Tam's Toes

* * *

If you go to Muir Woods really early -- I mean really early -- you can always beat the crowds, even on a weekend. But government shutdowns? Those you can't beat. 

Purely out of historical interest I headed down to Muir Woods to photograph the closure sign, which reads, "Because of the federal government shutdown, this National Park Service facility is closed." Nothing snarky, though the temptation must have been fierce. Just the sad fact, black ink on white paper. Later on I would see a tour bus at Rock Spring for the first time ever. French-speaking people milled around outside the bus: "Ou sont les frickin' redwoods?" Some of them visited the portable toilets. Somewhere in the distance, a cabal of Republicans were high-fiving each other for screwing a busload of French people out of a trip to Muir Woods.

I'd been thinking about getting over to the coastal feet of Mt. Tam since I hadn't been out that way in a long time. The wind was still blowing pretty hard from the east, and I had to use the Jeep as a windbreak to make this 30-second exposure along the Shoreline Highway north of the Muir Beach Overlook.

I didn't have anyplace in mind to shoot from, so I stopped at a few different pull-outs and decided this one would do.

This is another view from the same pull-out. That spit of land in the distance is Bolinas. When the sun finally rose, it touched the very tip of that spit and worked its way inland.

I have never stayed at the Steep Ravine Environmental Campground. It looked pretty quiet down there, but I see that they are closed this month for maintenance. I've heard it's not easy to get reservations on the spur of the moment, but one of these days I'm going to have to make a plan and spend a couple of days there.

When the original Forty-Niners saw this stretch of coast, there wasn't a pampas grass in sight. It was introduced in Santa Barbara in 1848 and has since spread throughout the state. 

Dawn at Stinson Beach.

I swung a right just before Stinson Beach and drove up toward Pantoll, reacquainting myself with this stretch of road. Along the way I spotted this fern-filled canyon and had to stop to check it out. I guess I made some noise clambering up the hill; I could hear a deer loudly chuffing in indignation from farther up the canyon.

Heading up to Rock Spring I was passed by several Ferraris whenever I stopped at a pull-out. They appeared to be gathering for a group photo. I had moved on by the time they left, but you couldn't miss hearing them go, as they all revved their engines for maybe half a minute before they went.

On my way to check out the trail camera I stopped to photograph some ripe peppernuts (bay laurel).

The coast live oak acorns were still green.

I haven't had much luck with the trail camera since that first week. I had one week with no animals at all -- but lots of pictures of wind-blown trees -- and a second week with just a single deer. It's amazing to realize that a game trail can go completely unused for a whole week. I moved the camera to a pretty good trail for the coming week, but I'm thinking about moving it back over to the west side of Bolinas Ridge next time. There's lots of coyote and bobcat scat along the trails, but it's all old. Maybe the animals don't use that area much this time of year.

I spotted some wild turkeys and American goldfinches on my way back from setting up the camera.

They need a dexterous beak to separate the kernel from the fluff.

The meadowlarks are back!

* * *

Nature's Chaos

* * *

"The images . . . are mostly details of nature which emphasize how nature's apparent disorder can be reduced to aesthetically stimulating fragments."

--Eliot Porter, Nature's Chaos, 1990

California Buckeye Along Redwood Creek

I finally found an Eliot Porter book that at least comes close to doing justice to his photographs (the public library had a first edition). It's called Nature's Chaos (NY Times review) and features Porter's photography accompanied by the writing of James Gleick, author of Chaos: Making a New Science (1987). Porter had been fascinated by Gleick's book and was inspired to spend the last days of his life (he died in 1990) on one last photography project.

I can see how Porter, who had a scientific bent (he began his career as a biochemical researcher at Harvard University), took such an interest in Gleick's book. I remember being excited about the book myself when it came out. 

Chaos seems like such an unlikely subject for a photographer. We tend to look for something simple and graphic, something with a clear subject that grabs our attention and stands apart from its background. Indeed, that's the key to our usual aesthetic in nature photography. What I loved about Nature's Chaos was Porter's genius for creating beautiful compositions from a chaotic scene. Much of his success for me is due the details so clearly visible in the images captured with his large format camera. With the details rendered so clearly, my eyes comfortably roam over the larger compositional elements -- the lines and shapes -- and gradually transition into the finest surrounding textural details.

