“Listen, and lay your head under the tree of awe.”
—Rumi
Although I don't anticipate adding new posts to the blog for a while, I'll still enjoy leafing through pages from the past, especially pages from the same month in different years.
And speaking of revisiting the past, I recently returned to a part of Mt. Tamalpais where I used to roam around quite a bit back in the early '90s, a place where I could allow the landscape to reveal itself to me over a period of years, a place above Redwood Creek and west of Muir Woods that I called Bobcat Hill. I was drawn into that landscape by the inviting sight of a thin deer trail that meandered like a mountain stream through coyote brush embankments. It's headwaters disappeared over a hilltop horizon where nature's secrets beckoned from beyond.
The deer trail has faded quite a bit in the ensuing years. The coyote brush has grown so thick that whole meadows of bunchgrass where mission bells once bloomed have disappeared, as well as old landmarks like a small grove of Douglas firs under whose branches I took refuge from rain and wind, and where I once startled a sleeping coyote. A small grove of spindly oaks that occasionally sprouted a chanterelle motherlode has disappeared. A stony outcrop where vultures used to warm their wings in the morning was gone, buried in dense chaparral. The sunny patch of meadow where I once did a vision quest was an impenetrable thicket.
December Scenes
