All about (some) trees

It’s been a long time since the last post and a lot has happened, and I’ve got a lot to say. And I know you've been fretting and getting impatient (ha), but you will have to be patient, it will be in instalments. But long story short, I was meant to go back to France around that time, but instead, I’m still in the US and will be for another month (exactly today)! Yep. Whooop! And my lovely mum is making a very long trip to spend Christmas with me, which I am soooo excited about.

But anyway, back to this post. Despite what this first picture above of the Sierra Nevada might indicate, I’ve decided to tell you is all about trees! You see all the National parks in Utah and Arizona were about the rocks and the canyons (see previous post – so much rock and so many canyons, strongly recommend it). Then I went to Las Vegas (more on that another time, but very much not about canyons or trees, or anything remotely natural), and I continued to California and the National Parks there were all about trees. So let me tell you about them.

• Joshua Tree National Park: This park, along with the city that borders it (and a U2 album…), is named after… a tree. That is because the Joshua Tree is EVERYWHERE in most of the park. And this tree was apparently named by 19th century Mormons arriving in California who thought that its spiky branches reminded them of Joshua, the biblical figure himself, and he was pointing them towards the promise land (or something like that). Well. Hmmm. OK. I have spent a lot of time looking at these trees and I’m not sure I get the resemblance, but whatever helped them not die of thirst I suppose. Anyway, back to the park. What I found interesting is that the park is actually made of 2 different deserts: the Mojave desert in higher altitude with its Joshua trees, which then makes way to the Colorado desert as you go East (and down) where there are cholla cacti (also very cool). And I can't resist showing you a cholla cactus because they are very cool (see below).

And then in the park there are a lot of boulder-like rock formation that my climbing friends would have absolutely loved (looking at you Donna). So that’s for the geography lesson. Now, I don’t know what it is about this park, but it is zen. It may be the trees, but it is. Calm and amazing. I don't think it's because it wasn’t very busy, but it certainly helped. I did a couple of walks (in my shorts and T shirt in December…:) and watched sunsets, which were amazing and I loved it.

• Sequoia National Park: now we’re still in California but further north, and we’ve left the desert for the mountains of the Sierra Nevada. And it’s completely different. Obv. Even when it rained for 2 days pretty much solid. And that I had to rent snow chains for the car (made compulsory to bring because of the altitude). And to learn how to put them on… Anyway. In this park, there are giant sequoias which are endemic to this part of the world. And believe me, they are HUGE. Like a km high and a gazillion meters circumference. OK a slight exaggeration, but we’re not that far off tbh. Over 80m I think. And 2000 years old. But the coolest thing is their thick soft bark that protects them from insects and fire. So they can be touched by light fires and they’ll be OK. In fact they need the fire to grow, as it burns pests and thick litter, which is otherwise too thick for new seedlings to grow, and they grow faster after a burn. In fact, the park has had a phase of really preventing all fires for a good century and then they discovered that this was the reason why nothing was growing anymore. So now they’re doing prescribed burning (which is really not wildfires which can still have really bad impact).

There you go. Now you know a bit more about these fascinating trees, which I have loved discovering. Now let’s all have a good Christmas :-)

Emilie and the concept of time (… difference)

Fear not, this isn’t going to be philosophical – simply a compilation of weird things to with time difference, distance and geography that have happened since I’ve been here.

So generally, I understand the concept of time zones. Most people do. On top of that, through my (looong) training as a geographer I know that, when you go East for a while you go forward in time, when you go West you go backwards, and when you go North or South, you stay in the same time zone. I very much understand this. Easy. As a European, moving in all of these directions within the same country usually means the clock doesn’t change, but in places like North America… not so much. So just in case you don’t know and you want a little geography lesson, there are 4 time zones in mainland USA (let’s not start with the further parts like Puerto Rico and Alaska, sorry… Not saying it's not important, just that there is enough between the East and West coast as it is). These are, from East to West: Eastern, Central, Mountain and Pacific. But even knowing that, there are the few weird things that have still messed with my little geographer’s mind:

· I was in West Texas. If you are familiar with the shape of Texas, I was in “the bit that sticks out on the left” (technical term). If you’re not… look it up. So. I was there, minding my own business, and I was driving to Santa Fe, which is in the neighbouring state of New Mexico to the West. But, as I was in “the bit that sticks out on the left” and I was travelling North to reach this neighbourly state to the West. You still here? So, although I was travelling North (the direction that does not generally cause a change in time) … the clock went back! Isn’t that mad? On top of that, the time on my phone happened to change a few miles before the state line (which is technically when the change happens), when neither my watch nor my brain were ready for it. This also coincided to me stopping in the [insert PC description here] town of Van Horn (good old American name, isn’t it?) to get something to eat. At that point I felt stuck in a no person-land of time, not sure if I was supposed to have a late breakfast or an early lunch. This confused me big time. And more importantly, what time was it for the people around me. I probably should have asked, but instead I just ordered Tacos and iced tea and left as quick as I could for somewhere with proper time.

· Then “what about day light savings and winter vs summer?” I hear you say. Well, I am glad you ask, because here comes my next point of confusion. The USA does apply daylight saving. Yes. Well… most states do. That means that not all states do (yep… you heard me)! So, when I got back to Arizona from Mexico the very weekend of the change to winter time, I looked it up: Arizona (where I was) does not use Daylight saving. So, no change for me at the weekend. I repeat: no change in time. Happy days. This also happened to be the day I was travelling to Flagstaff. So, to me, travelling North + within the same state = no time change. And I was right on that one too (phew). But then when I arrived at the bus at 9am, I heard that it would not leave for another hour “because of the time change”. Digging a little further, the exact reason the Greyhound employee gave me was: the clocks might not have changed in Arizona, but they have in Texas, where this bus is then headed. So, we have to leave an hour later, otherwise we will arrive an hour too early in Texas, “Sorry, we forgot about that”. They forgot!!!!! In 2023, are we really relying on someone to remember (something that happens every year…)?? This country can send people on the moon but not cope with the clocks changing. Unbelievable. Or maybe it's just Greyhound who won’t send people on the moon, which is probably just as well.

