Close Encounters of the Aromas Kind

 Third Quarter Moon

What I really wanted to do for the last ten days of November was to pack up and head for Death Valley NP. I love the desert this time of year and there was a good chance I could score some tasty Turkey Day grub at Furnace Creek Ranch (at least there was in pre-COVID days). However, reserving campsites in the national parks now takes a set of internetal (new word) gymnastic skills which I do not possess. Or maybe it's patience that I lack. Or maybe reserve dot gov is the crappiest web site this side of planet Mercury. I knew that some of their campgrounds were still closed or restricted and I was hesitant to to drive that far if I couldn't nail down a spot to camp for a few nights in advance. 

Should I gamble on a cancellation for the chance to see a desert Sunrise or a Moonset? I can see them fine right here.

My end of the month decision was rendered much simpler by a request by friends Teri and Clete to watch over their house and animals in Aromas, CA, a mere hop, skip, and scoot from San Juan Bautista. So I agreed to a twelve-day stint in their beautiful home while they travel back East. 

I like Aromas a lot. It's a small, friendly, hilly, wooded town on the Pacific Plate side of the San Andreas Fault about ten miles from the beach. There isn't much to do there, but the Aromas Grill serves good food, Marshall Grocery makes excellent burritos, and the Aromas Sports Park on the edge of town is great for walking dogs and playing disc golf. That's enough for me right now. I get a change of scenery and an opportunity to spend quality time with Bob the Dog, Hazel the Cat, and Eekamouse the Other Cat. 

Hazel and Eekamouse are exclusively house felines, originally feral kittens, who have wide-ranging, manic personalities that swing between cute-and-cuddly to kitchen-counter-hurdling savage. Hazel is on the left in this awww-ain't we-sweet pose. To capture them in action would require a few ESPN camera crews. 

Bob the Dog, in contrast, is the most consistently laidback creature this side of Pluto. He is getting up in years, just how many no one knows, but he's very smart and way easy to get along with. He keeps a regular schedule of the following low key activities: peeing, pooping, eating, drinking, sleeping, and walking on a leash. Here's a photo of Bob in his festive pumpkin-colored holiday sweater. He's not really into posing for the camera, but he'll  occasionally put up with human housesitter quirks if it means getting to go to the park.

Every day after breakfast Bob is scheduled for an 8:00 morning mile. I load him into Teri's Subaru and we drive over to the sports park for a brisk amble around the crushed  gravel track. The brisk amble is frequently interrupted by sudden bursts of stoppage to smell the heck out of the grass and sometimes pee a little bit. For a couple of old guys, we are pretty durn quick. Bob can stop and pee on a dime whenever he wants to, though, something, alas, I cannot do without risking arrest. Here's one of Bob setting the pace.

The amount of time and effort that goes into caring for just these three relatively copasetic critters amazes me. I really don't know how people do that plus raise kids, hold down jobs, maintain marriages, socialize, recreate, and be on time for group therapy, too. I mean, I like to recreate, you know? It sort of takes up my whole day, come to think of it. And I avoid group therapy like the plague. 

Well, I'd better get on the stick. Bob is looking at me with that forlorn, take-me-to-the-park look again. Away we go.

Peace, Love, and Recreation All Day Long,

Jim

An Invitation to the Haudenosaunee Thanksgiving Address

 Waning Gibbous Moon

Recently, no fewer than five of my most valued friends recommended that I read a book by Robin Wall Kimmerer called Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants. The author and mother of three daughters is an absolutely brilliant writer of Potawatomi descent with a Ph.D. in Botany. Every page is delivered purposefully like visual poetry. Each chapter is a separate lesson. The whole book is a treatise on realism and natural philosophy rooted solidly in Mother Earth. To all those friends who knew I would love it and urged me to read it, thank you and bless you. You were right.

https://www.amazon.com/Braiding-Sweetgrass-Indigenous-Scientific-Knowledge/dp/1571313567

About a hundred pages into the book is a chapter entitled Allegiance to Gratitude. Kimmerer refers to the Haudenosaunee Thanksgiving Address, an Onondaga greeting or prayer called, in their language, "Words That Come Before All Else." She describes it thusly: 

This ancient order of protocal sets gratitude as the highest priority...It is said that the people were instructed to stand and offer these words whenever they gathered, no matter how many or how few, before anything else was done.

