This isn't Global Cooling

"[C]limate scientists warn that a decade from now, a scorching summer like this one might seem comparatively mild."

--New York Times (7-28-22)

Yes, I know that when they hear me complain that Seattle high temperatures have broken into the 90s for the fourth straight day, the reaction from the rest of world may well be bitter laughter.  In a different article, from a week ago, the Times wrote that during this past spring, the temperature in northern India routinely exceeded 110 degrees.  The heat was so persistent that people were unable to work. 

Much of the world consists of economies that barely provide basic necessities to their people.  Those economies are failing.  Because of excessive heat.  Because critical portions of the population insisted that global warming was a hoax.  

But the rest of the world exists only in my mind.  My reality is what I see before me, day after day.  And 90 degrees means something different to me -- who grew up in a world where 80 degrees in summer was considered hot -- than it would to a resident of Delhi, or Cairo.   Or San Antonio.  

At this moment, 6 p.m., it is still 90 degrees outside.  Inside my house, it is now 80 degrees, a temperature that has been very slowly rising throughout the day.  And "inside my house" means on the main floor.  Upstairs, where I sleep, it must be well over 100 degrees -- as you ascend the stairs, the change in temperature is sudden and overwhelming.

So I spend most of my day indoors.  My two outdoor-oriented cats have also spent most of the day indoors, sprawled out on a window ledge.  I will again go to bed at 11 p.m. or midnight, rather than my normal 10 p.m., as I wait for the upstairs to cool down.  Because one advantage Seattle possesses over some hot cities is that -- usually -- the temperature does cool down during the night.  Down to 64 or 66 degrees this past week.

This morning, I arose at 6 a.m., despite being retired and having no job to hustle off to. I opened front and back doors, hoping that a little fresh 66 degree air would cool the downstairs to below 70 degrees, in preparation for another day beneath the blazing sun. It didn't, really, never dropping below 72. I ate an early breakfast, glanced at the morning papers, and then left at 7 a.m. for a morning walk.

That walk was refreshing, and was definitely the highlight of the day. I followed one of my several walking routes -- through the Arboretum and down into Madison Park. I sat outside in the cool morning air at Starbucks, arming myself with a blueberry muffin and a latte, and then continued walking into Madrona, and wound my way back home.

It's sad, but that was the highlight of my day. I arrived home at 9:30 a.m., with the temperature already pushing past 75 degrees. I spent a short time on my back deck, being entertained by my cats and plucking a few dandelions out of the yard. Then, the temperature up to 80, the doors went shut, a fan in my living room was turned on, and I once more was barricaded against the outside heat.

A novel addition to my daily ritual: from 2 p.m. to about 3:30 p.m. I slept. Siesta time, making up for those lost hours at night. As well as the boredom of incarceration in an over-heated house. Who would have ever predicted that the Siesta would come to Seattle?

You may properly conclude that I don't have air conditioning. Correct. I'm a native resident of the Northwest Corner. We don't do air conditioning, because we don't need air conditioning.

So I keep telling myself, with less and less conviction, as I listen to the hum of the AC next door. Power-driven machinery, keeping a group of kids cool, kids renting the small, neighboring house. Bah! A waste of power and one more source of environmental degradation.

My cats look at each other, and roll their eyes.

Ascending Mt. Si, to measure decline

Many of us have childhood memories of measuring our heights at intervals -- keeping track of our growth, for example, with pencil marks and dates on a wall or doorjamb. It was encouraging proof that we were not only growing up, but getting bigger and stronger as we did so.  

I'm probably in a minority, however, in keeping track of my decline as I age -- by documenting the increasing time it takes each year to climb Mt. Si, an isolated 4,167-foot volcanic remnant, looming above the town of North Bend, Washington, about forty miles east of Seattle.  I've hiked the trail frequently ever since I was 26, but have documented my climbs annually only since 2011.  My Mt. Si post on June 5, 2011, continues to be one of my most frequently read entries, a reflection of the large number of persons who continue to climb the mountain.

Each year, I add to my 2011 post my most recent time to climb Mt. Si.  By which I mean the hike from the trailhead only to the open rock field, below the Haystack, where one emerges from the forest, some 3,200 feet above the trailhead.  The Haystack itself is a class 3 scramble which I did a number of times in my careless and foolish youth, but not in recent years.   

