Fantasy Ride

 

Bridge View Above Fort Point

Riding over the Golden Gate Bridge on a beautiful morning yesterday was a breeze, with hardly any cyclists coming the other way, and virtually no pedestrians. I could even afford to enjoy the view without concern. About mid-span, though, I reached what must have been a busload of tourists, soon  accompanied by an increase in cyclists coming the other way. No more time for reverie. Near the end of the bridge there's a short narrow section that I'm always grateful to be able to get through alone, but on this morning a cyclist coming the other way appeared to actually speed up in order to make sure that wouldn't happen. I'd be curious to know how much space was actually between us as we sped past each other. It seemed like about an inch.

Down in Sausalito, the waterfront was gorgeous, bathed in the same clear morning light that made me stop to take a picture at the Golden Gate Bridge. Richardson Bay was calm, and the tide was still heading to its low, though it hardly seemed like it. The low was going to be +3 feet, down only about a foot-and-a-half from its high. Riding my bike next to traffic on Bridgeway was about the same as usual, with cars and work trucks maybe a bit more than an arm's length away at times. I found myself grumbling in my mind about smog-belching deathmobiles passing too close for comfort until I thought, "Wait, isn't this ride supposed to be fun? Isn't this supposed to be enjoyable?"

I was only able to let the air out of my angst and revenge fantasies when I reached the bike path that starts at Mike's Bikes. I could finally direct my attention to the enjoyable parts of the ride, the lovely morning, pelicans diving into the bay, shorebirds working the tide line, but eventually I'd need to share the road again and live with the subtle stress of knowing I could be ground into roadkill by just one distracted driver. 

During the ride up Shoreline Highway, I savored the breaks between bouts of vehicle traffic. Some drivers will cut it very close in order to pass me, and others will be so timid about passing that I hope they aren't letting traffic pile up behind them, thereby setting the stage for drivers to heat up with rage against cyclists. 

When I finally reach Panoramic Highway I finally feel in the clear enough to relax and enjoy my surroundings once and for all, and it gets even better when I round the bend past Mountain Home Inn. Then I'm riding among the Doug fir and redwood forest, with weekday morning traffic being mercifully light--the cars, trucks, and buses coming few and far between. And then I reach Pantoll Road and head up to Rock Spring with an even lighter heart, scouting the grasslands for wildlife, being mesmerized by fog feeling its way through the forest below, taking note of the seasonal change marked by fallen acorns in the road.

Greater Yellowlegs Foraging Along Coyote Creek

If the coyote hadn't moved, I might not have seen her. Even though I was nowhere near her, she ambled into the woods to get away from a human's prying eyes.

A female California darner clung to a thistle branch along the Cataract Trail and obligingly stayed put long enough for me to snap a picture. She blended in so well with her perch and background that it was a little tricky even to find her in the tiny FZ-80 electronic viewfinder.

Howdy, Skipper!

Poison Oak Turning Color

This Buckeye Butterfly allowed me to get close as long as my shadow didn't interfere with its sun bath on the Cataract Trail.

The goldfinches are still around, and still gathering to drink at the Rock Spring water tank. I'd seen a red-shouldered hawk not too far away, and the goldfinches kept nearly constant look-out, ready to peel away from the tank and into nearby cover at the slightest provocation.

I almost didn't see the white-breasted nuthatch several feet away from the goldfinches. They were drinking from a spot that water actually dripped from, but the nuthatch was satisfied with a merely damp seep.

* * *

The Fallen

 

Tibouchina urvilleanum

It's about a week from the fall equinox, that evanescent perfection of Earth's balance of light and darkness. As we tilt toward greater darkness, plants will cannibalize their green chlorophyll machinery and sequester energy for the future. Leaves will fade to yellow, then brown, and finally give in to gravity's embrace. 

Just the other day I walked past fallen royalty, the purple petals of princess flower on Noriega Street. The tree's energy will now turn from flower production to fruit formation.

Leaves and flower petals aren't the only things that fall. I streamed a movie the other night despite knowing nothing more about it than the fact that it starred Harry Dean Stanton. I almost turned it off during the slow beginning, which included scenes of an old guy doing his morning exercises in his underwear. Something that happens pretty much every day where I live. In fact, I hope I'm still doing it when I'm 90 years old like Harry was in the movie, called Lucky. 

