Grateful for this town I live in!

At first; the sunrise tangerine over the cool blue, and a sea lion or two giving a chase, the penguin-like murres tiny on the swells.  We rowed long, out past the mile bouy to the west, farther than I’ve ever rowed. The thought of whales steadied me as my body remembered rowing, leaned into the tippy side swells.  No whales.

We turned toward shore, enjoyed the green earthy layers of west cliff, the circus on seal rock, the empty stands of the O’Neill Coldwater Classic. No whales.  Mandy said she felt ‘em out here somewhere, we paused.  We headed back in, satisfied with the morning and the row, the ocean smelling very fishy. Passing the wharf we stopped amongst a group of UCSC rowers, and their instructor lit up telling us tails of huge beasts spy-hopping 10 feet in front of her boat the day before.

I guess the whales needed an audience.

There, amongst the largest group of rowers, kayakers and standup paddleboarders I’ve ever been out with, they arrived for brunch.  Five humpacks with their sweet out breaths, their no-wake footprints and elegant huge bodies, the quiet while we waited for them and again and again and again.  Rowing smoothly with the swells, we moved to be near them, and the flury of the sea lion pack following them, and the churning of the birds diving into the water.

Before I’d gotten on the boat I had an important ten o’clock meeting.  It was nine and us an hour off the dock.  I turned, and kept chasing humpbacks.

[No cameras today, so I'll share this poem to get you there too]

Humpbacks

by Mary Oliver

There is, all around us,
this country
of original fire.
You know what I mean.
The sky, after all, stops at nothing, so something
has to be holding
our bodies
in its rich and timeless stables or else
we would fly away.

Off Stellwagen
off the Cape,
the humpbacks rise. Carrying their tonnage
of barnacles and joy
they leap through the water, they nuzzle back under it
like children
at play.

They sing, too.
And not for any reason
you can’t imagine.

Three of them
rise to the surface near the bow of the boat,
then dive
deeply, their huge scarred flukes
tipped to the air.
We wait, not knowing
just where it will happen; suddenly
they smash through the surface, someone begins
shouting for joy and you realize
it is yourself as they surge
upward and you see for the first time
how huge they are, as they breach,
and dive, and breach again
through the shining blue flowers
of the split water and you see them
for some unbelievable
part of a moment against the sky–
like nothing you’ve ever imagined–
like the myth of the fifth morning galloping
out of darkness, pouring
heavenward, spinning; then

they crash back under those black silks
and we all fall back
together into that wet fire, you
know what I mean.

I know a captain who has seen them
playing with seaweed, swimming
through the green islands, tossing
the slippery branches into the air.
I know a whale that will come to the boat whenever
she can, and nudge it gently along the bow
with her long flipper.
I know several lives worth living.

Listen, whatever it is you try
to do with your life, nothing will ever dazzle you
like the dreams of your body,
its spirit
longing to fly while the dead-weight bones
toss their dark mane and hurry
back into the fields of glittering fire
where everything,
even the great whale,
throbs with song.

From AMERICAN PRIMITIVE by Mary Oliver. Copyright © 1978, 1979, 1980, 1981, 1982, 1983 by Mary Oliver; first appeared in COUNTRY JOURNAL, May 1982. By permission of Little, Brown and Company, Inc. All rights reserved. For information about the book, please call 1-800-759-0190.

Mary Oliver was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1984 for AMERICAN PRIMITIVE.

What is a dive? Its dropping the tether of ‘its too cold’ and ’scared’ on the rocks with your clothes, instead taking in the surface and depth beauty of the high mountain lake water, and wondering what it feels like to fly, and, then, leaping.

What is a dive? Its jackknife and cannonball. Its a big breath in and jump high, shouting “summer!” on the way down.

I just returned from a trip of honoring the last days of this summer, traveling up to Boulder and Lyon Lake in the Trinity Alps.  I have backpacked solo so much these past years, it was a treat and a comfort to have company this trip in my friend Greg, who’s even more passionate about beautiful water than I am.

Our trip bridged the last week of summer through the first day of fall. An early start and half day drive and we were hiking the few miles into Boulder Lake, meadowed and green bowled, quiet enough for us and the dragonfly wings, and the ht-hoot, whoo whoo of the resident owl.   The next day I scrambled early up to the lakes above (Lost and Found) and came back to a leisurely breakfast and swim.

