First of May

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.

Cathedral Hush

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?"

The Secret of the River

But he learned more from the river than Vasudeva could teach him. He learned from it continually. Above all, he learned from it how to listen, to listen with a still heart, with a waiting, open soul, without passion, without desire, without judgment, without opinions. ...

He once asked him, "Have you also learned that secret from the river; that there is no such thing as time?"

A bright smile spread over Vasudeva's face.

"Yes, Siddhartha," he said. "Is that what you mean? That the river is everywhere at the same time, at the source and at the mouth, at the waterfall, at the ferry, at the current, in the ocean and in the mountains, everywhere, and that the present only exists for it, not the shadow of the past, nor the shadow of the future?" ...

And once again when the river swelled during the rainy season and roared loudly, Siddhartha said: "Is it not true, my friend, that the river has very many voices? Has it not the voice of a king, of a warrior, of a bull, of a night bird, of a pregnant woman, and a sighing man, and a thousand other voices?"

"It is so," nodded Vasudeva, "the voices of all living creatures are in its voice."

from Siddhartha, by Herman Hesse

A few minutes with a solitary seagull

A lone seagull floats easily over the calm water, rising and falling on the unseasonably small waves between storms. His bright white head, free of dirty gray streaks, highlights his maturity among his kind. He’s alone, yet unbothered by his solitude. Peacefully, he coasts slowly northward atop a royal blue sea on a cold winter afternoon.

A quarter mile away, a churning flock of his brethren flip and flap above the creek. It is chaos: blurred wings, screeching heard the length of the beach, birds on the water, birds in the air, birds in constant, frenetic motion. They’re busy, every one of them. But busy with what, I can’t tell.

The sun is gold on the horizon. The breeze streaming down from the eastern hills is cold. Tomorrow’s storm appears in the distance, a dark wall of gray rising north of the setting sun. The seagull is unconcerned.

He pauses briefly when I stop to pull out my notebook. Does he wait for me? Probably not, but I imagine a kindred spirit, another soul seeking quiet and calm amid the season’s frenzy. For him, this solitary swim is a moment between storms and raging surf, away from the daily squabble for food and shelter necessary to survive the harsh winter. For me, the solitude of the beach pulls me away from the activity and noise and chaos and crowds and stress that have come to mark our American Christmas.

“Alone among others.” It’s a phrase I stumbled across in a book a couple years ago, and one that could be the pithy caption under my grainy black and white photo in life’s yearbook. In career, home and community, I am surrounded by others. Yet, increasingly, mostly by choice, and especially in this season, I enjoy my own company more than the camaraderie of the crowd. The world swirls around me, and the faster it swirls, the more I seek solitude.

In the couple of minutes I’ve paused to scribble these notes and chill my fingertips, the seagull has vanished. There’s no sign of him on the water or in the sky. The seagull flock flutters in the distance, their wings flashing white in the reflection of the setting sun. Perhaps he’s joined them. Maybe two proved too much a crowd for him.

As much as I want to imagine the gull as a spirit or heavenly metaphor intended for my personal reflection, I realize it’s mere coincidence. The cosmos don’t work that way. Still, it’s heartening to know that the search for quiet and solitude is not mine alone. It’s part of the way things work. For each of us, there comes a time to be together and a time to be alone.

Change

The first real winter storm has carved a steep edge on to the beach south of Redwood Creek. Weekend waves sliced a ten-foot tall slope from the crest of the sand berm to the roiling white and brown ocean surf. A stiff breeze blows in from the hills to the east, bending the tops of the breakers backward. Thin streams of surf blown off the top of each wave fly back into the ocean like the wispy strands of Joe Biden's combover.

The sky is a dark gray on this early morning, broken only by wind-cleared strips of lighter gray. Over the hills, an optimistic brightness shines through the clouds, breaking through briefly, before giving way to a high monotone gray ceiling.

The breaking waves are tall and rolling steadily to shore. I try recalling the names of colors from the Crayola box - the big one with 128 colors. The ocean beyond the surf opens at a Midnight Blue before easing into a dark Jade Green as the morning progresses.

A few solitary gulls brave the breeze above the choppy surf. One seal tracks my walk down the beach, disappearing beneath the waves whene'er my eye catches his.

Redwood Creek and the Pacific are closer together than I've seen them since the sand spit closed in the early summer. Just a few yards separate the rain-swollen waters of the creek from the ocean. In fact, as I stand here, the easterly wind pushes the creek a few inches closer to the top of the sand berm. Though I've watched the mouth of this creek for several years, I've yet to witness the actual break-through of fresh water to the sea. Today looks and feels like a break-through kind of day.

The pressure of the creek on the sand bar feels ominous. All around the edges of the estuary, thick piles driftwood rafted down on the weekend's rain line the banks like anxious ticketholders at a general admission concert. All of this forest debris will be flushed into the ocean shortly, along with the salmon and steelhead fry that have incubated all summer in the warm fresh waters of the lagoon.

Last night's surf has scoured the sand clear up to the edges of the grassy dunes. Most of the game paths I usually take to connect the beach to the estuary boardwalk are flooded. The wooden walkway itself floats on the swollen waters.

The change of seasons is nigh. The creek is poised to open. Perhaps today on the next high tide. Maybe tomorrow after tonight's continuing downpour. You feel it on the breeze and in the spray of the surf. You see it in the wind-pressed waves blowing off the creek towards the Pacific. Summer's calm is ending, and the dynamic winter is set to begin on this small patch of the planet. Change we can believe in. Change that is inevitable.

Friday morning

I walk north along the beach this morning, the warming yellows of the rising sun on my right, the cool gray fog blowing softly off the ocean to my left. As the sun slowly slides above the tops of the nearby hills, the alchemy of early morning turns the low-lying silvery haze to gold.

