January at Pt. Reyes

 

Sunset With Elephant Rock

"We have ephemeral lives. We have this world that's going to end. We have this star that's going to die. We have this incredible moment. Here we are: alive and sentient beings on this planet. It just feels like an extraordinary thing that I want to know about the universe before I die."
--Sarah Stewart Johnson, Principal Investigator at NASA-funded Laboratory for Agnostic Biosignatures (quoted in Scientific American)

Drake's Beach

Beach Grass Sunrise

Inverness Ridge

Elephant Rock Sunset

Rainy Day at North Beach

Low Tide Erratics

Chimney Rock

Point of Light

Cutie in the Grass

Elk Landscape

Tomales Point Sculpture

Fungal Friends

Waxy Caps

Landscape Layers

Black Mountain

Arch Rock, Three Months Before Collapse

Bear Valley Sunrise

Polypody Log

Roadside Marsh

Blue Estero

Limantour Beach

* * *

Signs of Life

 

Strange life forms: the female flowers and male catkin of a hazelnut tree

The cover story in the February issue of Scientific American (magazines always seem to arrive well before their cover dates) is called Life as We Don't Know It, and it's about astrobiologists who are looking for life signatures for beings that might not breathe oxygen or even be carbon-based. Instead of looking for the kinds of chemical signatures that life on Earth would reveal, they are looking for any kind of structure that appears to be non-random. That's all just fine, looking for signs of life that might be unlike our own, but they are still looking at only five percent of what's out there, if Dark Matter and Dark Energy turn out to be real.

I mean, there's supposed to be about five-times as much Dark Matter as the Ordinary Matter we can detect. So I am imagining a science fiction story that would involve life composed of Dark Matter, beings who thrive on Dark Energy. (Cue the evil laughter.) 

I was just about to take credit for being the first to imagine this when I decided to do a quick internet search, and dang it, someone beat me to it. 

I photographed the hazelnut flowers above by cutting a sprig to bring indoors and out of the considerable wind. I wanted a second "strange life form" for this post, so I went back down and looked for one in our little garden. I chose the huckleberry that I planted at the same time as the hazelnut, both of which I bought around 15 years ago at Bay Natives. 

While I was scoping out the huckleberry flowers I spotted a tiny jumping spider descending a single strand of silk. It landed on a leaf, then pounced like a shot to another leaf surface below it, and that's when the fun began. I went back upstairs and brought my camera down, and of course the spider became alarmed by my return and did its best to hide from me, ducking behind the leaves. I kept spooking it back toward the front, when I would try to fire off a few frames before it ducked back under cover. I had to put on my reading glasses to see the little tyke, then take them off to put my eye to the camera's viewfinder and try to find the spider through the lens. Meanwhile, gusts of wind would toss branches around like crazy. I was pleasantly surprised to get a few half-decent frames.

I noticed on a birding e-mail list recently that San Francisco's first Allen's hummingbird of 2023 was reported at North Lake (in Golden Gate Park) on January 17. I'd also recently noticed that the first bloom of the pipevine in my back yard appeared on Jan. 19, a couple of weeks earlier than last year. That was the first time my new plant, bought at Strybing Arboretum a couple years ago, produced a flower. It flowered again in late July.

In other back yard shenanigans, I found several holes a couple days in a row and wondered who had been digging back there. I thought it might be a cat, a skunk, or a squirrel, but only my wife guessed right (see short trail cam video clip below).

Lots of Blossoms This Year

Protector of the Realm

Tiny Jumper: All Legs and Eyes

First Pipevine Flower of the Year (Jan. 19, 2023)

Sidewalk Sign on Irving Street

“Are you people telling me,” Babette said, “that a rat is not only a vermin and a rodent but a mammal too?” –From White Noise, by Don DeLillo

* * *

Wave Watching

 

Ocean Beach, San Francisco
(Click to view larger.)