My annual time entries show a definite trend upward, and my physical condition a corresponding trend downward.  It takes me longer to climb the same distance each year.  In 2011, it took me an hour and 40 minutes.  Last year, that had increased to two hours, 13 minutes. Yesterday, it was five minutes longer: two hours, 18 minutes.

I'm not getting younger.  Or faster or stronger.  But I'm like the dog that learns to dance on his rear legs:  he doesn't do it well, but it's a miracle that he does it at all. 

Yesterday was a Saturday, and the trail was mobbed.  I used to hear complaints that hiking and climbing were recreations enjoyed only by privileged white youth.  That certainly wasn't true yesterday -- climbers of both sexes and of every conceivable ethnicity and age.  It was a veritable United Nations on the slopes, reminding me of a recent report that Seattle was behind only New York and San Francisco in the diversity of its population.

The usual approach to Mt. Si from Seattle is to take I-90 to North Bend, then exit and follow the winding road to the trailhead.  My car has some problems that made me uneasy about taking it onto the interstate, so I chose the "back road" that I'd never taken before.  I drove across Lake Washington on SR 20, continuing as far as Redmond -- a freeway as crowded as I-90 -- but then turned off onto SR 202, a very pleasant and scenic drive through rural King County, including the small towns of Fall City and Snoqualmie, ending up in downtown North Bend.  The drive takes about 15 minutes longer from my house than the I-90 route, but was much more enjoyable.

An enjoyable day that has become something of an annual ritual.  As has the following day, during which I once more learn to walk on legs made of rubber.

Return to North Rim

After my major disappointment, two months ago, as I unsuccessfully attempted to reach Bar Harbor, Maine, for an idyllic four-day vacation, I held my breath last week as I plotted a four-day visit to the Grand Canyon.  

The gods toyed with me, as they did with Odysseus's attempt to reach Ithaca -- throwing up a series of obstacles en route, obstacles that seem funny only in retrospect -- but they ultimately allowed me to succeed.

This was my fourth visit to the North Rim in the past decade -- prior visits having been noted in this blog in 2013, 2017, and 2018.  The place obviously attracts me.  As in those past years, I braved a six-hour drive, going and coming, between Las Vegas (the nearest major airport) and the Canyon.  As in past trips, I unaccountably chose to make the trip in mid-summer.  The temperatures as I drove through southern Nevada reached 114 degrees (45.4° C), but began moderating once I left I-15 at St. George, Utah, and began climbing toward the canyon.  

During my stay at the North Rim, with an elevation over 8,200 feet, the temperature never exceeded the high 70s -- far below the temperature down at the level of the Colorado River.  On past visits, I have braved hikes down into the canyon as far as Roaring Springs at 5,200 feet (2013), and the Supai tunnel (6,800 feet) (2017).  I began those hikes, both years, at about 6 a.m., and I still had a long, hot hike back to the rim.  

This year, I didn't feel like getting up at 5:30 a.m., or skipping a good breakfast in the lodge.  Shamefacedly, I admit that I therefore confined  my hiking to trails on the rim.  But it was some pretty good hiking, in a nice climate.

Grand Canyon Lodge is situated on something of a promontory into the canyon.  On its east is Kaibab Canyon, where the Kaibab Trail leads down to the river.   On its west, is another canyon, called the Transept.  A trail follows the rim of the Transept from the Lodge to the only North Rim campground, a distance of about 1½ miles.  Although there is no appreciable change of elevation between the Lodge and the camp, the trail dips up and down in places, making it an easy, but not too easy, hike.  I hiked the trail early on my first full day at the North Rim, and again as a send-off to the Canyon on the morning of my departure.  Both times, I returned on a dedicated Bridle Path -- closer to the road, and a slightly shorter route back to the Lodge.

On Monday afternoon, the day after my arrival, I hiked the Uncle Jim Trail (4.7 miles), a loop originating at the Kaibab Trail trailhead.  The trail was steep in places, the afternoon was hot, and I worried for a while that I should have brought more than my one liter of water.  Eventually, the path reaches the rim of Kaibab Canyon, and follows the rim for some distance with excellent views of monuments arising out of the depths of the canyon, such as the Throne of Wotan and the Vishnu Temple.  As the loop began moving away from the best view at the Observation Point, I heard distant thunder, and soon was drenched in heavy rainfall for about 45 minutes.  Unexpected, but entirely welcome -- my concerns about being overheated vanished as I strode briskly down the trail in sodden shorts and t-shirt.  A happy  Seattleite, hiking in the rain!