Aggressive waves overtopped the spit last night, clearing the sand of yesterday's footprints and gullprints. Steep banks have been carved into the sloping sands by the surf. A solitary line of tracks left by an early rising fox bisects the beach.

At the edge of the estuary, two pairs of Caspian terns each stake out some private space. In each pair, a larger steely-gray backed bird stands alongside a slightly smaller, mottled brown partner. A mating pair perhaps; Caspian terns partner for life. Or maybe a mother and child, or a father and child; these largest of terns continue to provide food for their children for up several months after they're born.

In either case, my presence disturbs them all. The two closest to me squawk off to join the second pair a hundred yards or so further up the beach, safe from this Converse clad intruder. The foursome is then interrupted by an annoyed gull who chases off one of the larger birds. Moments later, the absent tern is joined in its escape by one of the smaller ones.

The estuary waters shimmer in the morning light. Across the estuary, small frogs leap silently skyward, inches above the water's surface, making a meal of low flying insects before splashing awkwardly back into the green pool. The entire estuary simmers with hundreds of tiny splashes.

Like the seals in winter though, the frogs seem to sense my presence and the splashing diminishes wherever I approach the shore. They hide well in the clear water, waiting until I've moved on or turned away before resuming their breakfast.

It feels like fall. The number of people stopping by has suddenly and dramatically diminished. Our summer staff slowly dwindles, one by one heading off to other endeavours. The hectic pace of summer melts into the reflective calm of autumn. And, once again there's time to think. Time to walk. Time to wonder. Again. Thankfully.

Gray

It's a long afternoon, sitting here tending to visitors who don't come. The sky outside, the sky I can't really get out under since I have to "mind the store", is a uniformly pale gray. Only the slightest deepening of the gray differentiates the sky from the near-waveless Pacific. And the ocean blends softly into an even darker gray sand horizon. The mood is only accentuated by reading graying 40-year old pamphlets advocating for a new national park, replete with 1960s black and white photographs...all while wearing a gray shirt and gray-green jeans. Is it any wonder my beard feels grayer on days like this?

So little time

Seems I have two wildly busy seasons anymore, with a whole lot of generic, though generally manageable, busy-ness the rest of the time. May is one of those periods: coaching two girls softball teams with games every night of the week, while coordinating the scheduling for the whole league, and at work I'm hiring and training our new summer rangers and shepherding in another busy summer season.

That other crazed season is right now. Though visitation is down at the park - October 15th usually marks the day that our numbers fall off the table - and winter's rain started in earnest late last week, our staffing is also down with the departure of the last summer ranger. Our winter ranger's hiring has been stalled due to bureaucratic foot shooting which, as of October the first, requires all new hires to clear a background check before they step behind the desk, a process that could take up to a month After all, we wouldn't want al quaeda operatives staffing our quiet visitor centers in the dead of winter. (Actually that wouldn't bother me as long as they don't call in sick on weekends and can properly count out the cash register at the end of the day.) For me, it's means more time hanging out at the VC than in my office (not always a bad thing) and trying to sensitively juggle the lonely desk time of the other permanent rangers here.

October is a two sport season for me as well. I'm in the last month of the soccer season with my under-10 traveling team, and just beginning practices for the middle school basketball team. Now, instead of sneaking out of work twice a week for soccer, I'm stealing away at 2:30 or 3:00 every day for one or the other team, whilst trying to keep up a respectable presence at work so I don't piss off the bosses or my coworkin' friends.

Speaking of soccer, our girls beat the league powerhouse yesterday 4-3. Yes, the team that went 0-9 last year with a goal differential around 7, the very same team that had gone 1-6-2 so far this season, knocked off a team that hasn't lost a game in two years. We found ourselves down 1-0 barely a minute into the game as our cross-bay rivals stormed our goal before our kids even realized they'd kicked off. It was 2-0 maybe 3 minutes later when our fullback tipped the ball into her own goal in an shotblocking attempt. And then suddenly it was 3-0 off a penalty kick forced by our other fullback raising a hand to block a shot in the goal box.

But the valiant Thunder eight charged back scoring on a penalty shot of their own just before the half. Beautiful passing and timely runs knotted the score at 3 a few minutes into the second half. Then, with 10 minutes remaining, a mid-field kick, intended as a pass but which became a shot, rolled painfully slowly under and past their falling keeper, its forward momentum sapped mere inches across the goal line for the game winner. The last 10 minutes were a flurry of runs and charges and shots as our opponents pulled out everything to avert their loss. Several great saves by our own keeper and a few direct kicks off the chests and faces of our own girls closed out the game...a most satisfying victory for these beautiful little 9 year old girls (not to mention their long-suffering coaches and parents). I should mention they were almost as thrilled by the homemade caramel apples post-game as they were by the win.

Ah, but back to the time crunch. On top of girls' sports and work, the baseball playoffs keep my ass firmly settled in the family room chair when I'm not on a field or in the VC. The Rockies have forgotten how to lose. And the Red Sox figured out a clever way to lose game 2 of their series. There are more games coming with at least another 3 games in AL, and perhaps only 1 in the NL. Then there's the World Series. And me and the Mrs still have to watch the last two episodes of the first season of 24!

I haven't been to the mouth of my creek in maybe three weeks. The rain, the trip to Arizona, work, meetings, annual stats, performance reviews, basketball, soccer, life, kids, dentists, have all conspired against me. Winter is here. We had two-and-a-half inches of rain last Wednesday so by Friday the mouth of the creek had burst open to the sea. More rain last night with a forecast of continuous wet through the end of this week. Perhaps this afternoon I can sneak out between showers to check things out. Perhaps, instead of writing this pointless screed I could've been walking out there by now.