Summer Fog

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I started hiking this morning on a thin dirt trail on the windward side of Bolinas Ridge. Visibility was probably around 100 feet, and the trail was covered by a golden-brown archway of knee- to hip-high grasses -- all of them heavily burdened with dew. My legs, shorts, and shoes and socks became completely soaked in very short order, and I had a long way to go. I stopped to take stock while a cold wind blew and reluctantly decided that to continue, to insist on reaching my intended destination, was untenable.

I was glad I hadn't brought my wife up to hike the route I did last week -- Pantoll to Stinson Beach via the Matt Davis Trail, then back up via Steep Ravine. It was foggy last week, but it was a relatively dry fog, with no dew-soaked grass or dripping forests. In fact, the morning light had been beautiful at a particular point along the trail, and my plan this morning had been to hike out to the same spot with my camera.

I've been taking a bit of a break from blogging and other online activities and have been making a few prints to better enjoy the fruit of my labor. I've made a few 8x12 and 16x24 metal prints, four 24x36 glossy prints mounted on gator board, and a 20x80 glossy panorama that I simply tacked to the wall. They all look great, if I do say so myself.

Something weird has been going on with the blog since around the beginning of summer. I'm not a stat-hound or anything, but I've noticed over the years that I tend to get around 30-50 pageviews a day. All of a sudden I'm getting 1,000 to 1,200 pageviews a day, and it's been going on like this for weeks.

Lots of bicyclists on the mountain this morning, and they were getting a nice little soaking as they passed beneath the redwoods on Bolinas Ridge. Reminded me that the Tour de France riders are about to climb into Switzerland. My camera and I got pretty soaked while I made a few compositions in the rainy forest. I headed home with my shoes and socks still soaked, about four hours after they first got that way.

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Solstice Sunset

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On June 11, two weeks before summer officially arrived, Mt. Tam experienced a ridiculously early "red flag" fire hazard day that closed the mountain and forced cancellations of both the Mountain Play and the Astronomy Program. This evening the only fire in the sky showed courtesy of the most incredible summer solstice sunset I can remember. As I biked home from work I thought the clouds looked promising for a nice sunset, but I perished the thought. San Francisco doesn't get great sunsets in the summertime.

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Palomarin Reef

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If you haven't been out to photograph on the reef in a while, as is true in my case, the reality of doing so takes very little time to catch up with the fantasy. The fantasy is that the reef is going to be teeming with interesting plants and critters. The reality is that one's poor eyesight is going to make a trial out of seeing any of it. If only there were more critters like the Hopkin's Rose nudibranch to bring fantasy and reality a little closer together. Despite its small size (~ 2 cm) even I could see this guy from twenty meters away.

Other than a raccoon, whose tracks I could just make out, and a possible bobcat, whose freshly twirled scat in the center of the thin trail marked its passing, I was the first large mammal to make it to the beach this morning. Sometimes you can tell you're the first to pass because you get a face full of fresh spider webs, but I could tell this morning because I was collecting all the dew as I hiked along the overgrown path. By the time I made it down to the beach I was completely soaked from the hips on down. For the last hundred yards, I could barely see the trail at my feet. Poison oak wasn't a problem, but watch out for the stinging nettles.

In looking for a new direction to occupy myself on weekends, I thought it might be fun to really learn about the reef -- get to know all the usual suspects, both plant and animal. I know that this will not be easy, and I wonder if I can stick with it. I thought it might help to think about how best to photograph the variety of species, and I sort of punted the idea down the road, thinking that I really need an aquarium for staging my images. Otherwise, how do you tease out the identifying characteristics of a mat of algae into a pleasing image? After this morning, I am certain only that more thought will be required.

This was one of two bat stars I saw on the reef. Both were on the small side, definitely not full-grown. I also saw several Pisaster sea stars, all of which were blandly ochre-colored, and one of which looked like it was in the process of succumbing to wasting disease.

