AIRHCA

The main project that I developed while at the Headlands dealt with colliding forces in human nature.  This focused on the macro by incorporating opposing philosophies between western and indigenous cultures: dominance over people and lands versus co-existence and equality.  What began as a troubling, narrow didactic pebble rolling about in my mind turned into new ideas and solutions, new knowledge and unexpected possibilities.

1) Just visiting?
Perhaps not so incidentally, my time on the Marin Headlands brought home the micro: time and again I experienced various colliding forces within, as one state of being often contradicted another.  About midpoint during my tenure, I began to feel that I was no longer a visitor.  Rather, the people I saw everyday were indeed the people that I really did know, this was the place that I lived, it felt right and comfortable.  Imperceptibly I had arrived at this state of being.  At the crux of realizing that somehow I had crossed over the invisible ‘residency-bridge’, I was struck with sudden, acute homesickness, brought on by a sinking fear that what I had known, what had previously been so much of ME had begun to slip away.

2) Urbanornot
For many artists, once they come to the Headlands, they feel a certain reluctance towards the necessity of having to go into town- any town- for supplies or food or to get culture, or even to visit friends.  Though I live in what is now a trendy section of downtown Cleveland, living out there amplified my normal resistance to crowds, let alone, to shopping.  So, one Friday evening at the beginning of August I went into San Francisco to meet with some friends at the de Young Museum in Golden Gate Park.   As usual I dreaded the prospect of urban congestion.  The crush of evening traffic, the miles of concrete and asphalt and the crowds threatened to first chew me up and subsequently spit me out.   Insult was added to injury when I missed the street that I needed to turn on, due to lack of signage.  Thus a huge, annoying loop was inserted into my route.  Finally, frustrated and rushed, I reached the intersection of the city and the park.   The pillars signaled a significant change in pace and purpose.  A winding road, lush with tall trees, cooling shade and cultivated plant-life generously spread a sense of relief.   As I exited the garage, grateful to be out of the car, but still somewhat frazzled, I burst into a totally planned marriage of architecture, garden, music and art, of classical form juxtaposed with the thrust of the new.  It was organized, thoughtfully structured. cared for and… surprisingly invigorating. It was as if I had miraculously passed a mysterious and grueling initiation rite.  Suddenly, I gladly entered the throng of people who had come to experience the evening of salsa music, special exhibits, and views of the city from the de Young tower.  I had re-entered civilization.  Later in the evening, even the layout of the city streets made sense to me.  The evening brought discovery, associative leaps and connections.  The rich experience so stimulated my mind that I thought I might not sleep that night.  As the night turned towards the next day, I replayed the sequence of events:  re-experiencing first walking out into the plaza between the conservatory and the museum, all the historical references to culture and architecture, the pleasing ‘shock of the new’, the sounds, the art, food, people and further bonding with friends.  This mental exercise revealed a dramatic contrast to the richness of the Headlands landscape, so stark, its relative emptiness, and the inevitable connection to nature that occurs.   They are opposite worlds, but both play key roles inside my little dot in the universe.

3) A sappy-sack
A week or so before leaving the Headlands, I experienced repeated bouts of conflicting states.  On one walk up the hill to other studio buildings, the afternoon sun dispelled the gray.   The bark of a dog struck me with a painful longing to hug my own dog, 2,480 miles away, and my eyes instantly filled with tears.  Immediately, upon looking to the hills and ridges I had stared at and hiked through and around for three months, wrenched out of me such a sorrowful moan because soon they would be erased from my sight.  Thus it went.  I was the ball in an emotional ping-pong match.  Around the friends that I had made, I would have to often walk away and do something else to calm myself.  Organizing the items to be mailed, packing boxes, cleaning, all of this fueled my torment.  The agony of leaving persisted until the last of my clothes were packed and the very last afternoon shifted to evening that the excitement of returning home grew constant and strong.  

