Sunday, April 24, 2011 - Jacob's Chair Trailhead, Fry Canyon UT
< previous day | archives | next day >
White Canyon, Fry Canyon UT, April 22, 2011
Continuing overcast and showers
It rained a little overnight. Inexperience with the weather and the threat of flash floods here make me think it prudent to continue to delay any more hikes in the canyon until the skies clear. The high water mark in the canyon is surprisingly high and in some areas it could be hard to get above it in a hurry. There's a lot of neat stuff to explore down there - maybe tomorrow...
Night camp
Boondocked - Trailhead to Jacob's Chair, Fry Canyon UT
- Verizon cell phone and EVDO service - no signal
- Locate this camp on my Night Camps map
- Check the weather here
Teosinte and the Improbability of Maize
The ancestors of wheat, rice, millet, and barley look like their domesticated descendants; because they are both edible and highly productive, one can easily imagine how the idea of planting them for food came up. Maize can't reproduce itself, because its kernals are securely wrapped in the husk, so Indians must have developed it from some other species. But there are no wild species that resemble maize. Its closest genetic relative is a mountain grass called teosinte that looks strikingly different - for one thing, it "ears" are smaller than baby corn served in Chinese restaurants. No one eats teosinte, because it produces too little grain to be worth harvesting. In creating modern maize from this unpromising plant, Indians performed a feat so improbable that archaeologists and biologists have argued for decades over how it was achieved. Coupled with squash, beans, and avocados, maize provided Mesoamerica with a balanced diet, one arguably more nutritious than its Middle Eastern or Asian equivalent.