Wet wood

   This morning here in San Francisco we had another decent rain, which excites me for a number of different reasons. For one, we need the rain here in California, and being happy for rainfall is one of the few things that I can comfortably join others in being happy for (I'm uncomfortable with the idea of being a 'joiner'). Secondly, I have spent some time acquiring waterproof and water-resistant clothing that I can use when it rains so I don't have to carry an umbrella, which I dislike using, and lastly, the Stow Lake area of Golden Gate Park is much more special to me when it is raining, as there is less human activity, and the smells and appearances of the nature there are different when wet.
   Early in my walk today I saw a tree limb that had fallen from the rain and heavy winds earlier, and a nice man that works for parks and recreation was cutting it into smaller pieces to cart away in the small flatbed buggy that he drives around in. As he cut the wood, the memory of the smell of freshly cut wood temporarily filled my head, a smell that I enjoy greatly but don't have the opportunity to smell as often as I would like. This memory led me to think  began about the way that wood looks when wet, how it can look so slick that it appears to be covered in a coat of varnish that has not yet dried. I like how memories can at times seem to grow like plants.
   Whether the wood is part of a living tree or a log cut from a long-dead one seems to matter little; the effect of the moisture on it is just as beautiful either way.

 

Wild animals at Stow Lake

   There are many animals at Stow Lake, some seasonal and some live there year round. I enjoy watching the ways that they interact with others within and outside of their particular groups, and the arrival and departure of species that migrate to or from other places.
   For anyone that reads my blogs (which is basically no one), the fact that I have many opinions about how myself and others should behave is nothing new, and included in these is whether people should be feeding the animals that live around Stow Lake in Golden Gate Park.
   While I feel that I should note that there are signs posted in a few locations which state that feeding the animals is prohibited here (and why it is), I want to focus in this blog entry on the wild character of animals, rather than whether or not people should be following the rules, a subject which I believe that I could write about endlessly.
   Never have I thought that the people who toss peanuts to the squirrels and scrub jays, or dump bread crumbs for the mallards and ducks have anything but care for them in mind when they do so (I imagine that they enjoy the animals as much as I do), but what I find most intriguing about the animals there is that they are wild, and I believe that feeding them regularly serves to make them into pets, robbing them of their wildness.
   Early in the morning, when it is mostly dark and the park is still sparsely populated by people, the animals that I can see and hear start their days; birds are singing, ducks quacking, and the squirrels' nails scratch into the bark of  trees. It's a world mostly mysterious to me, and although I am a person that likes to control things (mostly to my dismay), I love that the animal life in the park exists devoid of me; it seems so beyond my control that I cannot even fathom judging or altering it.
   As the light of the sun illuminates more of the park, the animals begin running up to me, obviously and dishearteningly expecting me to feed them. It is endearing in some way to see this, but also saddening, as I feel like I'm witnessing the loss of one of the things that make them specifically them. I believe that their birthrates have probably increased because of the land of plenty that they've become accustomed to over the years, and although I am a social animal (and forged by my own environment), I don't like that my fellow animals have impacted the others that I share my mornings with in such a human way.

The sounds of windblown branches and cracking wood

   Still cold from the chill of this morning's walk, I sat in a quiet coffee shop earlier today, in a city still quiet the day after Thanksgiving, thinking about the beautiful sounds I heard earlier in the morning.
   It was pretty windy at times as I rounded certain corners of Stow Lake, and there were lots of leaves and dried bark being blown from the gusts around the main path. I also noticed that one particular large, old and very stately looking tree's limbs and branches looked as if they were dancing as the wind whipped them around. It struck me that it looked like a visual representation of an uninteresting poet describing the scene I was witnessing.
    After what I believe was my second lap around the lake, I decided to veer off onto the car path, as I frequently do when I want avoid people. (I should point out that I do this, for the most part, to have the space to better try to understand my feelings at the time). As I crossed to the right side, the wind began to blow strongly, and I heard overhead the branches of what seemed like all the trees in the park blowing, and most beautifully, the crisp, crackling sounds of dry wood breaking. Now that I think of it, what I was hearing could have meant to me the impending death of the trees in question, or less cynically, the shedding of old, unneeded skin, but all that I thought of at the time, and what still stays with me most now, is that sound.            
   I feel that I am very sensitive to the world audible to humans, and perhaps my ears are sometimes 'too open' (for I can also become easily irritated by sounds that I don't like), but I also believe that this quality can help me to listen better to what's around me, and there are are so many wonderful things to hear.

