Sequoia National Park Lodging

Almanac Archive 2002

Dateline: Wednesday, December 4, 2002, Elsah reporting in for this week
December has arrived with crisp, clear but not too cold days. I am just now eating the very last tomatoes from my garden. The hills are pushing up green tufts of grass with the promise of wildflowers to come in the early spring. While the days have been sunny and bright, the night sky has been exceptional for star gazing, the milky way is really bright as the moon has been in its darker phases. I have filled the hot tub and find myself glad at times that cottage is not too busy as I have the hot tub and the starry sky to enjoy. You see, when you are the guest here then the hot tub is for you alone and I have to wait my turn. It is very strange but I report that Christmas is still open for reservations, News Years is booked. So if you are making last minute holiday escape plans you may be able to find the cottage open for you. I do have a four night minimum for Christmas, so you can really take a relaxing break from a busy and sometimes very stressed season. Call me for detailed calendar openings, or email and please put "reservation" in the subject box as I am getting a huge amount of bad trash mail and I can't always recognize potential guest inquiries in it all.
All for now...................................

Dateline: Tuesday, November 12, 2002, Elsah reporting in for this week
We had our first rain last week and it was powerful and wonderful. It rained almost thirty hours nonstop. Our dried up Salt Creek became a minor river, and the rock face on Case Mountain became a huge waterfall again. This is a seasonal pulsation, having the creek flow and then recede into sand and rock. The earth just seems to open a huge mouth to take in the first rain of the season. It rained eight inches up in Giant Forest, instead of snowing four inches, so the Kaweah River became a mighty force tumbling boulders and logs down its stream bed.
It is a great time to come here when "weather" is happening here. I guess many travelers think that only the perfect sunny weather is vacation weather. That is why the most of them come in the summer time when it is hot and dry here. My favorite months are January and February because of all the awakenings in the ground, the beginnings of the wildflowers and new trees showing up. This is what I felt happening with our first rain last week. I found a tiny fern pushing its curled up frond/head on the bank next to where I park my car. Spring is coming my friends, and in this time of new weather patterns, who knows when it will actually arrive. So don't be put off by weather forecasts that speak of something afoot. Let yourself be adventurous and experience the weather's interaction between earth and sky.
The air smells great and the earth is soft for falling footsteps. I am off for a walk up the canyon along Salt Creek this am. We have the grace to have a dirt road for walking and mountain biking just out the front door. So come for a visit with your walking shoes or mountain bikes and good books and nap longings and just get away for a renewal of spirit and body.
Christmas time still has some open days, but Thanksgiving is booked already. Call me for detailed calendar openings, or email and please put "reservation" in the subject box as I am getting a huge amount of bad trash mail and I can't always recognize potential guest inquiries in it all.
All for now..................................................

Dateline: Saturday, October 26, 2002, Elsah reporting in for this week
The air temperature is changing and for the first time I have some heat floating upstairs to me as I write. Officially fall starts for me when I have to turn on my furnace. Next week I will be filling the hot tub for cozy star viewing. The hot tub has reclining seats in it and is perfect to just spend time looking at the night sky. I heard an astronomer on the radio the other day talking about the lack of darkness in so many areas of the world making it difficult to actually see the stars in the sky. He said that when one city had a black out for several hours this past year, many people called the authorities because they saw "lights" in the sky and thought that maybe terrorists were coming. They had NEVER seen that many stars at once and had no idea that the night sky actually looked that way.
Hearing this just makes me feel all the more compassionate for city dwellers. The cities may have the good restaurants but we country folk have the stars. I am continually amazed to see the Milky Way so apparent and dramatic here. The full moon rises equally fine each month. There is a sacred quality to its appearance, and that very first instant of light just peeking over Case Mountain is the most fun to try to catch.
I wish I knew more about astronomy and how to identify more stars/planets. I can tell you some of the constellations. Orion is wonderful to see, and I can now identify Leo and Taurus, and Mars when it is visible, and the intense brightness of Jupiter. Venus is the morning star for part of the year and I just have to be up in the early hours to see it proudly beaming down to us. I don't have a view of the Western sky, so when Venus is the evening star I don't see it as often.
I am telling you about all this to let you know another wonderful aspect of coming here for a visit. Maybe you can extend your vision from the tall Sequoia trees to the very Universe itself.
The Cottage has lots of openings at the moment. It seems that many people are waiting for the last minute to make reservations. Both Thanksgiving and Christmas are open as I write this. This past summer was one of the busiest I have had, and many people stayed for longer periods with an average of four nights. I think this is one of the best ways to visit here, to come and stay a while and become a Three Rivers night sky resident for a week. If you call for a reservation these days, you may not find me answering the phone during the day, so be patient and wait to hear from me in the evenings. I am very busy doing craniosacral work, feng shui consulting, teaching and doing some part-time home health nursing in the day time.
All for now.........................................

