do a wrap on the many places Bone has been in his 49 years of wandering the world.

Bone, feeling a little low, in Death Valley National Park. It is one of the numerous stops he made with Curt on his 10,000 mile bicycle ride through the US and Canada.

Peggy and I are presently in the Greek city of Nafplio on the Peloponnesian Pininsula. On our way down from Athens yesterday, we stopped at several Ancient Greek sites, one of which was Mycenae (where Helen of Troy originally came from). I was going to show you the gate to the city until Peggy pointed out this kitten on the trail up to it.

Dog Stew, Smelly Feet, a Rattlesnake and Hypothermia… The Story of How Bone Was Found: Part IV

June 1, 2026May 31, 2026 / Curt Mekemson / 4 Comments

Peggy and I are off journeying through Greece, Scotland and Ireland over the next several weeks, so there won’t be much time for blogging. Initially, I decided to put the blog on hold, but I’ve decided to republish some of my favorite posts that may eventually make it into UT-OH!.

Today’s post completes the tale of how Tom Lovering and I found a bone in the Sierra Nevada Montain Range and he/it began his transition to being Bone.

Bone has been wandering the world for close to 50 years. Given his nature, it is only natural that he would end up at Burning Man (14 times).

It was a pleasant hike down to Carson Pass on Highway 88 and relatively dry since we were on a south-facing slope.

Kit Carson came through here in February of 1844 along with John C. Fremont. It wasn’t pleasant then. The snow was deep and food was limited. They ended up dining off of their horses, mules and the camp dog. The dog apparently went quite well with pea soup. Later, the trail they discovered would become a major entry point for the 49ers and run through the foothill town of Diamond Springs where I was raised.

Frog Lake was a short jaunt off of the Tahoe-Yosemite/PCT near Carson Pass.

There was nary a bar, restaurant or gas station near the Pass so we hiked on another three miles to Lake Winnemucca. Rain was threatening and I set up my tube tent, a large sheet of plastic shaped into a round tunnel. It wasn’t particularly sturdy, but it was light and dry.

Tom, on the other hand, was carrying a luxurious three-season tent. He stacked the women in head to toe and ended up smelling April’s feet all night. I suspect he rubbed them, as well.

The next day was all downhill: down to Fourth of July Lake, down to Summit City Canyon, and down Summit City Creek to Camp Irene on the Mokelumne River. After dropping 4000 feet in 14 miles, I found myself bone tired again. Camp Irene provided an attractive campsite but turned out to be rattlesnake country. We kept a careful eye out but I missed one when I went out to utilize nature’s restroom.

I had discovered the perfect toilet spot, dug my cat hole and was baring my behind when one buzzed at me. It’s amazing how fast you can pull up your pants. I was lucky the snake didn’t bite me on the butt. It had crawled into the hole. We avoided a fate neither of us would have wanted!

I grabbed a stick and chased him away with a couple of sharp prods for good measure. He was lucky I was something of a nature boy. Otherwise he would have been smashed. The next time I did any serious bathroom duty was when I was parked on a flush toilet at Lake Alpine.

Backpacking out of Camp Irene is a challenge. The 4000 feet we dropped the day before in 14 miles we were now expected to re-climb in five. Low clouds filled the canyon. It wasn’t raining but it was cold and damp. Somewhere in the mist a male grouse made its familiar ‘whump, whump, whump’ sound, working to attract a female companion. I empathized. Dripping wet Buck Bush grabbed at our legs.

To stay warm and dry we broke out our rain gear. Lynn moved from being cold and miserable to shivering and not caring. She was on the edge of hypothermia, a very dangerous state. The body loses its ability to maintain warmth and the rational mind ceases to function. Coordination spirals downward. It is very easy to die.

Tom and I acted quickly. I fired up my Svea stove and Tom had Lynn stand over it wearing her cagoule, a dress like poncho. We positioned the stove carefully. While this wasn’t a solution to hypothermia one found in survival guides, it worked. (The recommended solution is to break out your sleeping bag and crawl in naked with the victim.) Within minutes, Lynn was ready to tackle the rest of the mountain.

Hypothermia can strike fast but it can also be quickly cured… assuming of course you catch it in time. Tom was next.

“Curt,” he called plaintively from off in the brush where he had gone to pee. I rushed over and begin laughing. He had managed the first half of his chore but couldn’t zip his pants up. His mind was working fine but his coordination had gone south. He was all thumbs. I called Lynn over to help as I returned to the trail chuckling. There are some chores a trek leader doesn’t need to handle.

We hiked the rest of the way into Alpine Lake without undo difficulty. Since our ride wasn’t coming until the next day, we rented a one-room cabin to share. Rain poured down outside as we relived our adventures and made up tall tales way into the night. Our journey was winding down, but it wasn’t over.

I was shaking the dirt out of my pack at home when the bone fell out. Apparently I had been carrying it all the way from Winnemucca Lake. “Darn Lovering,” I thought to myself, “I am going to get even.” I decided to keep the bone. There would be an opportunity on a future trip to slip it back into Tom’s pack. I would have revenge!

And that’s it, the story of Bone’s discovery. It started like so many things in our lives often do, as a non-event. Bone didn’t come up as a subject during our night in the cabin. Naked jumping ladies, lost trails, swollen rivers, gorgeous country, rattlesnakes, the physical challenge, hypothermia and even the upside-down map were the stories of legend, not a small, insignificant bone that came from who knows what.

But time has the power to rewrite history. When Tom opened his suitcase in France at the beginning of a two-year exploration of Asia, Africa and Europe, he found a surprise, Bone. I had my revenge. When I moved to Alaska and was unpacking my boxes, who should fall out but Bone. The tales go on and on…

Next: Bone answers 10 questions people frequently ask him.

Bone on a 20 day raft trip down the Colorado River in 2010 through the Grand Canyon. He travelled with his own PFD. Here he is floating on the Little Colorado River.

Peggy and I are back in Athens. This morning we are heading down to Nafplio on the Peloponnesian Peninsula. This is a photo of the Parthenon that Peggy took when we were here last week.

Tales from UT-OH!: Bone Is Found… Part 4

May 29, 2026May 31, 2026 / Curt Mekemson / 7 Comments

Today, I am continuing the story of how Bone was found. Bone was just plain bone when I found him in a field of Corn Lilies.

A final view of Lake Aloha. Pyramid Peak, where Tom was married, is the far peak on the left. I took this photo during my PCT Trek.