Tuesday morning, I drove the narrow, winding, 23-mile side road to Cape Royal, east of the Lodge with views not only of the canyon, but beyond to the Painted Desert far below, and mountain ranges beyond.  From the end of the road, there is a paved, flat, one-mile trail, lined with descriptive signs regarding local plant life, and with an excellent view of the Angel's Window, a square hole carved in the rock.  The trail ends on top of Angel's Window.

A 2.6-mile side road from the Cape Royal road leads to  Point Imperial, the highest point in Grand Canyon National Park, at about 8,800 feet elevation. 

Tuesday afternoon, I set off on the Widforss Trail.  The trail is 4.8 mile in length (one-way), circling the end of the Transept and following the opposite side back for some distance before turning inland toward the south.  I started late, and had no intention of completing the entire trail; I planned to be back for dinner!  I turned back after reaching the Transept's approximate end, maybe two miles.  It was a very enjoyable hike, with  ups and downs into side gullies, but not really strenuous.  Next time I visit the North Rim, I'd like to start early and hike the entire trail.  I met only one party while on the trail, and my car was the only one in the parking lot when I returned.

I got up early Wednesday, had my final Lodge breakfast, did a final hike on the Transept Trail to the campground, returned to the Lodge, spent some time hanging out on the Lodge patio, and finally checked out at the last allowable minute at 11 a.m., squaring my shoulders and facing my six-hour return drive to Vegas.  

I hated to leave.  I'll be back.

---------------

PS -- At Grand Canyon National Park, the Park Service has recently reinstated masking mandates at all indoor spaces for everyone, and -- for the unvaccinated -- at outdoor spaces where social distancing can't be observed.  Signs informing the public of these rules are posted everywhere.  While I was there, I was surprised at how many visitors totally ignored the rules.

Klara and the Sun

Sixteen years ago, while on a family canoe trip in France, several of us took turns reading Kazuo Ishiguro's novel, Never Let Me Go.   We were fascinated by his story of young people (all clones) who had been raised into their teens for the single purpose of having their organs harvested for the medical needs of those who could afford them. .  Fascinated, and creeped out.

Ishiguro's recent novel, Klara and the Sun (2021), is equally eerie, and raises somewhat similar questions in our minds -- questions we may or may not like contemplating.  Ishiguro's approach in both novels reminds me of that in works by Ursula K. LeGuin -- both authors deal with worlds very similar to our own, but with certain critical differences.  As LeGuin once stated, she was not interested in predicting our future, or in envisioning possible scientific advances -- she was not, she believed, writing science fiction.

Instead, like Ishiguro, in story after story, she described our own world, or a world very similar to our world, but one with certain critical differences, asking the question -- if we postulate these differences, what might result?

In Klara, the variable is the development of artificial intelligence to the point that resulting "robots" not only can imitate all human behavior, not only have superior perceptions to humans, not only excel humans in analytical skills, but also seem to have a sense of self and an ability to display empathy, to experience emotions.  

These abilities have permitted the development of robots that serve as "Artificial Friends," or AFs as they are called in the novel.  (A development we see developing even now, in "real life," in embryonic form.)

The story is told from the point of view of a female AF, whom we first see as she stands on the floor of a retail establishment, waiting to be purchased.  She develops a reciprocal friendship with a young girl, Josie, whose mother finally decides to purchase Klara to keep Josie company.  Josie is ill, it turns out, suffering from after effects of having been "lifted" -- genetic editing to increase intellectual ability -- which has become a prerequisite for admission to virtually all universities.  Klara is purchased to help keep Josie's spirits up, to give her a close friend, while she struggles with the illness.

As in his earlier novel, Ishiguro asks us what it means to have a soul.  In Never Let Me Go, the young people -- cloned, which in our civilization would not detract from their humanity -- were believed by everyone to be soulless, mere physical imitations of human beings.  In Klara, the AF is clearly a manufactured being.  But, by telling the story from Klara's point of view, we are left unable to doubt that she thinks, acts, and feels in ways identical to ourselves, modified only by not having the advantage of our years of gradually accumulated experience with the world.  If she doesn't have a soul, what exactly do we mean by a soul?

