Green Girl

Wonder filled wonderful spring green.

Rain or no I am hiking somewhere tomorrow.

Here, my nephews at Pinnacles. If not this weekend there, then next.

Rain - Near

Just got back from my for-sure-I-make-at-least-this-class-weekly yoga followed by a quick run to my neighborhood Live Oak Farmer’s Market to spend what cash I had in my wallet.  They are attempting for the first time to go year round, so especially when the weather is bad I try to go by  and pick up some baked goods, breakfast, and whatnot.  (A tip for you locals - you can get great deals on days like this as the vendors are concurrently freezing, long on inventory, and short on customers  thus willing to bargain).

There are two vendors that do not have store fronts in town so I follow them around the market circuit on weekends religiously to indulge in their wonderfuness - one is Companion Bakery (they hooked me initially in July with their chocolate cherry scones and while the fruit changes seasonally the generous chocolate part does not)  and one a lovely family that makes the most amazing gorditas [fresh masa patted out thick, deep fried, then stuffed with spicy chicken, cooked organic root veggies, lettuce, queso fresco, crema, salsa verde y rojo - mmm!].  En route there I enjoyed meandering along the oceanside streets to look out and feel like we are on the edge of the known world with the wild grey sea stretched out whitecapping into cloud horizons.

Natascha and I hosted a lovely potluck last night of over a dozen cool ladies cozied up in my modest living room with a fire going and about a million candles flickering - some guitar playing and all night chatting warmed the house up. Today I am enjoying the quiet and this morning happily left my bed unmade in anticipation of a cozy rainy afternoon nap.

Rain - Afar

(Gold Bluff Beach - Leisyka and Izzak in his dino raincoat)

I rushed and relaxed both through a car-train-bus trip up the coast on a combined trip to visit Robby, Sneaky and her 6 three day old pups, and to help Leisyka, Blair, and Izaak settle in after their big move from Surprise Valley in Modoc County to Arcata (Izaak:  “this is HUMBOLT momma?” Leisyka: (with big smile) “Yes Izzak!  This is HUMBOLT”).  Thankfully on the latter, where I had pictured shelf papering, unpacking boxes and snarfing pizza dinners, they were really almost all moved in thanks to Blair’s efficient moving process and only requested my help with interior decorating and cooking up great meals - what fun!   We also hiked amongst old groves and played in the sand under beautiful bluffs.

(love the outfit!)

The train/bus rides were all day adventures -  got pole position seats both trips and the huge bus windows were like experiencing an iMax theatre screen of tall tall trees and forested ridges marching off into the distance.  Josy was a new driver and was fun, sweet and a perfect chauffeur for us.  I finished two knitting projects and met neat folks including a handsome  22 year old football scholarship student headed into his last months at Humbolt State and had quite the nice conversation on the bus.  He still looked clean cut and SoCal but was considering staying up in the laid back foggy north.  He kept pointing things out like where someone had written in the dirt on the back of a van (peace symbol) + (heart) = (smiley face) and saying “you wouldn’t see THAT in San Diego”.

After the year turns I hike to the mountaintop and find Joy there.  She does not fly off, fearless as she is, when I approach but stays perched in her treetop squeaking out her happy call.  Its nothin but sky up here, clouds brushed out horizon to horizon.  The only sound’s the winter surf far below and the wind in your ears and the pines.  A few weeks into winter and its oddly balmy even up here today.  Manzanita are already tossing out their pearly bell flowers and there’s a spring green in things even under the thin hazy winter sky. Like, you know, how sometimes in life a thing you really need comes at a time when everything else is sorta dead, or sleeping?  Like a love arriving late in life, or when you receive a sweet kind act and really let it land in the midst of depression?  Water is like that here in our Western winters - the air so thin, the sunlight so stingy, the plants all sleeping - it is only then the sky is so generous with rain that life springs up out of everything anyway. Fields of mustard celebrate, shout out golden blooms.  Everything else glowing green underneath.  I pause in my journaling, what else did I want to say?  Only this: shhhh. Look up. The sun sets right now.

