forestofglory

Observations is what I call my bi-montly posts about the natural and built environments, and Bits and Bobs is what I call my “many things make post” post. So here I'm combining the two.

*It’s October and definitely fire season. It’s been a bad fire year for the state but so far this year we’ve been lucky in terms of air quality and haven’t had any really bad smoke days. The kind where you have to wear a mask to filter the air you breathe. Of course there’s still a while until the rains start and we relax a bit about fires. One of the worse smoke events was right before Thanksgiving after all.

*R and I have been eating out a bit more, now that numbers are low locally and more things are open. Recently we started sampling lunch specials. This is a thing a lot of local Asian restaurants seem to do. You get soup, rice and one person sized serving of a main dish, some places will give you a salad and/or a small appetizer like an egg roll too. I find these very appealing, something about getting a small amount of several things just makes me happy. It’s been fun trying a bunch of them!

*The kid has been doing swimming lessons at a local outdoor pool. The last one was last week. She really enjoyed them though. Since the lessons are pretty short I would take her to the pool then sit and watch/play with my phone while she swam. I haven’t been swimming much lately, but I swam a lot as a kid so it's a bit nostalgic for me.

*My local fabric store had been online only since March 2020, but they recently opened up to limited in-person shopping a few days a week, and I got to browse fabric! They are only letting ten people in at once so there was a wait to get into the store, but it was worth it. I picked out thread for my next project, and bought several things to make quilts and more shirts for the kid.

What adventures have you been having outside your home lately?

Last November I posted a list of books about cities and nature I wanted to read. I thought it would be interesting to look back on. Since November I have read only two of the books on the list: Zoned in the USA: The Origins and Implications of American Land-Use Regulation by Sonia A. Hirt and The Rise of West Lake: A Cultural Landmark in the Song Dynasty by Xiaolin Duan.

I've also added a few books to the list:
Jade Mountains and Cinnabar Pools: The History of Travel Literature in Imperial China by James M Hargett
World of Wonders: In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, and Other Astonishments by Aimee Nezhukumatathil
What the Emperor Built: Architecture and Empire in the Early Mingby Aurelia Campbell
Tasting Paradise on Earth: Jiangnan Foodways by Jin Feng
Neighborhood by Emily Talen
Trees in Anglo-Saxon England: Literature, Lore and Landscape by Della Hooke

Since then I've also joined an Urban Planning book club, so I've read several books about cities that where not on the list. At the moment I'm mostly alternating between reading books about Chinese history and reading for the book club. At this rate it will take me a long time to get to the books on the list that are not book club books or about Chinese history but that ok. I still read no fiction pretty slowly but I do enjoy it.

Yesterday the magnolia in our backyard burst in to bloom. When I looked at it in the morning there where only buds, but by afternoon there where flowers, dark pink at the base fading to white by the edge of the petals. It's been lovely, warm and sunny the past few weeks. I've been enjoying the feel of sunshine on my skin.

Meanwhile most of the rest of the country had a severe winter storm. Watching so many people without power in the freezing cold was awful. It reminded me of when our power was cut off in fire season, though of course we had much nicer weather for that. It's finding out how fragile our infrastructure really is. I hate living in slow climate apocalypse, yet I feel helpless to stop it.

Here and now the sunny is shinning and the flowers are blooming. I've made some changes and I'm doing better, with fewer hard days and more focus. There's just this dissonance of knowing I'm ok when so many others are not, and the feeling of powerlessness that goes with that.

2020 was a hard year in a lot of ways, but being stuck at home and unemployed meant that I had lots of time to explore my local environment. So in the spirit of making the best of things here's a list of my best outdoor finds of 2020.

Neighbourhood Fish Pond: early in the pandemic when we were exploring the neighbourhood, we found someone’s front garden with a small pond with three fish in it. This turned out to be a great place to take the kid on a walk. She really loves watching the fish. Later, more fish were added to the pond making it even more exciting to visit.

The Perfect Beach: We found the best beach possible for our family! It’s not very far away, it’s sandy rather than rocky, it’s on the Bay not the ocean so the waves aren’t too big for little ones and best of all, it’s uncrowed enough on weekdays to be safe. Currently it’s to cold and wet for any of us to find the beach enjoyable, but we are looking forward to more beach days when it's warmer.

Bay Trail: This trail is being built all around the shore of the Bay and several sections near me where recently finished. They are nice for flat walks, with a good view of the bay. I’ll will definitely keep walking here after lockdown is over.

Mango Desserts: Hui Lau Shan, a Hong Kong based dessert franchise, has opened a shop that is within walking distance of my parents house, so it is now possible to meet my parents at their house, walk over and buy desserts, then walk back and eat said desserts in my parents backyard. So far we’ve only managed to do this twice, but it was great both times. There are several more things on the menu that I want to try, so when the weather warms up and the restrictions are reduced, I look forward to going back.

