Friday, August 30, 2013

Little Treasures from the Dry Ridgetop


I took a walk on the East Blithedale Ridge today, a long loop with just my feet and water and an apple, an old route once, I daresay, and Indian footpath, now a fireroad. It was a walk we used to take often when I was a child, coast live oak lined, steep and sunny dry chaparral, that smell of dusty bay-spiced Mt. Tamalpais. I'm housesitting for my parents for a few days, wandering the streets of Mill Valley and getting sweet nostalgic whiffs of old memories in the lanes, roads such as Catalpa and Sycamore that have much meaning in my heart. Up on the ridge, my dad and brother and I would go in the evenings with the dog before dinner and look at the mountain or the stars coming out. Feeling overwhelmed, I often went up there and lay down in the redwood needles. Home from college, having missed the smell of redwoods (down the north facing slope), the color of bay leaves, the shape of the oaks (on the south facing slope), so much, I would walk almost in tears with my parents on the little footpaths during winter break. 


Now, the madrones are peeling off their bark, the coast live oaks are shedding a few (though never all) leaves along with some unripe beautiful acorns (I have so many memories of getting poked by their spiny edges barefoot as a child!), the bays are dropping a few (but never all) of their spicy leaves, a bird, perhaps a small accipiter such as a cooper's hawk, left behind a feather. I learned just yesterday that madrones actually photosynthesize through their (delicious, satiny) bark. Those trunks that curve like muscles, like arms, are sugar-making factories from stem to stern! And the bark peels off to protect the tree from pests and unwanted fungi (making scrolls that I always used to imagine, and still do, belonged to small dark beings on the backs of chipmunks or riding the dark blue wings of the jays). Magic.


These little treasures are scraps of the coming autumn, the shift in season into the depths of drought and out the other side. They are runes— Acorn, Usnea, Madrone Bark, Spiny Oak Leaf— of this move toward harvest, toward softer light.


7 comments:

  1. Such rich and beautiful colors in this collection... and, I can't really tell the size, but that feather looks an awful lot like a Great Horned Owl feather to me. I have rather a lot of them... so soft so there is not a sound when the owl takes flight. Interesting information about madrone trees.

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    1. Great horned owl you think? Wonderful! I shall look into that a bit. Thank you for the tip. The world of feather identification is vast and largely untravelled terrain for me. Delicious. Magical deep creatures. Thank you for visiting as always!

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  2. Autumn's coming is exciting me ever so, and these pictures and words gave me a little thrill...

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  3. gorgeous, Sylvia. " coast live oak lined, steep and sunny dry chaparral, that smell of dusty bay-spiced Mt. Tamalpais" , this alone is just breath taking. I still have the bay leaf you sent in the grey fox epistle to my old home in north carolina, I need, need to order one again, soon, your words are like turkish coffee to me. Sending blessings, wild ones and windy ones, from the east.

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    1. Thank you Raquel! I'm glad you've still got the old spiced bay leaf. Amazing beloved trees they are. And wow, a high honor to be akin to turkish coffee, those Epistles. I thank you deeply. I hope your time in New York is full of old strange city magic and a good amount of wild green ones at the edges. Lots of love to you! xxx

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