Category Archives: Around home

The transit of Venus

Around home, Bay Area Walks, Current Affairs, Religion, Science

Michele and I went up Russian Ridge to watch the transit of Venus. I have read about the transit of Venus across the sun several times in the last couple of days, but Michele has been talking about it for a month. Since it was going to be at sunset, I suggested that we go up where we could see the sun sink into the ocean with Venus in transit. It turned out to be colder than we both thought it would be – in the mid 40’s when we got back to the car after standing outside for an hour – but the light was golden and then sun sank right on cue.

As it sank, Michele got the picture she wanted: Venus visible against the setting sun on the lower right hand side right where she knew it would be.

I got what I didn’t expect, the wonder of seeing Venus as a round object – not just a bright star – twenty three and a half million miles from us….crossing in front of the sun.

 

On the road to Las Vegas

Around home, Cactus & Succulents, California, Camping, Photography

Monday morning, we got up pretty much with the sunrise and got going. It was easier and quicker than we had planned – we didn’t bring a stove which wasn’t planned but did speed up the mornings – and we were on the road out of the Carrizo Plain by seven AM. The Carrizo Plain is a large graben in the middle of the coast range. The San Andreas fault runs through it – actually, I guess, it is caused by the fault – like a zipper.

We camped just off the road – on the left side of the fault, on the Pacific Plate – in the picture above but, on the ground, everything looks pretty flat and we wouldn’t know – without being told – that one end of the road is on the Pacific Plate and the other on the North American Plate. Behind us, in the picture below  is the Trembler Range – great name! – and over it, past a few wildflowers blooming, is the San Joaquin Valley where they are still pumping out oil after over a hundred years. But first, we had to backtrack past the community center of the pseudo town just north of the Carrizo Plain. The picnic tables offer a great view of a future, sun powered, electric plant.

The it was just a matter of beating our way east – past Bakersfield, Tehachapi, Mojave, and Barstow – until we got to the Mojave National Preserve. I am not sure what a National Preserve is compared to a National Park except that a Preserve allows hunting – hunting what, here, I am not sure – but the Mojave National Preserve does have a heavy duty set of railroad tracks going through the middle and a lot of in-holdings. Our first stop was the Preserve headquarters at Kelso to get a couple of suggestions on camping spots.

Then it was up to Granite Pass at about 4,000 feet to find a legal camping spot. In Death Valley National Park, we can camp almost anywhere as long as we are three miles off the paved road; at Mojave, we had to camp where there was a fire ring. At DV, we can’t have ground fires and, at Mojave, we can (in the ring, presumably). I prefer the DV system because it spreads the campers out  and there are no overused fire rings. But the area was nice and, at 4,000 feet, we were starting to run into Junipers.

We spent the late afternoon wandering around, looking at blooming plants – including several Echinocereus engelmannii and a cute little echeveria type plant (maybe a   Dudleya saxosa) – and admiring the round, exfoliating, granite, boulders as the setting sun turned them orange.

On the road to Vegas with two lenses

Around home, Art, Camping, Photography

 

Ed Dieden and I took three days to drive to Las Vegas last week, camping as we went. The basic plan was to drive south along the coast until we got to about the southieness of Vegas and then we would turn left and drive east. For me, one of the main attractions was a chance to spend some time making photographs. I was getting my camera back from Canon and we would be spending three days in the kind of country I love, big spaces.

I did get the camera back, but it still didn’t work. After a lot of screwing around, including going back to the camera store,  I began to realize that the camera did work with my wide angle and tele zooms but not with my primary lens. My favorite lens! The lens that I use all the time. Shit!

I am re-reading  The Zen of Creativity by John Daido Loori and – I think – it helped keep me centered on the problem. What I wanted to do was spending some time photographing and being outside and not having my primary lens – my crutch – didn’t change that. In some ways, it could enhance it. It could help me see from a different point of view.

As planned, we drove south on Highway 101 and then turned east on State Highway 58. As we went inland, the country which was already pretty dry, got drier, the spaces got bigger, and the light got softer.

It also got windier and our camp site hunt became a lets find a place with as little wind as possible hunt. Strangely, that was a place pretty much in the open.

The wind stopped, the air got cooler, we put a some sausages and veggies on the grill and I had a couple of glasses of red wine. It was a very nice place in which to sit and feel the day end. (Double click to enlarge and notice the lonely power poles going across the valley.)

I don’t particularly like camping, I camp because I do particularly like being out in spaces like this at eventide. Feeling – more than seeing – the day slowly, slowly, drift into night; seeing the first star come out in the dusk – this spring it has been Jupiter, the king of the gods and the god of sky and thunder according to Wikipedia – feeling the darkness and stillness sop up the light. It is the witnessing of an ancient ritual in a huge cathedral. For me, it is being with The Sacred.

 

Spring is springing

Around home, Uncategorized

After rain, cold rain, warm rain,late rain, and then a hot week, our garden is alive. When I go for a walk in the woods – that seems a little pretentious and wildness seems way too pretentious, but both are more or less true – behind our lot, everything is growing but not much is blooming. But, in the garden, everything seems to be blooming. I am not sure why there is a disparity between the two although most of the stuff in the garden has been picked because it blooms.

When Michele’s dad died, twelve years ago, she bought a dogwood that was blooming so that – each year – it would be a a memorial and this year, our Fremontia – Fremontodendron californicum, a California native – joined it in a big way.

Along with some native irises ( Iris douglasiana) .

And lots of rhoddies whose tags have been lost and their names forgotten.

Spring is my favorite time of year and nothing says death and rebirth as much as a garden.