Travels, nature and breweries (4/9 through 4/16/2016)

My wife and I have been away on vacation for a week.  It was wonderful, away from work, away from the regular travel I do for work, just away from all the regular crap I do all the time.  We spent time in New England; we visited our daughter who goes to graduate school in Boston (Harvard) and (as we describe it to friends) we stole her car for a few days and drove to Maine.  This entry: however, is more about a few experiences I had and how they relate to some of the subjects that are a common thread in this blog.

As any good naturalist or any good Unitarian Universalist that visit New England should do (it helps I am both), I visited WaldenPond.  It is somewhat of a pilgrimage site for many of us.  I often mention Aldo Leopold, who introduced the idea of environmental ethics, but in truth, it was Henry David Thoreau who was one of the first persons who introduced naturalism to the American public and the need to get away in nature.  He had a strong need to go back to the land, to get his sanity back, learn what life was all about and what it could teach him:

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion.

— Henry David Thoreau, Walden, "Where I Lived, and What I Lived For

The location of Thoreau's cabin near Walden Pond.

The plaque showing the location of the chimney of the cabin.

This is one of the most common used quote from Thoreau when it comes to Walden.  Walden was published in 1854 and was based on a more than 2 year stay in a cabin in the woods near Walden Pond.  It is just interesting to see how already in the mid-1800s there was an obvious need by some to get away from it all and go back to nature, to connect to nature, to experience nature and describe it.  Did Thoreau experience nature deficit disorder in 1850?  But it definitively shows the need to connect to nature.

Walden Pond

Thoreau was a fascinating character he did a lot more than just live for two years near a pond, he is worth a read and a study.  I have read a few books by him or books that tried to retrace his steps and it was impressive what he did.  But he was more that a naturalist he also was a philosopher, a humanist and humanitarian.  There is a whole society set up around this scholar and thinker.

While sitting in coffee shops, microbreweries and funky restaurants is wonderful, albeit maybe not so wonderful on the budget, they can only satisfy me so much.  It is really the nature that nurtures me and satisfies me in the long run.  Our most favorite times and memories of our trip to New England will definitively be our hikes around Walden Pond and on Mount Dessert Island (Acadia National Park); our trip to the top of Mount Battie to look over the Penobscot Bay; and our walks around all those wonderful lighthouses looking over the water (that’s nature too).  They will be staying with us much longer than that food we ate at that restaurant.

Visit to the Allagash Brewery (my favorite) in Portland Maine)

We encountered a beaver dam in Acadia National Park on Mount Desert Island (near Bar Harbor, Maine)

Looking down on Camden and the Penobscot Bay from Mount Battie

One of the many lighthouses we visited and had an opportunity to enjoy ocean views.  We saw a lot of common eiders swimming in the waters below these lighthouses. 

The need for nature really struck me during our walks through downtown Boston.  It is great to see how the famous "Big Dig" stuck a major highway under ground and turned the above ground part into a park.  Moreover, it was great to walk on the Boston Commons, in the Boston Gardens and even along the Charles River.  All little pieces of green, where people could enjoy a little nature.  One bizarre thing struck me and I had to take a photograph of it (below).  Not far from the Paul Revere house was a church that where the outbuildings were completely covered with a canvas depicting plants, branches and leaves.  It reminded me of Richard Louv's in his book "The Nature Principle" in which he describes that research has shown that even pictures of nature in buildings and offices help in reducing stress.  Personally, I know that being in nature is so important in bringing down my stress level and (I assume) bringing down my blood pressure.  Nature can be the woods (green) or the water (blue).  That's why I was so fascinated by what I saw on the church; hopefully it does the same in the area near the church.  I found it such an interesting idea of using a bare wall.  What a sight!

The canvas nature mural on a church in downtown Boston

Northern Neck II (12/27/2015)

I want to end 2015 with a post that is somewhat of a throwback to the original intent of this blog.  My initial idea behind this blog was to share some of the pictures, sites, and experiences that I have during my travels as instructor in the state of Virginia.  I get to a few far flung places and if I can help it, I do try to get off the darn interstate highways where everyone tries to drive in the left lane whether they belong there or not.