What fun things did you find outside in 2020?

September and October are hot months in the Bay Area,the rains haven't come yet and everything is dry. The hills are golden brown. There oaks are dropping acorns. Other people I know in the northern hemisphere are talking about the cool fall days, but we have been having some very hot days.

I don't like when people try to impose the standard four season on the Bay Area we have seasons, but not those four. Yet kids books seem to really harp on those. My kid was asking what this season was called, so I tried to look up what the Ohlone or the Miwok called the season, since surely the Native American's who lived here would have had words for the seasons we really have. But all I found where stuff talking about "Fogest" and other recently coined words. I know that various waves of European colonizers destroyed a lot of the native langues of California, but it feels really stark when I can't even look up a simple word for the seasons.

Normally this time of year is orb spider season. They get really big and there classical webs are all over the place, but this year I haven't seem very many. I wonder if the smoke earlier killed them? What ever it is I miss them.

I have discovered a mango desert place within walking distance of my parents house. It's very good! All there deserts are cool and contain frozen elements which really hits the spot on hot days. I've walked there twice, once with my parents and once with my brother who lives with them. We brought the deserts back and ate them in my parents back yard.

It's been several weeks since I wrote about living in slow moving climate apocalypse and things have not really let up. Well, we have had days that aren't too hot and smoking to go outside. So that is technically an improvement.

This last week has been especially unpleasant though. This weekend there was record breaking heatwave in the Bay Area. Our house is built on a hill with the living space on the top floor. Heat rises so it gets pretty hot up there. As mentioned we don't have AC, but generally we can open the windows. But this last weekend it was too smoky. It was miserable. We all lay around in puddles on the bottom two floors.

Then it cooled off, and we had one ok day.

But yesterday was scary. At 7am I noticed that it hadn't gotten light in the morning, and it continued like that all day. The Sky was scary red color, and it never got lighter than twilight. My mom remarked that it was worse than the Hills Fire. Apparently we where experiencing "fire thunderstorms". The air quality at ground level was actually not that bad, but there was so much smoke above us that it blocked out the sun.

Today things are lighter, like still dark, but a very cloudy day instead of sunset all day. However the smoke has started dropping lower, and the air quality is way worse. I'm not sure that's better. I'm really struggling mentally -- everything is just so stressful and scary.

Recently we took a trip to Muir Woods. It’s an old growth redwood grove that’s generally very hard to visit because it is very popular, and doesn’t have much parking. I think the last time we were there was when friends from the UK visited us, many years ago. Due to the pandemic fewer people are traveling and they have instituted a reservation system for the parking limiting the number of guests. So R made a reservation and we planned an expedition.

I had been struggling that week, having a hard time focusing and feeling sad and distant from the world. So I was harboring some thoughts about being swept away by the majesty of nature, even though generally I’m critical of the myth of wilderness. The idea that some places aren’t impacted by humans is silly and harmful. It erases ways that the landscape is and has been impacted and makes us over value some kinds of landscapes.

Muir Woods is very much not Wilderness. Signs of people are everywhere. Informational signs, trails, hikers, boardwalks, fences, salmon restoration projects And the landscape is impacted in ways that are not obvious at glance by the human history of the place. One sign mentioned that there had not been a fire in Muir woods for 150 years. This major change from the pre-Eropean fire regime and a major way humans have impacted the landscape.

It’s hard to talk about humans impacting the landscape without seeming to downplay the grandeur of nature. But both can be true at once. I love the grandness of the old trees, the way they rise above me when I walk among them. But I also appreciate the signs that tell me about the ecology and history of the place, the paths to walk on, the restored salmon habitat. On my visit I was not swept away by the majesty of nature, but I did enjoy being surrounded by beauty, and know that other humans had work to preserve it. It felt special just the way it was.

It's tricky to write about what I'm observing in the built enviroment when I have been spending most of my time in my house. I have been in a building other than my house twice since mid-March. Once was to go shopping, and once was to go to the dentist.

So I've mostly been staying close to home. However going to the dentist I did have to drive across town. There's several new building going up downtown and since I now don't see them very often they always seem much bigger than the last time. Things like that seem to grow in leaps and bounds when you don't keep an eye on them.

There are still plenty of deer around, there's a doe and two fawns that hang out in our backyard sometimes. The other day on a walk I saw a buck with velvet covered antlers disappearing into some bushes.

And exciting new development is that the local botanic garden is opening again! One needs an appointment, a you have to wear a mask, and some paths are closed. So R made us an reservation and we went yesterday. It was great to be back. I'm sorry that I missed the spring iris, but there where still flowers, trees, and winding paths. So I was glad to wander for a while.