During the slow painful process of goodbye, I often questioned how anything in the world could replace my view out my bedroom window each morning as I did my exercises: the old cedars, the ridge, the frequent fog… and yet… upon returning to my permanent home I was surprised by the objects of my unexpectedly happy gaze: the warmth of the bathroom floor made from recycled roller rink wood, the second-hand deep cadmium yellow kitchen sink, several friends’ artworks too long hidden, now hanging in unfinished the hallway.

Most of my summer reading was split between fiction and physics: stories and facts from Jorge Borges’ Collected Fictions and Michio Kaku’s Parallel Worlds cling to my recent memories.  Since I cannot help but sense that a trace of myself is left on the Headlands, I consequently picture, in a parallel world, a ‘me’ exists who still feels the coarse sand under her feet, who hears the waves break along the shore and who walks the same favored paths, who stares out the window at the large old cedar and lifts the weight/meditation rocks retrieved from the beach.  I sometimes experience a stab of envy, until I remember that was/is after all, still me (the same self) who is now Here in the Middle of the continent, in the center of a city that crowds the shores of a large body of water carved out from the last receding ice age.

What is the point to these musings? Any particular insight, revelation, conclusion regarding coexisting opposing states?  Should I contemplate and then wax on about the deep truths hidden in the concept of the yin and the yang.  Probably not.  Life doesn’t need to add up.  It just keeps filling up.

1) To climb the impossible climb

            The Tennessee Beach trail was longer and more circuitous than I had anticipated.  I felt rushed, particularly since I was closing in on my departure date, not to mention that I sensed that the afternoon might threaten to slip into evening.  Reaching the summit and then turning to follow the trail to the beach, the valley below held a spectacular piece of California ‘bling’.  A single barn possessed a dazzling galvanized roof that reflected the sun with mirror-like intensity.  The trail, full of loose rocks, was often narrow and steep. The long descent kept aiming in the wrong direction, throwing more weight against my already dampened sense of adventure.  Nevertheless, I observed flowers still blooming here that I had not seen on the other side since early June. This valley seemed more green and lush than the other side where I had been living.  Along the way there were numerous other hikers I either passed or over-heard, unseen beyond clusters of small trees.  At the bottom, the beach remained hidden for another ten or fifteen-minute walk.  Once there, the view opened up, full of children and teens wildly climbing up and down the cliff face and teasing the edge of the tide. The surf pounded dramatically.  The afternoon sun shone through a hole that had formed in the cliff on the northern side of this small beach wedged between two steep ridges.

On an earlier hike I had tried to find a shortcut to Tennessee Beach, but came to a dead-end.  However, two other artists-in-residence confirmed my hunch afterward when I ran into them jogging back to get to dinner on time.  The first attempt to find this path brought me to a dizzying precipice overlooking the sea.  Retracing my steps, the path, a thin line drawn through the grass and shrub, seemed even more precarious.  Almost back to where I had first started up from the beach, I scanned the ridge and decided that the path must be that barely perceptible difference in the ground.  It led practically straight up the side.  During the sheer climb up it was often necessary to scramble, all hands on deck, just so I wouldn’t slip downwards.  Almost losing the path on a regular basis, I had to keep reassessing the situation.  I quickly came to the conclusion that this path had undoubtedly been forged by the deer and coyote and then worn slightly more by humans of questionable intellect.  I included myself in that group.  None of the photos I took reveal the sharp incline of this route.  For a week or two afterwards, without warning, the feeling of extreme vertigo would overcome me, exponentially stronger than anything I had survived during the hike itself.  I would suddenly suck in my breath, reliving particular spots in the dizzying climb and anticipate that impending nightmarish fall from immeasurable heights.  I had to physically shake myself out of this psychological state.  Then I would wonder: What was I thinking?!!?   At the same time, I perceived that I had unwittingly quenched a deep desire that manifested as soon as I arrived at the Headlands.  I had looked at the hills across the valley from my studio all summer, longing to trudge right up through the middle, to blaze a new path where no one had gone before.   However, the abundance of poison oak and a certain respect for the natural order of the landscape, not to mention the National Park status, tempered my misguided pioneer urges.  Now, looking back on that Tennessee climb, it did not matter that others had been there before me, for there I had been clinging, alone to that peak; alone reaching that abandoned military lookout-post whose concrete pad long ago had achieved the look of a site for ancient diurnal rituals; there I had been, at the edge of the cliff, a lone figure, silhouetted against the sky, who climbed higher and higher on a ridge of the most western edge of the continent.  As those visions flitter across my mind, an inward tickle floats up and fills me until it seeps out through the upturned corners of my mouth.