I realize that I have gotten off on tangents so now and then, on soap boxes and talked about global warming, training, course development, environmental issues, ecology, stormwater, and even sailing.  I should pare down my labels (or subject list), but I guess that's must be my way of showing off.  I have made an effort of hiding all the key words (labels) that I've only used once.

Oh well, back the the subject of today's blog: The Northern Neck!  (Yes, I wrote about it before in this blog post).  The Northern Neck is the northern most peninsula that jots out of the mainland of Virginia.  Going from south to north we have: "the Peninsula, where we live; the Middle Peninsula; and the Northern Neck.  The Northern Neck has the Potomac River to the north, the Rappahannock River to the south and the Chesapeake Bay to the east.

View of the Rappahannock River from Belle Isle State Park.

The Northern Neck is a nice place to visit.  It is an hour drive from us on the Peninsula, it is an hour from Richmond, even closer to Fredericksburg and probably an hour to an hour and a half from the greater DC area.  It has one of the oldest wineries in Virginia (Ingleside Vineyards) and what I consider one of the best (The Hague Winery, at least three years ago I thought it was one of the best).  I reviewed some of the Northern Neck Wineries in this blog post and in a later post (here).  It is somewhat out of date.  New wineries pop up and I have to visit some of them and revisit some of the old ones; but there are so many in Virginia.  

During our visit this past Sunday we saw a sign for the "Good Luck Vineyards", we have not visited it yet, so no review, but we need to go.  The name takes me back to the time we spent in Nepal (I worked there in 1981, 82 and 83), and we often stayed in the Good Luck Hotel, so if only for some weird sentimental reason, we should visit this vineyard.  If the wineries read this post, they desperately need to invite me to come back to review their wines (hint, hint)!  But there is so much more to see.  I have not yet visited Reedville, the place made famous by the menhaden, fish oil and the ferry to Tangier Island.

This time it was State Park time.  The Northern Neck is host to two State Parks: Westmoreland State Park and Belle Isle State Park.  Westmoreland is located on the Potomac and we have stayed in cabins at that park a few years ago.  It's a great place.  So this time we decided to go hiking at Belle Isle State Park.

Hiking along the shoreline of the park looking over the Rappahannock

Belle Isle is on the Rappahannock River.  It is relatively new and it is very nice.  All the photos in this post were taken at the park.  It is worth a day visit.  The park also has two cabins that can be rented for overnight stays and a camp ground.  I am wondering about sailing there and anchoring out while the rest of the family goes out there and camps or stays in one of the cabins.  That would be a riot.  However, as you can see from the photos above there is no nice secluded inlet to anchor (my boat draws 4 ft) and you are very exposed there in the middle of the Rappahannock.  Yes there is a boat launch, but from what I can see on the charts, the water is only 2 to 3 feet deep and that's not enough for me and my boat.  Oh well, so be it, we'll just have to bring the kayaks.  There are a lot of kayak opportunities at the park and even canoes for rent.

This Sunday we spent an afternoon hiking some of the trails with the dogs, and just exploring.  Belle Isle is relatively new in the state park system and yet has to mature.  Never the less it is a nice place to hang out.  A great place to walk (it is flat), to kayak/canoe, it has a boat launch, it has a pick-nick area and even a sandy beach.  Note that the water is salty.  Hopefully the captions on the photos explain things a bit more.  Go visit and enjoy.

A creek that you cross going from the mainland on to the island

Another creek crossing going on to the island

A view of the Rappahannock from the Island

There is a pick-nick area in the park with access to a sandy beach.  Our dogs just loved playing in the surf.  It was a rough warm-ish day (77 but the wind over the cold water made it feel colder right on the shore).  Note that the water is salty.  In our area, the Rappahannock is famous for its oysters.