The depths of green

    It was a chilly, clear morning as the sun began to warm parts of Stow Lake in Golden Gate Park where I walked the morning I began this blog piece. While areas of the path and surrounding roadway were still shrouded in shade, the brightness began to warm the northeastern section. Interestingly, at least to me, this is the area that tends to be the foggiest and windiest during much of the year, but right now it is the first to receive concentrated sun, and the light here, at any time of the year, tends to illuminate the bushes, trees and their leaves in the most beautiful ways.
   I have written in these blogs before about the color green (I can't recall exactly where, when or exactly what I said about it), but the intense feelings of calmness that this color can fill me with warranted this second meditation. I try to keep this calmness with me throughout the day by wearing the color, especially the deeper varieties, but I only get the feeling deeply when in nature. I am consistently disappointed by it, it seems, when it is not living.
   It is very difficult to really know whether it's the color green itself or the way the light hits it at the time of day I see it that moves me to write on the subject (perhaps it's a combination of the two), but when I see it during my morning walks, when the light is just right, it looks like there are endless variances. It is like a forest of color that never ends, and occurs to me that I would like to be enveloped in it. It seems like it cares for me in a way that I never seemed to get from either of my parents.
   If I could become even somewhat as nurturing to myself and others as I sometimes feel when experiencing this wonderful color, I would be quite satisfied. If I could also possess even some of the nearly unnameable and  indescribable qualities in the place that I occupy in the world, I would be very happy.

Thunder, lightning and freedom

   It rained in San Francisco; That's news in itself, as the city and state have been in a pretty well known drought for the past few years. What made the day's storm particularly noteworthy, however, was the accompaniment of thunder and lightning, which is quite rare here, even during a normally wet rainy season.

   I began my daily foray out of my apartment as I usually do, with a walk in Golden Gate Park, and the steady rain, though not very heavy, kept many of the early regulars away.
   With the park nearly to myself, I walked amid the drizzle and then steadier rain, and soon began to hear thunder in the distance. The sound of the rumbling reminded me of when I was a boy in sleepaway camp, when on some days the hot weather would give way to strong thunder and lightning, cooling the afternoon heat. I remembered those days with fondness, even though I did not always have pleasant experiences, nor good memories of the time. The ducks and squirrels in the park seem unfazed by the thunder, and appeared to relish in the wet weather. I also saw the hints of an dark rainbow at about this time.
   As I continued walking, the thunder became more intense, and suddenly the muted colors brightened from the first hint of lightning. The flashes struck me as so unusual that it crossed my mind that a studio photographer's flood lights had momentarily flashed (I knew that thought didn't make sense, but that's honestly what occurred to me), and as the flashes became louder, brighter, and closer to the rumbles that proceeded them, the people who were there seemed to grow as excited as me. We all seemed to be sharing in our witness to  a remarkable event.
   It dawned on me at that time that I felt very free just then; it was as if this thunder and lightning had transported me back to the times I'd experienced them in the past, amid all of the pain and anxiety of those times, and temporarily cleansed them from my present.

Delicate exits and entrances

     I was walking around Stow Lake about ten days ago, and passed an area that had recently been re-sod. I had previously noticed that there had been times where parts of this new grass had begun to peel up (probably as it had not yet formed strong roots to the soil below), but when I came upon it on the day that I took the picture below, something seemed a bit different.
   As I looked closer, it appeared that a gopher had dug its' way up from one of its' underground tunnels just at the corner where of one of the new sod squares had been laid down. It struck me as rather beautiful and interesting that an opening would be revealed at such a tenuous place. I thought about entrances and exits, about how new grass can seem so natural yet alien in its' new home, and found it especially wonderful that an animal whose forays above ground seem so haphazard would rise exactly at this location. I also found it amazing that the corner of the sod still appeared so square and relatively undamaged by the commotion which caused its' upheaval.
   I consider myself fortunate that I could witness something so meaningful, for it's these kinds intersections and tensions that I find so interesting in life.

 

The hole

   During my morning walk, I spotted this hole, seemingly made by a gopher, and was drawn to it. There is evidence of hundreds and hundreds of these holes which have been covered up by these animals for their protection, but I don't see many of the uncovered ones, and if I do, there usually seems to be a gopher about to peek out or duck back into it.
   I didn't think why this particular one was so interesting to me when I first took the picture (apart from it's unusual angle and inverted conical shape), but the more I thought about it, I realized that it seems to me to be an almost perfect negative version of a hole which has been covered by its' maker.
   The 'door' of these holes is usually closed by a pyramidal shaped pile of dirt (the dirt which was used to create the hole in the first place), and this strikes me as a sort of inverted version of it, not literally an exact opposite, but a kind of allusion to it. It works abstractly in a way that I find uncommon in art made by human beings.
   Although it is difficult to tell this in the picture below, the hole is dug in a way that the gopher that made it appears to have had it's angles askew, perhaps searching for the top of the ground, but taking a couple of wrong turns along the way. While I am a person that usually thrives on rational ways of doing things because it provides a sense of order to my sometimes chaotic-feeling inner life, I find that unusual turns and obtuse choices makes the world more interesting and life worth living.
 