I think I was reaching for the remote when the pace picked up in the nick of time. That might have been when David Lynch appeared, full of years and quirky lines such as, "There are some things in this universe, ladies and gentlemen, that are bigger than all of us. And a tortoise is one of 'em!". (Although David Lynch has a brother named John, David is not related to the movie's director, John Carroll Lynch.)

You could be forgiven for thinking of Lucky as more of a winter movie than a fall movie. But Harry's fall from grace is a metaphor of humanity's fall from grace, its banishment from the Garden of Eden for breaking a rule. Don't light up. Don't become enlightened. If you eat the fruit of knowledge, you will be expelled like a fallen angel. Personally, I like to think that story is about the knowledge of good and evil being the turning point between our animal state of nature and our cultural state of civilization.

Not that I subscribe to any such arbitrary notion that civilization is antithetical to nature. Even if we insist they are different, they remain entwined. And if you wonder which one is the real boss, think about where civilization would be without abundant fresh water. Here we are in all our glory, fancy-pants human beings, utterly dependent for our lives on one little molecule.

* * *

Ruby Mountains

September Color at Dollar Lake

After several years of being shut down by weather, wildfire, and scheduling issues, we both figured it was this year or never. So a friend and I decided to make the long drive out to Nevada's Ruby Mountains despite the fact that rain was in the forecast, and that the best part of the Lamoille Canyon Scenic Byway, which also leads to the most popular trailhead, was scheduled to be closed for road maintenance. 

The good news was that the road closure was postponed. The bad news was that inclement weather was the reason.

It had been so long since we first planned to visit the Ruby Mountains (named by early explorers who mistook garnets for rubies) that we couldn't even remember how we'd heard about this small slice of the Sierra Nevada (figuratively speaking) in the basin-and-range country near Elko, Nevada. But the scheduling gods finally granted us an opening, so we threw caution to the winds in the hope of finally kicking this place off our bucket list. 

We loaded everything into my friend's VW camper van and zoomed east on I-80, up through a very smoky Sierra Nevada and into the fresh air of the desert, where the speed limit was sometimes 80 mph. We reveled in the beautiful blue skies studded with massive clouds, including distant thunderheads unleashing dark-gray curtains of rain. 

Having interesting skies in September seemed like a generous bonus from the weather gods during such a long drive. 

Although the daily chance of precipitation in Elko (the town next to the Ruby Mountains) rarely rises above twenty percent even in the rainy season, the National Weather Service issued a flood watch for the region this week due to "significant subtropical moisture" moving in. Yesterday, several rainfall records were broken throughout Nevada, and heavy rain remains in the forecast through tonight around Elko and the Ruby Mountains.

I mention all this because even though my friend was going to have a dry sleep in his camper van, I was going to spend the night at the Thomas Canyon Campground staving off several leaks in my North Face Lenticular tent. Luckily I'd thought to bring a towel to sop up the rivulets and puddles I noticed when I was periodically awakened during the night by heavy downpours. The  ground on the nicely groomed tent pad (this was a $27/night USFS campground after all) eventually became saturated, and a pool of water formed. I was grateful that I hadn't pitched my tent where the pool was deepest.

I took stock of the situation in the morning and, despite having experienced an interesting night, I was confident that I could do it again the next night as long as the sun came out and dried my gear. I pulled up stakes for the second time (the first had been done during the night to escape the rising pool of water) and carried my tent over to the relatively dry and non-absorbent cement pad next to the picnic table so it could dry out while we drove up-canyon to see if the road had been closed. 

It had not, and we were able to drive all the way up to road's end. The valley was quite beautiful, even with fog and clouds obscuring the peaks. Had we come in September 2018, we'd have been chased out by wildfire. Now it was raining almost non-stop, and we had to eat our lunch inside the van. When we finally returned to camp I found more rivulets and pools of water inside my soggy tent. The towel that had saved me the night before was still nearly saturated. It was obvious that there was no way for me to stay dry another night.

Even if I'd had a better tent, we'd have been spending all day and night being rained on, so we reluctantly decided to pack up. As I began to take down my tent I was grateful to the weather gods for hitting pause on the rain. But of course, those weather gods do have a sense of humor, and I was soon racing against the rain to get my completely drenched tent disassembled and stuffed into its sack. 