 2) Four eyes meet

            After my final dinner with the rest of the artists, writers and musicians I had come to know, admire and love, I stepped out of the main building to return to my studio for one final farewell.  Across the drive stood a deer.   Deer regularly graced the grounds around the Headlands, though they never loitered if you came too near.  I slowed my pace.  This time the deer didn’t bolt.  I slowed down some more and then stopped. We stared at each other, transfixed, just a dirt and gravel driveway apart.  The extended moment seemed to reveal volumes of truths, of secrets, of sharing different worlds.  Gratefully and barely breathing, I lifted my camera to my face, framed the portrait and took the picture.

 3) A walk among clouds

            For several days I mulled over what should be my last hike.  Should I hike a route I had never been on before- there were so many left to explore; or- should I return to the trails that I had chosen for my first official climb?  An intermittent debate brewed in the back of my mind.  I finally decided on the latter, perhaps somewhat by default.  Although I had intended all along to hike that loop again, I had yet to do it.  So, I set out fairly early Tuesday morning, my last full day at the Headlands.  It was windless and quiet.  The night fog continued to hug the hills.  The trees shed the condensed moisture they had collected in big erratic drops.  Occasionally I passed through mist so fine I wasn’t sure whether or not I had imagined it.  As I climbed further and further up the Miwok trail, the fog grew thicker and the visual range grew shorter and shorter.  I met no other hiker. Only the tiny blue gnatcatchers seemed to be aware of me, as they flittered in and out of the bushes, criss-crossing the path ahead.  I often looked in the direction of the valley, towards the Bobcat trail, the road, and the opposite ridge.  However, these views were no longer there, hidden now, by soft, gray rolling clouds.  While ascending that trail it was as if someone had opened a portal to a secret place, presenting yet another expansion at the end of a time during which so many other doors had opened or had re-opened.  The trail wound around turning toward the north, west, then southwest and north again leading slowly to the Wolf Ridge Trail that wiggled west along the northern side of the ridge.  Always the fog followed closely around me, a faithful and silent friend.  Finally reaching the spot where the Miwok and Wolf trails intersected, even the places I had just passed were hidden from my view.  Though I remembered the trailhead from my previous hike, I sensed that I was entering uncharted territory. The hanging moss, the dew-laden spider web that spanned the path, the salamander passing by my feet, all loomed up before me as striking, isolated images and events. The trail became a thin path winding up and down and finally leading to the highest point, Hill 88, a former military base.  Hushed and abandoned, even the familiar vistas of Fort Barry, the Headlands institute, the lagoon, Rodeo beach, the Pacific Ocean had become only pieces in an imagined landscape, merely traces like the vestiges of the purposeful watch that once took place on this site.  The trail down that led to the shore was the old asphalt road from the base.  It continually disappeared under native growth and had currently transformed into a bridge over nowhere.  This bridge of clouds put me in touch again with the magic of an animated Japanese tale I had seen when I was very young on the way to a new home half-way around the world, a tale that still haunts and inspires me.   I never even thought to take a photo.  I just called home.  At this height, the signal was unimpeded.  The moment was too big to keep to myself.  I described my climb and my descent until the signal lost its strength.