· Final observation: after discussing states, time zones and daylight saving, we are now going onto the matter of… overlapping geographical boundaries. Yes! So the Navajo nation is a Native American reservation and it covers an area of 71,000 km2 over Arizona, Utah and New Mexico. I think it’s the largest but don’t quote me on that. From discussions with people here, I understand that they have their own system and their own police… and they also do daylight saving. This means that, for example, if in the summer, you decide to travel North (my favourite direction today) within Arizona to somewhere in Navajoland, the clock will change. Then if you travel south back again, the clock will change… again. In the same state. Yep.

There you go. I bet you’re glad you know that. Ironically, I am writing this on a Westbound bus between Flagstaff (Arizona) and Las Vegas (Nevada). At some point, as we will cross the state line and get into pacific time, the clock will go back. So I’ve been asking my fellow passengers whether the arrival time on my ticket is Mountain or Pacific and how basically many hours are left (as I’ve learned not to trust Greyhound) and the answer is… nobody knows, not even the driver (So just to reiterate, Greyhound to the next state, yes OK, but not the moon. I repeat, NOT THE MOON)! But the comment of the bloke in 6D made me smile: “they should just get rid of time zones altogether!”.

That’s all folks.

The wild (ish) west - end of part 2!

It’s been quite a while since I’ve written on here. I'm just finishing over 2 weeks of travelling: over 3000 km exploring parks and canyons in Arizona and Utah. This was kinda one of the main parts of my trip, going back to where my Dad went. So I was too busy driving, looking, walking and being amazed by the beauty of the landscape in front of me to think about the blog thing. But now I am back and I also happen to be the end of my second month here, which went really quickly. So here's something about all the beauty I saw the past couple of weeks, which felt a bit like being on a first-year geology fieldtrip: seeing all possible rocks and forms of erosion, the scale of which is hard to imagine. Kinda my highlight of places, from least favourite (but still totally amazing and still loved it!) to my top preferred place. This is obviously entirely objective. Not.

5. The Grand Canyon: I’m sorry if this is not PC. But, yes, it is my least favourite amazing place of all the amazing places I've seen. I might be dropping a bomb shell here, I know. Don’t get me wrong, it is jaw droppingly amazing, grand, huge. All of this. And I really liked it. But it has remained for me something to look at from a distance. Tall, big… and far! Too far and a tad overwhelming (and I went on both the south and north rim just to be sure!). “Why didn’t you hike down?” I hear you say – well yeah good point. The hikes are quite challenging, going down and up isn’t something that can be done in a day, and I just didn't. I tried one hike which was very steep and very quiet and after half hour I just thought… nah. So I suppose I did go half an hour down the canyon. But still, I won’t bulge - I’ve preferred other stuff.

4. Monument valley: this is what you see in Westerns. It’s those big red forms. You actually drive around. Sooo impressive. I went there when I went 17 and I loved it just as much as I did then. Not sure what else to say.

3. Canyonlands NP: That park is huge. From where I was based (Moab), the closest part of the park (Island in the sky) was about an hour’s drive away. It’s stunning. And there I went on walks and stood on cliffs, and looked at canyons down below, and climbed boulders… Amazing. I wish I had taken more time to explore more. But hey.

2. Arches NP: smaller and with the main attraction of… arches in the rock! Self-explanatory really. So you can go and see them, get close, touch them… the park caters for anything from the lazy tourist who takes photos from the car, to the more adventurer who hikes for hours on not always very clearly marked paths, climbing on top of huge smooth boulders to eventually be standing on a not very wide rock with quite a huge drop on both sides thinking “how will I ever get off this rock on the way back?”. And you will be pleased to hear that I did it all, and thought just that (but managed it). I also got under one of the arches for sunrise and that was pretty amazing. The fact that I had been the first one and everyone turned up later also made me quite smug – always a bonus.

1. Bryce Canyon NP: OMG. My absolute favourite. It is like being on mars: a never-ending landscape of red chimneys (called hoodoos) carved in soft rock by water and ice. The top is quite high in altitude (about 2000m I think), and it was late November, explaining the arctic temperatures. I had it all: hail, snow, sleet and bright sunshine. I did two long hikes on two different days where you walk down the canyon and you’re surrounded by hoodoos and trees, and not much else. Plus there are trees (which were few and far between at Arches). Totally my favourite.

No ranking - Zion NP: I have no ranking for that one. Not because it’s so exceptional, but because I lasted about 15min: I only had a day and I had heard it was crowded. My gut feeling was telling me to find another canyon to hike and explore… But then I thought I wasn’t THAT far (1h), and it looks amazing, blah blah blah so I gave it a shot. And guess what? My gut feeling was right. It’s not that it’s not beautiful, quite the contrary. In fact, it would have had the potential to become my number one NP. No, the problem to me was the crowd. Awful. To limit the traffic, you can only go up the canyon using a shuttle bus. Well, the queue for that looked like what I remember from trying to get on the ski lift in Chamonix on the first day of the school holidays, but times 10. It would have taken over an hour just to get on a bus. And I didn’t want to wait or to feel like cattle. Hell. So I cut my losses, enjoyed the drive out (beautiful) and did something else instead (some caves and some sand dunes if you wanna know).

There we go. A long post, but it was an amazing couple of weeks. And now I’m about to have a cultural shock: off to Las Vegas for a few days, where I’m meeting my good photographer friend Nicolas and will become a millionaire. Til next time!