19 February 06
Coast Range Snow
There was a dusting of snow this morning on the Blue Ridge Mountains north of Berryessa Gap and Putah Creek. Unfortunately this portion of the ridge is inaccessible, despite there being 9000 acres of public land along the crest of the ridge, so no trips up to the snow for us. Tomorrow we’re going on a hike on Mt. Diablo: I suspect it too had a dusting today but I don’t think there will be much evidence of it when we get there.
16 February 06
Early Morning
If Charlie hadn’t
pounced
on my bladder
at four
[oofff]
I wouldn’t have
had the chance
to go for a walk
after half an hour
of
writing
and another
of
calligraphy
and another
of
blogsandemail
so I’d have missed
the sound the creek
makes
rounding that
willow
and the
pair of
bluebirds
in the sunrise
framed by
the feral almond
and the
seven egrets
that rose
as one
when the wood duck
screamed
or learning
again
that when you walk
in the frost
with the sun
to your east
the left side of
your
face
is less
cold than
the right…
5 February 06
Boots
I’ve been wearing my new hiking boots in the house to try and break them in. I’ve never done this thoroughly before… I think it may have made all the difference in my blisterability.
Yesterday it was gorgeous despite warnings of rain. We hiked up Cold Canyon to sketch Gray Pines. I wore my sister’s old hiking boots, not wanting to push it too hard with the new ones. I have high hopes though.
The shooting stars were in bloom, there was coyote sign everywhere, and the grayghost pines grew out of the hillside at odd angles…
I’ve made some prints of the needles as well as some sketches. I’ll try and upload these tomorrow.
Later: uploading prints of gray pine needles
4 February 06
Why We Like Shopping At The Coop -- Part 2
After returning late this afternoon from a sketching hike up Cold Canyon, we stopped by the coop to pick up salad for dinner, and ran into Fernanda near the checkout stand. We took our groceries out to our car, and saw that there was a silver Honda Element parked next to our green one. The license plate on the silver Element read “CMPGNLO”, and it had a license plate frame labeled “Campagnolo”. On the back window, there was a sticker saying “Aerodynamics is overrated”. Not surprisingly, there was a bike inside.
30 January 06
Endings and Beginnings
Teju Cole comes offline tomorrow, having lasted just the month of January. If you haven’t had a chance to read it, don’t wait a minute longer. Lagos is your destination. You will rarely see better writing than this.
Meanwhile, the white-tailed kites outside my office have built a nest in the tall pine just above the railway track. The female is incubating by now, I think. It doesn’t stop the male from mating with her, though. He “kip, kip, kips” about with his wings in a steep dihedral, almost unable to stay airborne—the merest hover. They are some of the most beautiful birds on the planet. I’ll try and sketch some of this.
29 January 06
Coyote Corridor
We went over to REI in Sacramento today to hunt for a pair of hiking boots for Pica that don’t give her blisters. We brought our bikes along and afterwards went for a little ride along the American River Parkway. On the parkway there is a bike trail that runs along the river about 32 miles one way from Sacramento up to Folsom. We’ve been quite remiss in never having ridden on it the almost seven years we’ve been up in Davis. Conveniently, REI offers easy access to the parkway so we rode from its parking lot up along the trail up to Cal State Sacramento and back. Just when we were returning and on the other side of the levee from REI, we heard, perhaps howling at a train passing by, two coyotes! This sort of thing makes one a believer in wildlife corridors.
23 January 06
Monday, Monday
The first almond blossom of
the first tree that blossoms here:
doomed to sterility
The white of egrets
fussing in receding floodwaters
bright white on mud
The Canada geese
watching the egrets
cryptic on cryptic
The mallards
ignoring them all
sexsexsexsexsex
The blue, blue sky
no hint of clouds
with this north wind
I ride into it.
The north wind.
The day.
18 January 06
Ivory-Billed Tale
We just got from the presentation at this month’s meeting of the Yolo Audubon Society. John Trochet, a Sacramento area birder and a meticulous field surveyor, gave a riveting account of how he came to see the recently rediscovered Ivory-Billed Woodpecker. He has been a long-time explorer of the swamps of the Southeast and an occasional ivory-billed searcher. Last April, he went on his own little expedition into the Arkansas swamps with another ivory-billed seeker. After running into the official Cornell Lab and Nature Conservancy search teams and dancing around the question of what they were both doing in the woods, they were invited to the private home of one of the researchers, made to sign non-disclosure agreements (this was before the public announcement of the resighting), and were told the whole tale. Two days later, John and his two companions, now coordinating with the Cornell/TNC folks, had the great good fortune to get a three-second glimpse of an ivory-billed, not far from where they put in with the canoe that day.
4 January 06
Davis Walkabout
There’s a story in the Davis Enterprise today about Robert Faber, a 79-year old Davis man who has walked every street, land, and path in town. He started this project after a quadruple bypass surgery in 2001, and has logged about 4000 miles total. “An animal lover, he is regularly greeted by the dogs and cats of Davis. Many cats recognize him, running from half a block away to greet him.”
1 January 06
Off To The Hindu Kush
I am now on a reading-about-Central Asia kick, and have just finished Eric Newby’s account of misadventures in Nuristan, A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush. It all started with reading Peter Hopkirk’s book The Great Game. Next I have to figure out just what Alexander the Great was doing in those parts, but not before finishing Hogfather! (UP GOUGER! UP ROOTER! UP TUSKER! UP SNOUTER!).