I was up early the next morning and eager to hit the trail. My body was starting to adjust and feel good. More importantly, the resort at Echo Lake was calling. A quick breakfast and we were off.

I took the lead with Tom following and Terry trailing. Soon we had climbed out of Lake Aloha, passed Margery Lake and worked our way across Haypress Meadows where cattlemen once harvested grass for winter feed.

As we began our descent into Echo Lake, I left my companions and the Desolation Wilderness behind. The vision of cold beer and a hamburger drove me on. Lynn and April were supposed to rejoin us at the Echo Lake Resort.

There was a decision to make when I reached Echo Lake. I could continue to follow the Tahoe-Yosemite Trail around the upper and lower lakes or I could call the Lodge from a phone located at the end of Upper Lake. It would send a boat taxi to pick me up for five bucks. The trail was hot, dusty, and filled with day hikers. And I was ready to take a break from backpacking. I made the call.

A half hour later, the throbbing of the motorboat’s engine caught my attention as the boat worked its way up the lake. Soon it arrived, coughing slightly. The boat slowed and bumped into the pier. My ‘taxi driver’ was a 16-year old plus teenager who had managed to snag a great summer job.

“Hop on,” he told me. An elderly couple was along for the ride. I nodded at them. I was halfway between the boat and the pier when I heard a commotion.

“Over here, Curt,” a familiar voice shouted. I looked up. A few yards away alders hid another pier. Two very attractive and very naked women were jumping up and down to get my attention.

They succeeded.

It was April and Lynn. They had come over on an earlier boat and were working in a little sunbathing while waiting for us. The young boatman and the old man were all eyes. The elderly woman looked thoroughly irritated and glared at all of us, especially her husband.

“Uh, I think I’ll stay here,” I told my driver.

“Can I stay too?” he asked and grinned at me. The elderly man wisely stayed silent.

I joined the girls as the boat coughed its way back toward the resort. Tom showed up soon afterwards. We were waiting for Terry when the ranger showed up.

“There has been a complaint about naked women jumping up and down over here,” he told us.

“Boy, I wish I would have seen them,” Tom responded. I am not sure the ranger bought our story but he wandered off in search of other criminals.

The same boatman picked us up and told me that the first thing the elderly woman did when she got back was to complain loud and long about the perverted people across the lake. She even cornered a ranger. My new young friend speculated that the ranger came looking for us as an excuse to escape. “Or maybe he wanted to see the naked ladies,” I noted.

The resort at Echo Lake, the dream of many a backpacker out on the trail. This photo is from my trek down the PCT.

We made it to the resort ourselves and celebrated our brief return to civilization with a hamburger and a cold beer (or was it more). My system complained about the third as we hiked on across Highway 50 and up to Benwood Meadow where we stopped for the night, some 34 miles from Meeks Bay.

Our fourth day started out as a typical backpack day. We climbed. It was gentle at first and then became more serious. Once again snow-covered large segments of the trail. We spread out and searched for tree blazes. I scrambled over a particularly steep section and found myself in a high meadow.

Something half buried in a field of young corn lilies caught my eye. A few days earlier it would have been covered with snow. Curiosity led me to detour through the still soggy ground. Mud sucked at my boots. My treasure turned out to be a disappointing, short, squat bone. Gnaw marks suggested it had been part of someone’s feast. I was about to toss it when a devious thought popped into my mind.

My wife, Peggy, and I took Bone back to the area where he was found. The snow was gone and the Corn Lillies large. He decided to take a nap. Or maybe he was sunbathing— naked.

“Trash,” I hollered at Tom and held up the bone. We had a game where if one person found a piece of trash, the other person had to carry it. But first you had to catch the other person.

Tom sprinted down the trail with me in pursuit. Unfortunately, we had made it over the mountain and our route ranged from flat to downhill. Tom was very fast. We had traveled two miles and were almost to Showers Lake before he stopped, concerned about leaving our companions behind. Very reluctantly, he took the bone and stuffed it in his pack.

“How can you classify a bone as trash,” he whined. I figured Tom would toss his new travelling companion as soon as I was out of sight.

Next: Dog stew, smelly feet and hypothermia.

Peggy and I are staying on the Greek Island of Tinos. As this photo from the charming town of Pyrgos suggests, there aren’t many tourists here. It’s the reason we chose the Island! There are, however…

A Jay By Any Other Name, Is Still a Jay… Plus Seven Other Fun and Interesting Birds of Costa Rica

April 20, 2026April 25, 2026 / Curt Mekemson / 20 Comments

We heard its screech before we saw it. “Jay,” I announced to Peggy. Its call is unmistakeable unless it is modified because of its situation. Or mood. At our property in Oregon, I even heard them make the sound of a hawk— to amuse themselves, I’m sure. It scares the heck out of other birds and small mammals. Their personality, intelligence, and possible warped sense of humor, makes them one of my all time favorite birds.

These handsome birds with their Groucho Marx eyebrows are known as a Brown Jays (*Psilorhinus morio*). Their range reaches from the Rio Grande Valley in southern Texas to northwestern Panama. The white under-belly on this one marks it is a member of the southern subspecies. As for their diet, they are omnivorous: Insects, lizards, fruit: It’s all good. They were regular visitors to the bird feeding table in front of our villa in Nuevo Arenal and happily downed the fruit of the day, whatever it was. But do they eat chicken? We had to travel to Monteverde, Costa Rica to answer this question.

We were in Monteverde when I spotted a Brown Jay carrying nest building materials. I grabbed my camera and went hunting. This one was actually wearing an identification band. The birds work together to build a nest. The female then sits on the eggs until they are ready to hatch. The male feeds her during the process. Offspring from a previous season will sometimes help in the feeding of the chicks, but they transfer the food to mom and dad for the actual process. I couldn’t find the nest, but I noted something else about this Jay beyond its band.

It had found the bone of a discarded chicken leg and was pecking the marrow out of it. As I noted, they’re omnivorous. The one-eyed look was fun.

A Clay-Colored Thrush, (*Turdus grayi*) or Yigüirro, as they are known in Costa Rica, is the national bird of the country. The bird originally gained its popularity in the country’s folklore by singing a beautiful song just before the beginning of rainy season. The natives thought that the yigüirro brought the welcome and necessary rain. Actually, the male who sang the song, wasn’t trying to bring the rainy season. He was busily courting a female before the rainy season started. It’s when they mate, build nests and raise families. But it makes a great story and the male still has a beautiful song.

