Physics is Fun Memoires of Richard Wilson Version of September 25th 2009

The trips west
I was well aware that Andrée was and is, a westerner and her stay with me in the east, although we have now been at Harvard for nearly 53 years, was only temporary. I took opportunities to go west. As noted above, the first opportunity for the whole family came in summer 1959 when I spent a summer at Stanford to learn about electron interactions in preparation for the operation of the Cambridge Electron Accelerator. We rented Sid Drell’s house while he was away for the summer. We went out west just after I had spent nearly a month at two conferences; one in London, and the other at the Kiev high energy conference and a few days in USSR and Nice. Angela Holder came with us. We tried to save money, because I got no “summer salary” for this trip. We went out on a night flight. On an American DC7 (non stop from New York) and back on TWA via St Louis, Chicago and New York. Michael was a little scared (and I was worried) about the flames from the back of the engines in the DC8 on take off. I had not realized that this was normal, and thought it was a malfunction. Nicholas was airsick on the TWA flight but recovered a bit waiting on the top of the steps of the plane at St Louis.
It was on this occasion that Laurose Becker, Pief’s secretary later to become the wife of Burt Richter, kindly lent us her “mini-minor” and leaving the children behind with Adèle I suspect, we went to the High Sierras out of Tuolomne Meadows. We hiked in expecting to stay many days- maybe a week. We had been told that it did not rain in the summer in the Sierras, but when we were 5 miles from the road rain clouds appeared and we just made it to the road at Tuolomne Meadows before the downpour came. We drove east to Mono Lake and then to Carson pass before returning to Stanford. We remembered Carson Pass fondly and went back some 10 years later with the family but without Christopher or Michael. We took the children one day to the beach - the same beach which I had visited 7 years before with Pief, Adele and their children. We stopped at the same restaurant on the way back and ate abalones. Again I was sick on the way back and again thought it was due to motion sickness. But much later, in 1974, I ate an abalone with Alan Litke in a restaurant in Sausalito, and on returning to Palo Alto I was again ill. I had eaten abalone three times in my life and was sick each time. I had a food allergy.

I remember being highly embarrassed in 1959 when we were invited to a party with some of the young research fellows - Henry Kendall, Burt Richter and others were present. They spent the time criticizing Bob Hofstadter even though two of them were Bob’s research fellows. I never understood why they would be so open about their criticism of their boss although I somewhat shared their view. Pief was the better physicist but I could not ignore that Bob had, by that time, accomplished more than Pief had at Stanford. Later, about 1962, Pief asked my advice on how to cope with Bob with whom he had difficult relations. This meeting was a clue to the problem. Bob’s own colleagues, and research fellows he had hired, were spreading bad words about him. But the real issue became clear to me later. Pief was a brilliant and quick thinker and Bob was a slow, but very thorough thinker. Pief was a little impatient and when he did not get an immediate answer from Bob on an issue he assumed that the answer was never coming.

A second occasion came to visit Stanford for a SLAC summer study. We went out in July 1963. This time we stayed in Pief’s house while Pief and their children were camping in the Cascades east of Seattle, and then stayed in a house with a swimming pool. This summer my father and his third wife - Winnie - felt that it was a good time to visit the USA for 6 weeks. That meant that they arrived in Boston, on a freight boat, just the day before we left for Stanford. I had arranged for them a transcontinental train trip. Toronto, Vancouver, Oakland Los Angeles, Chicago and home via New York. We took them to the train station at about the same time that we went to the airport ourselves. One long weekend we camped at Kings’ Canyon National Park. We returned via Oakland where we picked up Percy and Winnie with at home our rental car. The car was full with 4 adults and 6 kids. Percy and Winnie added their luggage to the mix. Percy was highly amused when at Oakland station I threw away some old camping equipment to make room.
