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My favorite tree. The Jeffrey Pine, named in honor of its botanist documenter John Jeffrey, occurs from southwest Oregon through much of California (mainly in the Sierra Nevada) and all the way down to northern Baja California in Mexico. In the north of its range, it grows widely at 4,900 to 6,900 ft and to the south, anywhere between 5,900 to 9,500 feet.

The tree gets between 82 to 130 feet tall and the leaves are needle-like and grow in bundles of three. The cones are 4.7 to 9.4 inches long and dark purple when immature.

See you soon, Jeffrey Pines.

MP3: Metallica – Master Of Puppets

Cold Splinters is headed out to California tomorrow, and for those of you living in the Bay Area, come on down and hang out with me and the wonderful folks from Juniper Ridge this Saturday. We’ll all be one of my favorite stores out west, Gravel and Gold, from 1-5 pm distilling White Fir from a recent JR trip to Carson Pass (a few of Obi’s photos from that trip are after the jump). So if you want to smell better than all of your friends, come on down and watch the magic unfold.

Learn more about Field Lab, Juniper Ridge’s “aromatic snapshots of life on the trail, here.

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As previously noted, I spent a couple of days last week in the Trans-Pecos, doing some work and visiting friends in Marfa. There are endless amounts of things that I love about that part of the country, but the one that stays with me after I get back east is the wonderful Marfa Public Radio. There’s loads of great programming on the”Radio For A Wide Range,” but for Cold Splinters, we thought we’d point you towards Nature Notes. Here’s some more info:

Why do rattlesnakes rattle and hummingbirds hum?
How do flowers market themselves to pollinators?
Why do tarantulas cross the road?

Nature Notes investigates questions like these about the natural world of the Chihuahuan Desert region every week on Marfa Public Radio. Through interviews with scientists and field recordings, this Marfa Public Radio original series reveals the secrets of desert life.

Listen to a few episodes here (they’re very short), and learn about that handsome javelina, pictured above.

If you’ve ever been hiking through the woods and thought, “Ya know, I don’t know much about the moss that’s covering all these trees around me,” then the newest installment of CS favorite, Stuff You Should Know, is going to be your huckleberry. And if you’re normal and have never had those thoughts while out hiking, well, you’ll still find “How Moss Works” pretty darn interesting. Download it for free here.

MP3: Tomas Barfod – November Skies (ft. Nina_Kinert)

According to an article in The Oregonian posted a few days ago, the California Condor has reached a new population milestone: More than 400 are alive today, 226 of them wild in California, Arizona and Baja, Mexico, and 179 living in zoos and four breeding centers. The Condor, which is largest bird in North America, was almost extinct just 30 years ago.

A few weeks back, while spending a day hiking up to Tin House in Big Sur, CA, three (!) of these handsome birds flew over us for close to a half hour, soaring back and forth, getting so close that you could hear the flap of their wings. We had just gotten high enough above the redwoods that the coast was in full view, making it nearly impossible to lose sight of the birds in the thick of the woods. I was by myself during the entire thing – I had walked ahead – laying down on the trail, too happy to care that I had left my phone in the car to take pictures.

Thank you Obi for bringing your camera.

MP3: Little Joy – The Next Time Around