Lazy Days

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Made my first stop at Muir Beach Sunday morning to check up on the coho action. Sill too early. Redwood Creek has cut a new channel into the ocean, just a bit south of where it was on my last visit. A couple of large swells pushed their salty way up the creek quite a distance, and I imagined a smart salmon body-surfing a head start into the creek on such a swell. Dec. 15, 2006 is the last time I saw salmon spawning in Redwood Creek, so hopefully the time is just about right, if we get more rain.

Found this strange altar in a small clearing just to the north off the Benstein Trail. There were a couple other rock placements nearby that had been dug up by animals, so I assumed there wasn't a dead pet at the center of this intact pile of stones, feathers, bones, store-bought shells, and such.

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Mendo Morsels

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Spent a couple of days in beautiful Mendocino where we stayed in a cabin in the redwoods a few miles up the Comptche-Ukiah Road. We had one dry day and two wet ones, so we did most of our outdoor explorations on the dry day. The ocean was producing some large swells which appeared to be taking a toll on these nearly frond-free sea palms. Love the water color though.

This has become our new favorite hang-out on the Mendo headlands. We sat facing the ocean with our feet hanging over the edge, a great scene to be a part of.

I brought three small books to read while I was up there: Tribe by Sebastian Junger, Upstream by Mary Oliver, and The Hidden Life of Trees of Peter Wohlleben. They got me thinking about the life and further adventures of this drift log, which might have started as a seedling next to a river, grown strong and tall for hundreds of years as the river chipped away at the bank, and finally toppled into the river and out to sea during a heavy storm, then to drift among the swells, bull kelp and sea otters until it came to rest on this small sandy beach at the foot of Mendocino.

We joined the teeming hordes at Glass Beach in Fort Bragg. It's kind of amazing there's anymore glass at all after years, even decades, of gleaning by collectors of sea glass. I took only pictures myself, sea glass in a mussel shell and in a small abalone shell.

There's a great photography gallery in Fort Bragg that's always worth checking out. It's kind of hidden around the back of the main drag, and we just made it before closing time after a late lunch and craft beers at North Coast Brewing Co. 

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Dr. Strange

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Pam and I went to see the movie Dr. Strange at the Alamo Draft House on Saturday, and it got me thinking. Always a dangerous thing.... 

I see people like Dr. Strange almost every time I drive on the freeways – arrogant idiots who endanger other people’s lives with their own recklessness. The second-best thing that can happen to someone like that is they go upside-down and on fire all by themselves. The best thing that can happen is what happened to Dr. Strange.

When Western medicine can’t give him what he wants, Dr. Strange risks everything on a desperate attempt to find someone who can fix him. He journeys to the East. He believes he has risked everything, but he can’t even risk his own arrogance. That arrogance is stripped away only when he sees for himself that there is a heretofore unknown dimension of awareness. Only now does he see how lowly his old keyhole existence actually was. Only now is he humble enough to be a student.

His last material possession is useless for its intended purpose, but it’s inscribed with magic words that will bind him to earth as he undertakes the supernatural adventure of a lifetime. He does battle with a powerful enemy, but he also has powerful allies and finds supernatural aids, including a levitation cloak and a double ring of power. His final battle is with the enemy of life itself.

We don’t have to be world-class surgeons to be self-absorbed keyhole mongers. We probably don’t have to be forced into dire straits to begin the Strange adventure. That is, we probably don’t have to go into it kicking and screaming and wanting our mommy.

Then again, maybe we do…. (Cue the evil laughter.) 

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