Grand Prismatic and Other Sights

JWise Photo of the Day, Thoughts, Travels

Up before the break of day so we can capture the first light to fall upon the Upper Geyser Basin. The sky is turning pink and pale blue before I’m able to capture a worthy photo to celebrate the return of the sun.

Our original plan to hike the Lone Star Trail was nixed so we could linger yet again right here with all these beautiful sights we never tire of seeing.

We’ll end up spending nearly three hours in astonishment meandering these trails refamiliarizing ourselves with features we feel we should know by now but still feel just as new to our senses as they did seven years ago on our first visit.

The building blocks are essentially all the same: water, minerals, heat, and gases, but these things visible to our senses manifest in so many ways that each unique spring, geyser, and the various other windows into the world below our feet demonstrates how little of reality is actually seen by us.

But we walk along in our daily life staring blankly at the artifice we’ve contributed to and we no longer are able to see the chaos of nature that exists around us every moment of every day. We are lulled into a routine, and that likely holds true for those who work in places like Yellowstone, as it seems to be human nature to take for granted the familiar.

You are an ant approaching a white-topped mountain that, upon the approach of the peak, you realize is not snow but calcium. At the crest, you look out across a vast sea steaming in the distance; should you fall in, you will instantly die in the scalding water. Love is similar in that you are an ant approaching the periphery of another person; you see their beauty, but in getting to know them, you find a depth you hadn’t realized before. Their potential stretches to the furthest point on the horizon, but what’s yet to emerge from them is still buried deep within. You’ll have to wait around and visit countless times before you realize they may be infinite, but are you too so infinite that you can continue to absorb what they have to offer?

The character of Earth changes every moment, with every step and shift in shadows, the thing once familiar has become something different. Did you know, did you really know that about yourself and those around you?

Why is it so effortless to see the beauty of those external things we gaze upon from the distance? The play of elements we see are all contained in this gas hovering above the surface of the earth; they, too, are internal elements of a stage we are looking into. They exist in the depths of our imagination as much as on the surface of reality, as our mind’s eye constructs the meaning of what we sense within our infinitely small heads. Inside these skulls, we work with hearts and souls to picture all things great and small that are only outside of us because of our skills of giving meaning to abstractions.

And now we reach that critical juncture where a thread must be broken as I’ve followed things as far as I can. A branch in the path is taken where things will sound and appear different, if not pictorially, then narratively, as though I may want to explore the vastness of linguistic travels; I only have an inventory of those words and ideas that I’ve allowed in. If measured in the accumulation of experiential content, I’m certainly wealthier in that department, but I cannot disgorge trees and mountains upon the paper for you to read.

Blogging here allows me my own geyser-like moments where the pressure below the surface accumulates until it explodes out into the atmosphere. There’s no idea where the fragments of thoughts will travel as they punch through, even when I attempt to guide them up and outward; momentum has a way of dictating enough chaos that sometimes the sight is beautiful, exquisite even, and then at other times they just sputter barely above the surface of awareness.

Choosing which images accompany a blog entry is never really easy. Starting this day with more than 450 photos that were taken with the hopes of being the greatest reminders ever captured, not all of them turned out that way. So, I must winnow them down to a manageable number. This particular photo Caroline chose to leave out, but it was one of my favorites and so it’s here. This scene was reduced to a monochromatic view where the reflection of our star in a thin layer of mineralized water removed most of the color that might have otherwise been present. Remove your own thin veneer of color, examine yourself for what type of light you reflect, and then ask if you are seeing the real you even then.

With the sun reflecting off this shallow pool of geyserite and calcite, a feature here at Yellowstone is created that might easily be overlooked. Not everything must have the colorful palette of the Grand Prismatic or the opulent height of the Old Faithful Geyser; even the little things deserve our recognition.

What is the musical accompaniment that should play to this bubbling of superheated water? Does it feature drums, violins, or pianos? Is it a soft voice or a bombastic rap of arrival and disappearance? Personally, I hear birds in the distance and the sporadic hiss of gas rupturing from the depths.

This is you splayed out flat. Bacterial mats, hydrological functions, pathways, things carrying information, and various decorations. You, too, are a biological entity, and while you may choose not to see it here in Yellowstone, just like the rest of our planet, we are part of an enormous living thing oblivious to the symbiotic nature of it all. We stroll atop things with egos that hold us outside of the planet that is solely responsible for our potential existence.

Our fragility stops us from diving into the boiling pit of beauty, not just that our organic being would be boiled off of our bones but metaphorically speaking too, we cannot jump into the boiling pit of knowledge as our minds would be boiled out of our sanity and so we are rendered small, petty, and often stupid. We stay safe behind the signs others have put up for us as we cannot comprehend where it’s safe to tread.

Ah, the perfect metaphor for John can be found right here in this crusty corner spouting off a bunch of hot water and gas. Nature, in this sense, is lucky as it doesn’t require words to convey the message of what it is while we humans attempt to be like nature when we put our most beautiful people forward, but isn’t that denying the intrinsic nature of what people are, the sum of their words?