            By the time I reached the coarse sands of Rodeo Beach, my sustained state of elation had congealed as if it were a thing I would always possess.  Reaching the shore, I took off my socks and shoes and indulged in digging through the pebbly, sandy mix to try to find a trace of carnelia, a rare stone that could be found in this geographic area.  I had recently read more about this rock type at the park’s information center.  I had limited time- I did still need to finish packing and cleaning.  I searched and sifted, searched and sifted and… then… Aha! A tiny smooth translucent red pebble lay in the palm of my hand.  Triumphantly I made haste to the other end of the beach to head home via the Lagoon trail, up over the sandy ridge that overlooked the Lagoon itself, then down the dirt path, densely canopied with willows, eucalyptus and cedars.  The tight, dark cell within which my departure had held me, effervesced into the midday air. 

Through June I always felt somewhat conflicted about the path that had been carved through the field leading from the house to the studios, because it tramped down and eventually killed the grasses, leaving only dirt.  By mid- July, I reconciled myself to following it, deciding it was better to have a thin path of dirt rather than a wide one. At night, however, trudging down the short hill to the field and then to the house, I have taken pleasure in finding it.  It’s a good challenge and exercise to train my eyes for night vision, and heightens my other senses as well.  In the dark, the pale shade of the yellowed line of grass can just barely be discerned.  At times I have been able to only feel the path under my shoes, a very subtle difference between flattened as opposed to tufted areas.  In this way, I have become more familiar with the small bumps and hollows because at night they carry more significance.   The patterns of light, darks and shadows caused by the clouds, the fog, the phases of the moon and which porch lights happen to be on or off interface, intersect, reveal or obliterate that connecting thread from studio back home.  The artificial light of electric bulbs create a stark contrast between elongated lit  and unlit rectangles.  The bright lights turn the bushes along the short hill into odd black lumps that hide animals large and small who scurry away at the sound of footsteps.  On the other hand, the ambient light reflecting off the fog casts the whole field in a very soft even dimness that makes visible subtle shifts in color, texture and shape.  Waxing moonlight spreads an elusive magical glow onto everything.  Even an obscured moon exposes the path as if it had been etched into a scratchboard.
I understand the comfort that some people obtain from a flashlight. At the same time this mystifies me. The flashlight reduces the world to two elements: a relatively small circle of light and a pitch-blackness that seems to take on a solid form.   Without it, the world offers a rich low-key palette and an intangible, yet powerful connection to the land.

The edges of this continent are defined both by destination (destiny), and genesis, (renewal). In the 19th century the Western edge was settled by droves of immigrants and transplants full of hopes and desires. Farms and ranches spread throughout the Marin peninsula where the native people had previously co- existed with nature stretching back through many centuries. Immigrants and transplants still find their way here, where tectonic plates dramatically rub against each other. I am writing within a structure that was built in the last century for the sole purpose of surveillance to protect this land that we call ours. I live in a well-built, though perhaps worn, house where the upper echelons of military personnel once lived. The cluster of buildings on this spot certainly aren’t the only ones integrated into this tip of the Headlands. There are many people living and working here with many more visiting daily.

And yet, this land is wild. The hawks and the falcons glide over the ridges searching for their next meal. Pelicans plunge from the air, straight down into the lagoon to catch fish. The hiking trails are filled with the signs of other inhabitants: coyote, bobcat, mountain lion. The strong odor of the kill blankets particular locations and can linger for weeks. Occasionally joggers and hikers are confronted with the impressive form of a very large member of the feline family. Coyote stop to stare from a distance. Around the houses the wild turkey meander, almost like well-trained pets. Families of deer, munching on the fennel that grows on the hill below the house, pause to look as I pass and then go about their business. The fawns are extra curious. They judge us by our smell and have accepted that we are somehow part of the environment, not always dangerous, but to be considered with caution. Sometimes the deer, coyote, or rabbit and I lock eyes momentarily, seeming to attempt to penetrate the mysteries of alien worlds that intersect. I gaze upon the hills and ridges and call them mine, but only in the sense that I am comfortable here, because it feels like home. Nature has allowed us in- up to a point. Poison Oak thrives on the hillsides, in the brush, everywhere. Its encroaches on the paths that have been etched by humans. The fog hugs the hills and keeps the land’s secrets. The seals’ barking chorus and the falcons’ “kii-ak kii- ak” fill the air. The coyotes howl before daybreak and trot down the middle of the road as they see fit. Short or long-term, here it is obvious that humans are the ‘Other’.

