our play here in the Jazz Messengers recorded live a cafe Bohemia and I don't have the disco Gras disco graphical information on that cd but it sounds like that might be Bobby Timmons there on the piano for India Repertory Theater humble county's oldest theatre company presents Disney's Beauty And The Beast made. 5th through June 4th at Ferndale repertory that's in Main Street on Main Street in Ferndale more information is available at Ferndale Wrap dot a large ear at 765483 and I think we can leave out of Ferndale there I think we got 4 in the card 234 Ferndale of it's a straight it is 5 o 2 in the pm your to the Jazz feast here on the most support for came and comes from Green wired renewable energy offering sales design and license installation of off grid and grid connected solar electric systems green wires solar showroom in the meadows business park and Roadway features solar micro hydro and solar water pumping ventilation lighting and more serving the m.o triangle since 2004 green wired can be reached at 932001 or on line of green Wired dot com This is people powered Freedom Radio for the north west coast of California you are tuned to Liberation Radio resistance radio. The voice of the free this is the mighty mighty mad you are tuna k m u d Garber avail 91 point one f.m. And hybrid digital one came you Eureka 8 point one f.m. And hybrid digital one Kaley I Laytonville 90.3 f.m. Or f.m. Transmitter k 25 a.p. Q. Is it 99 and a half on your f.m. Dial thank you for listening on the World Wide Web where it came we need out already of course we're in our spring pledge drive and I think we're going to have a couple folks in with us before the 530 hour comes along and we have some public affairs programming. So I have some more folks to thank for supporting your voice in the redwoods I sure do came and enjoys the support of humble distillery local makers of organic vodka in Rome what distilleries organic spirits are made from all natural ingredients whose raw materials have been grown sustainably and with the use of synthetic fertilizers or pesticides more information is that humble distillery dot com and supporter came and comes from Bogart extractors manufacturers of closed loop essential oil extraction systems the new beau graphics director Stuart 142 s 4 St and Eureka features of ns accessories apparel and all extraction needs more information available online it Bogart dot com That's be h o g a r t v dot com or at 855-553-3887 there's a full house in there somewhere. All right the great but. Here on the. You. Know. That. 2 a. Big band there. With a tune called do a deed. All right I wanted to check out this is recent recently fortunate enough to get the 2 Wilbur hardened John Coltrane L.P.'s that they recorded for Savoy and. Long out of print stuff not familiar with any of it I haven't heard this yet this is going to play one of the shorter selections this song is called e.f. F. P. H. I do not know what it stands for Wilbur harden and John Coltrane here in the jazz feast. Wow was that great that was the great. St John will I am Coltrane on tenor sax there and the obscure Wilbur harden on trumpet along with Doug Watkins on the bass Arthur Taylor on the drums and Tommy Flanagan on the piano and we're going to listen to that same rhythm section with Gene Hammond's on the tenor sax and Ray Beretta on the Congo's right here and right now on the Jazz feast It is $515.00. You know it with in a 2nd. Or 3rd. Union means with our Taylor. On the drums Doug Watkins on the bass. And Tommy Flanagan on the piano and we've got time for a couple of more we're going to listen to. And we can listen to get happy and believe we're going to listen to get happy by. Oh no wonder Ok We're going to listen to get happy by the j.j. Johnson 6 at with Clifford Brown on the trumpet. J.j. Johnson on the trombone Jimmy he's on the tenor and baritone John Lewis on the piano of course John the sound of the Modern Jazz Quartet Percy Heath I think also is in the Modern Jazz Quartet he's a bass here and Kenny Hark the great bebop originator on the drums This was recorded early in quiver Brown's career June 22nd 1903 of course he died tragically in 56 in a car accident with. But the hols brother Rich you Paul. figure the From. The j.j. Johnson 6 that in their version of Get happy as has been the Jazz feast just about everything today except for the James Williams which was from 1980 in the. The companies which was in 1962 was from between 1951 and 59 the golden age of jazz I didn't come in with any intention it just turned out that way. A lot Art Blakey was in different folks which is really a treat with Miles Davis and. Around the board I mean that was that was some big fun thanks for having us. Folks I got one more we're going to bring it to the sixty's for just a 2nd here this is you massacre. And then we're going to get to Radio Curious and $530.00 the local news of course at 6 coming up thanks again. Don't forget to call. 933911. Drink Radio Curious. And the. Place in North America. Park 91 percent of this park is an out. Which has been designated as a wilderness and protected by