I was invited that summer to present the new CEA results at an APS meeting in Edmonton. So, leaving the children behind, we flew to Edmonton, and after the meeting took the Canadian National train to Jasper, Alberta, and drove down to Lake Louise. By now one no longer had to hike to Lake O’Hara - there was a little shuttle van. . Instead of camping as I had done in 1951 we stayed in the lodge. Interestingly, as we waited at Lake Louise for the van to Lake O’Hara, Andrée thought she saw Abigail Van Vleck. Indeed she had. We found out later that Abigail and Van (John Hasbrouck Van Vleck) had spent the previous week at Lake O’Hara. Van appears in many places throughout these pages. He was a brilliant and friendly man who did a great deal to make everyone in the Harvard Physics Department comfortable and at home. He, like myself, loved Lake O’Hara. We both noticed that in the dining room of the Harvard faculty club there hung a painting of the lake by Sargent which we loved to point out to visitors. It disappeared one day about 1970, and when I enquired we were told that it was on loan to an exhibition. I enquired again after a few months when it had not returned and was told that it was too valuable to show in the faculty club - and it was being kept for safety in the storage room of the Fogg art museum. Van and I crafted a letter commenting that in our naive inexpert view the value of a painting must have something to do with the number of people who saw it and admired it. The painting was returned to the faculty club. But when ten years later it went on exhibition again, Van had died by then and my lone entreaties were inadequate. Andrée and I had a pleasant two days at Lake O’Hara where I attempted, in vain, to get Andrée to walk on a glacier. Then the shuttle van took our bags down to the motel at Lake Wapstra by the Kicking Horse Pass, where we joined them on foot in time to catch the night Greyhound bus to Vancouver and the morning plane back to Stanford.
Aspen and Wyoming
Andrée and I felt that we should take the children to the Rockies as soon as possible. Not just to California by flying over the mountains but to the Rockies themselves. In 1968 it seemed to make sense. Peter was 7. Chris was16. It happened that year there was a summer study for Fermilab to discuss an experimental program. Bob Wilson decided that it would be at Aspen. Accommodation at Aspen in the summer was actually cheaper than around Chicago! We were away from home for 8 weeks in all. We went to Aspen for a month. We drove out in our Peugeot “familiale”. We had car trouble from the word go. We first drove west to State College to see Geoffrey and family. At State College we found that the water in the radiator was gone. There was a leak in the water pump. So we spent an extra day getting that replaced. We camped the next night just short of Cleveland and the next day we stopped by the NASA reactor where we spent 2 hours to see whether it was suitable for my proposed parity experiment. We went on and in Illinois it came on to rain. So we left the main highway to look for a motel. As we went under an underpass, under the ATSF main line, the road was flooded. We went through a lot of water about two feet deep; slowly and gingerly. But it flooded our brakes and they did not work properly for several miles so we drove in low gear and found a motel on the corner of route 66 and I 80. We rented two rooms each with two double beds for the 8 of us. Then we drove on across Iowa to a campsite on the river just north of Omaha. The next morning, water had drained out of the car again. Auto mechanics in Omaha told us that there was a Peugeot dealer in Lincoln, Nebraska where there was a Frenchman who understood Peugeots. The pump was replaced again. The State College repair man did not grind the pump in to the seat in the engine properly. Then we drove on. We camped at a somewhat bare and disappointing campsite on the prairie just south of the Platte We had planned to stop near Boulder to look at WWV which was the radio time station which interested Chris. But we were late and went on into Rocky Mountain National Park where we camped for 2 days just west of Estes Park. Then we went west over the pass and down to Granby, and west to Kemmerling. Then we went south to Breckenridge and back over the divide at Climax with its old mines and huge tailings ponds, to Leadville and then over Independence pass to Aspen.
On this trip the children mostly behaved very well. But as I drove there was often a lot of noise as the children got bored. They had some copies of Mad magazine and were continually quoting therefrom. After a particular annoying distraction I confiscated the Mad Magazine. But I undermined my own authority by being seen reading it at the camp site at Rocky Mountain National Park!
