Biology vs. Geology redux

(11:00 a.m.) Had to preserve this title until later tonight when I can add the photos. Builds a little anticipation, no? (8:45 p.m.) Can't shake this cold. Was very inspired today after listening to Desmond Tutu on the car radio. More about that later. Got to work and suddenly had another coughing fit, couldn't continue my work, so I left for home - coughing. Stumbled across incredible beauty - first a great blue heron in a field, then a magpie on an electrical wire. Took some photos, then stopped at one of my all time favorite spots, the Greenville Y. I stopped, ostensibly to photograph plants, but was overwhelmed by the varied rock formations. I remembered a conversation with my geologist friend, Derek Lerch, in which we discussed what appeals to us in Feather River Canyon and he mentioned how he likes Nevada because there's not so much vegetation in the way of seeing the rocks. Of course, I'm the one always seeking out the vegetation. Well, today, I saw so much beauty, both biological and geological, that I got into a serene state of accepting it all that reminded of Desmond Tutu's description of how he almost died of TB when a teenager. He coughed up blood and thought he was going to die. Then, suddenly, he accepted that possible fate and felt extremely serene. He wanted to be a doctor, but he told of how and why he got diverted to the ministry. Well, my cold isn't so bad that I thought I was going to die, but I was definitely frustrated by it, and being immersed in this natural setting put me into a kind of trance. I took 105 photos, and I am anxious to share some of them here, but it'll have to wait until morning. I'll post one before I close, though. Make that two! I've got to at least reflect the theme of this post. [Click on photo for close-up.] The top photo, especially, reminds me that all the vegetation is made of just rocks and air!
(8:00 a.m., Fri., 3-12-10) Added most of the remaining photos. Reflecting on the spot at Greenville Y, I realize the incredible diversity of life here. The dominant scene is the confluence of Indian Creek and Spanish Creek, with varied rocks from sedimentary, tilted at odd angles, and beautiful granite and many crystalline structures I don't know about (need geologist friend). There are some puddles left behind from winter's high water filled with filamentous algae and lots of intriguing invertebrates, and virtually every plant phylum from ferns and mosses to flowering plants, both gymnosperms and angiosperms. What still lie hidden until warmer weather are all sorts of frogs, salamanders, snakes, and lizards - seen in past summers. At this time, a fallen, rotting log such as pictured above, is an obvious winter home from which I anticipate new animals emerging over many weeks as the weather warms. Some more photos will be added this afternoon.

Snow again, but....

Woke up this morning to 4" of new snow, totally unexpected. In a little over a week, I get to go to Table Mountain for the first time this season. Will bring back photos of these three, I hope, as well as beautiful creeks and waterfalls. I took these at Table Mountain last year at this time. They are bitter root, dwarf monkey flower, and blue-eyed grass.

Everyone's Looking for the Same Thing - In the key of C?

This has been a most stimulating day, so this post can't wait until tomorrow. Today, at our Writers Group meeting, a friend introduced me to a new author(ess), B. M. Bower, AKA, B. M. Sinclair, AKA - never mind. The book my friend had in hand was almost 100 years old and it was all about the terrain near Quincy, specifically around the base of Mt. Hough, and forest fire lookouts.. Since I have lots of lookout friends and have lots of time on Mt. Hough, I had to check this out. Turns out our town library has a copy under lock and key due to its fragile nature. So, I searched the fiction section which had over a dozen of her books. I checked out two. The one called "Cabin Fever," begins with what I consider a great line: "here is a certain malady of the mind induced by too much of one thing." You can probably guess where she goes with this, considering the title of the book. However, her treatment of the idea is not at all superficial. The question that comes to my mind is Why didn't this happen to Thoreau or the Dalai Lama, or thousands of others who spent many hours meditating? Also, what do we mean by "one thing." I have hiked the same trail hundreds of times, for instance, and it's never the same trail twice. The river metaphor is strong in Buddhism, and we all know that the river is never the same river from one moment to the next?
The title of this post comes from the first Kate Wolf song I ever heard. It was played on a radio station near Mendocino and was a humorous take on the postings on community bulletin boards back in the day when it seemed that Mendocino and Humboldt counties were swarming with transient folks looking for free things - the same free things - rent-free housing, milk goats, firewood, most anyth8ing that could be bartered for..... Once you've seen these bulletin boards for a while, it's hard to avoid stereotyping the seekers after the "same thing."
The lesson in it for me, because I think I'm incapable of "catching" cabin fever, is that we really live in the place between our ears, no matter where we are geographically. I think it was Checkov who wrote a great story along these lines called "The Bet." If we get bored, perhaps we need to change our outlook [our our inlook], and not blame circumstance. Anyway, I hope the rest of the book lives up to my expectations because "Cabin Fever" starts off playing directly to one of my favorite biases.