Coastal living and sea level rise (12/16/2015)

While scenes like the pictures that I took below are idyllic, being on the hook (anchor for you non-boat people) in the York River in the middle of December, or me scrubbing my sail boat bare chested on Sunday morning in the middle of December in coastal Virginia is somewhat unheard of.  I guess it does happen, because Sunday evening my 88 year old father-in-law told us that he remembered that it happened once before some December day approximately 50 years ago (and I am too lazy to research what year that was).  I did hear on the Weather Channel and on the CBS news last night that this is the longest that Buffalo New York has ever gone without any snow in any winter since the start of record keeping in the late 1800s.

December 14, 2015, an early morning scene on the York River in Yorktown.
A ship on the hook and the sun is just coming up over the horizon.
The temperature was 61 degrees that morning, probably 20 to 30 or so degrees above normal for this time of the year.

Sunday December 13, 2015.  Scrubbing the Beagle.
I got so warm doing it, so I took my shirt off and I did it bare chested.
The temperature was 72 degrees.

But hopefully you get the message.  I was so happy when I heard about the climate accord in Paris this weekend.  I did not listen to the conservative pundits (no teaching up state so no travel in a car without satellite radio), but I can just imagine their discussions about a climate’s cyclical nature, the takeover by the United Nations etc., etc.  I did see a small article on how Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell already promised that as soon as President Obama leaves office they are going to throw the deal out.  Here is another example of some criticism.

I know I should not get into the debate, I’m just a minor blogger who tries to show pretty pictures and talk about his teaching, stormwater, his sailing, coastal living, and his travels throughout Virginia; however, my teaching, stormwater, my sailing and my coastal living are all impacted by global warming, isn’t that the truth?  Take a look at the article about Tangier Island (or click on the next one as well).  I honestly hope to write a blog post from my sailboat when I visit Tangier Island next year (at least that is a cruise I would like to make), and yes, it will not disappear in the next few years.  But it still is serious, for the people living there, for our culture, as a colonial heritage site and as part of our history.  As both articles discuss, we really do not need to go to those poor Pacific Island Nations to watch them disappear with sea level rise, we can do that right here, in Virginia.

But then even closer to home, just two minor storm this September and October and we could not even get to our sailboat.  The marina was flooded.  Members of the club were forced out of their home and friends of ours who live in Poquoson on the water could not get in or out of their home, there was one to two feet of water in their yard and streets.  I can just imagine if the water levels rises a bit more over the years combined with the subsidence we will have in our area, particularly during storms.

October 2, 2015.  Flooding at the marina.  The Beagle is in the first slip on the left.  You had to go through almost knee deep water to get to the dock, and then you had to watch out for missing boards that had been pushed up by the rising water.

Oh of course, why should I care?  I’ll be long dead and gone before it would even affect me.  Very optimistically I may have 40 to 45 more years to live.  What can happen in those 40 or so more years?  Climate change is slow, so who cares?

I think that’s the problem we are facing.  Too many people are too cavalier about environmental issues.  We worry about the economy and saddling future generations up with our financial debts.  However, this environmental stuff is too touchy feely and more difficult to define; it does not touch our pockets or directly effects our livelihood, so we don’t worry about saddling future generations up with environmental debts, a.k.a. disasters, such a climate change, sea level rise, famines, desertification, you name it. But environmental debt may also translate into financial debt in the not so distant future, but that is so difficult to define.

I am still simply amazed how misinformed some people are, not informed at all, don’t care, don’t want to know, and of course some people are just plain partisan.  I am not sure if I captured them all here, but yes, even in this country you still run into people who have never heard or considered things like global warming or climate change.  Even if you believe it is cyclical, this is not a time to take things laying down.  How can you be so sure that humans are not aggravating, speeding up, or worsening this natural process?  Even over geological time it has never happened this fast except when there were meteor impacts or massive volcanic eruptions.  So can you be that sure that we humans are currently not "helping."  I strongly believe that we can try to minimize our impact and that we can try to anticipate what will happen and to preempt at least some of it or try to slow it down, instead of just rolling over and saying "so be it, it's natural." 

