When the Whole Earth Catalog (WEC) was published in late 60s and early 70s, the idea was to create a finely curated list of everything “useful, relevant to independent education, high quality or low cost, not already common knowledge, and easily available by mail.”

The Dymaxion World of Buckminster Fuller, Fall 1968. From Arts & Ecology.

Steve Jobs once referred to the WEC as “the bible” of his generation, and it’s no wonder that he admired it: Each issue of the catalog was sprawling, ambitious, smart, lovingly crafted, and very much in keeping with the best of Northern California’s innovative spirit — progressive, irreverent, and (in its own way) ruthless.

The title of this post refers to a (perhaps apocryphal) account of the user experience considerations of the WEC. Reportedly, the catalog’s design editor, J. Baldwin, said that the catalog was an attempt to bring everything (of value) in the world to within two¹ phone calls for any reader. Which was undoubtedly great at the time, but not quite good enough to escape the development of the one-call solution — the dial-up modem. Doh! And the no-call solution — broadband!

And yet, when you compare the infinite variety of the web to the refined encapsulation of the WEC, it’s easy to see the value of expert curation. Doesn’t it seem like the great opportunities for progress in web content is to become more like the WEC — reliable, readable, smart? And even reader-supported? (After all, the WEC cost $5 in the 60s; $31.85 today. As one of the Whole Earth editors wrote, people will pay for authenticity and findability).

¹ For the record, I’m not exactly sure what the significance of “two” is, rather than “six” or “three.” Would the first call would be the Whole Earth Catalog, and the second would be to ... the product creator? Or the first would be to the product creator, and the second would be to ... someone else?

From the outstanding satirical Twitter feed, @BPGlobalPR. T-shirts here; book deal to follow, I assume.

I tend to obsess over outdoors gear. The pinnacle (or nadir, as the case may be) of this obsession was the spring/summer of 2001, when I hiked the Pacific Crest Trail. Over four months, I sampled a ton of gear — six pairs of shoes, a few different shirts, jackets, socks, shelters, cookware. I had dozens (maybe hundreds) of conversations about this stuff, spent hours discussing the various qualities that distinguished some little piece of backpacking equipment or apparel as the lightest, strongest, driest, most comfortable, most long-lasting, most whatever.

What did I take away from these discussions? Two things: (1) At some point, rational evaluation becomes religious debate. Gear nerds have deep, complicated relationships with their hardware, and we have a hard time remaining level-headed about the stuff saves our butt during a thunderstorm, or keeps us consistently comfortable as temperatures change. And, (2), for me, Patagonia apparel lasted longer, bounced back better, fit better, dealt with rain better, and just generally worked better than the other stuff I tried. Others poo-poo-ed it as “Pata-gucci.” Froofy, high-end couture posing as outdoor gear, i.e. stuff that “real thru-hikers” wouldn’t be caught dead in.

All of this is good and well, but I recently came across another excellent aspect of it. (And I still wear it).

Called the Footprint Chronicles, they’re a series of detailed accounts of how individual pieces of their gear are made — where the material is sourced, how fair labor practices are ensured, how the garment is assembled.

This example takes you through the design and construction of the Nano Puff Pullover, made from recycled polyester.

This is a different kind of marketing, clearly: Documentary accounts that highlight the qualities of the company, rather than the performance of the gear. I’d be interested to know how (or if) they measure the return on investment of this kind of thing.

Last Friday, we improvised a parlor game during a visit to Sarah’s parents’ East Bay homestead. They’ve got tons of books on California history, including a gem called California Place Names: The Origin and Etymology of Current Geographical Names by one Erwin Gudde, a Cal professor and friend of Sarah’s fam. There wasn’t much “game” to the game; someone shouted out a city or county or river name, and then we all offered theories about its origin before flipping to its entry in the book and reading aloud.

A sample. Yosemite:

From the Southern Sierra Miwok yohhe’ meti or yosse’ meti [meaning] “they are killers,” derived from yoohu– [meaning] “to kill,” evidently a name given to the Indians of the valley by those outside it ... Edwin Sherman claimed discovery of the valley in the spring of 1850, naming it “The Devil’s Cellar.” In March of 1851, it was entered by the Mariposa Battalion and named at the suggestion of LH Bunnell: “I then proposed that we give the valley the name of Yo-sem-i-ty, as it was suggestive, euphonious, and certainly American; that by so doing, the name of the tribe of Indians which we met leaving their homes in this valley, perhaps never to return, would be perpetuated.”

There’s so much information in here that it’s hard to know where to start, but (1) Yes, majestic wilderness should be called things like “they are killers.” This should be a requirement for any place that is rugged and majestic and awe-inspiring. What words can match landscapes like these? Those that involve violent death, for starters. (2) I can guess at why were the Indians leaving, “perhaps never to return,” but this seems like a detail that should be, say, expanded. (3) The “y” at the end, for my money, makes more sense. It was replaced by an “e” in 1852 by a Lt. Tredwell Moore. No explanation is given as to why; the implication is, why not? More on Yosemite here, but the whole book is pretty great.

