2-12-2011 MB
A perfect morning for messing about in a boat, as Toad might say. The sun was rising behind the dragon hill head, and a clear sky. Sun on the cypress and eucalyptus of Spindrift point. Every seventh wave or so led a perceptible train of mildly noisy landfall, but in between it was the kind of lapping that is more East coast than West.
Someone was sleeping underneath the big cypress tree, scrunched down inside a sleeping bag, small boots, hmm
Kayaks on the green tousled grass. I carried the old purple Dancer, scraping under the chain, dodging a pile of brush. Across the un-figured beach, ready for Picasso. Who wrote that story? Alphabet exercises, to get my arms ready, and the tussle to get the spray skirt on. Weakening older hands.
Easy strokes out into the bay, a little strain left hand but the right elbow is fine. Careful not to cock right wrist.
The tide is too high for the blowhole that I call ‘Hina’s Mouth’ to be working. Later, it’s going out now.
Around the point, and in / out of the surge channels there. Enough surge to be exciting but not dangerous. Gull on the rocks, watching skeptically as I come too close, and others fly as I come surging out. Out here, in the open, there is a surge of 3-5 feet up and down the rocks. Purple with a white lace of marine growth. Bright stars of echinoderms, purple, red, orange, blue, more colorful than Asterias forbesi from the Cape.
This rock is about 50 yards offshore, a real little seamount. The bottom is over 30 feet down on all sides. Seaward, there is a kind of basic of rock. In the middle, a deep cleft tide pool. At tides a little higher than this, you can surge up with the wave into the tide pool. In the dry season, the peak of the rock is white and redolent with guano. This time of year, its black brown and smells more of seaweed. A gaggle of cormorants on the rock move nervously away at my approach. The gulls, more phlegmatic or pragmatic. Incredibly neatly white and gray and black, with nicely contrasting yellow bills and pale pink legs. The juveniles, of course, are dressed differently with their belts down around their butts.
The big mussels in the tide pool have died or been eaten, probably both. Replacing them are garlands of gooseneck barnacles and toddler mussels. I guess eventually the mussels win out, but only temporarily. Shards of water coming over the rock top. Incoming outgoing curl and whirl of water around the sides, slipping sliding into and out of the pool, around the rock, the dance of water and land. A perfect dancehall this morning, discrete, delightful, and not dangerous.
I move out to the outside of the rock, near the evanescent bowl that forms as a wave is coming in over the outlying rocks, and still sucking the previous water back across the inner circle. Blicks of the weeds and the anemones, mussels, barnacles, and reticulated sea fans. But this is trumped by the crashing coruscating approach of the new wave, already whipped up into white froth, it comes smooching and crashing and filling and crashing and going every which way with the loud sharp noises that air and water make when they meet on rocks and seaweed. And then, with a loud suck and the whirling tormented movement again, it happens all over.
Past the rock, I decide to just paddle straight on, with the sun behind me, into the landscape and towards the rock that from some angles vaguely looks like an impassive human head with a feather on top. Yes, it probably was called that. I just think of it as Featherhead.
On the Cape this kind of pointedness would be much blunter, and smaller. Up north / down east, Maine was carved by glaciers into shapes very like this, but where we live in Woods Hole, its all moraine, the droppings of rock and sand that fall out when the glacier melts back. The rocks, mostly granite or quartz, are called Erratics, a wonderful name; the biggest of pebbles, sometimes house sized, but basically small pebbles compared to the black basaltic towers of northern California. The smaller boulders here are chunks of that stuff, and it erodes into filigree and scalloped forms that resemble in stone the momentary claws of the sea, as frozen in Hokusai’s ‘Wave at Kanagawa’ painting. It’s volcanic in Hawaii, black, even softer then the basalt, even more easily worked by crab and clam as well as the tireless caresses of sand and sea.
I don’t know as much about the geology as I should. Are we from southern California. Like Pt Reyes? Or did we lie here along our fault, waiting?
