Tassajara Zen Center June 13-18, 2010

This place is a blessing.

Resilience-freedom-ease-elegance in challenge and intimacy.

THREE SEED SOURDOUGH ROUND, BRIE AND SPROUT BREAKFAST

“When you say ‘I breathe’ the ‘I’ is extra.” Suzuki Roshi.

Sound of chanting - sound of raking

- sound of creek dancing - sound of listening.

BODHISATVA TRAINING: “Formal Practice, Informal Mind” - Suzuki Roshi

and “What we are doing here is too important to be taken seriously.”

be curious.  allow yourself to be surprised

click here for the big picture(s)

Metta and gratitude to the Tassajara students and

Mark Stephens, Yoga

Linda Galijan, San Francisco Zen Center

Dumped rain and snowed at start, swimming at end, missing all of the Peanut Gallery except Kimmy the steadfast Tequila Liaison who ended up taking shots for all those missing [ Ellen stayed home for fear of getting sick but caught pnemonia anyway just THINKING of camping in the snow, Anna was jet lagged just back from Nepal, Myles stayed home with Chloe who had head lice, Andy had broken his wrist, etc etc, etc].

Jams were good, cocktail hour again epic, lots of lovely time with the Santa Barbara Crew and - as every year - surprising sweet healing and AH YES! its SUMMER! [More fun pics]

Reward for scramble out a thousand feet above Rancheria Falls

- La Conte Point, Hetch Hetchy Resevoir, Kolana Rock, and Hetch Hetchy Dome

Granite Scramble and look back over Tiltill Valley

One secret view spot - 5 falls - 2 painters - 0 other hikers for 2 hours

- Liberty Cap, Vernal and Nevada Falls, Illouette Falls, Glacier Point, Upper and Lower Yosemite Falls

Ohlone Regional Wilderness Trip - May 2010

Stayed over on Mission Peak with Heather and Pete - lazy morning’d it Friday then Pete drove us to Sunol to begin the walk. On the way we spotted a raptor nest in a sycamore just off the road to Sunol and stopped - intermediate dark colored red tail - rusty collar, speckly dark tummy and elsewhere - with two like chicks on the nest.  Hiked in 3.5 miles to Sunol Backpack camp in the warm afternoon - coyotes, blinking airplane towers and right under the flyway for SJO and SFO.  Realized we’d forgotten stove.  Befriended neighbors who cooked our dinner and polished off a whole bottle of Crown Royale after eating carnitas and chocolate pudding on tortillas. Clear night turned to foggy damp morning with no rainfly on.  Borrowed stove with limited propane fuel. Befriended a pack of gents whom Heather knew five different ways from Arcata.

Hiked over 6.5 miles and 1.5 K elevation to Rose Peak with a side trip to Goat Rock. Last half the day walking with the gents, getting water out of S Fork Indians Creek and enjoying Berkeley Bowl coffee on the summit of Rose Peak.  Realized we could see where all of our parents lived from that spot.  Dropped a bit to Maggie’s Half Acre for camp, borrowing stoves to conserve fuel.

Night hike to the peak with Venus and the Moon having a hot date in the west and us laying on the peak in all our layers chomping burnt caramel toffees and tea.  Fabulous dawn chorus  and biscuits in the morning from neighbors.  Final circle back to the peak on the way out, the valleys fogged in lovely below.  On a pass just below the peak spotted a far off set of hikers, then a bird across the valley -  TV turned to eagle cutting through a slot in the forest and zooming over our pass at eye level, 10 feet off the  ground and 50 feet away FAST then around the bend and gone, Yahoo! Sibley’s later told us likely juvenile bald eagle.

Met the group of day hikers doing a 30 miler over Mission Peak (”hey honey - come meet a celebrity!  She LIVES on Mission Peak”).  Met several runners training for 50 and 100K races all the way back in there in just running shorts and two water bottles in hand. Amazing wildflowers all day every day with floralistic surprises of late blooming shooting stars and the first Chia Heather has seen in Alameda County. I found two plants she did not know!