Congress for a guest in this edition of radio. National Park ranger for the past 30 years and currently in 2017 the chief. National Park. In this one wildly beautiful and dangerously hot place is the lowest point in North America at 282 feet below sea level Death Valley replete with rolling sand dunes deep winding smooth marble communes spring fairways seams and crusted barren Salt Flats averages 2 inches of rain per year. We visited with Linda Slater on March 15th 2017 in the Radio Curious mobile studio while parked next to a rock strewn area in Death Valley so white that it appeared to be covered in snow yet the outside temperature was 100 degrees our conversation began with Linda Slater's description of that white material. All the white tents are salt deposit that's so common in the valley floor of Death Valley. And now what we're looking at right now basically is the texture that you see looking out over the salt pan is caused by the expansion and contraction of the salt pan after it rains and there's water over the entire dry lake bed it kind of races the salt pan and makes it smooth and then as it begins to dry out the crust breaks up and salt crystals begin to grow in the cracks of the crust and in this area it's been quite a long time since the water kind of a race to made it smooth and so there's quite a bit of crystal development in this area that causes this really interesting topography it's grazed expression is down at the place it's known as the devil's golf course and that name is a bit of a joke because you know how the golf course is perfectly smooth and this is so rough What is the source of the salt being here the salt has washed down from all the canyons that you see here. Jeff alley is is amazing in that it's one of the driest places on the planet and yet when you look around you you see canyons everywhere so all of the topography has been formed by water rushing down through these canyons and any salt deposits or any minerals that are up in the rocks get washed down into the dry lakebeds when it rains and then the water evaporates and then the water evaporates and it leaves the minerals behind so when you're saying the whistle groans Can you describe what you mean by grow well it's you know if you've ever done that experiment as a kid where you you dissolve salt or sugar in water and then let it dry out salt crystals form it's kind of the same thing here there's so much salt now on the dry lake that are after all the deposits that have been created here and so even though you know rainwater falling from the sky even will wreak of or the lake bed 'd with water and dissolve the salt into the water that makes the lake bed the lake and then when the lake evaporates the salt crystals again fall out of solution and start to grow. Well the range here is rather sparse from what I understand to range as much here in the year that it does in some parts of Florida in a day well our average rainfall is 2 inches per year so I've heard that it rains for like I don't know the rainfall for it can be like 13 inches right or more so yeah our average annual rainfall is about 2 inches right now yet you describe that all of the canyons in the hills surrounding where we're sitting here close to the lowest part of Death Valley all the canyons were formed by water. That's right and it is the most amazing thing to see because if you are here on a rainy day it typically doesn't rain really hard over the entire park at one time but there might be one place where it just pours down rain and we think we have like a half an inch in 24 hours just in January this year and actually some of these canyons that you see right across the valley from us here big rivers of water were flowing out of those canyons and when you see the water it's muddy and it's full of rock and you can see that it's just carving and carving lower and lower each one of those canyons so what is the geological aspects that would cause the terrain and isolated areas of Death Valley as opposed to the entire region well on the west side of the valley here definitely is a hugely long gated valley that runs north and south and there's a big mountain range on either side and of course just like all the rest of California Our most of our storms come from the west off of the Pacific Ocean and there's actually several mountain ranges before we get to the Panamint range that you see right here and when the clouds hit the mountains you know the rain starts to fall over the mountains it catches the rain and the east side of every mountain form is a little bit of a rain shadow because all the rain falls on the mountain ranges so by the time it gets over 3 mountain ranges and gets to the over the Panamint that are really big here basically most of the rain is gone so it tends to get pretty patchy out here let's talk about the heat why is it so hot here being one of the hottest places if not the hottest place in the United States well I had a me a visit with a meteorologist recently and she explained to me that one of the biggest factors is the high pressure cells that form in this area over the summer months you