West Pinnacles National Park

On our way home from Berkeley we stopped at West Pinnacles. The park is unusual because there's no road through it's center, and one must drive for two hours to visit the east side. The day began cool, but the sun was warm against the towering pinnacles and rock faces.  

the hillside view from the picnic grounds

We had a lovely picnic and while John slept, I hiked the Balconies Cave Trail, which passes directly through around among and up the rubbled aggregate of the lava which once flowed over this land. Rocks ejected at great force from the volcanic explosion mixed with mud and volcanic ash and hardened, creating a rock called rhyolite breccia.

23 million years ago multiple volcanoes erupted, flowed, and slid to form what would become Pinnacles National Park. What remains is a landscape unlike any other. Travelers journey through grasslands, chaparral, oak woodlands, and canyon bottoms. Hikers enter rare talus caves and emerge to towering rock spires teeming with life: Prairie and Peregrine falcons, Golden eagles, and the inspiring California condor.    -from the National Park website

A few million years of powerful explosions, lava flows, and landslides created the 30 mile wide volcanic field that forms the foundation of Pinnacles National Park today. This field of fire was then split down the center by the San Andreas Fault and the west side traveled 195 miles north at a rate of 3-6 centimeters each year, all while being worn away by water, weathering, and chemical erosion! 

the trail will lead you right between and around these upthrust eroded masses

While condors and magnificent rock spires are certainly what draws many visitors to Pinnacles, they are by no all there is to see at the park. Visitors can explore two systems of talus caves, which are formed by massive boulders wedged in ravines and widened by water and erosion. 

these cascading frozen stones, stacked on each other, inspired the name balconies.

The lava

This rock sample shows how the slowly flowing lava formed many internal layers as it began to cool. The layers eventually stretched into very thin bands.

After the rigor of hiking at 8-10,000 feet in the Sierras, hiking West Pinnacles seemed like a gentle ramble. My poles really help, too.

Rocks the size of houses will hang steadily over your head as you make your way through a cool, dark environment that provides a home for Townsend big-eared bats and red-legged frogs, among others.

entrance to Balcony Cave (from web with permission for educational use)

I did plan on passing through the cave, but the crawl space was only about 3 feet high and worse, I had no knee pads, and my thin hiking pants would give little protection for this scramble.

crawl and squeeze through the opening between the rocks! - photo from web with
permission for educational use 

 If you prefer to stay in the sun, you can hike our 32 miles of trails which are decorated during the spring months with California poppies, bush lupine, mariposa lilies and a variety of other wildflowers. These flowers are pollinated by the park's 400 species of bees, a higher density of species per area than any other known place in the world! 

You may also see bobcats, coyotes, black-tailed deer, any number of lizards and snakes, tarantulas, and perhaps even a mountain lion!

Another type of rock is greenish in color.  Lava droplet hurled into the air formed pumice, and papilla (small volcanic rocks), which embedded in the the volcanic ash. And indeed, many of the formations did seem rather green, but also because of the mosses and lichens growing tenaciously upon their massive flanks.

While returning along the trail, I heard/saw a raptor, probably a Cooper's Hawk, make a kill and fly off with the prey in its paws.

The bird landed on the trail about 15 feet from me, permitting me a marvelous view.

The sound of the kill I'll never forget - the wings and thrashing, the gurgled gasp and cry of the prey, caught unawares.

a photo by Ron Dudley from the web - a Cooper's Hawk with prey, very much like what I saw that day

I also saw several oak titmice, charming little grayish crested birds flitting about among the twisting oaks. 

As the sun set, we drove south to King City and our comfortable rest in a Quality Inn. Dinner was at at Cork and Plough, a wine gastro-pub bistro with an industrial feel - a welcome choice. Home the next day via Santa Paula, through more of California's hilly chaparral oak woodlands and crops - delectable winter lettuces were sprouting.

We'll go back again in the spring to see the flowers.

Alice's Memorial Service

The hublet and I traveled to Berkeley for a friend's sister's memorial service.  A singular woman and a distinctively lived life, in a small isolated community on Tomales Bay called Marshall.

These are two of her most exquisite stitcheries - about 4"x 4" each. Rob, her husband, said it took her several months to finish each one.  

