Rain and color at North Lake

  I greatly enjoy when there is a light or moderate rain falling during my morning walks around Stow Lake for two main reasons; the ways that the scents of the plants and flowers seem to perk up from the moisture, and because the ducks, geese, mallards and herons apparent joy at the weather is contagious. There is also a feeling of my defenses coming down a bit as I walk and get a little wet, and although I wear appropriate clothing for the weather, I find it relaxing in some way being forced to accept that I am powerless to avoid looking a little disheveled from being in the wet for an hour.
   Although there are other things too that I like about being out when it rains, there was something that I noticed this day that is by far my favorite aspect of the rain as I think and write about it here; the ways that it highlights the colors of nature, especially the bark of trees.
   I have noticed this phenomenon before, but never have seen it appear so dramatic and beautiful. Perhaps it is because we've had such dry winters for the past four years that the bark has not been able to draw in enough moisture to produce as spectacular results as I noticed that day. Perhaps I had never really been in the right place to see it, nor was it the right time of our winter to see it.  Maybe I was just able to see it more this time.
   Although I had an appointment to attend to after my walk, I decided to return to the park later in the morning. Knowing that Stow Lake can become a bit crowded later, even on a rainy day, I decided to
drive to the North Lake, perhaps a mile further out towards the ocean. It was here that I walked slowly, and saw the amazing colors that inspired to write this blog entry.
   I really have no idea why the rain seems to create or allow the colors of the trees to appear as they did on this particular occasion, but I can't recall seeing colors like blue, nor the kinds of yellow that I saw this time. I imagine that although bark ages and assumes different hues as it ages and dies, the examples that I looked at intensly here seemed as if they had patinated more like a metal than wood.
   Below is one of the pictures that I took, and reminds of the paintings of Clifford Still, an artist whose paintings I have enjoyed precisely because they reminded me of the kinds of surfaces of trees that I saw that rainy day.

The smell of nature

   For at least the past couple of weeks I have noticed something new at Stow Lake. It's not new for what or where it is, but for its' consistency; the smell of fresh skunk scent permeating the eastern side of the lake's drive, just across from a bridge there leading to Strawberry Hill, which the lake surrounds.
   During the two or three years that I have been enjoying my morning walks in Golden Gate Park, I have smelled the scent on many, many occasions, but can't recall the frequency with which I am smelling it now, which is nearly daily. It has become something of a regular thing, but thankfully not so much so as to make me expect to smell it. I say thankfully, because I know from experience that regularity often dulls me to the beautiful in the world.
   As I walk and smell that wonderful skunk odor, I am happy, because I feel like I am somewhere very special, where wild animals live and share the space that I do. Of course there are also other wild animals here such as ducks, mallards, geese, squirrels and even herons, but I have seen them enough as to sometimes (not always) dull me to their wildness. In the case of the skunks however, and even though I have seen them quite a few times, I still don't expect to, and because I smell them so much more than I do see them, their world strikes me as a bit more hidden and mysterious.
   As a man who used to be a regular marijuana smoker, maybe there is a part of me that likes the smell because it reminds me of that drug (I recall there were strains of it that were called "skunk"), as the other people that walk past this area don't seem to appreciate it like I do, or at all for that matter. Although I don't doubt that the cannabis influence is negligent, I don't think it is the only reason; perhaps it is more because both of them are earthy, and I like pretty much everything that can be described using that word.

The earthy area

   I have been told by two people at Stow Lake (one a regular walker there, the other a park ranger) since writing this entry that it is the mating season of the skunks that inhabit this part of the park. I would assume this accounts for their increased visibility to us humans, though this knowledge does detract from my experience in the least.

Mushrooms almost overnight

   A few weeks ago we had a pretty steady rain here in San Francisco, and I noticed these mushrooms sprout up a couple of days later. Perhaps another day after that, the mushrooms seemed to have nearly doubled, growing in size, mass and density. I know that things can grow fast, but the ferocity with which these grew made it seem like they had been saving up all of their energy for a time just like this, when they could suddenly burst forth to show themselves!
   One of the main reasons that I began, and continue writing this blog is to express my wonder for the natural world, a world that I am able to experience daily due to my schedule, desire and proximity to the great Golden Gate Park. No matter what I see here, and regardless of the regularity that I do, I still see so much to fascinate me that I doubt I could ever be interest could ever be exhausted, even if I only walked the one mile oval that I do in the mornings.
   It's hard to tell if this spatially limited environment is continually changing and developing, or whether it is my consciousness that is; at times, it seems like one or both of them is doing so almost overnight