know the valley is deep the mountains are high on either side so the air gets. Trapped in the valley here and because you combine that with the fact that it's trapped by the the mountains on either side with the fact that it's the lowest elevation in North America which is 282 feet below sea level that low elevation means the air pressure here is much higher so it acts like a pressure cooker like there's a lid on this valley and it just traps that Erin you know when I lived at Mojave National Preserve in another part of the desert it would get hot during the day but it was cool off every night every night we could open our windows and it would be great but here in Death Valley it never calls off at night that pressure keeps the hot air trapped down here it just keeps circulating you know warm air rises but instead of dissipating it just gets cycle back into the valley floor and it never calls off and now here in the summer you can wake up in the middle of the night and it's 10110 degrees on a day when it's 11520 degrees I mean it's over 120 for many weeks of the year where you say the highs of 120 are not are not uncommon they're not uncommon we go for weeks at a time when it's over 120 and when the temperature you know the highest heat in the world was set at Death Valley and that record was set in July of 1913 and the temperature was 134 degrees that day but we haven't gotten over 130 we haven't gotten over a 129 since then so whenever people hear that the temperature might reach 129 or 130 they all come to Death Valley because they want to experience that hottest temperature. Well that would bring us to the concept of death in the heat when visitors come here and it's hot it what's going on in the mind of the visitor from the perspective of Ranger Linda Slater Well it is a bit of a problem you know it's it's pretty interesting that it seems like Europeans and especially Germans are just fascinated by the idea of the heat in the desert anyway they come out and they want to experience these hot temperatures and you know in the summer we put up these great big red octagonal warning signs at every trail had to say stop do not hike your be off the trail by 10 o'clock because it's just too hot to hike out here and that's 10 o'clock in the morning o'clock in the morning you know in terms of the temperatures here in Death Valley and examining the concept of global warming. What might you anticipate based on your learning and your experience here well I know that we haven't beat that record temperature that was set back in 1913 but in the last decade or so temperatures have reached 129 many more times in the last 10 years than they have been you know they've been keeping weather records and family since the thirty's and getting to want 20 No I think it was one temperature setting of 129 in the eighty's and then a couple in a nice and now that we're in the 2 thousands and beyond it happens regularly where we get up to 129 so. It is warm here in Death Valley for sure. But the place in the desert that I'm aware of that's being most impacted by climate change at the moment is actually Joshua Tree National Park and you know they're famous for their Joshua trees but the climate is changing and their Joshua trees are being stressed because it's drier down there than it used to be and hotter down there than it used to be when you talk to folks to study Joshua trees they anticipate that the Joshua trees down there may end up going away we have several groves of Joshua trees within Death Valley and of course the largest and dense is Joshua Tree woodland is in will have a national preserve and that they're likely to survive there much longer they than they do in their namesake park because it's just drying out down there and further south and it's really dry. Linda Slater the rocks here on a very flat place that appear to move Yeah well that's an area that's known as the racetrack it's in a very remote part of the park and it's a several hours from the main visitor center in Furnace Creek to get there on a very rough road and it's basically a dry lake bed that's pretty smooth and there are you know boulders have fallen down over the years and are lying on the surface of the lake and there's tracks behind the boulder so you see a rock with a truck you can tell the Boulder has been dragged across the surface of the dry lake bed and really it's been a complete mystery as to how that happened for decades and decades and then finally some scientist Norris boys they went out there and camped out there and put instruments on the rocks and cameras on the rocks and finally figured out exactly what how the rocks were moving and so what they found out was after it rains and there's water laying on the lake bed in the winter and if it's a cold enough night and the surface of the lake freezes it becomes a sheet of ice and then in the morning the shoe device. Breaks up into chunks of ice and the rocks are embedded in the chunks of ice and then a big wind comes and it catches the edge of the chunk of ice and like a big sail it pushes the chunk of ice and it drags a rock that's embedded