Early morning trail ride

Some Saturdays I rose before dawn for early morning trail rides with my friend Stephanie. Everyone else was asleep. Her father never knew of our morning escapades, and my grandmother didn’t seem to mind. But I also didn’t tell her where we were going, as it was too far from home for a child on her own. I was on my horse, somewhere deep in the hills, and therefore, safe. At least she never said anything to me. My own parents were in absentia, my father deep in a bottle, my mother in one asylum or other. Steph‘s dad was a little more controlling. See, her mother, who was a Russian translator for the UN, blacklisted by McCarthy, knew all about silence. She drank in silence, and because of that silence, she died in the fire. A short in the dryer. Because Les couldn’t protect his wife, he was over-protective of Steph. The boys, her two younger brothers, not so much. Bucky was close to our age but Gooby was still in diapers. We’d simultaneously sneak out of the house just as the sky was beginning to lighten, and meet up at the county road. The morning fog was like a tight glove protecting us from the mid-20th century. We could’ve been anywhere in time. Sometimes we’d sneak through her upper pasture, past Old Grandad, the Hereford bull, to get to the fire road that led up to Mt. Barnabe. But the stiff barbed wire gate gave our small hands pause. The top of the mountain facing due west was our goal. It was always a spectacular view from the crest of the ridge, the morning mist parting to reveal the sheathed silver sword of Tomales Bay, tracing the trench of the San Andreas Fault, and the clenched bare fist of Elephant Mountain. It restored my equilibrium to see the word from a raptor’s viewpoint. These refuges, these steep hills and valleys were the coping weapons of my youth.

4/12/23 

TheNarrativeMethod.com prompt

Fire on Mt. Barnabe

My biggest nightmare, a wildfire broke out near my family home and I can only watch from afar. Trying to reach my cousins was impossible. No cell service. The cell tower is on the top of Mt. Barnabe is out because of the fire. Surrounded with flames. The small side valley, Arroyo/Barranca Road, where I grew up, could easily become a firetrap. Evacuation began right away as the potential for this wildfire to go rogue was huge. We heard from one cousin, James, who wasn’t home, but not the other, however, we're fairly certain he got out with the dog. Luckily the fire did not turn up Barranca Road, it headed south instead. TG.

It looks like the wildfire came up the shoulder closest to Devil's Gulch, where Sam Taylor's favorite white and only mule, Barnabe, was buried. Then the fire burned all the way up to the lookout, then headed down the mountain on our side of the ridge to the right, which means the Nunes Ranch homesteads was threatened, plus a few newer homes in the trees, as it headed back towards Lagunitas again. Had it burned straight across, along the ridge that separates us from Nicasio, we wouldn't have stood a chance. The wildfire spread so quickly, that within minutes, the entire park side of the mountain was engulfed in flames— one of the evacuees, Dave Cort, said the flames were 100 feet high! Within two hours CalFire said it was 80% contained. Phew.

Mt Barnabe, Castle Rock (photo)

Mt Barnabe, and what I called Castle Rock (my childhood playground). That's Eric Stone's old teepee at the bottom of Portola Road. Wonder where my childhood friend Bucky is now?

I WAS BORN WITHIN SIGHT

I WAS BORN WITHIN SIGHT

I was born within sight of the ocean
and a nervousness dances
when I stray from the coastal hills of my birth.
The slopes of Mt. Barnabe sheltered me.
The long arm of the ridge wrapped itself
around our house holding us in from the world.

Afternoons I'd ride the crest of the ridge
testing the odor of pine and bay.
Sweet lethe, the crickets sizzled
in the rattlesnake grass
shaking a soft rhythm in the breeze.

9//10/10
Published at Medusa's Kitchen, Dec 7, 2010

Hiking up Big Rock Ridge

Entrance to Big Rock Ranch—George Lucas's compound in Marin County, northern California. All these photos are © 2010 by Maureen Hurley and may not be used without express written permission from her. Please respect copyright.

Yesterday, I wore the skin right off my feet by hiking 3 hours in last year's worn out crocs up a long mountain range. Crocs = rubber slippers. Not even a proper half-shoe. What was I thinking? I promptly stepped on a stick and punctured a hole in my foot—but it didn't deter me. Though I gimped a bit, I was on an adventure. The euphoric path beckoned and blocked the pain. I had no idea where the trail led, or where I was going. Other than it was there, in front of me.

Big Rock, the apex of the watershed divide between West Marin (Lucas Valley Creek) and Southern Marin (Miller Creek). © 2010 by Maureen Hurley

Big Rock Ridge in the distance. You can see the radio towers to the right. © 2010 by Maureen Hurley

The path led ever onward. And so I followed the trail switchback after switchback into box canyons, climbing through chaparral, traversing crenulated flanks of steep hillsides—heading east, south, then north, then south-east again. I strolled beneath oak cathedrals where bumblebees droned in the banks of sage, phacelia, star thistle and bush monkeyflower, I crossed damp seasonal runnels in the fern-lined ravines. Not enough to wet my feet, but horsetail ferns thrived. I gazed out on the southern exposure of chaparral slopes from the rails of civilized wooden foot bridges that made the hike seem very Japanese.

