Posts Tagged ‘California’
Spring walks on the coast
Our coastal parks are either Redwoods or beaches or clifftops by the beaches. The trails may skirt the Pacific ocean or start off at the sea level and climb up an adjacent cliff, or climb up the Santa Cruz mountains.
This spring, after a lot of deliberation, we bought a convertible, a car that my spouse and I have discussed with adoration for the last three decades. We now are proud owners of a little two seater, a Miata. It feels purpose built for the mountain roads that separate the valley from the Pacific coast. We have been walking the mountain trails these last several years, but now the drive to the trailhead is part of being out in nature. Driving in a convertible is the equivalent of walking in nature. You can hear the birds, smell the petrichor and be awash in the dappled sunlight. Much like I deliberate over the trail properties, now I deliberate over the drive properties. Is the road narrow or twisty enough to allow us to slow down? Is there an alternate county road to the highway? Will the road give the Miata bumper a chin rash?
Post Miata, a number of our hikes have started off on the coast. One stayed on the beach, one climbed into the Redwood forest, and a few that climbed the dead cliffs covered with scraggy vegetation.
A blue oak woodland in summer
Blue oaks are native to California and are endemic. Meaning, they should be everywhere in California and be nowhere else. They aren’t as easy to spot as their name would have you think. Blue oak aren’t blue. Describing oak leaves as blueish-green may help when the light is just right. Describing the leaves as leathery doesn’t help in California where most of the vegetation tends to have leathery leaves. I would have to walk around with an acorn+leaf chart to match them. Our most common oaks, are the coastal oak (bristly tips) and the valley oak (have lobes). The valley oak grows tall and has twisted branches and lends a queen like elegance to the landscape. The coastal oak often look like they have fought hard to survive, a sherpa who can keep climbing forever. Blue oaks have been elusive to me in Bay Area preserves and parks. Rangers tell me that most of the existing blue oaks are on private lands.
Last weekend we found ourselves on such a private land, the regenerative Paicines (Pai-seen-us) Ranch. We had gone looking for astrophotography opportunities. During our stay, we learned about their Blue Oak forest and I had to take a look. When you live in California long enough, oaks become as fascinating as the Redwoods. One year, we noticed the coastal oaks in our neighborhood masting (link). I want to find acorn flour so I can make flatbread but I don’t want to start with harvesting acorns even when the trees are masting. This trip, the cottage we stayed at, the Cheese Cottage, was next to a large Valley Oak specimen. The cottage’s patio was high up enough that I was practically sitting in a tree house. It allowed me to notice the oak galls up close.
Here are few photos of the blue oak woodland. I present them in black and white. By the time we explored the woodland, the sun was high up and the shadows were stark. It is the end of summer here and the grasses had turned into straw color. The leaves were covered in dust. If it were spring, the woodland floor would have been covered in blue lupines, and the blue dicks and my photographs would have wanted to reflect all that color.
Passage of 25 yrs
A quarter of a century ago, we were married in St Helena. It was a wet day in Feb. This Feb, we found ourselves in St Helena again, this time to see a close friend during his post-op recovery at the acute care Adventist Hospital. Feb in St Helena is just the same as it was a quarter of a century ago – the fog laden tree tops, moss covered trees, the grape fields submerged in water, and the raging Napa river.
Read the rest of this entry »A slug rises
A headline caught my eye a few weeks ago – Assembly Bill(AB 1850) passed recognizing the banana slug as the official state slug. It took a bill – not scientists! A slug joined other well known symbols, like the California grizzly bear and the California poppy. That is when I looked up the list of California State symbols and learned about the lesser known symbols such as the California quail (1932) and Golden trout (1947). Call me silly, but I was expecting to find weed on the list. Anyways, I adore this slug, it is yellow, it is large, and it lives on our forest floors. They are caretakers of the giant Redwoods, our state tree. They eat plants that compete with the Redwood seedlings but never the Redwood seedlings. Somehow they know that these little Redwood seedlings one day will become the giants that will give them back the moist forest floor.
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Locomotoring 