In the Introduction to The Intertidal Wilderness, Anne Wertheim Rosenfeld writes, "In their natural habitat many sea anemones are calculated to be at least five hundred years old." She gives no reference for that statement, and I can't find anything online to back it up, but at least some cnidarians (a group that includes sea anemones) are said to be immortal, showing no sign of senescence even after many years.

In order to make things easier, I brought my camera and only one lens, a 105mm macro. Nevertheless, it is never truly easy to photograph on the reef. I bloodied my knees as I pressed closer to the nudibranch while a hermit crab scuttled by (they seemed to ignore each other as best they could, like a Muni passenger squeezing by to get off at the Civic Center). Tripod legs don't anchor as easily as they do on dry land either, what with the uneven and slippery surfaces, and not to mention the little aggregating anemones who don't appreciate getting a tripod foot planted in their gullets.

This nudibranch (Phidiana hiltoni) was in the same tidepool as the Hopkin's Rose. I'm sure I'd never have noticed it if I hadn't already been drawn close by the bubblegum 'branch. There was a second specimen at the bottom of the pool, but it stayed put, well out of range. A critter this small needs to be very close to the surface to be photographed well. If it's more than an inch deep, especially on a windy day (there were small craft warnings in effect today) the distortion will be awful. This 'branch is known from Duxbury Reef south (Palomarin Beach is north of, but basically contiguous, with Duxbury Reef).

One novelty of the morning was having direct sunlight on the reef. Not only did I drive all the way to the beach after sunrise -- a novelty in itself -- but I had abundant natural light and no fog. Nevertheless, it was breezy and cool, and sometimes I couldn't see well enough to compose an image because of watering eyes and a sniffling nose.

Brilliant camoflage. Like sparrows gleaning seeds along the trail, you don't even notice the lined shore crabs unless they move.

Although I wandered around quite a bit, I ended up returning the way I'd come and chanced to find the very same Hopkin's Rose I'd photographed earlier. It was now completely exposed to the air, the water level several inches below. It had taken up residence in a shallow hole in the rock and looked like some kind of anemone.

Low tide didn't last long. It was a minus tide with a minimal swell, but the reef was only well-exposed for about an hour on either side of the low.

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Changing Seasons

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I was surprised to arrive at the gate so early -- a good fifteen minutes before 7 a.m. -- to find a bunch of cars parked and waiting for the gate to be opened. There were eight cars parked in front of the gate before the ranger arrived and made it nine, plus me and two cars behind me across the street. Turns out we weren't all eager hikers or crazed photographers, but mostly folks there to get things ready for opening day of the Mountain Play.

I joined the convoy up the mountain and pulled out at Sunset Point. The light was gorgeous. I wish I had space on my walls to print and mount this 30x60-inch panorama. It's been a few weeks since I was up there, and it was interesting to see so much golden grass with just a hint of green left in it. Also, driving over the Golden Gate Bridge I'd noticed quite a few small fishing boats motoring out the bay toward the gate, and from this vantage point I could see many more at sea off Stinson Beach. Zooming into the details in this picture I counted 56 vessels, some at anchor and others leaving a wake.

There was lots of activity at Rock Spring as crews got ready to direct the crowds that would be arriving later for the play, but the trail was quiet as I hiked down toward Laurel Dell -- quiet enough to find a still-sleeping flower longhorn beetle on these mule ears. Quiet enough to enjoy the trilling of Pacific wrens and the skittering of Wilson's warblers foraging among the sword ferns.

Quiet enough to do some thinking about my next photography project, too, something I've been thinking about almost since I moved to California to go to photography school back in the early '80s. Unfortunately, I'm still seven or eight years away from being able to carry out my project because it will require much more time than I can devote to it right now.

Until then, I'll need to stay in shape both physically and photographically, and trust that I'll still want to do it when the time comes!

Which came first: the spring robin or the sprung robin?

Jewels in the serpentine.

Rock Spring at about 9 a.m.

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