Invasive purple star thistle &amp Bombus Californicus, one of 27 California native California bumblebees—threatened species all. Also sighted: diminutive but toxic to livestock yellow star thistle. And the rare native carmine red cobweb thistle—I should've taken a photo but it wasn't very close, and I was in a hurry. Double-click image to enlarge it. © 2010 by Maureen Hurley

The trail opened up and took a sharp turn to the northwest and held course. I expected it to climb the chaparral ridge to the southeast—on public lands. I quickened my pace. When I crossed the threshold of the ridge, a narrow hiker's vee into the vast golden pastures of Big Rock Ranch, the view was so spectacular, I was gob-smacked.

This was a ridge I have always wanted to hike but it was off limits as we didn't know the rancher at Big Rock. The western slope was too out in the open to successfully trespass. And the rancher was permanently irate because the teen townies from Marinwood kept painting the iconic Big Rock in pastel hues.

George Lucas inherited the rancher's fight but took a Jedi stance. Now Big Rock is sandblasted clean and fenced in—in solitary confinement, replete with surveillance camera. Now, the only graffiti artists are the ravens who shit on its crest.

Trailhead. Note the surveillance camera trained on Big Rock. © 2010 by Maureen Hurley

The view was so stunning, I took myriad photos of downtown San Francisco—Baghdad by the Bay as Herb Caen dubbed it—all three bay bridges (the Golden Gate, the Bay and Richmond bridges). To the southeast, Mt. Diablo loomed nearly 4000 feet straight up from an otherwise featureless plateau. But marine haze hid details. The naked eye was a far better camera lens.

Mt. Diablo from Loma Alta. Telephoto lens distorted the color and atmospheric haze made it hard to see. © 2010 by Maureen Hurley

There was s small corner of San Pablo/Suisuin Bay glistening like lapiz; and to the southwest, majestic Mt. Tamalpais peeked out from behind its smoky darkness, framed by the broad open slopes of Loma Alta ridge—where I hiked up in my old crocs at the summer solstice. To the west (or Tír na-nÓg, as my grandmother called it), the familiar eastern flank of Mt. Barnabe (my natal home—a place that haunts me even in dreams) was coyly shrouded a gossamer shawl of marine mist.

As I crested the Big Rock Ridge summit after a steady hour of navigating even more switchbacks, I could see glimmerings of the Coast Range—Mt. Whittenburg, Elephant (or Black's) Mountain—once featured on Jesse Colin Young & the Youngbloods album cover—near Pt. Reyes—and to the north veering to the east near Novato, the tip of Mt. Burdell and the laid back Sonoma Moutain—cradling the Petaluma watershed. This is probably one of the best views in all of Marin Co. And I've traversed most of the coastal ridges between Mt. Tam to Devil's Slide. I've been around.

This is view you really have to earn. Sort of like hiking up Ben Lomond (3000'), you just keep at it, one foot in front of the other, and you'll reach the summit. Why would I compare Big Rock to a classic Scottish icon? Because the last time I got an urge to go climb a mountain was at Ballloch, part of the Trossachs range that cradles Loch Lomond, Scotland. Once I started trudging up the slopes of Balloch Castle, euphoria set in‚ and I wanted to keep on going. Roamin' in the gloamin'. I hiked until it was nearly midnight. We walked back to the village under starlight.

Besides, we have our fair share of Scottish references in the Greater Bay Area: Glen Ellen, Inverness, Ross, Greenbrae, Falkirk, Dunsmuir, Dumbarton, Brisbane, Albany, Stewartville, Scotts Valley, Ben Lomond, Bonny Doon, Campbell, Gilroy. And I haven't even gotten to the creek names. Suffice to say our old phone number was GL-4 for Glenwood—I suspect the suburb name of of Marinwood was an offshoot of Glenwood. I imagine that right now, my sweetie, Neil, is gazing out his ailing mother's door across the Clyde Valley at Ben Lomond and the Trossachs. A munro I plan to one day hike.

Big Rock Ridge, visible from Highway 101, dissects southern Marin—Marinwood—from Novato and is part of the larger Bay Area Ridge Trail system. According to the Marin County Open Space website, Big Rock Ridge is the second tallest mountain range in Marin; it looms more than 1800 ft over Terra Linda—with our local goddess (or The Sleeping Lady—often compared to Mt. Fuji), Mt. Tamalpais, the tallest at 2572 feet.

Mt. Tamalpais, though not a volcano, rises straight up from sea level 2600 feet, is often compared to Japan's Mt. Fuji. © 2010 by Maureen Hurley

Mt. Tamalpais, the Bay Area's own Mt. Fuji-san, used to stand at 2600 feet until the army corps of engineers got ahold of it during the Cold War and sawed one pap off readying it like an Amazon warrior princess—so her aim would be true. The implanted Nike missiles were never launched, but to this day, the women of Marin have a high incidence of breast cancer. My mother died from it, my two aunts survived. I live in dread.

