Nullius in Verba

Brasil: Dia Sete – Búzios

Terça-Feira, 11 Março 2008

We slept like bricks until 1:30 AM when two, maybe three, roosters crowed for while (maybe an hour) and then shut their beaks until dawn.

I’ve been fighting a cold and a sore throat for a week so Mary wandered out into town in search of comidas for café de manha. She returned with bread, bananas, super-evaporated milk. We fixed some coffee and felt like royalty.

Mary did a little work (yay for Skype where it’s $0.02/minute to make international phone calls) and I read and relaxed. After one o’clock we strolled toward Centro Buzios in search of more comidas. The condo is one block from the praia (beach) where the women wear fio dental (a thong bikini, it literally translates to “dental floss”).

While walking the sidewalk that skirts the beach, we met Americans. On the way in was a young (30ish) couple from Colorado. The man was tall and gangly with crinkles around the eyes from squinting into the sun. His wife was lithe and pretty. She spoke with a Brazilian accent. It turned out that we may have heard her on the Rosetta Stone program we used to study Portuguese. Returning, we came across an older couple (70ish) form North Carolina. They made little effort to learn any phrases and were staying in a hotel run by some expatriate Brits.

We asked the young couple (she grew up in the area) to steer us toward a reasonably priced restaurante. Most of the restaurants have someone who speaks passable English but we try to use Portuguese as much as possible. They recommended Boom a Kilo gastronomica (the food is paid for by weight—salads are an exceptional value this way) on Rua Turibio de Farias. We ate a very satisfying meal that included feijoada—the national dish that is a stew of beans and meat. At $R30, it came to about $18US.

Depois almoça (after lunch) we shopped for a few groceries at a tiny “supermercado.” (have you ever been in a supermarket that did not carry eggs?) We pulled out our short shopping list that we had spent an hour translating English to Portuguese. Por exemplo, we needed to know that mel is honey and eggs are ovos. Our little walking tour took quatro horas.

As the sun set, the wind gusted and we watched an intense lightning storm behind the hills across the bay. We only saw the flashes. We were too far to hear the cannons in the rain.

Brasil: Dia Seis – Brasilia to Búzios

I’m sitting on our balcony overlooking the Atlantic listening to Maria Rita on the CD player as I write this recap. I’m fighting a head cold that has dogged me since leaving the US but otherwise, I feel great. Below is a picture of Rio de Janeiro.

Segunda-Feira, 10 Março 2008

We got up before the crack of dawn (aka “oh-dark-thirty”) to ride to Brasilia’s Aeroporto with Serge e Lu. They had a 7:00 TAM flight to Rio (pronounced “Heeoo” in Brazilian Portuguese) to catch a connecting flight to Buenos Aires. Serge asked if we’d like him to see if we could ride the same flight to Rio with them. “Claro! (sure/absolutely)” we said. Serge spoke with the counterperson and we were loaded on. It meant we would arrive seis horas early but it gave us time to rent a cell phone ($R130 for the week plus $R2/minute for each call) for emergencies and also allowed us to simply rest. The phone came in handy to call the owner of the condo and have him arrange for Mario, the taxi driver (Taxi Buzios 24 hora), who speaks no English, to pick us up earlier than planned.

Mario came into the terminal and found us. He drove very prudently and we felt quite safe. The ride contrasted greatly with our trips with Antonio and Mr. Toad’s wild cab rides I’ve had in Mexico. We sat back to enjoy the sights. Rio de Janeiro is a huge cidade of around 17 milhao. It is not the largest cidade in Brasil, that is Sao Paulo with around 30 million. One forgets that besides being a major tourist destination Rio is a major shipping port dscn4405-rio-harbor