It appears that this Thrush has caught a worm that wasn’t interested in being swallowed. As we watched it hop around on the lawn searching for such delicacies, we were reminded of its cousin, the Robin. Thrushes share a lot in common. I doubt you would find a Robin following a foraging mass of army ants to feast on the insects that are fleeing to escape, however, which is what the Clay-Colored Thrushes do. I immediately thought of the army ants that invaded my house when I was living in West Africa. We discovered their attack when numerous small bugs came hopping, running, and crawling under our screen door in an effort to escape. The Thrush would have been quite happy to scarf them up. I’m sure the Robin would have as well. But it might not have had the Thrush’s sense to fly off before the ants arrive. We saw a mouse make that mistake. It was his last. Not wanting to end up like the mouse, we went to war. I’ll tell the story in *UT-OH!*.

Here a Clay Colored Thrush and a Palm Tanager check each other out. It’s likely that they are having a discussion over who gets the fruit. Alternatively, I like to think that the thrush is saying, “Wow! You are really beautiful.”

A fluffed up view of the palm tanager. They often nest and hang out in palm trees, which is how they get their names.

Another dining table discussion? Here, a Buff-Throated Saltator is checking out an appropriately named Scarlet-Rumped Tanager. These, along with several other of the smaller birds I am featuring here, often flock together for feeding purposes. (Safety in numbers?) The Tanager is chowing down on a bite of pineapple. It’s hard to find a more easily identified bird than this Scarlet-Rumped Tanager (*Ramphocelus passerinii*), unless you are looking for the female of the species.

I was surprised when my bird ID app, Merlin, told me that these were Scarlet Rumped Tanagers. I double and then triple checked it! The name for when the male and female birds of the same species look so dramatically different, btw, is sexual dimorphism.

I like this head-on photo of the female Scarlet Rumped Tanager.

A Buff-throated Saltator (Saltator maximus) gives me the look. Originally classified with cardinals and grosbeaks (given its beak), recent DNA research has shown that they are instead related to Tanagers. I like the soft look of the feathers.

This frontal view gives the reason for the Buff-throated Saltator’s name.

The long view! The head of the Saltator looked metallic in this photo.

It was nest building time for the Blue and White Swallow (*Pygochelidon cyanoleuca*) of Monteverde. I’d watched this one pick up and reject several small straws until it arrived at this large piece that it flew away with. I’m always impressed with their streamlined look. It serves them well when they are practicing their insect-catching aerobatics in the air. Peggy and I enjoyed watching them whiz about from our porch in the evening.

They would often land, and possibly had a nest on the roof beam above the porch. The bright evening sky gave their blue a black look. We weren’t sure whether it was chirping at us or its fellow flyers.

I’ll conclude my collection today with the Muscuvy duck (*Cairina moschata*) that has both feral and domesticated versions. The duck was first domesticated in the tropical Americas during preColumbian times. You’ve may have seen the domesticated version, like this one, swimming around in park ponds. If so, you probably haven’t forgotten it.

Head shot! That’s it for today. On Wednesday I’ll be featuring Earth Day. It’s worth saving. Our survival— as well as that of numerous other plants and animals— depends up on it.

One would think that the Giant Saguaro cacti of the Sonoran Desert would welcome Global Warming with open arms, but the truth is, it is one of numerous species that are threatened today. The increased drought and extreme heat of global warming prevent seedling survival, cause structural collapse of adult plants, and encourage wildfires capable of wiping out wide swaths of these majestic plants.

Another species threatened by Global Warming is the Eastern Box Turtle. The increasing heat disrupts their reproductive cycles and sex ratios. Once found often, they are now rarely seen. Peggy found this one crawling down our driveway yesterday, heading toward the traffic clogged highway that runs in front of our apartment. She saved it, at least temporarily, by taking it down to the creek that flows through the property and turning it loose, far from the road.

She set it down and away it zoomed (with zoom defined in turtle speed).

Hello Deer: I Won’t Say We Were Part of the Herd, But It Was Close… Focus on a Deer’s Life Cycle

January 12, 2026January 11, 2026 / Curt Mekemson / 31 Comments

Today’s post on deer is part of our focus series where I make use of our extensive photo library to feature a single subject. From 2011 to 2021 we lived in Southern Oregon up in the mountains about 30 miles west of Ashland on five acres that backed up to a million acres of national forest. There were many things that we loved about the property. The deer herd that insisted on calling it home was a big one!

I walked out my door one June day and found this fawn napping next to our doorstep. It was wedged in between the step, a chair, my walking stick, and a natural wood shelf we used for our shoes. One eye was checking me out but it obviously wasn’t worried about my presence. In its short life, it had determined that I was harmless and might indeed be helpful. Mom wasn’t worrying either. She was out browsing (eating) while her baby was sleeping. Our house and yard served as a safety zone for the herd and the cement porch was apparently the safest place in the yard, considering how often it was used as a day bed. Hunters weren’t allowed on our property and natural predators of the deer such as bears and cougars tended to avoid it— for the most part.

This was the first time we saw this youngster. Mom was performing some hygiene with her tongue while the baby ate. Grooming is common among deer and is one way they maintain close ties. We’ve watched adult deer simultaneously groom each other.

Fawns on our property were normally born in April or May, hidden away by the doe, and sternly instructed to stay put and not move when she was away eating for the first 2-3 weeks. The spots they are born with serve as natural camouflage making the fawns extremely difficult to see. They are also scentless when born, making them impossible to smell.

We did come upon a newborn fawn once. The mother had blown it and given birth right in the middle of our driveway. We were returning from town and sat for 30 minutes as the doe urged the baby to get up. Its twin was already off to the side. Finally the youngster stood on wobbling legs and managed to totter off to the side. I kicked myself very hard for not having my camera.

If this buck appears nervous, it’s for good cause. A few minutes earlier we had watched junior walk under him, see danglies, and assume they were udders. Reaching up, it had chomped down. Deer are noted for their prodigious ability to leap, jumping over fences as high as 5-6 feet. I swear this guy cleared 10! Apparently, the baby was coming back for more. The buck ran away. The small size of the fawn signifies how young it is. They grow fast. The buck’s antlers are still growing and are in velvet. More on that shortly.

