Lassen's Dark Night Sky

Summer 2013 I worked as a seasonal park ranger at Lassen Volcanic National Park.  There's a lot to love about Lassen, from the glacial lakes, dozens of volcanoes, hot springs and mudpots, to the diverse wildlife, hiking trails, and camping opportunities...but one of the least recognized (and most beautiful!) resources the park has to offer is its dark night sky.

We don't often think about a dark sky as a natural resource, but it is.

The dark night sky is worth protecting and ultimately worth celebrating, and the Lassen Dark Sky Festival is an annual event in the park that takes place in August during the Perseids meteor shower.

You can join amateur and professional astronomers each night to look through telescopes and see constellations, planets, and other deep sky objects.  There are also daytime and evening programs led by rangers and NASA scientists.

Check out the video above, which I produced for the park to help promote the event, and if you're going to be in northern California over the summer, the Lassen Dark Sky Festival is not to be missed!

STAR CHASERZ: This SUV is also a "mobile observatory" outfitted with a high-powered telescope that pops out of the roof and displayz what it seez on an LCD screen mounted in the back. It's a regular at the Festival and it rulez. 

Pochote

Trees in Nicaragua are super cool.

You won’t run into any boring old oaks or maples in Nicaland…instead you’ll find a startling diversity of exotic arboreal species.  And there is no tree more fun to look at or more dangerous to climb, than pochote.

Pochote is pronounced Poe (like Edgar Allen) - Cho (like Harry's old fling from Ravenclaw) - Tay (like the longest river in Scotland)

Anatomy of a Project (Vol. 4) - The Problemática

The title for this volume of the Anatomy of a Project series is “The Problemática.”  It felt natural to use the Spanish word problemática because there is no single word in the English language (that I can think of) that describes the concept quite as well.  A problemática (used as a noun instead of an adjective) is the collection, series, or totality of interrelated problems and consequences that surround an issue.  What a great word!  So, let’s take a closer look at the problemática of traditional cooking methods in the communities.

The prevailing cooking method in the communities of Los Álvarez and El Llanito is over an open wood fire.  Some families use three large stones or bricks, balance their pots on top, and then simply light the fire underneath, but many families have built (or have received by donation) stove-like structures formed out of concrete.

I call these structures “stove-like” in order to differentiate them from real stoves that actually make burning wood more efficient instead of just looking nicer.  The fact is, the stove-like abominations that most families use are no more efficient than lighting a fire between a few rocks.

Traditional cooking methods...this is a classic "stove-like abomination"

Two Fundamental Issues

Here's a slide from a presentation I made for a community workshop

There are two fundamental issues with traditional cooking methods:

Firstly, these cooking fires produce un cachimbo (a slightly vulgar way to say “a lot”) of smoke that becomes trapped in the home.  Some stove-like structures do have chimneys, but they’re really only for show.  Instead of going up the chimney, the smoke rises right out of the burners and collects in the kitchen to be breathed by women and children, just as if there was no chimney.

Most kitchens have their walls and ceilings burned black with soot.  When we had families keep track of how much wood they were consuming in a week, we gave them a nice white sheet of paper with a table for them to fill in, and when we got them back they were stained a disgusting sickly yellow.

The soot is pretty gross

Secondly, cooking with traditional methods consumes an obscene amount of firewood.  We’ve calculated that an average family (about five people) consumes about fifteen pieces of wood per day.  That’s 105 in a week, 450 in a month, and 5,475 pieces of wood in a year.  Multiply that by the number of families in the community (134 in Los Álvarez for example), and we’re talking about an estimate of 733,650 pieces of firewood consumed in one year in one small community in the smallest municipality of one of the least populated provinces of Nicaragua.  Clearly there is an astronomical amount of firewood consumed as a result of traditional cooking methods.

A casual wood pile

So, the two fundamental issues with traditional cooking methods (smoke in the house and high firewood consumption) lead to consequences for the community in four general areas: Health, Safety, Economy, and Environment.

Health and Safety

Traditional cooking methods lead to both health and safety consequences in the communities.  The health consequences are a direct result of the issue of wood smoke in the home.  The high levels of wood smoke inhalation lead to respiratory problems (one of the leading reasons among women to seek medical attention in rural Nicaragua) including chronic obstruction of the lungs with tar and phlegm, tuberculosis, asthma, and lung cancer.  The wood smoke gets into the eyes as well and affects vision, leading to additional health consequences such as cataracts and blindness.  The smoke also has an effect on the skin, causing more rapid aging, wrinkles, and a leathery texture.  When all is said and done, the daily exposure to wood smoke in the home reduces the life expectancy of women in these rural communities by about twenty years.


Along with the consequences of the noxious smoke produced by traditional cooking methods, the open flame itself leads to a slew of safety hazards, especially for children.  Both the women doing the cooking and the children who play around the cooking fire are subject to burns and other cooking accidents.  There have also been many cases of house fires (especially in the dry season) resulting from the precarious nature of open-flame cooking fires.

