Tag: bay area
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Permanente Quarry
Into the quarry, rocks cascade -but mining here has numbered days,if the county plan gets its way.The pit will merge with a preserve,leaving forest sounds undisturbed.Birdsong, crickets, and flowing creekmake the music that hikers seek.
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Cheerleaders at Sonoma State
The first time I came to California was the summer before seventh grade. Dad was in a Jack London seminar at Sonoma State University and drove the family there from Vermont in a red Ford Taurus station wagon with a car carrier on top my sister and I packed full of stuff to keep us…
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Kayak Instructor
Instead of exerting yourself to drag the paddle through water, let your other blade push the air. Trust me, you will propel your boat. Remember, the core of your strength is neither from arms or shoulders, but in your hips and abdomen. Seek to glide with efficiency – hull speed is plenty fast enough. Allow…
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Looking for the Green Comet
It’s 10pm in Silicon Valley. This winter night is oddly cold and clear, good timing for a drive into the hills. My old sedan climbs up La Honda Road, nimble on the switchbacks, clutch adjusting the gears easily to changes in grade. Redwoods on both sides loom large in the dark. A sharp left onto…
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Stanford Dish
A herd of cows blocked our way down the hill, strewn across the path as if they were boulders. Since a barbed wire fence stretched out to either side, there was no going around them. Spooked by their number, by their restlessness – by the sheer muscular bulk of each one – we stepped back…
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After a First Date
“Let’s be in touch!” she said, after we spent what I thought was a pleasant couple hours together, walking the Stanford Dish trail on a glorious day, the sun shining. We marveled at a coyote leaping across a field so lush and green from all the recent downpours, we talked affably, we reminisced – and…
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Saturday Hike
Heart pounding, I climb Mount Diablo. There are coyotes in the hills below Eagle Peak. At the summit, crows fly higher than clouds. Sunset in two hours – I hurry back to the trailhead.
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Post Drought, 2017
The last drought was brutal to reservoirs. Moisture disappeared, leaving behind a vast alien landscape of craters, parched and absent their usual fill. Now, after more storms than we thought likely, lakes have returned to their abandoned beds and soil throughout the county drank enough so that groundwater is somewhat replenished. What is to be…
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Elk of Tomales Point
Rain has collected inside a basin at the bottom of a hill on a spit of land between wind-whipped Tomales Bay and an ocean shoreline pounded by waves. Mirror-flat, reflecting a cloudless sky with serene, blue stillness, it is precious as a source of freshwater for the herd of tule elk who linger around it.…
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The Buckeye Trail
After we cross the river the first time, we walk a quarter mile in our bare feet, avoiding horse manure, sharp stones, and twigs. The path is a mere wisp of loam woven among giant redwoods in a forest carpeted with ferns and decorated with forget-me-nots. We can feel damp soil each time our heels…
From the Firefly Galaxy 