Does brought their fawns by to meet us shortly after they had grown out of the ‘hide the baby’ stage. Or at least it seemed that way. Anyway, they trailed along with mom. At 3-4 weeks, they could easily keep up with her and even run fast enough to get away from many predators. They would dash madly around in our yard playing. Not sure whether baby is smelling its feet or scratching an itch. The ears on the doe are almost as big as its head! Deer have extremely sharp hearing and constantly move their ears to detect sounds that might suggest danger. I actually watched one with its ears pointed in two different directions.

Hello. The deer in the west are black tail deer as opposed to the white tail deer found in the east and the south. One sign of a black tail deer is its dark forehead.

The fawn from above and its twin walking across our deck. Speaking of the deck, it was right next to our bedroom and we could hear deer (and bears) when they crossed it at night. Once we heard a loud thump followed by two quieter thumps immediately afterward. I went out and checked the tracks in our yard the next morning. It was a deer that had made the loud bump as it landed on and cleared the deck in one leap. It was a cougar right behind in hot pursuit.

One of the reasons the deer were frequent visitors was that they considered our bird bath their watering hole, especially in the summer. The section of Southern Oregon we lived in has a Mediterranean Climate and is very dry in the summer. The nearest water was down the hill, across the road, and down to the Applegate River. I’m sure that the deer thought ‘why bother.’ The challenge was that two thirsty adult deer would come close to emptying the bird bath. Other deer, birds, squirrels, foxes, etc that used the watering hole were out of luck until I refilled it.

Hey, save us some water. We don’t drink much.

What is it that you guys don’t get about ***bird*** bath!

Who? Us? Note the antlers on the buck in the background. There’s a reason why yearlings are know as spikes.

My solution to the water hole problem was to add a five gallon paint bucket filled with water. It was a welcome addition. How welcome?

Well, baby climbing over Mom to get to it is an example. The laid back ears suggest that Mom wasn’t particularly happy with being used as an obstacle course.

No smelling this time. The fawn is scratching an itch. Flies, fleas and ticks all hassle the deer. Again, I enjoyed the three leg acrobatics. Now note the next photo…

One of the fawn’s responsibilities is to learn what is and isn’t edible. It watches what Mom eats and also smells her breath. Lavender isn’t on the deer menu. We grew lots. It took us a few years to figure out what plants the deer wouldn’t eat and plant accordingly. In the meantime, Peggy would rush out and lecture the deer. It was quite humorous, for me and the deer.

This young buck, who had leapt over our Gabion cage wall, climbed over the cement blocks, and worked its way past the lavender, stopped to listen to Peggy’s lecture before leaping up the cliff to gobble down the plants and flowers it loved to eat.

The real treat was acorns. Squirrels, turkeys, woodpeckers, Stellar jays, and bears seemed to agree.

Remember how I said the fawns grow up quickly. Check out the legs. Also note that the fawn’s spots are disappearing.

By fall the spots have totally disappeared. The young deer will hang out with their mom through the winter until she gives birth to her new fawn in the spring. Mom then chases them away. They aren’t happy about it and often continue to stay nearby for a while longer—at a safe distance. The young doe will become part of the herd that Mom, Grandma, and possibly Great Grandma oversee.

The herd of does browsing in our back yard…

The young buck, Spike, here growing his first set of antlers, will slip off to join the boys.

And now to the bucks. They lose their antlers in January and February and begin to grow new ones in March and April. A soft, hairy skin known as velvet covers the new antlers providing them with the blood and nerves necessary for bone growth. Aren’t the legs impressive?

The antlers will continue to grow until they have reached the size of the previous year and then grow larger, dividing into more points.

Bucks are judged by the size of their racks and the number of points on one side. A deer with two points is a forked horn, with three, a three pointer, and so on. The first year the deer grows spikes. Second year is normally a forked horn. Third year 3 and 4 pointers. Five pointers plus grow in the fourth year and beyond.

A three point buck without velvet. “Did somebody say apple?”

This big boy in velvet is a five-pointer. The back antlers are split but can’t be seen in this picture.

Two bucks displaying a forest of antlers! We thought this was a fun photo. Come August-September the antlers have completed their growth and the bucks scrape off their velvet on anything available, normally a tree or bush. It’s time to get in fighting form. One year we arrived home and found a buck using our hammock to scrape off his velvet. I chased him off but it was too late. The hammock was torn to sheds.

By November and December it’s time to decide who gets the girls.This is a contest that the bigger buck normally wins. Size is often enough to decide the outcome without a contest.These two three pointers have been checking each other out. The one on the left is larger and has a bigger rack, but…

They go at it, head to head and antler to antler.

The biggest buck shoved the smaller buck around. I worried about their eyes.

And then they separated without either being harmed. The big fellow seems to be saying, “You want more of me?” The smaller guy had had enough, however. He vacated the scene. For a day or so, the three pointer chased does around our yard, happily making the rounds and rutting away— until a bigger buck came off the mountain. After the rutting season is completed is when the bucks lose their antlers and a new year begins.

As you have probably figured out, this doe and her twins were the stars of our blog. She was usually somewhere nearby and was the first to bring her fawns by. Always curious about what we were doing, she often stared in our window. Here she is looking though our screen door.

Our house was surrounded by windows providing excellent views of everything happening outside. I had the best seat, however. I turned my writing chair around in our library and could watch all of the action in our backyard. We considered it a great privilege that the deer herd allowed us to share in its daily and yearly life. Here, Mom taking a snooze on our back porch, was about four feet away. That’s it for the day. Next up:

On Friday I will do the intro to the my memoir: UT-OH. I am blogging one chapter at a time. I am quite excited about the book and have already written 22 chapters. Please join me.

Rattlesnakes… Lots of Them: Eek!

August 8, 2025August 7, 2025 / Curt Mekemson / 33 Comments

The eastern diamondback rattlesnake has been known to grow almost eight feet long.

I’ve have been to Albuquerque, New Mexico several times over the years. One place that I always wanted to go but never managed to was the American International Rattlesnake Museum. They have one of the largest collections of live rattlesnakes in the world. Could it be that whoever I was traveling with didn’t share my enthusiasm?

Peggy, however, is game for almost anything and snake images almost always show up among the petroglyphs that fascinate her so much. So off we went to the museum two weeks ago.

Peggy even bought a rattlesnake T-shirt from the museum. Is there a message here?

