Nature comes to mind when reflecting upon Iceland. Two aspects of Iceland’s natural beauty come bundled together on the Golden Circle Tour through which many tourists to the island nation gain their introductions – geysirs and waterfalls in the form of the geothermal area of Haukadaulur and the amazing waterfall, Gullfoss – Golden Waterfall.
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A recent trip to Europe ended up flying us through the far northern island country of Iceland. I had wanted to visit this country since hiking about in the tundra and mountains of Norway back in the early years of the 1980s. The vast treeless moors of the Hadangervidda and the Jotunheimen served as magnificent introductions into the immense beauty to be discovered in the subarctic. Iceland figured to take the natural beauty up a notch or two. The tundra also provided a bridge between magical nature with the political past at Þingvellir.
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The number of monuments and marker you can find in some of the National Battlefield Parks preserving American Civil War battlefields can simply numb you. Granite monuments form literal forests inside some National Battlefield Parks from the American Civil War. Each monument does have a story, even those not as fancy, expensive and artistic as others. If you want to see all of them, say in a day or so – a true monumental dash, you will need to put on your running shoes – boots, in some cases, depending on the weather.
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If you have lived in Portland long enough, you will end up making a visit to visit the fish hatchery at Bonneville Dam, home to Herman the Sturgeon. The dams along the Columbia River system have hugely curtailed the once humongous runs of salmonids up and down the river and its tributaries. Overfishing definitely has a role to play in the depletion of the huge runs, but the hydroelectric – flood control dams have even more hugely impacted the once vast movements of fish. A recent visit to a small local waterfall brought to light part of the plight of the fish encountering physical obstructions to their journeys. One answer to the problem, fish ladders.
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1000 Places to See Before You Die includes only one entry for the Autonomous Territory of Greenland – Disko Bay. Nowhere is East Greenland mentioned. Author Patricia Schultz only gives the Faeroe Islands one entry as well while Iceland merits two. The mother country, Denmark, gets ten. But as she said in an interview with the Chicago Tribune when she was out promoting her 2019 update of her book; 1000 places, can you really find that many spots? Her reply, “How can I narrow it down to just 1,000?”
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Larch Mountain stands as one of the three big shield volcanoes of the extended Boring Lava Fields. Rising to 4055 feet high, the mountain presents an array of contrasts. Once the site of intense logging industry, the mountain shows an amazing natural renewal a century after most of the timber production came to a halt. Pockets of old growth, wonderful views from the top and remnants of past industry all make Larch Mountain and its crater, a fascinating walk in the woods.
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I knew before that a certain Captain George Pickett, a thirty-four-year-old veteran of the Mexican War and graduate of West Point – albeit, last in his class – served on San Juan Island in the Puget Sound just before the American Civil War. What I did not know, was one of his opposites in the whole Pig War ordeal in 1859 was an Anglo-Irish peer by the name of John De Courcy. Like Pickett, De Courcy would figure in the next war, as well. Pickett’s role would be bigger and better known, but De Courcy’s role was big enough for someone involved in command. And not even as a citizen of either side.
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We saw earlier how to climb to the top of the Larch Mountain crater from the Columbia River on the 1915 historic Larch Mountain Trail. But you don’t have to gain 4,400 feet over the 6.6-mile trek up to Sherrard Point. You can actually cheat and start at the top. Simply drive up Larch Mountain Road to its end. Fourteen miles up from the Columbia River Highway just west from Crown Point. Park in the large lot near the summit.
Continue readingLook out to the east from Portland and your attention draws to the snows and glaciers of Mt. Hood. But search a bit to the left and you can notice another bulky mountain with a notch on its northern rim. This is Larch Mountain one of three shield volcanoes sitting in a line of volcanic vents making up the Boring Lava Field range stretching from Mount Sylvania on the southwest edge of Portland all the way east past Larch Mountain to Beacon Rock standing near Bonneville Dam, almost thirty miles apart in a straight line.
Larch Mountain sits on the western end of the canyon of the Columbia River Gorge rising just over 4,000 feet above the river running about three straight miles to the north of its peak. Coming from the east along the river, Larch Mountain is the last significant Cascade peak on the Oregon side of the Gorge before the mountains begin to ease topographically into the northern end of the Willamette Valley.
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Kennesaw Mountain saw the third time during the American Civil War in which William T. Sherman employed a direct assault upon entrenched Confederate positions. The attack failed as much as his previous two attempts. All through the Atlanta campaign, Sherman had gotten around the Confederate positions set out by Joseph E. Johnston through flanking maneuvers. Sherman wrote to Washington, “The whole country is one vast fort, and Johnston must have at least 50 miles (80 km) of connected trenches with abatis and finished batteries. We gain ground daily, fighting all the time. … Our lines are now in close contact and the fighting incessant, with a good deal of artillery. As fast as we gain one position the enemy has another all ready. … Kennesaw … is the key to the whole country.” For the key, Sherman decided to open it with a direct frontal assault.
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