California serpentine, aka California jade, and soapstone, or, more properly, serpentinite, is really group of 20 different varieties of serpentinite stones, one of which sometimes has an inert form of chrysotile asbestos, is not the cancer culprit. You'd have to grind up the rock into a powder and breathe non--native antigorite studded serpentine in deep for 20 years to develop cancer—and it would be mesothelioma—lung cancer, not breast cancer. 

But the scientifically illiterate closet hysterics are ignoring scientific facts and trying to ban the state rock of California. If serpentine were the cancer culprit, then men too would get breast cancer too. Breast cancer and mesothelioma are equal opportunity diseases. (A scientifically illiterate, moronic State Senator Gloria J. Romero proposed legislation (SB 624) in May 2010 to remove serpentine as the state rock and lithologic emblem.)

Serpentine soils or serpentine barrens, do host rare endemic species of plants found nowhere else in the world: leather fern, coffee fern, jewelflower, popcorn flower, campion, rock cress, wallflower, wooly sunflower, Marin western flax, linanthus, Clarkia, Indian paintbrush, owl's clover, buckwheat, manzanita, sargent cypress—most of which I've found in my wanderings. Who knew wat we called a wimpy California daisy is actually the endangered pentachaeta bellidiflora. But I digress

Mt. Barnabe—facing west. I grew up in the valley below the tower. The other side of that vague hill to the right is ours'. © 2010 by Maureen Hurley

Now, I'd always learned that my Mt. Barnabe was the second tallest mountain in Marin (I was surprised to discover it was only 1466'; it seemed so much bigger when I was young—but it does rise up nearly 1000' up from the foothills.) Maybe they meant in West Marin. Big Rock is Central /Southern Marin—West Marin folks consider it enemy territory. As a child, I used to climb up Mt. Barnabe often as it was my own personal playground. Most afternoons I rode up one arm of the ridge or down the other—it cradled me, made me who I am.

I knew all the mountain's secrets—where the best springs were hidden. The castle rocks. Where the dead lie buried. The windswept glens. The names of rocks: serpentine, Franciscan and limestone. The meadows where the abundant wildflowers grew. Mallow and baby blue eyes. Shooting stars and lupine. Godetia and meadowfoam. Butter and eggs. Azalea and horsetail fern. We'd pluck gold-back fern and stamp fern-prints on our jeans with the pale green pollen.

Sometimes I'd take out the little book stashed inside the geological umbilicus‚ a brass marker embedded at the summit, to see who signed it. Not many folks hiked up Mt. Barnabe in those days—and they always came from the Samuel P. Taylor Park side, not from my side of the mountain. But we knew most of the ranchers. So the western world was my oyster.

A friend was on fire lookout duty on Mt. Barnabe one summer, and I used to ride my horse up to the old wooden clapboard lookout tower that was built like a ship's quarters. Not like the ugly new stucco tower. But check out the view in the link. We'd spend hours gazing at the vast ranges—is that smoke? No. Low fog. My favorite views were to the west—Elephant Mountain, the long finger of Tomales Bay. A thin sliver of Kent Lake spillway to the south, and Mt. Tam.

As I stood surveying my new kingdom of wind at the summit, I noted my Mt. Barnabe—named after Samuel Taylor's beloved white mule—who is buried on its slopes, was roughly level with the serpentine-studded Big Rock Ridge (1825')—so I assumed they must be fairly close in height. But Big Rock has 360' on Mt. Barnabe. Poor beloved mountain of my childhood, demoted to third place.

Serpentine-studded trail. © 2010 by Maureen Hurley

George Lucas's compound. No sign of life other than exiting work trucks. ILM is now housed in the Presidio. It's come a long ways from the dicy canals of San Rafael. © 2010 by Maureen Hurley

Most of the land I traversed is owned by George Lucas—but now, because of Open Space, we can legally trespass on Big Rock Ridge. Of course, I took obligatory photos of Lucas's compound surrounded by a moat. I won't dwell here about what that new reservoir has done to the ecosystem of Lucas Valley Creek as the huge Big Rock spring and tule marsh I crossed, that feeds the reservoir—is the headwaters.

I could even see bits of Skywalker (Bulltail) Ranch with its hillsides plaited in grapes the next canyon over. I plucked a gold-back fern and stamped delicate decorations on my jeans for old time's sake, and sucked the nectar from an orange bush monkeyflower blossom. I admired the lacy chamise in full bloom. Pale pink-tinged manzanita bells, with tiny tart "apples" ripening, pink honeysuckle, and the shiny dark leavers of the ceanothus—mountain lilac. California buckwheat. Even the lowly morning glories looked good to me.