Porter didn't make new photographs to illustrate the book. He pulled the images from his collection after being inspired by the "new science." As I was looking through the Mt. Tam images in my "October" folder I came across the photo above of the California buckeye with dozens of large nuts dangling from a now-leafless tree. Although I shot that image in October 2004, I still remember being charmed by the scene and thinking it was going to be impossible to photograph. I shot a frame anyway.

* * *

September Favorites

* * *

I'm convinced that my unabashed appreciation of Bay Area wildness is based on my direct experience of such highly touted places as Alaska, Hawaii, the Galapagos Islands, the polar regions, and Tibet. Only after having photographed all seven continents and both poles do I know with certitude how favorably my home wildlands compare.

--Galen Rowell, Inner Game of Outdoor Photography

Jimson Weed

Tanoak

Bobcat Surprise

Insect Galls on Wild Rose

Jimson Weed Trumpet

Monarch & Milkweed

First Light

Coast Look-Out

Sargent Cypress

Spider Feast

Wind-Brushed Grass

Mossy Bay Laurel

Canyon Live Oak

California Fuchsia

Variegated Meadowhawk

Rifle Camp Meadow

Big-Leaf Maple

Pileated Woodpecker

Mating Dragonflies

Pacific Treefrog

Fall Colors at September's End

* * *

Things In Trees

* * *

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?

* * *

Last Day of Summer

* * *

As I drove up Panoramic Highway past Bootjack (headlights on and windshield wipers squeaking intermittently) I thought I'd be obliged to hang out for a while behind the locked gate since it was still 10 or 15 minutes before 7 a.m. But I pulled up and, what do you know, it was already open. Thankfully I hadn't gotten out of bed super-early to ride my bike up for the sunrise. There were no horizons in view, only a gradual disappearance of the landscape behind billowing clouds.

The rain hadn't yet begun in earnest when I arrived at Rock Spring, so I poked around among the recrudescence of mossy greens, so fresh you just knew it must be the last day of summer.

Several cars arrived shortly after I did, which surprised me due to the funky weather. Each of them drove up to the locked gate on West Ridgecrest, rethought their plans, then turned around and continued up toward East Peak.

The morning was fairly inhospitable, with gusty winds and significant fog-drip in the woods, but I was excited because I was about to check up on the trail camera I'd set up a week before. I'd hemmed and hawed for a few years before I finally decided to take a crack at camera trapping. I think this circumannuation project finally tipped the scale in favor of doing it. Although I'd much rather photograph animals in person, there's something about camera-trapping that enlivens a deep and ancient place in the heart. 

While I was hiking out to the trail camera, planning to swap out memory cards and set the camera in another spot nearby, the rain began. I could hear it pelting my rain jacket, and there I was, completely exposed on Bolinas Ridge. I picked up my pace to a light jog and ducked into the lee of a couple of Douglas fir trees where I could open my umbrella without it blowing inside-out. I was trapped there for quite a while. It was 54 degrees, and I was wearing shorts, but I was also wearing a t-shirt, longjohn top, and light rain jacket -- plus I'd eaten a decent breakfast -- so I wasn't cold. I was near the trail camera, though, and eager to get going, but I bided my time and allowed myself to simply enjoy being out there.

The rain finally let up, so I continued my jog toward the trail camera, only to have it start raining again -- and I mean buckets' worth. Once again I was obliged to take cover behind some trees and park under my umbrella. By now I was too wet to simply swap out the memory cards in the field, so at the next break in the rain I jogged back to the Jeep.

I let the heater run for a while even after I drove back and parked. The rain was coming down once again, and I had to wait for a chance to retrieve the camera. When I finally went down for it, I at first didn't see it and my heart sank. "Someone took it!" But then I saw it. No one took it -- but as I found when I downloaded the pictures, it had definitely been found by passing hikers. Thanks for leaving it alone! 

I set the camera in a new location that's not along an even lightly used human trail. Still no guarantee it won't be found, since lots of people hike off-trail, but hopefully it'll be okay. It would be easy enough to lock the camera to a tree, but I'm hoping that won't be necessary. I think anyone savvy enough to spot my camera is going to be cool enough to leave it in peace. 

* * *