We were given an old little house in Aspen which was just big enough for us with the 6 children. It was a silver miner’s house, which had lasted 60 years, including many years of neglect, but we enjoyed it immensely. Alas it has gone now to make room for condos . I was at the Aspen center every day, but at the weekends we went into the mountains. I had an inkling of further trouble with the Peugeot, when we tried to climb Castle Peak, which is the highest peak at 14,000 feet. We had planned on driving to the end of the dirt road with a parking lot at 12,000 feet but the car would not do it, so we went up a subsidiary peak instead. On another weekend we went into the Maroon Bells and took a loop around Willow Lake, climbing through a pass at 10,500 feet. We then found that Chris had great trouble above 10,000 feet. But he perked up again very quickly as we dropped down again and back to the road. Chris had to take his college board entrance exam and we found it could be done in Glenwood Springs 40 miles down the Roaring Fork river.. So we went there one Saturday. In Aspen, Christopher made friends with Danny Drell, son of our friend Sid, and arranged to go on a hike. To go up the ski lift to the top of Aspen mountain, and walk down the other side to meet the party at a picnic on the road to Ashcroft. They made an estimate of the time that was way off; they thought they would be down by 5.30. I estimated 7.30 as indeed it turned out. But Sid was deeply worried. Danny was a diabetic and had to have regular medication. Fortunately they turned up happy and healthy and were forgiven.
There was an interesting sideline. The Mayor, a local businessman elected to this position, wanted to make the town more upscale. He got a rule that no one was allowed to hitch hike inside the town, and anyone who did would be arrested and jailed. The Colorado police chief’s association did not like this, but they had to go along. It was reported in the newspaper that a young man from a small group climbing and camping in the mountains south of Ashcroft had hitchhiked into town to buy food and supplies and was arrested as he tried to hitchhike the 7 miles back. The same day I wrote a letter to the Director of the summer study (Ned Goldwasser), with a copy to the newspaper, commenting that while Aspen was a fine place for a summer study they should not return unless human rights could be guaranteed. I commented that I imagined myself being arrested 25 years before and my children arrested in a few years. Ned attached his own letter pointing out that the summer study had spent $½ million in the town. My letter was published in the local newspaper and the Mayor resigned the next day. Murray Gellman, in an approving comment said that I should try it on Breshnev next. When appropriate I do so try to ensure that liberty and freedom exists. Not always to Murray Gellman’s satisfaction, because Murray is a strong supporter of Israel and in our view, our view because Andrée agrees with me, he is an overly blind supporter. Murray has expressed disapproval of our attempts, to ensure that the Prime Minister of Israel does not behave like the Mayor of Aspen.
After we were at Aspen for a month we spent three further weeks in the Rockies. Firstly we went on to Wyoming. Coming up from Rock Springs to Pinedale the car slowed and slowed. We found that the valves were not working and needed re-grinding. We just found our way to a camp site by Fremont lake. We were lucky to find a mechanic who had metric wrenches and I translated the instruction book (which was in French) for him. While we waited for parts to come from Salt Lake city he lent us his car while he and his wife used their motor cycle. The family camped on Lake Fremont. A bear came to our campsite one night and scared Elaine in particular. Andrée and I remained fast asleep. One day Chris and I went on up into the hills to Elkhart Entrance. This, at 9,000 feet altitude was an entry to the Bridger Wilderness. As we set off on the walk east we saw that only about 30 people had signed in that month. When I came back 8 years later it was 30 per day. We went as far as Hobbes Lake and came back When the car was ready we all went on to the Grand Tetons as we had planned..
The road went through Jackson, Wyoming. Andrée remembered Jackson from her 1938 trip when she was 10 years old, as a sleepy western town. Not now. There was a MacDonald’s. It had become a typical tourist town. Andrée wept. We went on through Jackson and stopped at a ranger station at the Teton National Park. “All camp sites are full” we were told. But we wanted to do off road camping. “That is different”. We hiked 3 miles north to the edge of Leigh Lake where we camped. Annette in particular was tired. But when we had stopped, made camp and looked at the sunset over the Tetons to the west we all brightened up. We only spent one night at Leigh Lake and hiked back on out. As we got back to the parking lot, they all looked a happy crowd. An elderly tourist looked at us and said: “you must have had a wonderful time.” I am not sure how our children remember it now, but at the time, none of the children contradicted her. Andrée and I went back to Leigh Lake in 2001 and at that time we stayed at Jenny Lake Lodge where Andrée and her family had stayed in 1938. Returning to our 1968 trip, the next day we went on to Yellowstone, making a brief tour by car and ending up at a camp site on the road to the east. Then a camp in the “Bitter Roots”, and on past Wall Drug Store. That was a time when there were advertisements all over the world such as “3,453 miles to Wall Drug Store”. The hamlet of Wall on the main road thereby became famous! We looked at the store for 10 minutes and then on to Chamberlain on the Missouri where we stayed in a motel again and Nicholas got a shot for his allergies. Then we headed for the Mississippi river at Winona. Then we made a big mistake.