Bush monkeyflower and morning glory, aka chaparral false bindweed. Double-click image to enlarge it. © 2010 by Maureen Hurley

Farewell to spring. Aka Clarkia or godetia—a member of the evening primrose family. Double-click image to enlarge it. © 2010 by Maureen Hurley

Clarkia, or farewell to spring, by the roadside. Clarkia, named after Lewis and Clark—has 30 species, most in CA, and some are rare—especially the species that grow in serpentine soil. Pay attention to the markings. Another favorite of mine is scarlet ribbons. I took photos of them too but didn't want to overburden this blog with photos. See Long Way Home—Hiking Loma Alta Ridge for more wildflowers —including scarlet ribbons. © 2010 by Maureen Hurley

Mountain chamise and bush monkeyflower. Manzanita and sage were also in full bloom. I've never seen such a lush and colorful riot of chaparral in bloom. To see more serpentine plant images, visit my Picasa site. There were also more images of Big Rock Ridge (but Google killed Picasa so this link no longer works, sorry). © 2010 by Maureen Hurley

Detail of serpentine, California's state rock. Like a close-up of an Impressionist oil painting. The orange is lichen. Double-click image to enlarge it. © 2010 by Maureen Hurley

Serpentine detail. Double click to see larger image. © 2010 by Maureen Hurley

At the higher elevations, Mariposa lilies, phlox, clarkia, brodiaea, Ithuriel's spears, blue-eyed grass (really an iris), pearly everlasting (related to eidelweiss), chaparral pea, and bush poppy, and a few spring stragglers—California poppies. No lupine or larkspur—intolerant of serpentine soils?

The California state rock, serpentine, (really a mineral) is the result of tectonic action along fault lines where two continental plates collide: the North American, and the Pacific plates. Serpentinite (the rock, vs. the mineral) is an ultra-basic metamorphic rock, from under the earth's mantle. Tomales Bay is the San Andreas Fault.

Serpentine soils, toxic to most plants, host many rare endemic plants that grow nowhere else in the world. These ridges—geologic islands—are the last refuge for over 300 endangered endemic species: ridge-specific manzanita, mariposa lilies/tulips, owl's clover, wallflowers, flax, campion, and odd drought tolerant ferns. Species found on Mt. Tam are not related to their counterparts on Ring Mountain in Tiburon. From what I can tell—Big Rock Ridge is one vast ridge of serpentine. Not typical Franciscan strata.

Some form of sunflower, gumweed, or yellow aster? Confirmed: Bolander’s goldenaster. This hirsute plant was growing close to the summit (1800') in the open grasslands facing west. Double-click image to enlarge it. © 2010 by Maureen Hurley

The names of plants came tumbling back—names my grandmother had taught me as a child. And the scientific names I'd learned from my biology teacher, Al Molina. I chanted them as I trudged up the switchbacks: dodecatheon hendersonii, shooting stars, escholtzia californica—named after a botanist on the Russian expedition to Fort Ross, nemophilia menziesi—baby blue eyes. Indian Soaproot, or deer lettuce—only flowers after 4 PM. Near the summit, I noted a strange sunflower I'd never seen before—like gumweed grindelia. Where did all those names come from? Where did they go?

Now this was a find—I dismissed it as pea chaparral—until I saw the seed pods. I did a double take and counted the petals: 4, not 5 or 6. My first sighting of a bush poppy in Marin! © 2010 by Maureen Hurley

Mariposa lily, or butterfly tulip. The spot patterns differ from ridge to ridge. Double-click image to enlarge it. © 2010 by Maureen Hurley

I'm not sure of the total miles I hiked—my body said at least 7 miles but then, it's no spring chicken. Nor is it reliable. My knee was holding its own—tore it in Andreas Canyon, Palm Springs one 4th of July—but my ankle wasn't as cooperative. So the built in pedometer may have been lying. There were many switchbacks. I lost count. But a new view filled my senses at every turn. So my pain was assuaged.

I am a cranky hiker—I don't like to hike with friends or to meet another soul—it interferes with my hearing the song of place. All afternoon, I had the mountain to myself. I was startled to meet two mountain bikers up this trail—they earned their view. I envied them, their swift descent.

Double-click image to enlarge it. © 2010 by Maureen Hurley

I didn't go all they way to the radio tower as it was fast approaching sunset and my feet were killing me. I had to keep moving for fear my body would seize up and I'd be stuck up there overnight, clad in a tanktop & shorts. I didn't have a watch nor a cellphone. I did, however, have my grandfather's wee brass penknife on me—but little else by way of survival tools. And I didn't fancy munching on brodiaea bulbs as there wasn't much else to eat at the top. Besides, a blanket of fog was rolling in. So back down the mountain it was. I was racing daylight.

Nicasio Reservoir—and shrouded in the fog, in the distance, is Tomales Bay. © 2010 by Maureen Hurley

As I turned to the west, I involunntarily gasped—Nicasio Reservoir—sheets of silver shimmering in the distance, nuzzling the hills like a mirage. Shrouded in mist, Tomales Bay and Inverness. Where I had come from—so far away. Another country. To the east, the lights of the city lighting up like fireflies. But I couldn't tarry. A garter snake whipped across the trail in front of me. I yelled, leapt straight up in the air first, and asked questions later. Prime rattlesnake territory.

Once, a coiled fellow was sunning himself on the path as I trudged up our steep hill to catch my horse. She had an uncanny way of heading for the ridge around 3PM, the time I got home from school. I grasped a tussock of grass and heard him and without hesitation, I leaped backwards—straight out into space. He lunged.