Heading toward Lyon Lake we enjoyed a Trinity-steep pull up, breaking finally out of the darker woods to the open big trees, wildflowered meadows, bear tracks and benched views.

The lake offered Greg some good brookies, so he cooked them over the fire for dinner in earl and salt.

We had perfect weather the entire time and no skeeters so we slept out, able to see stars when we awoke in the quiet, and watch the sun come up chasing the late moon across the sky every morning.

No people until our last night, so we lazed the last day of summer away at the lake; diving, watching, fishing, swimming, painting, balancing on our floating log friend, listening to the jay pretend to be a hawk, then watching the hawk thermal up and disappear in the sky.  Watched the light leave the basin early, watched the bats come, then Greg said “Lets chase the sun!” so we went, scrambling up to the pass for an epic still, warm sunset.

We sat quiet for a long time while the views back to Shasta cooled to periwinkle and rose, and the cadmium sun greened the blue sky as it set over Caribou Mountain and the coast range in the west.

Shasta seemed to grow taller and taller as her smaller cousin ridges grew dark in the shadow of the earth.

The very last blaze of orange told us it was time to go, so we scampered down in the dark granite light, no headlamps, back to our peninsula campsite, dinner, and fire.

First day of fall we again lazed the morning away, then geared up to head off trail to a pass high above Parker Creek with views into the heart of the Alps.

Perched above the sloping meadow we watched mountain bluebird and a white band tailed hawk work the winds, with silver granite and red peaks and forests in the distance.  I saw so many places I’d been before, geeking out on the map flapping in the breeze, identifying some of my favorite Trinity places.

A sweet surprise? We could look directly across at Ward Lake, a place where two great journeys began: my friends Leisyka and Blair got married there and it was on that trip, walking up Swift Creek in the wildflower riot of July, that I fell in love with the Trinities and started my affair with backcountry travel.

We took another route home passing the lovely tarn Blair promised was there, and stopped often taking in the open views out over Cub Wallow and to Shasta, landing back to our lake for another afternoon of still sun, dive, swim, and brook trout.

Ate an early dinner and scrambled up again for the sunset (this time taking the camera) and heading right up the pass, avoiding our first-of-the-trip neighbors who’d set up camp at the outlet.

I slept deep on our last night, laying in late (Greg has my kinda backcountry morning schedule: “slothlike” he called it…works for me!).  We swam and chatted in the morning sun, then headed unhurriedly out, feeling as if we’d been up there forever.

On the way out, fresh bear scat, flowers I had not noticed on the way up and (so perfectly fall-like) berries! (thimble mountain black, straw, wild currant, and goose).

At the last tall view of Shasta and the clouds she was collecting we paused, noting how much quieter our minds were coming out than going in.

Double high fives and hugs arriving safe at the trailhead to a dusty (maybe named Meg) red Honda, we headed down for a wash off in the sweet rushingTrinity, and waited for the best ever burgers and shake from the Yellow Jacket in Trinity Center.  Full up we headed home under cloudy skies and windblown forest fire smoke turning the sky crimson.

We tugged a bit more summer from this early fall, and a bit of our youth into our evening, zooming down the blue highway with windows down, music blasting, zig zagging down the pass to Whiskeytown and through the broad valley watching the dusk draw into itself eastward.

Warm wind night drive and we were home.

Full set of pics here.

inspiring me to repost this one: lets get outside!

Tent tethered among jackpine and blue-
bells. Lacewings rise from rock
incubators. Wild geese flying north.
And I can’t remember who I am supposed to be.

I want to learn how to purr. Abandon
myself, have mistresses in maidenhair
fern, own no tomorrow nor yesterday:
a blank shimmering space forward and
back. I want to think with my belly.
I want to name all the stars animals
flowers birds rocks in order to forget
them, start over again. I want to
wear the seasons, harlequin, become
ancient and etched by weather. I
want to snow pulse, ruminating
ungulating, pebble at the bottom of the
abyss, candle burning darkness rather
than flame. I want to peer at things,
shameless, observe the unfastening,
that stripping of shape by dusk.