The scene during which this Thanksgiving Address is presented should be read in context of the chapter and the book as a whole, so I won't give that away. Suffice to say it stunned me. I was moved to read more about the address and discovered a beautifully constructed website that gives the expanded version which extends gratitude to all of the natural world.

https://danceforallpeople.com/haudenosaunee-thanksgiving-address/

This year on the eve of Thanksgiving Day, I am extending an invitation to anyone who happens to read this to join me virtually tomorrow morning in reading aloud each part of the address in the order constructed on this beautiful site. No Zoom thing, just join me in spirit, wherever you are. I recommend taking a few minutes to watch the short videos first to set the mood, then proceed to speak the "prayer" either by yourself or with a partner or a group. I think it is quite a powerful meditation when read aloud and a soothing way to start any day, especially Thanksgiving.

Peace, Love, and Say It Out Loud,

Jim

The Twisted Grove of Nisene Marks State Park

 First Quarter Moon

This past Monday I returned to the Magical Forest of Nisene Marks State Park in the company of my semi-notorious friends Captain Chem, Sultry Sue, and Saint Nacho the Chihuahuan Empath. This visit had the twin purposes of a) finding the much ballyhooed "Twisted Grove" of redwoods and b) enjoying a picnic lunch at the end of the Old Growth Loop trail. I successfully checked both items off my Monday to-do list.

Now I have another thing to-do. I have a Facebook friend who has sort of been bugging me for a while to find the Twisted Grove and report on what I saw. Her interest prompted me to think the grove might be both hard to find and somehow very spectacular. It was neither, really. It's only a half-mile, if that, from the park entrance and it was easy to spot on the park map. This small grove of twisted trees uphill from Aptos Creek exhibits a curious thing called spiral growth. They are interesting, but unspectacular, at least until you start to learn the how and why these trees grew in spirals. 

They are cool-looking, though. My photos did not turn out so well, so I borrowed a couple from my San-Juan-Bautista-by-way-of-Soquel friend Katie Smith.

Photo credit: Katie Smith

Photo credit: Katie Smith

To understand how these trees got so twisted, I turned to Dr. Maynard Moe, a retired Biology professor and plant expert/naturalist/hiker/backpacker who grew up in Yosemite Valley, yes that Yosemite Valley, in you know, Yosemite National Park. The good Dr. Moe allowed me to ask one dumb question after another as I scoured the web for an explanantion that wasn't pure speculation. He helped me eliminate a few wild goose chases and he didn't once come out and say "Geezuz, Jim, you really should be in a home by now." Heckuva nice guy, that Maynard. 

To begin to understand what happened to these redwood trees that made them grow in spirals, it helps to review a few terms from high school daze. I'll go ahead and preface all of this by telling you two things: a) this will be a very simplistic explanation and b) the exact mechanics and causes of the process are still being studied. How is that for lowering expectations?

For a little review of how trees get water and nutrients from their roots to their branches and parts farther out on a limb, I'm going to quote some folks from the University of Tennessee who know what they are talking about. 

Tree Growth Characteristics 

 https://extension.tennessee.edu/publications/Documents/W227.pdf

Upon peeling the bark off a branch, the soft inner layer of bark next to the wood is revealed. This is the vascular cambium, and every year it creates xylem (new wood) on the inside, and phloem (new inner bark) on the outside. The xylem carries water and nutrients from the roots upward, while the phloem carries sugars from the leaves downward (Fig. 4). In temperate climates, the cambium does not grow during the winter and a dark line can be seen in the wood where cambial growth slowed at year’s end. These are the annual growth rings that are visible in many species.

A certain amount of diameter growth also occurs through growth of the cork cambium, which produces cork, the outer layer of bark. New cork is produced each year; however, the outermost layer is shed so that the bark thickness of a mature tree remains nearly the same from year to year. Therefore, while growth of the cork cambium may contribute greatly to diameter growth as a sapling develops a thick bark, diameter growth of a mature tree is mainly due to the production of wood by the vascular cambium. 

Okay, so the root system transports water and nutrients up through the xylem to the branches, right? As long as the roots are intact and functioning "normally," the water goes pretty much straight up the tree above where the root system is feeding it all around the circumference of the tree. Absent any funny business, what you get eventually is a big ole beautiful straight redwood. 

BUT, what happens when the roots are not functioning as described above? What if, for example, the roots on one side of the tree get tangled in rocks and can no longer reach soil to transport water? What if that or another external stress changes the straight upward movement of fluids through the xylem on one side of a tree?  Then you get blockage called cavitation, creating an embolism.

