11/5/11
CARRIZO PLAINS: DAY 2
Waking up the next day was amazing. I was able to watch the morning sun rise and see a morning metro enter the Earth’s atmosphere. The morning birds were chirping and the clouds painted a beautiful picture of the ocean shore for us to see. We were still in our cozy sleeping bags, not wanting to get out of them. So we waited and watched nature slowly wake up. Then everyone started to wake up one by one. It was kind of funny watching people leaving to take care of morning business. It was like watching zombies rise up from their graves. Startling actually. In thirty minutes or so, half of the entire camp was awake and hungry.
People started to boil water and the day begun to start. We ate some oatmeal breakfast, had fruit and cereal on the side with hot cappuccino to wash it all down.
After refueling we headed back to bring in our banana chairs and sleeping bags. After cleaning up we headed back to the middle of the road and huddled up.
Craig showed us his fancy thermometer and asked us each to guess what we thought was the lowest temperature of the night. I guessed 18 degrees Fahrenheit; it was 34.5 degrees Fahrenheit that night. (-_-) Craig then asked us, “On a scale of 1 to 10, how did you sleep last night?” The average response was around 6; people were still adjusting to sleeping on the ground. On the other hand I felt really good about how I slept the previous night, maybe it was because I only did sleep 3 hours, and maybe it was because I was sleeping on the banana chair, but I felt great the next morning, so I answered 11! Yessica felt the same too so we were in the 11 boat together that day. Now here is were things started to get crazy at 9 in the morning! We moved our circle back to the campfire we had the other night to talk about Low Impact Camping. O yeah I forgot to mention the whole group experience last night, let me recap really quick:
After the interactive movie the first night, we had a sucking contest to see who had the best lungs and lips to get the job done. After that we were brought out into the wild and then ditched by Craig and Mark. Some people started heading back, but some stayed behind. Craig and Mark happened to be right next to us the whole time. We all went back to camp and had a fire to warm up. There we talked about how our first day went.
VOOOSH now back to the story of Day 2 of the Carrizo Plains. So there we were standing around the fire pan looking at it and how it baked the ground it was on. Mark began talking about Low Impact camping and how to go about doing so. We then interrupted by a Trash-Dumping-Music-Blasting-S.O.B. who looked a lot like Craig! That mofo was a great example of what not to do while camping.
LOW IMPACT CAMPING
PLAN AHEAD AND PREPARE
· Know the rules and regulations for the area you’ll visit.
· Check to be sure the site is open and find out if you need a permit.
· Plan to keep pets and pack animals restrained and away from sites.
· Visit in small groups. Assure supervision of youth groups.
TRAVEL AND CAMP ON DURABLE SURFACES
· Durable surfaces include established trails and campsites, rock, gravel and dry grasses.
· Stay on designed roads and trails; soil disturbance can cause significant and irreversible impacts to heritage sites.
· Climbing, sitting or walking on walls and other constructed features weakens them. Walls that are stressed may suddenly collapse.
DISPOSE OF WASTE PROPERLY
· Pack it in, pack it out. Pack out all trash, leftover food, and litter.
· Never dig catholes for human waste disposal near heritage sites. Walk at least 200 yards from these sites.
LEAVE WHAT YOU FIND
· Artifacts and fossils left where they are help tell the story of the past. Rearranging them limits their scientific value and the experience of future visitors.
· It is illegal to dig, remove or collect artifacts and vertebrate fossils without a permit.
· Leave historic and prehistoric structures intact.
· Take photographs or make a drawing of the rock art or gravestones you visit. Touching, chalking and making rubbings and latex molds cause damage.
MINIMIZE CAMPFIRE IMPACTS
· Campfire cause lasting impacts. Use a light-weight stove for cooking.
· Where fires are permitted, use existing fire rings, a fire pan or build a mound fire.
· Collect only dead and downed wood that is clearly not from heritage sites. Collect wood and build fires at least 200 yards away from sites.
