So Saturday, the boys and I are coming into Yosemite on Hwy 120, sleet off and on, about 35 degrees, and a deer flashes across the road within feet of the front bumper. There’s another, down, in the road, barely lifting it’s head, one eye rolling back.

“Holy crap!” Peter (13) yells from the back seat. There are no visible marks on the animal. No car with a bent grill. We idle dangerously on the curve in the road. CRASH!

The biggest coyote I’ve ever seen jumps onto the road from the bank and grabs the deer’s neck in its jaws. Shaking it.

*#*##$%$#*!! Andrew (15).

Nature is savage. Marlin Perkins never had it better—in the middle of the road! Readers of this blog are lucky there were other cars coming and my efforts to back up to get a photo were thwarted—“Dad, you’re going to kill us!”

….

My car is a mess, not withstanding the window made out of packing tape that resulted from a black bear bending my doorframe down to the ground last fall. Apparently, they really will break into your car for a tube of sunscreen. Amidst the rubble and remaining glass shards, an old journal from a Half Dome trip in 2001:

The yawning breadth of the Sierras
and that’s enough. That’s why
we came here my brother and I
in November after the first snow.
People gone the cables
down for the season
no common-sense reason
to be here. Only the fluttering
of a pack in the wind
to mark the ascent,
the lonely pace of a raven
following from camp bringing news
of an alien planet.

After a day of bouldering near Camp 4, the boys and I huddle around a gathered-wood fire and watch the climbers sort gear by headlamp. What sounds like thunder— reverberating through the camp—is really a rock-fall. People from all over the world come here because they are drawn to adventure, to something that exists nowhere else.

As for poets, Gary Snyder found his Yosemite inspiration in trail crew work, as his Zen training might suggest. We’ll end with this meditation with a piece from “Riprap” :

In the thin loam, each rock a word
a creek-washed stone
Granite: ingrained
with torment of fire and weight
Crystal and sediment linked hot
all change in thoughts
As well as things.

Not far from Los Angeles lie the San Gabriel Mountains, an oasis for the 18 million people who inhabit the sprawling metropolis. The Angeles National Forest is a welcome escape for city dwellers to hike, swim, fish, and camp.

But, not everything is beautiful up there; proximity to L.A. comes at a price. The most accessible trails are flush with trash, and the trees and rocks are covered with graffiti.

The following photo, by hiker and fisherman Darrell Kunitomi, provides just one example of the vandalism that's rampant. Check out this slideshow of his photos to see the damage along a one-mile stretch of the San Gabriel River's East Fork.

You can read about efforts to protect the San Gabriel Mountains in "Above the City of Angels," by Brendan Buhler, a must-read piece from the current issue of Sierra magazine.

Yesterday, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar delivered a powerful keynote address at the UN Climate Change Conference being held in Copenhagen.  That speech, entitled "New Energy Future: The Role of Public Lands in Clean Energy Production and Carbon Capture," gave a clear message to the world just how much the Obama Administration has already accomplished moving us toward a cleaner energy economy and how we're going to finish getting there.  The Secretary made clear that our abundant lands are going to play a crucial role in that transition, both in terms of responsible renewable energy development as well as acting to naturally sequester carbon.

The speech was eloquent and meditative and deserves to be read in its entirety which can be viewed here.  Some representative highlights are excerpted below:

On Wednesday, December 2, the Sierra Club partnered with a coalition of other environmental organizations to honor members of Congress who have championed efforts to protect our national forests' roadless areas.  In 2001, President Clinton issued the Roadless Area Conservation Rule, which added protections to our country's remaining 58.5 million acres of roadless forests.  These ecologically rich areas serve as vital wildlife habitat, provide clean water, store large amounts of carbon, and offer exemplary recreational opportunities.

Photography copyrighted: John Hyde, Wild Things Photography

Despite President Bush's efforts to undermine the Roadless Rule, the majority of our country's remaining roadless forests remain protected, and thankfully President Obama and Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack have made commitments to upholding and defending this landmark conservation policy.  Congressional leaders have been instrumental in the success of protecting our roadless forests and Wednesday gave us the opportunity to honor them for their efforts to build support for legislation that would more permanently protect these precious areas.  Receiving awards in person were Representatives Jay Inslee (D-WA), Earl Blumenauer (D-OR), Diana DeGette (D-CO), Senator Jeff Merkley (D-OR), and former Congressman Sherwood Boehlert (R-NY).

Although the majority of our country's roadless areas are currently protected, areas remain that are still at risk.  Idaho and Colorado submitted state-specific plans that greatly reduce the level of protections that their roadless areas receive, and the Tongass National Forest in Alaska is not protected under the national rule thanks to a temporary exemption that the Bush administration made in 2003.  As a result, there is still the need to weigh in with the Obama administration.

Take action and encourage them to uphold and defend the 2001 Roadless Rule to ensure protections of all our roadless forests, including the Tongass.

This article originally published the Lay of the Land blog.