With offshore winds and a big swell still rolling in, I brought the FZ80 with me when I walked to the beach this morning. I'd hoped conditions would be good enough to entice a few surfers out, but I only saw one guy with a surfboard, and he stood on the dunes talking with a friend and watching the waves for a while before turning around and heading home. What Ocean Beach needs is a few natural channels where deep water would prevent waves from breaking, and give surfers a chance to paddle out.

Even without anyone riding the waves, I found them mesmerizing to watch. Such power and grace. It's "nothing but" the physics of wind and water, of gravity and topography, of light refracting and reflecting, of energy propagating hundreds of miles across an ocean, but it sure does stir the soul.

Ocean Beach, Jan. 25, 2023

* * *

Critters & King Tides

 

King Tide at Stinson Beach (1/20/23)

I stood perplexed, buffeted by a cold wind in the pre-dawn darkness at the Golden Gate Viewpoint along Conzelman Road. Where was the moon? It was supposed to rise at 6:41 a.m., and now it was past 7 a.m. I looked everywhere for that shining crescent but couldn't find it. I changed position several times to check behind the towers of the bridge. I scanned the sky from north to south. Nada. I eventually saw something shiny, way off in the distance, that might have been the moon, or merely the wisp of an airplane's contrail.

I knew I'd blown the moonshot, but since it was now getting close to the 7:22 a.m. sunrise I stuck around with a few other folks who were waiting to photograph it. At one point, four young women poured out of a rental Jeep to ogle the bridge and wait for the magic moment. One of them, who must have been from Maine or Minnesota or something, was in short-sleeves and didn't seem bothered by the cold. I kept expecting her to rush back into the warm Jeep, but she played it cool. I think it was her friends wearing jackets who finally begged to get out of there.

From there I headed up to Mt. Tam. As I exited the freeway I could see that Richardson Bay was getting very close to inundating the Mill Valley-Sausalito Pathway. High tide was going to be 7.1 feet in a couple of hours, and the Mill Valley offramp would soon be closed due to flooding. 

Just as I was about to turn up Pantoll Road from Panoramic Highway I had to drive around some sticks in the road. One of the sticks looked suspicious, so I pulled over and checked it out, finding a very nice, recently shed deer antler. As I continued up Pantoll Road I spotted a buck, antlers intact, near the edge of the road. I parked at the next available pull-out to see if I could photograph him, and when I got out of my car and turned around, I saw a half-dozen bucks grazing and sporting on a steep hillside. I don't think I've seen more than two bucks together before on Mt. Tam. 

A couple other bucks were in the woods below me. When I walked down the road a ways see where the deer cross it, I spotted a few wild turkeys in the woods on the uphill side. It looked like a good place to put a trail camera one of these days.

Despite all the rain, I found very little fungal action in the woods when I went to check on the trail cams that had been out there during all the stormy weather. Likewise, I'd noticed on my city walk that the mushroom locations I'd last seen showed no sign of ever having had fungal activity. Where the Amanita muscaria had been, a daffodil was in bloom. Along Sunset Boulevard the only mushrooms I saw were little crowds of orange-capped Leratiomyces ceres (formerly Stropharia aurantiaca) sprouting in the wood chips. 

With nothing in the woods to keep me up there I drove down to Stinson Beach to photograph the king tide. This morning I submitted my photos to the California King Tides Project. Waves were washing way up the beach, and there was a pretty decent swell with an offshore wind. The only problem was, the offshore wind was blowing so hard that the handful of surfers out there seemed to find it a little too much of a good thing.

Six Bucks on a Hillside

Blacktail Bucks Going Antler-to-Antler

Turkeys in the Dappled Woods

Morning Light on Bolinas Ridge
(with Farallon Islands in center distance)

Stinson Beach and Bolinas Lagoon at King Tide

Rooster Tails at Stinson Beach

Color in the Spindrift

Toppled Trees Across Cataract Trail

Coyote Latrine Stop

Coyote Passing Through

Fox & Deer Composite

Deer Encounter Rushing Stream During Stormy Weather

A Fox Takes the Bridge

Tam Cam

* * *

Breaking the Law

 

Warm Sky, Cold Dawn

One way to look at it is, the universe broke the laws of physics. After the Big Bang, matter and antimatter should have been created in equal measure and cancelled each other out, but instead the symmetry between them was broken. Lucky for us, there was more matter than antimatter. One of the scientific terms for that matter-antimatter asymmetry illustrates the universe's law-breaking ways. That term is "charge-parity violation." 