We started out to Buzios on BR-101, the main artery of Brasil. Buzios is a two-hour ride. Here is a partial list of what we noted along the way:

in Brasileiro jeito (Brazilian way/style): dirt roads connect to the highway without any exit, heading straight uphill, or right into the subdivision;
many people walking along the highway, pushing wheelbarrows, riding bicicletas, and crossing the highway. People (sometimes with little children) waited between gaps in the concrete barriers. (According to Lonely Planet, about 80,000 die each year in Brasil from traffic related accidents.);
alcohol for sale by street vendors on the side of the road;
a man on a motorcycle wearing rubber boots for shoes;
gas at $R1.79/liter (around $R6.89/gallon or $4/gallon);
a priest in full-length robes on a cell phone at the Esso gas station;
a mother riding her bike on the shoulder of highway, with child on the back with his legs splayed;
the hills reminded us of California’s Sonoma County;
lots of in-ground pools for sale—at least 4 displays of them;
satellite dishes in the favelas;
stores on the side of the road with statues of Christ the Redeemer (like the huge one in Rio) and bean bag chairs (why this combination of items was particularly common, we didn’t figure out, as we haven’t seen any bean bag chairs or Cristo statues anywhere we have been);
lots of Retornos for turning around and going back;
stacks of bricks in front of several partially-constructed houses (people will complete their basement and then work on the above ground portion as time and money permit);
roadside stands that are no more than a small table and an umbrella;
billboards proclaiming “Se beber, nao diriga” (If you drink, don’t drive);
a profile of a cow as a caution sign;
an incomplete pedestrian bridge in a small settlement with only flagging across the entrance to stop anyone from using it (if you walked up it, you could plunge about 25’ to the ground);
a man on the side of the road wearing Speedos, socks and tennis shoes, and using a rake working on some kind of landscaping project;
a man hand-tying something (hammock?) in macramé

Around 4 PM, we arrived in Búzios, one of the most charming towns in Brazil’s St. Tropez. Búzios was a sleepy fishing village until the early 1960s when Brigitte Bardot and her Brasileiro boyfriend ‘discovered’ it.

Mario wound through the narrow cobble-stoned streets of the peninsula to the condominium of a couple that we have a home exchange arrangement with. They will let us know later which of our residences they want to use for their as-yet unscheduled trip to the U.S. We hung out on the varanda, watched the boats go by, and relaxed. Our trip, which had begun at 5:00 a.m., had finally ended around 4:00 p.m. We were exhausted.

veiwfromcondo

Brasil: Dia 5 – The Day after the Wedding

Domingo, 9 Março 2008 Steroid-fueled touristas.

Antonio drives fast (even for a Brazilian). We visited several sites including but not limited to: the JK bridge (pictured), the Presidential Palace, and Catetinho. Catetinho is the Presidential residence for JK’s use while he was overseeing the 3-year construction project of Brasilia. It is muito rustico—just a place to sleep and eat breakfast. In keeping with the speed of everything to do with the construction of Brasilia, Catetinho was built in 10 days. The interpretive texts indicated that JK would return to Catetinho each evening between 11:00 and midnight, and would be back on the construction site by 6:00 a.m. each day. The house is very simple—a row of bedrooms connected by a covered, outdoor hallway upstairs, and a kitchen and laundry on the bottom floor. Looking at the surrounding jungle, it was even more breathtaking to realize that to build the city of Brasilia, which now is home to 3 million people, they cleared an immense amount of vegetation. There were photographs that resembled the Grapes of Wrath showing the laborers flooding (often from the poorer northeast part of the country) into the new city for the construction jobs.

Antonio insisted on paying for every meal, every museum admission, every parking fee, even the beggar outside of Catetinho! Twice we managed to snatch the restaurant bill from the waiter before him, only to have it rapidly grabbed away. At one traffic lights, itinerants were selling boxes of açaí fruit. They resemble tomatoes and have something of the tomato’s fleshiness but are pear sweet. Antonio wanted us to experience them, called over the man, and gave him $R10. The man hadn’t the correct $R5 in change. “Rapido!” Antonio shouted, (which sounds like Happy-Do! and is Mary’s favorite Portuguese word) hoping to get his change before the traffic light changed. But, no luck—the light changed, and Antonio was swept along with the flow of the traffic without getting his change.