I’ve been thinking about race and the landscape, and how one can and can’t see race in my neighborhood. I live in the hills, in a neighborhood of big houses on big lots. If you stand between two houses can see the Golden Gate Bridge. In the way of expensive neighborhoods in the US not many Black people live here. Still when I take a walk there’s not much that I see that makes me think about race. The most notable things are the Black Lives Matter yard signs.

It seems quiet and calm. But of course this is a landscape that hides a lot of racial conflict.

You have to teach yourself to see the history of the neighborhood. Some things are easier to learn than others. You can learn to look at a building and guess when it was built. You can learn something similar with street plans, to see a grid of streets or cul-du-sacs and know when the town was planned. It’s trickier to put that together with the history of racial conflict and see who might have been excluded.

Here, maps can help. For most major US cities you can find a Home Owners' Loan Corporation (HOLC) map from the New Deal era. These “Red lining maps'' show where the government and banks would make loans, and where they wouldn’t. Looked at today, these maps show society’s systemic disinvestment in non-white neighborhoods. On the HOLC map my calm, green neighborhood was rated A1, the best possible rating, colored green on the map. Meanwhile my city's downtown was rated D, the worst rating, and colored red. You can’t see this as easily when you’re walking through my neighborhood, but it matters. It shapes the city.

What you can see on the ground is a history of investment in my neighborhood. We have nice sidewalks, well maintained streets, good street lights. This is the kind of investment nice white neighborhoods get.

You can also see race in the lack of police presence; there’s a combined police and fire station that I sometimes walk by, but unless I’m right in front of the station, I never see cops on my walks.

Going back further and further into the past, racism is still here. This land is the home of the Ohlone people. The Ohlone are still here, but the way they relate to the land and the land itself have changed. Before settlers came, there was vastly different landscape. It’s hard to see that landscape in the neighborhood I walk through. There is a glimpse -- in the shape of the hills. In the live oaks and redwoods that grow among all the introduced tree species. But not in the hard sidewalks and paved roads. Not in the clear property lines and title deeds. When I walk, I often stop to admire the oaks, but I don’t often think about the people who once depended on their acorns for food.

It's easy to walk around my neighborhood and forget racism that destroyed the Olhone's land and redlined this neighborhood for investment and others for decay all this history. But these days I’m trying to see, and to remember.

A built environment is any environment that’s built by sentient creatures -- so for example, houses, castles, cities, or spaceships. As a person with training in urban planning I’m always drawn to fiction with interesting cities and other built environments in fiction. It’s fun to imagine other ways of ordering space. This list is by no means definitive, but it includes some of my favorite SFF media with awesome built environments.

China Mountain Zhang by Maureen F. McHugh — This book was near future when it was written but now reads more like alternate history. It has an unusual structure, with several different linked sections, that take place in different times and places, but with at least some of the same characters in each. The book features a lot of cool build environments, including New York City, an arctic base, and a homestead on Mars. There is also a character who studies a futuristic and really cool style of architecture, which made me think about space differently. (Content note: homophibia, suicide)

A Memory of Empire by Arkady Martine— How could I not include a book which features a plot-relevant epic poem about the buildings in the capital? I also like how this book deals with the practical bits of city living, like public transit.

Our Dreams at Dusk by Yuhki Kamatani— This four volume manga about a gay teen in Japan finding a queer community takes place in Onomichi. I love the way that adds to the story. There are beautiful suspension bridges, narrow lanes, and hillsides full of old houses. One of the story elements is the characters working to renovate the old houses, and it works so well both as a bonding activity, and as metaphor for the main character’s emotional journey. (Content note: homophobia, suicidal thoughts)

The Nameless City Series by Faith Erin Hicks — This middle grade graphic novel about an unlikely friendship between two kids features some great cityscapes! The kids spend a lot of time exploring and climbing -- so we get some great rooftop chases. But there are also markets and festivals, palaces, and alleyways. You can really feel the layers of history.

Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West by William Cronon — This History of Chicago and its surrounding countryside totally blew my mind the first time I read it! It's a super detailed look at the “frontier” and how it was deeply interconnected with cities and capital. Its also a fascinating story how ideas about food and the environment changed over time.

Outer Wilds by Mobius Digital — As I was working on this rec list I chatted with several people about media with memorable built environments, and games came up quite a few times. Video games really have a unique way of building immersive environments that other types of media really can’t compare to. In Outer Wilds you explore a solar system full of strange alien buildings and strange tech! It’s really pretty, and strange, and cool!

“To Balance the Weight of Khalem” by R.B. Lemberg — I love this novettle! It’s full of very fantastical built environments, but as seen by a struggling immigrant, which helps make the things feel grounded and lived in.

Hilda — This kids cartoon on netflix has great built environments! Hilda and her friends spend a lot of time exploring the city, there’s parks, residential neighbourhoods, and a cool library. I enjoy how Hilda showcases both urban and wilderness environments as equally interesting and worth exploring.

What are some of your favorite fictional built environments?