I was expecting that we would descend from the Rubies to find sunshine down in Elko, but  even that was not to be. Storm clouds were everywhere, and there was nowhere to dry out.

So we'd finally gotten to the Ruby Mountains--our Big Rock Candy Mountain that had turned into our White Whale--covering more than a thousand miles of road in two days. We drove through the smoke-filled Sierra with our pandemic face masks on, and the Dutch Fire closed westbound I-80 on our way home, sending us on a detour of dark and unfamiliar winding roads past Nevada City and Auburn. We got home at about 11 p.m., and our clothing smelled like smoke despite the fact that we'd had no campfire and had driven with the windows up and the air on recirculate.

I left my Nikon gear at home and did all my photography with the Panasonic FZ-80 and my smartphone. I'd like to go back someday with my "real" gear, perhaps as a stop on a more wide-ranging tour of the basin-and-range country.

Right now my tent is hanging off the back stairs to dry. It might take a while, as it's quite foggy out. I recently wrote about "sweet fog," but I might have to get on my bike and ride out somewhere to find a little sunshine.

Ominous Beauty on the Approach to the Ruby Mountains

Heading Up Lamoille Canyon Road

Nearly 10,000 acres burned in September 2018.

Lamoille Canyon, September 2022

Tree Skeletons

Trying to Stay Dry

During the night of rain, I had to move the tent to the highest part of the tent pad (one side of which is the wood beam to the right of the tent) to back away from a growing pool of water.

Rabbit Brush in Lamoille Canyon

Lamoille Creek at Road's End, NF-660

Fireweed and Aspen Along Lamoille Creek

Trail angels had left a bunch of bottled water for hikers who might not have brought their own, but there was little chance of dehydrating or getting too hot on this rainy, 55-degree day.

On the Trail: Ruby Crest National Recreation Area

Trailside Views Along Lamoille Creek

Climbing Switchbacks in the Rain

Possible Glacial Erratic on the Edge

Pine Belt Around Dollar Lake

Mushroom in the Pines

Dollar Lake (9,600' elev.), a glacial tarn, has been expanded in size by the handiwork of beavers.

The beaver lodge is that brown hump at the far end of the lake, between the trees.

Beavers had engineered a mud-and-stick dam all around the downstream perimeter. I never saw a beaver, but a duck landed on the lake while I was there. I wondered how beaver ever got to this remote location which is surrounded by desert.

Looking back down from near Dollar Lake, the Road's End parking area is in the center, just in front of the wall of clouds.

Lots of weather at the base of the Rubies

"God beams" on the way back to California.

The sun begins to turn wildfire smoke red as it sinks into the west.

* * *

Smoked

Smoky View From Mt. Tam

I could tell that wildfire smoke had drifted in overnight by the blood-orange color of the rising sun, and I debated with myself for about two seconds as to whether I should ride up to Mt. Tam despite the poor air quality. On the way out of the city I couldn't tell what was smoke and what was fog. 

I stopped at the Good Earth grocery store in Tam Junction to pick up a bite to eat and noticed the temperature was a pleasant 70 degrees. Heading up the mountain, the smell of smoke finally broke through after I gained enough altitude to really be in the thick of it. By the time I reached Rock Spring and unwrapped my breakfast burrito at a picnic table there, the temperature was 89 degrees. It would be 91.2 by the time I left an hour or so later.

The first thing I noticed when I hiked out to the trail camera was a large blue dragonfly zipping back and forth directly in front of the camera. Sure enough, the camera had recorded two or three gazillion captures of blue streaks. I considered moving the camera to a new pool, but when I checked the card I saw that a bobcat had come by to drink that very morning, so I left the camera in place. While I was fiddling with the set-up I heard a red-breasted nuthatch whistling right behind me. The cute little fella gingerly made its way down for a drink just a few feet away, showing off its bravado to other nearby nuthatches that cheered from the branches far above.

Smoky San Francisco Skyline

Lines of Hills and Smoke

Red-breasted Nuthatch

Flicker Feather & Bay Leaves

Time, Temperature & Turkey Feather

Early Morning Bobcat

Coming In For A Drink

Tam Cam Clips in Chron Order
(Late Aug. to Early Sep.)