That I have a certain ‘fondness’ for rattlesnakes isn’t news to my blog followers. I’ve had numerous encounters with them over the years and have written about several. I’ve even been known to get down on my stomach when they are crawling toward me so I can get better head shots. (Peggy gets a little ouchy about that.) I suspect my attitude would be considerably different if I’d ever been bitten by one. Rattlesnake bites can be deadly, or at a minimum, extremely painful. It’s not something one wants to test.

Fortunately, rattlesnakes come with an early warning system. They rattle. The rattles are made up of keratin, that’s the same thing your fingernails are made of. When irritated, the snake vibrates its tail, knocking its rattles together. It makes a very distinctive sound, one you never forget, one guaranteed to shoot your heart rate up faster that a skyrocket on the 4^th of July.

Each time a rattlesnake sheds its skin in grows a new rattle. This makes up for ones it has lost. The bigger the snake the bigger the rattle.

The Ancestral Puebloans included a rattle on this petroglyph of a rattlesnake in Petroglyph National Monument, Albuquerque. It’s probably a coyote or a dog beneath the rattler, obviously not worried.

A rattlesnake you see coiled up, rattling its tail, and ready to strike is worrisome, to put it mildly. It’s not a problem, however— as long as you stay clear of its strike zone, which can range from half to two thirds of its body length. For a six foot snake (which is a very big snake), that would be from 3 to 4 feet. If you want to check this out, use a long stick. I have. (Don’t try this at home, kids.)

One you can hear but can’t see is a quantum leap scarier. I stepped on a dead log once ‘that started to rattle’ and found myself an olympic winning 15 feet down the trail before my mind registered snake. There is some evidence that our fear of snakes is instinctive. For example, have you ever come close to stepping on one you didn’t see in advance. Did you find yourself thinking, “snake, maybe I should be concerned.”

Odds are your reaction was more like this guy from another petroglyph at Petroglyph National Monument. Eek!

When I was a Peace Corps Volunteer in West Africa, I had a cat named Rasputin that proved the hypothesis about fear of snakes. I discovered if I took the old fashioned spring off my back door and rolled it toward him, he would leap 6 feet into the air and land on our couch or other piece of furniture well out of reach from the deadly ’snake.’ Being scientifically oriented, I did it 3 or 4 times just to make sure.

On the other hand, back in California I had a basset hound named Socrates that seemed to counter the theory. I was hiking with him one day at Folsom Lake near Sacramento when I noticed him walk out on to a granite ledge and start sniffing down into the cracks. Suddenly he began barking like the baying hound he was: Loud. Simultaneously, the rock became alive with rattles. Socrates had discovered a rattlesnake den. They can get big, big like in a hundred snakes. Some have even been found with a thousand. Talk about an Indiana Jones’ nightmare…

It was for me, as well. “Socrates, come here!” I demanded. And then again. And again. Each time louder and more desperate. All, to no avail. He just kept barking louder. Damn, that dog could be stubborn. Finally, there was nothing I could do but walk out on the buzzing rock, grab him by the collar, and bodily drag him off. I was lucky I didn’t pee my pants. Had I not immediately put his leash on and pulled him away, he would have gone right back to barking up a storm at the irritated, poisonous serpents.

Here are a few facts on rattlers:

There are between 32 and 45 species of rattlesnakes, many of which live in the Southwest where Peggy and I just spent five months wandering around outside. They can range in size from 15-24 inches like the pigmy rattlesnake of the South up to close to 8 feet like the eastern diamond back. Peggy’s brother John and his wife Frances found one of these monsters in their backyard in Texas.
They are superb predators. While lacking an outer ear that would allow them to hear their prey, they have an inner ear that allows them to sense the vibrations of a prey’s movements. Vertical pupils aid in depth perception for strikes and pits on the side of their faces serve as heat detectors which allow rattlers to see their prey in pitch dark situations. Being members of the pit viper family they have large, sharp, hollow fangs that are designed to deliver venom. The fangs fold back against the rattlesnake’s mouth when not in use.
And finally, here’s a long word for you to impress your friends with: ovoviviparous. It means the rattlesnake mommy hatches her eggs inside of her body and her babies are born alive, ready for action as soon as they can bite their way out of the protective sack they are born in.

And now for a few of the photos we took at the museum.

The museum had a book of Gahan Wilson cartoons on snakes.

One way to recognize a rattlesnake, beside the obvious rattles, is by the distinctive shape of its head, which it shares with other pit vipers.

Plus a couple of snakes that weren’t rattlers, but we were fascinated by their colors.

And this striking green snake which, as I remember, was a python. (Don’t quote me.)

And finally, Peggy and I in front of the museum, which is located in the historic section of Albuquerque. Not sure why they chose the skull and string of peppers instead of a rattlesnake but they are symbols of New Mexico. Next up, we will conclude our posts on Canyon de Chelly National Monument.

The Marble Mountain Wilderness: Magnificent Views Up Close and Far Away… Part 2

July 14, 2025July 14, 2025 / Curt Mekemson / 19 Comments

This is view of Mt. Shasta from the Marble Mountains Wilderness. My 750 mile trek down the PCT gave me northern views of the mountain, western views and and southern views. This was one of the best. Given its mystical/magical look, it’s hardly surprising that tales of beings like Bigfoot, Lemurians, and Lizard people are associated with it. The local Native American Modoc Tribe, whose legends include Bigfoot sightings around the mountain, refer to him as Matah Kagmi, meaning *keepers of the woods.*I like it. The Lemurians are a New Age creation connected to highly advanced lost continent of beings that live under the mountain. As for Lizard People, think aliens and UFOs.

As part of our series about protecting national parks, monuments and other public lands, I’ve been reading news releases from the directors appointed by President Trump who oversee these areas. It’s not a task I would wish on anyone. It isn’t surprising that the directors all support the president’s objective of significantly reducing many public lands in size and opening up others for profit making operations. That’s why they were appointed.

The news releases are full of statements designed to hide their real purpose. Here’s an example:

“President Trump promised to break the permitting logjam, and he is delivering,” said Energy Secretary Chris Wright. “America can and will build big things again, but we must cut the red tape that has brought American energy innovation to a standstill and end this era of permitting paralysis. These reforms replace outdated rules with clear deadlines, restore agency authority, and put us back on the path to energy dominance, job creation, and commonsense action. Build, baby, build!”

Let’s did a little deeper. By ‘permitting logjam’ and ‘red tape’ and ‘outdated rules,’ he means rules that have been developed to protect our air and water quality, save rare and endangered species from extinction, and maintain areas of great beauty and/or cultural significance that the majority of Americans support protecting. The Administration’s perspective is that these rules get in the way of progress. Who needs clean air or water. “Build, baby, build!”