As a foreigner in this land I cannot help but don the cap of the unsystematic anthropologist. I study the Californian species, searching for what makes them so different, or, perhaps it is that I am searching for what makes them more like the Ohioan species with which that i am very familiar. The cashiers at the grocery store have glued on nails that are so long they must use their hands differently or never retrieve the change out of the drawer. The elderly woman waiting in line at the post office has beautifully dyed hair and full, but tastefully applied make-up. Her clothes are crisp, well matched and in good taste. They fit well. The woman ahead of her is close in age, but the perfect antithesis: undyed, wild hair, overweight, wearing a house dress with obviously little holding her in underneath. All these examples I can find at home. Then there are the wind-brushed and outdoor-sunned faces. To find examples of this in my home- country, I must go to particular locations- such as yacht clubs at the appropriate times of the year. Here they seem to be generously sprinkled randomly everywhere.  My curiosity is piqued. I wish to categorize: How many are the outdoorsy type versus the ones who merely happen to be outside a lot, which one could easily do, given the climate.

Yet another type is the bicyclist. This category appears on the Headlands in droves on the weekend, but they are visible daily. I watch in unabashed admiration while they churn up the long hills and wistfully follow with my eyes as they fly down them. Their massive thighs and buttocks at once fascinate me and make me grateful that I possess no such thing.

There are other features. Whatever municipality I happen to be in, racially- mixed couples and families are common. This is as it should be here in America.  It makes me feel that somehow even I might be able to belong here.

Another topic of scrutiny is the cost of living: Is the wage adjusted so that it accommodates for the astronomical prices of food, rent, etc, or is everyone living on credit- similar to what has happened in London?  I am perplexed by the fact that people are so willing to pay exorbitant prices for property that may in fact be a plot in the middle of a landfill in a location in which the ground can assume a liquid state.   Tourist guidebooks show examples of San Francisco buildings that now have the entrance cut into what used to be the second story, since the first story sank as a consequence of the last earthquake. My Ohian mind fails to grasp the logic.  I wish to peer into the lives of each subject.  Is the lure of the ocean and the climate so strong that the fault line bears no meaning?  Or perhaps it is the particularly fresh flavorful fruits and vegetables.  Or, did they just find themselves here through family, school, and jobs?  This is a highly inconclusive study.  But, what knowledge can I bring back?  What will I tell my people when I return?

I had it all planned, I had my notes. I enjoyed the logic and the order that I was creating, one blog post to the next. But, as I sit here in my studio with the black night hiding the landscapes out the windows, my mind is full of so many faceted things. Added to this mindful stew, is that color can be interpreted in very broad terms. For example, I took a trip to Point Reyes yesterday to visit Kehoe Beach and Abbott’s Lagoon (one of the last surviving sand dune ecosystems on California). The route was winding and long, bringing very different landscapes, turn by turn. The plant and tree combination changed, the rocks changed, the sand changed. I am still absorbing it all. This day trip has cast my own mental drifts in a sort of magical mist. I want to write about this experience, but I must muck about in it longer. And that definitely conjures up a muddy tone. Yesterday, too, early in the morning one of my housemates left for her true home . She is the person that I have known longest here, in this expansive natural setting full of compressed introductions, acquaintings and farewells. The house feels different; the doors to her room and her studio are always open now. I do not want to feel sad, but I think I am a little. That has also colored the quality of the day, gray, like the weather. Lastly, because I have given myself the topic of color- this colors how I am thinking and my search for just the right words.

Last week (6/14) there were several overcast, foggy days in a row. Early on one of those evenings I walked down to Rodeo Beach. The ocean was a soft sea green. At the horizon where the sky meets the water, the clouds were a pale shade of that same sea green, fading slowly into a more natural mottled- blue- gray.

