This week is the 25th anniversary of the eruption of Kilauea on the Big Island of Hawai'i. Here's some spectacular video of it.
What brought this to mind was seeing ABC News' pictures of snow falling in Truckee, California the other night. Way back in 1983 I drove up to Yosemite and went through Truckee at some point. Along the way I stopped at Donner State Park. There's an impressive museum and statue there memorializing the Donner Party, but the thing that really struck me was seeing a grove of trees, all lopped off about 15 feet up in the air. The explanation? Those trees had been cut for firewood at what was ground level when the Donners got there in the winter of 1846-1847.
Imagine that. 15 feet of snow, so packed that it was perceived as the ground. Then imagine how desperate the Donner Party was.
One of the best books about their experience is Ordeal by Hunger, written by George Stewart (who also wrote the science fiction classic Earth Abides and Storm).
Posted by Linkmeister at January 5, 2008 12:05 PM | TrackBack