Dry Hillsides & Live Oaks
We’re reaching the end of a lovely three-week vacation back home in the beloved Bay Area. Realizing that I’d taken tons of photos as always, but not posted any of them whether to facebook or to the blog…let alone to instagram, which friends are telling me I should try out…I decided that before I head to the airport tomorrow for the flight back to Port au Prince, I should at least start sorting some of the pics and putting them up. I’ve been out on my bike even more than usual this time, because I have no motor vehicle up here; I’ve driven around a bit with friends down in the city (SF, that is) and the peninsula; and yesterday around Sonoma County with another friend who came for a visit…but those shots will appear in future posts once I’ve sorted the good from the bad. This post is all about the superb mountain-biking park that is semi-literally out my door, turn right, and walk til the streets end and the paths begin. Any time someone wonders why I’ve continued to pay state taxes in CA during all these years when I’m more out of the country, than in…well, state parks with toilets and drinking fountains (potable water than won’t give you cholera! piped fresh to a faucet near you! don’t take it for granted!) and maintained walk and horse and bike trails…well, if my taxes are going for that rather than bombing schools in various poorer foreign lands, they’re taxes I’m happy to pay. ‘Nuf said…oh except the mountain lion sign is for my brother Steve: these, you can be afraid of. Chickens, no; mountain lions, yes. Got it? 🙂
Seasons in Sonoma County
When I moved from New York City to southern California, a long-time family friend told me I’d miss seasons. While not untrue, this was also not entirely true. The joke among southern Californians at the time was that there were seasons but they were just different from the classic northern four — in LA, one had fire season, mudslide season, etc. Now I’ve spent the past decade and more roaming among assignments mostly well within the world’s tropical bands, I’ve learned more about the seasons not of winter and summer, autumn and spring — but of wet and dry, all too often also of malaria and cholera. As a world we seem also to be learning about the less-bad and even-worse seasons to attempt crossing the Mediterranean in an overcrowded wooden boat in the urgent hope of providing for yourself, your children, your spouse some kind of safety or opportunity more than you and yours face in the horn of Africa or parts of the Arabian peninsula. And meanwhile, would-be presidential politicians in the US whose great-great grandparents left northern Europe as economic migrants wax sanctimonious and try to bar the gates behind them and limit opportunity only to those who look, think and act like them. Ah well: when the politics and pain of the world get too much for me I think about the green grass of winter, and the brown grass of summer, on the hills of California.
Herewith some examples of the same places, at different times of year. And let me add, for blog readers new and returning: I’ve made some changes in design and layout recently. One feature I’m personally addicted to is the header image on this page, which should shuffle through a bunch of different images, changing pretty much each time you come back to it. I’ve tried to pick some of the most interesting things I’ve seen since I started this little blog thing in early 2005…so please, if you see things up there that you especially like, or that you think aren’t strong or interesting enough, drop me a comment or shoot me a note. I’m enjoying fiddling with the design and layout, and always love to hear from readers, whether I’ve met you yet in person or not. Thanks!
On & Around San Francisco Bay
…plus a few remnants from a series one might call ‘airports of the world.’ smw, slt has not gotten out and about with the camera much these past weeks, but I did realize there was a small cache of photos from some boat trips on the bay, and some hikes in Marin and Sonoma counties, that had not yet been posted. Since I get a bit homesick sometimes when I’m so far away, I’m putting these up so that I have an easy way to scan over them from time to time and remind myself what home looks like. Maybe some of you will enjoy it as well. All the photos have descriptive file names that show up if you hover over them or open them separately, I think. In the slide show below, you’ll see a panorama which goes from the Bay Bridge on the left (east), across the full waterfront of northern SF, to the Golden Gate Bridge & Marin Headlands on the right (west). Further down you’ll see some hiking shots from the trails in Tennessee Valley (Marin county), and Annadel State Park & Hood Mountain Regional Park (Sonoma County). In one of them you’ll see frost on the ground in the shadowy foreground: that was Christmas day last year – ah, how I long for frost on a hot afternoon here in Port au Prince! At the end are some photos of me and friends – at Wolf House in Jack London State Historic Park (Sonoma County) … and, well, me looking as lost as I felt, with some colleagues in Casablanca airport on my way home from Sierra Leone, last December. Our flight out of Freetown had been at some crazy hour like 2 am or 3 am or something, so we took the ferry over to the airport at 10pm or so, and snoozed in the waiting area and then flew for three hours to Casablanca to land at something like 8 in the morning. Oy, airports in which we have waited listlessly: might be a future series, what do you think?
(so much world, so little time....) 