Coming up on Featherhead, with glances up to the top of the cliffs, hundreds of feet above. The overlook, between the tide pool mini mountain and Featherhead, is a outcropping of rock, and built into it the concrete pill boxes, once with metal anti bomb covers, that housed the spotting stations that were supposed to see the Japanese fleet coming over the horizon and send coordinates to the gun batteries that also still remain along the Marin Headlands, and the Presidio. Now, sometimes, people are on the narrow paths up there. I will be an almost un-seeable dot on a very large expanse of water, made the more interesting by the Farallones, visible as pointed inserts on the horizon of a clear day.
I come abreast of Featherhead, and let the boat drift in close to the edge of the rock, to ride the mildly surging rollers in over the seaweed buffered rocks covered by each wave, and then back out in curls and swirls as they sweeps on, retreat from the rock, carry me back out to ground lightly, for a moment, perhaps alarming a few dozen barnacles and the occasional anemone tapped by my plastic hull. Another dance, this one also waltz like, definitely in 4/4 time.
Now I can see the trees marking Slide ranch up ahead. Along this shore, there are an entire herd of sea rocks, ranging from small islands to large boulders. Soon the storm that is predicted for next week will start creating the winds that will mound up the ocean and send storm waves surging miles ahead. Soon this stretch ahead will be swept by white capped and caped waves. Soon the weed will be busted and whipped and whapped into a gelatinous slightly brown foam, with enough internal consistency to collect in persistent piles, perhaps even come ashore on a beach where some child will gather up handfuls of delight. Where the wind will break loose chunks and blow them into scurrying foam bunnies. But now the vista is a smooth reflective green surface, with the gentle surge moving white rimmed water around the rocks.
For now, it’s a depthy smooth rise and fall, seen far off as a dream, an illuminated expanse, faintly figured by a wind blowing off the land, swooping down the cliffs, enough to blow me along with the tide towards the Farallones out there miles away. The coming swells approach at a steady and majestic 20 mph or so, and are so long and smooth that they are under me before I know it. Or, closer to shore, pushing me gently but firmly. Or, in a few more feet, taking me by both elbows from behind and marching me at increasingly violent speed towards those very hard rocks that I will splatter on.
I don’t paddle knowingly into that zone. Once, years ago, I found myself in it, and was swept up against the flat face of a rock and spurted straight up until I was so surprised that I almost forgot to even wonder as I came splashing back down, boat and all, newly equipped with a sense of what it feels like to be slapped against a rock and thrust skyward.
Today its dreamy and smooth the sun is climbing higher behind me, this part of the coastline is still in shadow, and the figuration of the rocks is dramatic. Crouching, climbing, submerging, emerging, the moving landscape is magnetic. And look, the mermaid or man herself, paddling up higher to get a better look. Big dog whiskers, the vibrissae that let it check out the edible object in murky water, and the large liquid eyes, apparently with some binocular vision. The seal submerges, but in a routine way, and surfaces several times as we share the same part of ocean. Rocks must be only a few feet deep here, and the bobbing heads of the kelp are all around. The boat bumps and slides across them…not enough to get tangled in. Their necks are child sized, the brown color sometimes chromatic with some kind of diffraction effect. The walls of the rocks are pinkish in many places. Within the pleasing patchwork and filigree, the knobs of gooseneck barnacles, each on a goosey stalk, each grey white head somewhat…well..gooselike. I wonder if you can eat em? Did the Ohlone eat em? And then the seaweed whiskers, drooping green and bulky around the knobs of the sides of rocks. And of course, the mussels, of all sizes, blue black and textural.
It goes like this. Wait for the right wave, then paddle to get on its front, and steer between the rocks where the water is still emptying to meet the wave, then surf down the gentle slope of the break, minimal bracing right to left to swing alongside passing rocks, and bouncing on the breaking turbulence as the wave gradually breaks up among the boulders. Try to stay in water deep enough to avoid stranding, but if it happens, enjoy the sudden rocky solidity, with tipping and sliding, and then the lift and unpredictable instability of the next wave coming to rescue you from the land, suck you back to the safety of the sea.