I landed in the brush some 20 feet below. Gophersnakes mimic rattlesnakes—the prime difference is that the rattler holds his rattle up, the gophersnake trashes the tip of his tail against leaves. This fellow was shaking the business end of his schtick.

As I stopped by the tule spring with a water trough dedicated to Lorene French Volpe, I was literally straddling two different watersheds—Miller Creek to the east and Lucas Valley/Halleck Creek to the right. Sweet water from the pipe. I risked it. Serpentine above, no upper seep. Less chance of giardia. Ugh. Been there, done that.

One time, circa 1969, my grandmother and I traversed Halleck Creek looking for the last surviving band of Coastal Miwok Indians. We found only abandoned farm houses but the view sustained me. I could see into a small rincon of Halleck Valley as well. Hiking up Big Rock Ridge brought my small myriad worlds into focus. The great Aha! Pieces of the puzzle fitting together at last. My own inner topo map I carry with me always.

Last time I trusted a man with a topo map while hiking on unknown fire roads near Austin Creek, Sonoma County one April Fool morning—we foolishly hiked too far out, and as dusk fell, we couldn't make it back.

At least we had a blanket that time and the moon was full. At one point we used the durry blanket as a rope to slide down crevices and wash outs on the abandoned fire roads. Some of them were not even roads but donkey trails to cinnabar mines.

The road home. © 2010 by Maureen Hurley

I lingered a few more moments at the Big Rock Ridge summit, then I spun a slow dervish of joy as if to take the landscape with me. But it was shank's mare back down the ridge. The shadows grew long and it was as if I was in another landscape.

A good hour later, I staggered into Peets' around 8 PM where my cousin plied me with double decafe lattes, muffins and Advil. My dogs were tired, I think I need to retire my crocs which, at this point are little better than thin moccasins. I was literally walking softly on the earth—for fear of stickers and stone bruises. The next time I decide to go for a little impromptu hike, I think I'll wear shoes.

Stonecrop, liveforever, or hens and chickies. Double-click image to enlarge it. © 2010 by Maureen Hurley

Bluebelly lizard, aka western fence lizard, sunning itself on Lucas Creek. © 2010 by Maureen Hurley

Topo map from MCOS site—where you can download a pdf.


For plant resources I used Wiki, various native plant societies, and UC Berkeley's CalPhotos.


More info on Serpentinite from the real rockhounds:

Looking For Detachment—Serpentine: A Group of Minerals

Geotripper—The Other California: Geology and our State Symbols 

Long way Home Wildflowers of Marin—some are specific to the serpentine soils of Marin, San Francisco and San Mateo counties. Loma Alta and Big Rock both host rare and endangered wildflowers. Marin dwarf flax (Hesperolinon congestum) is a threatened plant species.

Hiking up Loma Alta Trail

Long Way Home—Hiking Loma Alta Ridge

I take the long, long way home via Nicasio.

Hike Loma Alta ridge above George Lucas's place—

the reservoir comes right to the foot of the complex.

But now the creek's dry. How is this a good thing?

Lucas's lordship over the native fish and terrapin:

he liveth here and blithely taketh away

from those who live downstream.

There is water in the creek—at August levels

but it's mid-June and we had a late rainy season.

Already the pond scum is matting the surface—

too warm for the fish who summer over in deep pools.

Mariposa tulip, and Marin dwarf flax

Farewell to Spring (clarkia)

Mariposa tulip

We have an ID! Calycadenia multiglandulosa, aka Sticky western rosinweed !

It could be Marin dwarf flax (Hesperolinon congestum) but there's also California dwarf-flax (Hesperolinon californicum). Anybody want to make a guess? Botanist Brett McDougall says it's California dwarf-flax. 1) Leaves are alternate and threadlike with well developed stipule glands, 2) Pedicels are short, 3) Flowers are white to partly pink, 4) Anthers white to rose, 5) Ovary chambers are white, 6) Correct range for plant on coastal ranges of serpentine base. He gave me the same link I had used: Jepson herbarium

Itherial's spears (brodiaea)

As I ascend the ridge, ravens circle & greet,

tree swallows flit amid godeta,

Mariposa lilies & Itheriel's spears—

I chant Blake's Tyger Tyger with each step.

Invasive milk thistle

The sky draws a little nearer to the earth.

Elephant Mountain is a Ukiyo-e of mist and fog.

A tiny brush-covered spring nourishes

late spring flowers banded in yellow,

magenta & lavender, along the seepage—

a painted band of tidytips, clarkia & poppies.

Bush monkeyflower and scarlet ribbons (clarkia).

When the stars threw down their spears

And water'd heaven with their tears:
Did he smile his work to see? —Blake

From the ridge above Big Rock,

I see a a worker leaving the compound—

a pickup stalls at the guardhouse—

to live in Lucas' walled city

nestled in our childhood hills,

is a sacrilege.

* *

See also Hiking up Big Rock Ridge

water puppies

When we were kids we used to find giant water puppies in a tributary of Arroyo Creek in Lagunitas. They were huge, the size of large cats. Our water puppies on the slopes of Mt. Barnabe came in varying shades of brown and russet. We called them moving poops (we were very young). They were quite scary as we'd never seen anything like them before—and we thought we knew the woods and creeks like the back of our hands.