Yorktown ((9/27/2015)

The concept of global warming has been in the news the past week.  It started with the Papal visit to the east coast and when I posted a few pictures of the yacht club on my Facebook account, one of the first questions from one of my friends on the west coast was: "Global warming? "  At the same time a very conservative Facebook acquaintance posted something about the Pope being the Antichrist because of his opinion on the environment, evolution and homosexuality.  Boy it sure has been an amazing couple of days.  It is nothing I am going to solve in this blog, but it is also not something I wish to ignore.

Arriving at the yacht club around high tide Sunday morning it was evident that there was a coastal flooding issue. 

The water had retreated a little, but not enough for me to get on the finger pier and on the boat.

Blame a high pressure system over Maine and a coastal low off North Carolina, and there we had a stiff (20 to 30 mile per hour) easterly wind for the past couple of days.  Wind like that will pile the water up into the Chesapeake Bay.  With high tide it will push it in and even with low tide it will really not let the water out.  (This is a great website that shows you a comparison between the expected astronomic tide and the observed tide in the Chesapeake Bay, I assume there are other websites that do this for other places as well).  Thus with each successive tide water gets higher and higher.  Resulting in coastal flooding.  Yes, sea level rise increases the effect and we all know what causes sea level rise.  Or do we really?

High tide in the York River on Saturday

While you can't see it on this picture, the tide was still rushing in under the Coleman bridge at Yorktown.

We here on the east coast in particular in the Chesapeake Bay area are at a distinct disadvantage when it comes to sea level rise, at least I am told.  We live in a subsidence area.  During the last ice age, our area was pushed up.  We were not covered by ice, but the oceans had retreated.  This made the land lighter, and with the ice pushing on the land further to the north, our land was pushed up.  Our countryside is currently sinking, making any sea level rise more pronounced.  On top of that we were pushed up by a meteor impact that fell in the lower part of the Bay and we live on the rim of the crater.  This rim is sinking as well.  Finally, out in the ocean, the Gulf Stream makes a bend towards Europe right near us, and that bend will push water our way as well.  So this is why they predict a larger sea level rise in our area while elsewhere on the east coast it likely to be less.

Seaside goldenrod swaying in the 20+ mph breeze at the beach

Yorktown (8/3/2015)

We are so lucky where we live.  Last evening we needed to celebrate good health and just life, so after dinner we decided to take the dogs for a walk along the York River in Yorktown and get an ice-cream cone at Ben and Jerry’s.  The walk I can do every day, but $9.54 for two ordinary ice-cream cones is a bit steep, so we do that on special occasions, or when we feel we need to celebrate something.  It is really amazing how everything is getting more expensive and our wages are not keeping up.  But, if you read my previous blog post about my trip back from western Virginia you know I had a MRI and the results came back clean, so it was a special occasion.  It was around sunset and there was a large thunderstorm to the east.

Nothing really deep today (in the far distant past I started these pages as a photo blog), but as I mentioned we are really lucky.  The planners in Yorktown did a pretty decent job in what they did, and with the exception of mid-winter, our little town is pretty crowded.  Sometimes it is so crowded that I am afraid that its success, its parking issues and the lack of diversity in restaurants will be the reason for its eventual demise, but I have not seen it yet, thank goodness; and I hope I never see it.  But yes, I have walked around town, daydreaming about what I would do to make it even more attractive and more for four seasons. 

Anyway here are two more pictures I took last evening.

York River (7/3/2015)

I'm currently reading a book called: "Blue Mind" by Wallace J. Nichols.  It's is a book on man's relationship with water in particular being near, in, on or under water and it's effect on the brain.  I just started it, so no review yet, but I like the premise.  It sure is calming and relaxing to me being on my boat, kayak or even just on the beach.

Well, since July 4th falls on a Saturday this year, we got a holiday on the Friday before.  Kind of on the spur of the moment we decided that it would be fun to take the kayaks out and go play on the water that way, instead of sailing.  It promised to be a gorgeous, somewhat cooler than average day, and checking the tides showed it was ideal to launch in Yorktown and explore the area west of the Coleman bridge along the Colonial Parkway.