And what do we mean by love?  Klara doesn't love romantically, but she is devoted to Josie, to Josie's boyfriend, and to their hopes of a lasting relationship.  She loves the Sun, which she personifies as a divine presence, one to whom she turns repeatedly with both prayers and adoration.  She perceives the divine Sun, as it reflects through several stacked panes of glass:

Although his face on the outermost glass was forbidding and aloof, and the one immediately behind it was, if anything, even more unfriendly, the two beyond that were softer and kinder.  There were three further sheets, and though it was hard to see much of them on account of their being further back, I couldn't help estimating that these faces would have humorous and kind expressions.  In any case, whatever the nature of the images on each glass sheet, as I looked at them collectively, the effect was of a single face, but with a variety of outlines and emotions.

She thus develops a sense of the complexity of her divinity, the Sun, and, perhaps, of the complexity of human love.

As I've suggested, the entire story is told by Klara.  Klara has a high intelligence, an incredible ability to infer human emotions from studying faces, but a limited familiarity with day to day human life.  Her eyes apparently divide her range of vision into "boxes," blocks which she learns to combine to give a true picture of reality, the way we combine views from our two eyes to obtain three dimensional sight.  She has concluded that the sun literally sinks into the ground at the point of the viewable horizon.  Her nemesis throughout the book is some form of machinery that emits a cloud of smoke; she believes the purpose of the machine is to produce pollution, an offense against the Sun.

It's a fascinating story -- the oddities of Klara's perceptions, the intense, the lasting sense of guilt by Josie's mother for having had Josie "lifted," and thus subjected to life-threatening illness, the underlying love story between Josie and her friend Rick.  The Kindle edition has a Study Guide at the end, with eighteen questions to consider.  I didn't find the questions particularly helpful, but they do suggest the number of issues considered or hinted at in the novel, the various ways it might be interpreted.

Despite its complexity, Klara and the Sun is an absorbing story that draws one into its world, a world so like our own, but with the addition of thinking, feeling Artificial Friends, AFs with their own hopes and dreams and ways of viewing life around them.  

And an ending that is therefore heartbreaking.

Music in the park

Last night I enjoyed a free outdoor concert in Volunteer Park, provided by the Seattle Chamber Music Society -- the traditional precursor to their annual (indoors) summer festival.  I say annual, but -- thanks to the pandemic -- this will be their first summer season since 2019.  

Unlike prior outdoor concerts, this one was presented from the stage of "The Concert Truck" -- a van with a side that opens out into a small stage.  The Concert Truck, apparently an independent entity that has worked together with the Society this year, has been visiting various areas of the city, offering free concerts to audiences who might not otherwise have exposure to chamber music.

If I can offer an opinion -- thank you, I will -- I much prefer the open air stage to the Concert Truck venue.  The performers looked cramped on the tiny stage, and the acoustics sounded odd.  I suppose that instruments are always amplified in outdoor concerts, but they sounded peculiarly amplified, especially the piano, last night.  

The program was somewhat different from that announced on the Society's web page.  With a couple of exceptions, each piece played was a duet between piano and an instrument, or a piano for two hands.  One exception was one movement from a Bach cello suite transcribed for solo viola.  The other was a well-received performance of all four movements of the Dvořák Piano Quintet. 

Aside from the Bach and the Dvořák, the various duets emphasized African-American composers, or other Americana.  

The five players of the Quintet appeared uncomfortably crammed together on the tiny stage, but their playing was, as expected, excellent.

Outdoors performances have their advantages and disadvantages.  The primary disadvantage last night was the decision of Sea-Tac's Air Traffic Control to direct incoming flights over Voluntary Park seemingly about every ninety seconds (well, to be fair, as they probably do every night).)

The advantages of an outdoor performance on a pleasant summer night are obvious.  The ambience of a beautiful park.  Friends and families stretched out on the lawn, many accompanied by extremely well-behaved dogs.  Kids dividing their time between rapt attention, and running around the periphery, working off excess energy.

Entertainment not to be overlooked was the somewhat surreal appearance in the distant background, while a duet was playing on stage, of  the Society's artistic director and violinist James Ehnes.  He was wandering through the park, amongst kids playing games, warming  up his violin for his upcoming part in the Dvořák.  I'm not sure anyone besides me noticed -- but it brought to mind a scene from a Fellini movie.

Enjoyable evening, and a happy crowd.  Hope this tradition continues every year.