Good luck turtles

   Recently I wrote in another blog about wild animals, which gave me cause to think about my my life, and how limiting my own thoughts are. I wrote in that blog entry about how it had seemed to me that these animals and I seemed to belong to different universes, and thinking that there are living things that can strike me as being so removed from my own experience reminded me how closed my mind can be to the world that others exist in.
   When I take my daily walks, I see many of the same animals, and although I know that there are other animals there, living out of my sight under water, behind and up in the trees, I tend to forget that they are actually there, and turtles would be included in this group. I rarely see them outside of the summer months here in San Francisco, but about a month ago, I started to spot them again, bodies submerged as their heads come above water for a brief moment until they see me, when they disappear again.
   I now see the turtles almost daily, often times more than once a day, and today saw two in the same place, one swimming as another sunned itself on a small rock in the lake. Even though seeing turtles early in the morning has become a pretty regular occurrence, I still find their submerged ways and dinosaur-like appearance compelling. They are like a creature out of another time or universe, and I sometimes feel that way, too.
   My father-in-law recently passed away, and in his house there are two tortoises, or as my wife called them, so interestingly for me, "land turtles". She asked if we could bring them to our house, but unfortunately, we cannot have animals where we live.
   How wonderful would it be though if we were to forget that they were in our apartment, off hidden somewhere dark as they seem to be inclined to do, and then see one by accident, as I do by chance during my morning walks.

A water tortoise

Windier, colder and wetter.

   When I park my car for my daily walk around Stow Lake in Golden Gate Park, I generally (but not absolutely always) park my car in one of two places; either midway on the lake's east side, or on its' southeast corner.
   As I begin my walk, I soon approach the area pictured below, and if I were to close my eyes and forget where I walk almost daily, I would still know when I am nearing this area, as the weather here is always a bit different from the other parts of the path around the lake. I don't know why the weather is a bit different here; it's not closer to the ocean, at a higher elevation, nor can I tell that there are any less trees here to block the sea breeze, but it is definitely different, and it is colder.
   When I approach this corner while I am walking, I will often readjust my scarf (if I am wearing one) and wipe my head from the foggy moisture which often drips from the tree seen in the middle left of the picture. I don't notice it being cooler on those rare warm days when I am walking here (there are probably about five to six of those yearly), but on those other chilly days, it's always more of everything that makes western San Francisco notable, referenced in the title to this blog entry.

Bundle up!

Sound and expectancy

   Over the past few days I have heard a sound during my morning park walks that is both familliar and was, initially hard to place. The sound came from an area that is hidden by shrubs at the southern part of Stow Lake, and the first time I heard it three days ago it didn't strike me as out of the ordinary, though I didn't think about what was producing the sound either. It wasn't really until two days later that it dawned on me that it was the sound of a bullfrog, a sound which is a regular one at Stow Lake, but which, from what I understand, is only heard for a short period annually when the animal is looking for a mate (at least that's what regulars who have been walking there for years have told me).
   So it seems that this annual sound event, which occupies only the smalles part of my day when it is occuring, is something like a vague memory that brings hope and excitement to me, and which fills me with expectation when I approach the hidden area where the animal seems to reside.
   Although I have been walking around Stow Lake (mostly) daily for more than two years now, it wasn't until one day last year that I saw the maker of this sound, a large black frog, which was ahead of me in the walking path, and which quickly disappeared as I approached. At first, in the foggy, drizzly weather, it looked like a large black, plastic bag, the kind that you rarely see here in San Francisco since these kinds of bags were banned here almost two years ago, but as I got closer it jumped away, and I was joyful.
   Experiencing these kinds of things is for me like being told that a wonderful surprise awaits you, and having the trust and patience to know it will come at some point. It is something to look forward to in the future, and allthough I don't necessarliy need to have a possible reward on the horizon to make my life worth living, it does add to its' allure.
   The existence of the wonderful sounds, sights and smells that have been available to me in the past in my park spots creates a belief for me that there are more of them available to me in the future, and the expectancy of them suggests that there is more good ahead.