The tide was coming in when we launched and it was a great help pulling us up river under the bridge.   The current can be treacherous around the docks which was one reason why we chose to stay relatively clear of the dock and wear life jackets.  Still it was a little bit like being in a washing machine;we got jostled around a bit, and the waves made no sense at all.  Thing calmed down once we passed the dock and the bridge.

Going along the shore we observed a bald eagle majestically sitting on a branch overlooking the river.  There was a water-man crabbing; and we said hello as he pulled up one of his "pots."  A little further we beached the kayaks and just enjoyed the empty beach and just sat in the shade of a large tree watching the river and the boats passing by.

Me on the beach (photo taken by Donna Briedé)

After the tide turned we returned to Yorktown.  During our trip back we saw more people fishing and we got to see the Alliance under full sail.   A fun day, that we celebrated with a pizza and a beer at the Beach Deli on our return to Yorktown.

It just occurred to me that I often write about "Nature Deficit Disorder" and here I'm writing about "Water Deficit Disorder."  When push comes to shove, it is really amazing to realize what we modern humans are potentially missing if we don't make an effort to reconnect with nature, be it green or blue!  I'm sure it will not create world peace, but reconnection with these basic items and living in the moment does the soul good.

Yorktown (6/29/2015)

So going to work on the boat we got stuck at the railroad overpass by a train with tanker cars.  The railroad is owned by CSX and serves the heavy industry in York County.  With heavy industry I am referring to our power station and what used to be the refinery.  Both are and have been changing a lot lately.

The power station is owned by Dominion, and it is my understanding that it is partially coal and partially natural gas.  From what I understand, it is or used to be one of the most polluting power stations on the east coast, and we know that!  After a few days without rain we have a (not so) nice, thin, black dusty coating on our white boats, and the only thing that could possibly contribute to that would be the power plant.  Hopefully it is not the hexavalent chromium that was found by the EPA in the waste site.  I also hope that they’ll make good on their promise and discontinue using coal.  But then they are complaining that they cannot generate enough electricity for the Peninsula and have to construct a power line over the James River, in view of historic James Town, but more importantly Kings Mill a neighborhood with million dollar homes.  Dominion is threatening rolling blackouts if they don’t get what they want.  It seems somewhat childish, but of course we the common/middle class man will be the victim.

There is one nice thing about the power station: it is a great beacon for us sailors.  If we aim for the smokestacks we know we are on our way home.  That time we sailed across the Bay it was a very clear day and we was able to see the stacks all the way from the eastern shore.

The refinery has been closed for some time, and the current owners have been retooling it as an oil storage and shipment facility.  CSX is the major transporter of heavy crude from the wells in North Dakota to the Yorktown facility.  We have heard of two major accidents in the past year.  Both of them, the one in West Virginia and the one in Lynchburg, involved CSX trains that were on their way to our sleepy county on the York River and Chesapeake Bay.   This was somewhat concerning to some of us because we had discovered some issues with a stream crossing in our county.  Finally after all the accidents, CSX fixed the problem.  The photograph above shows the railroad crossing, one of the big storage tanks, and a train on its way out of the refinery.  I assume it was empty and on its way back to North Dakota to pick up another load.  The tanker cars looked new (no graffiti), so hopefully they are the double walled type, although I am not sure if that would be any help if you roll down a cliff in the mountains. 

No real message here today, but just a record of some of the things that we saw over the weekend.  It illustrates how this little county, that we live in, is connected to the world (remember my post on the Dolly Sods?).  This interconnectedness includes the electricity that is generated in the county and its influence on the construction of power lines elsewhere, or even as far as North Dakota and exploding railroad cars in West Virginia and Lynchburg.  We are amazingly interconnected in this world and it feels like things that affect us in York County may have nationwide or maybe global impacts.  The photo below illustrates that as well.  It was taken a few weeks ago and shows the visit of the Hermione from France.  In front of it is a small cruise ship; I wonder if it’s visit was planned or if the passengers had a treat that they’ll remember for the rest of their lives, and most likely they will remember Yorktown as well.