in the ice with it for a little bit of a distance and because you know the prevailing wind comes from a certain direction you can sometimes see rocks that have their tracks all lined up in the same direction they'll have moved to the north for 20 or 30 yards and then the next wind blows them at an angle to it so then they'll be to the east for a ways so it's pretty amazing it's a neat thing to see Let's talk about the bad water the lowest point in North America what is so peculiarly unusual about bad water. Well the fact that it's soloist elevation definitely attracts a lot of visitors in the tourism industry develops here in the family in the thirty's and it's one of the 1st places actually that was identified as a tourist attraction so people have been going there for decades to see that to see the lowest elevation and if you drive down there later on this afternoon you'll see a beautiful but that's pretty level and when the rain comes because it is the lowest elevation it's a place where water is most likely to pull on this big salt pan that we're sitting on right now so you know in January when we had 2 or 3 rain storms in a row there was a little lake down there for 4 or 5 days but it is the one place that people want to see most when they come to Death Valley so now there's a huge parking lot there there's a boardwalk that leads you out on to the salt pan and also because so many people go out there there's a path that sworn across the bumpiness is off to the sides and the place where people walk is pretty much smooth salt pan and the water table is not too low below the salt pan and if you do you can sometimes find a little bit of water there how deep would one have to dig one foot 2 feet. And that would be salt water it would be salt water. To if you taste it it will be salty. To family has access to very very potable water at Furnace Creek indeed Yeah there's a very good spring right above Furnace Creek and what's the difference that's a spring and this is water collection Yeah well there's a big underground aquifer basically in the ash Meadows area which is just to the east of here you know that's where the famous Devil's Hole put fish oil I don't know if you've heard about them it's one of the 1st species that was actually considered an endangered species after the Endangered Species Act passed that one was designated as an endangered species pretty early on so that's where there's a big underground aquifer here and the water kind of dribbles down into the spring system that's in several of these canyons so there's one at Furnace Creek and one up at the North End at mosquito spring is another wonderful water source and then where the Park Service housing area at Navarre spring is a 3rd really big water source talking about the pope fish are you implying that they live in fresh water or salt water salt water they live in salt water and I want to ask you about what is unusual about pub fish but 1st I want to say that in this edition of Radio Curious We're visiting with Linda Slater a national park ranger here in Death Valley and Linda has been a park ranger for 32 years this is Radio Curious I'm very vocal Linda tell us a little bit more about the pup fish what do they represent from an ecological perspective Well you know back in the place to see when there was a lot more water in the deaf alley area this dry lake bed that you see now was a real lake that was full of water called Lake manly. And there was a series every one of these valleys that surround a family that you've driven through on your way here had a lake in it and they were all connected by a series of rivers it was quite a wet time back in the place to sing and of course or fish in the river and then as the waters receded the fish were trapped in different small pools of water and so there's I don't know maybe 15 or 20 different species of puffer fish in each one of these isolated water systems around the desert and each one is a different species because they've all been isolated from each other you know originally they were probably all one species but once a group of fish are living in isolation from others and they of all of into different species based on the environment that they're living in just like those Darwin finches down there in the go up because islands where every island has a something which every pool of water here has its own fish how many pools are there. Across not just in Death Valley but across the desert there's probably 20 different species of pump fish to overtake when this leader let's talk about the super Bloom last year was a super bloom they happen approximately every 10 years. What is the rainfall amount and when is it necessary to fall from the sky to create a super bloom of the flowers Well it really does take some special conditions to create the so-called super Bloom I think last year was actually the 1st year that it was ever deemed a super Bloom even though like you say it does happen about once a decade it doesn't happen frequently because it takes very special conditions to cause so many flowers to bloom in this desert environment and basically