Day of the Dead, Farallones, from a photo 2015

 

A photo from the last day of the year, 2015: the Farallones, 20 miles out from Point Reyes, seemed so close, I could almost touch them. A last gasp from a dying camera; its swan song. Farallón means "pillar" or "sea cliff," once aka "Devil's Teeth Islands," for the treacherous shoals. Part of the Sierras, a block of rifted granitic continental crust thrusted up. A place where, as a child, I though the dead dwelled. I had no idea that the islands were the abode of spirits, called "Islands of the Dead" by the Ohlones.

The Farallones are home to 400 species of birds, many of then rare, or endangered. I once saw a tufted puffin wing his way off Point Reyes. A small clownish football of a bird winging home with a beakfull of fish.

Vizcaíno's friar, Antonio de la Ascencion called the islands los Farallónes. Probably why San Francisco Bay was never discovered by Vizcaíno or by Drake, who called them the Islands of Saint James. A place of treacherous shoals. A place of many shipwrecks.

The American whalers, and Russian explorers built sealing stations there, manned by Alaskan Kodiak Islanders, until there were no more northern fur seals left. Whether Northern, or Guadalupe fur seals, we will never know. One of the largest seabird colonies in the U.S. Then the Gold Rush—millions of seabird eggs (500,000 a month) collected, led to the San Francisco Egg Wars.

Then it was Rum Row during the Prohibition, and a nuclear waste dump during the 1940s to the 1970s; 50,000 radioactive drums, and 44,000 shipyard containers were scuttled, and are rusting away—we still don't know what is in them. But it can't be good. Stories of massive sponges growing in the littoral zones.

Yes, and here we are, still dancing on the brink of the world.

uxar-at kai pire.
On the cliff, on the edge,
on the brink of the world,
we are dancing.

Day of the Dead, All Soul's Day, The beginning and the end of the Celtic year. My grandmother, brother and mother all died right before Samhain. So, Samhain, All Souls' Day, and El Día de los Muertos is a three-fold sorrow.

Thinking of my mother who wanted her ashes scattered off the Golden Gate, to drift to the Farallones. Maybe I should give her back to the sea.

Fitting image for El Día de los Muertos. 

• Last sunset of the year (photo) 2016 another variant 

• Last day of the year, Farallones, photo 2015