* * *

Sweet Fog

 

Sun & Fog at Point Reyes

Back in high school I'd go over to a friend's house and we'd listen to his George Carlin records, and one of Carlin's bits was about phrases that no one has ever said before, like, "Hand me that piano." I think of Carlin's joke from time to time, like when I'm thinking about how much I'm looking forward to having the fog blow in. 

In my neighborhood, a sunny day is an almost magical thing. Who could want that nasty bone-chilling fog to blow in?! But there does come a point where enough is enough, and for me, so accustomed to San Francisco's narrow temperature range, that point comes well before the mercury reaches triple digits.

After my morning walk and bike ride yesterday I still felt frisky enough, despite sweating profusely, to plan a bike ride up to Mt. Tam today. It seemed like it might be interesting to test myself in the heat for five hours of biking and hiking. But later in the day I read a couple of news stories about people dying in the heat and figured I should show the heat more respect and wait until the fog returns, hopefully tomorrow. 

Half a lifetime ago I would do a twenty-mile bike ride after work on the flat, country roads around Davis, and when the temperature shot up to 115 degrees one day I decided to ride anyway, just for the adventure of it. I soaked a t-shirt in water and wrapped it around my head and took off with two full water bottles. The ride usually took about an hour, but even in that short time I got so hot that I stopped to re-soak my headband t-shirt in farm ditch-water, twice. And when I got back to Davis I went to the pool to cool off and recover.

I've had other experiences of learning respect for excessive heat, so even though I still feel that adventurous spirit, I'm worried about my mind writing checks my body can't cash. I'll tell myself that discretion is the better part of valor, even if it feels like I chickened out. 

When I began my walk today at around 8 a.m. I had second thoughts. It wasn't all that hot after all. But by the time I was climbing back up the hill about ninety minutes later I felt like I'd made the right decision. Maybe tomorrow San Francisco will experience the sweet spot of fog and sun like I found one September morning out at Pt. Reyes.

Pierce Ranch

Facing the Sun with Back to the Fog

Fog Jewelry

* * *

Like Flies On Stink

 

Fly Feasting on Fungal Fruiting

Looks like I picked the wrong week to give up Klondike Bars. As Duran Duran sang last night at Chase Center, "Darken the city, night is a wire; Steam in the subway, earth is afire." Yes, indeed, the heat wave is on. Although, thankfully there was no steam in the subway, since we took the N-Judah home at about midnight. Which is why I almost didn't feel like riding down to Sunset Boulevard this morning to look for flies on the Latticed Stinkhorn. But I'm glad I did. I could smell the fruiting from ten feet away, and the scent was not coming from juices like wine. If I tell you that the flies, three species by my guess, were hungry like the wolf for that stinkhorn juice, I promise to make no further Duran Duran references.

Just to throw in a little hodgepodge, my wife and I took an educational plant walk on Mt. Davidson on Saturday with biodiversity champions Jake Sigg and Ruth Gravanis. I hadn't been to Mt. D in a very long time despite the fact that it takes less than ten minutes to drive over there. I learned of the hike through Jake's newsletter, a short and interesting read that he cranks out two or three times a week, for free, via email. Jake is my neighbor on the east side, and I often enjoy watching birds working through a large coast live oak in his back yard, which he planted as an acorn in the late 1960s.

As for my neighbor on the north side, ordinarily you wouldn't think there was any space at all between our two duplexes, but there are certain times of the year when the sun shines through the space between the buildings. It creates a really cool side-light on the side of the building, and my wife discovered yesterday an even cooler effect by putting your hand on the wall.

Finally, as I stepped out onto the stairway landing to our back yard this morning, I heard a chewing sound that I feared meant that the gophers had returned. I stealthily descended the stairs and picked up my gopher-poking stick at the bottom, only to see that the culprit was a squirrel. Now I knew who has recently been chewing on an antler in our garden, enjoying its fine mineral nutrition.

Another of the three species of flies partaking of nature's bounty.

The Fruiting This Morning, Sept. 5, 2022
(More fruiting has begun in the wood chips beneath the nearby strawberry madrone.)

Urban Biodiversity Hike on Mt. Davidson,
With San Francisco Skyline & Mt. Diablo in Background

Touching the Light

Antler-Munching Squirrel

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