what it takes is to have a good wetting rainfall in the month of October November December and January to create the ideal conditions for a Super Bowl. And last year what happened is we had intense rains in October really intense rains that cause all kinds of damage and flooding you know our destroyed was closed because of that still hasn't been completely repaired but Saddam's intense rains in October and then we had a few drier months so we were kind of wondering if we would get a good bloom but then the the rains picked up again in December and January and every 1 of the a Lluvia fans or the fans of debris that you see coming out of each Canyon was covered with a flower called Desert gold which is a sunflower so it's just a beautiful yellow on every one of the all of the oil sands and throughout the entire valley throughout the entire valley but not all at the same time the bloom starts at the southern end of the park where the very lowest elevations or that's where the warmest temperatures hit so it starts down south at Ashford Mills It started in January down there last year and slowly made its way on up past bad water and into the area where we are now near Furnace Creek and continued on up north another 30 miles or so so it was quite a show and it lasted for month after month and many many people came to see it was there not also an array of other kinds of flowers and you know there's there's hundreds of kinds of flowers here and you know the bulk of our visitors just want to see the field the flowers they just want to see you know that big yellow show but then the botanist came out too and they wanted to see like the turtle the x. In the facility in the desert 5 spot in the Mallows and all the other kinds of flowers that don't pollute every year that it takes a certain kind of year to get all those different variety of species here so during the course of the Super Bowl. Tell us about the seeds that are dropped in preparation for the next. Anecdotal opportunity if you will for a huge amount of water you know when you look around you right now you're not seeing very many plants. Out there and not a one Death Valley it looks like it has absolutely no plants and it really cannot support very many perennial plants you know shrubs and trees it just takes more rain and more water to support those kinds of plants but the one kind of plant that can do well in an environment like this is annual plants plants that sprout when there's water grow quickly set seed and toss off their seeds and they're done all within a month or 2 and so those are the kinds of plants that we typically have in the Mojave Desert and in Death Valley So yeah For instance last year super Bloom there's a seed source laying in the dirt you can't see it right now but if you were to go out and really look around you would start seeing all these different seeds if you had a little magnifying glass you could find them easier and scientists say there's hundreds of seeds per square meter just out there in the desert waiting for the right conditions and when the rain falls early in the fall it makes the seeds sprout and then those little bursts of water that we get once a month make those seeds grow and flower and set seed and then they dump their seed source and they're ready for the next super bloom but they'll stay dormant for decades I mean you know we say a supervillain happens once every 10 years well it's not like there's a clock that goes off every 10 years it's that the conditions have to be right so it might be 10 years or 9 years or 12 years or 15 years and those seeds will last for that many years until the next time the rains are right and the flowers bloom again so returning to the geological formation of the family sitting here where we are now and looking out the window we consume mountains that are pink and aqua blue black brown dark tan light tan and some places almost white. Yeah there's a lot of different minerals in the rocks here and they react chemically with water in different ways I mean it's a really complex process it's not an area that I'm an expert in it is beautiful however. The people who originally lived here and valley Can you share with us what you know about you well I can tell you a little bit about the 2 bishops Shoni those are the folks that were living here before $849.00 that's the year when Anglos 1st came into Death Valley the gold seekers they were over in the Salt Lake City area and they wanted to head for the the gold fields over there at Sutter's Mill and the typical route is to go down almost all the way to Los Angeles and circle around back up around the Sierra Nevada but they were looking for that shortcut and they they got some little map to run them in the Death Valley and it turned out that they actually got stuck here and they were here in the winter in October so it wasn't like it was the hottest part of the year but they got down here in the deaf alley and ran out of supplies and each family like they split up they just couldn't all agree on how best to get out of here so some of them went down to a well to the south there's a place called