#utah juniper

World Gin Day

Distilled from Juniper berries, gin is one of the sweetest, most subtly flavored liquors. Have a martini, gin and tonic, negroni, or any other gin cocktail.

Distilled spirits have been with us for a very long time, and all of  them have rich histories covering the sometimes mysterious origins of  their use. While spirits have long been used medicinally, only one  started as a medicine and then became a mixer for one of the most  important medicines in history.This delicious, smooth drink is  distilled from the berries of the Juniper tree and can trace its origins  back to an older drink from Denmark known as Jenever.

History of Gin Day

Gin Day was established by England’s own connoisseur of the  juniper-based drink, the Gin Monkey. Emma, the titular Gin Monkey, has  been a huge fan of cocktails of all kinds and has worked throughout the  Newcastle, London, and Leeds area in multiple cocktail bars. Taking this  experience to the streets she created her Gin Monkey site, put together  with the intent of saving intrepid bar-hoppers from finding the worst  of the alcohol joints at their destination.

After having had an incredibly hard time finding anything worth  drinking when she first arrived in London, she decided someone had to  solve this problem for other travelers, and it might as well be her.  Since then she’s taken a dedicated role in providing independent and  impartial views of the gin joints in her area… well, they serve more  than gin, but one is allowed to have a favorite, wouldn’t you say?

But gin has had a noble history as a medicine as well, or rather, as a  way to make medicine more palatable. Quinine is the distillation of the  ground bark of the cinchona tree, which produced a tonic that was  capable of treating malaria. Unfortunately, the quinine was incredibly  bitter, and gin was used to cut it. The flavor caught on, and to this  day, the tonic in the Gin and Tonic contains the slightest bit of  quinine to capture the flavor of the original.

The history of World Fin Day itself began in 2009, following the  efforts of an avid gin connoisseur, Neil Houston. He was already a  massive fan of gin, but wanted to find a way to bring the drink to more  people so that they could enjoy it. At the time, it looked as if other  spirits might supersede gin. So he and the “Gin Monkey” Emma Stokes,  teamed up to launch the first World Gin Day in Birmingham as a way to  popularize a gin bar. In 2010, they launched a similar event in London  and have been celebrating this juniper-based beverage like clockwork  ever since.

World Gin Day started as a tiny event in 2009, but it has since grown  to enormous proportions. In the last few years, things have really  taken off. At the last count, the organizers reached more than 200  million social media users and ran events in more than 30 countries.

Those in charge now put on a vast range of events – everything from  tasting to lectures on the drink’s origins. Prominent figures associated  with the day run masterclasses, too, where participants learn how to  make drinks. And there are even professional courses where bartenders  can up their game.

How to celebrate Gin Day

Celebrating Gin Day is best done by diving straight in and  experimenting with some of the drinks that gin has made amazing. Take a  look at Buzzfeed for a list of drinks that are out of this world, and don’t forget to check in with the Gin Monkey  to get the updated list of the best places in the world to have a  smashingly good cocktail! Gin Day is the best day (other than yesterday  and tomorrow) to have a nice Gin Cocktail!

The best way to celebrate gin day is to travel to one of the original  gin bars and try a range of mixers and cocktails. Some of the best  establishments offer “house drinks” with a unique twist you can’t get  anywhere else. While the classic drink is gin and tonic, there are now a  host of variations that you can try.

If you don’t want to travel, you can check to see whether anybody is  organizing a World Gin Day-related event in your local community. Local  gin companies will often arrange street parties where people can show up  and sample local beverages made in their area. Many of these events  also provide food and even opportunities to improve your cocktail-making  skills.

The organizers of the event have expanded their activities all over  the world. You can attend taste-testing sessions, gin-related treasure  hunts, pop-up markets focusing on gin, and garden parties. Just look for  what’s going on in your local area by visiting the official World Gin  Day website.

Finally, you can also experiment with making your own gin beverages  at home. There are dozens of recipes out there, both traditional and  modern, that you can try to emulate. Red Lake, for instance, is a gin  drink made of 1.5 oz Monkey 47 Gin, raspberry syrup, and lime juice.  Likewise, Feeling Blue is a cocktail that uses 2 oz gin mixed with lemon  juice, grapefruit bitters, tonic water, and dry Vermouth.

Gin is one of the most important liquors in the world and the basis  for some of our most beautiful drinks. Just like wine, it is possible to  become a connoisseur and learn the different tastes and subtle notes  from each producer.

Just remember to celebrate World Gin Day responsibly. Aim for merriment, not inebriation!

I don’t think I ever actually posted about it on here, because of this whole entire year, but OH YEAH I got a half-sleeve from Pony Reinhardt during a trip to NYC last December! :D It’s all stuff from my Utah road trips: a Utahceratops, the Grand Staircase sedimentary rock sequence, a Utah juniper, ghost towns, and a one-antlered mule deer (playing off of “hummel” deer who are deer with missing or deformed antlers)

The Shoe Tree (An excerpt from Wise Trees by Diane Cook and Len Jenshel)

UTAH JUNIPER (Juniperus osteosperma) US Highway 395, Hallelujah Junction, California

There is not much evidence of human life along the desolate stretch of road just north of where US Highway 395 meets State Route 70 at a place called Hallelujah Junction, California—except for the many shoes hanging from this Utah juniper tree. Those who feel compelled to toss their footwear onto the branches of this juniper often inscribe their wishes on the soon-to-be dangling shoes. This is an American variation of a wishing tree—quite different in style from those in other parts of the world.