‘ i imaging that Yes is the only living thing’ ~ e.e. cummings

The month and half since last post has seen spiritual catharsis, various sicknesses, good lovin’, rest, mind blowing walk in old growth tall trees, navel gazing, silent retreat at Esalen and finally a return to work. Still meditating everyday to keep the thread of the Unknown and Unknowable alive in the Marketplace.  Some snippets and links to photosets:

All Hallows Eve journal post. When I first moved to my 769 place I thought I heard coyotes deep in one evening.  “No coyotes here” neighbors said and I did not hear them again until last night, four years later, yipping and keening in one of the nearby creek drainages, calling us.

Season’s First Shrooms. October hike with Donna, Peter and Izhar - Big Basin

Learning to sit in my own lap. Silent yoga meditation retreat, Esalen, early November 2009

Fall on the Coast. Duncan’s Mills weekend with Robby, November 2009

Sapaque Valley Ranch. New friends and the beginning of a lifelong romance.

“The most important thing is this:  to be ready to give up what you are for what you might become.” ~ w.e.b du bois

“Teach us to care and not to care. Teach us to sit still.” ~ T.S. Elliot

Blazing Orange Red Tricolor yarn and a pair of size 7 needles
iPhone, Ear Buds and Charger in Cute Etsy Herringbone Case
Canon Rebel DSLR with 50 mm Lens
D’Addario Steel Guitar String, 1.07 mm
a Dona Handbound Journal, Shminke Travel Watercolor Set, and Waterbrush
Dona Handmade Red Velvet Art Supply Bag
Faber-Castell, uniball and Prismacolor pens
Organic Parmigiano-Regiano (France, 0.49 lb)
Cowgirl Creamery Batch #9, (Sonoma County 0.4 lbs)
Black Box with 20 Assorted Recchiutti Chocolates (Ferry Building, San Francisco)
Black Bag with Three Recchiutti Micron Sliced Dried Pears Dipped in Lime and then Dark Chocolate
White Bag with Three Gruyere Baked Cheese Twist (Destination Bakery, Glen Park)
Red Leather Wallet with Cream Stitching
Dark Beauty Theo Chocolate Lip Balm
Red Nalgene Water Bottle
Navy Made in USA Handkerchief
Jackie O Style Sunglasses in Blue and Grey
Billowy Cream Scarf will Sterling Rose Print

What a luscious bag of wonderfulness!  The lovely part is I used everything in this bag today except the camera (thus no photos in the post).  Started the day with a sunrise drive to SF, breakfasted with Petra, Barry and Tila in their sunny Glen Park home and squeezed in over a year of catch up before swim lessons. Hopped on BART with Barry for a bit more chatting, then parted ways and met Lise at the Embarcadero Hyatt before strolling to the Ferry Building for gourmet food shopping and a fabulous grounding lunch at The Slanted Door.  We got there just before the lunch rush and landed a seat on the patio by the bay.  Enjoyed:  bloody mary, cruchy veggie rolls served with lettuce leaves, mint, rice noodles and a wonderful soaking sauce, muddled mint limeade, juicy chicken roasted to perfection with tamarind dippling sauce, Hodo Beanery tofu sauted with shitake mushroom, onion, chili and peanut, chocolate cake lightly encrusted with sel de mer topped with what we believed to be Valhrona chocolate ice cream accompanied by an unsweeted cardamom whipped cream. My god its good to live in a food mecca!   Got front door service as Lise dropped me off right in front of Hardly Strictly Bluegrass with Dave Alvin and the Guilty Women taking the stage as I strolled in.  Reunited with Petra and Tila for an hour more fof music and catch up before strolling to the deYoung and catching the 44 Muni back to Glen Park.  Drove south and met Tom, Donna and Jim at Highway 85 and Saratoga Avenue.  Tom then continued north and I shuttled the tired and happy hikers home.  Evolution Valley had been perfect, deserted, clear, very cold yet swimable in the afternoons and provided a phenomenal snow shower show Tuesday evening clearing to a pink mauve sunset with fantastic clouds.  I missed it, but enjoyed the stories and will cook dinner in exchange for picture viewing this week.  Somehow telling my story and hearing theirs on the way home was full circle and completed the trip for me.