During another walk on the Lagoon trail to the beach, there were suddenly bright lemon- yellow and black birds bobbing on the air, playfully criss-crossing the path ahead of me. The intensity of their feathers was such that I keep wanting to say: ”neon yellow”, but that seems absurd. Yet, imagine following spots of color floating in the air that seem to be lit from within. I have seen these small American Finches elsewhere and their color does not compare. I have other bird stories but I will save them for another time.

This environment holds other color surprises: The seaweed. Besides many types and sizes, the prism of colors is quite broad. Here is a short list: Purple, red, lavender, olive brown, deep red-brown, green, deep green, dark sea-green with a touch of blue, and ghostly white. Even more unexpected is the richness and variety of the browns in the turkey feathers that are easy to find in the space between the houses. (By the way, the two hens are back and the male has been much quieter).

This is a dry country. Since I arrived, I have watched the grasses in the field below the houses shift from green to pale green to straw yellow to dusty brown. The grass now crunches beneath my feet. The hills and ridges are covered with the same blanket. This warm spread of brown and yellow make the brush in the valleys, dips and depressions all the greener. The cypress and the cedars are so green they appear almost black.

It is here that the rocks themselves are lush. Yes, yes, there are beautiful wild flowers. I have taken many pictures of them. But the rocks, the cliffs! They are black, dark green, yellow ochre, brick-red. They are brick red with ochre streaks. They are soft green-gray marbled with thick, bumpy white veins. These colors appear in endless patterns and formations. I could tell you that this is because they are they are of the Franciscan complex, the serpentine and radiolarian chert variety, but this isn’t a geology lesson. Consider instead Bird Island, an extremely large chunk of rock not far from the shore. It is so named because apparently all birds like to roost there. They spend so much time on that island that each bird has contributed to a thick icing of droppings, marvelously altering the rock’s natural color.

On clear days I stare at the sky, trying to memorize the exact color so that I can compare it to the sky above my real home, because it IS different. I know that it more intense- saturated if you will. Yet, proper description eludes me.

I am afraid this topic was too large. But one last note. Some of the ground cover bears Lilliputian flowers, maybe a quarter-inch diameter, five to seven petals a piece. They are tangerine or a hot magenta-pink. Tiny and secret, they demand one’s attention. There are certain advantages to a downward gaze.

At Black Sands Beach, the sand is not black. As a matter of fact, it is more of a mix of gray, green and red. You might be thinking at this juncture, why so much about color when the topic is light. The only time that the sand is indeed black is when the waves have hit the shore, slide again into the sea and the unobstructed Californian sun shines fully on the wet luscious sand.

On the Marin coast, the sand has many grades. Several sizes are clustered in groups in repeating patterns, large, medium, small, coarser sand and so on. Consequently after the individual waves break along the shore and then are sucked back into a unified body of water, the sand-pebble-water mixture dances and sparkles, filled with thousands of brilliant sunlight diamonds.

One cloudy day, the evening became a quiet, all encompassing blue- gray, but at the western edge of the cliffs, a spot on the horizon held a soft, charismatic glow.

Friday it was beastly hot, hot like a humid Cleveland summer day. It was not a good day to run errands with an old car, but the die had been cast. Two other artists had planned to go with me. We were all hot. My head got baked. Late in the day, they reminded me that it was better than the cold. So many days bring cloudless skies and a brilliant, bare-chested sun, stripped of any pollution. Usually the wind saves us.

Here one can catch the phases of the moon without even trying. This past week, as it grew fully round, the moon rose late, peeking out just above the trees on the ridge behind the Headland houses between 10:30 and 11:30 PM. There is an open field below the houses, rather like a giant flattened bowl with steep sides. It is pleasant and convenient to get ‘home’ by cutting across the field. The moon lit the western corner. The trees gave the light an uneven rectangular shape. Unnaturally intense, it made a large, empty stage, poised for some grand entrance.