I dreamed of a beautiful campsite by the side of the Mississippi river where we could relax and enjoy the running water. The campsite was indeed by the river. But we had to share it with many thousand bugs of various shapes and sizes. The big ones indeed alarmed Elaine in particular. She became hysterical - unfortunately with good reason. Christopher got up and walked around half the night. All of us had a rough night. As soon as we could we set off to cross the river and drive across Wisconsin to Lake Michigan. We stopped for our usual sandwich lunch by a lake. We surprised the locals by having a Massachusetts license plate. A storm came up near Green Bay and there was a tornado watch but fortunately no tornado. We camped at a park by Lake Michigan. It was a fine site with a fine evening. The next day we went up by Sault Ste Marie, watched a couple of boats passing the “Soo” locks and entered Canada. The Soo locks are where the waters from Lake Superior enter into Lake Michigan and is a crucial point in the Great Lakes Waterway. But they don’t look prepossessing. Elaine told me 40 years later that she was disappointed. She was hoping for “lochs” not locks. I was hoping for a woodland campsite near Sudbury, or a lake side site above Parry sound. But it was getting late so we took what we could get. Alas, Peter lost the tent pegs in the dark. The next day we passed below Niagara falls and stayed in a motel again. We were all tired and the unanimous vote was to miss the falls so we came straight home.
We did not forget the Bridger Wilderness. 7 years later we went out again in 1975. Chris had left home by then, and Michael decided not to come and stayed at home. That time we had a GM suburban and drove west faster than we had driven in the Peugeot. We stopped at Omaha for 3 weeks supply of food. There was a contretemps as we passed Laramie. The gasoline tank fell down, and was dragging on the road making sparks. We were towed back into town, and had to wait 24 hours for a new tank to be installed. But it was not all bad. We found the best Mexican restaurant north of the Mexican border. Then we went on to a motel in Pinedale. We stayed a couple of nights and put most of the food and stuff on horses in a pack train that was headed in to the mountains and they dropped the stuff by Island Lake. A day’s rest, and we drove up to Elkhart Entrance. We camped there a couple of nights because Annette and Elaine had colds, picked up no doubt in Laramie and at 9,000 feet they tend to last longer. I had a guide book from Appalachian Mountain Club. Maps from the National Park service. But they said 12 miles from Elkhart Entrance to Island Lake. It was 16 miles. Then we set off with little in our packs. All went well till we got to Hobbes Lake where we had lunch. Then everyone began to get tired - especially Elaine who was not over her cold. Just after passing Seneca Lake, Nicholas and I pushed ahead to find our food and tents that had been dropped by the outfitters, and set up camp. We found the tents and started to set up. Then the others arrived. Elaine was sick and worn out. Andrée and I were quite scared because of her sickness. At high altitudes, diseases can move fast. Elaine had dropped her pack 3or 4 miles back at Julie Lake and I went back to pick it up. As a result I hiked about 24 miles that day - all at 9,000 to 10,000 feet. Elaine clearly had a small fever. I insisted that we light a fire and heat up some soup so that Elaine could have something warm inside.
We stayed at Island lake 10 days or so. Other hikers came by. A group, with a guide came to climb Mount Lester, just SE of Island Lake. On the way down, the guide was below the party, (a no no) and someone dislodged a rock that hit him and broke his leg. One member rushed back to Pinedale and a group on horses came to take him back. An airplane flew overhead and dropped splints and a stretcher. Unfortunately the rescue party tied him to the horse so tightly that when the horse crashed into a cliff beside the path, the leg was broken in more places! Another party came up with pack horses for Titcomb lakes. On the way back the packers had picked up a girl whose leg had seized up on the way down Freemont Peak. Her companion brought her down on his back till they met the pack train. We fed them all for the night. The pack man showed us how to catch fish - by grabbing them as they went up a stream under the banks. But we never managed to catch fish this way. Nor were our fishing rods we had brought of much use!