There were sectors of Brasilia that permit horse-drawn carts in the streets, right alongside the traffic. We never had the camera ready when we saw this, but it was always quite a surprising sight to see a horse and cart in the left turn lane, trotting forward when the light changed to green. (We’re not well-traveled)

Antonio took us to Restaurante Carne do Sol. “Carne do Sol” refers to a particular way of preparing the meat, and this particular restaurant is the one Antonio considers it the best in the city. We had farofa, some local grown sweet-potato tuber (I think but it looked like pear), feija (beans), arroz (rice), and mouth-watering beef. As a side accoutrement, they served a small pitcher of melted butter to drizzle over everything. The menu consisted of only drinks, as everyone always had the same dish (carne do sol, with its side plates).

We stopped at the American Embassy. I rolled down the window and Mary brought up the camera to take a picture. Antonio said, “No. No pictures. If you take a picture, they will phone the police with a description of our car, intercept us, ask us why we want to take pictures, and confiscate the camera.” As the former police commander of the embassy district, he knew whereof he spoke. Because Mary had raised the camera, he knew he had to go and speak to the guards. Then he had to speak to the guards’ superior. It took 15 to 20 minutes to straighten it out. I think that maybe, just maybe, our government has bounced out of being prudently careful into full-blown paranoia. I’m sure I can find the US Embassy on GoogleEarth and get a better idea of what the compound is like better than I could at a distance of one-hundred yards from the gate. You will have to go here to Wikipedia to see a picture of the US Embassy’s front gate.

We saw lots of mansions, ambassador residences, and embassies on our tour through “Mansion Sector, Park Way, North” and “Mansion Sector, Park Way, South”. They rival the streets of Beverly Hills. Each home seemed to have its own gate, and many of the streets had their own gate and guard.

In the evening, we gave Luciana and Sergio their wedding presents (ours and also Colleen’s and Brian’s). They (of course) also gave us presents: Sergio and Luciana gave us two Maria Rita CDs—a Brasileira singer who is huge in Brazil– and Rodrigo gave two medium-sized bottles of Absolut (he is a distributor) and baseball caps to match.

It was now 9 PM and we begged off going out to dinner with them, as we knew we wouldn’t return until close to midnight, and we had to rise at 4:00 a.m. to catch a ride with Serge and Luciana for our flight to Rio in the morning. On our way back in, there were teenaged kids hanging around at the gate. They heard us speaking English to Sergio, and as we were leaving, we heard their jibes of, “I love you! I love you!” I said, “I love you, too.”

Brasil Day 4 – Day of the Wedding

Sabado 8 Março 2008

The wedding was scheduled for 7:30 p.m., so we had the day free to rest and relax, or so we thought. Sergio’s father, Antonio, insisted (the former commander of the security force to protect the embassy sector can be quite persuasive) on taking us to the same sights as the day before, so that we could take photographs. And this time, the tomb of JK was open. We could have spent the entire day in there—it was a museum to JK’s life and effects, as well as the tomb itself. We attempted to ride the elevator to the observation deck. But the line on a Saturday afternoon was too long. Long wait to go up; long wait to come back down.

They took us to “Paraguay,” so called because much of it came from China (direct import from China had not been allowed) and in the past had to be shipped in through Paraguay. We got the chance to sample coconut milk water and an incredible cheese-on-a-stick. Later, we lamented the overall state of American intelligence and obesity. Just think of what we could accomplish if we only had grilled cubes of cheese on a stick! Hugeness beyond belief. At Paraguay, we also found a power strip to replace the one we had burned out the first day; it has a voltage meter so we know what’s coming in and out.

Everywhere, we shot photos, Antonio and Maria Eugenia took many photos of us in front of the landmarks. The usual afternoon chuvarada (storm) came up, and in some shots, the wind is quite evident. It rained cats, dogs, and even chickens every afternoon, with water accumulating into rivers in the streets, only to clear in about an hour until the next afternoon.

