Sage Creek Campground in Badlands National Park, a well-kept secret in South Dakota. The terrain looks pleasant enough in this photo, but a few miles away are the examples of extreme erosion that aptly give the area its name. Here in front of the tent, you see my green minivan, equipped with the giant salt and pepper shakers that I loaded with astrophoto equipment and camping gear for my six-week odyssey.
It wasn’t long before the clear nights of photographic activity and subsequent days of driving took their toll. I camped in the remote Sage Creek area of Badlands National Park, where the campground was an oasis in the middle of those badlands, an oasis with no water and no open fires allowed.
The sky was dark and clear, but I was exhausted. I made a feeble attempt to ready my equipment for what promised to be a beautiful evening but decided to nap instead. As I “rested my eyes”, I could hear a neighboring camper who, with more energy and an eager audience, had set up a telescope and was conducting a tour of the night sky. Someday I will return to this unusual and remote site; maybe then that night sky guide will be me…
I returned to the campground as the sky lost its deep darkness to the dawn. I was tired now and falling asleep was an easy matter. Staying asleep was not. Campgrounds come to life at an early hour and become noisy collections of waking families preparing for a new day. The commotion subsided when most campers had driven off to their destinations. The midmorning sun, radiating through a cloudless sky, heated up my tent. Even after moving the tent into the shade I found it difficult to sleep. By 10:00 I gave up and decided that I might as well start traversing some more of the miles toward my appointment in Washington.
Heading west on blue highway 14, I share the road with rural traffic and the occasional bicyclist. I enjoy seeing the bicyclists; they ignite the memory of an earlier epoch in my life when I would bicycle for weeks through beautiful countryside, carrying everything, and camping along the way. Bicycling is just the right speed to experience the land. A car travels too fast, there is not enough time to truly let in the details of the terrain. Walking is too slow, the details become stale before you reach the next vista. But a bicycle brings you close, living and breathing the environment you travel through, giving you options to linger or to move on.
Even as one exits daily life, its anxieties drag along. I headed west on highway 12, a route that could take me to Montana and beyond. The interval between rural Minnesota towns was a consistent five miles, a day’s round trip in the days of horse-driven vehicles. Although I had no need or desire to stop, I found these distances between oases of civilization annoying–my progress seemed so slow. As I crossed into South Dakota however, and the distances started getting longer, I found my tempo slowing to match. The rhythm of the car on the pavement was beginning to seem more natural. I had no appointments or obligations, other than my desire to reach Washington for the Table Mountain Star Party. And even that was not an obligation, I could change my plans at will!
Go west! Ride the road and make my plans on the run. I could go as far as I wanted, stop where I felt like it, and make my way, my way. And like the title of the book by William Least Heat-Moon, I was traveling the blue highways. Except by the conventions of today’s maps, the lesser traveled roads are marked in red, not blue. The two-lane roads serviced the rural business, farms and ranches, and the segments between the small-town hives of activities became longer as the hives themselves became smaller.
My family has never travelled light. The weeks prior to my scheduled departure were hectic as I figured out how I could transport all the usual camping equipment plus telescopes, cameras and tripods. I had a very ambitious list of photography projects which required nearly all of my accumulated gear. I might not be able to try every experiment on my list, but at least I would have the right stuff with me.
A mental calculation showed that all of it couldn’t possibly fit into my minivan, even using the cartop carrier that we had overflowed into in previous years. I also had to keep in mind that I would, for part of the time, have two passengers, including my teenaged son who had recently grown into a large-scale young man. Hauling a trailer was a skill I didn’t want to master. Acquiring a larger vehicle was not an option. So I decided to add additional cartop storage. I went out to find a left-handed version of the “Yakima Rocket Box” I already owned so I could carry them side-by-side on my roof. Alas, they no longer made them in their original white color; the new ones were black. I hesitated, but after learning that there was only one remaining in stock, I decided that this was actually a desirable feature; I would be able to distinguish them by their color… for all those moments where I might otherwise be confused about where I had stowed what. Ok, maybe it’s not a strong benefit, but I didn’t need much to make the purchase decision.
The curse of beginner’s luck. I had taken this beautiful picture of the Andromeda Galaxy and then spent the next years trying to take more such images, but discovered all the ways that astrophotography can go wrong. If only I had some more time to practice this craft.