When I start a camping trip, the Van Halen song “Panama” [Video on YouTube] often pops into my head — I wish I could represent Eddie Van Halen’s reverby guitar opening in words, but I was humming it and singing the chorus — Pa-neh-ma ... Pa-neh-ma-ha — as this picture was taken. That’s the Wind River Range coming into view beyond my friend Nick. For the next 10 days, it would dominate us. In fact, this photo represents the last few moments of peaceful hiking. Our packs were really, really heavy, and soon enough the hurt would begin. Then, we would get rained on pretty often, and (for my part) suffer too many black fly bites and a few altitude-related headaches. Still, totally, totally worth it.

I could go on and on here, but my pictures on Flickr really tell the story better than I can.

I’m a shameless sucker for gear, so here’s some shout-outs:

• Bridgedale socks. They were really wet, really often. But they stayed warm and they maintained some spring, even when soaked.
• Tarptent. I visited Tarptent designer Henry Shires at his house on the Peninsula, and I bought the Squall [PDF] last spring. Since then, I’ve put it to the test in the Gila Wilderness, Yosemite, and the Yuba River. I was still skeptical about its ability to really keep me warm and dry, but I must testify that, even when it rains hard all afternoon (and even when the rain really comes down), the Tarptent abides. Everything people say is true: It’s a really good, reasonably light backpacking shelter, and it’s got everything you need to anchor and adjust it to respond to changing weather and wind.
• Blistoban. Part of the reason for the shout-out to Bridgedale was that, halfway through, I switched to thinner Smartwool socks, and they absolutely killed my feet in the matter of a couple of hours. Nick loaned me some Blistoban strips, though, and they ruled. How does Blistoban compare to my old backpacking blister-control remedy: antibiotic ointment covered by bandaid which is then covered by duct tape which is then smeared with Vaseline? Jury’s still out here.
• Patagonia Dragonfly. They call it the Houdini now, and it’s a little different, but I bought one of the early models in 2003, and it still impresses me. I wore it almost everyday, and it admirably repelled rain without ever becoming oppressively warm.

Mary Appelhof’s Worms Eat My Garbage is one of my all-time favorite gardening books. Not only does it contain the first principles of worm composting; not only is written in an engaging, warm and yet practical voice; it’s one of those special books that says a lot about the person who displays it on his or her bookshelf, a freak flag representing all sorts of affiliations, opinions and predilections.

I was thinking about Mary after I read a strange tidbit about worm composting in today’s Wall Street Journal Informed Reader blog. It linked to an article in Britain’s Daily Telegraph called “Wormeries ‘may add to greenhouse gases.’” Hmmm.

In fact, the greenhouse gases emitted by a large commercial worm composting plant may be comparable to the global warming potential of a landfill site of the same scale, according to the Open University. This is because worms used in composting emit nitrous oxide — a greenhouse gas 296 times more powerful, molecule for molecule, than carbon dioxide. Landfill sites produce methane which is 23 times more powerful a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.

What is this Open University? (Apparently, it is a “distance learning” program in the UK). And how much nitrous oxide do worms emit as they consume garbage? Is it comparable to the amount that the garbage would emit if it sat in a landfill? Is it less? More?

(Mary’s website? www.wormwoman.com, naturally.)

I’m usually the person who recommends going anywhere but Yosemite in the Sierras because it’s expensive and tends to be over-run with people even in the high country, whereas the Emigrant Wilderness, for instance, tends to be pretty sparsely visited, even on the busiest of weekends. But let’s keep that on the shhhh. Anyway, I spent 3 warm, sunny days in Yosemite last week with my good friend and all-around good guy Andrew Goodman.

We had nice weather, went to popular places (North Dome, Yosemite Falls — which has its own Wikipedia page), and yet saw very few other people. Maybe it’s the time of year, or the fact that it was a low-snow year, or both? Or our route? We hiked down to North Dome on the Porcupine Creek Trail, and then got back to 120 via the Yosemite Creek trail (where, incidentally, we took some excellent swims). Whatever contributed to it, I’ve now seen the good side of Yosemite.

Yosemite Valley from North Dome, rendered via the magic of Autostitch. It assembled 25 or so photos from my Motorola SLVR into a pretty complete panorama, and even the artifacts — moving clouds and ghosted edges — seem to make the result more compelling, I think.

Yosemite Valley is an incredible place, especially when seen from a place above the Valley, like North Dome or the outcropping above Yosemite Falls. If you want a glimpse at the Valley was like when people were putting up the first routes on El Cap, check out Glen Denny’s photo book, Yosemite in the Sixties. It’s really nicely produced and filled with amazing black-and-white images of simpler times and the legends who started it all — Yvon Chouinard, Warren Harding, Royal Robbins, Galen Rowell, and many more.