Mary and Maria Eugenia had appointments to have their hair done before the wedding at 3:30 p.m. Mary was quite relieved to get the humid frizziness removed, at least until she next showered. She met a young woman who was an English teacher, and they spoke for an hour while the young woman, Tatiana, waited for the rain to stop (so she didn’t get her newly straightened hair wet) and Mary waited for her appointment. Tatiana’s comment—that Mary had to write down—was, “I never expected to laugh so much with an American!” and then she told Mary her impression of Americans as cold, remote, and formal. Formal!

Tatiana wanted to know if Americans always ate very fast, and always ate at fast food restaurants. She also wanted to know if obesity was as much of a problem in America as she’d read. (See above comment about cheese–on-a-stick.) She said that many Brazilian women (Brasileiras) eat as little as possible to maintain those bodies that we think defy the laws of physics. She said that she is considered on the heavy side—Mary told her that she would feel quite good about her weight if she visited America, especially a Wal-Mart, she would feel better. It’s part of the Wal-Mart guarantee that someone there will weigh one-hundred kilos more than you ever will. They have Wal-Mart here, but we didn’t stop to do the weight test.

Sergio’s and Luciana’s wedding was very nearly over-the-top for us. I have never been to such an event. Live musicians. Policial’s (police) dress uniforms. A sword arch. All of it was video recorded. Bouquets of flowers at the end of every pew in the church, not just the first few rows. The aisle was lined with baby’s breath on both sides along its entire length. Cascading umbrella-like structures on poles that held multiple votive candles and large cubes of votive candles flickered in the front, back, and along the sides. And, during much of the videotaped ceremony, I am sure the video camera had me in the background of every scene. I hope I didn’t pick my nose during the ceremony.

The reception gathered at a mansion dedicated to big affairs. Musica barulhento (thunderous music) inside. We covered our ears and headed outside to relative quietude. Then Food. Food. Food. A battalion of waiters circulated, offering trays of food. During the event, people heard Mary and me speaking English. Americanos! Of course, the dead giveaway was my bright yellow heavily-thumbed Portuguese-English dictionary on the table.The waiter would stop to ask one of the teenagers at the table how to say in English the name of the dish he was serving. It was very nice of them.

Brazilians follow our politics much more than we do theirs and perhaps more than we Americans do of our own:

“Who do you like: Hilary Clinton, Obama, or McCain?”

“Obama,” I said. I think the music and dancing stopped at this point, along with all the traffic outside.

“Why?” he asks. He wants to say more and takes a moment to form the Portuguese into English. (I also tried to translate my English into ragged Portuguese with much less success—if only I’d had internet access I could have translated faster. (I’ve not yet found a small hand-held translator unit for Portuguese.) “Hilary Clinton has much more experience than Barack Obama?” he says.

From the outsider’s viewpoint (often the view from without is much clearer than one’s is within the burning building), Hilary’s time as First Lady counts for quite a bit. Then comes the question, “who do you think will win?” Followed closely by, “How is Arnold Schwarzenegger as a governor?”

I thoroughly enjoyed the wedding of Lu and Serge. It was planned down to the last detail—as we waited for our valet to retrieve Antonio’s car, there was an attended table with cappuccinos and plates of doces (sweets), and a chocolate fondue. They fed us even as we were leaving!

Brasil Day 3 – Brasilia

Quinta-Feira 7 Março 2008

Mary and I had the apartamento to ourselves for the first night and awoke feeling pretty darned good. We showered and went off in search of café de manha (breakfast) and a banco or a reliable ATM. We took the elevator down from the 12^th floor and immediately became disoriented in finding our way to the street out of the apartment’s bloco.

On our way Rodrigo found us, gave us a cell phone and a ride to the shopping mall. He pointed us toward the bank and sped off to the airport, where he was en route to pick up his father, Antonio, and Antonio’s significant other, Maria Eugenia.

We still could not cash our AmEx Traveller’s Checks at the Banco do Brasil in the local mall; “You need to go to Banco do Brasil at the airport” we were told by the nice lady. We located an ATM, got a few hundred Reais using our debit card and went off in search of café de manha (breakfast) at a local padaria (a bakery/café).

Later in the day, Sergio’s father (also named Sergio but called Antonio) took us on a fast trip to the Mexican embassy (for visas he and his wife needed) and then back to the aeroporto so that we could exchange our now much-maligned AmEx Traveller’s Checks.

