The Last Cedars of Lebanon

I'm already back stateside, but I wanted to write a few lines about my visit to Lebanon's cedars in early August.

When you hear Lebanon, you think cedars. The tree is featured on the Lebanese flag, the cedar forests of Lebanon are mentioned in Gilgamesh -- which is the oldest known written story -- and any two-bit Beirut tourist shop will have trinkets supposedly carved from cedars. Which is why it is astonishing to see just how few are left. (At least in the main preserve, which is the one I visited. Apparently there is a secondary one in the Chouf that is quite a bit more extensive.)

In the reserve in Mount Lebanon, the cedars are confined to a few acres on a broad, denuded plateau at about 8000 feet. The winding road that takes you to them -- with the anticipation mounting all the while -- goes straight up from the sea through fantastic villages perched on the sides of chasms whose bottoms lie in shadow. You pass the village of Khalil Gibran -- the famous poet who wrote The Prophet, a popular feature at 70s weddings -- and churches built improbably on precipices. Bare mountain summits tug on shreds of mist. You're almost there as the car climbs up through a final ravine...

Suddenly, the car passes through a 30 meter stretch of crammed stalls selling cedar-related tourist goods, and a few stately cedars begin to pop up on your right. Man, you must really be getting close to the forest!

But then you pull out into a treeless plain and there's nothing in front of you except a bare mountainside with a lonely ski lift floppily hanging to it. Those few stately cedars were the forest. And barring a somewhat spotty attempt at replanting on the road to the entrance of the preserve, all the old trees have been cut down, literally to the edge of the stone wall surrounding the preserve. Inside, there are just enough trees -- and some of them truly are sacred, thousand-year-old grandfathers that instill a lot of awe -- that you can briefly be tricked into thinking you are inside a forest.


From a vantage point high on the mountain ridge above, however -- where I drove afterward -- the magnitude of the deforestation is clear. The cedars look like someone's garden, perched on the lip of a high basin that must have once cradled a mighty forest that seemed inexhaustible to its early harvesters. The deforestation is probably a problem that dates back to ancient times, because there is very little evidence of stumps or the former forest. But based on the topography and climate, and my experience with clear-cuts in North America, it seems pretty clear that the forest was as large as I imagine (though I'd like to get a scientific confirmation).

It is a pitiful sight and one representative of Lebanon in general -- so much has been taken from this country's glory. Only a tiny glimmer remains, just like these cedars. Perhaps it is just barely enough to produce seeds, which if carefully protected could produce another forest of beautiful Lebanese cedars one day. Then again, the grove is also so small that a single catastrophe could easily wipe it out.

The sight of this grove also made me thankful for the systems of public land protection we have in the United States, something we need to continue to protect. We are extremely lucky to have as many national forests, parks, monuments and wilderness areas as we do. Let's not take it for granted.

Heart of Solitude, One Year Later

It's been a year since two friends and I crossed the Sierra Nevada through its most remote heart. For me, it was a spiritual experience, extremely difficult -- the most challenging climb/hike I've ever done -- and a reference point for all things afterwards.

I've been thinking about it a lot because I have been so out of touch with nature since then, and decided to post a few pics from that time. (My brief encounter with nature in Batroun, see previous post, made me realize that.)

I am too selfish to write the place names -- I don't want this to be searchable and then draw a bunch of people to these amazing places. Some spots are secret and sacred, and should only be available to people who study topo maps for hours and dream about the obscure swaths of peaks, canyons and lakes where no trails lead.

Your eyes follow the lines, and a landscape opens up in your head. The unnamed lakes with their high elevations printed on them, the creeks in canyons so narrow all the contours touch, the glaciers that cling to northeastern cliffs on the highest peaks are flat and dry on the unbeautiful paper, but your imagination runs wild. Then, when you finally see the places that inspired these maps, there is no way to exaggerate how beautiful this hidden land is. The feeling of crossing over mountains and valleys with only your food, maps and shelter -- and no guide or path -- is the closest thing I've felt to flying like a bird. Pure freedom.

I won't name the places, but I will give a few clues: Enchanted Gorge, 10 days of hiking and an east-west traverse of the Sierra Nevada, completely off trail. And I will say that we once went three days in California without seeing another person, which is an accomplishment. Enjoy.

Peering into the Gorge.
Everything was silent as we passed between two peaks named after mythic monsters.

Mouth of the Enchanted
(and we look like a party of 1860s surveyors)

On top of the world, somewhere on the western ridges.
We had nearly completed our crossing.

Dimmy's final resting place at 10,500 feet, where he lay down to sleep and turned into a stone (inside joke).

Prospect Park Thunderstorm

Two friends and I chilled yesterday on the big rolling green of Prospect Park near Grand Army Plaza. The day was sunny and warm, with an increasing sheen of clouds that made the quality of light like that softened sun that happens during a California wildfire.

We sat on the grass and looked at the scene of mixed groups of people -- I love Brooklyn for its diversity -- picnicking, playing footie and volleyball and enjoying each other's company. It looked like a tableau from that crappy kid's magazine High Life, which we grew up on. I mentioned that, and we laughed, but it made it a little sentimental, because the scene was indeed picture-book perfect.

The green trees were seething all around with sap and leaves -- all the longing for energy stored up during the hungry winter. The clouds closed in and long rich thunder began to rumble from distant corners. Finally the skies opened and flashed. We ran back to the Grand Army Plaza station -- I had to go back to Manhattan and the two SF natives I was with, to Crown Heights. Lightening exploded in front of us on the plaza, near the arch and the fountain. Rain soaked us to the bone.

It was wonderful.