Sometimes the surge basins are larger, and you can see, in the calm between waves, down to small fish and large anemones, I mean big as sunflowers, with fat jolly tentacles ho ho ho armed with stinging harpoons of course, ready to grab and stab smalls.
Sometimes the basin is woops not really a basin, and I am left hanging between two rocky davits, or sliding down the side of a miniature mountainside. But it’s all so gentle, hard to remember the smashing crashing welter of violence it was once and will become again with the next storm.
I’ve reached Slide Ranch, a little rural commune frozen in time since the 60’s, and still thriving, with grants from state and local agencies to provide rural experiences for school age children, host weekend farm retreats and generally do the kind of things they do. Hurrah for Slide Ranch, may you continue and spread your quiet goaty wisdom far and wide.
And it’s time to turn back. Things to remember: The seagull silhouetted against the glare of the sunlight, standing on that outcropping of rock just a few dramatic feet above the waves. A pair of oyster catchers, piping their alarm to each other, fly off, a bonded pair as they generally are. They look over their shoulders suspiciously as they skibble away up the new rock they have flown to. No pelicans…not any more, not yet. Seasonal.
There are four major attractions on this part of the coast, four that I have found anyway. Just ahead is the Hidden Harbor, a 10 x 20 pool reached by sliding in through a crevice that is 4 feet wide at mid high tide, but narrows above and below. The tension here…if the surge is too high, or the retreat too low, you jam. The reward. towering cliffs, and a place which can only be reached by the sky or the sea.
A little further south, there’s a field of whipped white foam, the kind of a blanket that quiets those water slapping noises you weren’t even aware of until they are gone, a vast and enveloping silence that lasts until you reach the other edge, and the boat slides out into the noisy open water.
Then attraction number 2, the roundabout. The thing here is to get on the wave surge, and just as the wave breaks around the 10 foot cone of rock on the seaward side, turn hard left and follow the surge into the channel between the cone and the cliff, spilling out the landward side in a garland of white water and adrenaline. Miss the turn jam the nose, turn sideways, and hope that you can roll or grab the rock and get upright again. Today, I make the wave, make the turn, and am back on the open water, feeling pretty good.
Next is the cave. This is a real sea cave, no dry beach at low tide here, as you find in China Cove at Pt Lobos. Slurping, glurping, glugging and all the g’s and s-sibilance that a real seacave should have. Fingers extending back into the rocks, and the purple marine growth is even more intense in the dim light. Brilliant starfish and the occasional sea urchin. And the rolling wash of the waves, recreating the choreographed sequence of noise, with the boat rising and falling. Woops, here comes a larger wave, so I paddle to stay in the higher part, avoiding being washed back and jammed into a crack.
Coming out of the cave, it’s back past the little seamount and tide pool, with the now thoroughly nervous birds taking to the water or the air. Back around the point, via the surge channels, and then back to Hina’s Mouth. At this tide, the blowhole works perfectly. A textured voluptuous darkly secret vertical crevice in the rock, and when waves roll in, they trap air, which then gets pressurized and explodes back out in a geyser of spray. Why Hina..the Polynesian goddess of death? Well, according to some stories, when Maui became old and discovered he was mortal, he tried to achieve immortality by crawling back through Hina’s womb. But the giggling of the birds and animals who accompanied Maui everywhere woke Hina, and in anger she crushed him.
So I sit in the kayak, my right hip beginning to pain a little after an hour in the boat, getting sprayed with each wave cycle, and watching the rainbow form briefly in the spray.