Dateline: Monday, July 15, 2002, Elsah reporting in for this week
Fall is in the air, how do I know? The buckeye trees are in their fall color with orange/brown leaves and the buckeye seed balls appearing not far behind. The California buckye is almost half a season ahead of the other vegetation here. Or maybe everything else is lagging behind. In the middle of summer it is turning its leaves into burnt orange offerings and going to seed harvest. In the middle of fall it looks like a tree form etched in silver on trunk and branches with "ornaments" (the buckeye balls) hanging from it. In the middle of winter it is putting out green leaves and new elongated white flower stalks. And in the middle of spring it is a beautiful lush green tree and looking quite pleased with itself.
Many people ask me, "why are those trees dying?", when they come for a visit at this time of the year. This is the dry season for us, rain only visits between October and April, and the other months are a natural drying out time. The native vegetation needs this dry time, and if the local oaks or buckeyes or ceonothus (wild lilac bushes) get too much water then they will die. No, the trees are not dying.
Yes, it is hot here a bit. Seems that the entire country is breaking the recorded temperature records of the last 135 years. Three Rivers has not been left out of the warming trend we are all experiencing. You can go up into the Park and find air that is usually 20 degrees cooler than here, where the higher elevation wild flowers are continuing to bloom in the alpine meadows. Or you can rest easy in the cottage with a good book, sitting under the cool air coming from the evaporative cooler, and just let yourself do nothing. Doing nothing is very underrated in this world we live in, and maybe the heat has come to slow us all down. Doing nothing may be exactly what we need to replenish spirit, to let go of the mind-boggle we have created, and to create space and time for nothing to be healing for us all. If you can't get yourself to come to Cort Cottage to do nothing, try it where every you are, right now! All for now...................................................

Dateline: Friday, June 28, 2002, Elsah reporting in for this week
Summer is here and the scent in the air reminds me of my childhood when I would come to Three Rivers for summer visits with cousins and my aunt and uncle. I discovered this place in the early 50's. We would spend time at "the cabin" still to be found in Grouse Valley at 4000-5000' up the South Fork. The kids would all sit in the back of my uncle's pick up truck, bouncing up and down on the dirt roads, waiting at several gates while someone got out to unlock the gate and open it and close it after we passed by. This always seemed so special to me that we could go past locked gates like that. Now I live here myself, for 25 years so soon, meaning in another 25 years, I will be considered an "old-timer" here.
Three Rivers feels lazy to me in the summer. I can work and walk only in the early morning hours, read and rest in the afternoon. It sounds likes a vacation doesn't it? I am going up to the Park this weekend to meet with old friends. It will be early Spring up there, not summer which comes late in August for that higher elevation.
All for now...........................................................................................................................................

Dateline: Sunday, May 19, 2002, Elsah reporting in for this week
I suppose that summer is just around the corner. It is a transition time in the foothills. The late spring flowers are blooming quietly amid the dry grass. You can find mariposa lily, clarkia, harvest brodiaea and farewell-to-spring (which is also called herald-to-summer) in the lower foothills. You can also drive up just a few thousand feet in elevation, on your way to Giant Forest, and find early spring wildflowers all over again, spring just walks up the hill as time passes. Up in the Park at 5000 feet the dogwoods are just beginning to open their delicate pale green/white blossoms. I journeyed up the road this past week, with plans to view the planetary gathering on May 14. I went to Beetle Rock, a very short walk from the parking lot across from the Giant Forest Museum. Beetle Rock is a large granite outcropping, above ground from hidden caves, including Crystal Cave which is now open for the season to the public, and the Marble Fork of the Kaweah River traversing in the deep underground. On Beetle Rock you can watch the western sky, with beautiful sunsets. On this particular evening, I watched as the red-rose sun ball was sinking and melting into the horizon. Then the crescent moon was revealed with the planet venus very close by. Jupiter appeared next in the sky above the moon, then golden mars, and saturn, and mercury appeared below. All five planets and the moon were within 33 degrees of each other in the sky. (for more about this, look at http://www.skyandtelescope.com) This close proximity and human eye visibility of these planets will next make an appearance in the year 2040. It was a rare experience to see this, and also to be on Beetle Rock with no one else, except my sister (who works in the Park and lives at Lodgepole part of the time). She, too, had never been to Beetle Rock with no one else there at the same time. We did hear, but did not see, another visitor--a loud crashing and crunching sound that was definitely a bear. We decided that our hot chocolate, although warming to the hands and solar plexus, perhaps was not a good idea, so we took our refreshment back to the car. In the parking lot we had another profound experience, that of being in Giant Forest with no lights anywhere. For the last 10 years, the Park has been in the process of taking out all the cabins and buildings in Giant Forest. This was to protect the Giant Sequoias, as the fifty year old septic systems were beginning to fail, and to replace them would have required cutting into the massive root systems of the big trees. Every human structure is gone now, except for part of the old store building, now turned into a natural history museum and a minimal parking lot. In the past there had been hotel rooms and restaurant there with lights all around. On this night we found ourselves in the true dark of the forest. It was wonderful. I like to think that the trees themselves are relieved to finally have their dark, silent peace of night returned to them. They are not afraid of the dark, so why should we be? We had our flashlights after all, and the bear? Well, I really think he was wanting to sit on the sun-warmed granite patios of Beetle Rock with the view of the stars and planets for him alone. I can see him there now, breathing a deep sigh as the moon becomes his night light and Beetle Rock exists only for him. There is a sunset every night on Beetle Rock, and you can come to enjoy and see it for yourself. All for now...................................................................................................