I want to sit in the meadow a rotten
stump pungent with slimemold, home
for pupae and grubs, concentric rings
collapsing into the passacaglia of
time. I want to crawl inside someone
and hibernate one entire night with
no clocks to wake me, thighs fragrant
loam. I want to melt. I want to swim
naked with an otter. I want to turn
inside out, exchange nuclei with the
Sun. Toward the mythic kingdom of
summer I want to make blind motion,
using my ribs as a raft, following
the spiders as they set sail on their
tasseled shining silk. Sometimes
even a single feather’s enough
to fly.

~ by Robert MacLean

Again did the

earth shift

Again did the nights grow

short,

And the days long

And the people

of the earth

were glad

and celebrated

each in their

own ways.

- Diane Lee Moomey

Still, we warmed our hearts in Camp Tequila Mockingbird in yet another year of weather perseverance and big love for each other. Oh, and the music.  Baby Stella’s first ‘fest and she was a rock star.

See ‘em all here.

RockyGrass on the docket for July and I hope some warm weather too….

Donna and I. Talking and not talking. Left the van parked half way along the last downslope on Empire Grade behind a downed Madrone.

Its supposed to snow tonight all the way down here, with us, at the shore. Here, the wind comes, now…

“It is said the Inuit have over 50 names for snow….
Here are 25…

1. Call it welcome in November.
2. Call it sheet when it stretches across garden beds.
3. Call it lantern when awakened in the night by its brightness.
4. Call it piranha when it bites your cheeks.
5. …or possum when it pauses, so you can shovel the driveway
6. …or kitten when it sleeps in the crooks of window.
7. Call those soft, full flakes, floating down wings of white butterflies.
8. Call it coat of Joseph when the backyard wears the many colors of sunlight.
9. Call it forgiveness when it lies like balm over an area of clear cut.
10. Call it tickle when you stand, arms outstretched, and catch it on your tongue.
11. Call it ceiling when it spans horizon to horizon and blocks the sun.
12. Call snow lace when it lines the limbs of lilacs.
13. …or eyelet when it embroiders spruce.
14. Call it harmonica when it whistles through the trees
15. Call it mother when it dusts.
16. …or grandmother when it rests in the porch swing.
17. …or magician when the landscape disappears.
18. Call it prayer in its stillness.
19. Call it padlock if it clasps the door closed.
20. Call it mouse when it squeaks under your boot.
21. Call it encore when it falls a second time from trees and telephone lines.
22. Call it barnacle when it deposits behind the wheel of your car.
23. Call it tradition when it comes on Christmas.
24. …or trickster if it appears on April 1st.
25. In the evening when snow delivers you to the comfort of hearthfire, call it friend. ”

Names of Snow  - List compiled by Judi K. Beach

Thanks to Artist in the Arctic Blog and to Dona B for the link there.

Call it “friend”

#44 Cook and eat wild mushrooms that I harvested

In reality I have done this already, with some lovely bluetts found by Donna Thomas and I on our around town walks.  I didn’t cross it off then, for I wanted to harvest some on my own, which I met yet do someday.  Erika Perloff and I were floating up Chalk Mountain Road in the clear sky day today and got a tubfull (this is only half) of some new finds:  candy cap mushrooms.  She was thinking of making muffins with them with a touch of maple syrup to enhance that savor they already have.  I dreamed of being able to make as tasty an ice cream out of them as Kendra at the Penny Ice Creamery did in November, but not being that talented I just did a quick saute in butter and salt so I could really experience their pecan-y sweetness.  Cinnamon colored, lovely and delicious.  Thank you forest floor fungi!

The sponsors of this event authorize the following Official Notice to be broadcast on the wireless:

On Saturday, December 11, a local tech collective,  UBEW, will be hosting an unusual evening of food, auction, and performance.  This historic costume benefit will feature an elegant three-course dinner, a semi-silent auction of unusual items, stimulating music, and an exhibition boxing bout between Nikola Tesla and Tom Edison. At the Pacific Cultural Center, 1307 Seabright Ave in Santa Cruz, at 6pm. For more info, go to UBEW DOT ORG.

More Still Photography and StoryBoard Here

I go down to the edge of the sea.

Then you begin, slowly, to read the whole story.