One of the sweetest things of 2008. Roberta adopted us!

My mom (rear left) and her siblings have long hosted holiday gatherings since most of my generation lives in teeny condos and apartments. This year, Mara and Zach (foreground and photographer) said “size be damned” and hosted it anyway, a first for our generation.  We popped a few canopies up and set a large long table up on their deck.  I borrowed chairs, silver, napkins and a coffee urn from our work sustainable catering kit.  We covered the tables with all color table cloths, napkins, candles and gourds.  We both squished family in all available guest sleeping quarters for the weekend too.  As those who live in Santa Cruz know, Thanksgiving was a blessing of sun and bright blues skies over the sea miraculously birthed between a rainy Wednesday and a fogged in chilly Friday, so the en plien aire approach all worked out.  I walked into the kitchen just before dinner was announced to see my aunt Pat, our resident turkey expert, handing Zach the electric knife and a bit of guidance on reducing the large bird into beautifully servable slices.  It came out perfect.

Mom came out for her birthday and we toured Elkhorn Slough on a pontoon boat.  The captain knew much and still shared excitement about the tremendous flocks of gulls, just in off their migration, and the daily changes of that nature place. Mom loved it. On the way back the fog rolled in mystifying everything except us - ensconced in life jackets, sipping hot chocolate and conversing to keep our bubble of civilized strong around the boat, even yet feeling the weight of the wildness seeping in, quiet and gray.

Kings Canyon Rae Lakes Loop journal excerpt:

29 September 2008

I met fall today.

Her still moments, her cold winds, her banks of day glow aspen marching up the hill. Her high cloud skies and her brilliant azures too.  How her mountain bluebirds chase through the meadow when one gets a fat bug.  How in these last few days before snow she puts out all her berries and seeds.  The preciousness of her few sunny hours.  Her long nights.

She offers a different kind of end of season harvest here in the high country. Concert of birdsong in the migratory throats of the passers through, the bears moving toward lower ground foraging for winter’s extra warmth, the color pouring out of the plants in the culmination of their year’s effort before drawing their sap deep down in.  Even the flowers, so summer and spring, are transformed to seedy pods blown open everywhere and quiet.

But mostly, the berries.  Juniper trees pulling down half the big sky into the hard blue berries they hold in tight bunches basketed on their limbs.  The elderberry bowing over its ripe canopy of river blue.  The thimble and gooseberries, hard to find and eat respectively.  The hillsides of manzanita, each berry tanning to amber after a fiery red start.  Chokecherries too, their darkest black red hiding smooth oval seed centers.  Everywhere, everywhere the plants have their year’s work out in offering. We taste each one along the way.

Listen now, too, to the tall fir, its many cones impossibly bunched on its highest branches as it lets go its seed in the hot sun or cool of evening.  See the winged seeds spiral out over the stream.  Hear them showering down in a singsong tinkle through her simple and clean heavenward raised branches.

[More photos and words from Rae Lakes trip]

I am ready to put my feet up!  Heading off to vacation this week: Lake Almanor for warm evening lake swimming with Bonnie and the boys, Trinities for solo backcountry and naked lake floating time and meeting Blair off trail after his month-long journey.  Onward to Modoc for Izaak and Leisyka play time, then Union Valley Resevoir for time in the bucket holding down J’s Nacra in the mountain afternoon winds, and Sierra Hot Springs in there somewhere for ahhhhhhhhhh.  Good news: Diedre loaned me her camera so I’ll be able to share picture stories upon my return. [Photo thanks to Dona, post-Pride weekend fun in SF]

Specifically, at 18th and Guerrero.

 Celebrated solstice with Dona (who gets photo credits again).  We sketch crawled up the coast, starting on Kelly’s patio in the thunderstorm - heavy grey clouds striated, rolling and ancient as the rock layers revealed in water carved canyon walls, lighting over the ocean and fat raindrops cooling the hot pavement.  Motivated by a cool breeze we left our shady cafe table for the north coast.

Traffic stopped just short of Pie Ranch, a fatality we heard, so we turned around and sauntered onto Cove Beach at Ano Nuevo State Park, stopping to taste spring water leaking from the cliffs, balance rocks on rough wave tumbled logs, sketch New Year’s island with its crumbling lighthouse keeper houses, dipped toes in freezing sea foam, rest back on the rocks. Filled up with the four elements we returned to the road.  The landscape rolled out long in the low light, far off cliffs and nearby canyon cuts. I can’t say quite why but the presence of everything right then, light, sweet road ahead dipping into the cliffs, the sky and sea, a friend and a silver car, all added up to some open sense of unlimited possibility, a lightness, a softening.

The late day allowed us to buzz up to Moss Beach Distillery to catch the sunset, sip drinks and nosh on fish and chips wrapped in wooly blankets by the fire pit, quiet, listening, leaning way bay to look up as the stars sang out and pelicans veed by in the last light of this the longest day.

Sweet birthday weekend. Friends wrote some amazing poems for me, dedicated some too.  Natascha made my special request  - a tuxedo cake with cherries on top.  Dona captured this prettiest cake in the whole world well with her point and shoot. Kelly’s breakfast cozy in the fog. Restorative yoga.  Best pizza in town with family fiesty table tennis fun.  Indian Canyon storytelling, Live Oak Farmer’s Market brunch sunning and smiling, long late nap, sienna sunset.  Welcome to my 40th year.

Camp Tequilla Mockingbird kicks off summer. Rainy Memorial Day.  Tequilla and truffles under the easy up to stay out of the drizzle.  Fiddle. Mandolin. Mr. Heater mounted on 5 gallons of propane that went the distance.  Wet boots. Dry tent. May I be this blessed all summer.