Mother’s Day

How is it already Mother’s Day? It’s already been over a year since I started writing This Little Plot, and I’ve enjoyed it more than I can express. As someone who all too easily gets caught up in worrying about the future, I appreciate so much anything that forces me to slow down, to focus on place, on the present moment.

I’ll be spending the day with my mother, who’s getting more frail all the time. She just suffered a bad fall and broke her hip, one of the more serious injuries for older people, and one of my worst fears. As bones become brittle with age, and loss of eyesight and balance make walking more precarious, falls become more of a risk through the years. If a senior breaks a bone and becomes bedridden, it’s not hard to become depressed, to lose the will to walk again, even to live. But despite all the challenges of her schizophrenia and dementia (at first she refused hospitalization, then surgery, even pain medication), my mom’s recuperating after her hip operation, and is walking a little more every day with the aid of a walker and nurses. Her strength and perseverance floor me.

She’s passed on so much of her knowledge and love of the wild and of gardens, of beast and flower alike. What little I know began as the germ of a seed inside my head, slowly taking root through years of rebellion and my move from the town where I grew up to a big city, and now has flowered and fully blossomed into my own passion for nature. Mother, I’m so grateful for all you’ve given me, and as I write this I think of you.

Reminder: May is Mental Health month, and all of us know someone either directly or indirectly who suffers from mental illness. NAMI does tremendous work in advocacy, education, and sharing resource information. Check out its websites – regional and national – if you or someone you know needs help. Happy Mother’s Day to moms everywhere!

The Volcanoes of Sibley

A visit to Berkeley’s Robert Sibley Volcanic Regional Preserve brings many different wonders, from a Labyrinth near the geologic remains of its ancient volcano, to serene cow pastures, to golden eagles  and ferruginous hawks in flight, backlit by the sun against Mt. Tamalpais in the distance.

With incomparable views of Coast Range geology, take a self-guided tour of the park’s volcanoes, stopping at basalt lava, tuff-breccias, red-baked cinder piles, and pebbley mudstones. These are 10-million-year-old consequences of folding and erosion, as the Pacific Plate carried the Round Top volcano north, and twisted it on its side.

At the northwestern edge of the preserve lies a pond oddly close to a highway, yet filled with the songs of spring’s newest bullfrogs. Fat tadpoles or pollywogs glide between submerged forests, mini-Jaws swimming up toward you. As the City’s fog rolls in and envelops the valley in swirling mists, you experience true solitude and serenity.

May Day

May Day, or Beltane, is the last of the three spring fertility festivals [Imbolc (Candlemas) and Ostara (Eostar, or the Vernal Equinox)], and the second principal Celtic festival (besides Samhain, or Halloween). Celebrated approximately halfway between the Vernal Equinox and the Summer Solstice,  Beltane traditionally heralds summer’s arrival. Bonfires symbolize purification and transition, heralding in the season in the hope of a good harvest later in the year, accompanied with protection rituals. Edinburgh has an annual fire festival at this time of year.

In ancient Ireland the Sacred Tree, the center of life, now survives as the Maypole, representing the connection between the people and the heavens. This tall pole is decorated with long brightly colored ribbons, leaves, flowers and wreaths. The circle of dancers begins, holding the lengths of ribbon taut, with a roughly even number of young men, facing clockwise and women, facing counterclockwise. Each moves in their direction, weaving the ribbons over and under around the pole. Those passing on the inside go under, those on the outside raise their ribbons to slide over. The pattern created indicates the abundance of the harvest year.

Now, the Pleiades star cluster rises just before sunrise on the morning horizon, standing very low in the east-northeast sky. These seven closely-placed stars, the Seven Sisters, appear in the shoulder of the constellation of Taurus. Beltane, and its counterpart Samhain, divide the year into two primary seasons, winter (Dark Part) and summer (Light Part). Samhain is about honoring death, Beltane honors life, when the sun is released from the bondage of winter. Both are times when the veils between the worlds are at their thinnest, “no time,” when the worlds intermingle and unite, and magic is everywhere.

Magic also comes from uniting with like-minded community on May Day celebrations honoring the workers of the world, the fight to institute the eight-hour workday, and other protections we take for granted today; as well as protesting economic injustice worldwide. Find one near you!

April poetry month

Made a wonderful visit south of San Francisco, to Fitzgerald Marine Preserve, and to Pacifica, where I wrote this poem:

Pacifica pier: Fisherfolk, buoys,

Two lines per person.

Shadows along the sand, rock: serpentine, chert –

Long-billed curlews, ravens, gulls pick in the surf –

Sand fleas pick at my jacket,

Strong wind lifts the brim of my hat.

The surf, violent spill of foam

Renders the sand pearl.

Out on the pier, for a moment the foam blinds, all there is,

As if you are moving, on a boat, along the water.

Brown current, spiderweb of foam,

Devil’s Slide all the way to the south.

A gull I could reach out and touch,

Buffeted still by the wind, fetch miles long over open water.

Mt. Tam all the way to the north,

A shade in the distance.

 

Waves’ energy, not the water itself,

Moves to shore, all this eventually

Reduced to a tideless leak.

Or sneaker waves carry you out to sea.

Pelicans, flying close over water,

Sense thrumming life in the ocean’s deep heart beneath the waves.

Pier throbs with thunderous swell,

As if we’re all alive in the sea.

Out to sea, all fog fades to mist in the distance,

Kelp unmoored from the seafloor below.

To turn your back on the sea (which you should never do)

Is to dream the green, flowered hills beyond.

Then there are the waves receding away from you –

There, to the far shore, more behind you than ahead.

Where the water breaks, the tideline

A sea of snow, stretching all the way down the shore.

