A Sense of the Wild West - March 2015

On March the 7th, I took a Cambridge test in the morning, and joined in the afternoon my friends Anne and Coralie who had just landed in SF directly from Paris. Finally, it was vacation time! We set off for a trip to some of the renowned American natural parks and scenic drives of the West...

#The highly SCENIC highway one on the Pacific coast of California.

This beautiful road from Monterey to Big Sur definitely lived up to our expectations. Surprisingly, I felt like going through the outstanding lanscapes of Britany, followed by the low mountains of Pyrennees, the shredded coast of Cotentin or the dry cliffs of Les Calanques, all these at once, in larger and wilder than those we know. On top of that, you sprinkle some wild sea animals : seals, sea otters or even enormous sea elephants taking the sun, lazily lying on the sand of quiet beaches along the coast...This gives you a glimpse of what awaits you on highway one if you have a chance to drive on it.

Protected area between Monterey and Carmel

Anne, Pascale, Coralie

Sea elephants taking the sun.

 

# The STUNNING Death Valley.

Coralie unfortunately had to go back to work after this Pacific coastal trip. We extended the journey with Anne, heading east towards lake Taho and then south alongside the green and refreshing Sierra Nevada mountains covered with fir and spruce forests still spotted with patches of snow before diving suddenly into the dryness of the barren Panamint and Death Valley. This is a place you definitely don't want to cross in summer! We left an 18 degree temperature to a sudden 35 degree one...

 Leaving the fresh mountains of Sierra Nevada

Diving into Panamint Valley

The salted ground at - 80 m in Death Valley.

# The UNCANNY wild west ghost town of Bodie

On our way down to Death Valley, we made a stop at the village of Bodie, which was once one prosperous mining town which boomed following the discovery of gold in 1876 - a second wave of gold rush after that of 1848 west of Sacramento - This town that bragged 8000 inhabitants in 1880 dwindled rapidly to a few hundreds once the vein was used up and ultimately suffered a big fire in 1932 that ravaged most of the town. Nonetheless, this town gives a real sense of what the harsh life of the pioneers must have been at that time in this remote rough barren environment - Bodie was known to be the scene of one murder a day!

 

 

# The WONDERS of the National Parks & Monuments

We went with Anne on a 6 day camping trip organised by a Trekking agency. Seamus was our guide, a 35 year old man as thin as a toothpick, ultra marathon man (which means he runs 100 km races  -  crazy man!). We were treated with wonderful meals he cooked himself like vegie curry, taboule, blue berry oatmeal or strawberry pancake for breakfast, a delight! He reminded me of Tintin, this cartoon character whose shrewdness gets him out of any situation. We were in a group of 4 - including ourselves - with a sweet couple in their sixties, Rey and Tracey, both used to mountain climbing, having already hiked Mount Whitney twice! Tracey was a very dynamic and positive woman,  who survived cancer, and was talked into hiking by her husband to lose weight when she was young... She still craved a hamburger and a Pepsi at the end of the camping week! Her husband Ray, grumpy at first sight, was very sweet in the end, and definitely reminded us of Gandalf a character of the famous ' Lord of the ring'. The camping grounds were great, in Zion Park and Escalante National Monument (don't ask me the difference, a matter of preservation status). Be that as it may we slept in freezing cold temperatures - 0°C at night - Fortunately we had good quality sleepingbags.

 

# In Zion Park, we hiked the iconic Angel's Landing trail. Actually it is quite popular and you can just see it as it is as busy as the Champs Elysees (as the French say), but it is really worth it! This hike is reaaaaaally BREATHTAKING. A few people give up before the end because one has to walk on the ridge of a 500 meter high cliff on a one meter wide path, with a lot of rock climbing which I love ! Not difficult but just impressive because of the height right above you.

 

Angel's Landing Trail in Zion

 

# Brice Canyon was also FLABERGASTERING! A landscape unique in the  world, a forest of orange and pink limestone spikes looking like stalagmites, also called Hoodoos. There were still patches of snow which made the scenery even more photogenic. We had the chance to hike a whole afternoon in this incredible landscape,  walking down and up the colorful hills of a fantaisy land.  The trail was called " fairyland trail',  more fun than any Disney rollecoster in the world!

 

Brice Canyon in March

 

# We also discovered the slot canyons of Peek-a-boo and Spooky in Escalante National Monument. This experience was just EXHILARATING! The canyons were so narrow that we often had to take our bagpack off our back to be able to wriggle in the slot of the canyons. It was like making our way in the internal parts of a human body.

Anne in Spooky Canyon



# I keep the Grand Canyon for the end. I went there on my own after Anne had left to fly back to Paris. It is not an easy place to go to when you don't drive a car. However, its immensity is sort of unreal. So when I walked along the rim taking pictures I felt I was taking pictures of a fake backdrop hanging there. I had the chance to stay overnight on the rim, so I could walk down the South Keibab trail, half way from the Colorado river, unfortunately - my only regret -  but the hike was GORGEOUS with 360° views of the Canyon. And the Canyon became reality, eventually!