Although Nobel Prizes have been won by scientists for discovering small-scale charge and parity violations, we still don't understand the large-scale violation that resulted in a universe that matters. Given the vast amount of energy that would be required to find out how it works experimentally, we might never be able to find the answer.

What I wondered, though, as I gazed into the pre-dawn sky while waiting for the crescent moon to rise (it came up too thin and too far south to photograph, alas), is what the universe would be like if there had been no violation. Suppose matter and antimatter did cancel each other out. Obviously, we would not be here to wonder about it, but if matter comprises only five percent of the universe, would the other ninety-five percent--the "dark matter"--still exist?

Would only a non-scientist such as myself ask such an impertinent question? I tried to google the answer with no luck. At least, not exactly. The most promising answer, to my mind, is that dark matter doesn't exist. Instead, we just need a new theory of gravity such as Milgromian dynamics (or Mond) which actually predicts the galactic shenanigans that dark matter was conjured up to try to explain.

I guess you can't really break the laws of physics. Matter-antimatter asymmetry happened, whether or not we ever figure out how. And Newton's law of gravitation, being a law written by a human, might need some tweaks to better explain our observations of galactic behavior.

I am in awe every day when I think about how deeply we have investigated the laws of nature, and the knowledge we have gained, even in my own lifetime. From the vastness of the cosmos to the intricacies of the subatomic realm, the more we learn, the more profound we find the mystery that remains. And that's even before we start talking about the greatest mystery of all, the mystery of life.

Peekaboo

* * *

Radar Games

 

Downtown Downpour

It had hardly rained at all since early this morning, but as soon as I decided to go out for a walk, the sky darkened around me. I had consulted a weather radar app on my phone, and it looked like the mass of rain would drift to the south, so I continued on my way to Grandview Park. A brief shower chased me under an eave over someone's driveway where I tried to ignore the security cameras pointed at me. As the rain let up I continued to the park and climbed the stairs against the flow of people heading back down to escape the coming rain.

From the top of the park it was plain to see that the rain was not going to pass to the south and miss me. When it reached me I took refuge under a tree and checked the radar to see if the rain would soon pass. No such luck. The yellow stuff on the radar looked pretty far off, though, so I stuck around to enjoy the view and the simple pleasure of being outdoors in some interesting weather. It was a little chilly to be standing around very long in shorts, though, so I reluctantly headed home.

This morning I was looking back at some blog posts from January 2014, which was a very dry month. I had set up my trail camera next to Redwood Creek, in a spot that I'm sure is completely underwater right now. But back then I had found a very picked-over deer carcass and set up the trail cam to see if anything was still coming by. I only wish I'd had video and audio on that camera, which was my first trail cam.

Storm Over Frisco

Nope, I'm not going to wait it out.

* * *

Break in the Rain

 

Sunrise Skyline

The morning got off to a colorful start, and I almost missed it. The cat was meowing for breakfast, and as I went to feed her I forgot to keep an eye on the changing sky. When I noticed what was happening out the window I dropped everything to run upstairs and grab the FZ-80 to get a quick shot out the bedroom window. The cat was completely understanding, and I returned to find her waiting patiently next to her soon-to-be-filled food dish.

I left the door open so she could go out afterwards, then went back upstairs to make myself some oatmeal and coffee before heading up to Mt. Tam to have a look at what the storms have wrought. I'd called the Pantoll Ranger Station the day before to confirm that the upper mountain was really closed (as their web site indicated). The ranger said it would remain closed indefinitely, so I drove up and parked on the shoulder between Bootjack and Pantoll to avoid paying the parking fees at either one, which was eight bucks the last time I checked. 

