Why does it seem that the most striking flowers of spring shouldn't be here at all? The everlasting pea (Lathyrus latifolius), is non-native. Exotic. Invasive. Unwanted save for those who enjoy a flash of bright color in the sea of grass of the backdunes.
From it's homeland in southern Europe, the everlasting pea has spread across North America and to every state except North Dakota and Florida, thus proving its good taste in travel destinations. Thomas Jefferson noted it on his Monticello homestead in the 1770s and planted it in his gardens (more likely his slaves planted it in his gardens) in 1807 while Jefferson was off bein' president.
It's not supposed to be here, and someday we may do something to eliminate it from this protected landscape. But on a quiet June morning, with the gate locked behind me and the beach to myself, I'm glad it's here.
Not that I'm bragging, but check out her stats from last night's 5-0 victory in the semifinals of Mad River Girls ASA 10 & Under tourney:
On the mound: 3 IP - 0 runs - 7 K's - 0 BB including a 3 strikeout bottom of the 6th to shut the door and send us on to the championships. At the plate: 2-fer-3 with a 2B, RBI and a run scored. Add in a nifty running catch at second and it was quite a night.
Kinda like wrapping up both Ellsbury and Papelbon and stuffing them into a 4'6" blonde ponytail.
'Twas her night to shine after weeks of patiently watching her freshman big sister's 25-0 championship season with the St Bernards Crusaders.
Not that she did it herself, of course. She and her teamates saved the most perfect of their 16 games this season for last night, an elimination game that would either end their season or propel them forward to the championships. Timely hitting, smart base running, strong defense, and stellar pitching from my kid and another great li'l thrower all came together on one magical night. That the victory came against the team that embarrassed us a week ago makes it all the more exciting.
It's so easy to be proud of two beautiful kids who seem to excel - in sports, school, and life - in ways that I never have. One has outgrown her dad's coaching skills and taken her game to a new level at a new position under new leadership. (Though I still offer my advice, she knows better than to listen.) The other, still trapped under coach/dad's tutelage, is emerging from the shadow of her big sister as an athletic force in her own petite right.
Can Dad match their glories when Arcata's D-league wood bat season begins next week? Not sure that I can, or that I even care to try. I'm satisfied bein' a proud dad for now.
10am, Friday morning, the first day of May, just before low tide.
Unusually calm out here this morning. Almost no breeze to speak of. A flat, gray-blue sky. The ocean quieter than it's supposed to be. Feels more like a summer on Blue Hill Bay than the roiling Pacific coast.
A western grebe sits just out of reach atop the placid sea, wrestling a slender silvery fish into position for the long slide down his white gullet. Further out a black'n'white-backed loon rises and falls on modest swells.
Reading Rock seemingly floats above the ocean six miles out. The ebbing tide uncovers a rocky path from the north side of the creek to the Sisters. Dark boulders, usually unseen, surround Little Girl Rock. A single long wave breaks a hundred yards offshore indicating a shallow sandbar raised by gravels carved from the redwood hills and transported downhill in the belly of the creek.
The sun tries in vain to crack the gray clouds. It never quite makes it through, though the sky brightens and warms my neck nonetheless.
Three cormorants zip by as I reach the mouth of the creek. The waves are taller here and crash more loudly where they meet the creek's rushing waters. The mouth bends to the south, the lack of recent rain slowing its push to the ocean.
Three dozen gulls rest on the peninsula separating creek and ocean. Western gulls, California gulls, and a single Heerman's gull, his orange bill and charcoal gray body distinguishing him from the rest. Two Caspian terns soar above the small seagull gathering, followed a moment later by a solitary pelican gliding inches above the waves.
I follow a single line of heron tracks from the mouth back to the calm estuary. The timeless drumming of the surf gives way to the twittering of a thousand songbirds. This place comes alive in the spring. It’s long past time for me to do the same.
Perhaps I spent too many years under the spacious skies of the southwest, but I am more often drawn to the wide panorama of the sea or the grassy vistas of high prairies than the secluded depths of the forest. When I dare to enter its lush green underworld, the redwood forest overwhelms me with silence and timelessness. A recent wander along Lost Man Creek roused a vision, yet left me searching for words. Just as an amateur photographer can never capture the majesty of the redwoods, an aspiring scribbler such as I, is hopelessly, shamelessly lost in painting with pen the verdant blanket enveloping the lone traveler. In my wordless stead, I substitute the words of the more accomplished Mr Steinbeck:
"No one has ever successfully painted or photographed a redwood tree. The feeling they produce is not transferable. From them comes silence and awe. It's not only their unbelievable stature, nor the color which seems to shift and vary under your eyes, no, they are not like any trees we know, they are ambassadors from another time."
"There's a cathedral hush here. Perhaps the thick soft bark absorbs sound and creates a silence. The trees rise straight up to zenith; there is no horizon. The dawn comes early and remains dawn until the sun is high. Then the green fernlike foliage so far up strains the sunlight to a green gold and distributes it in shafts or rather in stripes of light and shade. After the sun passes zenith it is afternoon and very quickly evening with a whispering dusk as long as was the morning.
