The stars will be watching us, and we will show them what it is to be a thin crescent moon. Rumi c. 1242 CE.

Michele and I went up to Russian Ridge behind our house to go for a short walk before dinner. (That sounds like Russian Ridge is right behind our house, but it is a three and a half mile drive up Old La Honda Road and then about ten miles south on Skyline to the turnout.) I had hoped the fog would be filling the valleys below Russian Ridge and I would get a couple of good shots of the fog filling the valleys below; the fog was coming in, but not very much and the fog filled valleys were all way down by the ocean.

But, with no fog to push it, the air on the ridge was still and warm and soft. The evening was lovely. We walked a couple of miles – enough to break a sweat – looping around the ridge just in time to see the sun drop below the edge of the fog bank and then cutting through a section of the Oak forest that – in the glooming light – was as dark as Mirkwood.

Back out of Mirkwood, we stopped on the trail in the warm, soft, air to watch the sky strut its stuff under the moon hanging in a cloudless sky.