RESPECT WILDLIFE
· Never feed animals. It changes their natural behaviors and food left behind may alter the heritage site.
· Control pets at all times.
BE CONSIDERATE OF OTHER VISTORS
· Respect the Past – Heritage sites hold clues to what life was like long ago.
· Educate others never to dig at sites or collect artifacts.
· Graffiti is vandalism – it damages rock art, ruins, cliff walls, trees and historic structures. Attempting to remove graffiti can cause further damage.
· Many Native Americans consider their ancestral land sacred.
MAN MUST LEARN FROM HIS MISTAKES. HE MUST LOOK, LISTEN, READ, AND BE CRITICAL SO THAT HE MIGHT UNDERSTAND AND DO WHAT IS RIGHT.
(PAGE 110 #24)
After understanding Low Impact Camping, we began to learn how to trace animals. There was a lot of action that happened the previous night as we saw in the mud. There were coyote footprints, as well as kangaroo rat tracks. We also learned about the native plant in the area, called Salt Weed. This plant is found all over the Low Kern and it has the special ability to absorb salt from the water and transfer it to its leaves. That morning, the most distinct tune we heard was that of the Meadow Lark:
WESTERN MEADOWLARKSturnella neglecta
BLACKBIRD SUBFAMILY
10’’. Speckled brown above; throat and breast yellow; belly and sides white, striped black; chest has black V; crown striped brown and white. Bill long, pointed, gray; tail short. Flights reveals white outer tail feathers. Flies with flutters and glides. VOICE Song: low, flute-like too tee too tiddleyou. Call: low chupp. HABITAT Grasslands, sagebrush deserts, farms. RANGE Resident in most of CA.
(NAC 337)
We left the Low Kern that afternoon with a fresh start and excitement. Where we were headed next, we had no clue. The road was still muddy and wet from the storm and we were careful not got get stuck again. We headed down for a few miles for a morning quickie, our first stop, the California Aqueduct. The man made river is constructed with cement. It is dug 50 foot deep and about 30 feet wide. This is an impossible river for animals to cross over. Fish are swept out of the water. Plants are killed with pesticides. This is not a good thing for the habitat or the drinking water transported to Los Angeles. Besides animals not being able to cross to the other side, water cannot as well. Rainwater and snowmelt would pour into the aqueduct. To solve this problem water bridges are made to physically move water across the channel. We got back on the trucks and headed northwest, stopping at quickie #2, the EMF towers.
Electric Magnetic Fields (EFM) is present wherever electricity is found. Little is released about the side effects to EMF exposure; however electricity does produce positive ions, making the body feel sleepy and dream like.
Back on the road we went traveling onto high ground. We made our way into a valley camped there for lunch. We got onto the trailer and stuck our fingers in the hole. “1, 2, 3!” Down the hooks went and off the net, it goes. We unpacked, ate, potty breaks, and repacked. We were close to where we needed to be. We got back into the trucks and went up a few miles. We reached our site and parked on the side of the road. We all got out and headed to the asphalt seeps. They are also known as tar pits. This black gooey tar was special and is still special today, the Youkuts Natives used it as paste for their arrows, and we use it as fuel. Many animals have crossed this black adhesive and died. Their bodies lie fossilated on the ground. There were tons of rats, a few birds, and one snake dead in the tar pits. We even got to feel the cooled tar with our hands. It is absorbent yet hard; I was able to leave my fingerprint into the material. We quickly got back on the road, heading for the Carrizo Plains.
As we drove down the stretch of asphalt, dinosaurs began to emerge on both sides of the road. These dinosaurs pump underground oil to the surface with their noses and are commonly know as oil pumps.
We made a right turn and pulled over on the across the street of a power plant. This was our fourth stop for the day. This power plant is not what we expected it to be. It is a solar energy plant run by the petroleum company, Chevron.
This is was a small start in the right direction.
It is both a renewable and sustainable production of energy.
However, it would not be wise to put 100 miles of pure solar panels out in the desert.
That would destroy 100 miles of habitat.