And don’t think for a moment that art is not the sum of a human’s words. We could not paint without the knowledge that pigments are able to stain a surface and that we can exercise control to determine if the strokes are horizontal, vertical, or diagonal. We either mimic patterns already seen, or maybe we stumble into inspirations, but still, they are tools being utilized by a mind that has assigned a linguistic value to all parts that will be utilized to create something.

This luxury we have to go about our world outside the biological function of requiring food and shelter has allowed us to be witness to this beautiful flow found in nature and copy it so we might adorn ourselves or our dwellings with the aesthetic sights we’ve witnessed. Using technology from the earliest cameras to our current age of digital imaging, we have made those things of earth and universe portable. Instead of needing to experience nature on strictly its terms, we package it up and carry reminders with us wherever we might go.

This is Turquoise Pool at Midway Basin, but it’s not the Turquoise Pool I’ve known. I did not know Turquoise Pool because Turquoise Pool is not knowable. I’ve seen this pool before; I know I have, but then why do I not really remember it? Because, like me, it’s changing. Were its waters hotter or colder the last time we were here? Were the conditions dryer or wetter? What of the sun? The characteristics of nature are forever changing, though it may be difficult to determine just how or when they changed.

Sure, this is a slightly different viewing angle of Grand Prismatic, but I couldn’t choose between the two, so just as we stare at it for an inordinately long amount of time, why not offer the chance to see it as we do in the park where we look from multiple different spots along its bright orange shore.

Have I written this before that I don’t believe we’ve ever seen the center pool at Excelsior Geyser Crater? Maybe we have, but who cares, as this will forever be the way I saw it for the first time on this visit.

Here we are on the Fountain Paint Pot Trail, just getting lost in the park instead of starting our drive home as though one more minute, one more geyser, one more time holding hands and smiling at each other will sear the important stuff into our memories never letting them go.

Clepsydra Geyser as seen close up and zoomed in.

Clepsydra Geyser as seen from a different angle. Like the Grand Prismatic above, it’s not just seeing a thing but taking the time to see it again and again, so you might appreciate its various characteristics that you’ll only want to see yet again. The hopelessly insatiable desire to fall into beauty holds us tight, allowing the justification to go further.

Silex Spring on the way back to the car and now we’re satisfied.

Hey Reason,  it’s only 22 miles to Norris Geyser Basin, and should you never be able to return to Yellowstone, wouldn’t you want to know you saw it all on such a nice day?

The rugged moonscape of Norris is like a wholly different environment where the elegant grace found in the other basins has been stripped away. The ground is hotter here, too, making me wonder if this won’t one day be where the volcano we are walking upon today erupts.

And with this photo, we bid adieu to Yellowstone and make our way to the exit, seriously this time.

We needed to get south with no small amount of haste, so we were relegated to taking photos from the moving car, but that’s okay as it feels like we had a satisfying, immersive moment in America’s first national park. I wonder how long it will take before we return.

Miso Happy

JWise Food, Thoughts

In our continuing effort to eat healthier, and because our CSA supplies us with a lot of salad requiring ever more ingenious salad dressings, we have added miso to our diet. Looking for new salad dressing recipes, I had come upon a number that included miso. We know miso from eating at Japanese restaurants where we have often had a small bowl of miso soup with a few pieces of tofu and some thin slices of green onion, and our first encounter with a miso salad dressing was at Eddie McStiff’s in Moab, Utah. Their house dressing with miso has made us detour through Moab on more than one trip to allow us to pick up more bottles. But, until now, we had never made an attempt to make our own miso-based dressing or soup.

Our local major grocers do not only not carry miso, but also are quite ignorant about it. Even our healthy organic farmer’s market-type stores are short on knowledge or available products. One store has miso, but it sits on the regular, un-refrigerated shelf, which suggests to me this is a pasteurized product and hence lacks the real nutritional benefit of miso. I found miso at another store from the organic category, but it is quite expensive and does not come with information about genetically modified ingredients. The Asian grocery stocks four or five brands featuring different types of miso, including red, white, yellow, and brown. All of them were short on (English) data regarding ingredients, manufacturing, or pasteurization.

Thus, I started looking for healthy organic miso on the Internet. Miso is a living fermented food. To a base of soybeans or, as hinted at just above, chickpea, rice, adzuki bean, barley, or wheat, the maker of miso adds a yeast mold known as koji along with a few other ingredients, starting a fermentation process which for some misos can take upwards of three years before its ready for consumption. Koji is created by inoculating rice with the synthesizing bacteria Aspergillus oryzae. Because this bacteria is high in vitamin B-12, it has often been recommended as a good source of this vitamin for vegetarians, who often do not get enough of it. B-12 is typically found in meat, dairy, and egg products.

If that alone wasn’t enough, though, researchers have shown miso to be a truly potent medicinal food. During the 1960s, after many years of treating atomic bomb victims in Nagasaki, Dr. Shinichiro Akizuki came to believe that neither he nor his staff suffered from the effects of radiation due to their consumption of miso. In 1972, Dr. Akizuki’s theory was validated by the discovery of dipicolinic acid in miso, which is an alkaloid believed to chelate or dissipate heavy metals such as radioactive strontium.

