Battery Check

The latest update from Mt. Tam State Park is still, as I write this, the one from way back on May 1. Yes, it seems like the first of May was a long time ago. While I remain hopeful that they'll open the mountain to vehicle access this month, I'm glad my two-battery ebike system can get me up there in the meantime. I rode up on Sunday morning, leaving the house at about 9 o'clock.

View of the Marin Headlands from the cyclist's side of the Golden Gate Bridge.

Nice to see that Sausalito was ignored by looters.  

I reached Mt. Tam at about 10:45, which makes the ebike trip about one hour longer than driving up in my car. The yellow mariposa lilies (Calochortus luteus) are now in bloom. I didn't see any just a week ago.

Even though I had only a week's worth of material on the wildlife cams, I wanted to check up on them since I'd placed two of them in slightly different spots. I'd also set them to shoot very brief six-second videos in addition to capturing still frames. Two of the cams were loaded with Eneloop Pro batteries and had plenty of juice left, but the third cam, loaded with regular Eneloops, was almost out of juice already. I ordered another eight-pack of the Pros today.

Unfortunately, I'm getting just a bit too close to the animals with this camera placement.

In case you weren't sure what that critter in the still shot was, here's a frame-capture from the video.

And one more.

A composite with Buck and Gray Fox.

Another composite with Fawn and Jackrabbit. I actually saw the fawn and its mom live and in person when I was up there on Sunday. So cute. They were right on the edge of a small meadow, staring at me. By the time I got my phone out, the camera app on, and the 3X "telephoto" dialed in, the deer had slipped into the forest, out of sight.

I was disappointed to see that my only bobcat of the week zipped through the frame before the camera's trigger engaged. I had it set to fire three frames, and this was the first. The next two, as well as the following video clip, were blank. I have the least expensive model, and the specs on that page don't even mention the trigger speed. Elsewhere I've seen it advertised as half a second, which is more than twice as slow as a similarly priced Bushnell, which triggers in two-tenths of a second. Normally I don't place the cams so close to a cross-trail because of the slow trigger speed, but I am actually hoping with this placement to catch critters walking toward the camera.

I was really impressed with how green everything still was in the woods on May 31st. The forest floor was still damp enough that the leaves didn't crunch underfoot.

A few wild turkeys foraged in the grass next to the Rock Spring parking lot.

View on YouTube

About a half-minute smartphone pan of the forest with birdsong.

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Greetings from San Francisco

The news this morning was full of nationwide protests that had ranged from righteous to violent the night before, including a drive-by shooting of security guards at the federal courthouse across the bay. I've been in that courthouse many times, and just last week put in a 12.5-hour day with the environmental organization I work for, filing motions to join three lawsuits being heard in courtrooms in that building to protect people in the City of Richmond from coal-dust pollution, which kills much more slowly than bullets do, or for that matter, a police officer's weight on a citizen's neck. 

I biked into the office this morning and was surprised and glad to find Market Street as mellow as can be, with protests planned for the afternoon. Heading home along the waterfront, still before noon, I saw that the Ferry Building's farmer's market was on, and noted that everything seemed pretty normal despite the horror and tragedy going on elsewhere. 

I was reminded of a time at Headwaters Outdoor School where a group of us sat in a circle as two of us held a pair of lovely, lively chickens that were destined to become our dinner that evening. All of us sat in attentive reverence as their necks were wrung, and I recall watching their bright-red combs fade to some neutral color as they died. 

As I looked down in front of my feet while the chickens' lives faded away, I saw a busy trail of ants gathering seeds and showing no sign of any perturbation in The Force. The killing was done, and life went on. 

Life and death, action and reaction. The callous murder of an innocent man. The burning of cities in rage. The laws of life can be cold, yet the beautiful sadness of being human is almost preturnaturally warm. It might not give comfort, but the way of truth doesn't give a rat's pink derierre about making us feel comfortable.  

View Toward Alcatraz

When my wife heard last week's news that Pier 45 had burned, she mourned the loss of the Musée Mécanique (donate) which holds special significance for her. Back in 1996 when we met, she told me her dream job would be to guide tours of San Francisco, and Laffing Sal would have been a key stop. Thankfully, as we learned only after my wife's tears of sadness had fallen down her cheeks, the museum survived. On my way home this morning I had to take a picture of the "Thank You SFFD" sign out front.

With all the talk of super-busy bike shops (including my own, Everybody Bikes), I was surprised this morning to find nine bikes that seem to have been all but abandoned in the bike cage at work.

The view from yesterday: Grandview Park lost in the fog.

I was chillin' with the neighborhood cat when I asked her opinion of the coronavirus. I couldn't agree more with her reply.

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Heat Wave

Day 1, Tuesday, May 26, 2020: For the first time in a long time--maybe the first time since the shelter-in-place began--it is warm enough to take my morning walk without a longjohn top or windbreaker.

Day 2: Morning fog has formed over the ocean and the entrance to San Francisco Bay, but it's still warm enough to walk in shorts and a t-shirt.

Day 3: Windy and cold this morning, so the longjohn top was on again. It seems to me that the city usually gets three days of sunny weather during these heat waves, so I'm a little disappointed that we only got two days this time. Last year we got an unusual four days of very warm weather (and I'm talking about warm all the way to the coast, not just east of Twin Peaks), and that was almost too much sun for us fog-dwelling folk in the Sunset District. 

When the heat waves come, I bring our only fan upstairs from storage. We close all the curtains during the day to keep the sun out, and we open the windows at night to let the cool air in. I've suffered through summers without air conditioning in Davis and Sonora; now my air conditioning is provided by fog. 

When the trees are dripping like they were this morning, I'm reminded of Coast Redwoods which depend on the fog for moisture, and I'm also reminded of a time or two that I've been seriously cold while encountering large puddles of water in redwood forests--in August--with scorching sunshine just a few minutes' hike away.

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