And how about American energy innovation and dominance? Obviously, he’s not talking about solar, wind and water power. We’ve been moving ahead quickly in the development of clean energy. The Trump Administration is actively discouraging this progress. Incentives designed to encourage their use have been cut. His passion is for coal, gas and oil, all three of which are nonrenewable resources and have been prime factors in the development of global warming that has been having such devastating impacts on the US and the world. The Texas floods of this past week are but one of a multitude of examples.

Several countries in the world have now reached the point where 80-100% of their energy needs are supplied by renewable clean energy. I’d argue that they are the ones achieving energy dominance, one that will last long beyond our nonrenewable resources and is vital to our battle against global warming.

On another subject, it’s interesting that right-wing Republicans played an important role in blocking the administration’s plans to sell off millions of acres of public lands in the West. Here’s what Christopher Rufo, a culture warrior and leading supporter of Trump in in the state of Washington had to say:

“Pre-2016, you’d have the small government argument against a kind of federal domination over the land, but Trump and MAGA is a nationalist movement,” he said. “I think many conservatives are now reassessing these questions, and many of us in the West understand that part of a great nation is the preservation of its natural beauty.” There is hope.

The Marble Mountain Wilderness, the subject of this post, is an example of this beauty.

On the subject of ‘far away views’ seen from the PCT in the Marble Mountain Wilderness, here are two more. These are the Trinity Alps.

When I left off in my last post, I was just coming up to Paradise Lake. I was captured by the reflections, in the lake and…

The sign told me that I had left Paradise Lake and was on my way to Marble Valley. It seemed like an easy walk, but don’t quote me. Some photos from along the way.

One of the names of this Mariposa Lily is cat’s ear. It’s easy to see why.

The value of this tree isn’t in its board feet, which is how the Trump administration sees it. It is in its beauty. Old growth forests deserve our protection.

I’m glad I wasn’t around when this gorgeous chunk of limestone came rolling down the mountain.

I came on this patch of snow shortly afterward. I planned my trip to allow time for most of the snow along the trail to melt. Hiking in snow is hard and requires extra caution in the summer when it often melts beneath the surface.

The trail then took me past this limestone outcrop up close.

Looking up, a view of Marble Mountain was one of the treats I found in Marble Valley.

As was looking down. Dozens of butterflies in the mud next to a stream provided a photo op.

My hike through the rest of the Marble Mountain Wilderness featured hiking across scree/talus covered slopes…

Through a high mountain meadow with an rock filled stream…

And covered in flowers. Including rosy spiraea.

And Western Pasqueflower also known as Dr. Seuss mop heads.

Until I came to this rock. “We’re all mad here. Be you!” Bone, who’s never been anything but, insisted on having his photo taken with the rock. I found several of these rocks along the way, usually near a trailhead. I was getting excited.

Peggy would be somewhere near with her welcoming smile and cold beer.

She caught a photo of me hoofing it up the mountain!

I got an extra long and tight hug for having finished/survived my first solo section of my 750 mile Trek down the PCT. And a cold beer. Cheers.

Sunset in the Northern Sierra Nevada Mountains. — As you read this post, Peggy and I are on a backpack trip into the Five Lakes Basin north of I-80 in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. It’s where I made my first ever backpack trip in 1969, a while ago. It’s also the first place I ever took Peggy on a backpacking trip. That was in 1990 just after we met. She requested that we hike in to the basin as part of her 75th Birthday Celebration. This is a photo of the Black Buttes that overlook the basin at sunset. The trip will be our next post. Can a 75 year old and an 82 year old still pull it off? Grin. Wish us luck!

Our post after the Five Lakes Basin will take you into the Canyon de Shelly with its towering cliffs and marvelous pictoglyphs and petroglyphs, which brings me to a reminder: If you enjoy word searches or know someone who does, Peggy’s new book on the unique and magical petroglyphs of the Southwest makes an excellent gift, either for yourself or a friend. It’s available on Amazon.

The Granite Chief Wilderness… Lake Tahoe’s Next Door Neighbor

June 23, 2025June 22, 2025 / Curt Mekemson / 23 Comments

There is a fascinating world to be discovered on America’s pubic lands. For example, you will occasionally find a pile of sawdust next to a dead tree. Odds are that carpenter ants have been at work building an apartment complex. This ‘cut-away’ view in Granite Chief Wilderness provides an inside view of their home. If you are lucky, you will see the ants plying their carpenter trade. They appear out of a crack or hole in the wood with mandibles filled with sawdust, which they drop on their pile and then return to chew/break out another load. Unlike termites, they don’t actually eat the wood. The ants provide a valuable service in the forest breaking down dead wood (not so valuable when it’s the lumber in your house).

So, who or what opened up the tree? Clue, it wasn’t me. Nor was it the caterpillar, obviously. I photographed it just above the ant apartment complex for perspective on the size of the slashes just above it. They tell the tale. They are bear claw marks. A bear had torn open the log for breakfast. Or was it lunch?

While I was backpacking through Lassen National Park on my 750 mile/75th birthday trek in 2018, Peggy caught this photo of a bear and her cubs opening up a log on a trail near the park’s road. “Dust and wood were flying everywhere!” she told me. Peggy quickly vacated the premises. You do not want to get close to a mama bear with cubs!

Today, Peggy and I are continuing our series on national parks, monuments, wilderness areas and other public lands with an emphasis on their unique beauty, geology, flora, fauna and history that makes them so important to us today— and to our children, grandchildren and future generations. I can only repeat how vital it is at this point in history to let decision makers know how we feel about protecting and maintaining public lands.

In my last post, I discussed a bill by Republican Senator Mike Lee of Utah to be included in President Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” that would require the government to sell of 50-75% of BLM and National Forest Lands in America over the next five years. Here’s what the Southern Utah Wilderness Association has to say about the bill:

It bypasses public process, allowing public land to be sold with minimal transparency, and depriving the public of input on the future of their public lands. It also bypasses any environmental, cultural resources or endangered species reviews.
While Senator Lee attempts to make his bill more palatable by claiming that it will create opportunities for affordable housing, it does no such thing. There is no requirement that any housing developed on sold public lands would be affordable or meet any affordable housing requirements.
- There is no provision to prevent lands sold under Lee’s bill from being developed into high-end vacation homes, Airbnbs, or luxury housing projects, which would be especially desirable near scenic or high-demand areas.
- The bill will primarily benefit real estate developers and speculators rather than addressing real housing needs.