She married an abstract painter, had a daughter, Isis, Waldorf schooled, a painter too.  It's a remote place, a commitment to commuting of more than an hour from Berkeley or San Francisco.

It's a bit lonely, as many a western place still is, but in its own time-warp, where all the best of the flower child lifestyle seems preserved.  

The families created a pre-school for their children, where they shed their clothes, played in a manure pile, and explored the shoreline, bay, and hills.

She loved native plants, ran a gardening and landscape design service, and devoted herself to her daughter's alternative education, stitchery, and photography. 

Across the street from her house, an old, frowsy Victorian which remained in need of much repair for the 30 years she and her husband and child lived in it, is Hog Island Oyster Farm. It's one of two suppliers of these delectables in Point Reyes. It's the only memorial service I've ever been to that had an oyster bar, along with north coast wines and cheeses, a foody dream.  

Ironic. Because when Alice knew she was terminal, she decided to end her life by self-starvation. Supported by her loyal and loving daughter,husband,sister and friends, she lived for over two weeks before her body finally released her. Her last meal was oysters.  

Her sister, Trish, lives on in Berkeley, a friend of my husband and his sister, become my friend too. 






   

Zen, Present for the moment

From the NYT - article about Buddhist chef Jeon Kwong, popular in Manhattan

Kwan deferred to the dharma: “If you want to be inspired and create, you need to empty yourself out and accept and let desire go,” she explained. “Too much ego and you cannot accept new things.”

It takes so much time to be "into" food. I really want to eat to live these days.  Let myself be concerned with natural beauty, and my presence to it.

This is what Western philosophers term “epistemic humility” — a deep Socratic sense that one knows that he or she doesn’t know. For Shinran, this is a pivotal form of spiritual prostration — a laying low of the last vestiges of selfhood. Everything in human existence is equally meaningful or meaningless, take your pick. 

This is not unlike what Western ethicists call the “problem of dirty hands”: the difficulty of tidying up the world’s atrocities with hands that can never be washed clean, and may get dirtier in the process. 

Walker Evans

I've seen the photograph many times, and it has always made me grieve for the immigrants, the workers, they who toiled during the early period of industrial growth in America.  Rest in peace. 

Eastern Sierras: Fall

Sept. 24, Tuesday    

High up in Bishop Creek Canyon is a small group of cabins for rent, Parchers Resort.  It has been a favorite of mine for many years, giving me the experience of mountain forest, early and late. Streams crash down over boulders and downed trees, aspens  golden leaves dance to the windsong, and the canopy of pines soughs  a mighty bass swaying high above me.

The honest simplicity of its scale seems a valuable contrast to L.A.'s luxury aesthetic and civic power.   

It's been a few years since I went to the Sierras in the fall, and somehow the rigor of early mornings has been conveniently forgotten.  It's cold, dry, still, perhaps 28 degrees, and the cabin is too. 

The small heater takes its time to warm the front room, unmindful of the bathroom and bedroom.  There's no wi-fi, cell service, and no electrical appliances - everything runs from propane tanks and generators. I make coffee in an old fashioned percolator, and 9 cups takes a half hour.   Still, we're up and out on South Lake at seven, a clear morning, dressed warmly.  But my LA-tempered body craves comfort, and the first hour and a half require a level of fortitude I  haven't had to summon for this purpose - exercise, healthy eating, and chores have their debits instead.

What I love is that in the wilderness, one earns every pleasure, but that bounty isn't always a given.  Impervious Nature, wind, rain, cold, humidity, implacable need for food: all humbles me, returning me back to reason and flow.
   

Sept. 25, Wednesday

Hike to Long Lake from South Lake Trailhead in Bishop Creek Canyon.  The day began cold again, and we left at about 11.  The sun was warm on the trail, the shadows cool, and bits of snow coated the mountainsides and darkened trailside vegetation.  In several places the aspens are already yellowed, but mostly are about to turn, remaining greenish yellow.  The willows are full of fluff, the meadow grasses turning golden, the flowers gone, and the stillness full and waiting, like an old man sitting on a park bench.

I haven’t hiked to Long Lake for many years, and remembered the descent, the shapely lake tucked against the mountain, and the island-like shoreline. 