It would be best to spread the area of solar panels apart.
DIVERSITY = STABILITY
PAGE 56 #10
An area that would cause no harm to the environment would be the rooftops of America. This placement would not only provide energy for the building, but the leftover would be sold back into the grid, providing revenue for little to no work at all. As we looked at the solar panels, directly to the west of us was Midway Sunset, One of the largest oil fields in the state. California is the 4th largest state in oil production, trailing Texas (3rd), Louisiana (2nd), and Alaska (1st). At Midway Sunset there are three ways to extract oil from the ground:
· Primary – A hole in the ground that shoots oil out, gusher.
· Secondary- Water is pumped into oil, which causes the oil to rise.
· Tertiary- Steam is pumped into the thick tar, creating massive amounts of pressure, in order to pump oil from the deepest part of the underground reservoir. (Enhanced oil recovery)
Big pumps are used in excavations that can go as deep as 3000 feet, approximately 6 miles into the Earth’s crust. Cogeneration is used in the tertiary process, which produces two produces from a single element. Methane is used to heat up water to generate steam. The steam powers the turbines, which generates electricity. This electricity is energy for the 11 thousand oil pumps that can be found here at Midway Sunset.
Omega loop pipes transport this fresh oil to storage tanks. They are specially designed to expand when hot steamy oil is traveling through them and contract when it passes, in order to prevent too much head pressure. Extracting oil is difficult and pricy when the reservoir is nearly depleted. We will never run out of oil because it will be economically depleted. Prices will soar sky high when we reach the very last ounces of oil left. Hopefully, we will not have to spend so much on oil in the near future with a drastic change in renewable energies.
PINCIPLE
We left Midway Sunset down with low spirits, seeing all the oil pumps that bombarded the land. Eventually they began to die down, and slowly they were nowhere to be seen. Cows roamed freely on the grassland and stared at us, as if we were the non-natives. We began to climb here in elevation as we traveled down Crocker’s Road. Soon the oil fields were visible as we acceded higher and higher. Cars were coming down, coming home from a days worth of hunting. The view was spectacular, besides the flames of oil pumps; it was peaceful and vast. I have not felt that way in a long long time. When we had climbed to the very top of the mountain, we had the sun shinning in our eyes. It was a magical moment. We finally made it. Our final stop: The Carrizo Plains.
CONCLUSION
We got out of the vans and sat on the edge of the mountain, staring into the valley of this great plain, taking everything in all at once, the sun, the air, the environment. And soon I began to think of all I have been through, what I have experienced. And it all added up to this one moment in time. This is where all the environmental efforts go. This is where I understood for a split second, I am only a visitor on this foreign land and I must cherish every moment I have to stay on this land, not just here in the plains but all lands. You began to talk about Karen and how she fell in love with Carrizo, how she took you and Vogl. And all the amazing things she has done for the environment. And I began to think about Yessica and all the amazing things she has been trying to show me during these past few months. I finally understood that I am still new to everything. With as much energy and ganus I got, I am still learning. I need to appreciate the people that are taking me on this journey to becoming harmonic with nature and all those within it. A tear fell from my right eye as I stared into the sunset of the Carrizo Plains for the first time. I am appreciating this gift. And I finally had the courage to open it up. Thank you for bearing with me so long, for me to finally open it. Thank you.
After I snorted up my mocos, I got up and walked up to the sign for a family picture. (Where is the picture Craig?) After the photo, we all headed up into the vans and made our decent into the Carrizo Plains.
To understand this topic we must visit the reactor to see what really goes on behind closed doors. A nuclear reactor is a highly complex and costly stem designed to perform a relatively simple ask: to boil water to produce steam that spins a turbine and generates electricity.4 Currently the United States operate the most common type of nuclear reactors, light-water reactors (LWR). LWR produce 85% of the worlds’ nuclear-generated electricity (100% in the U.S.). 5 Environmental scientists G. Tyler Miller, Jr. and Scott E. Spoolman explain the inefficiency of light-water reactors.