In the late 1980s, medical researchers discovered ethyl ester in miso. This fatty acid is produced during miso’s fermentation and acts like an anti-mutagen. It is known to counter the effects of nicotine and burnt meat mutagens. Then, in the 1990s, the plant isoflavone called genistein was found in miso. Compared to other soy-based foods also containing genistein, miso contains about 25 times more genistein. Genistein is now believed to be an active anti-cancer substance. Studies have shown that genistein reduces cancer cells’ ability to form new blood vessels and attacks the cells’ reproduction mechanism. There is much more writing concerning miso and the effectiveness of genistein in fighting cancer readily available on the internet.

Finally, miso acting to alkalize the body helps neutralize the acid to bring the body to a healthy ph. Miso is a tremendous source of linoleic acid and lecithin, and if you are eating unpasteurized miso, you are also benefiting from miso’s lactobacilli. Miso is believed to be an essential part of a long, healthy life, promoting stamina and an all-around feeling of well-being.

All of this made me more and more excited about finally trying out Living Miso. Fortunately, I soon found South River Miso, which appeared to be the miso maker for us and so an initial order of four different flavors was made. On first taste straight out of the bottle, I knew I had to order the other flavors. South River offers Dandelion and Leek, Red Pepper Garlic, Chickpea, Brown Rice, Adzuki Bean, Barley, and a number of other flavors of miso that are all extraordinary.

Buying a healthy living miso today is not that easy since commercial food producers are more interested in cost savings and bulk to satisfy demand than in providing quality. While foods such as miso, which undergo a Lacto-fermentation process, have been consumed for centuries, their method of production is less than convenient. A good strong miso, as stated above, can take upwards of three years before it is ready for consumption.

Using chlorinated water, table salt, or substandard ingredients, all have an impact on fermented foods. Some techniques are meant to standardize consistent yields, not deliver consistent health benefits. Olives, for example, should be fermented using the natural lactic-acid fermenting method of sea salt alone, but nowadays, for the sake of expediency, mass-produced olives are treated with lye to remove bitterness before getting packed in salt and sold to the consumer.

Finding healthy and conscientiously produced products is becoming more and more difficult, especially as the majority of consumers care more about convenience than flavor and health. Fortunately for those willing to make an effort to find such products, they do exist. Miso from South River Miso in Conway, Massachusetts, is an example.

South River is a small operation, taking the time and patiently using skills learned from Naburo Muramoto and his School of Oriental Medicine and Traditional Fermented Foods in California to make high-quality living miso. In a massive masonry stove in the farm’s purpose-built post-and-beam shop, a wood fire gets the process underway. Founders Christian and Gaella Elwell work hard to fill over 20 wooden vats with over 150,000 pounds of fermenting miso for those fortunate enough to learn of their precious product.

Our favorite use for any of the flavors of miso from South River so far is this salad dressing:

Miso Happy Salad Dressing

¼ cup Braggs raw cider vinegar or rice vinegar – I prefer seasoned rice vinegar
2 tbsp Sweet White Miso or other light variety
2 tsp honey or rice syrup – we enjoy honey most of all
2 cloves garlic
¼ cup olive oil
½ cup fresh basil

Mix all ingredients in a blender on high except oil.
With blender on medium speed, slowly add oil.

This is a slight variation of their recipe. Regarding vinegar, we tried Sherry and balsamic vinegar but would not recommend it since both tend to overwhelm the subtlety of the flavors in the finished dressing. We have tried other flavors of miso, both light and dark, and all have produced great results. Instead of olive oil, the original recipe calls for sesame or vegetable oil, but we have found that an early harvest olive oil is the most complimentary due to its much fruitier taste! However, walnut oil does NOT work; the flavor is too strong. In the original recipe, the basil is optional, but in my opinion, it shouldn’t be, as it perfectly rounds out the dressing.

So, if I got you interested, get to it and order yourself some of the best miso, you are likely to find in the United States. Do it soon, before it gets hot, because South River only ships during cool months. I would recommend starting with several different flavors to sample the varieties and different aged products. Consider the Barley or Chickpea Barley misos from their three-year dark miso selection, and from the one-year light miso selection, try the Sweet White or Adzuki Bean misos. If you’d like a real treat and it’s still available, try their unique Dandelion Leek miso!!!

To learn more about South River and order their fabulous products, contact them at www.southrivermiso.com or call 413-369-4057

References
• www.clearspring.co.uk Miso Medicine – Health Giving Properties of Miso
• www.whfoods.org The Worlds Healthiest Foods – Miso
• www.mercola.com The Incredible Health Benefits to You of Traditionally Fermented Foods

Catastrophic Failure

JWise Thoughts

The server hosting my site went to toast on March 25th, leaving a void where my site had once been. Even today, this is but a test as we prepare to bring the content nearly lost back online.

Over the next week, I should be able to repost the photos, comments, and words, along with a few thoughts from the past few weeks while the blog was absent. A few travel stories were unfortunately not retrievable.