Clark’s Nutcracker, Mountain Chickadee, Dark-headed Junco, White-Crowned Sparrow, Belding’s ground squirrel, golden mantled ground squirrel

I think this is Chocolate Mountain at the end of Long Lake

I was just amazed at the powerful jumble of geologic 
activity that is visible here, though I can't identify or describe it.  I just know something amazing happened here to bring all these colors, textures, and vertiginous experience together.

Kath had a hard time with the hike,  experiencing altitude sickness, though she hadn’t had it on past trips.  
I feel quite bad about not noticing - she's been to the Sierras several times before and not been ill.  Perhaps she was tired from the jet lag of flying in from Rome.

John is ill with a severe gout attack and stomach upset. 

He is managing to fish, but I am pained that he is in such discomfort.

Saw the Space Station pass over in the early evening - the glowing sphere was pinkened by the sunset glow - how remarkable.

Thursday, Sept. 28

Fish Lake Sabrina, drive up to North Lake

We fished the inlet here, catching lots of fish.  The water was about 6 feet lower than this summer.  The aspens hadn't really peaked - late because of the plentiful snowfall last winter, and warm summer.  One thrill, a bald eagle sighting.

North Lake is also beautiful, and lonely and high up.  Katharine loves the Sierra; I hope she is finding it refreshing after her blazing hot Italian summer experience.  

I walk from Parchers down to Willow Campground in the afternoon.  A path runs east parallel to the highway, perhaps a mile or so. The sun warms the canopy of aspen, slightly golden, and again the tumbling stream, dashing down the mountainside, all so quiet, the quiet of autumn, a sense of slowing, of release, of peace.

willow fluff

Friday, the 29th 

We drive home together, leaving a bit late, taking our time.  Home is very warm, the turquoise pool is sparkling and waiting.  Southern California, so easy, so lovely, our home so comfortable, welcoming, cozy.  I wish I'd seen a snowstorm, though.  Or a mighty wind and rainstorm.

Art: Carolyn Castaño: Art after the post-Chicano movement

Ms. Castaño spoke to WPW, my women painters' group, last week at luncheon.  She has an impressive art education, SFAI and UCLA. 

Her materials are mixed - gouache, acrylics, 
watercolor, painted on large pieces of watercolor paper, usually affixed to the wall without frames. There are also light boxes, which make use of the appearance of images on media screens - the high contrast, over-saturated, crisply-defined lines, the flattened perspective.

Her seemingly bright and simple palette displays well on these, but I suspect,also commands the viewing space. Large drawings in the Southwest Airlines terminal at LAX are bold, absolutely distracting from the chaos of baggage claim.  They announce so vividly:  you are here, in Los Angeles, a very singular world.   

She's rooted in a Latina-feminist perspective, though her imagery appears very contemporary.  It's narrative, historical, and figurative, driven by a kind of funereal iconography, deaths-head molds and portraits made of ancestors and cherished, images of lost souls, their faces whitened, impurities of skin and bone disappeared in their now-eternal slumber. 

The Narco-femmes series is insightful and saddening - the objectification and obliteration of the female, of the possibility of real human development based on family, nurture, and slow deep growth sacrificed for the ultimate commodity experience - the drug high. I think of Millais' "Ophelia".

I see confident, bold line shaping forms with faux-primitive colors, thinking of Fauvism, composition drawn from the Pattern and Decoration Movement, Central American textiles, and outsider folk artists (le Douanier Rousseau's Garden of Eden work).  I also think of late Hockney's drawings on the iPad of California palm trees, and Hockney's early fine portrait drawings. Matisse's late collages from "Jazz" seem another reference.

There's a smoothly-integrated synthesis that's referential to art history, and yields a body of purposeful, thoughtful work offering a perspective to those attendant at the shifting plates of cultural diversity, at the "babe struggling to be born", second generation.    

   

The Golden Age Myth: Psychoanalytic Read

Things were better back then...all these changes are decadent and we're all corrupted and Dystopia is us...

I came across an interpretation that suggested that discontent about the present and nostalgia, devaluing the current state and way of things, is part of aging - of letting go of life, "it's not so good anyway, so might as well resign myself to death"...

It's a doomsday device, faulty reasoning that feeds into a loss of a positive attitude in old age - which causes faster cognitive decline.