“Back already from your trip?” you ask, “I thought you just left for Evolution Valley yesterday?”.

Lesson #1 - Gaiters do not work when they are in your backpack and not on your legs
Lesson #2 - Watch your footing on granite when shaley rocks are present, regardless of slope
Lesson #3 - If you do need to bail on your trip to seek medical care, do so where you have relatives living right down the hill

After 6 hours in the car yesterday we arrived at the high country reservoir called Florence Lake which looked interesting as its mostly drained right now so they can do work on the dam.  The usual packing, sunscreening, clearing out the car and putting stuff in bear boxes and we were off to the closed down store at the edge of the lake  to consider our route. The dry lake was the reason we  needed to hike extra mileage, as the water taxi was not running, but also offered another opportunity to cut some mileage off the southern shore maintained trail route. The off trail northern route looked doable as the basin was mostly smooth granite, little mud as far as we could see.

We set off and not 500 yards from the lot I slipped on some shaley granite. Torqued my ankle a bit but popped back up prepared to go on. Until I looked down.  A wide 2″ gash in my shin  - dark red with fatty tissue popping out.  Shit. It hadn’t even hurt that much.   I sat down and compressed it and it wasn’t bleeding much but was looking nasty.

Jim and Donna were sweet in their care and irrigated it, neosporined it and taped it up best they could (which the doc later said looked great).  I decided starting an a long trip was probably not the best idea without getting it looked at.  We figured out logistics and they went on and I headed down hill in Donna’s car, not finding a medical center until two hours later - the Clovis Hospital.  After many hours there (why I did not think to go further on to an Urgent Care instead, I do not know) I drove just a few minutes to my sister-in-law’s family home where her brother Robert awaited (my hero), scarfed down dinner, made some calls trying to locate an open store with water treatment tablets (did not) and went right to bed.

Doc said I coulda hiked on in, and I considered it but did not have any of the communal  gear, including water treatment  - a key issue - and it would have been a 2 hour drive and a  9 mile hike to catch up with them - a lot for a tired sore ankled girl. So, I decided to come home and just chill, work on house projects, get a massage and sit staring at the ocean instead of a lake.

I now feel as tough ass as the most pierced and leathered in Santa Cruz with my 5 stainless staples sticking up outta my shin. Gonna make a pretty scar I tell ya.

Feeling grateful for my good life, having medical insurance, and the love of all my peeps.

Patrick’s Point on the Humbolt Coast. A deep, wide stretch of smooth rock beach, undulating between very fine and large rocks wet by surf and drying.  They slide on each other easily, forcing a slow walk, enticing one to gaze down at their multi-hued gray golden loveliness.  Opaque quartz everywhere, but the one who has a discerning eye and is patient for quality finds agates.  They let the light clear through and are smoother in the hand than the others, often found shining in the footsteps of those who came before.   Best to come right as the tide recedes but always some somewhere on this grand sweep of beach, golden in the sunlight, you too shining in the company and true-hearted conversation of a new friend, the depth and play of that, the “come here, I have something I want to show you” hand-in-hand discovery of it all.

There’s nothing on the website about it, but when you come to Strawberry Music Festival, you are welcomed into the Strawberry family and begin to learn the Strawberry Way.  Absent a master list, I can tell you it includes things like:

* Kids have as much free fun as possible, including you grownup kids
* Be kind, polite and considerate to each other
* Share, help, pitch in
* Smile at your neighbors (even if they were up playing late next to your tent)
* Conserve water, don’t litter, recycle
* Pick and sing until you can’t any more

You come home feeling like a peaceful co-existence is possible and are reminded to live the Strawberry Way every day.