Remembering Chub and the police stables

   I remember vaguely when I first discovered the police horse stables in Golden Gate Park, though I can't recall the exact time. I had been visiting the bison paddock on the other side of John F. Kennedy Drive, and somehow I ended up here. I don't think it had anything to do with my friend Karl, who I found later used to go to the Golden Gate Angling & Casting Club right next door, but somehow I did end up here, and it became a favorite place of mine to visit for a while.
   I used to come here to look at and talk to the horses, whose personalities seemed easier to comprehend than the comparatively drowsy, though equally sweet bison across the street, and it refreshed me and made me feel happy to be alive when I did. My wife and I would give them grass to eat which grew just out of their reach, and we enjoyed seeing their faces up close, marveling at their big nostrils and feeling their hot breath on our hands.
   When I would visit, either alone or with company, there would often be one horse off in a smaller pen by himself. I think that in some way I felt sorry for him, but also perhaps related to his isolation, and to my horse-behavior-uneducated eyes, he seemed as content as the other horses, who shared a large pen attached to the stable where they lived (the road separating the two pens is called James W. Bloesch road, named after a mounted police officer accidentally shot here in the head by a colleague).
   At some point a worker had come out while I was visiting, and he told me that this single horse's name was Chub, and that he was there because he didn't get along with the other horses. He also told me that this horse was retired, and was being sent out to stud.
   When I would visit after learning this information about Chub, I would call his name when I arrived, and he would come over to me. To a city kid like myself, knowing the name of a horse that I could go to visit was something special, and whether Chub was special as an equine specimen, I don't know, but he was to me.
   At some point, my visits here subsided, and when I returned on a few occasions, he was no longer here.
I don't know what made me think of him today, it's been awhile since I have, but I knew that I should revisit this place physically, emotionally, and in memory. I'm glad that I did.

The collective pen as seen from Officer James W. Bloesch road.

Chub's old pen, apparently unused.

New and mysterious

   Now that the days are longer and the sunrise is earlier, it's already pretty light when I arrive at Golden Gate Park for my morning walk. If I get there too much earlier, I have too much time before I need to go to work, and so I've been missing that special time of day there when the light is just beginning, and the place is quiet and still, except for the animals.
   Today is Saturday, the second day of my weekend, and because I was already up, I decided to get to my favorite park spot early, forgetting that it's been awhile since I was there for that wonderful time of day. There was a misting drizzle at times after some light and steady rain a few hours earlier, and the wet colors  and delicate sounds produced by the water droplets dripping off of the trees were beautiful and soothing.
   As I passed a tree favored by squirrels on the northeast corner of the path around Stow Lake the second time, I noticed this strange, milky white substance accumulated there. In the midst of my walk, I decided to wait until the next time I passed it to look at it more in depth, which is when I took these two pictures.      
   Looking at it closely, I could see that there was an area above the white formation where a small piece of bark protruded, and it seemed that this is where the drips where coming from that formed this substance. I'm guessing that it may be some combination of rainwater and possibly sap, or perhaps a sickness in the tree that caused this, but I had never seen something like it before, or perhaps I had but had never really looked closely. Either way, it was new and a bit mysterious to me today, and experiencing things in my life that those two words can be sparingly used to describe make my life worth living.

Bubbling stuff.

Middle-top of picture, the piece of bark where the drips came from.

Dead mouse

   This is another picture that I recently rediscovered on my computer that I took some months ago. I saw this little fella (or lady) during one of my walks in Golden Gate Park, and although seeing a dead animal used to make me sad, I've found that the last couple of years it has affected me in a more complex way. The dead animals that I've seen recently include this mouse and a Muscovy duck, which appeared to have been attacked and mostly eaten by another animal, probably a coyote. Below, rigor mortis appears to have set in on this Stow Lake resident, but its' stiffness is offset for me by the gentle, crescent moon shape formed by it's body. I see no signs of trauma in the photo; it looks as though life gently left it during a tranquil night's sleep.

   The fact that I see these animals in what I regard as their natural environments, and because I see so much life here regularly during my walks, death seems more a part of the process of life (perhaps that fact that I am past fifty years old and can sense my own mortality also has something to do with it). Seeing things in environments that appear continuous with the life located there helps me to envision the world more holistically, and that helps me to feel more like I belong to that world as well.

