A (Sometimes) 1 Percenter Casts a Gaze at WOC

Where ever water's refreshment is sought, White Oak Canyon remains a primal place to see and smell water's essence on a clean cold day. Feeling pallid and cooped up, though not especially winter-blasted, now that the thermometer often belies the cold season, the gorge delivers a better-calibrated hit of goodness than an oxygen bar. Revival is startling.

Reading William Cronin's provocative introduction to Uncommon Ground - Rethinking the Human Place in Nature, by 15 authors who convened at UC Irvine to "explore contemporary environmental problems from a broadly humanistic interdisciplinary perspective" coincided with this visit. At any rate, trying to snag shots and maintain the pace of 7 hiking companions, I began thinking of ice as one more diminishing resource, one that, I for one, in my small way, do my part to rarefy. I wonder if a week of  sub-freezing weather will occur this decade to convert White Oak Canyon's six falls to massive, scalable ice formations, as the hike leader depicted in images made in the two preceding decades.

The steep rocky path, partially concreted with embedded cobbles, reminds me White Oak Canyon was the principle attraction of segregated Skyland resort before becoming a classic hike in Shenandoah National Park. Enjoyment of SNP recalls 500 families unhappily removed to create the park, many descended from settlers following on the heels of vanquished natives, some in turn, we are reminded, who did some vanquishing of their own.

After editing images last night I read The Week citing CNN.com, "To be counted among the world's richest 1 percent, a single individual has to earn just $34,000 a year. Members of the planet's true middle class, meanwhile, live on just $1,225 a year." That's a picture.