attempt on the pic d'anie / tentative sur le pic d'anie

Attempt on pic d’Anie (pour le version  francais vois en dessous les photos). 

The good bits: 

I slept under a canopy of stars the night before

I spent an enchanted hour or so o the GR10, walking through what can only be described as a gigantic natural rock garden.  Cast a quadrant and you would have caught a dozen flowering species, plus a few butterflies if it had a net.  It’s a mystery to me why nutrient poor limestone soils harbour such rich diversity. 

I saw some marmots, for the first time in my life.  They were much larger than I expected (beaver size) and completely unfazed by my presence.  I watched three of them graze and play for five minutes and even when I moved on they did did not gointo hiding

I took a photo of my father with me, who passed away five years ago – almost to the day.  I wanted to do something in memory, so decided to share one of the things that I enjoy with him (that we never shared in real life)   and have a last (?) conversation.

Bad things

I didn’t make it to the top – it was far too hot I should have set out at seven to have had a chance

Most of the approach to the foot of the mountain has been bulldozed to create a 5-7m wide ski piste.  It made the approach feel like walking the Kakokoram Highway. Totally ugly and dispiriting.  An act of ecological vandalism, desecrating a beautiful and to the Basques, holy, mountain. It was a large part of the reason I gave up on my attempt on the peak.     I can’t remember when I felt so viscerally angry.  Yes, I would have stood in front of the bulldozers had I known about the plans.  And I will encourage people in Hendaye I know who go ski-ing to boycott that resort in the future.

Back at ‘base camp’ I met someone having a beer (who it later turned out works at the resort) and told him how I felt about what had been done.

‘Ah but they had to, otherwise the skiers would go elsewhere’

Now, the hikers won’t come ‘

‘But the skiers spend far more’

As Mr Zimmerman said ‘Money doesn’t talk it swears'.

version francais

Essai sur la pic d'Anie

Les bons morceaux:

·         J'ai dormi sous une canopée d'étoiles la veille au soir

·         J'ai passé une heure enchantée au GR10, à travers ce qui ne peut être décrit que comme un gigantesque jardin de rocaille naturel. Jetez un quadrant et vous auriez attrapé une douzaine d’espèces en fleurs, plus quelques papillons s’il avait un filet. C'est un mystère pour moi que les sols calcaires pauvres en éléments nutritifs présentent une telle diversité.

·         J'ai vu des marmottes pour la première fois de ma vie. Ils étaient beaucoup plus gros que j’ai prevu (taille de castor) et complètement indifférents à ma présence. J'ai regardé trois d'entre eux paître et jouer pendant cinq minutes et même quand je suis passé, ils ne se sont pas cachés

·         J'ai porte une photo de mon père avec moi, qui est décédé il y a cinq ans - presque jour pour jour. Je voulais faire quelque chose en mémoire, alors j'ai décidé de partager l'une des choses que j'apprécie avec lui (que nous n'avons jamais partagé dans la vie réelle) et d'avoir une dernière ( ?) conversation.

Mauvaises choses

·         Je n'ai pas atteint le sommet - il faisait trop chaud, j'aurais dû partir à sept heures pour avoir une chance

·         La plus grande partie de l’approche au pied de la montagne a été détruite au bulldozer pour créer une piste de ski de 5 à 7 mètres de large. Cela a fait en sorte que l’approche donne envie de marcher sur l’autoroute Kakakoram. Totalement moche et décourageant. Un acte de vandalisme écologique, en profanant une belle montagne, sacrée des Basques. C'était une grande partie de la raison pour laquelle j'ai abandonné ma tentative sur le pic. Je ne peux pas me souvenir quand je me suis senti si visiblement en colère. Oui, j'aurais été devant les bulldozers si j'avais eu connaissance des plans. Et j'encourage les gens de Hendaye qui je sais, qui skier, à boycotter cette station à l'avenir.

De retour au «camp de base», j'ai rencontré quelqu'un qui buvait une bière (qui par suite j’ai appris est fonctionnaire sur place) et lui a dit ce que je pensais de ce qui avait été fait.

« Ah mais ils devaient le faire, sinon les skieurs iraient ailleurs » 

« Maintenant, les randonneurs ne viendront pas »

«  Mais les skieurs dépensent beaucoup plus »   

Comme l'a dit M. Zimmerman, «l'argent ne parle pas, il jure ».

Impermanence / nature in the raw

This week I found a new resident on my balcony. A tiny spider - a few mm across - had built a web across my lavender and geraniums - impressively anchoring the top of the of the web to the balcony overhang- more than one metre overhead. Not only are spiders impresive engineers but also quite stunning acobats! A few days later there was a bug five times the size of the spider caught in the heart of the web - and we were treated to the gory sight of the spider sucking it dry. Nature in the raw, in tooth and claw! This morning I went out to check progress on this real time wildlife documentary on my very own doorstep - and found the web in tatters - battered and torn apart by last night's torential rain. I trust Mr spider got enough sustenance to build another food catching machine. Like estate agents say - its all about location, location, location.

Postcript: five days later the web had been rebuilt and the next night was washed away again in another storm.

Cloud Cuckoo Land

Where is all that data that we click into every day stored? All the Google searches and Wikipedia hits? Using the internet and remote data sources and storage seems weightless -and geeks refer to virtual data storage as 'the cloud' - suggesting a fluffy and seemingly innocuous 'never-never' place. The reality is somewhat different - our hunger for remotely sourced data and entertainment is giving rise to huge data processing warehouses the size of football fields - where banks of servers, strung together by fat cables, need constant air conditioning. Jim Thomas paints a different picture in November's Ecologist: "Far from being weightless, the expanding digital cloud is really an enormous necklace of steel silicon and concrete. That necklace is now growing heavy as a global building bonanza in now underway". Google alone spent $2.4 Bn on data centres in 2007 and the demand for power from data centres in the San Francisco region increased from 70 MW to 500 MW in just eighteen months. It is estimated that a single search query to Google uses 11 Watts of energy- equivalent to keeping a fluorescent bulb switched on for an hour. If I think about how many hits I do in a week I am ashamed. Major date processors are looking at ways of reducing their carbon footprint (and electricity bills!) by using sustainable sources of energy - locating their facilities near cold and fast flowing rives. Google is even looking at putting them out to (cold) seas. Even if / when they manage to reduce their CO2 emissions, the data centres also generate vast amounts of e-waste - in the circuit boards and in the coolants used in the air-conditioning. I thought we were moving to a lighter post-industrial, information society. These findings suggest that we may once again just be dumping our wastes in someone else’s backyard. The moral is to think before you search for data that you might already have.

P.S. Thanks to Nick at Nick Here and Now - whose one liner on this topic reminded me that I had planned a blog on this some weeks ago