Photo taken June 7, 2015.

Yorktown (6/14/2015)

Life in Yorktown has slowed down after last week's visit of l'Hermione.  Walking through Yorktown those days I came to the conclusion that there are now so many pictures of the boat floating around the internet (pardon the pun), that I do not need to contribute to the glut (I guses I did below).  It was a madhouse, but it did put our sleepy village on the map.

We were actually sailing that day and watched the Hermione leaving the York River this pas Mon day June 8. 

Not that the town slows down much on a hot day on the weekend.  There were already plenty of people laying on the beach, soaking in the sun when we walked by the beach around 9:30 am, Sunday morning.  We tend to stay away from the madhouse, although in no way do we stay away from the water!  But still visiting Yorktown is fun (and our beagle lover to swim).

The photo below show you a little bit about the architecture.  I love the pineapple; it's a great fruit and it also serves as a symbol of hospitality.  It is difficult to find out why, but it seems that Christopher Columbus was given a pineapple when he first landed in the new world, and it seems that's how it started.  Naturally it is a exotic looking fruit as well.

Well, Yorktown is fairly hospitable.  We have one hotel on the water, and at least three Bed & Breakfasts.  It has a town dock where you can stay overnight with your boat.  Our little town has at least 6 places to eat and/or drink, and even a Ben and Jerry's.  Personally I would not mind a different more experimental restaurant or even a microbrewery, but heck, it's not a bad place to hang out.  We even have a farmer's market and on Thursday evening they have a concert (Shagging on Main).  We are very happy we moved here 15 years ago.

I try to drive through the town every chance I get on days I commute to Richmond or when I return.  I love the view of the water, the sailboats on the river or at the town dock.  The town is vibrant on a summer evening, but pretty darn dead in the winter.  Oh well, something to work on and make it a year round attraction.

Virginia Beach (6/9/2015)

What a difference a decade makes.  I was at this location more than a decade ago to do an environmental inventory, and it was a contaminated site that needed some serious work.  Development was encroaching and there was a tremendous pressure to do something with the site.  I'm so happy to be here now and see what the Chesapeake Bay Foundation has done with it.

A view of the Lynnhaven river from the Education Center.  Interestingly, when I got my sailboat five and a half years ago it came out of the inlet in the back.  The boat could not get out at low tide and we had to pull her over a sand bar.  The problem was it could not go under the bridge any other time; the mast was too tall. 

The site now has the Brock Environmental Center and we are giving a stormwater class in their class room.  The building is LEED certified (platinum), they used good environmental site design, recycled materials,  do not use city water, generate the majority of their own electricity and have composting toilets.   Yes, that in the middle of Virginia Beach!

One of the two windmills that are estimated to produce 40% of the electricity for the Center.  Solar cells on the roof generate the rest.

It is pretty impressive,  the building has been designed to take advantage of the environment while still being protective against the elements, in particular global warming, sea level rise, and just increased flooding events.

Looking outside, you can see that the site is surrounded by tidal wetlands and what looks like a salt marsh community.   I can remember that one would not eat oysters coming from the Lynnhaven; the water they grew in was too polluted.  Currently,  Lynnhaven oysters are a delicacy, prized for it's salty, but delicate taste.  So great to see we are making progress in cleaning up the Bay; albeit very slowly and very localized.

Chesapeake Bay (5/31/2015)

Boy it was a sailing Sunday.  First a friend of mine and I took my boat over the Wormley Creek Marina to get hauled for a bottom job (the subject of my next post).  We expected some wind and that proved to be somewhat wrong.  It started out good, but around the end things were slow.  We were bucking the tide, and although it looked like we were making some headway based on the wake and current around the boat, our GPS showed we made 0.0 knots over the ground.  In fact we were actually drifting somewhat.  Frustrating but it was fun anyway.  The two pictures below show the approach to the creek and us getting ready to dock the Beagle.

I'm really impressed by Wormley Creek Marina; if I was not a member of the club, I can see having my boat there.  

