On & Around Muir Beach for a Day
smw, slt has accumulated so very many photos in my now 4+ months back home that I simply must return to long format. It’s great fun to set up a daily photo, trying to mix up what I’m showing you each day – and I plan to keep doing that because, well, covid home restrictions, no social life to speak of, fill in your own personal reason for wanting specific tasks to frame your days 😊. But some locations and topics are just so photogenic that they require a longer post. And even some explanatory text.
Fear not, there’s little text because each photo, if you click on it or hover your cursor over it, will tell you pretty precisely what you are seeing. But, by way of explanation: I rarely get out by car, mainly because I rarely have a car, since I don’t own one. That means most of what I show you when I’m here at home is within about a ten-mile radius of my home since, well, ten miles out and ten miles back makes for a reasonable day’s exercise and exploration of this wonderful world I’ve been born to. BUT I do have wonderful friends who let me borrow a car sometimes – even more so during covid because, well, covid. And thus I’ve begun to range further afield as the days get shorter and colder, making bicycling a bit less appealing compared to farther-ranging hiking exploration with more clothing layers and a carbon-emissions compromise at the start and end of said activities.
What you’re seeing here are shots all taken one day last week when I explored some of the trails and roads branching out from Muir Beach, which is (I believe) a unit of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. Although it’s a bit north of the hills you see immediately as you exit the north end of the Golden Gate Bridge, the area has at least one ridge high enough to get a view of the western parts of SF, though downtown and the bay bridge, Alcatraz etc. are all behind a higher ridge on the left in the shots I’ll be showing you today. But fear not: I plan to get back to explore those and other trails in my lovely region again in coming months, so stay tuned for future installments.
County Views: Beauty & The Burn
So we’re getting a bit more rain yesterday & today: Santa Rosa itself may reach the magic inch of rainfall before today is out. Thus, I’ve decided it may be safe for me to post these remaining photos I took in the days and weeks after the Glass Fire exploded into Santa Rosa over the Mayacamas Mountains. (Safe, in the sense that it’s less likely yet another fire will explode over the mountains. Though one really never knows, these days…) Somewhere in each of these photos you can see the burned ridges and eastern slopes of the range that separates us from Napa county, the view I see from my home, from my bike rides and hikes around most of this central part of the county. Most of it’s what I called twiced-burned, in a post not long ago.
I’ve recently been on many a hike, alone or with friends, where I know how to detect the marks from the Nuns and Tubbs fires three years ago. Things can grow back, so long as there’s time and enough rain to regrow. This landscape and ecosystem evolved with fire, but it did that evolving before our human pollution started tipping the balance and changing the atmosphere so very much. I wonder how much of this beauty our current childrens’ great-grandchildren will be able to see still. I wonder how many of our fellow citizens actually even care to ask themselves these questions and consider changing their habits and patterns to help preserve more for our future generations.
Beginning of the End
We’re told the fire season officially ends when one inch of rain has fallen. I haven’t determined if this is one inch from a single storm, or a cumulative inch. Either way: even if we love the clear weather in this year of covid so that it’s easier to get out for walks, hikes, bike-rides, tennis or what have you…most of us have eagerly watched the skies for the kinds of clouds that, here in northern California in the late dry season, might drop real rain.
I’ve consciously put myself out of doors with no easy recourse to dryness on the days when brief, scant showers were possible: a week ago I biked seven miles away for lunch with friends, taking only my waterproof windbreaker, and indeed a few raindrops fell on my head and my bike: but not measurable rainfall, yet… Two days later, I went for a half-day hike without even the windbreaker, and was rewarded with more scattered showers that even turned to sleet! (You can see said sleet on my sleeve, and on the ground, if you look closely enough in the photos below. And yes, it’s pathetic that we’re driven to excitement over a few raindrops. We know this. Humor us.) Yesterday our good intentions were rewarded, with about .33 of an inch here in Santa Rosa. Closer to the coast, whence comes this moisture, they were blessed with that magic inch or so of rain. Still: even 1/3 of an inch is such better news than, say, another evacuation warning or more 24-hour-news-cycle stories about, say, vote recounts. So, with apologies to true wetlanders for whom the sight of raindrops beading on plants is nothing special, here’s my paean to the beginning of the end of…well, at least this particular fire season, and maybe a few other things that have been troubling our local community in recent years.
And for those with the bandwidth, the bonus video director’s cut version of “it rained in California yesterday!” 🙂
(so much world, so little time....) 