Cavitation occurs in xylem of vascular plants when the tension of water within the xylem becomes so high that dissolved air within water expands to fill either the vessels or the tracheids. The blocking of a xylem vessel or tracheid by an air bubble or cavity is called as embolism (Gr. embolus, stopper), and such a vessel or tracheid is said to be embolized.

https://www.biologydiscussion.com/plants/cavitation-and-embolism-in-vascular-plants-with-diagram/22732

An embolized xylum vessel will prevent straight upward movement of fluids from the roots to the branches, so for the tree to grow, something  must give. Of course, nature finds a way. The tree compensates by an adaptation called spiral growth. Fluids move around the blockage (embolism) at about a 30-degee angle and begin a spiral journey around the tree like stripes on a barber pole, thereby bringing fluid to all parts of the crown, not just the parts directly above the healthy side of the root system. The end result is the twisted form exhibited in the Twisted Grove at Nisene Marks. 

Simply stated, spiral growth is:

an adaptation that resists the "upstream" effects of embolisms. If embolisms aren't an issue, there is no selection for twisting. – Dr. Maynard Moe. personal communication

In the hundreds of redwood trees that surround the tiny Twisted Grove in the Magical Forest of Nisene Marks State Park, there are no consequential, bothersome embolisms and thus, there is no spiral growth. 

I for one am happy the twisted trees and their embolisms allowed me to visit and wonder how they came to be. Did I arrive at an exhaustive answer to why and how spiral growth occurs? Nope. But at least I gained a basic understanding of what may be the process that produced the result. And I learned to be cautious and dubious while reading speculative, data-less answers like the Coriolis Effect and earthquake shaking self-correction on the internet. 

No doubt, I will learn more as time goes on. That's entertainment.

Peace, Love, and Picnics,

Jim

The Magical Forest of Nisene Marks

 Waxing Crescent Moon

Yesterday's mini-adventure began with breakfast at the Sunrise Cafe in Soquel, CA with my esteemed colleague and hiking pal Captain Chem from nearby Aptos. The Sunrise is one of my favorite little cafes in this neck of the woods, but due to COVID concerns, it had been a while between veggie omelets. I can verify that they are still awesome as is the swift and friendly service. 

The plan for the day was to head up to nearby Land of the Medicine Buddha to do a six-mile hike around the property - and perhaps to spin the prayer wheel/ring the gong in the middle of the holy redwood forest. The weather was perfect and I was more than excited to get on the trail. 

Alas, this hike was not to be. Unbeknownst to me, administrators have closed the trails and grounds to the public from November 1, 2021 until April 1, 2022 for monk maintenance of mind and soul and for land recovery of soil and tree. Good medicine requires special care. If I had bothered to check their website beforehand, I would have been forewarned. Consider yourself forewarned, in case you were on your way. 

No biggie, though, Plan B quickly hatched itself. Captain Chem knew of an easy fix to our simple problem. Parking Hondo at the southern edge of the Cabrillo College campus, we accessed a very pleasant Santa Cruz County hiking trail that winds along the back of a residential area through a healthy-looking oak forest. I know that pampas grass is non-native, but I think it is pretty nonetheless.

 After a mile or so, the trail connects to the northern boundary of Forest of the Nisene Marks State Park. Just like that, we were walking among the redwoods anyway, so there was no need to be disappointed. On the contrary, this hike was great. I think the medicine buddha is probably everywhere anyway, prayer wheels, prayer flags, and gongs notwithstanding.

By the way, you might be curious as to who or what Nisene Marks is or was. In case you are or may someday be curious, I did the tedious, nitty-gritty, scholarly, Dr. Googlie work for you.

The park's name honors Nisene Marks, the nature-loving mother of the Salinas farm family that bought the land in the 1950s. Her children donated approximately 9,700 acres to the state in 1963 with the provision that the land never be developed. Today, the park showcases a forest in recovery, with rugged canyons and remnants of its once-bustling railroad and logging industry. A grove of ancient old-growth redwood trees near the Pourroy picnic area was preserved under private ownership and added to the park in recent years.

Yesterday, we encountered a potpourri of happy hikers with equally happy dogs plus sleek, rosey-cheeked trail runners and a few well-mannered mountain bikers, too. Everybody in the park seemed to be tuned into the same sunshine-and-clean-forest-air vibe. What a spectacular day in a magical forest!

The seasonal low-angle sunlight enhanced the forest enchantment when it was time to descend to Aptos Creek and step cross the rocks to the other side. The reflections in the water were mesmerizing. And beautiful.

You might also be curious as to what is the origin of the word "mesmerize?" Again, I have done the heavy lifting via Dr. Googlie. 

