Coastal Bird Walk

This second week of September 2015 we’ve seen temperatures remain in the triple digits, a blazing heat that won’t let up. In a climate kept moderate by coastal wind and influx of fog, these over-inflated temperatures add further distress and hardship to the parched landscape. Coupled with the water restrictions of this year’s drought, our drooping garden plants are testament to the need for a rapid reprieve. We wait and wait, enduring the heat the best we can, hoping for a helping hand to emerge and move over us.

With a Friday afternoon clear of appointments, my plan is to escape the heat. My new favorite spot on the Sonoma coast is a 1-mile loop through a revitalized salt marsh that provides habitat for wildlife and birds, including Canada Geese, Snowy Egrets, White and Blue Heron. After a brief rise from the parking lot, this gentle trail system has a gravel surface thoughtfully sprinkled with sturdy wooden benches facing the open ocean of adjacent Doran Beach, visible and easily accessible on foot by means of The Cheney Creek Bridge.

 

I drive to the coast and park my car in a dusty, unmarked turn-off along Highway One. Carrying lunch and book I walk slowly along the elevated gravel path that leads to the bench nearest the bird marsh, taking in the scenery. A series of brilliant white Snowy Egrets spread out along the shallow waterway, each giving ample room to the next as they lay claim to their own private fishing spot.

The coastal air is cool enough for a light sweatshirt, yet warm enough to wear it unzipped. An unsaddled ocean breeze touches the hair on my forehead. All memories of the intense heat at home are quickly erased like a drawing from the blackboard, yet I wonder how much longer until the ocean fog makes its move inland? Overhead, patches of the ascending fog bank thin and come apart, then regroup for another surge, forever striving to cancel out the sun, like a dark hand before a face. Who will win? I wonder. So far it is a toss-up. Then I remember, there is no winner or loser in nature.There is only the next moment.

After lunch I decide to walk the .4 mile path across the bridge to the open beach. Nearing the surf, I notice an outpouring of flowers, lemon yellow and shades of pink, from fluorescent to pale. Their sleekness and fullness, stops me. I kneel down for a closer look. Bright blooms belonging to the creeping Ice Plant, that ground-hugging succulent perennial that roots at the nodes, sprawl into unkempt areas as the plant widens its berth and depth, seeking to secure itself. Widely planted for soil stabilization and landscaping, the Ice Plant is well known by most Californians for its succulent three-sided leaves and deep mats that invade dune scrub, coastal prairie, and coastal bluff.  On closer inspection, I find a worker bee deep in the heart of one buttery bloom.  Do flowers appear as bees entice them, or is it the other way around?

 Once over the small hill of dune rimming the parking lot, the open sand welcomes me.  A steely blue flat expanse of ocean water glitters, reaching over and over again onto the shore before pulling back with a gleaming edge that speaks in sentences where grandeur dwells. I remove my sneakers and steady myself, my feet sinking into the loose sand’s warmth and pull.     

 A hundred yards or so down the beach, the liquid note of an ocean bird falls upon the damp air moving in the direction of where I am standing. Dark silhouettes of a flock of gathering birds are in pursuit of something just below the surface. Flying up and diving down into the water over and over again against a backdrop of flickering light, they are quite beautiful. In all of my beach-going days, I have never been witness to such a spectacle. Pelicans, terns, gulls and cormorants in a come-one, come-all, buy your tickets here before they are gone flying and diving show. 

Venturing out into the frigid water as far as my rolled-up pants will allow me, I wave to the collected body of birds as they pass. How I long to join them, become a part of their energy. Yet as wings slap water and beaks break below waves, they continue to ignore me. Excuse me but I have plenty of work to do, they say.

I look downward, disappointed, feeling betrayed by my heavy feet rooted to their dark, earthly anatomy. Reluctantly I turn and walk toward shore where a woman with hair piled high lifts her long skirt to step into the surf while holding the hand of a small boy who looks out over the indifferent sea. The boy bends down to be closer to the rays that break and sparkle, then closes in on a small white umbrella of a sea shell deposited just within reach of his pale star hand.