The South Kaibab Trail in the Grand Canyon

The unreal backdrop of the Grand Canyon

 



The American Paradox - Feb 2015

Keith Haring Exhibition - Dec 2014 - De Young Museum

Since I have been here, I have been very impressed by the sense of community Americans tend to cherish, which I found utterly positive. At the same time I have to admit I have been schocked, not to say appalled, by the seemingly callous way Americans handle their people's health care, which is to me not less than a community concern. This is what I call the American Sense of Community Paradox.

 

I recently fully experienced the best aspects of the American sense of community.
I discovered the city of San Francisco thanks to two websites.Those are great american initiatives which aim to foster local human links. 'SFcityguide.com' offers 60 different free guided tours of the city, run by savvy guides who have been selected and trained prior to their leading of a group.Those guides are mainly recently retired people who are interested in passing on their interest for the city without earning a penny. Thus I learned about the Gold rush in San Francisco,  the Earthquake of 1906, and the wonderful Victorian architecture that is so typical of the Californian city. If one day I retire in Paris I wish to emulate this wonderful organisation and set up free guided tours of the French capital, which would be awesome!
 

'Meetup.com' is also an American concept whose inception stems from the observation of a decline of community in the US, that has been rekindled after 9/11/2001. There was a sudden yearning for people to reconnect, to feel part of a local community. Though amazing the internet can be, the means to chat all over the world in front of one's computer has its intrinsic limits, for a web contact never surpasses a human contact. That is why Scott Heiferman created Meetup.com in 2002, to allow people to meet on the basis of common interests or hobbies on a local scale. Therefore, 12 years later, there are 125 000 groups that potentially allow14 million people to meet up in more than 200 countries all over the world.  That`s how I joined `Walking in San Francisco for Health and History` (but it could have been, `I love Californian wines` or `we are Bolywood friends`), and there I made some friends!
 

I also experienced this way of building a sense of solidarity in my English classes. It is very impressive to see how the American way of teaching is highly conducive to helping each other by fostering interaction between students. It is like creating a virtuous circle by getting everybody engaged in the success of all. I don't mean to fawn over the American spirit, ( my French teacher  friends will hate me!)  but all in all I find it utterly positive, and quite different from our way of doing in France...

"The last moments of John Brown" 1884 -  De Young Museum
This man was hanged convicted of inciting black slaves'insurrection.

On the other hand, with regard to this high sense of community and solidarity,  I am bewildered by the way health care is treated in the US (I am not talking about the new Obama care- nevertheless the principles remain).

In my opinion,  every citizen should have the unassailable right in a modern democracy to be taken care of in case of illness or health problem irrespective of their salary or previous health conditions. No one chooses to get cancer or to give birth to a deaf baby. A lot of those people are not covered by health insurance because the health insurance companies are private and profit driven, and thus have the ability to choose their customers, preferably the healthy ones. Were they to insure a seemingly healthy person who becomes ill, they will find all the legal reasons not to cover their medical expenses. As an example I met Jane who hiked with me in Zion Park, 59 years old, recovered from a bad cancer two years ago, she now has to pay 2000$ a month to be insured, her husband, 69 cannot retire to be able to pay the cost of his wife's health insurance - not everybody can afford that. I recommend you see "Sicko", a staggering documentary from the infamous Michael Moore. As a result a lot of patients are not treated. The evidence for this preposterous situation is given by the life expectancy of the United States which is 3 years less than Western Europe  and Canada. It is at Cuba, Costa Rica and Lybia's  level (I checked this figure for the 2014 year).

The nadir of this system lies in the governance practices of the nation. Political parties and their candidates  are largely sponsored by private companies. This is an insidioulsy deleterious system, for there is a blatant conflict of interest here. It results in condoning a legalised corrupt government. This issue was pinpointed by the French government almost 30 years ago. Thus, they passed laws regulating this financing, forbidding any company to take part in any political funding. Political parties in France are now financed by public funding according to the results of the last polls, and private funding is allowed by individuals to the extent of a 7500 euro maximum amount. I told you my American sycophantic speech was not going to last long!

No wonder it is so difficult to change the paradigm in the US, drug companies as well as health insurance companies are big supporters of politicians who wouldn't give up their crucial financial help, by taking the risk of creating laws that would hinder those companies from thriving.

Conversly our French public health care system  does not let anybody down and treats everybody (almost) equally. However some  know very well that our sense of solidarity might be tainted by selfishness. Our current system leads us to dig the grave of our children by increasing an already outrageous debt because our earnings don`t cover our expenses. This is how we will bestow an overweight debt burden to our future generations. Why: because we are unable to budge an inch when it is about giving up the slightest privileges we have acquired over time.

As you can see the grass is not always greener on the other side of the fence...
Or one could also say that it is easier to see the mote in your neighbour's eye, rather than the beam in our's own!