Charcoal Kiln Info



Date: Thu, 26 Sep 1996 13:03:04 -0400
From: Bradley Lamar Anglemyer (blanglem@eos.ncsu.edu)
Organization: North Carolina State University
Subject: Page

Great Page!  Where is your story.jpg from, and what is it of?
-- 
-----------------------
"He to whom this emotion is a stranger,
	who can no longer wonder
	and stand rapt in awe,
	is as good as dead.
-Albert Einstein

Date: 27 Sep 1996 04:13:31 -0700
From: Randolph Wang (rywang@sequim.CS.Berkeley.EDU)
To: blanglem@eos.ncsu.edu
Subject: Re: Page


> Great Page!  

thanx for "stopping by"!

> Where is your story.jpg from, and what is it of?

it's a shot of the "charcoal kilns".  they are near the trail head to
wildrose peak.  the origin of these things is roughly the following:
there were some kind of mines operating in Death Valley.  they needed
something to generate intense heat.  the valley floor is desolate as
you can see from the other pictures but the surrounding hills are
pretty well covered so they sent people up into the hills to produce
charcoal. the "charcoal kilns" were built by a group of Chinese
workers, who put in a lot of hard work there.  the kilns had a perfect
geometry designed to concentrate heat to the center.

i come from China and i have an almost religious respect for the
pioneers who ventured into Death Valley.  that picture is one of very
few of mine which has man-made structures in it.  as i stood in front
of those silent witnesses, my thoughts went beyond the mere stones and
the surrounding environment and i began to imagine what rich dramas of
human stories these kilns must have witnessed...

that was the (secret) sentiment i had when i picked the title and the
quote to go with the picture.  in fact, each picture has a "secret
story" behind it and i was hoping the titles and the quotes are
conveying some of those magical sentiments, yet without giving out too
much explicitly...

cheers,
Randy



© 1997 Randy Wang
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