I was tired and overheated when I got home; jumped in the shower and we ran out to meet friends for what we thought was a moonlight sail on their boat.  Well, the weather had turned and we had a steady 20 knot wind and 3 to 4 foot waves on our part of the Bay.  Thank goodness we were on a 40 foot boat with a reefed main, but we were still flying 8 knots at times.  When we got back, it showed that the highest wind gust we had was 29 knots.  It was an exhilarating sail.

When we got home and downloaded the pictures we were struck how small our Catalina 25 was compared to the Pearson 40 we sailed that evening. 

Nothing really deep to write about today, except maybe that being out on the water is exhilarating at times; without time to think about all the things around you.  You are just in the zone, concentrating on sailing.

Random ramblings about the Hampton Roads (5/24/2015)

The Australian kayaker Steve Posselt visited the area this past week.  He is trying to convince the world about the gravity of global warming by kayaking in 3 continents.  He eventually plans to end up in Paris for the next climate conference.   There are many ways people try to focus our attention to a (their) cause: be it dead soldiers with Memorial Day, multiple sclerosis with an MS 180 bike ride (I rode one from Houston to Austin 8 years ago), a breast cancer walk for life, circumnavigate the Americas for disabled sailors, or even kayaking the world to focus attention on global warning.

I have been interested in the issue of how to convince people that environmental responsibility is a must.  It seems that there is a group that is concerned about the environment and a whole group of people who do not seem to give a damn.  Crazy enough they seem to fall out along political or ideological lines, or even religious lines.  That's what's fascinating me.  As I mentioned in my bio, it was Stanford University's psychologist Leon Festinger who wrote the following in the 1950s:  "A man with a conviction is a hard man to change. Tell him you disagree and he turns away. Show him facts or figures and he questions your sources. Appeal to logic and he fails to see your point."  Call me crazy, but it still applies 60 years later.   I really wonder how to get that paradigm shift, but I'm afraid that they'll only see the point when it is way too late.

The way I see it, it was Francis Bacon (1561-1626) who reminded us that we humans had dominion over " the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.’ (Gen.1:28).  In the Novum Organon, Bacon writes: "Let the human race recover that right over nature which belongs to it by divine bequest."  It is scary to see that in those days we already felt that we owned the earth and that we could do with it what we wanted, with the excuse that God gave us permission (dominion).  Still now do I see Facebook posts by religious friends that tell me to trust God, and to relax because God is in control.  I find this outright scary, but it illustrates the divide that I was writing about; although as I am often reminded by Donna (my wife), dominion over nature does not mean that you do not need to take care of it.  Dominion means you have a responsibility to take care of the eartg.  I honestly do not think that any God would have a plan to let her/his creation go to hell.

Anyway Steve Posselt called our area "This is a staggering part of the world," or as I may paraphrase one of the crown jewels in God's creation.  Below are a set of pictures that I have taken over the years of this crown jewel.  Hopefully we can preserve this beautiful landscape.

View of the James River from Surry towards Jamestown

York River from York River State Park

Sunset over the York River from the National Colonial Parkway

About the cross the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel with my sailboat 

Chesapeake Bay (4/18/2015)

Finally, this was the first time this year that we went for a sail on our boat instead of the boat of a friend.  I like sailing in general, and yes, sailing on boats from friends is great.  Those boats are usually larger, and warmer.  Our friend Ben has a Catalina 30, of which he can enclose the entire cockpit and keep you out of the cold weather.  It was great sailing with him around Christmas time, while it was snowing outside, and on other cold days this winter.  But as a boy of the tropics, I prefer warmer weather, and of course nothing is better than sailing your own, even if it is inferior to other boats.

During our sail we had to test our new camera (an Olympus TG-3).  Yes I know not a Go-pro, but ; being an avid Olympus user all my life I just gravitated to this one.  Moreover, it does everything a Go-Pro does and then some.  We clipped the camera to the mast with a monopod and was able to take pictures using my cell phone as a remote.  I used my phone as a view finder and could use it to zoom in or out and take shots.  Great fun!  On the photo below you can see me operate the camera with my phone.