1.1 The Windfall
A windfall is a sudden, usually unexpected, influx of wealth. Winning-the-lottery windfalls are rare. Smaller, but still welcome, are an employee bonus, an inheritance, or a lucky run at the casino. People react in different ways to the experience of unexpected wealth or “found money”. It tells something about a person: the easy-come, easy-go gambler versus the frugal saver who salts it away for an indefinite future.
I have experienced a windfall not of money, but of time. A new company benefit designed to attract and keep employees in a climate of dot-com employment frenzy was announced. It seemed like an inexpensive benefit to advertise: employees of five years or more could take a one-time additional 3-week period, a sabbatical, of “disconnect time-off”. Combined with conventional vacation time, one could be absent for six weeks! But it would never happen. What high-tech California company had employees that stayed long enough to collect such a benefit?
But I wasn’t a California employee. I had held on for over twelve years in stoic Scandinavian style at a small Minnesota company, a company whose flicker of success first caught the attention of, and then was acquired by a Silicon Valley company desperate for people to help it grow, and eager to retain them. It was an unexpected gift, and I now had the dilemma of how to spend it.
I’m about to start a series of posts that are a travelogue I worked on after a remarkable summer in 2001. I concatenated our traditional family summer camping trip with a personal journey aimed at photographing the night skies. Some of the descriptions will seem anachronistic today, with the subsequent advent of smart phones, ubiquitous GPS, and the demise of photographic film, but I hope the narrative of the adventure still holds up.
I intend to review my old writings (with the assistance of my skilled copy editor), filling in some of the gaps I left, and submit them to this forum. I invite you to enjoy them at your leisure, and if you have reactions, or if you find something unclear, let me know!
Planetrise Central Minnesota, 11 July 99 E200 Ektachrome
The subtle details of the night sky fade away with the dawn,
but the brightest remain: the planets Jupiter and Saturn rise above a windbreak
on a prairie farm. The sky will brighten
and they will eventually be lost (though if you know where to aim a telescope,
they can be found again in broad daylight)!
On this occasion, the clear skies held through the
night. The distant haze provided the
right conditions to spread the long rays from the sun. It’s an unusual transition of colors from
orange to blue, a combination not found in many other places in nature. The planets poke holes in the otherwise
smooth shading.
Eight years later, we re-create a photo given as a Christmas gift to our parents in 2011.
Growing up in a home headed by a “ham” (an amateur radio operator), we often would hear my dad’s radio conversations with remote, distorted, and static-filled voices. In one such contact, the usual exchange of technical banter was augmented by a personal one. Dad mentioned that he had a “full house”, the poker hand, in describing his children: three boys, and a pair of girls.
We all overheard such over-the-air dialogs, as well as evenings
filled with the clicks and beeps of Morse code. Such are the experiences of the children of a zealous
radio amateur.
But it has been a very long time since we were all together for any extended time under the same roof. My dad’s Morse code telegraph key went silent a few years ago, and it is the second passing of a parent that now brings us together to figure out the final disposition of their possessions.
The last time we spent this much time in such proximity we
were on a family backpacking trip in 1972.
It was a wonderful and new shared experience, but as teenagers there was
always plenty to bicker about. Some
things never change.
And although we still sometimes act like squabbling
siblings, the things we argue about are no longer the outrages of personal
space violations (“Mo-om, he’s looking at me funny”). Instead, they are the banalities of politics. On the things that matter, we all seem to
agree!
Over the course of four days we came together under the roof
of the house our parents enjoyed at the end of their lives and we applied our individual
strengths and skills to the task at hand.
We unearthed familiar artifacts, discovered old photos, revived faded
memories, and re-told family stories as the contents of a very full house were
processed by the “full house” of siblings.
Jackie’s Last Moonrise. A view from her home in Idaho Falls where the landscape is shared with her late husband’s ham radio towers.
I am sad to announce the passing of my mom, Jacquelyn
(Jackie) Olson, who lived a full and active life until becoming limited by the gradual
but inevitable decline of health from COPD.