Hope Springs Eternal....

Since I'm constantly yearning for spring, I couldn't pass up the pun potential of this quote from an Alexander Pope poem, which is titled "An Essay on Man" I decided to re-read the poem which is quite remarkable in many ways. Many allusions to nature, especially weeds. I'm a weed lover, so he was preaching to the choir here. His many allusions to God and/or the creative force apparent in nature are clearly those of a person steeped in the creationist environment of the day, yet honestly questioning. If he'd lived during Darwin's day and after publication of the "Origin," I think he would have readily become a "fellow traveler." [That last phrase possibly a dangerous one to use here:)] So, after weird weather yesterday and a new dusting of snow during the night, my hope for spring is intensified. I've already photographed the first wildflowers to emerge around Quincy, so I do not look forward to more snow - unless perhaps above 5,000'. Today's photos are of the most beautiful alligator lizard I've ever seen. A tail longer than its body with no evidence of injury or prior loss. This is the same guy I photographed in my son's hands and posted earlier here. The other photos are of turkey tail fungus that is prolific in my former home in the redwoods, but occurs here, too.

How could I forget this beauty?

The Great Spotted Bat, Euderma maculata, found on a mountain top in northwestern New Mexico.

Can the weather be ambivalent?

Today the weather alternated between rainy, sunny, windy, snowy, and who knows what else? couldn't decide on a theme. Chose random drawings and photos from my journal. My mind wanders. Sometimes artwork, sometimes political commentary, and a poem based on the word syzygy. A page of showing someone the algorithm for finding a square root. The process is based on a kind of unraveling of the binomial theorem. For some reason, it doesn't bother me to include it with art, photography and poetry. The spruce tree covered with snow looks very winter-y, yet, twice today it had no snow at all. Quincy is in that in between zone where any given storm might dump several inches of rain, several feet of snow, or no precipitation at all while the surrounding area gets deluged. I came across some pages in my journal with lots of photos of centipedes and millipedes. Had just finished talking to biology students in the forest when I wrote: "Sometimes people's failure to distinguish millipedes from centipedes, even after simple instruction, seems willful. Is there a need to have an enemy in nature? Is it just a matter of not wanting to take in information that seems too challenging? Is there a fear that it would obligate one to learn much more? Or is there actually a deep-seated revulsion - or is it just melodrama? What were the critical steps leading my son to enjoy letting a millipede crawl across his face? (See Feb. 7 blog entry.) These are some of the things I wonder about when the weather can't decide what to do next.