The origin of the term "mesmerize" dates back to Franz Anton Mesmer, an 18th century physician in Vienna who founded a therapeutic movement called mesmerism. In his dissertation Mesmer proposed the existence of an invisible fluid in the body that reacts to the gravitational force of the planets

Okay, Franz, whatever!

Captain Chem observed on the way back that he had detected no birds or mammals or wildlife of any sort in the forest. In fact, neither of us heard or saw a single peep, cheep, or warble on the whole hike. Unusual? I think so! Nary a squirrel, nary a crow or jay or sparrow. Nary, even, a Santa Cruz banana slug! 

Verrrry interesting. Did they run out of invisible fluid I wonder? 

I guess you can't have everything all at once, even on a perfect day in the magical forest. For a Plan B hike, this one was pretty excellent!

Peace, Love, and Flexibility,

Jim

A Fresh New Era

 Waning Gibbous Moon

Few 1987 Mazda B2200 longbed pickups have been celebrated as grandly as Spugly the Spectacularly Ugly Palomino Transporter. I will go out on a sky high redwood limb and posit than none has, in fact, received even half as much acclaim. Spugly was an integral part of several of my retirement adventures and, for the most part, it came through like a champ.

All things, as they say, must pass, so it was with the utmost respect and no small measure of gratitude and melancholy that I sold dear old Spugly at the same time as I plunked down a chunk o' cash for a newer, nowhere near as ugly, 2004 Honda CR-V EX. 

This transaction occurred a few weeks ago in Tracy, CA with a friendly, hardworking gentlemean named Pablo. Fans of Spugly will be happy to know that Pablo is a man of many skills, one of which is the painting of trucks and automobiles. Two days after Pablo purchased Spugly, he sent me this photo.

Note the slick gray primer hood complexion contrasted with its flat black bumper and grill. This truck is styling now. It is no longer ugly in form or fashion - instead it seems almost smug in its stoic transition away from Boomer Beat Frantic to Millennial X-change Cool. There was a time to be Spugly and now there is not. Spugly is no more. 

In Spugly's place is a used, one-owner, low mileage gas saver that runs like a top and fits nicely under my poor-ass retired-teacher budget. In a fortunate, happy twist of fate, I was able to purchase it for nearly the exact amount I sold my 2002 Toyota Tacoma to a friend back in 2013. I gave him a great deal on that supercool truck so he could give it to his son as a high school graduation present. "What goes around comes around" has never been more timely. If all goes well, this car might be my last one. It is in pretty great shape and it really scoots. 

I expect that this little Honda will run and run and run, calling to mind NBA great John Havlicek, one of my older brother's and my favorite basketball players from days gone by. Havlicek was a legendary Boston Celtic small forward whose endurance and clutch performances  inspired even me, a lifelong Los Angeles Lakers fan. He never stopped moving, running opposing players into exhaustion and filling up the bucket with fast break layups and "leaping leaner" jumpshots. 

Havilicek's nickname was Hondo, ostensibly borrowed from the 1953 classic western movie of that name. I'm not sure about the John Wayne/Geraldine Page/Ward Bond connection, if there was one, but I believe that christening my ride Hondo Hondacek would be a fitting tribute for my indefatigable, resolute, steadfast wagon.  For sure there will be wild west adventures to come, maybe even soon. Hondo Goes to Hollywood? Hondo Meets the Mother Road? Breakfast with Hondo? Hondo Hoops America? Or maybe all the above, all together, all at once. Stranger things have happened.

It's a fresh, new era. Let the games begin.

Peace, Love, and Wonder Wheels,

Jim

Mitteldorf Preserve

Waning Gibbous Moon

Last week I noticed a post on Wastebook announcing the opening of public hiking opportunites on the Mitteldorf Preserve, part of the Big Sur Land Trust above Carmel Valley. The link outlined an easy procedure to register for a hike, how to get there, and what trails to take. So with a few mouse clicks and a bunch of fill-in-the-blank typing, I was all set with a permit for a new adventure close to home. This Big Sur outfit is super-organized. They only allow about twenty or so hikers per day through the gate in order to keep the land clean and to preserve a reverence for natural peace and quiet. I'm for it.

So I opted to reserve a spot on Wednesday, October 20, the day of the Full Moon, forecast for partly cloudy sky with temps in the 60's. I showed up at the gate at 10 a.m.after a 40-mile drive, showed my registration email, got my pass, and found my way to the parking area on the road to Williams Canyon. When I arrived, there was only one other car and the forest was perfectly silent. After a 1.8 mile road walk, I came to the kiosk that marked the launching point for a variety of hikes around the preserve.