Unfortunately, the lone boy among us, Eric, stoned some of them them to death. They couldn't move very fast on land, I always felt so bad about that incident—as they were quite rare in West Marin!

Wiki link has a photo of a rather cute one. Ours were fiercely ugly. Now I get why they're called water puppies/dogs. They must've barked at us.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_giant_salamander

Abetter Wiki link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Giant_Salamander

But ours were much stouter (hence the poopy name) —these salamanders are more svelte. Like Twiggy!

February 3, 2010

Close encounters with Japan's 'living fossil'
 

I grew up on the other side of Mt. Barnabe...

I grew up on the other side of Mt. Barnabe, on the southern slope, in full sunlight. Barnabe's mule bones have long since slipped back into the earth. We used to loiter by the pools of Lagunitas Creek, Carson Creek, Devil’s Gulch, and Arroyo Creek when the salmon were running, we waited for that flash, coinage of silver, vermilion and green heralded the fall.

Though the Devil's Gulch route was the most direct route over the mountain, and was one of my grandfather's favorite hikes, it was such a long, hot and desolate ride over the summit of Mt. Barnabe to Camp Taylor, we kids avoided it.

Following the flat railroad bed from Lagunitas, or the creekbed to Tocaloma was the easiest route.

There was also a more northerly route over Mt. Barnabe that avoided the summit. It took us along the hogback ridges through abandoned apple and bitter pear orchards down to the deserted settlement of Devil's Gulch. I felt so far from home, thankful for the warm reassurance of my horse under me.

It was in Devil's Gulch where my mother, as a child, stumbled into a wasp's nest and was nearly stung to death. My grandmother cooled the poor child off in the creek and covered her stings with fine clay mud to draw out the poison. My grandmother said it was always a longer walk home. But when something went wrong, the road home doubled in distance.

Sometimes I made a circle up over Mt. Barnabe and down its steep slopes to Camp Taylor and then returned home up the railroad bed to Lagunitas and Arroyo Road. At one point or another, I've ridden most of what's left of the railroad beds from Woodacre to Tocaloma.

Early mornings, we'd race our horses along the flat stretches of railroad bed to the park gate. I always pulled out ahead at the quarter mile, but a two-mile course fatigued my quarter horse, and the nags would always pull ahead. Even Brenda Bullock's Icelandic pony, Helgar, or little Susie Mattsson's plug could beat my mare on the two-mile run.

Soon after that, my mare pulled up lame, but I was 15, and addicted to racing, I avoided the warning signals. Riding her bareback at breakneck speed was an unmatched thrill. She was pure verve and muscle, it was like riding a barrel down Class Two rapids.

One time when Becky Dart ran away with me at Kent Lake, I sawed on the bit until flecks of blood and foam decorated us, her tongue nearly cut in two by the metal snaffle bit. But still she ran, a Three Bars mare at heart. I just had to let her run it out.

It was spring, my sorrel mare was out to grass, but foxtails carpeted her wound. Every day I had to tweezer the stickers and oats out of the raw flesh, which I cauterized with silver nitrate. Daily I was reminded of what I'd done to this animal by racing her, firing her up like that. I was reminded that she came from a long line of champion race horses, it was in her blood to run.

Granddaugher of the fabled Three Bars, my mare had the thoroughbred lineage of kings in her blood. She was one degree removed from The Preakness, the Kentucky Derby, Sarasota Springs. When my aunt's friend Chuck traced her pedigree, at first, he thought it was forged, but he said, If this proves to be true, you've got quite a valuable mare there, she could beget champions even if her knees were bad.

It was like finding a secret treasure in the woods, or a Vermeer hidden under an artless painting. There wasn't another horse in the valley who could match her at the quarter mile, and no one would race me unless it was a long track.

It was precisely on those kinds of afternoons when you knew spring had arrived. We'd ride and ride for miles on the open road. Time took us on a curious echoing quality. I can still recall the poignancy of late afternoon rides and the dappled roads under tall trees. Bleeding hearts, checker lilies and false Solomon's seal nodding their heads. Trilliums spreading their tripartite wings.

Riding horseback was as natural as walking or breathing. My best friend Stephanie Stone and I rode everywhere. We grew up and lost touch. I hadn't heard from her in years. Her brother Eric said she had a horse in Arizona to ride and that helped to keep her sane through a loveless marriage. But that's when the drinking began. She kept it to herself. Held it in until the cancer ate her marrow.

At seventeen, after my mare tragically died of colic, from eating too much new spring grass in the Bianchi's pasture, I worked for the Lehman's training stable. I showed their horses at gymkhanas, I collected armloads of blue and red ribbons, but I didn't want to own another horse, losing her was devastating. She was big and beautiful, there was so more of her to love.

At nineteen, my other interests, my art—demanded that I move into the larger area of the world. I was at odds. Two worlds colliding. I had a chance to travel, a work-study job in Switzerland. I was sorry to leave, I almost didn't go to Europe, but Edie said, Don't be silly! It's a chance of a lifetime. Go! Have fun!

