Friday, July 14, 2017

Bowling Ball Beach, II

 While we continued to converse, off and on, cognizant of the other's main interests, we also meandered separately, each focused on our own main interest - Bib on the rocks with "finger" holes in them, and me on anything alive besides humans.  When I wandered a little bit south from our entry to the beach, I found huge accumulations of seaweed and poked through quite a bit of it looking for amphipods, flies, and crabs.  The wind was probably making me impatient because I didn't find much, and I wasn't as persistent as I usually am in such situations.
 Turning north again, wondering where the large bowling balls had gone, I recognized the furthest cliffs (left-hand edge of the above photo) as the ones immediately behind the bowling balls we had seen on our last trip here.  That area appeared to be around a mile away, so we decided not to walk that far.
 Back to looking for signs of life, I was intrigued by the glow of sunlight emanating from this bunch of grass.  Stealing a phrase from an iconic Ansel Adams photo, I love the "early morning light."
 This lone specimen of Bull Kelp seemed particularly photogenic to me.  The wavy pattern of mini-sand dunes brought forth images of desert and other places of isolation, but the kelp was a reminder of the tenacity of life found in such places - such as Ed Abbey wrote about after exploring Death Valley.
 Considering how the waves bash everything against the rocks, I felt privileged to find an intact crab shell.

Then, on the trail back up to our parking space, I found a great specimen of Harvest Brodiaea that I overlooked on the way down.  Again, the early morning light made this one especially beautiful.  Onward to points south - coffee, chile relleno, and bookstores.

1 comment:

  1. Are you sure that is Harvest Brodiaea? Looks more like Ithuriel's Spear (aka Wally Basket) to me, but hard to tell from a photo

    ReplyDelete