Almost 9 miles Sunday with a side trip to Murritta Falls and a dip in La Costa Creek and down down down after Johnny’s Pond on my favorite part of the trail - single track and festuca everywhere!  Up a bit to Boyd’s camp. Chilly. We now had a stove but realized we’d nothing to light it with (we found out at the last camp my emergency matches did not work without a flint and our lighters were with our stoves), but damn if I wasn’t getting great internet!  Heather asked if my iPhone could light the stove. I said I did not have that app. She offered her credit card. Cold rehydrated chili for dinner. Soaked oats overnight. Spied my dad’s neighborhood with the binocs and called him for our hitch. Hiked out to twittering migrants and dad picking up trash at Del Valle. Bald Eagle (mature) flushes from tree. Lunch at El Sol with Tommie’s ginormous Sammies and barrel tasting. Wine and stove delivery to trail saviors. Home to Fremont Peak. Nap. Indian food and late chat with Pete and Heather at Chaat Bhavan. Home. Happy.

Chuck wanted to try out some new gear in prep for a Canyonlands trip so off we went, exploring the Hunting Hollow entrance to Henry Coe state park. He had 42 pounds (mostly water) in his pack and kept up with me all day on our 10 mile hike making me feel like a slow hiker (which I sorta am stopping as I do to look at everything).

We walked up to Wagon Road then up to Wilson Camp crossing down through Coon Hunters Hollow - evidence of BIG coyote everywhere on the road.  Explored the ramshackle but relatively recently occupied Wilson Camp houses (the kitchen door was open) and lunched on the back porch.

Refueled we headed SW along contour through the deep grass on Bowl Trail stopping after awhile for a sketch, a nap and a long talk about finding ourselves here in this most interesting of times - interesting for us anyway, this being our time, being the small flashes that we are the ever so grand scheme of things - and how many things there are to be appreciative of and challenged by both in our days. Lucky.

Lazily refreshed and heart filled we dropped back down to the canyon, stopped for a quick barefoot dip in the creek, then the car, Jamba Juice, a windy forested up and over Mt Maddona drive, and home.

This morning we built an AM radio. Not from scratch exactly, and I still can’t tell you how the amplifier or the resistors work, but we finished it and Charlie switched it on, leaned in close to listen.  It had an on-off switch, a volume slide and a wheel tuner that works a short segment of airway band so as to receive two stations.  We passed over KSCO talk radio - broadcasting from the three towers high overhead on nearby Moran lake - and opted for a scratchy memories show, perfect somehow for a tinny snap circuit AM radio speaker with old songstresses swooning and old jiversters snapping swinging tunes.  Charlie experimented to see if the radio got better reception outside than inside, and it did, so we pulled patio chairs around the slide out back, leaned back and stacked our legs matchsticklike on each other using the slide as an ottoman.  Ben slid down the slide till his bare feet met mine bottom to bottom and laid there too, the sun shining on us in our spring green outdoor living room, quiet, listening, to the crackly then clear “At Last.”

Blackbirds

by Julie Cadwallader Staub

I am 52 years old, and have spent
truly the better part
of my life out-of-doors
but yesterday I heard a new sound above my head
a rustling, ruffling quietness in the spring air

and when I turned my face upward
I saw a flock of blackbirds
rounding a curve I didn’t know was there
and the sound was simply all those wings
just feathers against air, against gravity
and such a beautiful winning
the whole flock taking a long, wide turn
as if of one body and one mind.

How do they do that?

Oh if we lived only in human society
with its cruelty and fear
its apathy and exhaustion
what a puny existence that would be

but instead we live and move and have our being
here, in this curving and soaring world
so that when, every now and then, mercy and tenderness triumph in our lives
and when, even more rarely, we manage to unite and move together
toward a common good,

and can think to ourselves:

ah yes, this is how it’s meant to be.

