Ready for His Close-up

 

Smile, you're on Bobcat Camera.

Excellent!

Like we say in the city so much these days,
stay safe, Kitty!
(Click on images to view larger.)

* * *

High Country

 

September can be a great time to be in the Sierra High Country. After having our pick of campsites, we woke up with Thousand Island Lake pretty much all to ourselves. 

I don't recall the last days of summer back then, in 2011, as being particularly fraught or portentous. Nothing like it seems this year, anyway. Thankfully there are still places to go to experience the beauty, peace, and majesty of nature, to recharge the spirit for the work that needs to be done back home.

* * *

Dewy Mornings

 

Jeweled Orb on Tomales Point Trail
(9/2/11)

Setting Moon from Grandview Park

(9/30/12)

It's been fairly warm and damp the last couple of mornings, without much breeze even on the exposed hilltop at Grandview Park which I circumnavigate in the dark these days. No point bringing the phone camera. We'll be hiking on Mt. Tam this morning, hoping to beat the return of smoke which the weather forecaster warned about.

As for Point Reyes, it looks like the Woodward Fire is close to 100% contained. The new General Management Plan Final EIS is also out, and it's not looking good for seeing our national park prioritized for nature and wildlife instead of cattle ranching.

* * *

Bird's Eye View

 

Even on a beautiful day, basking in the sun on a sandy beach, these whimbrels do not let their guards down. They are predators who don't want to fall prey to a speeding peregrine.

I wonder if marbled godwits ever fall prey to conspiracy theories the way so many people seem to these days. It's kind of shocking when people you know suddenly seem to disappear into the dimly gaslit atmosphere of outlandish tales from an unreal world.

I think such people could benefit by spending more time in nature, more time watching the flight of sanderlings, more time just letting nature heal minds that have been engrossed too long in a venomous sea of emotional manipulation.

* * *

Welcome Visitors

 

I was sitting in the back yard the other day when a Cabbage White butterfly fluttered down to nosh on the nectar of our lantana flowers. We've had the lantana for years, but this was the first time I'd caught a butterfly taking advantage of them. I chalk that up to the fact that I'm spending more time in the back yard these days than when I had to work downtown.

I didn't have even my phone camera on me when the butterfly landed, but these shots are the same species, shot on another September day nearly ten years ago. Of course I'd really like to see a Green Hairstreak come streaking down to partake of our flower garden. There is a "Green Hairstreak Corridor" just a block or so away, but the only place I've actually seen one is Lobos Dunes, way on the north side of town.

* * *

Ansel Adams

Thousand Island Lake

Ansel Adams Wilderness, September 2011

Wildflower Meadow

(Click on images to view larger)

* * *

Dinner Bell

 

We've been adopted by one of the neighborhood cats, and I've been trying to get her to come when I make a non-verbal cat-call (if there is a word for that sound, I don't know it). She must not have been nearby because I didn't hear her footfalls in the leaves in the neighbor's yard, or even a meow to let me know she was on the way. It was last call, though, so I set out some food in the hope she would get it before the raccoons found it.

No such luck.

* * *

At the Pool

Camera Trapping on Mt. Tamalpais

 

Bobcat

Gray Fox

Raccoon

Blacktail Doe

Coyote

Screech Owl

Sharp-shinned Hawk

Red-tailed Hawk

Raven

The Day the Earth Stood Still

N95 Weather

* * *

Saving Mineral King

 

Exploited by miners in the 19th Century, the awe-inspiring valleys of Mineral King came very close to becoming Disney-fied -- literally. Walt Disney wanted to build a ski resort up there. It was a very popular idea at the time, but the Sierra Club came out against it and won a victory in the US Supreme Court that was important not just for preserving the valley, but also for winning the right of citizens to sue the federal government to protect the common good.

"Just as important as the protection of a lovely valley was the precedent set through the lawsuit. The case confirmed the right of citizens to seek the help of the federal judiciary when any public resource -- land, air, water, wildlife -- came under threat. It established that Americans don't have to have an economic interest to have the legal right to get involved in protecting special places or stopping pollution; we all have an interest in keeping open space open, or in breathing clean air." --Tom Turner in High Country News

Which sort of explains why industry doesn't want to be regulated under the Clean Air Act for carbon dioxide emissions. Not that industry wants to be regulated at all, for anything, and who can blame them? When the miners dug out what they wanted from Mineral King, they left all their crap behind. And still, that's pretty much the way we roll. People tend to be very short-sighted. 

Some grown-ups, even now, choose to believe that the universe was created a few thousand years ago, and specifically for humans to boot. Geologists tell us that the Earth has been around so long that if you extend your arms out left and right to indicate the full span of time, the period that humans have existed is so tiny you could shave it off your fingernail with the single pass of a nail file. 

You can see why some people don't want to accept that. It would mean letting go of the fairy tale and embracing the truth, which by the way, is much more miraculous and interesting, and is based on reason rather than imagination.

The photos in this post were shot in September 2009. The photo below is from a Mineral King web cam image I snagged today (which apparently hasn't been updated since Friday).

Whether you wanted Mineral King to be a ski area or a natural area is almost beside the point if this is the kind of nightmare the future holds. I'm sure Mineral King will be beautiful again when the smoke clears, but for how long? A chart on Wikipedia shows that 17 of the 20 largest fires in California's history (and all of the Top 10) occurred just in this century.

Back around 1990 I drove across the country on my way to spend the summer on an island called Manhattan. On the way I stopped in Bozeman, Montana, and got to talking with someone who said I really shouldn't miss seeing Glacier National Park. Unfortunately, I was too impecunious to be able to make the side trip. 

There's nothing I could have done, but I do regret having to pass it up. I suspect now that whatever I could have seen back then is already considerably less amazing. Throw in the trophic cascades associated with the ecological benefits of the glaciers, and the bummer of losing them becomes even worse.

“We have just ten years to avert a major catastrophe that could send our entire planet into a tailspin involving extreme weather, floods, droughts, epidemics and killer heat waves beyond anything we have ever experienced.” – Al Gore in An Inconvenient Truth, 2006

Extreme weather: check; 

floods: check; 

droughts: check; 

epidemics: check; and 

killer heat waves: check.

Ten years after Gore's warning, atmospheric CO2 cracked 400 ppm. Unfortunately, it kinda seems like we won’t know with absolutely certainty whether we’re just in a wobble of turbulence, or an actual tailspin, until it’s too late to pull out of it. 

Of course, for people who've already suffered losses on those five checkpoints, it already is too late. For the rest of us, we'll have a good clue that the end is near when insurance companies stop selling coverage for the five checkpoints.

 * * *

Beach Weather

 

The verdict is in, and it looks like the ocean goddess is going to show her cooler side this year. Strong equatorial winds are pushing sun-kissed surface waters west, bringing cold water up from the deeps and sending it farther north than usual. One result of the colder ocean waters will be less rain for California. 

Even though I appreciate being able to hike in shorts on a sunny December day, I'd rather be bundled up in rain gear, looking for mushrooms.

These scenes of North Beach are the last of my Ode to September in Point Reyes images.

One morning I was looking out over these dunes and saw a pair of ravens playing a game with a coyote. The ravens would swoop down, and the coyote would leap in the air as if to catch them. At first I didn't believe my eyes, but binoculars confirmed the magical sight. 

I got out of the car as quietly as I could and opened the back door to get my camera out, but the ravens busted me and the spell was over. The ravens fluttered away toward the east, and the coyote disappeared behind the dunes.

* * *