The weather was great, a few clouds in the sky and winds around 10 knots.  Temperatures were in the mid-70s, but with the wind over the colder water it was chilly.  During the sail we were reminded that it is pine pollen season on our part of the world, and if you are not from our part of the world you would not know what I am talking about.  During pine pollen season everything gets covered by a layer of fine yellow dust.  It is amazing.  While they say people are not allergic to pine pollen, on Sunday my body was not as happy as it usually is, the sky was yellow, and everything had a thin cover of yellow dust.  I wrote about it before (here) almost exactly a year ago (on 4/19/2014).  So interesting how closely nature is synchronized. 

With the first rainstorm streams are covered by a yellow slime and in a way it is actually indescribable.  The admiral (my wife) took a picture of a plume of pine pollen that we sailed through well off shore (maybe a mile or two) in the Chesapeake Bay (see the photo below).   What amazes me here that there must be this strange current in the water (or a combination of current and wind) that concentrates the pine pollen in this narrow band.  But you can see is goes quite the distance.

Seaford (2/20 &2/21/2015)

As regular readers might have seen, we have had a harsh weather week these past few days.  It snowed on Monday and temperatures went below 10 degrees Fahrenheit (or -12 degrees centigrade).  Yes for us southerners that is cold!  It was that cold that it froze Back Creek where our boat is located.  As I mentioned previously, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) website mentions that seawater freezes below 28.4 degrees and our measurements showed the ice surface was 28 degrees; indeed cold enough for saltwater to freeze.  Expecting rain on Saturday night, I thought it was prudent to at least get a lot of the snow of the boat, in the hope to let the rainwater runoff easier and keep the inside drier.

First getting on the boat was an adventure.  She was stuck in the ice.  Thank goodness we were able to pull her forward a bit and I was able to push some of the snow of the bow with my snow shovel, thus taking some of the weight of the bow and loosening it enough that I could pull it over.  Now getting on without slipping and going of the other side.  I did succeed, and got most of the snow pushed of.  I only slipped once and thank goodness I fell right into the cockpit and did not need to try to swim in 28 degree water.  The snow was nice and soft.  I tore off the handle to the companion way hatch on my way down, but at least I've got something else to work on this winter.

Removing snow from the boat (photo taken by Donna A. Briedé)

It is always good to be at the yacht club.  I’m seldom alone; there is always someone working or at least visiting their boat.  This was also the case on Saturday and actually on Friday as well.  The advantage of membership of a group such as this is comradery and friendship.  It is a great place to hang out.  We humans are social animals and need others around, despite my regular assertion that we men are all monks and rather be alone.

York River (1/16/2015)

The York River is very interesting, it is only named the York when the Pamunkey and the Mattaponi come together at West Point.  At this point it becomes a very wide river.  The river has fairly steep slopes and except for some neighborhoods it is fairly undeveloped until you get to Yorktown.  Before Yorktown you have three areas that are owned by the Federal Government and you see signs on shore that tell you to stay away from these areas, or else!  Another stretch of the south shore of the river is a state park (York River State Park).  That's where we visited today.  The photo below was taken from the visitor's center, looking towards the northwest.

These facilities have a kayak launch and you can also rent kayaks if you don't have your own.  There is a great creek that runs through the marsh you can see below.  It has some fun wildlife, in particular a huge population of fiddler crabs.  Today we hiked along the marsh and saw a number of birds including two soaring bald eagles.  The north and west facing slopes of these marshes are spectacular.  I absolutely love the ecology of the area.  It still amazes me to see pretty darn big trees in this area and a dense understory of mountain laurel (yes they do grow here on the coastal plains).  The photograph below was taken near one of the bird watching platforms in the creek (yes this is a great bird watching area).

I assume that the park is across an area where the native American population lives that became a Disney legend. Archaeologists and historians place Pocahontas' village on north shore of the York. How's that for historical significance.  I guess that's why there was this thing in the local newspaper today telling us that some citizens are trying to get an historic and ecological significance designation for the river.  Hopefully this will be successful.