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With Pam just coming off a bout of the flu and my having just come down with some kind of crazy allergy (or whatever's going on that involves lots of nose-blowing and a keen desire to get back in bed), we headed up to Mt. Tam with a loose plan to hike out to Potrero Meadow.
Not feeling up to it by the time we got to Rock Spring, though, we decided to just mosey around.
Our mosey took us out along Bolinas Ridge.
For a hike that's really just an excuse to find a great viewpoint, you can't beat Bolinas Ridge. Although there was a line of smoke across the horizon (perhaps from the Hay Kingdom fire out near Winters), there wasn't a lick of fog and we had a clear view out to Chimney Rock at Pt. Reyes as well as the Farallon Islands.
This was the first of three unusual items we found in trees along our route. This is some sort of webbing that's tied into some trees to provide a platform. Not knowing its provenance, I did not climb into it. It's high enough off the ground that you would not want to fall through an unfortunate spot of dry rot.
As we continued our mosey, Pam discovered this Buddhist statue installed on a bay laurel. I believe it's a statue of Avalokiteshvara, bodhisattva of compassion, and I might hazard a guess that it was installed only recently, perhaps on last week's equinoctial Circumambulation of Mt. Tam....
Finally, moseying about on a different patch of the mountain, but still on Bolinas Ridge, I discovered the third unusual item in a tree -- someone's nicely camo'd trail camera! Like the bodhisattva, the camera was bolted in place, obviously set up for a long-term stint. We found raccoon tracks in some nearby mud (what are 'coons doing way up here?!), but my imagination was piqued: has this camera ever trapped a mountain lion?
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