Our teenage twins are constantly in motion. If you blink, you miss ‘em!

Denali Dazzles

Denali dazzles when she runs. Pippi Longstocking braids fall past her waist and become scarlet jet trails that fly behind her as she whizzes past. It’s a blur of freckles- hazel eyes flashing with determination, all long gangly legs and pumping arms. The air is whipped into a tornado, a monsoon, a Santa Ana whopper of a windstorm when Denali flashes by. If you blink, you miss the show, it’s as simple as that! The birds, bees, flowers and trees shake their heads, wings, blossoms and branches in amazement. What the hell was that anyway? All that’s left behind is a cloud of dust, just like after the Roadrunner once again pulls the wool over Wile E. Coyote’s eyes.

When Denali jumps, watch out! Flying through the air like a whirling dervish, arms helicoptering with reckless abandon, she splits the sky with a sonic BOOM! Falcons, hummingbirds and swifts can’t hope to keep up with Denali. She lands with a tremendous splash, sand flying madly all around, completely engulfing her in a yellow-brown haze. Denali stands and flips her head from side to side, braids shedding sand like a dog shaking water from its fur. She’s focused and determined, hazel eyes burning with joy and purpose. Denali dazzles, she razzles, she never frazzles!

Sam Spins

When Sam spins, he always wins. Lucky 7 coming up roses, paying off with a jingle-jangle of gold, cascading down the run. Sam spins like a dervish in a turban, a turbine whirling, crackling with electric energy, always charging forward. His skateboard flies through the sky; four wheels spin, Sam spins, the world turns, our blue planet whirls through time and space. Sam is riding this cosmic twirling wave into the future. Brown hair- wild, free and freaky, flying out from under a black skater’s cap, earrings of silver dangling, glinting, reflecting back the sun’s energy. How does he do it? The board goes this way, then that way, Sam goes yet another way, all arms and legs; baggy jeans billowing out like parachutes when he goes airborne. Say hello to the hawks and eagles circling up there son. Float back to earth just in time to crash down perfectly on your board. The wood bows, almost breaks, but somehow manages to stay in one piece. Grinding, wood on cement, wood on metal. Like a cowboy bucking a bronco Sam stays with it until both board and boy run out of steam, only to start up again and again until the last bit of daylight melts into indigo, into purple, into black. Stars light the way now. Roll on my boy, roll on!

Ella’s ears are still pointy, that much hasn’t changed. What has changed is Ella no longer is a kitten, she’s a full grown cat.

Ella was once a foster cat. Eight years ago we took her in on a trial basis, fell immediately in love and decided to adopt her. The first thing that grabbed me about Ella was those pointy ears. When she was a kitten her ears were disproportionately large for her tiny body. They loomed above the top of her head, concave like  bandshells, coming to a sharp point at the top. From the summit of each of her ears sits a tiny tuft of hair. Back then Ella looked like one of those long-eared bats that live in the tropics, her tiny head and large ears were comical and cute at the same time. As an adult, her body has since grown into those ears, but they still look kind of big to me.

Ella is a light tabby. There are hints of stripes along the last six inches of her tail as well as on her haunches. Her feet and the tip of her tail are slightly lighter than the rest of her body, otherwise her fur is a uniform light brown to blonde color and lustrous with health.

Ella’s eyes are a luminous shade of green similar to the polished sea stones of serpentine that are commonly found along the Northern California coast. The cornea of her left eye is partially clouded over, kind of like a cataract. Ella’s view of the world must be a little out of focus.

While she has grown a bit more feisty with age, occasionally swatting at us when she doesn’t want to be bothered, Ella is still an even tempered and very affectionate cat. She often greets me by climbing into my lap, gradually making her way onto my chest until we’re nose-to-nose. We give each other “Eskimo kisses”. She sometimes licks the end of my nose with her sandpaper tongue. I tell her, “I love you too.” I know she understands me.

Ella loves tummy rubs. In the evening when Carol and I are on the couch reading or watching television, she’ll often end up spread eagle on her back in Carol’s lap. Ella purrs with feline ecstasy and is nearly comatose while the tummy rub is being administered.

Cats are by nature quite independent, but Ella does not like it when we go away. A day or so before a trip, she just knows we’re going to be gone. While we pack the car and scurry around the house making last minute preparations, she is clearly agitated. She’ll follow us around the house and has even jumped into the car! We leave Ella alone if we’re gone for two or three days, any longer than that and we have our neighbor stay at our house and cat sit. Ella is a very social kitty and really needs someone to be with her. When we return home, she is almost always waiting for us in the driveway.

I adore Ella, but there’s a bit of irony here. I was never a cat person, however successive girlfriends in the mid to late 90’s would have it otherwise. When I met and fell in love with Carol in the spring of 2001, her cat Bugsy was part of the deal. Bugsy was a gentle soul who helped me to see the sweet side of cat ownership. She lived a long and full life and the day we had to put her down was a sad one indeed. Bugsy now rests in our backyard beneath a circle of sea stones, surrounded by purple irises that bloom every spring.

When Bugsy passed she was nearly eighteen years old. Ella is eight now so with a little luck we’ll have her around for another decade. Relative to humans a cats’ life is short. That fact gives me a deeper appreciation for every day that Ella is in our lives. Some say that a cat chooses you. I am so grateful that Ella chose us.

The beach is a place where a man can feel he’s the only soul in the world that’s real.