There were plenty of other girls, like Donna Lopez—who once unscrupulously kicked my horse right when I was in front of the judge, costing me the blue ribbon—girls like her were only too happy to step into my coveted job. And so she did.

I felt a crippling loss, separated from the horses like that. There was nothing much left of my childhood landscape. And so I sometimes dream of horses, and wake up with an inconsolable sense of longing. Everyone else moved into bucolic Marin. They came from LA, and from back east, they bought up the valley, they quickclaimed it and put up plywood palaces, they put up electric fences, they dammed the creeks and gated the roads.

They brought their urban nightmares with them. Runaway horses on the precipice.

When the invaders came, we lost more than our right of way. We lost our way.

The wild creature within me has slowly become urbanized with time. But I still dream of following the horses on endless fire roads running along the horizon.

Twenty years later, laid up with a bad knee, I am remembering it all as if it were yesterday. No point, no point of view. Merely Bob Hass's rivers running uphill against memory and time.

Journal entry, 6/29/91, Oleg calls from Indio, California

 6/29/91 Oleg calls from on the road, Indio California. I tell him he’s in the San Andreas Fault bed. The Salton Sea, the Sea of Cortez. He asks if the San Bernardino Mountains are the Rockies. He has no idea. No, I say the Sierras, simplifying geography a bit. I tell him how the peninsula of Point Reyes came from there along the fault, though it was probably from the Tehachapes, or at least that’s what geologist say. But most of those same granite outcroppings extend all the way to Cabo San Lucas. At Point Reyes I saw the same kind of rock as I did in Cabo. How I love the story of rocks.

Anyway, finally, I think I made a geologic impression on him after all this time. He’s never fully grasped the magnitude of the idea of how living along the fault line has shaped our culture and our coastline. He doesn’t think of the earth is moving because we can’t measure it with the naked eye.
When he called, he said he was in Forestville, he said he couldn’t leave me, then he amended it by saying he was in Indio. It was a joke maybe not in the best of taste, considering the circumstances. I had mixed reactions.

I was willing to go and pick him up, but I had a pang of dread, thinking of all I had to do before I left for Hawaii at 5 AM on Monday morning. Both of us were trying to pack at the same time. It wasn’t working. So I said squelched my needs in order to meet his needs. I still haven’t physically packed though I did all my bills and chores.

I couldn’t pack with him in the house. He was ending a way of life, while I was merely preparing for a short respite from the interruptions of the past nine months.

Having Oleg in my tiny house was definitely a pattern breaker. So, my life was turned upside down. Rather than face the emptiness of his not being here, I opted to get out of the house. A complete change of scene. Hawaii. The eclipse will take my mind off the past year’s events, and hopefully it will launch me into the next stage of my life, whatever that is.

And so, his call was welcome, though I fought down the guilty beasts rising within myself. Why don’t I like to answer the phone? Fear of responsibility, and of what is to come. I hated it when he called, asking me of my plans and is pathetic hangdog voice. I’d love to make over his telephone voice too, because I knew I always had to come and get him wherever he was. Beck and call. I was always responsible like a mother to a child, and I hated it. I loved it when he was self-reliant, which wasn’t often, but it seems we fight too hard to get there. My secondary emotions, resentment and anger included all the primary emotions.

I just re-learn the word sublime from the ground up. To pass from solid to gaseous state without going through ice to steam. Turner’s paintings are sublime landscapes, Wind, steam and fog. I too learned to pass from one state to another, bypassing logical progression, into the sublime state. Pavlovian emotions. How to stop the roller coaster heart now?

He forgot five rolled cigarettes In the Bugler can on top of the clock radio. Women are more sensitive to smell, than men—it’s biogenetic. We are born that way. It makes sense—food, danger, sex, all carrying odor with a message of one kind or another like the on/off binary code of computers. Pixels. Danger/no danger. I hated the smell of tobacco, rolled, unrolled, loose, burnt, etc. Nothing to do. My nose smells the minutest particles. I could smell him rolling cigarettes in the kitchen while I stood in the bedroom doorway 8 feet away. Sometimes it made me sneeze.

The past few months I’ve had to take allergy pills day and night to suppress my allergies as it was an unusually bad pollen season. His cigarettes, my down comforter, and pollen were too much for my immune system. I kept getting short term viruses with a duration of a few days to a week, the worst part is the low grade fevers and the night sweats. Of course it scares me, AIDS foremost on my mind. None of us can completely rest assured when it comes to our sexual past. I saw a gripping documentary Absolutely Positive, how HIV affects lives, both straight and gay. I guess the hardest part is to get to the no blame section as the I Ching says.

No, I never got to the no blame, or at least it was pretty rare. I did it times achieve that state, saying to him, no blame, but when you do A, B, or C, this is what happens within me…
How can we avoid this möbius loop? Issues of time being the most prevalent.

I took Oleg to meet my family after we went to Point Reyes. He said he wanted to. I didn’t suggest it, but I pointed out landmarks dear to me— my hill, Mount Barnabe, and the Olema Hill Road. We were on our way to Bolinas and Mount Tam for the solstice. As it turned out, we hiked to the other end of the point, Chimney Rock at 4:47 PM, or whenever the precise moment the solstice was, and missed it. I wasn’t aware that the solstice happened at a certain time, I was waiting for sunset to celebrate.