Armed Guards

It surprised Mary to see at least two armed guards in each bank we visited—it has been such a long time since we had armed guards in the U.S. that she had forgotten we ever had them. The banks also use a portcullis and a metal detector each patron passes through in order to enter—you open the clear plastic (glass?) door, the door behind you closes, you wait for a light to push a button to allow you through the inner door. The banks are locations for obtaining and depositing money and paying most household bills. (Sergio and Rodrigo’s condominium buildings also had their own gate and 24-hour guard. While we were happy for the security it offered, we had more than a little trepidation each time we left that we wouldn’t be allowed back in, and wouldn’t be able to explain that we are staying at Rodrigo’s. Apparently, the guards told

each shift of their foreign visitors.)

We finally had discovered why our original efforts to cash the traveler’s checks were denied—the name on the passport didn’t match the name on the checks. Mary’s passport displays her previous name. Uh huh. Our government, in its “wisdom,” only puts a little note in the back of the passport saying “oh by the by, her name has been changed a

nd it’s cool with us.” Try explaining that to someone who does not speak English and we can’t speak Portuguese. With Antonio’s interpretive help and general demeanor, (he used to be in charge of embassy security for the Distrito Federale), we were able to cash them (it cost us about $35 in fees for about $700 in cash). The transaction took about an hour and a half. Antonio dictated to us the phrase we would use if this arose again.

So, we were off to see the sights of Brasilia.

We saw the National Cathedral, a beautiful structure of stained glass.

We saw the buildings which house the ministries of the government, the palace for the President’s official functions and the palace for his residence, we saw an overview of the city from the TV Tower, taking an elevator up several flights to an observation deck. We tried to visit JK’s tomb, (JK is their revered President, Juscelino Kubitschek, who caused Brasilia to be built out of the raw jungle land), but we arrived a few minutes too late. We finally arrived home around 9:00 p.m., having been whisked from car to car, and place to place, ever since we had meandered off to get a cup of coffee that morning. We were sorry we hadn’t had time to retrieve our camera from Rodrigo’s house.

Sergio told us that JK had promised to build Brasilia while on a campaign stop, when someone asked him if he would follow up with the pledge made by his predecessor. “Sure!” JK declared, without having planned on this.

Brazil (part um) SFO to Brasilia

WWSWAD (What would Southwest Airlines do?)

Wednesday March 4, 2008

I have grown used to how Southwest Airlines runs its operation. Conditioned like a gerbil to their needs. Needless to say, when I fly with someone else I compare the experience to SWA. I could not fly on SWA to Brazil. They don’t go there, yet. I opted for American Airlines.

We flew out of San Francisco International. The flight’s departure time was 12:30 PM. Mary and I got up at oh-dark-thirty and headed for Emeryville where we picked up my son, Lee. He drove us to a nearby BART station to take a train to San Francisco airport. BART is showing its age and when it’s in a tube passing another train, it’s louder than a Stone’s concert. Still, we got to the airport for less that bridge toll and gas. Plus, giving my son the car keys for a couple weeks is much cheaper than airport parking.

I found the experience in the terminal to be satisfactory. We picked up the received boarding passes for all the legs in the journey, including the leg from Rio to Brasilia on domestic TAM Airlines. The woman at the American Airline ticket counter claimed that our luggage was checked all the way through too. (Not quite.)

We knew our seats before boarding, that’s kind of nice…until you discover that you are going to be next to a squalling baby for the next four hours, forty-seven minutes, twenty-seven seconds of this leg. Trapped. Thoughts of shoving a pencil through my eardrums ricocheted in my head like marbles on a tile floor.

On Southwest Airlines I could have changed my seat because it’s “sit where there is a seat.”

On the domestic flight, American Airlines sells their snacks. Half a sawbuck for a sandwich, or three bucks for a can of Pringle-style chips, cookies, and a candy bar. We split a sandwich. It tasted good. I cannot remember any more than that.