The Pacific Crest Trail Association also noted this week that the bill would have serious implications for the PCT by blocking access to the public lands that the trail now crosses over. The 750 mile trip I did for my 75th birthday would not be possible. But that’s nothing compared to the millions upon millions of people who would forever lose future access to these lands that now belong to all of us. Please, let your Senator know Lee’s bill will do irreparable damage.

But, now on to my post about hiking through the Granite Chief Wilderness on the Pacific Crest Trail.

I began this section of the PCT where I hiked through the Granite Chief and Desolation Wilderness areas on historic Highway 40 near the Sugar Bowl and Donner Summit. Before it was replaced by I-80, it was part the Lincoln Highway, America’s first cross country road. Like most of the Sierra Trails I know, the PCT here begins with a climb. The peak you see up ahead is Tinker’s Knob. The Knob, BTW, was named after James A. Tinker, a freight-hauling teamster in the area. Legend has it that it was named after his nose, which was said to resemble the knob.

Having got a late start after Peggy dropped me off, I camped that night with a view of Tinker’s Knob. As far as I know, not one other person was camped in the valley. That’s one of the beauties of backpacking.

The views from my campsite were gorgeous.

I watched as the sun set on Tinker’s Knob, outlining it in golden, warm colors.

And then went for a short walk and watched the sun set in the west. A note here: Tinkers Knob is just outside of the Granite Chief Wilderness in the Tahoe National Forest. It’s part of the land that Lee’s bill might open for sale. I can see a land speculator grabbing this and making it available to developers for huge profits who would then sell it to multi-millionaires for homes at even greater profits. No trespassing signs would quickly follow.

This map of the Granite Chief Wilderness provides a fairly accurate view of the trail system. Tinker’s Knob is on the top, just outside of the wilderness to the north of the 9005 Granite Chief Pass.

I caught this photo the next morning. There are two Needle Peaks in the Granite Chief Wilderness. Needle Peak and Little Needle Peak. This is the former. Both are made up of volcano cores.

Leaving my camp, the PCT took me through an extensive field of corn lilies.

I came across this old PCT Trail sign placed before the name of Squaw Valley was changed. The name squaw had become controversial. Since the 1960 Winter Olympics were held at the Squaw Valley Ski Resort, the name was changed to Olympic Valley.

The Granite Chief Wilderness is just behind the mountains. All I had to do was hike over them.

I actually made two trips though the Granite Chief Wilderness on my 750 mile PCT Trek. The first was with my grandson Ethan. We took the tram up from the Olympic Valley floor to reach the wilderness area and then hiked through Granite Chief Wilderness and part of the Desolation Wilderness when Ethan sprained an ankle. I decided on a do-over starting at historic Highway 40. I needed the miles given the areas I had to skip because of forest fires. The following photos are from both trips.

Ethan and I spent our first night at Little Needle Lake beneath Little Needle Peak. It’s a relatively short hike from where we got off the tram and an old favorite of mine going all the way back to the 1974 when I first started leading hundred mile backpack trips through the Sierras.

Instead of following the PCT through the Granite Chief Wilderness, we dropped down off the ridge to Five Lakes Creek. Once, this trail marker, known as a blaze, would have marked the trail along the creek. It’s likely that carpenter ants carved the holes.

Another old blaze on a tree that still lives. I’ve followed blazes many times over the years. Especially when the trail disappeared under the snow.

A limb came out of this snag when the tree was young. The rings take you back in time to its youth. I thought it made a neat photo.

A small amount of water was still flowing in Five Lakes Creek.

The trail follows the creek for five miles and reaches what is known as Diamond Crossing where I have often camped.

Earlier in the season there is a small, but photo-worthy waterfall just up Five Lakes Creek from Diamond Crossing.

With a great swimming hole to cool off in.

The trail leaves the canyon at Diamond Crossing and heads up a long steep climb following Powderhorn Creek. I heard something splashing in Powderhorn on my second trip when I was by myself. I snuck up and discovered two bobcats frolicking in the water. They took off before I could get my camera out but I was able to pick up one very wet track left behind.

I continued to follow their trail out of the canyon. Here kitty, kitty, kitty.

By late August most of the flowers were finished, but I did find abundant goldenrod…

There is ample evidence of volcanic activity throughout the Sierras. This view is of a basalt lava flow that cooled and contracted into vertical hexagonal columns can be seen from the upper section of the Powderhorn Creek trail. The tree on the right is a red fir. Unlike pine cones, red fir cones disintegrate.

Another view of ancient volcanic activity: A volcanic mudflow. I believe the talus slope in the background is from the basaltic lava flow.

The climb up from Diamond Crossing is no joke. Ethan had every reason to celebrate! The Granite Chief Wilderness stretches out to the farthest peaks in the background where Ethan and I started and I had hiked twice in a row. You can barely see Big Needle Peak below Ethan’s right arm. The Barker Pass road provides and easy exit or entry point for both the Powderhorn Creek Trail and the PCT.

Peggy and I will be taking a break from our blog over the next three weeks. We are in Sacramento this week visiting with friends and relatives. Next week we are flying to Florida where we celebrate Peggy’s 75th Birthday with our son and his family. The following week we fly back here and will continue to celebrate. This time with a backpack trip retracing the route of the first backpack trip I ever took— in 1969! Then we will continue our exploration of the southwest and blog series.

Mokelumne Wilderness: Where Mother Nature Prevails… Part 1

June 10, 2025June 9, 2025 / Curt Mekemson / 27 Comments

“The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness.” John Muir

A small unnamed lake reflects the beauty and peace of the Mokelumne Wilderness. There’s a chance that John Muir stopped to admire it, given all of the time he spent exploring California’s Sierra Nevada Mountains. I’ve spent a bit of time wandering there as well— starting in 1957.

The Wilderness Act of 1964

“A wilderness, in contrast with those areas where man and his own works dominate the landscape, is hereby recognized as an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain.” –Howard Zahniser, Author of the Wilderness Act

What does this mean? Transportation is by foot or horse. No bicycles or motor vehicles are allowed. Even chainsaws are banned for use on trail maintenance. No one can build permanent structures of any type. It’s just you and nature.