A Thunderous Breakfast Conversation

My official greeting of the day began as usual at Morning Thunder where I like to read the Sunday paper, then, time permitting, write or draw in my journal. This morning the paper was late and a friend walked in. She usually reads books that's she's reviewing for a library group. We settled for conversation. She just returned from a week at a nature preserve in Arizona, where they don't really have a winter. Here I am, chomping at the bit, waiting for spring to arrive, which it already has in fits and starts, punctuated by brief snowstorms. TIME OUT. Family duties call. Will finish later.
I'm back - only to discover that this software I haven't mastered keeps rearranging the photos after I click POST, sometimes overlapping them, etc. I will now try to correct the photo positions before continuing my typing.
I'm back. Still fighting the software. Got the photos to where they're not overlapping, but it blocked out the word "paper" after Sunday. Who knows what might happen to THIS text after I click PUBLISH again. [Hey, I'm back on Monday morning to find that the word "paper" is back. But, who knows what might happen after I post this correction?]
Anyway, that morning conversation embraced frog lore. My friend mentioned a great book she was reviewing about "hip pocket frogs" which I'd never heard of. I told her about spadefoot toads which I knew lived in that area of Arizona she visited. Then, when I got home I looked up hip pocket frogs which live in Australia and have leg pouches for their young when makes them superficially resemble marsupials. I'd love to see that!
Our conversation also reminded me of various things I've written, photographed or drawn over the past year or more, and prompted me to go back through my journals. I discovered that I had done a lot more drawing than I realized. The wooden post that appears to have rope wrapped around it was by the seashore and the rope was actually a steel cable. When I arrived, there was a handsome alligator lizard sitting along the cable. I photographed it with my old film camera, and I'm sure it's in my negatives file somewhere, but the lizard then climbed to the top of the post and pooped before dashing off to the underbrush. I then made the drawing I've posted here. I was impressed by how much lizard poop resembles bird poop, and, in fact, in my journal I mistakenly labeled the drawing "bird poop." Minor point, though, as some zoologists consider birds to be reptiles - descendants of the dinosaurs, in fact. If you're not too squeamish, ponder this: the darker portion of the poop is actually poop, that is, a product of the intestine. The white portion is actually urine, a product of the kidneys. They emerge together from an internal sac called the cloaca which also receives the sperm in males and the eggs in females before they exit. Cloaca is the Latin word for sewer. The drawing of the oak gall was done beneath a California black oak, for which my publishing business is named, and was in Mendocino County. These galls are, of course, nests. The residents are sometimes mites, sometimes wasps. The gall is actually a growth of the tree branch in response to being stung by the insect, although some can be caused by fungi. Sometimes, after the bug that causes the gall departs, ants may take up residence. The swallowtail butterfly is one I drew when I was designing a nature calendar. Never did complete the calendar, but I saved the drawing. Maybe a calendar for 2011?
I drew the frog some years ago to accompany a newspaper article I wrote called "Our tree frogs don't like trees." I mused about having met the tree frog clan as a student in Florida where there are many species of Hylas. I first met my California hylas back in 1965 when they were still called Pacific Coast Tree Frogs. I even named my first daughter Hyla. Maybe my article was prescient because since then the herpetologists have decided that California's Hyla regilla is not a tree frog after all but belongs with its allies, the chorus frogs. Now it's called Pseudacris regilla. If I remember correctly, the new generic name means "false cricket." The drawing of a Stellar's Jay feather was done partly out of inspiration from the feather I found, but also to test a new type of pen. I like the "micro" size and am always trying out new pens. The last drawing is of red alder, seen from my canoe on the Noyo River which enters the Pacific south of Fort Bragg, CA. The red alders near the coast grow very tall, but the alders where I live now in the Sierra are usually bushes or small trees. Both have the cute pine-cone-like female cones and catkins that resemble those of other broadleafs like oak, birch, and cottonwoods.
The photos were all taken near the Quincy library and they, too, started my mind racing in many directions, after having already been sent racing by the aforementioned breakfast meeting. The crocus is always one of the earliest to arrive here, even before the snow has finished melting. They seem able to survive getting covered with snow, sometimes more than once, before the snow is gone for good. The dandelion is the first "wild" flower I've seen around here this spring. It was close to the violets which were growing out of the lawn. The violets will undoubtedly get mowed soon, but the dandelion will survive the mowing because it was behind the wooden barrier defining the "garden." However, it might get "weeded." The violets may or may not survive the mowing and grow back, again and again, but I suspect that, being weakened by domestication, it will give up after a few mowings. The dandelion, on the other hand, usually grows rather tall the first time out after winter. However, after getting mowed, or pulled up without getting all of the root, will flower sooner, that is, shorter, the next time. As I watch the dandelions outside my office window get "cut down to size," mowing after mowing, they keep coming back, and eventually will bloom with practically no stem at all, below the height of the mower's blades. You've got to admire that! Thank you, Sherry, for energizing conversation today.