"Birds move in the dim light or flash like sparks through the stripes of sun, but they make little sound. Underfoot is a mattress of needles deposited for over two thousand years. No sound of footsteps can be heard on this thick blanket. To me there's a remote and cloistered feeling here. One holds back speech for fear of disturbing something - what? From my earliest childhood I've felt that something was going on in the groves, something of which I was not a part."
"And only these few are left - a stunning memory of what the world was like once long ago. Can it be that we do not love to be reminded that we are very young and callow in a world that was old when we came into it? And could there be a strong resistance to the certainty that a living world will continue its stately way when we no longer inhabit it?"
Driving home from the office yesterday, I had to pull over to capture this small gathering of Roosevelt elk on a thin peninsula of grass in the middle of Big Lagoon. Just a bit further north a larger herd massed behind a falling-down barn across from the small state park visitor center setting a similarly picturesque scene. This morning, through the fog and rain, the full Big Lagoon herd grazed the narrow strips of cut grass along the old Redwood Highway at Stone Lagoon.
Some may wonder at the sense of a 35 mile, one-way commute every day, but for my money the half hour drive past Clam Beach, Trinidad, the lagoons and the redwoods has to be among the finest drives to work in the country.
I'm thinkin' I could get used to all this hope and optimism. Feels good after the last eight years, doesn't it? I couldn't help singin' along with Pete Seeger on this one....
Monday morning postscript: Do kids learn these American standards in school anymore? A while back, When Johnny Comes Marching Home Again (Hurrah! Hurrah!) came up on my Ipod. (Thank you Ken Burns.) My kids, 10 & 15, hadn't ever heard the song before and frantically rolled up the windows while I marched out the tune as we drove past the Arcata Plaza.
Do the public schools still teach the music of our collective heritage? Do kids today open dog-eared music textbooks after morning recess to learn America the Beautiful, God Bless America (favoring Kate Smith's Broad Street Bullies rendition over the Bronx Bomber's 9/11 Irish cop tenor), This Land is Your Land, The Star Spangled Banner, America America ("Oh beautiful for spacious skies"), and We Shall Overcome? Have these standards fallen victim to music program budget cuts and political correctness? Did I just answer my own question?
Sure, some of these songs glorify war, or a particular god, or contain subtle racism in the second or third verses, yet they are essential elements of the American soundtrack, no? And, I believe, there is tremendous value in learning our collective history behind the music, including its sordid or shameful elements.
It's lonely (not to mention hard on the ears) being the only one singing along with our national heritage as we drive along those ribbons of highways. Lord knows I need the accompaniment. Do I sound curmudgeonly enough yet?
The ocean is an almost unnatural hue of royal blue resting under an equally brilliant and cloudless sky. Gently curling, bright white breakers roll and trill on a bed of cascading pebbles.
Reading Rock, nearly five miles offshore, is squashed to half its usual size and has been dragged at least a mile closer to shore - or at least it appears so in the optical tricks played on this shimmering mid-winter day.
The temperature at the office reached 73 degrees shortly after 12 o'clock, only to plummet 11 degrees before the bells chimed half-noon.
Few travelers pause here on their Redwood Highway journey today, and most that do are in splendid moods - a tangible benefit of sunny and warm winter days. That the visitors are few allow me dive deeper into Thoreau's Walden, fast becoming my unreachable ideal for the mental meanders some read here.
White gulls dot the sapphire ocean a few yards offshore. Little Girl Rock stands stately and calm, the proverbial ship in a calm harbor.
There's little time to enjoy the beach on this most glorious of days. Try as I might, my presence is requested at an interagency meeting about soil. I can think of no better way to spend the finest day in months than sitting in a windowless conference room discussing the bureaucracy of dirt. (My apologies to those earnest soil scientists out there among my readership.) I aggressively tried to avoid this entanglement, but I was discovered before I could wander too far off.
I've been scanning the ocean for whales all morning. Though today's becalmed sea is ideal for spotting southbound spouts, none desired discovery today. If only I could've been as fortunate.
Why does it seem that the most striking flowers of spring shouldn't be here at all? The everlasting pea (Lathyrus latifolius), is non-native. Exotic. Invasive. Unwanted save for those who enjoy a flash of bright color in the sea of grass of the backdunes. 
From it's homeland in southern Europe, the everlasting pea has spread across North America and to every state except North Dakota and Florida, thus proving its good taste in travel destinations. Thomas Jefferson noted it on his Monticello homestead in the 1770s and planted it in his gardens (more likely his slaves planted it in his gardens) in 1807 while Jefferson was off bein' president.
It's not supposed to be here, and someday we may do something to eliminate it from this protected landscape. But on a quiet June morning, with the gate locked behind me and the beach to myself, I'm glad it's here.