Disturbing forces – tides, wind – lift the waves,

Restoring forces – gravity – pull them, falling, back to earth.

Swells rise and seem to lift the pier,

Thunk! waves hit pier pilings.

Pelicans fall, dwarfed in the wake,

Murre, tern, auklet, orphaned in the waves.

Photo by Gary Kong

Glen Canyon, San Francisco

(Not to be confused with the fabulous Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, exposed by receding Lake Powell, in Utah/Arizona)

Photo courtesy of Chris Carlsson, Foundsf.org

A while back, B. and I headed to the nether regions of our San Francisco neighborhood, trekking over Douglass Street down into “our” Glen Canyon - which I’d never visited in all my years here. Descending the steep hillsides, brushing away overgrown ivy and weeds that grasped at our ankles, we came upon oak, eucalyptus, scrub, riparian habitat, and grassland – a 70-acre wild haven.

A recreation center and tennis courts sit at the southern border, where the park splits, on either side of Islais Creek, one of just two remaining open creeks in SF. Here at the foot of the canyon, signs pointed our gazes upward, at raptors riding the air currents and swooping down between rock formations carved over millions of years.

From there we wended our way out and eventually ended up in Glen Park, a secluded and charming neighborhood near Diamond Heights, the Mission District and Noe Valley. Here you can dine, browse through bookshops, or get a drink in a friendly local bar. Another aspect of the City that I love: no matter how much time you spend here, there always remain hidden gems ripe for discovery!

PS: I was pleased to read about local hero artist and filmmaker Alden Olmsted, saving some CA state parks slated for closure due to the sad state of CA’s budget, as reported in the SF Chronicle - an inspiring example.

The Bluest Ceanothus

Entering the Corwin Street Community Garden, I’m struck by the unreal blue of the ceanothus, or California lilac, in full bloom.

Toni Morrison’s first novel, The Bluest Eye, portrays the African American protagonist Pecola’s wish to be white with blue eyes, after a lifetime of struggle with racism, abuse, and poverty. Don’t we all wish for something we can’t have? something that seems great, but isn’t the best for us? Growing up with a divorced mother who, because of sporadic work, always struggled to pay the bills, I often yearned for material wealth, as if that would take away her illness, or ensure that we’d never again be hungry or in need. But what riches there are in nature, even in the heart of the city! Such power they have, to deeply soothe a troubled heart.

Thinking of the Verve song, “Blue,” as I tumble down the slide at the bottom of the garden, I laugh at where the stream of consciousness takes us. B. doesn’t care for the band or the song, says he doesn’t look for beauty in music but rather challenge: to be taken somewhere else, somewhere completely unexpected.

First Froglets of Spring

And now time has already come for setting our clocks ahead (my least favorite night of the year!), and for the vernal equinox. This day, Eostar, is equal to the night, poised but listing toward the side of light. The Saxon Eostre (whose name is the root of East and Easter) is a dawn goddess, signifying new life.

Hiking at Mt. Diablo after a very rainy winter last year, B. and I encountered unusual weather: cool, windy, and foggy. Sprays of golden flowers carpeted the hillside. B. found an owl pellet on the trail, a ball of tiny broken bones, feathers and guts all compacted together. I’d never seen one before.

Buckeye, long white candles of fragrance, grew all the way down the still-green slopes. Bluebells, and brilliant fuchsia-colored lovely clarkia grew near each other in the riparian woodland leading down Curry Canyon Road. The hills were in some places their normal dryness for this time of year, long wild oat grasses swaying in the wind, in others strewn with flowers. There was still some water running in the streams, usually dry by now, so B. suggested looking for the vernal pools we’d found one spring, picnicking secluded and surrounded by pines. Instead, we ended up at Frog Pond, which first appeared underwhelming, small and shrunken due to the lateness of the year (although it still had reeds and plants growing in it), and right next to the trail. But I went and knelt down at the shore for a look, and came upon a delightful sight.

Keeping still and crouching low, I called softly to B. He crept up slowly, I pointed, and he noticed a frog on a branch. But I’d meant the tiny one (size of my thumbnail or smaller) in the mud by the pond. Not one but two wee froglets! I hadn’t expected any, as they’re nocturnal, shy creatures. Then we realized the shore was covered with carpets of frogs, as B. said! As he backed up, tens of them leaped out of the way, and as we crouched again, our eyes adjusting, we saw that they were everywhere, sitting very still and looking up at us.

We made our picnic there, careful to spread our blanket away from the muddy shore, up on dry grasses where there were no frogs. Then we just sat, and looked. Some of them glinted golden in the sun, bronze metallic, some coppery. I saw a slightly larger green one – a mother? – “hiding” on a leaf. Darker ones, black or brown, blended with the mud, all with a small black stripe at the corner of their eyes. They hid in little mudholes – for cool or warmth? -  sat two on a branch, or stayed near our blanket as we enjoyed our sandwiches, chocolate cupcakes from our local bakery – B.’s surprise, and red wine. Surrounded by hundreds of sun-bronzed froglets, we both were so enchanted, B. commented that they could “ride atop the backs of dragonflies.” I couldn’t tear my gaze away, watching as they hunted insects (though some were too big for them). Even a lone tadpole in the water seemed bigger.

Eventually we had to go, the temperature dropping as the wind blew fog over the tops of rock outcroppings of shale, sandstone, and olivine, and ridges beyond. We only saw one other person during this truly restorative, resplendent day. A reaffirmation of our closeness with each other, observing nature (one of my favorite activities to do together), that day provided us with a good, longish hike like we hadn’t had in months. I needed it physically, feeling sluggish and stiff for weeks, my mood low and restless. Time to get OUT into the countryside, at once, to celebrate spring!

Froglet image courtesy of http://www.turning-earth.co.uk