Alan
Saturday, February 19, 2011
A Beach Party
2-17-2011 Muir Beach. After nearly a month of balmy sunny and altogether un-wintery weather, we are in another storm cycle. Lots of snow in the Sierras, lots of wind and rain on the coast. Driving across the San Rafael bridge from Chevron in Point Richmond to San Quentin in Marin (reality and metaphor; Big Oil linked to Big Law Enforcement) the wind whipped the car and rain splashed against the windows. Amalia, now 8, and Joaquin still 5 were full of joyful planning for going to the beach. It was crepuscular, the beginnings of night, and an exciting time for mammals. Our visual systems are tuned to such changes. We shift from daylights color/cone vision to nights more sensitive monotone/rod vision. Visual fields with rod vision are larger, and the information flows differently in the 4 layers of processing that happen in the retina itself, milliseconds before the brain has any idea of what’s happening. So in twilight the brain is vacillating between states of interpretation. The mechanisms we use to enhance edges, to be sure we see the action that might terminate or extend our genetic chances, cast interesting shadows on the scene. It’s a great time to imagine things.
We reached home with the ice cream and the broccoli after dark, the kids still amped up to go down to the water. Fuji, who had been left behind at home, was dancing excitedly around, and game for anything. And then Osha appeared at the door, having already walked down to the beach. When I had talked to him earlier, he had said he was thinking of driving out to do a ceremonial birthday swim. But had decided not, since he was alone, he said. Not anymore!! It wasn’t particularly cold, and from where we were, behind the house, there wasn’t even that much wind. It was dark, of course, and wet. But the kids were already getting into boots and coats. In the headlights of the car, inadvertently left on, Joaquin discovered he could see the rain as a little string of dots. For me perhaps a dash of sparkle, where my flicker fusion frequency interprets the movement as a string of light, rather than recording the momentary position of the falling rain drop.
Joaquin, dressed in a yellow raincoat and black boots, and Amalia, wearing her dependable green wool coat and also boots (a grandmother present from last week) and both equipped with their own LED camping headlights positively capered down the road towards the beach. Fuji capered right along with them, the tiny tinkling noise that her two dog tags make helping to locate her otherwise dark passage. We kind of depend on that noise, since she is otherwise very foxlike in getting under fences and gates, and through hedges. Osha and I stumped along behind the kids, he with two bamboo sticks, and me clutching three towels. Adults intermittently blinded by headlights, with much kiddish amusement, making light of our squawks of protest.
We turn down into Cove Lane, and get a gust of wind off the water. Filled with raindrops and the ironic smell of seaweed, the usual beach smell symphony. A little colder, a reminder of the reality of swimming into a Pacific storm. And the noise of the waves breaking, already very audible from the house, increases. It echos off the sides of this little arroyo, and the stream that runs down the middle is gurgly with runoff energy. We are becoming surrounded by the noises that water and air make when they meet land. Elemental. The only fire around is the relatively tame combustion that all us mammals carry around inside, burning glucose and fat, night and day, literally the fire of life.
Cove Lane’s asphalt ends with a concrete water bar angling across the road, a dangerous obstacle for 70 year olds at night, but we negotiate it without difficulty. The kids, dancing lights and excited screams in the growing noise of the waves, are well on ahead, hopping and skipping down the past rather steep path, laid over railroad ties as steps. Fuji is a soaked rat already, and doesn’t really like all this water. She doubles back, a fast moving wraith in the low light, wanting to be reassured it’s OK. Luckily she and Osha’s walking sticks avoid each other somehow. We descend the railway tie steps and begin on the 20 feet of loose and slippery rocks mounded up at the top of the beach. Summer’s, the sand comes back to cover most of this. Winter’s, the sand goes out to reveal the hard reality of the land here. Tonight, the tide is low, the sand looms ahead in the headlight, an indeterminate stretch of smoothness, and then the white shifting phosphorescence of the breaking waves.
The kids small shrieks thread through the lower pitch of crashing water. With violin like clarity, the noises of the branches of Monterey cedars, and the tinkling gurgles of the stream add their contribution to the tumult. Rain whipped horizontal by the wind splatters against eyes.
This space between water and wind, between air and land, between us and all of that is what we have come for.
This is insane, hollers Osha. Yes, I agree, but we gonna do it! Go in? Absolutely!!