Our flight from Miami to Rio de Janeiro got out of the gate about forty minutes late. I’m no world traveler, but the few times I’ve flown out of country my flight has been delayed (once by twelve hours). In the air, they never made up the time. The good part is that due to a duplicate seat assignment, we were upgraded to business class. That came in handy at the end of the flight when we had to dash to customs, through the international terminal to baggage to domestic to security to the boarding already TAM flight.

Quarta-Feira 6 Março 2008

We flew TAM Airlines (who, by the way, have arguably the most beautiful aeromoças—stewardesses—in the world) arrived in Brasilia around 1:30 PM local time or about 8:30 in the morning by our Circadian clocks. Sergio and Luciana were there to pick us up. Sergio was a Brazilian exchange student who lived with Colleen, me, and the boys in the mid ‘90s. He is now 29 and to be married on Sabado (Saturday). Luciana is gorgeous as, it seems, most Brazilian women are. While at the airport we tried to convert American Express traveler’s checks into Brazilian Reals (Reais in Portuguese) with no luck.

Brasilia-A Bit of History

Lucio Costa and Oscar Niemeyer designed Brasilia in the mid-1950’s and much of it was constructed in three years (1959-1961). And, like Washington, DC, it looks good on the map (the outline is of an airplane and the cidade is laid out in a grid pattern norte-sul-este-oeste). On the ground the effect is not unlike Disneyland’s Autopia with overpasses and underpasses criss-crossing everywhere. All the road signs are in Portuguese. Pare (stop) signs and lane markings are merely suggestions. Many roads didn’t even bother with lane lines. Brazilians straddle lanes to create new ones when the need strikes them. Despite the apparent anarchy, (or freedom if you’re of a Libertarian bent) we saw only one accident.

We went to the suburb of Agua Claras (clean water) where Sergio and his brother Rodrigo live and went to Rodrigo’s (pronounced Hoe-drig-go) apartamento and met Sergio’s mother, two aunts, and cousin stocking the pantry for us. They assigned us Rodrigo’s room and told us to make ourselves at home.

So I did.

I tested the multi-outlet surge protector we brought with us and in a flash of light and smoke, blew out the apartment’s electrical panel. In this part of Brazil, 220 is used. Later, I discovered Rodrigo’s line conditioner that reduces 220 to 110 for all our electrical toys: camera, laptop, AlphaSmart Dana, Palm Pilots, etc. Phew.

After a much needed nap, we went to dinner at a local churrascaria called Buffalo Bio’s. A churrascaria is a meat eater’s paradise. They had the standard salad, seafood, casserole buffet. They had a sushi bar. But the churrascaria’s allure is in the skewers of meat the staff bring around until you say “nao mais.” (there should be a “~” over the a in nao but I can’t seem to produce one). In addition to the mignon, lamb, sausage, pork, chicken, etc., one skewer has chicken curaçaos—yikes!

Two Second Drill

This last Sunday, one statement on a segment of CBS Sunday Morning titled, The Name Game caught me up short. Mostly Charles Osgood looked “at famous book titles, including the stories behind “Catch-22” with legendary editor Robert Gottlieb and “Winnie The Pooh” with British columnist Gary Dexter.” He talked about the naming of famous books like Catch-22 (originally titled Catch-18), The Postman Always Rings Twice (originally titled Barbeque), and 1984 (originally titled The Last Man in Europe).

But what made me sit up was that they talked about the effect the title has on a potential reader. A book’s title tries to encapsulate what’s in the book. In the piece Charles Osgood says, “A title is no small matter, because readers really do judge a book by its cover. … shoppers give a book just two seconds to make an impression before moving on.”

Two seconds. Those first words and the book’s blurb had better be great.

It reminds of the the Hemingway challenge to write a story in six words. Hemingway wrote, “For sale: baby shoes, never used.” I also like, Horny professor. Failing coed. No tenure. –“A Short History of Academia,” by Sue Grafton

The Chance of a Lifetime

It was the chance of a lifetime: going into the backcountry to search for section corners and quarter-section corners set by surveyors one-hundred and one years before. The fly-in-the-ointment was that the surveyors probably had done their work while perched on a barstool in 1882. Someone knew how to nurse a beer.