Pete Townsend

Driftwood…bleached bones. Tibia, fibia, a random scattering offered up by the sea, come to rest here. Finger bones, toe bones, skeletal remains of once living things. I love the shapes and sizes, no two are alike. This one is Moby Dick, mythical leviathan, gaping jaws, enormous unblinking eye, mottled and scarred skin, sounding then surfacing with a mighty blast through its blowhole only to disappear as quickly as it appeared. The whale swims across the lunar surface of this beach. Craters, peaks and valleys of sand stretch for miles in each direction, footprints of humans, gulls, horses, tiny birds, tinier mammals criss cross before me. These prints are a road map, they tell where to go, where I’ve been, where I hope to be. The tide will soon wash this map away, a clean slate for a different day, a new uncharted direction. We all have maps, inner paths plotted out for us, limited only by our imagination and the desire to follow the path of our choosing.

Wave after wave rolls to the beach, churning, roaring, sea foam flies back from each crest. These waves are my mantra; breathe in peace, breathe out hope. Again and again. The sun dips in and out of high clouds, its appearance and disappearance is a paint brush. Now the surface of the sea is cobalt blue, now it’s a deep olive green. The sun is an impressionist master playing with light and the infinite shades of color.

A quiet breeze animates the dune grass. Millions of slender, stiletto-sharp blades wave and shimmer. New green shoots emerge from dead brown ones, all dance together in the shifting light.

Coal-black Surf Scoters with conical white beaks bob up and down just beyond the breakers. The frigid sea, the roiling surf is their home. A small knot of tiny sanderlings appear to float as they scurry across the sand, their short, black beaks drill through the surface as each wave recedes. The outgoing tide will reveal a bounty for these diminutive shorebirds. With pure white heads and bodies, mottled grey wing bars, black tail feathers and tiny black legs, they are a study in contrast, a living Ansel Adams photograph. As one they take flight, knife point wings carry them swiftly down the beach to continue their foraging.

The shapes of the clouds are the stuff of my dreams. Today they are soft with ill-defined edges, cotton balls and blurred lines, broad sweeping brushstrokes, sky waves spraying sea mist. The sun is a white blur as it struggles to emerge from behind a grey section of the sky canvas. A clear blue sky is endless but today’s clouds add definition and depth. Now the sun breaks through. Like a lizard I give my body over to its life giving warmth. Renewal.

One of the benefits of retirement, besides the obvious one of not having to go to work every day and deal with the trials and tribulations of a regular job, has been getting to spend more time with my wife Carol. Over the past year Carol and I have made it a point to set aside at least one day each week for what we call Adventure Day. Our days include brunches, lunches, walks and bike rides, but what we love most is to get out in nature. Hiking and kayaking the various parks, rivers and lakes in our area have been our main modes of exploration. I once wrote that “nature is an antidote to restless times”, that statement has never rang truer than it does right now. Exploring nature with Carol is the perfect way for us to reconnect and to shut out, at least for an afternoon, the insanity of a world seemingly gone mad.

Our most recent adventure took us to Olompali State Historic Park. This little gem of a park sits right off the busy 101 freeway about 20 miles north of San Francisco in Novato. Prior to our visit all I knew about Olompali is that it was once a favorite haunt of the San Francisco rock glitterati. In the mid 1960’s members of The Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, Janis Joplin and virtually anyone else associated with the SF music scene could be found up here spending blissful days tripping and carousing among the oaks, meadows, hills and forests. Carol and I decided to finally take the freeway offramp and see what this place was all about.

When we arrived, there was exactly one car in the parking lot. Another fringe benefit of retirement: we can explore our favorite nature spots while everyone else is at work. The trail took us around various historical buildings from the turn of the 20th century and up a steep climb through a mixed forest of oak, madrone and bay laurel. The rains of November and December had everything looking green and alive. A few tiny wildflowers poked their heads up out of the forest floor, a preview of the bigger springtime show to come. The trail eventually leveled out and the remainder of our climb was through long gentle switchbacks. Our destination was the top of 1,500 foot Mount Burdell. After hiking for about two hours, we stopped short of the summit for lunch. The clearing we chose had sweeping views of Petaluma Marsh, the eastern foothills and San Francisco Bay beyond. Cars moved like ants way below along the 101. We were so close to tens of thousands of people yet it felt like being in the middle of the wilderness. The air was cool and clean, the quiet nearly absolute. Carol and I ate our lunches, enjoying the easy silence between us.

Tiny white flowers

Paint the forest floor

Harbinger of spring

The highlight of our day occurred somewhere between the sandwiches and the chips. I noticed two very large birds wheeling and soaring in the sky directly above us. I trained my binoculars on them and much to my surprise saw that it was a pair of Golden eagles doing this dance for us! I’ve spent countless hours exploring nature but have never once been blessed with a sighting of this majestic bird. To see a pair of them seemed nothing short of miraculous. These are massive birds with a wingspan of over six feet. Golden eagles are year round residents of our area but are rarely sighted. Next to the California Condor, these are North America’s largest birds. Carol and  I watched in awe, knowing that we were seeing something very special. The birds soared higher and higher, eventually disappearing behind us to the west.

In endless blue

Two Golden eagles

Dance with the wind

We continued on our way to the summit of Mount Burdell. The views of Mount Tamalpias and the hills to the west were breathtaking. Along the spine of the ridge we spotted several large prints in the trailside mud, most likely those of a mountain lion or bobcat. On our way back down we caught a fleeting glimpse of a coyote. The Trickster of Native American legends was sniffing around our lunch spot. It melted back into the forest before we could get a clear look at it.

A flash of fur

And he’s gone

The Trickster knows

Towards the bottom of the trail we crossed a gentle spring-fed creek. What beautiful music it was making as it tumbled down the hillside over rocks and fallen branches. After these past few years of drought, I’ve developed a deeper appreciation for the sounds of running water. We returned to our car, feeling newly connected, not only to ourselves but to the natural world at our doorstep.

The forest speaks

A gentle silence

We hold our breath