 In Jack London’s short novel Valley of the Moon he tells of a young couple's journey up and down the length of California, seeking a place to call home. "What we want," they said, "is a valley of the moon, with not too much work and all the fun we want. And we'll just keep on looking until we find it." As the name of the novel hints, they found that perfect place in Sonoma County, and now, taking it a step further, I have found my perfect place within this perfect place. It is a place where blue water shakes a youthful dance over the shy shoulders of delicate land – where sun, light, sky, waves and wind surge and flash in a daily performance of delicious mist and salt, readily available to anyone who has cleared their calendar of obligations and makes time to take in the lure of the transformative, dreamy grace invading every hollow of the near and dear Sonoma Coast.

 

S is for Summer

"The world, like a great iris of an even more gigantic eye, which has also just opened and stretched out to encompass everything, stared back at him. And he knew what it was that had leaped upon him to stay and would not run away now. I’m alive, he thought."  

- Ray Bradbury, Dandelion Wine

One of the perks of being a teacher is that each year I get to relive the excitement of childhood's most dazzling day; a day that children all across the nation long for, wait for, plan for and dream of months in advance...The first day of summer vacation! Summer vacation - those mythical, magical two months sandwiched somewhere between June and September that allow for teachers, parents and students alike to step away from their schedules; to relax and recharge. I always have ambitious plans for my "vacation" of course: catching up on neglected home projects, family excursions, expanding on classroom reading lists. But also included is time set aside for resting, and for slowing down. This year the first book on my summer reading list arrived as if on cue from the Sonoma County Library. Helen Mac Donald's H is for Hawk. I plan to spend a good hour each day reading it during my late afternoon hammock time. You can read a review here:

http://blog.allaboutbirds.org/2015/03/23/a-falconer-reviews-helen-macdonalds-acclaimed-bestseller-h-is-for-hawk/

Mizuno Wave Inspire running shoes: color - Florida Keys. It has been four years since I have purchased running shoes, and I feel like Douglas Spaulding in chapter five of Dandelion Wine. Douglas spies a pair of tennis shoes in the window of the shoe store. Not just any tennis shoes, the "Royal Crown Cream-Sponge Para Litefoot Tennis Shoes" are what Douglas needs to be able to run. They are infused with summer, and he needs shoes that have the magic to do everything magical that summer requires. 

Did someone leave this sign here just for me? Today is a special event: my first summer walk along the Joe Rodota trail. This paved trail runs through my town of Sebastopol, and in the summer I visit it often, increasing my mileage as the the weeks progress.The walk serves a dual purpose - first, to gently tame my body muscle back into tone and second, walking in nature restores that childlike wonder of being alive, taps into the deep reservoir of inner surprise activated by the everyday world of birds, woods, blackberries, plums and sky.

I listen. Sparrow, swallow, finch. This summer morning is bright and washed clean. Everything is rinsed - sky and tree, splashes of birdsong   I stop to photograph a blooming Catalpa tree, fragrant blossoms of Captapla snow already gracing the ground. An old friend emerges from the weeds and thicket to greet me. I remember him from last summer. It looks like he is enjoying the day as much as I am. Together we drink in the peace of this time and place, every warm drop.

 "The grass whispered under his body.  He put his arm down, feeling the sheath of fuzz on it, and, far away, below, his toes creaking in his shoes.  The wind sighed over his shelled ears.  The world slipped bright over the glassy round of his eyeballs like images sparked in a crystal sphere.  Flowers were sun and fiery spots of sky strewn through the woodland.  Birds flickered like skipped stones across the vast inverted pond of heaven.  His breath raked over his teeth, going in ice, coming out fire.  Insects shocked the air with electric clearness. Ten thousand individual hairs grew a millionth of an inch on his head.  He heard the twin hearts beating in each ear, the third heart beating in his throat, the two hearts throbbing his wrists, the real heart pounding his chest.  The million pores on his body opened.

I’m really alive! he thought."

- Ray Bradbury, Dandelion Wine 

Wintergreen

It’s February and it’s finally raining. For most of November, December and January we warmed our winter bodies under the bright, inviting sunlight of an extended high pressure and the skies stayed blue – little rain fell and there was hardly any wind. It meant for a beautiful, extended dry autumn.

Today the saturated ground holds water from the weekend rainstorm. The rain-slicked grass of the lawn sucks at my feet, and water pools around the soles of my boots as I walk. Patches of bright, vibrant green moss have sprung up along the edge of the gravel road that separates our yard from the orchard, holding fast to rock and mud. Early afternoon and the moss still feels wet to my fingertips, wreathed in a border of dead leaves – some crisp and thin, others still waterlogged.