The Mitteldorf Preserve, established in 1990 through the Big Sur Land Trust, has only recently been open to hikers. It would have opened sooner but for a major forest fire. In 2016, the Soberanes Fire burned 137,000+ acres from Garrapata State Park to Chew's Ridge. The magnificent redwoods of the preserve took a big hit as the fire (started by an illegal campfire, grrrr) surged inland from the coast. Suppression efforts cost more than 260 million dollars. Everywhere I went I could see the damage mixed in with the resilence of the forest beginning to make its way back.

By United States Forest Service - http://cdfdata.fire.ca.gov/incidents/incidents_details_maps?incident_id=1348, Public Domain

The longest trail in the park is the climb to Patriarch Ridge and back, about 11.5 miles round trip. There are lots of historic sites along the way and on a clear day, from the top you can see out over the Pacific. I decided to work my way up to hiking that one and start with the easy swing around to the Lodge and the Nature Trail Loop. The overcast sky accented the quiet of the woods and the beauty of the hardwood lodge.

I saw one furtive deer and a few scrub jays. Other than that, the only signs of animal life were several small piles of bear scat. The duff-covered trail revealed no tracks that I could see.

Just before looping back to the Lodge I came across the Landmark Redwood, a giant of a tree whose base had been charred by the fire. Otherwise, it seemed like the massive tree weathered the burn quite well.

In all, I hiked about 5 miles yesterday and learned the lay of the land for my next visit. I'm going to shoot for a sunny day and an earlier start next time to tackle the Echo Ridge Trail/Headwaters Road hike, about 8 miles round trip with views of the ocean and an old time loggers' bunkhouse. That will set me up for my third hike - a final outing up to Patriarch Ridge, the sacred site of Essalen and Rumsen tribal ceremonies. 

On the one hand I am kind of amazed by the extent that Father Time has eroded my conditioning and motivation to take on small goals like these. On the other, I seem to respond to that little push that comes from who knows where, directing me to keep my feet moving and my eyes wide open. There is always something new to see.

Peace, Love, and Preservation,

Jim

In Praise of Excellence

Waxing Gibbous Moon

My ex-librarian pal Dee Dee gave a book to me recently, saying she thought I might like it. I was impressed that she took the time out of her hectic retired-librarian, mushroom-hunting schedule to remember me. On top of being impressed, I am most grateful.

I finished reading The Wild Excellence: Notes from Untamed America last night. The stories in this book rang true to most of my core interests and formative experiences. Notice that I did not and will not use the word "resonate" as I describe the book or anything else under the Sun. I hate it when people do that.

 In my mostly humble opinion, author Leslie Patten just gets it. There is not a phony paragraph on any of her two hundred forty-seven pages as she covers the vast spectrum of real-life important things: learning, growth, attention, intention, purity, loyalty, discipline, ancestry, history, trees, mountains, rivers, wolves, elk, bear, coyote, relationship, and sacred places. She doesn't dwell on her personal past or exactly how that life informed her decision to leave California and live alone in a cabin in the Wyoming mountains. What business is that of the reader anyhow? She placed herself in close proximity to life and to its beings without the direct trappings and distractions of civilization. She describes her experience without judgement of herself or of others. She sees in nature the truths that can lead to harmony and connection. 

It probably helps that I am close in age and near in geographic attachments to the author, but I think it wouldn't matter if I weren't. She gets the holiness of being alone in the wilderness and that is most important for me. The fact that she expresses herself with clarity without saying "resonate" is probably number two.

Do I think you should read this book? Maybe. It kind of depends on where you are in life. I hope you are in a place where absorbing this woman's story will make you happy for her and will also let you see how you have made comparable choices to grow and learn on Earth, too.

We are a richer species by just walking with grizzlies in these woods. To walk with the Great Bear one must be alert, fully awake and aware. All one's senses must be engaged. With the Great Bear around, you cannot walk lost in thought, or conversation. You must be Present. This alone is a gift that only another top predator can bring to man. The Present is his present to us. He presses it upon us by circumstance. Men do not give themselves that gift by choice. That is the gift of the grizzly. - Chapter 7: Bear Dreamer

The Wild Excellence touches all the planet's bases before bringing us safely home in a clear, concise epilogue. The book as a whole is an exemplary environmental teaching tool as well as a deep salve for the soul. To borrow Ms. Patten's closing phrase, "I praise the wild excellence," too.

Peace, Love, and Excellence,

Jim