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.