This was my first Fall Strawberry and we Tequila Mockingbirds were less than a dirty dozen this year, but we took to the event like a drunkard to rum sitting in with Camp Hold On, Camp Let Go for the jams and sneaking kitchen access wherever we could find it.  It was warmer, dustier than spring, with higher attendance even without a sell out crowd.  I enjoyed my first real jamming time, made some really sweet and unexpected connections with folks in and out of camp and still soaked in all the usual naps in hammocks, Birch Lake swims and rambles into neighboring camps to lend an ear and a voice.  Photos and more stories are here and replaying in my happy mind.

Two stories stand out for the Festival.

One: Luka (from Camp Let Go, Camp Hold On) tugged at his mom’s shirt in the middle of the Sunday Happy Hour Jam and asked ” Hey, are those the ‘I Got It At The Mall’ people? ”  We Mockingbirds now have a reputation.

The second is simply the advice “don’t over underestimate” - originally applied to the imbibement of the corn likker Mahlon brought in from the midwest and then liberally applied to other situations with great gusto and fun.

Come with us sometime to the high wood.  We’d love to shower you in fast pickin’, slow jams, good liquor, and a heartful of the Strawberry Way.

Today I am almost 4 weeks into 3 months off work.

While it has been filled and sometimes feeling a bit too busy with all the goodness and experience, I yet can feel myself slowing down.  My mantra for this time is to Move only When Ready: when the energy is right, when my heart tells me too, only then say yes, make a plan, do the  next thing. Meanwhile, nap when needed, read a lot, go easy on the chores, dunk naked into fresh water whenever possible.

So many sweet experiences so far:  Great eats and girl time in Sonoma County with Lise and Lesli; Kitchen talks and fun everyday time with three great boy-filled families - hikes, building things, spaceships and dinosaurs, rope swings, football practices and frostys (hugs to Parrotts, Lows, Liskes); A successful and exuberating five day solo trip into Caribou Lakes Basin in the Trinities;  A new affair with Kosk Creek and Big Bend Hot Springs (where my toes can be seen poking up in the photo, past which is our secluded creekside camp in the trees (big heart gratitude to Robby, Osita and Sneaky).

This weekend - Strawberry Fall Music Fest, never been - aiming for fun.  After that, more backcountry time I think - we’ll see where to move next when I get to next week.

More posts and photos from my recent adventures to come. For now - read this and eat well.

Vegetable Love
by Barbara Crooker

Feel a tomato, heft its weight in your palm,
think of buttocks, breasts, this plump pulp.
And carrots, mud clinging to the root,
gold mined from the earth’s tight purse.
And asparagus, that push their heads up,
rise to meet the returning sun,
and zucchini, green torpedoes
lurking in the Sargasso depths
of their raspy stalks and scratchy leaves.
And peppers, thick walls of cool jade, a green hush.
Secret caves. Sanctuary.
And beets, the dark blood of the earth.
And all the lettuces: bibb, flame, oak leaf, butter-
crunch, black-seeded Simpson, chicory, cos.
Elizabethan ruffs, crisp verbiage.
And spinach, the dark green
of northern forests, savoyed, ruffled,
hidden folds and clefts.
And basil, sweet basil, nuzzled
by fumbling bees drunk on the sun.
And cucumbers, crisp, cool white ice
in the heart of August, month of fire.
And peas in their delicate slippers,
little green boats, a string of beads,
repeating, repeating.
And sunflowers, nodding at night,
then rising to shout hallelujah! at noon.

All over the garden, the whisper of leaves
passing secrets and gossip, making assignations.
All of the vegetables bask in the sun,
languorous as lizards.
Quick, before the frost puts out
its green light, praise these vegetables,
earth’s voluptuaries,
praise what comes from the dirt.