We spent a day walking up to Titcomb Lakes and the Ice Lake beyond. Another day we headed for Upper Jean Lake. I had intended that those of who wanted to do so would climb Mt Freemont or Jackson Peak the next day but I developed awful mouth sores so we rested that day. The day after Elaine came with me across Indian Basin to Indian pass on the continental divide just below Jackson peak. The next day I, Elaine, Nicholas and Carol Anne crossed the Harrowhead Glacier - I had bought everyone ice axes for the purpose - and went up Knife Edge just south of Indian pass. We did not get to the top: We chickened out on the knife edge itself although we had a climbing rope. I had said unequivocally to the children that if any one of them did not want to walk along the knife edge ridge we would not do so but would turn back. That, to my mind, is the only sensible procedure for a climbing party.
But it was crowded on Island Lake. Another camper came to use the lake! Our food supply was going down so that we could then carry the rest on our backs. We headed east across a pass to another lake, just above Wall Lake, where we saw no one for a week. We spent one day walking up to the Continental divide. I made a mistake on the way up. The shortest way was across a snowfield and I led the party that way. But that slowed Andrée down, because she hates snow fields and glaciers, so we came back a longer way around. After nearly a week, we headed back to Elkhart Entrance by the side of Wall Lake and along beside the Pole Creek lakes to Eklund lake. The last night was on Miller Lake just south of the main path. It was moderately crowded but Nicholas caught a couple of fish. None of the rest of us did but a but there a fisherman took pity on our miserable failures as fishermen and gave us most of his catch. The trout certainly tasted good.
We got back to Pinedale and drove to Rock Springs. There I got the train for California, where I spent three weeks; first at a lepton- photon conference where Luke Mo presented the results of our Fermilab muon experiment (insisting on saying things which the group did not believe and which were not true) and then at EPRI in Palo Alto. Andrée and the others drove home. After a couple of weeks I came home for the weekend, and Andrée flew out with me to Los Angeles, where we rented a car and drove up the coast to Palo Alto for the last week at EPRI.
It was probably in July 1998 that Andrée and I went again to Jackson. This time there was a meeting of the American Nuclear Society and we flew in to Idaho, crossed the border just north of the Tetons, and stayed for 2 days in Jenny Lake lodge. This was expensive and demanded advanced reservations. Andrée had stayed there with her family in 1936 so it was nostalgic. The lake and lodge itself were fine but the restaurant was snooty because we were not regular customers. In vain did Andrée say that she had been a customer for over 60 years! So that is one less place to return to!. We walked past Leigh Lake, which was as beautiful as we had remembered and on to Jackson Lake. In July 2007 Andrée and I went again, on a special trip, to the Bridger wilderness. We were persuaded to do so by one of my freshman students whose parents had a house in Pinedale, where they kept llamas to take in tourists into the mountains. These animals are more sure footed than horses and can go on rocky paths not suited for pack horses. Although they offered to take us in to Island lake, at ages 81 and 79 we were not enthusiastic to camp. Andrée had both arthritis and bursitis and it was one month after my hernia operation. We preferred a bed. The highest set of cabins were in Big Sandy Lodge at about 9,200 feet, not far from the continental divide and the “cirque of the towers”. From there we hiked in to higher ground but we found that a 5 miles round trip was already a stretch. Nonetheless we spent a happy two weeks and Nicholas and Carol Anne joined us for a couple of days. But it was a warning for me. At that altitude I was getting out of breath. That was perhaps a forerunner of my problems with allergic reactions and pneumonia later that year.