The kids leap and caper, their lights drawing exciting figures against the storm. They are safe on the sand; with the tide out, only a very large rogue could offer any danger, and they both know about calling loudly for help. Osha and I grope and stagger with our 70 year old proprioceptors and reflexes to a large log sitting above the tideline. It takes longer than it did only a few decades ago. We take off shoes, socks, pants, underwear and finally, discarding the sticks and the headlights, our shirts, sweaters and jackets.. and we are naked in the storm.
Too late to change course. Holding hands, we walk out across the smooth firm cold sand. Cold…nothing compared to what is waiting. Ahead, the farther breaking waves seem to pile up, so high they must sweep us away when they arrive. But at our feet, only small piles of foam over our toes. The kids are a few yards away, happy noises as they run away and return to tease the next wave. And we go on.
Now the waves have more substance, and definitely they are cold. Keep on walking. Now we are vocalizing, those more primitive noises that over educated old guys make when they are intentionally walking into the waves of a Pacific storm in Northern California. Ohhh!!! Ahhhhhh!!!! Yow!!!!!
The waves are fast, about 6-7 seconds between. And we keep walking, I want to get to a point where we will be completely covered when we finally yield and fall into the water.
And here it comes, a dark wall with just a hint of white along the upper edge. As it nears us, the noise begins, a delicate ripping noise, as the water begins to fall back into itself, pushed by the pressure of the wave. Within seconds, moving at 10 mph as it slows, the wave is breaking, there is white foam and water everywhere, and we are bowled over, knocked down, swirled around and surrounded by water and air and sound and cold.
We struggle to our feet, shouting, and turn, head back towards the beach, the kids, the sand, the trees, towels, our clothes, our shoes, our sticks, the wet dog and the deliriously happy storm fed children.
Alan
We reached home with the ice cream and the broccoli after dark, the kids still amped up to go down to the water. Fuji, who had been left behind at home, was dancing excitedly around, and game for anything. And then Osha appeared at the door, having already walked down to the beach. When I had talked to him earlier, he had said he was thinking of driving out to do a ceremonial birthday swim. But had decided not, since he was alone, he said. Not anymore!! It wasn’t particularly cold, and from where we were, behind the house, there wasn’t even that much wind. It was dark, of course, and wet. But the kids were already getting into boots and coats. In the headlights of the car, inadvertently left on, Joaquin discovered he could see the rain as a little string of dots. For me perhaps a dash of sparkle, where my flicker fusion frequency interprets the movement as a string of light, rather than recording the momentary position of the falling rain drop.
Joaquin, dressed in a yellow raincoat and black boots, and Amalia, wearing her dependable green wool coat and also boots (a grandmother present from last week) and both equipped with their own LED camping headlights positively capered down the road towards the beach. Fuji capered right along with them, the tiny tinkling noise that her two dog tags make helping to locate her otherwise dark passage. We kind of depend on that noise, since she is otherwise very foxlike in getting under fences and gates, and through hedges. Osha and I stumped along behind the kids, he with two bamboo sticks, and me clutching three towels. Adults intermittently blinded by headlights, with much kiddish amusement, making light of our squawks of protest.
We turn down into Cove Lane, and get a gust of wind off the water. Filled with raindrops and the ironic smell of seaweed, the usual beach smell symphony. A little colder, a reminder of the reality of swimming into a Pacific storm. And the noise of the waves breaking, already very audible from the house, increases. It echos off the sides of this little arroyo, and the stream that runs down the middle is gurgly with runoff energy. We are becoming surrounded by the noises that water and air make when they meet land. Elemental. The only fire around is the relatively tame combustion that all us mammals carry around inside, burning glucose and fat, night and day, literally the fire of life.
Cove Lane’s asphalt ends with a concrete water bar angling across the road, a dangerous obstacle for 70 year olds at night, but we negotiate it without difficulty. The kids, dancing lights and excited screams in the growing noise of the waves, are well on ahead, hopping and skipping down the past rather steep path, laid over railroad ties as steps. Fuji is a soaked rat already, and doesn’t really like all this water. She doubles back, a fast moving wraith in the low light, wanting to be reassured it’s OK. Luckily she and Osha’s walking sticks avoid each other somehow. We descend the railway tie steps and begin on the 20 feet of loose and slippery rocks mounded up at the top of the beach. Summer’s, the sand comes back to cover most of this. Winter’s, the sand goes out to reveal the hard reality of the land here. Tonight, the tide is low, the sand looms ahead in the headlight, an indeterminate stretch of smoothness, and then the white shifting phosphorescence of the breaking waves.