As of 2023, there were 806 wilderness areas located in 44 states and Puerto Rico. These areas are overseen by the National Park Service, the US Forest Service, the US Fish and Wildlife Service, and the US Bureau of Land Management. All in all, some 5% of land in the US is set aside as wilderness area, the majority in Alaska.

Over the past three months, I’ve been blogging (with Peggy’s help) about our national parks and monuments with an emphasis on their unique beauty, geology, flora, fauna and history that makes them so important to us— and about the threats that they are presently facing from the Trump Administration. Today we are switching to wilderness areas with the same emphasis. I’m going to cover three that I backpacked through on my 750 mile trip down the PCT in 2018 to celebrate my 75th birthday: The Mokelumne, Granite Chief/Desolation, and Marble Mountains Wilderness areas. If you’ve been with this blog for a while, some of the photos may be familiar to you.

The Mokelumne Wilderness is conveniently located between two of California’s highways that cross the Sierras. Since I was hiking north to south, I started at Carson Pass (elevation 8573’) on Highway 88 and ended at Ebbet’s Pass (elevation 8732’) on Highway 4. The distance on the PCT is approximately 30 miles, which is relatively short— but there are plenty of ups and downs! And, as you will see, great diversity and beauty.

By the time I got to the Mokelumne Wilderness section of the PCT, I was looking a little scruffy, not to mention skinny.

Peggy, who is never scruffy, sent me off with a smile. She hiked three sections with me and provided support on all of the others, for both me and through-hikers. By this point, she was almost over being nervous about sending me off on my own.

Almost immediately, I came on this old snag. I always enjoy their personality and beauty. You will see several on my two Mokelumne Wilderness posts. This one is all about roots.

And how about this lodgepole pine that was insisting on doubling back on itself. It must have had a warped childhood.

This is Frog Pond, maybe a mile along the trail from Carson Pass and a tenth of a mile off the PCT. I’d hiked by it several times over the years and not stopped. My loss. If it looks like the end of the world on the opposite end, close. There is a steep drop off just beyond the rocks.

This well known landmark is known as Elephant Back. My first challenge of the day would be hiking around it on the left.

Fortunately, it was all downhill. But there’s a truism about hiking in the Sierras, what goes down inevitably goes up!

The Mokelumne Wilderness features flowers galore. There were whole gardens of them, planted and tended by nature. This one was also tended by a bumble bee,

Pennyroyal, a member of the mint family. I picked a leaf and munched on it as I hiked down the trail.

Ranger’s buttons. People who name flowers have great imaginations. As noted in the beginning, there are lots of them along the trail.

Birdie on a granite rock. It sang me a song so I took its photo.

I camped under this magnificent Jeffrey pine my first night…

And met this young fellow in his 60s. He had quite a story to tell.

He had hiked all three of America’s National Scenic Trails including three times on the Appalachian. He was now doing the PCT a second time.

I figured an alien from a UFO planted this so I avoided touching it… just in case.

This, on the other hand, was an old friend of mine from growing up in the Sierra foothills: California Holly.

Looking down on Upper Blue Lake from the trail. Note the smoke. It was a summer of fires along the PCT and I ended up breathing lots of smoke and avoiding fires.

The distant knob was a prominent landmark for pioneers. Any guess for what they named it? The Nipple.

The trail worked its way through granite boulders and junipers.

Heading off the trail, I found an attractive small lake to camp on. The clouds were threatening a thunderstorm.

But the lake remained calm, reflecting the surrounding trees from impressionistic…

The next morning found me back on the PCT by 7 am, which will be the subject of my next Mokelumne Wilderness post…

The Breath-Taking Beauty of Death Valley NP… And the Need to Preserve It

April 21, 2025April 20, 2025 / Curt Mekemson / 45 Comments

The iconic Mesquite Flat Sand Dunes of Death Valley provide a unique hiking opportunity for the adventuresome as well as a world class photo op. They also provide a great backdrop for movies. C-3PO and R2-D2 were lost here on ‘Tatooine’ in Star Wars Episode IV.

Death Valley is known as a land of extremes. At its lowest point, it drops to 282 feet below sea level. Summer temperatures can soar up to 120° F and have been recorded as high as 134° F. Rainfall averages are around 2 inches per year but can drop to zero. It’s hard to get more extreme. You don’t want to visit in the summer.

I would add, however, that Death Valley is also a land of superlatives. My title above about ‘breath-taking beauty’ is no exaggeration. We have 25 photos below to make the point. As I have stated before, all photos are taken by either Peggy or me unless otherwise noted.

Peggy and I have visited Death Valley several times over the years. It’s one of our all-time favorite go-to places. One of our visits was during the government shutdown in 2019 that President Trump had instigated during his first term. Death Valley was without staff. We had entered the Park from the south and stopped at a rest stop along the way. The restroom was closed and people were using the desert as a bathroom. Instead of carrying their trash out, many were simply dumping it next to the already overflowing trash cans. What was worse, a few miles up the road someone had decided that no supervision meant he could take his ATV for a spin on the desert floor and drive brodies (sharp circles). Large gashes in the floor had been created— gashes that would take at least 20 years, if not longer, to heal given the desert’s environment.

I’m relating this incident here because I want to make a point that National Parks need staff to function effectively. While the impacts of reduced staff aren’t as dramatic as no staff, the recent efforts by the Trump Administration to cut employees along with a number of other Trump/Musk driven initiatives related to the parks pose a serious threat. Here’s a quote that the National Parks Conservation Association —a bipartisan organization that has been promoting and protecting our parks since 1919— made after the first six weeks of the Trump Administration:

National parks as we know and love them are changing — dismantled before our very eyes under the new Trump administration in just six weeks. Fired staff, cancelled building leases, erased history. We see the writing on the wall, and it’s dark.

Dark indeed. Among the latest pronouncements from the Administration is one that suggests there is no reason to protect endangered species. Let them die. Another opens 59% of all national forests to be logged with minimal, if any, environmental protection. Old growth trees that have taken hundreds of years to develop will be cut down in minutes.

Today, Peggy and I are continuing our series showing the beauty, geology, flora and fauna of these areas to emphasize the value of protecting them. The parks belong to all of us, and, I might add, the plants and animals that call them home. We cannot afford to let them be lost to the whims of one man and his cohorts who apparently see their value primarily in terms of the money that can be made from their exploitation. Our children, grandchildren and future generations are depending on us.

And now: Death Valley.