Dateline: Monday, April 15, 2002, Elsah reporting in for this week
We had a reprieve with cooler weather today with a 20 degree drop from yesterday; I just cannot predict weather for Three Rivers anymore. Yesterday it was in the mid 80's, today in the mid 60's. So today's weather was perfect for some serious garden work which meant heavy-duty weeding. I often look up in the sky when I am outside and today I watched the raven pair, our long time canyon residents, dancing together on the higher air currents. They flew as if they were synchronous dancers, in unison, flipping, turning, spiraling, going higher and higher in the sky. They did this for about 30 minutes, and then when they were very high, they just started to fly in opposite directions. I wish I knew exactly how high they were, it just seemed so far up to me. Later in the day I was watering the flower pots on cottage and I heard this screeching call, there were the two ravens sitting in the tall oak tree 20 feet from the cottage. They know me. They have been coming for almost 20 years to my backyard compost pile (one that does not make compost too often) where THEY cackle at me and make that funny sound they do that is like a deep clicking, maybe in raven morse code. Ravens mate for life, and this pair has brought full grown offspring from time to time to visit the scraps I offer, but mostly it is just the two of them that show up. Early in the morning I will go out with my green bucket of kitchen waste and not see or hear any sign of raven in tree or sky. I dump the bucket and give it some good slaps on the bottom to empty it well, and within 1-3 minutes the ravens show up to see what their breakfast is for the day. How do they come so fast when I cannot see them anywhere? I figure we are linked somehow on a telepathic air current, fueled by a green bucket and the pure joy of living here as we do on the edge of human and raven, feather to feather, hand to hand. The cottage is beginning to book up for the summer months, and a new trend is appearing. More people are coming for 4-5 night visits, a great way to relax and become a temporary resident of salt creek canyon, and maybe catch a raven dance in expanse of blue sky. All for now....................................................

Dateline: Sunday, April 7, 2002, Elsah reporting in for this week
It is the first day of daylight savings time for the year; it always feels so good to me to have more daylight, more time to enjoy the view and the hillside on which I perch. A weekend has gone by with no guests in the cottage, a mostly infrequent occurrence, but it seems to happen more often at this time of year. It has always seemed so ironic to me that the cottage is least visited at THE most beautiful time of the year, when the grasses are green and bursting from the ground, and the wildflowers continue to bloom and bow as if they were following some exquisite choreography for an immense stage set. The lupine bushes have been exuberant with fragrant, deep purple-blue blossoms, and are now starting to make the first green seed pods that later spiral out curling the dried pods and literally shooting seeds every where. There is a ten year old lupine bush up the path where we park our cars, that gave birth to hundreds of seedling bushes this year. I had never seen so many before, all growing in a potentially dangerous area where cars would be flattening them soon. So this season, only on rainy days when it is the best time to do so, I transplanted hundreds of the seedlings all around the paths to the cottage and main house, in front and back, and also gave away many baby lupines to friends and family in Three Rivers, who are reporting that the sweet little seedlings are making it so far. Transplanting a California Native lupine bush is not always a successful venture, requiring just enough water to support the transplant shock in the beginning and then, later on, to have the necessary dryness and sandy draining soil that lets the fast-growing tap root anchor deeply into the ground. Blossoms don't show up on lupine bushes until they are at least four or five years old. I must say I am looking forward to 2006 when this year's crop will come on stage in a purple dance! All for now..............................................................................................................

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