While making my way through social media the other day, I came across some photos taken by my friends J&J, a mother-son duo, of their day hiking the trails and caves of the Pinnacles National Park, one of the natural showcases of Monterey County. Not long after, I came across a story of a young man who had gotten into a situation that required some nine hours of rescue and the combination of J&J’s photos and the rescue story jogged some memories of the Pinnacles way back when it was not well known with very little infrastructure and scant visitors.
My first memory of the rocky ridges to the northeast of Greenfield was how the view of them was different as one rode north on the 101 until they were out of sight, and my first visit there goes back to at least 1963, when seven or eight of us from my family and the two families on either side our home on Ninth Street hiked from what then passed for a parking lot to the lookout atop Chalone Peak. What I recall the most is that the steep uphill climb took about three times what was needed to get back to the car and how long the whole venture took. We were a tired and thirsty crew when that little venture was finished.
Six or seven years later when in our late teens, if a carload of us went to the Pinnacles often we would be the only ones there; this is of course when the place was designated a national monument and did not get the funding and promotion that comes with national park designation. There is no way visitors to the Pinnacles today could get away with what we did back then; and that is not to mean we didn’t leave the place the same as when we got there, we did, but we definitely explored, shall we say, those areas that are off limits today except to the more advanced naturalists, like rock climbers.
I claim no formal training in rock scaling or repelling, but I can say that twice in my life I have climbed to the top of one of the more difficult ridgetops in the park, this shown by the pitons driven into the rock walls where professional climbers with ropes and harnesses had traversed. I did it free climbing on my 20th birthday and again on my 30th birthday with plans to do so again when I reached 40 years, but by then I had gained at least enough smarts to know that would have been suicidal. I have not set foot on Pinnacles land now for over four decades but that doesn’t mean I won’t someday, and if I do, I will follow all the rules and regulations posted by the U.S. government so I won’t end up another rescue story.
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MOON TREE UPDATE: It is a living fact, an in-the-ground-and-growing living fact, that Mary Chapa Academy in Greenfield is the proud protectors of a Giant Sequoia planted in 2024. According to my source Jackie, who is the mother of Adria who is the science coach responsible for applying to NASA for one of the seeds aboard the Orion spacecraft, which ultimately flew 270,000 miles past the moon, and who oversaw the planting of the tree by students. Keep in mind there are less than 300 of these special Moon Trees in the world, so this is a big deal for Greenfield; good for them. If there is any problem with this situation, it is that Giant Sequoia’s can grow to a diameter of 30 feet and reach heights of 300 feet and that is a helluva big tree for any school grounds to accommodate. Of course, that will take about 3,000 years so I doubt the school is much worried about it now.
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To be open and fair, if you are an avid supporter of Donald J. Trump, you should stop reading now and enjoy the rest of your day. It is just my opinion, mind you, but I recall vividly when Charlie Manson sent his minions into the streets to commit mayhem and murder and was later convicted of murder and sentenced to death, which finally came after years of imprisonment. And Crazy Charlie never laid a hand on anyone of the victims; he just orchestrated others to do his dirty work. I fail to see how this differs from what Kristi Noem did under the color of authority.
Here is a prime example of the Dunning-Kruger Effect: “They’re literally. You can walk over from Iran to Qatar; you can walk it in one second. You go boom, boom and you’re in Qatar.” That was our president speaking recently on Air Force One, the guy who is leading our nation into a war doesn’t know that Iran and Qatar are separated by a body of water called the Persian Gulf, which is 119 miles across and 160 feet deep. You really can’t walk across it in one second, with or without boom, boom. (If you are unaware of the Dunning-Kruger Effect, you may want to acquaint yourself with it to better understand why our country is in the fix we are now in.)
The only senator in congress without a four-year college degree is nonetheless no dummy. As a member of the Senate Armed Forces Committee, he was privy to the date the U.S. would attack Venezuela for its oil, Dec. 30, 2025, so on Dec. 29 he invested from $15,000 to $50,000 in Chevron Corporation and defense contractor Raytheon, both stocks rose substantially after the invasion. King Donald just appointed this Cherokee Okie grifter Markwayne Mullin as new head of the Department of Homeland Security, where he’ll have access to millions of taxpayer dollars, not to mention the disgraced Ms. Noem’s fancy jet with the private cheat suite. I wonder how many Cherokees regret their vote now?
Take care. Peace.