The air is a mass of sound: a high-pitched chatter of wintering sparrows, robins, and goldfinches punctuated by the crackling baritone of croaking frogs. Rushing water from the storm has worked deep canyons into the road, slicing through grey-blue gravel to reveal a deeper layer of blonde clay tinged with a burnt-orange hue. 

A rare sighting – the color red. A forgotten apple wedged in the trunk of a tree. Wet pendants of persimmons dangling from leafless branches. Rosehips round and full clustered on the tops of thorny rose bush stalks. 

The orchards look strangely inverted. Trees sleep, branches devoid of leaves, while beneath them bright green winter grass spreads to all corners of my vision, contained only by wide swaths of muddy road. Elsewhere, in ankle-deep pools and shallow puddles of gathered rainwater, the scent of the weight of all that has fallen reflects itself.

Summer Mornings

There is nothing like a summer morning. Dragonflies hover motionless in the sunlight along the wide dirt path that separates vineyard from orchard, their transparent wings gleaming golden as they throw back the sun’s heat and cool their own small shadows. Songbirds dot the high tension wires, while a pair of mourning doves race over rows of planted vines. 

Mornings like these call me away from my desk. Seeds swelling and unfurling, pods sprouting, hot winds beckoning. Small things gather into larger things, which gather into larger things, which merge into one big thing. Wisdom accumulated over millions of years. A prickly grass seed stuck to my sock becomes a poem.

The even, steady tempo of a cricket’s chirp emerges from a tangle of roadside brush. When I reach the entrance to the paved West County bike trail and walking path, torpedo-shaped barn swallows greet me with their narrow curved wings and short forked tails. Sapphire blue with a frosting of peach across the cheeks and white along the belly, these birds have taken advantage of the high wall of an abandoned firehouse on which to build their cup-shaped mud nests just beneath the slanting roofline. There they will remain undisturbed, that is, unless the citizens of Graton vote to tear the building down.

Walking in the dappled shade of the trail, well attended by tall tree growth on either side, I stop to marvel at the trumpet shaped flowers of a blooming Catalpa tree. 

Although the distinctive heart-shaped leaves and dangling beans are noticeable from hundreds of yards away, today it is the sweet fragrance emanating from a showy crown of white flowers that captures my attention. 

“The moments when the mind is absorbed by beauty are the only hours when we really live,” writes the British naturalist Richard Jeffries.



 What if he is right? 

Web of Life

Journal notes written last year at this time while chaperoning a 5th grade field trip to the WOLF (Web of Life Field) school at Camp Cazadero, Cazadero, CA. 

This afternoon we take a blindfold hike to the purple meadow. First the boys guide the girls, then they switch. Nobody complains about the steepness of the trail.

It is terribly sneezy in the upper meadow. Dry grass laced with California poppies. We sit with our sketchbooks and draw the contours of a rock cliff with a face like a dog. There is nothing like a mountaintop meadow with a view. Purple flower clusters on tall stems. Twitter of songbirds. Bright orange monkeyflower.

This morning I sat and sipped hot tea on the cabin steps in the warmth of the sun; so quiet I could hear the whooshing wing beats of a solitary crow flying overhead. Woodpecker taps. Call of a quail. Some kind of human activity from the dining hall.

 ***

Nighttime astronomy, we are being devoured by mosquitoes while listening to the naturalist tell a story about how the night sky was formed, and that hummingbirds are responsible for the stars. I take a look through the viewfinder of the telescope and catch a glimpse of the pocked and pebbled moon. Then Saturn, complete with rings – so tiny it resembles a bright sticker I could place in my journal.

Shooting star – a brief meeting between two like-minded people who won't ever meet again in the physical world. 

The rabbit in the moon.

After our moon-shadow walk down to the waterfall, the girls run barefoot out of the cabin across the field to see the silver fox recently spotted running under picnic tables. The waterfall made me feel like I was in another country, so lush and green with a small pool at the bottom. Ecuador? Peru?

At lights-out, the naturalist named Raccoon stops by the cabin to serenade the girls, who have caught a second wind after seeing the silver fox. They crown the tiny bathroom with murmurs and giggles while applying face cream and brushing out hair. At her prompting they head for their bunks. Lights out, in bed, we are covered with a blackness not usually seen back home where a constant glow of light emanates from our small town homes. Here it is too dark to even see my hand. Raccoon sings a lullaby, Lean on Me and at the conclusion of the third verse the cabin is silent, and remains so even after she and her flashlight slip out the back door and into the evening air, leaving us to our further savor the silence and invite the overnight fog.

