What I Learned Today

So again, on Sunday, I drove out to explore Amboy Crater (also see wikipedia’s article). It is a fairly recent cinder cone caused by volcanic activity out in the desert between 6000 and 500 (yes, only 500!) years ago. Once you get to the parking lot (about a 3-hour drive from here, not exactly my backyard), it’s a 2-hour round-trip hike to the crater, up to the rim (250 feet high), and back down and out. You get some spectacular views from the top of the desert and the huge lava field created by the cinder cone. I’d show you some views captured by me, except that I somehow left my camera at home (with my whole daypack, including lunch, extra water, batteries, etc.). I realized this just past Barstow (halfway to Amboy) and it wasn’t worth going back. Instead, I’ll just link to other people’s photos! (Photo at right is from Golden Gate Photo.)

Between Barstow and Amboy, I couldn’t help stopping to check out a few geocaches. One was inside Siberia Crater, an even smaller cinder cone (sadly, I didn’t actually find that one!). Another one was on a Route 66 loop off of I-40 (nice detour!) and another was at Amboy Crater itself. Boy, it was fun to sit on the rim and dig through an old ammo box full of plastic toys! There’s also a totally awesome cache just east of Amboy (the town), marked by a shoe tree. No, really: an old tree is hung about with hundreds of shoes.

The path out to Amboy Crater is marked with occasional educational plaques containing little facts about the desert. Two that stood out to me:

• Desert lizards do “push-ups” to get warm (because they cannot regulate their own body temperature). But based on my previous knowledge (and some quick googling), this is totally wrong. Push-ups are a form of display, aggression, or communication, used in competition and in mating. If you’ve ever been the target of a push-up display, you’ll have noticed that the lizard points itself at you while doing it — it’s not a mindless set of calisthenics. Maybe the BLM needs to work with factcheck.org.
• The tarantula bite is not deadly, but in self-defense it may flick hairs off its back, to which most animals (including humans) are allergic. This seems to actually be true! There’s even a word to describe these stinging hairs: urticating (check out some awesome photos of these hairs). They can cause anything from mild rashes up to anaphylactic shock.

But about the crater itself: there are lots of interesting volcanic features, including a lava field 24 square miles in extent; pressure ridges, where the lava has buckled upward; and stretches of pahoehoe (smoother) lava (although what I saw wasn’t as smooth or distinctive as that in Hawaii). There are also reputedly “squeeze-ups” of bulbous lava and “bowl-shaped depressions” where lava surfaces sank, but I didn’t see these. The view from the crater rim was excellent, with long shadows from the winter sun even at 3 p.m., gusty wind, and waving grass and brush colonizing the lumpy black lava field. (Photo by h.seng.)

On Sunday, I drove out to Amboy Crater in the desert between Barstow and Needles. More on that later. On the drive out I listened to the LibriVox recording of How to Live on Twenty-Four Hours a Day, a book written in 1912 by Arnold Bennett. It’s a delightful book with tips not about time management per se, but more about how to enjoy living your life in the hours available. His tips include:

• Get up earlier in the morning. You don’t really need as much sleep as you’re getting, and it keeps you from more interesting mental activity. “Most people sleep themselves stupid,” he quotes.
• Difficult tasks are good for you. He lauds the “necessity for the tense bracing of the will before anything worth doing can be done,” indicating that this is what separates him from the cat on the hearth. Well, he has a point; the deliberate choice of difficult endeavors is not something a cat regularly attempts.
• You aren’t really tired when you get home from work. “Mental faculties are capable of a continuous hard activity […] all they want is change, not rest.”
• His prescription: use the morning commute to train your mind to focus on something, anything, of interest, and keep it there for the whole time. Use the evening commute to learn about your self: analyze your behaviors, desires, goals, and really get to know what makes you happy. Use 3 evenings a week to, basically, improve yourself: e.g., pick an art you like (music, ballet, theater, etc.) and learn about how it is produced, its details, its history, and your enjoyment of such performances will be greatly heightened. Or do some “serious reading”, by which he means, specifically, “difficult reading.” He recommends “imaginative poetry” as the most difficult sort, and therefore best for you. He recommends starting with “Aurora Leigh” by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, which I am now intrigued by and have placed on my to-read list.
• Reading time should be split half and half between reading and reflecting on what you have read. I find this an interesting proposition. He notes that you will make slower progress, but it will be richer progress. This seems likely to be true, yet could I force myself to spend so much time on reflection and analysis? A good challenge!

Overall, I found the book thought-provoking and very entertaining as a reading (listening) experience alone. It’s only 1.5 hours long spoken, so I imagine it’s an even quicker read… consuming a minimal amount of your 24 hours.