Part of the doctor's presentation at a community workshop

Economy

The issue of high firewood consumption has a large impact on the economy of families and by extension the communities where they live.  Family members can either go out to search for and cut down their own firewood (which is an investment of time and energy, not mention often illegal), or they can buy it.  On average in Santa Lucía, one piece of firewood costs two córdobas.  A family who consumes an average of fifteen pieces of wood a day with traditional cooking methods spends about 10,950 córdobas in a year just for firewood.  That’s $472.  Considering that the average Nicaraguan makes $2,000 a year, $472 is a very significant amount just to buy wood for cooking…nearly a quarter of one person’s annual earnings.

This amount of firewood might last a couple days

Environment

Last but certainly not least, the issue of high firewood consumption in traditional cooking methods leads to a great many environmental consequences.  The most pervasive consequence of high firewood consumption is, obviously, the problem of deforestation.  Trees are being cut down in the hundreds and thousands so that rural families can cook their daily meals, not just in the communities of Los Álvarez and El Llanito, but in all of Nicaragua.

We’ve actually calculated (with the help of a local expert who works for the Ministry of Agroforestry) how many trees are being consumed for firewood in the communities each year.  Each piece of firewood is about thirty-three inches long and three inches wide, which means that the average piece of firewood has a volume of 297 cubic inches.  Assuming one family consumes fifteen pieces of firewood a day, that same family consumes about 1,626,075 cubic inches of firewood every year.  This translates to 26.65 cubic meters of wood per year.

Average firewood size

If an average small tree has 3.5 cubic meters of volume, then the average family consumes about seven and a half trees each year in firewood.  We can then estimate that the community of Los Álvarez (134 families) consumes 1,005 trees each year, and the community of El Llanito (380 families) consumes 2,850 trees each year.  Assuming that one acre of forested land in Nicaragua holds about 96 trees, we can say that just between Los Álvarez and El Llanito, deforestation as a direct result of firewood consumption is advancing at a rate of forty acres per year.

Here's another piece of wood

And how does deforestation affect the environment you ask?  Well the ecological effects of deforestation are quite far-reaching.  For one, trees function as the earth’s air filtration system.  Through the processes of respiration and photosynthesis, trees process the CO2 in the air and produce oxygen, which we breathe.  As trees disappear, the oxygen levels and the general quality of the air goes down.

Trees also serve an important function with regard to the earth’s soil.  Tree roots hold soil in place and prevent erosion.  Erosion and landslides are a huge problem in Santa Lucía since the town is surrounded by cliffs. Most communities, Los Álvarez and El Llanito included, are located on the sides of the hills leading up to those cliffs.  Trees also provide important substances to the soil that keep it healthy and fertile.  With less trees, the amount of landslides goes up and the fertility of the soil goes down.

Another important function of trees is in their relationship with water, plants and animals.  Trees make up an important part of the riparian zones of streams and rivers, meaning that their roots prevent stream banks from falling into the water and polluting it, and their leaves provide the necessary shade that keeps water temperatures at the correct level.  The process of transpiration also has a huge effect on rainfall levels, which in turn affects the growing and harvesting cycles of crops.  Trees also provide important habitats for animals and plant species.  So as trees are cut down, we see water pollution go up, rainfall become erratic, and plant and animal species leave or die.

Let's conserve trees! Let's consume less wood!

These four areas of consequence: Health, Safety, Economy, and Environment come as a direct result of the issues of smoke and firewood consumption that surround traditional cooking methods.  The consequences are the problems that exist within the community, and they are the things that we want to change and improve upon in the economical stove project.  As we will see in volume five, The Stove Design, the economical stove provides a solution to each one of these problems in the four areas of consequence.

Looking towards El Llanito from Los Álvarez

    • (Vol. 1) – Intro to Economical Stoves
    • (Vol. 2) – Community Development…The Goal
    • (Vol. 3.1) – The Key Players
           (Vol. 3.2) - The Designers/Facilitators
           (Vol. 3.3) - The Community
    • (Vol. 4) – The Problemática ***
    • (Vol. 5.1) – The Stove Design
           (Vol. 5.2) - Materials and Design Elements

           (Vol. 5.3) - The Stovetops

           (Vol. 5.4) - The Table

           (Vol. 5.5) - The Stove Itself

           (Vol. 5.6) - The Chimney

    • (Vol. 6) – Community Workshops
    • (Vol. 7) – The Budget and Funding
    • (Vol. 8) – Designing for Sustainability


Next up, The Stove Design.  I'm going to release a neat little video with that one!  Stay tuned.

Arboriculturalism

I've been strangely productive lately so please enjoy this extra treet...(sorry I couldn't resist).

As an environment volunteer in Nicaragua, I’ve been thinking a lot about trees. Not just about the need to plant more of them in order to protect streams, rivers, and watersheds, prevent erosion, and help reduce dangerous levels of carbon dioxide in the air, but also about the incredible variety of trees and plant life and the culture of the people that live among them. Needless to say, the culture surrounding trees in Nicaragua is different than in the United States. Trees mean many things to people here: shade, medicine, food, firewood, furniture, fence posts, animal feed…the list goes on.