Burger wagon point up here around Salt Creek it's the place where one family ended up camping and they they slaughtered all their oxen and dried the meat there and hunkered down there and the most amazing part of the story is no one died they set help they said the best the 2 best walkers over to Los Angeles or San Pedro which was what the kind of the biggest town down there at the time to get fresh supplies and they brought supplies back and he rescued everybody but as they were heading out the window a pass to the south here when they got up to the top of the pass they turned around this is a story anyway that's her said good bye despatch. To Savannah right but meanwhile. Tim Bishop show anywhere here all the time and they they spotted these folks they talked a little bit they actually utilize some of the food caches of the Shoni to help them survive during that time while they were waiting for help. Well Linda Slater I want to thank you very much for being with us on radio curious and before we close I'd like to ask a little bit about you. The 1st question is a Eureka or a ha moment the you experienced at some point in your life has changed your view of the world who drew the direction that you ended up taking. Well all right I guess I will go with so when I was in college I went to college at Oregon State University in Corvallis and I did this little solo backpacking trip up to Mt Jefferson not to the very top but to a mountain near by where I had this tremendous feeling of Mt Jefferson and I realized while I was up there with that incredible view I was up there all alone that I really wanted to work in a career that could allow me to be outdoors a lot because I just felt so at peace there and so comfortable there and like it was my place Anik it pushed me in the direction of wanting to work as a park ranger to the park rangers find you or you found them. I guess I found the park rangers Absolutely and you mentioned that she'll be retiring soon after 33 years come October yes what would you like to do with the remainder of your one precious life. Well I keep telling everybody I want to sleep for a month and then I want to read for a month and then I want to hike for a month and then after that anything goes where would you hike Well I guess I'll be living in the Sonoran Desert Tsonga to explore that area and since you would like to read for a year a month. Since since you would like to read for months. Is there a book that you could recommend for this news well if you're coming to Death Valley my favorite guide to Death Valley was actually written by a ranger over Sequoia and Kings Canyon His name is Bill Tweed and the book he wrote about about Death Valley is called Death Valley and the Northern Mojave a visitor's guide and I think it has the best stories and the best information for Torrey around Death Valley and the greater world beyond Death Valley the greater world beyond us so I recommend a sion for a book my favorite guide to desert biology is this desert's book by James and that man it's out of print but it's still available on Amazon and it actually talks about the 4 deserts in North America and his descriptions of the ecology of the desert I think are spot on their succinct they're to the point that they really tell you a lot about desert ecology and then the back of this like a field guide to birds and snakes and lizards and flowers so it's an all in one book. Well National Park ranger Linda Slater thank you very much for being with us on radio curious and welcome. Linda Slater has been a national park ranger for the past 30 years and in 2017 the chief of interpretation at Death Valley National Park this 3400000 acres attack your little league beautiful National Park is the hottest place in the world and the driest and lowest place in North America and well worth the effort to visit. The books that Linda Slater recommends are Death Valley and the Northern Mojave visitor's guide by William c. Tweed and Lauren Davis She also recommends a comprehensive Field Guide to the wild flowers birds reptiles insects and other national wonders of North America's deserts from Oregon to Mexico by James a McMahon this program was recorded in Death Valley National Park California on March 15th 2017. There are now over 630 archive editions on Radio Curious that's Radio Curious start orgies they're free for you to enjoy download and share as you wish we appreciate your cards letters and ideas about our programming and look forward to hearing from you curious or Radio Curious 280 north over Ukiah California 95482. 707-462-6541 you Boyle's ask them is the assistant producer I'm host and producer very vocal thank you for listening. Donors to k. M. You d. Include the Community Credit Union where local money stays local the Community Credit Union is located in downtown Garberville and is open Monday through Thursday from 830 to 4 and on Friday till 5 more information about their financial counseling and banking services available online at c.c. Us h o r g. This is Redwood community radio k m u t Garberville 91 point one f.m. K m u e t u Rica 88 point one f.m. K.l. .