I am sitting on Feyner’s front steps drowsey in the sun. I am watching a handful of quail browse for lunch on the knoll. I am listening to a chorus of barn swallows and ducking under their acrobatic aeronautics.  I am watching two whales make their way north far below as the surf sounds whirr up the drop off scrub slope. How easy it is to make friends when you are delighted! When you are delighted and they are delighted and you are grinning at each other bumping along in the mule, chilled, through the creeked forest, he stopping and gathering a posey of yerba santa for you to smell, debating whether or not it was a ringtail cat we heard cackling at lunch, keeping an eye out for spotted owls, or condors (”its a good day for condors”), eyes mind heart skin ears open, open to everything.

Its the first time I’ve ever crashed a party and I picked a good one.  A volunteer trail day brought me to Big Creek late Friday eve and I arrived to the start of a weekend long Redwood Camp birthday party with fresh caught ahi steak dinners every night for friend of a friend Jered who was gracious enough to let me join. What I found was a group of smart heartfelt folks who were funny, kind and generous. Who I met were cute kids, sweet dogs, beautiful men and women who love and live on the land there.  What I got was a world class adventurous introduction to an amazing special spot and I am feeling the gratitude for it all.  More stories and pics here.  Experience it for yourself! Volunteer for UCSC’s Big Creek Research Reserve or attend their open house in early May of each year!

]]> http://www.greengirl.org/2010/04/28/big-creek/feed/ http://www.greengirl.org/2010/04/19/change-in-the-weather/ http://www.greengirl.org/2010/04/19/change-in-the-weather/#comments Mon, 19 Apr 2010 17:31:19 +0000 Kirsten http://www.greengirl.org/?p=406 Weather conditions report: Many lizards, few newts. At last. (Nothing against newts)

After a pastoral evening on the deck and in the cliff perched hot tub of Pidgeon Point Lighthouse celebrating Piets 47^th I introduced a few of his friends to the wonders of Whitehouse Ridge Trail and Chalk Mountain. We checked on the Checkerspots I met at Easter, and they were already dried. Barb found a decimated fox carcass, tail fur strewn about, which I collected some of, so soft, and a bit left still under the chin inviting a considered caress. (I thought to leave a bush poppy in blessing on the way back but passed the spot in my fatigue not noticing). We parted ways at the repeater, whose pit toilet boasts the most amazing view I’ve yet seen one of its kind have. Then, deliciously alone all afternoon, only passed by one mountain biker, I headed up and down along the watershed ridge peering over Whitehouse to the West and various drainages to the East, the big basin in the distance. Skirted under Sandy Point and dropped down to Sunset Trail camp (sites 1, 6 and 10 being the preferred ones – weekly trash and pit toilet pumping service but no water). Once I hit Sunset/Berry Creek Falls trail I was surprised to find an almost highway with folks in their street clothes, and I’d felt all tough tackling a 17 miler with my bag full of gear, layers, emergency supplies. Here they were doing it palming one water bottle, sporting cotton and in regular old tennies….

Stopped a bit above the falls in a sunny clovered spot for a quiet lunch, then down - the falls – Golden, Silver Cascade, Berry Creek – pushing big in a lovely way with all the water. I saw novice outdoor love makers going at it behind a log, their knees obvious from my trail direction but obviously not from the one they’d come in on as they thought they’d found a private nook. I saw a few newts on the creekbank and some just pre-emergent with still their fins. I saw the season’s first white iris smile big. I saw a crow up above and below, shadow that they are. I finally saw sun instead of days of raindrops dance on the redwood forest floor.

I had come up through mixed evergreen, out into the chalks scrub, down into redwood riparian, and back up out through the dry heat, out onto the blue sky ridges to where the sun would keep me company until it set, up to where the coastal cool pushed over the ridge. Back to where the only thing coming at me were the bootprints of an earlier me.  And tracks of cats.  And of one other, taller than I, who had not yet returned.

over 17 miles and somewheres around 2.5-3.5K elevation gain

So enjoyed chilling with his peeps at Pidgeon Point Lighthouse on a calm, sweet night.