For the last few months I’ve been drawing these trees poco a poco, working on them in quiet moments of repose…and now I’m finally finished! Since they seem to embody a lot of the significance of trees in Nicaragua, I thought I’d put ‘em up on the ‘ol blog and let the public devour them.

This is a real tree that I began drawing at Selva Negra in Matagalpa during my group’s In-Service Training in March 2011. It’s growing on a tiny island in the middle of a lake and at that time did not sport any leaves or flowers or fruit—but that didn’t stop it from being host to a myriad of other plant life. A great majority of trees in Nicaragua don’t just stand alone, but form the substrate for other organisms such as lichens, epiphytes, and fern species. These trees are truly ecosystems in and of themselves.

This tree was inspired by a grove that the bus passes on its long trek to Santa Lucia from the highway. The roots are exposed, yet they crush and crumble the rock in which they grow, and the branches are stretched out, pushed and pulled by the force of the prevailing wind. In the dry season when I started this drawing, most of the trees truly looked dead, but this is the great illusion of many plants in the summertime. It’s pretty amazing how trees can and will grow anywhere and with any conditions, even without water for 6 months and straight through a boulder.

This tree was inspired by the innumerable fence posts that line the roads of Santa Lucia. I’d say that the general fecundity of life in Nicaragua can be illustrated no better than with the image of the fence post tree. In order to make a fence post like this, all you need to do is find a branch from an existing tree, chop it off with your machete, and plant it about 6 inches in the ground. With some rain and sun a few weeks later it’ll start to sprout little branches and shoot out roots, and after a couple months it’ll be covered in leaves. Then you can begin chopping off the branches that grow off the top for more fence posts or even for firewood, and if you need a shady place for your cows to rest, just let the branches grow out!

I hope these images speak a little more deeply than would be possible using only words. The captions I put with them aren’t really meant to explain the drawings, but to just give them a little bit of context. If you have any questions or comments about trees or Nicaragua or drawings—or trees in Nicaragua—or drawings of trees—or drawings of trees in Nicaragua—please leave them for me, I’ll do my best to answer them!

The Nest

I wrote a short story a few days ago and made some drawings to go with it. Also, I just made a new title banner and background using pictures from Santa Lucia! Enjoy.

It sees everything. From its solitary vigil suspended above the dusty road, clutching to an electric line headed to the mountains and oblivion, the nest observes the bustling of humanity below.

It sees the men chopping down trees for firewood and carrying the logs back to the houses on horseback. It sees the women washing clothes in the river that winds its way through the valley below. It sees the shoeless children playing baseball in the street with a stick and a ball made of sewed-up scraps of cloth.

It looks like a drop of water on a clothesline, this lonely nest, distended, ready to drip. But it won’t. Made of scraps of reeds and straw woven together by peculiar birds called oropéndola, it hangs golden through the wind and the rain, watching.

This particular forgotten corner of earth over which the nest keeps its watch has been changing. The trees are less and less. They are disappearing, slowly consumed by fire. Fire that cooks, fire that clears fields, fire that claims the forest for the people. There used to be monkeys howling in the valley but now the only howl is the wind and the flames. Every time the rains come there are more corrugated zinc roofs roaring back in opposition to the pounding water.

But the nest has nothing to say—an unwavering observer, it just is. It has no voice, no opinion, no counsel.

~

One day a little girl who lived along the road that winds under the electric line came with her mother to sit and wait for the bus to pass by and take them to the city. The day was bright and new but the girl was in a foul mood, angry with her mother for dragging her along.

She sat down huffily on a stone and stared at her bare toes wiggling in her sandals, her elbows on her knees and her hands supporting the weight of her heavy head. An ant made its way towards her, navigating terrain that must have felt like an expansive desert, carrying a giant Ranchitas crumb on its untiring insect shoulders. Ants have it easy, she thought, they don’t have to take a bus into town. But she felt glad that the chip wouldn’t go to waste.

Floating down from the mountains came the bleat of the approaching bus. Several birds squawked in reply. The girl lifted her gaze from the world of ants and watched as the birds took flight, their black and yellow plumage flashing in the morning light. Following the trajectory of one of the birds, her eyes fell upon the golden honey-drop form of the nest, still and pendent on the electric line.

In that moment a thought seized her—or maybe it was more just a wordless feeling—she kept her eyes gazing upward. The great contradiction of the nest filled her up.

She saw it then as nature’s sentinel, gazing down untiringly upon the human world. She knew that it saw her petty anger and she felt ashamed.

But wasn’t the nest dependent on humanity as well?

It was anchored to a manmade trellis after all, an electric line surging with the energy that drives insatiable human consumption. But only for a lack of trees was the nest want to clutch to a cable suspended over a road.

The bus pulled up, interrupting her reverie. Her mother called to her brusquely and she climbed aboard. In her seat squashed against the window, she craned her neck and watched the nest as the bus pulled away.

The nest, hanging as always, watched back.