I'm still getting over the flu bug, or whatever it is (still testing negative for Covid-19), so I didn't plan to hike far. I figured I'd head out the Matt Davis Trail a ways to see what I might find. First off, you notice there's a lot of water flowing. You can hear it even when you can't see it. Second thing you notice is that Mother Nature laid out the green carpet for us. Fallen Douglas fir branches were everywhere. Just little ones mostly. The trees that actually topple over, like the two I encountered on the trail, tend to be bay laurels.

Much of the fungi were seriously waterlogged, but I found a few subjects that caught my interest, starting with a blob of witch's butter that had a group of tiny mycena mushrooms (possibly Mycena capillaripes) sprouting in the background. I also found a few furry-stalked Lepiota magnispora, some little orange guys that I thought might be Xeromphalina campanella until I realized the gills didn't attach to the stalk as I expected and the caps lacked striations. The question is, could weathering change all that? Or are these some kind of Lactarius or who-knows-what?

The last mushroom I photographed was an Amanita gemmata that had lost most of its gemmata-ness (the "jewels" or warts of remnant universal veil tissue). A younger one nearby still had some of the veil tissue on its cap. I replaced the younger one in its original hole after taking the picture, and I only wish I could easily find out whether it has continued to grow.

After emerging from the forest I continued a short distance to take in the view along Bolinas Ridge, where the Matt Davis Trail continues toward Stinson Beach, before turning around to head back. Looking up the hill I could see that the Douglas fir whose iconic top fell off seven years ago during a heavy December storm continues to lose more of its limbs. 

My only disappointment of the hike was finding no slime molds, not even species I've seen before. I just finished reading The Emperor of All Maladies by Siddhartha Mukherjee and learned that a guy named George Beadle was studying slime molds when he discovered that genes encode the proteins that make cells function. Unfortunately, I am unable to verify that. The information I find online all points to a fungus, Neurospora crassa, as the subject of Beadle's study, not a myxomycete. Oh well.

At around the same place in the book the author mentions that biologists first thought DNA was mere "cellular stuffing." A mentor of James Watson, Max Delbruck, even dubbed DNA a "stupid molecule," although according to The Atlantic, “Delbrück, Watson’s most important mentor, used such blunt skepticism to spur scientific rigor among his followers. The 'stupid molecule' remark, then, is best understood as prologue to the solution of the double helix in 1953, rather than as an obstacle to its having been solved sooner.”

Although the rain is sporadic today, it's not sporadic like it was the day before yesterday when we had those excellent thunderstorms come through. I walked over to Grandview Park to take in the storm and photograph any rainbows that might pop out. I got more than I bargained for with the storm when the temperature dropped and hail began pouring down. I didn't even see the bolt that probably hit Sutro Tower, but I sure heard the peeling CRRRRRAAAACK! of thunder whose thrilling surprise raised the hairs on the back of my neck.

Fungal Friends

The First of Several Waterfalls

Weathered Lepiota

A Fresher Lepiota

One of my favorite spots on this section of the Matt Davis Trail.

Falls Along Matt Davis Trail

White-Spored, Bland-Smelling Orange Mystery Fungus

Amanita gemmata

First of two trail interruptions due to fallen trees.

The Season's Last Blooming Coyote Brush

Partial Rainbow with Mt. Tam in the Distance

* * *

On the Sense of Awe

 

Central Coast Cloudscape

I don't think I've ever recommended a radio program before, but I just listened to an episode of KQED's Forum on the subject of awe and couldn't resist. Hopefully this link goes to the recorded program. What a pleasant surprise to hear a radio show about how to find awe. In a world where it seems we are all becoming more jaded or ironic, where we take this incredible world for granted, the farther we recede from the source of awe that lives within us. May 2023 be the year we get in touch with awe and reconnect with the profound magic of being alive in this intrinsically mysterious, fascinating, and, yes, awe-inspiring world.

New Year's Bobcat

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