Last night, I saw architect Teddy Cruz deliver a fast-paced, idea-rich presentation at the San Francisco Art Institute. In a little over an hour, he tore through a slide show covering his recent work on the social, cultural, political, and economic forces at work in communities along the US-Mexico border. The slide show itself was pretty impressive — a blend of research photography, simple PowerPoint animation, and photo collages (like the ones shown in this post, courtesy of UCSD, where Cruz teaches) that looked somewhat like maps but also somewhat like actual photos of urban density.

I’d first heard of Cruz in the NYT Magazine feature from last spring, Shantytowns as a New Suburban Ideal. It details “Living Rooms at the Border,” his proposed project to turn a lot in the border community of San Ysidro into a multi-use dwelling/community center/market. He discusses it in more detail in “Urban acupuncture”, an article he wrote for Residential Architect Online:

Housing and density need to be seen not as an amount of units but as dwelling in relationship to the larger infrastructure of the city, which includes transportation, ecological networks, the politics and economics of land use, and particular cultural idiosyncrasies of place ... In a parcel where existing zoning allows only three units of housing, the project proposes (through negotiated density bonuses and by sharing kitchens) 12 affordable housing units, a community center resulting from the adaptive reuse of an existing 1927 church, offices for Casa Familiar in the church’s new attic, and a garden underpinning the community’s nonconforming micro-economies, such as street markets and kiosks. In a place where current regulation allows only one use, we propose five different uses that support each other.

Cruz discusses his architectural mission in this article at the American Institute of Architecture’s site: Border Postcard: Chronicles from the Edge.

During my hike on the PCT in 2001, my two favorite pastimes were swimming and eating. When I was walking — which was most of the time — cool swimming holes and sizzling cheeseburgers filled my daydreams. When my hiking partner, Nick, and I talked, it was more often than not about swimming and eating cheeseburgers: How far to the next river, creek or lake? How long would it take to hitch out to get a cheeseburger at the next road crossing?

As the two attached lists indicate, we found lots of chances to follow these particularly blissful pastimes. Cheeseburger-wise, the best were found in the Cheeseburger Belt, which begins as the Sierras give way to the Cascades in northern California, and ends a little north of Ashland, Oregon. The best of the best in the belt were found at Buck’s Lake Lodge near Quincy, the Pines Frosty in Chester (which also has kick-ass shakes), and Lake of the Woods Resort north of Ashland. At the bottom of the list was Belden Town, which shouldn’t really be surprising since they don’t seem to like hikers too much anyway.

The best of the swimming was between in northern California, between Sierra City and Etna. The Middle Fork of the Feather (pictured below) was spectacular, though Nick preferred Squaw Valley Creek, which he found a little cozier.

Five years ago today, I was hiking on the Pacific Crest Trail. I spent the summer of 2001 hiking through California, Oregon, and Washington; on the 12th of August, I was chilling out at Crater Lake, Oregon.

Crater Lake had been a really major destination for me, not because of its legendary, otherworldly beauty or because I’d never seen it or because I was looking forward to bumming beers off retirees in RVs, but BECAUSE I was having a new pair of shoes delivered to the PO there. My feet, at that point, were thrashed. The trail can be unkind to feet in a variety of ways — extreme heat in the south, frequent river crossings and snow in the Sierras — and it doesn’t help when you wear one pair of Asics Gel Trabuco III’s for the last two-thirds of the state of California.

I take a look at my PCT journal a few times every summer; the entry scanned above represents some of the happier times on the trail. A little earlier in my hike, the heat and drudgery of Northern California would have figured more prominently. The words “heat rash” would have appeared, and I also would have mentioned the fact that my girlfriend was breaking up with me. Later in the hike, my hiking partner, Nick Brown, broke his ankle and some religious zealots crashed commercial airplanes into American landmarks.

Reading over it now, August 12, 2001 represents a distant little period of serenity and calm. My days were pretty simple: How far should I hike today? Where will I get water? Should I stop and take a swim while I’m there? When should I eat my next snack? Should I take this alternate route? Should I stop early? Should I night-hike? Where will I get my next cheeseburger? It amazes me that it ever could be so easy ... The picture below was taken a few days before.

Like most things in New York, the Park Slope Food Coop is exclusive, filled with beautiful people, and a source of high drama in the lives of everyone involved with it. Most everyone I know in Brooklyn is a member, and all of them are on some sort of weird coop probation because they’re behind on their shifts. Skipping shifts is really naughty, and the lengths to which some members will go to get out of them has become the stuff of folklore. On the other hand, others seem almost pathologically conscientious — in a recent issue of the newsletter was a story of a member who had written into the coop to explain his absence. You see, he was in prison for eco-terrorism. So he may not, you know, be able to cover that Tuesday afternoon produce sorting shift.

The roots of (modern) urban gardening can be traced to the Liz Christy Garden on New York’s Lower East Side. (Some good 70’s photos of urban hippies getting their hands dirty). When I visited, the cherry blossoms were going off.