Fading Glume

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The mountain was bathed in gloom when I arrived shortly after 7 a.m. I'd worn shorts but was glad I'd brought a long-john top as well as a wind-breaker. And gloves. It was only a week after my last visit, but as I took shelter from the drizzle beneath a rocky overhang along the Old Mine Trail, spring seemed to have reversed its direction to head back toward winter. Finally, a flash of sun painted the landscape and I tripped the shutter three or four times before the flash was over.

The wind was coming up, so I took cover behind a grove of trees surrounding Forbes Bench and photographed some cobwebby thistle. Red-breasted nuthatches called from the nearby woods.

I'd been shooting with a 50mm lens, but was glad I'd brought a long lens, 300mm, as well, when the hills south of the mountain started to pick up some interesting light.

Soon enough, the rising wind swept away the clouds and fog.

The sun was too high for my purposes by then, unfortunately, so I roamed around and was intrigued by more cobwebby thistle, here sporting a cup of crystal dewdrops.

I created a dreamy version of cobwebby thistle by overlaying an out-of-focus frame with a sharp-focused frame, then played with the opacity of the latter until the blended images appealed to me.

I'd been hearing the gobbling of turkeys nearby, but I was still surprised when a pair of toms suddenly emerged from the forest close behind me. The colors of these birds are just incredible. What if we could always appreciate beauty as much as, say, money? It's easy to get rich on beauty. All you have to do is let go of all your troubles, and beauty you hadn't even noticed before will magically flare up all around you.

As I followed the turkeys strutting their stuff with cobwebby thistle in the background, I noticed that last week really was "Peak Green." The glumes and florets of tall grasses bowing under the weight of seeds, dew, and wind, were already fading toward brown.

I got back in the car to check out another location after the gate out to West Ridgecrest opened. Three bucks were resting and feeding near a tall oak tree where many years ago I found a recently placed grave for someone's pet. 

The biggest surprise of the morning was finding this fruiting of Gomphidius glutinosus mushrooms. I photographed them in a bed of lichen with a couple of flax flowers and a blue-eyed grass.

Just a few feet away, this lone spotted coral root orchid, a non-photosynthesizing plant that relies on mycorrhizal fungi, rather than sunlight, to survive, bloomed from the douglas fir duff on the forest floor. 

As I packed up my camera gear for the last time I noticed all the birdsong in the air, and my Merlin app recorded chestnut-backed chickadee, acorn woodpecker, black-throated gray warbler, and hermit warbler. My feet were cold and wet from walking through all the dew-laden grasses, but the sun was shining. I gratefully hiked back to my car with no ticks crawling up my legs. 

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Street Scenes

On my morning walk today I noticed this nice little world between the cracks that illustrates a crack between the worlds of weed and garden. When it came time for my afternoon walk I decided to bring along my DSLR and 50mm lens to snap it up.

A very short distance beyond the street bouquet I admired the almost animal-like patterns of vine remnants clinging to a retaining wall.

Mother Nature's graffiti.

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Peak Green

The little bit of rain we've had lately has spruced things up on Mt. Tam quite nicely, and I'd have to call it "peak green" right now, although it'll probably last at least through next weekend. I hope so, because as I hiked today I wished I had my DSLR with me at a couple of choice spots.

I arrived at the locked gate about eight minutes before opening, pulling in behind a guy who got out of his pick-up truck right away and started walking toward the gate. I thought how lucky I'd been to arrive right behind the ranger, but the guy wasn't the ranger. He was just stretching his legs. The ranger came right about 7 a.m. and opened the gate, then asked us not to park in front of the gate, something I've been doing since before the ranger was born (not really, but that's how it felt). He even pointed out the "No Parking" sign right next to my car and told us that in the future we should wait over at the Pantoll campground parking lot. Okeedokee, we were fine with that. Things change.

My wife was still recovering from the work week, so I hiked our usual loop by myself. I've been thinking about place names lately, and how I often don't remember the names of streets I've lived around for twenty years. We've hiked our loop so many times, though, I've made up my own names for places along the trail. Along the Old Mine, Matt Davis, and Bolinas Ridge trails there are place names on no map except the one in my head: Lupine Lookout, Tinker's Fence, Sun-Squirrel Tree, Bigfoot Bend, and Dandelion Overlook. This morning I added Woodpecker's Choice after spotting this pileated woodpecker. At first it was pecking inside the hole, but I got too close and it hopped out but stayed close by and went back in after I backed away. 

Back in January of 2016 I took this selfie with a young bay laurel tree that had an interesting cone-shaped base created by browsing deer. I recently passed by that tree and determined to photograph it now, six years later (that rain jacket has since fallen apart, and I lost the hat after driving away with it still on the roof of my car). I figured I might as well do it this morning so I wouldn't forget, even though I had to use my phone camera.

I didn't get the same angle, but it was interesting to see the difference. The basal branches were just shriveled dead things. I hadn't brought the original picture with me, but I'd remembered the dead tanoak in the background and thought I could line up with that, but there was no sign of the dead tanoak. In fact, there was tanoak in the background, and it looked healthy. Maybe the drought is doing to sudden oak death what it once did to the chorus-frog-eating bullfrogs some fool had put in Lily Lake.

On the morning's hike I'd exercised my legs on the trail, feasted my eyes on the gorgeous landscape, and enjoyed the sounds of singing hermit warblers and other birds, and I was almost back to Rock Spring when I realized I hadn't stopped to enjoy any smells. I picked up a dried bay laurel leaf and crushed it under my nose. The scent lit me up. The first time I'd done that was in the mid-1980s in the Santa Ynez Mountains behind Santa Barbara. I'd used a fresh green leaf and inhaled deeply -- too deeply! Whatever chemicals are in those leaves (pinocarbone and umbellulone, among others) made me so light-headed that I had to sit down before I risked toppling over.

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Morning Sky

Here in the Sunset District we don't take it for granted that we'll be able to see the sky on any given morning, so it's always a pleasant surprise to have a clear view when we open the curtains after shutting off the alarm clock. This morning the waning crescent moon had just risen above Twin Peaks, and the appearance of Venus and Jupiter were icing on the cake.

Today is my first official day back in the office since the pandemic, so I'm going to take the morning sky as a good omen. I skipped my usual routine to grab my camera and a couple of lenses and step outside into the cool, but not very quiet, pre-dawn neighborhood. With a garbage truck noisily working its way up the hill I snapped a couple of frames and headed back indoors.

Mars and Saturn were supposedly out there above and to the right of Venus, but I couldn't see them. Jupiter will get closer to Venus over the next couple of days until they actually appear to touch.

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Grandview Park

Ordinarily I'd have included this park on my morning walk, which today would have been about a half-hour before sunrise. But as I began my walk I thought I heard some little birds or varmints scurrying in the red trumpet vines next to the sidewalk. Only when I had passed the vines did I realize the sound was drizzling rain. 

It was very light, though, so I continued my walk. Naturally, the rain started to fall harder instead of stopping, so I took refuge beneath an overhang in someone's driveway. I waited and waited, then finally started walking back home since I needed to stay on schedule. Back at home, Pam had changed out of her walking-to-work clothes so she could catch the bus. Naturally, the rain soon stopped. No morning walks for us!

But hey, at least it's Friday. I took another spin up to the park for my 10 a.m. walk and brought my camera along to capture the three-in-one: cloudscape, cityscape, and landscape.

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