At the solstice I was alone, enclosed within the circle overlook, a wooden fence, very much like a wooden Stonehenge watching the sun set due west behind the lighthouse. I was alone on the edge of the continent, celebrating the sun, something far older than me within, and across the naked fields, a small black dot, man’s torso, Oleg always lagging far behind.

I had gotten tired of waiting for him and forged on ahead, alone, but this is the way I experience the openness of nature best. Alone, elemental. Surrounded by sea and sky, light, wind, earth. But he came into my circle. And we watched the waves crash below us, I pointed out Point Reyes, to the west, Drake’s Bay, and the scalloped cliffs to our right. I’m on an island in time, we were on another island, it seems like Scotland or Ireland. Nova Albion. I get it.

I wore a nylon jacket from the 20th century and there were boats in the harbor, but it was as if time itself didn’t exist. My determined pilgrimage, my mindlessly running to this place, only to have the uncanny sensation of having had a similar experience before, unnerved me. But my relationship with Oleg has been filled with déjà vu from the very beginning. He was supposed to stay this long, I guess.

I remembered another useless dream about schedules, etc., fragments of conversation, meaningless in the dream, but they still came true nearly two years after the fact. Because I write down what I remember of my dreams, I have a running fact sheet of images. The earthquake dream came true too. The rubber band dream with the red carnations defied logic. Oleg had rubber bands around his neck with me helping him to adjust them.

In another dream, we were on Highway 101 by Cotati, heading north to Santa Rosa. Instead, in real life, I took him to the San Francisco depot late at night, I had placed a red carnation in his food bag. And there were plenty of rubber bands around his luggage items, as it seems. In fact, he took all of my fat rubber bands, only Leaving two behind, just like in the dream. I have the elements of the dream right here. The order may be out of sync or it hasn’t happened yet.

And so we went to my grandmothers house, had dinner with Jane and my mom. So many cornflowers or bachelor buttons in bloom in the field below. Oleg said they grew among the rye in the Ukraine considered a weed, but to describe a beautiful girl was like cornflowers among the rye, all blonde hair and blue eyes. I realized my darkness, my hair and my eyes were the opposite of assumed beauty in the Ukraine, with its predominance of blue-eyed blondes.

Home, this land I love, and roses filled the path to the upper garden. We struggled in the tangle. I showed him plants. Huge bushes, rosemary and flowering peach that I had planted in the rocky, barren soil as a child. I season our food with sprigs of rosemary from the parent bush of my grandmother’s garden. I’ve made many progeny. Several here in Forestville as well as elsewhere. Rosemary the blue sea rose of my name and of remembrance. Roman cliffs, Italy, the sea.

We said goodbye to the sun setting in the northerly gap on Mt. Barnabe. Fitting that I should come home, appropriate accident. Later, my mother tells me that my uncle Bill has lung cancer. I am so angry knowing he was missing a half a lung from TB and yet he continued to smoke. I’m surprised it took this long to catch up. Jane, Oleg, and my mother continue to smoke as she tells me the details.

The open window and the air purifier is for my benefit, the asthma that comes from inhaling cigarette smoke, will not help their lungs. I flash angerly at Oleg. See why I want you to stop? I say it just brings more death. He continues to smoke. I pointed to my mother, saying how our family is riddled with cancer. She had breast cancer, an,uncle died of melanoma, and my aunt Toddy has skin cancer and breast cancer. My grandfather’s throat cancer from the cigars. In defiance, he draws another halo of smoke around his shoulders, the pleasure on his face is unmatched even by sex. Even with the knowledge of death, they enjoy their guilty addiction, subtle, thorough and lasting.

I want to mail those last five cigarettes to Oleg just to get them out of my house but I am aiding and and abetting by mailing them back to him, or am I? Grim reminders of death. I leave for Hawaii soon. When my uncle be alive when I return on 21 July? I talk of returning to my childhood home, living in a trailer in the garden. Oleg says it would be coming down in life to live this way, it would be regressing, that I’m better off staying in Forestville. Wow. I didn’t see that one coming. A middle class Soviet.

I never liked my uncle Bill, especially when he tried to sell our land right out from under us. My grandmother crying one summer evening as he laid down the news. Who was he, living in a tract home, to tell us what to do with our land? In a rage I attacked him verbally. I wasn’t even 12 years old and he never for gave me for my adult anger in a child’s body.

And I never forgave him for manipulating us, trying to break up our family. Put her in a nursing home, what happened to me and Guy? The enemy was a man all right, within the family. Eldest born son with the arrogance to match. Shades of the dream. The white cylindrical tubes, the glistening silver lines—what significance can I attach to the number four?

Sarcasm is the first form of humor. I think of the word sarcophagus. Phagos. The body devouring itself. Cancer. Give me another fag. I can hear my uncle asking, as he lies, so white and pale on the bed. I want to tell him, the Little League coach, that the bases are loaded this time, and who is left to steal home?