There are days when the air is just the air. Other days, upon leaving the house and its charming, worn porch, clattering down the long flight of weathered stairs to get to the studio, one’s olfactory nerves are overwhelmed with the intoxicating combination of fennel, cedar and eucalyptus. The air takes on the guise of a seductive messenger who insists: “Slow down, breathe deep, stay a while.”

The first week that I was here I had included a daily walk to or by the beach. On the sixth day the air was rich with seaweed and salt. Wholesome and pungent, it worked like a healing salve upon the mind and the body. Samples of mollusks, starfish, jellyfish and many seaweed specimens were strewn on the beach, multicolored and often huge.

A conundrum:
This past Monday I took a good hike- the kind that gives you a good cardio-vascular workout whilst toning up those glutes. Having been afflicted with ‘absent-minded professor syndrome’ most of my life, I tend to look down, deep in thought (who knows about what), as I walk. Sometime in the 10th year of my life, I came to the clear understanding that this habit could pose a serious problem when my head soundly met a signpost one day as I trailed behind the rest of my family on the fair sidewalks of Oslo, Norway. As an adult, it sometimes causes great discomfort between my shoulder blades. Therefore, part of the purpose of the hike was to practice looking ahead, not down. I set off at a good pace, first climbing up, then down. The hike was going well, it was a beautiful warm, breezy day. As I started my second ascent, I was having better success at looking ahead at the trail, the sky, the plants. It is around this time that I stepped on something soft, that squished a bit underfoot. I paid it no mind until I bent down to take a photo of a flower. On the less beaten paths, there are numerous samples of scat scattered about (hence the term, I assume), much of it from mountain lions. These are easy to spot due to the tail-tale signs of coyote hair. It was not only soft and in every crevice of my boot’s sole, it also had a distinctly fermenting flesh-like odor. I rubbed my boot in the grasses to no avail. This odor taunted me all the way to “Black Sands” Beach, the destination of my hike. Down at the beach I removed my shoes and repeatedly rubbed the one in the sand and then let the waves wash it. Still it clung to my sole, as if I had put my foot in my mouth at a party of strangers. At home, all vestiges of any physical material gone, yet reeking as strong as ever, I repeatedly scrubbed the sole with dish soap, then rubbed it with lemon juice, then set it out to dry. I checked it after a day or so, but the odor seemed to have chemically bonded with the rubber. (Was this an hallucination of pride or guilt?) I set to scrubbing it with comet and let it dry some more. At this point the smell has faded, but I still do not want to put that boot in my closet. This episode has further deepened my respect for the persistence of Nature. Unfortunately the consequences of my actions in all this has also hopelessly confused me: To look down, or not to look down- that is the question.

I spent Thursday evening in sunny San Francisco, but by the time I left, heavy fog enveloped the Golden Gate Bridge, creating a cluster of fuzzy moving lights amongst clouds. The fog settled in, spooning the bay like two lovers fast asleep. Fog horns called to each other all night long, a syncopated composition of a long and low note coupled with a higher tone of shorter duration and an occasional punctuated short, high blast. More distant horns completed the melody.

The Bonita lighthouse is not far from here, so the sound of its bell is a nightly, rhythmic constant. As night falls, the spring peepers form an extraordinarily full chorus. At times, the surf breaking on the coarse sands of Rodeo Beach unexpectedly reaches our ears.

There are several turkeys that live around the houses here at the Headlands. The male starts up in the wee hours of the morning, calling to the others, or…. just calling, effectively operating like an annoying alarm clock, according to some artists-in-residence. He struts around slowly, occasionally displaying his fine, attractive tail. One morning, he called and called and called without pause for a long time. At some point I heard an answer, somewhere in the surrounding trees and brush. At that, he seemed satisfied and went about his business, pecking at seeds in the mostly dried grass. After that, I thought that when he kept calling on succeeding days, that he had lost his family. Then one day it occurred to me that his wild, guttural speech sounded very much like “Hey, what are you all still doing in bed?! Get up, get up! Get to work, get to work! “