I write personal essay. I write to find out how I feel about something, an aspiration I learned from the poet May Sarton. I sometimes picture myself as a grizzled prospector leading a forlorn, burdened donkey into the trackless waste of basin and range country, looking for riches that might be only a few bright flecks in a stream.
These essays explore my world, from the hiking trails of California to the Java Sea and the Silk Road, from school days to retirement, from my backyard to my bookshelves. I invite you to read them—with this caveat from the Persian poet Hafiz:
Listen: this world is the lunatic's sphere,
Don't always agree it's real,
Even with my feet upon it
And the postman knowing my door
My address is somewhere else.
*The quote above about the fish is from Pablo Neruda.
Another hot day inland. Along the Sonoma Coast it's sunny and cloudless, with a gentle breeze. No one is at the Shell Beach parking lot when I arrive at 10 o'clock. Heading north, I'm amazed at the variety of wildflowers still blooming this late in the summer: sticky monkey flower, pearly everlasting, cow parsnip, radish, coyote bush, purple thistle, blackberry, scarlet pimpernel, flax, pennyroyal, yampah, madia. Pink-tinged coast buckwheat is everywhere, as are seaside daisies and bright yellow dandelions.
I climb the highest hill on the way to Goat Rock and find embedded in the soil at the top a metal medallion inscribed "U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey, Peak Hill." This agency is now called the National Geodetic Survey (NGS) and is under the auspices of NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration). Geodesy is the science of measuring the Earth and precisely locating points on it. NGS operates the Global Positioning System (GPS) that makes it possible to assign every point on Earth its own unique address: latitude, longitude, and height. When the medallion I found was put in place line-of-sight surveys were made at night with a theodolite and a set of towers. Brass disks set in concrete served as control points. A survey that once took days can now be completed in a few hours with 10 to 100 times more accuracy using 24 GPS satellites. Of course, I found out all this only after I got home and Googled U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey. But high on that bald nob overlooking the Pacific I found out its name: Peak Hill.
Down toward Wright's Beach bunches of pink naked ladies, Amaryllis belladonna, dot the bluffs. I find two plants new to me: prickly eryngium, a low plant with sharp-pointed, gray leaves, and dune gilia, with globular purple flower heads. A rein orchid (Piperia elegans) grows right by the trail and also some western goldenrod, which I don't think I have seen here before.
The sea immediately off shore is littered with sea stacks, left behind when the marine terrace was eroded and uplifted. Several of these rock piles are marooned on land and these are known as fossil sea stacks.
Predicted 95°F. at home, 70°F. at Pt. Reyes, so I head for Limantour Spit. It's pretty crowded for a weekday. I walk out on the marsh side and am surprised to see how much is in bloom: sticky monkey flower, yarrow, dandelion, baccharis, purple thistle, and the special salt marsh plants—grindelia, jaumea, limonium, Armeria maritima, brass buttons. Also two species of pickelweed and the orange parasite, dodder, both in bloom. Lots of orange and red splotches on the dunes—this is Carpobrotus edulis or Hottentot-fig, introduced from South Africa to control erosion along highways and banks. It has become naturalized on California dunes and other sandy places.
Fall migration hasn't started so the birding is a bit sparse. Still I see great and snowy egrets, white pelicans, great blue herons, ring-billed and Heerman's gulls, sandpipers, sanderlings, godwits. I spot one female northern harrier and an osprey soaring up high. The tide is out, no clouds, a bit of a breeze. Among the pickleweed I spy the bleached bones of a deer—skull, three legs, rib cage. At the end of the spit, no harbor seals are hanging out. I walk back on the ocean side, keeping my stride in tempo with the waves.
The sea immediately off shore is littered with sea stacks, left behind when the marine terrace was eroded and uplifted. Several of these rock piles are marooned on land and these are known as fossil sea stacks. .jpg)