President’s Day at the Coast

On this holiday weekend the winter beach is crowded with people and their amusements: dogs, kites, picnic lunches and sand castles; boats, blankets, cameras, binoculars and phones. Ocean waves thick in the mist rise up and thunder towards shore. Behind me shadows of seagulls float across the steep, rocky cliffs - appearing and then disappearing again - silently, spaciously, always on the move, staggered like sudden gleams of light emerging from the sun’s meeting with the fog-laced background of the ocean’s outer calm.

I begin my walk. How easily my bare feet advance along the seam of hard-packed wet sand trimming the water’s edge. Strangers smile at me for no reason; then walk past and leave me alone again. Swept clean of practical duties, I plan to spend the long morning soaking in nature’s warm, inviting disorder. Footfall after footfall I compress the glittering silt of quartz and feldspar which the waves draw back and return again –  each stroke erasing the shallow print of my body’s brief encounter with this broad, flat stretch of shore.

In the midst of multiple distractions, the ocean’s mesmerizing rhythm of sound fills me with balance and leads me to my center. How to remain here? There is no easy answer. Perhaps walking itself is a first step. Walking toward simplicity. Toward grace. Toward the cold, wet spiral of a small white shell.

 In the distance terraced cliffs of the headland break the bulk of the waves before they can reach this sheltered strip of beach. Deep green and orange plant growth weaves from root to tip along round boulders of grey stone.  While wave action fights to erode the coast and push the shore inland, the land resists the ocean's attack with the strength of its rock. Marine sediment mantles the terraces, much as my mind – at once clean and bare as whitened driftwood; empty as a shell, becomes so easily filled with life’s colluvium – pencils, pads and other particulars of the practical that accumulate in stubborn hollows, bound by the techno-urgency of the modern world.

The sugar-like sand of the upper beach hosts a tangle of wash-ups: crisp, stranded seaweeds encircled by a chorus of sand fleas; leathery, ribbon-like heaps of giant kelp; black-stained shells of the razor clam. The sand, usually too hot to walk upon in the summer season, is invitingly warm. Soft, loose, it slips beneath my feet and, as ever, pleasant sensations award all abandoned efforts. Halting in mid-expedition, I dig in my toes and lavish lazy waves of pleasure upon this torso of light I call my body, this polished pedestal composed of the elements, this confusion of salt – this sum of splendors that never slows or withholds; rather releases a lovely shimmer of everything it shows – this center of my self.

Inside, Outside

Early morning frost tints the ground white. The orchard is still, waiting for the frozen fog to lift. I open the heavy crossed arms of the cast-iron woodstove, let down the door and peer inside. Piles of cold ash – thin, grey weightless remnants of last night’s blaze, are of too little substance to be gathered up –  flakes that dissolve into a fine grey mist at the slightest touch, unlike the hard, brown dirt clods shaken loose from the deep treads of my boots that I sweep daily into neat little piles.

Outside, the dead leaves keep coming. There is no stopping them from falling on the lawn. Our home, which butts up against a yard of large diesel trucks, used to be a dairy farm – front yard the pasture for grazing and the red barn where the cows got milked. Now the barn is home to our landlord’s odd collection of vintage cars and rusty junk. Yet a pair of barn owls finds the abandoned barn to their liking, and raises a family or two every summer, filling the night air with the vibrant hissing of their young.

Inside the neglected barn dusty cobwebs cover the ceilings and walls. Outside, vertical siding planks are faded and worn with spots of gray wood showing through. The planks pull apart from one another readily, leaving black gaps in between like old teeth rotting and getting ready to fall out. Adorned with rusty corrugated roofing sheets of cold rolled steel panels about to peel off, the roof clatters to the big-band sound of windy afternoons.

Outside, long, snaky tendrils of thorny blackberry swaddle the cabs of a dozen big-rig trucks now abandoned in the yard. Rain-soaked turkeys slink past brown tangles of vine in the sleeping vineyard. A lone frog croaks to the strengthening wind just outside my window. Hard packed dirt of the lane softens to mud and tire tracks melt to puddles. Yesterday’s yardwork comes undone as wet piles of dead brown leaves rearrange themselves across the lawn.