   As I finish writing this blog entry and look at the picture again, I have just remembered my father's death, who was also an animal, but who died in a hospital, a place for me which is an unnatural environment. When he finally died after a night where I watched him struggle to breath, his body too, stiffened quickly. I don't know how much that thought has to do with this blog subject, but the association is a real one for me, and I write here to uncover these kinds of associations.

   In the picture accompanying this entry, the animal not only looks peaceful to me, but I believe that I can see the life that was once in it.

The bison paddock

   When I first came to San Francisco, at first to visit, I was enamored with this place. The idea of bison living in the local park was fantastic to me, and the reality of watching them do, well pretty much nothing, relaxed me. They seemed so content, that I though to myself, I could do nothing, too.
   Well, I am not a bison, and while the idea of doing very little all day does suits me, the reality of it does not. I get a bit anxious when I am docile for too long (though measured laziness certainly has it's place), and I feel like I have to get up and do something...anything. I've tried meditation, but I find it really difficult when I'm still, so I do it while I'm walking, and I really enjoy it. It's as if something in me has to be active (brain, legs) during the day to relax, unless I'm in bed about to nap or sleep through the night, at which time I am able to relax. I'm always ready though to be tranquil.
   So as I gather my thoughts about this subject, I realize that the bison in the paddock are in a nearly constant state of preparing to relax, so we are in fact not that different after all.

Tree Boulevard (Presidio Boulevard)

   When I am on this road in the Presidio of San Francisco, where the trees form a cool, shady canopy, I am always in my car. On the one hand this is unfortunate, because it is a fairly busy road, and I don't have a chance to engage in the kind of slow, intimate looking, smelling and hearing of my surroundings that normally make beautiful places so moving to me. There are places to walk, rough places in the wooded area off to the right of the picture below, but there is not really a designated, calm path to slowly meander in the area shown in the photo. The fact that I most often am driving when I'm here also has a positive side, in that I believe that this road only feels like the 'Tree Boulevard" of the title from the position from the inside of a car, and for me, it is when I am driving north, as shown in the picture. There is something about being in my car, going twenty five miles per hour that makes the canopy seem like the calming, continuous green drapery that I find so relaxing. When I drive here, it's like there is a cool, refreshing breeze clearing my brain of unwanted debris.

The smell of pine

   There are many places I love to visit at my local parks, spending most of my green time in Golden Gate Park, and in particular around the one mile stretch of walkway that is adjacent to Stow Lake. I spend about one hour here (or more) on a nearly daily basis, and although I'm very familiar with most of this area, there are often new sights and smells to surprise me, sometimes because I have not looked very closely before, and sometimes because different times of the year and conditions illicit new sights, smells and sounds.
   The picture below was taken recently, on a stretch of road that curves around the southwest portion of Stow Lake. I began walking on this road (it is actually a car path, whereas the pedestrian path is outside the picture to the left) when more people would arrive to walk, and I sought solace and quiet here. It was after a heavy rain about two months ago that I first noticed the strong, wonderful smell of pine at this location, and the fragrance has returned during the past three weeks or so, despite no rain during that time. It may be that the rain caused the trees to bloom, or the lack of rain and above-average temperatures fooled the trees into thinking that spring had already arrived, but most of the park, including much of the city, has been smelling wonderful.
   I recall seeing about a year ago a blind person being led around the lake by a friend, and as they passed by one of the people that I see here regularly, that person turned to her friend and said, "why would you bring a blind person here?" I remember thinking to myself how stupid that sounded. It reminds me to try to keep my mind, as well as my nostrils, open.

The curve of road in question

A week away

   I recently returned from visiting my mother who now lives in central New York, and while there I was not able to start my day with my usual dawn walks (I did try one day, but it was only 16 degrees fahrenheit, the ground was slick and frozen, and I threw in the towel early). Although I had a very nice time being with my wife, mother, and my sister and her family, I really missed that time that I am accustomed to having for myself in the mornings.

   Today, although tired and a bit jet lagged from the trip, I woke up early and enthusiastically headed head out for my beloved walk. It was dark when I arrived, and at the first hints of daylight, a beautiful display of early morning colors appeared somewhere around the east bay, while wonderful smells greeted me at special points around the path. I  heard loud, unfamiliar sounds at the north west part of the lake, and saw two great blue herons engaged in what seemed like a fight (or at least, an argument), as one doggedly pursued the other around their usual nesting tree. I have seen the herons here many times during my early walks, but never saw them in this way. Squirrels and ducks looked to me for food (they obviously had me confused with someone else), and I noticed that the coots, whose ranks were so populous on my last walk, seemed to have left and continued on in their migrations. It's great to be back home.