Glacier Park
I have to jump a few years by which time the children had all left home. But Andrée and I still wanted to see the west when we could. In 1983, I went to a small summer study in Snowmass, CO on possible uses of the electron-proton collider being built at DESY in Hamburg. We rented a car from Denver Airport, for a month. After a week in Snowmass we went to see Andrée’s niece Carol and her husband of the time, Karl in Delta, CO.. Then we drove to Idaho where we joined a Sierra club trip for a week in the Sawtooth mountains. And so on up to West Glacier (Apgar). My older colleague and train buff Van (John Hasbrouck Van Vleck) had spent his honeymoon there in 1930 or thereabouts. He did so in what was then the “proper” way. He took the Empire Builder train from Chicago to East Glacier, stayed at the lodge (called by the Blackfoot Indians the Big Tree lodge) and then by horse to a couple of tent camps at Two Medicine lake, Cut Bank, Rising Sun and so to Many Glacier Hotel. Van had given me his topological map to encourage me.
Glacier Park is now full of visitors. Since the “Going to the Sun” road across Logan pass was finished, the number of visitors jumped to 1 ½ million a year. Even the back country camp sites are crowded and access is limited by the National Park Service. In early 1970, some ten years before our visit, three people had been attacked and killed by marauding grizzlies in different areas. People had got careless about visiting them. So the National Park service started a campaign to encourage people to be more careful. Do not feed the bears. Do not leave garbage lying around. At a back country camp site hang your food from a tree and always eat at least 100 feet from the tents. Two huts, Sperry hut and Granite Park hut were closed because their sanitary facilities were considered inappropriate. So we walked one day toward the Granite park hut. from Logan Pass along the highline trail toward the Granite park hut. Alas, on this path I lost Van’s map. I hope the bears made full use of it. The next couple of days, we started our kike at Lake MacDonald, camped beside the Sperry hut, and crossed the Continental divide at Gunsight Pass. At the last campsite we became aware of a bigger danger than bears. If you leave your boots outside the tent, a porcupine may eat them. This happened to another camper. Fortunately it was only a mile or two to hobble out to the main “Going to the Sun” road. We hiked with him to the road and we hitch hiked back across Logan pass to our parked car 30 miles away. While walking along I made a calculation of the risk of being attacked by bears. The risk depended on the group of people considered to be at risk. This example has been very popular among students and is, of course, in our book on Risk-Benefit Analysis (ref 717).
The next couple of times we visited Glacier park were before or after a visit to the summer meeting of the Bioelectromagnetics Society in Kalispell. We flew to Kalispell, rented a car and were able to dive around. On one or another of these trips we stayed in one of the huts just west of Many Glacier Hotel, now called by the grandiose name, Swiftcurrent Motor inn. On one we hiked north from the Many Glacier road and camped a couple of nights returning by the path and tunnel through the Ptarmigan ridge. Van and Abigail had been through that tunnel on horseback some 50 years before. On that occasion we tried unsuccessfully to eat at the Many Glacier hotel, but the electricity was out. But the next day I had to fly back to Washington to testify in favor of the “Integral Fast Reactor” at Argonne National Laboratory, west, at Idaho Falls. It was the Senate Energy Committee chaired by Senator Bennett of Louisiana. Senators Kempthorne of Wyoming and Craig of Idaho were members and were there. Senator Craig, later to become well known because of a little item of foot tapping, made a point of saying that “Professor Wilson has made a big sacrifice to come here. He has come straight out of the wilderness.” The Senate Committee was positive but the Senate as whole was not. In particular my own senator, John Kerry was actively opposed the ANL plans and would not even acknowledge my letter to him.
We went again to Glacier park in August 2008. This time it is a special visit. Andrée had a new hip prothesis and infection and we chose to be nostalgic for what we feared would be a last time. The park hotels and lodges get booked a long time ahead so we were a little constrained because I only booked in April. But we found a small room available for three nights in August and planned a vacation around them. We came in, as one should, by the Empire Builder train from St Paul. We stayed one night at Glacier Park Lodge at East Glacier, the park entrance. This has big pine trees in the impressive main lodge, giving it an Indian name the Big Tree lodge. Then we spent 2 nights at the Prince of Wales hotel in Waterton Park, Alberta, before spending 3 nights in Many Glacier hotel. Neither of us have the energy that we had before and I remember with sympathy Van’s remark he made several times. At age 70 he had a heart problem with a pacemaker, but still loved the mountains. But he was no longer allowed to go to many of his previous haunts by car, whereas when he was a vigorous 30 year old the roads were put in, so that less active persons could also enjoy the mountains.