I remember her most as the central figure of a busy family;
her five children had diverse interests, and she encouraged all of them. She was the family manager, in charge of
feeding, clothing, coaching, logistics, cheerleading, and enforcing bedtimes. She set the house budget and found many innovative
ways to stay within it, becoming a do-it-yourself expert before DIY became a popular
acronym. She was fearless in tackling
new skills as needed, providing an example for all of us: that we could learn and become skilled at just
about anything.
As kids, we knew that she was quite talented; she could play
piano, operate a sewing machine, program a loom, make leatherwork, and ride
horses. I was surprised to find out that
she even had a darkroom, and at a time when my interest was aimed in this
direction, her equipment became my equipment, and I learned to develop film and
make prints.
Perhaps the strongest example of her brave approach to
learning was when she decided to go back to school and get a nursing degree. She was a student again, and despite the twenty-year
hiatus from her earlier coursework, she completed her first semester with an A
in chemistry, and all her other classes. My brother Eric and I were at the University
at the same time, neither of us quite matching her GPA. I recall meeting her for lunch sometimes at
the student union, along with some of her classmates. She was a generation older, but they all seemed
quite pleased to be hanging out with her.
She became an RN and worked at Waconia Hospital where she was liked and respected, confirming and adding to her sense of independence. She started applying her income to new hobbies: ceramics and upholstery, and one of her favorite activities was attending estate and yard sales, to find antique or underappreciated furniture, which she then restored.
In contrast to my dad, who offered explicit advice, boiling
down life lessons to memorable phrases, Mom taught by example. And not just how to hang wallpaper, but how
to be considerate to friends and respectful to non-friends, how to persist in
the face of obstacles and setbacks, and how to speak up when someone is not
doing the right thing. From her I
learned the skills of patience and persistence, and acquired the values for, if
not the skills of, being kind and attentive to others.
In 1997, she decided that Minnesota winters were no longer to her liking. The more arid climate of the West suited her better, and so she moved to Idaho Falls, acquiring Eric’s original house there as he built a new home for his growing family. (My dad reluctantly followed, never completely pulling up his Minnesota roots).
She has been happy there for these last decades, gardening
and landscaping and able to read as many novels as she wished, solve the daily
crosswords and keep up with neighbors, friends and family. In the last few years she has had to slow
down on her interests as her disease gradually overtook her body and
breath. It has been an unpleasant time,
and she has claimed that she has been ready to go for a while, but life is a
strong force and doesn’t give up without a fight.
The impact of her examples was not limited to her
children. She made friends all along the
way, from lifelong childhood friends, through college and sorority sisters, to neighbors
that had the fortune to move next door, and their children who are just now
becoming young adults. Many people will
miss her.
I will miss her.
With my mom Jackie, and her mom, Theodora Pankratz, on Theo’s 90th birthday (1994).
Postscript
In an odd cosmic or spiritual coincidence, my mother took her last breath at 3:11, the time indicated by the stopped antique clock in her bedroom. It was the exact complement of the old song about the grandfather clock that stopped short when the old man died.
Orion Rising Kinnikinnik Lake, AZ, 14 Nov 1998 24mm Olympus lens at f/2.8, 1 hour exposure on Fuji 800 Superia
I made an expedition to northern Arizona in November of
1998. It was partly to find out what is involved in transporting photo and
telescope guiding equipment to other parts of the world. Although cumbersome (I
shipped a 90 lb crate ahead to be available when I arrived), it worked.
On the first night I found a remote site in the high desert.
The map showed what looked like paved roads to a fishing lake. Evidently the
map notations are different in Arizona; at least there were ruts where earlier
vehicles had found their way.
The lake was remarkably calm and I marvelled at the darkness
of the sky as I watched Orion rise in the east. I could hear wildlife including
coyotes, owls, and yes, ducks. But they were far away and the water remained
like a mirror. The sky glow here is not from aurora, but instead from distant
Flagstaff, a city with an ordinance to use sodium vapor street lighting. The
color is strongly yellow, but easily filtered and removed by the astronomical
observatories that are hosted by the town. My film however captures all of it.
Although Orion is spread out into an unrecognizable form, he
can be identified by the bright orange star, Betelgeuse on the left, and bright
blue star Rigel on the right. The triad of belt stars makes a catscratch-like
trail, and you may notice a distinctly red star that is even more obviously red
in its reflection. This is the famous Orion nebula, a glowing region of gas and
dust where new stars are being born.