No one can say when this ritual began near Hallelujah Junction, which sits about thirty miles northwest of Reno, Nevada, only that it has been going on for decades. Junipers rarely grow more than thirty feet high, so it does not require a long toss to make a wish. And although the wood is quite durable—thankfully, for this specimen—every so often the California Department of Transportation comes along to remove the shoes. The combined weight of ice or snow and dangling shoes, compounded by fierce winds, has caused limbs to snap off in the winter, which explains the Shoe Tree’s oddly shaped crown.

Leading landscape photographers Diane Cook and Len Jenshel present Wise Trees—a stunning photography book containing more than 50 historical trees with remarkable stories from around the world.

Supported by grants from the Expedition Council of the National Geographic Society, Cook and Jenshel spent two years traveling to fifty-nine sites across five continents to photograph some of the world’s most historic and inspirational trees. Trees, they tell us, can live without us, but we cannot live without them. Not only do trees provide us with the oxygen we breathe, food gathered from their branches, and wood for both fuel and shelter, but they have been essential to the spiritual and cultural life of civilizations around the world.

From Luna, the Coastal Redwood in California that became an international symbol when activist Julia Butterfly Hill sat for 738 days on a platform nestled in its branches to save it from logging, to the Bodhi Tree, the sacred fig in India that is a direct descendent of the tree under which Buddha attained enlightenment, Cook and Jenshel reveal trees that have impacted and shaped our lives, our traditions, and our feelings about nature. There are also survivor trees, including a camphor tree in Nagasaki that endured the atomic bomb, an American elm in Oklahoma City, and the 9/11 Survivor Tree, a Callery pear at the 9/11 Memorial. All of the trees were carefully selected for their role in human dramas.

This project both reflects and inspires awareness of the enduring role of trees in nurturing and sheltering humanity. Photographers, environmentalists, history buffs, and nature-lovers alike will appreciate the extraordinary stories found within the pages of Wise Trees!

Syncline Loop Trailhead, Canyonlands National Park 

The Colorado Plateau’s high desert is an arid region with extreme weather. Summers are hot and dry – surface temperatures can reach 140°F. Late summer monsoon rains bring the possibility of flash floods. In the winter, temperatures often reach below freezing and ice and snow are likely.

Despite these harsh conditions, the high desert is teeming with a variety of plants and animals. The largest concern for many of these plants and animals is water availability. These species have developed a variety of strategies to survive changes in water availability: escaping, resisting, tolerating, and evading drought.

Colorado National Monument (No. 19)

Utah Juniper (Juniperus osteosperma)

Other Names:

Family: Cupressaceae (Cypress Family)

Description: may grow up to 9 m tall, although average height is 3-6 m. Seedling leaves are 5-10 mm long and needle-like in appearance. Mature leaves are 1-2 mm-long scales that hug the stems tightly. Bark is fibrous and often twisted. Cones are 8-13 mm in diameter and look like waxy, blue-brown berries 8-13 mm. This species is evergreen.

Range: occurs throughout the Rocky Mountain Region from Utah to Colorado, north to Montana, and south to New Mexico and Arizona. It grows throughout Colorado National Monument.

Did you know: the blue "berries" of the Utah Juniper are actually cones, making the Utah Juniper more closely related to a pine tree than to any true berry-producing plant. Various Native American groups in the desert west used Juniper "berries" medicinally, ceremonially, or secularly as beads. Today, we use the sour-tasting cones of the Juniper to flavor gin (which fittingly derives its name from Dutch jenever, meaning "juniper").

Mesa Verde National Park (No. 4)

Large Pueblo I settlements laid claim to the resources found within 15 to 30 square miles (39 to 78 km2). They were typically organized in groups of at least three and spaced about 1 mile (1.6 km) apart. By 860, there were approximately 8,000 people living in Mesa Verde. Within the plazas of larger villages, the Pueblo I people dug massive pit structures of 800 square feet (74 m2) that became central gathering places. These structures represent early architectural expressions of what would eventually develop into the Pueblo II Eragreat houses of Chaco Canyon. Despite robust growth during the early and mid-9th century, unpredictable rainfall and periodic drought led to a dramatic reversal of settlement trends in the area. Many late Pueblo I villages were abandoned after less than forty years of occupation, and by 880 Mesa Verde's population was in steady decline. The beginning of the 10th century saw widespread depopulation of the region, as people emigrated south of the San Juan River to Chaco Canyon in search of reliable rains for farming. As Pueblonians migrated south, to where many of their ancestors had emigrated two hundred years before, the influence of Chaco Canyon grew, and by 950 Chaco had supplanted Mesa Verde as the region's cultural center.

Not Giving Up