In cadastral surveying the place to start is to assume that the survey was done and either the evidence has been lost, obliterated, or simply not found. You begin searching for clues in the field notes that the surveyor took. These notes state the where they ascended, descended, crossed creeks and such along the way to setting a corner. The early surveyors carried a metal tape called a “Gunter’s Chain” to measure distance. (There are 80 chains in a mile and 640 acres in a section.) For instance, the notes might say, “at 25 chains 24 links, crossed a small creek.” You can put the items on a piece of Mylar and overlay them on a topographic map to see if maybe the notes match up in any way to the actual terrain.

Mountain Home State Forest is located in Tulare County, twenty-two air miles northeast of Porterville, CA. It is situated in the middle north fork and north fork drainages of the Tule River. Elevations from 4800 to 7600 feet above sea level. And for over forty years of state ownership, about half of the boundaries were not known. These were primarily in the township of 19S 31E.

A survey crew in 1919

So, based on these field notes and any hare-brained cockamamie idea or hunch, we went out and searched for the rock mounds and sticks and bearing trees (a tree that bears witness to a monument by having a rectangular section of bark removed and the distance and bearing is scribed onto the exposed wood). We did find one: an interior corner that had been missing for one hundred years. When our licensed surveyor (under who’s license we did all our work) went to the spot, the post crumbled in his hand as he dug it out.

To be continued…

Sections, Townships, and Range

A long time ago (call it 1983) in a place far, far, away (call it Mountain Home State Forest), a small band of courageous neophyte surveyors began a project that many in the California Department of Forestry hierarchy felt to be impossible. We started work on finding, and then marking, the precise boundaries of Mountain Home State Forest.

Not impossible to survey, just hard work

History of Mt. Home
California bought Mountain Home from the Michigan Trust Company on January 6, 1946 for $550,000. The deed delineated all the boundaries based on the section corners and quarter-corners of such-and-such section of townships 19 or 20 south and ranges 30 or 31 east of the Mount Diablo Base Meridian (normally abbreviated MDBM). On paper the acreage of the holding totaled around 4615.77 acres and was, mostly fiction. Mostly fiction because the total area based its value on townships of 36 one-mile square sections. Many of which had never been surveyed.

The US Public Land Survey System
Pretty much all the arable land (remember that term “arable”) that isn’t contained within the original thirteen colonies is supposed to have been placed into a grid known as the Public Land Survey System. Its basic units of area are the township and section.

Within a 6-mile by 6-mile township, the upper right section is Section 1 the section west of number is Section 2. The numbering moves left to all the way Section 6, the section south of Section 6 is section 7 and the number and progresses in a serpentine manner all the way to Section 36. There should be no Section 37.

In the 1880s, surveyors contracted with the General Land Office of the federal government on a per-mile of surveyed line basis to survey the land now known as Mountain Home. In the San Joaquin Valley, surveying went quickly. The land was flat and had few obstacles to get in the way. But the forested mountains were another challenge altogether. Hmm, a federal contract, thousands of miles away from Washington DC, based on the number of miles surveyed in mountainous terrain with trees. What could possibly go wrong?

More tomorrow.

My Old Day Job

At Mountain Home State Forest - circa 1973

I worked as the assistant forest manager at Mountain Home State Forest from 1979-1986. The old joke asks, “Where do forest rangers go to ‘get away from it all?'” As if working in the forest was not, well, work. I remember days when I’d been stung by wasps, hiked cross-country through thorny buckbrush in the beating sun, emptied overflowing trash cans, cleaned filthy outhouse toilets, listened to campers complaining about the yahoos nearby playing their music too loud, etc. Then, someone with a cold beer in his hand would come up to me as I tried to keep the 1 mil plastic garbage bag–filled with fermenting fish guts that leaked through onto my pants–from breaking and say “damn, I wish I had your job.”

Tomorrow, I’ll write about the meaning of Section 37 and the coolest job I ever had.