The kids small shrieks thread through the lower pitch of crashing water. With violin like clarity, the noises of the branches of Monterey cedars, and the tinkling gurgles of the stream add their contribution to the tumult. Rain whipped horizontal by the wind splatters against eyes.
This space between water and wind, between air and land, between us and all of that is what we have come for.
This is insane, hollers Osha. Yes, I agree, but we gonna do it! Go in? Absolutely!!
The kids leap and caper, their lights drawing exciting figures against the storm. They are safe on the sand; with the tide out, only a very large rogue could offer any danger, and they both know about calling loudly for help. Osha and I grope and stagger with our 70 year old proprioceptors and reflexes to a large log sitting above the tideline. It takes longer than it did only a few decades ago. We take off shoes, socks, pants, underwear and finally, discarding the sticks and the headlights, our shirts, sweaters and jackets.. and we are naked in the storm.
Too late to change course. Holding hands, we walk out across the smooth firm cold sand. Cold…nothing compared to what is waiting. Ahead, the farther breaking waves seem to pile up, so high they must sweep us away when they arrive. But at our feet, only small piles of foam over our toes. The kids are a few yards away, happy noises as they run away and return to tease the next wave. And we go on.
Now the waves have more substance, and definitely they are cold. Keep on walking. Now we are vocalizing, those more primitive noises that over educated old guys make when they are intentionally walking into the waves of a Pacific storm in Northern California. Ohhh!!! Ahhhhhh!!!! Yow!!!!!
The waves are fast, about 6-7 seconds between. And we keep walking, I want to get to a point where we will be completely covered when we finally yield and fall into the water.
And here it comes, a dark wall with just a hint of white along the upper edge. As it nears us, the noise begins, a delicate ripping noise, as the water begins to fall back into itself, pushed by the pressure of the wave. Within seconds, moving at 10 mph as it slows, the wave is breaking, there is white foam and water everywhere, and we are bowled over, knocked down, swirled around and surrounded by water and air and sound and cold.
We struggle to our feet, shouting, and turn, head back towards the beach, the kids, the sand, the trees, towels, our clothes, our shoes, our sticks, the wet dog and the deliriously happy storm fed children.
Alan
Friday, February 18, 2011
Butterflies, Piraracu, and an albino alligator
2-16-2011 Butterflies, Pirararacu, and an Albino Alligator.
That morning neither Sala nor I could find our keys to the new Prius . I still haven’t, but her’s were in another purse. So we left Muir Beach, roughly on time at 8:15 AM, headed for Tirien’s house in Berkeley to pick up Amalia for a girls day out in SF. It was Luna’s birthday, and the plan was for both of them to miss school and instead go to either the Exploratorium or the Aquarium, or both if possible, plus perhaps a little shopping trip to Chinatown.
It was a heroic sky of scudding clouds and showers of rain. A warning for wind on the San Rafael bridge was flashing in lights over the 101 Freeway north. Remembering the VW Kombi bus we once had that would move whole lanes from side to side on the windy bridge. This Prius streaks along all windworthy and sleekly aerodynamic, barely shuddering in the crossfire. And so 22 miles later we arrive; Earnesto is waiting to leave to leave for his day of studying, and Amalia is all ready to come with us. Fuji the little dog is coming with us because we won’t be home till late in the evening, and she is barely OK with a few hours alone. She dances around their living room, delirious with joy at the thereness of being included. The happiness of small dogs is infectious, and worth considering.
In the car heading to SF, we three are a car pool, and sweep majestically past in our special lane, marveling at the vast field of slowly moving single occupancy cars. I’ve recently been exploring the joys of public transport, spurred on by obtaining a plastic “Clipper” card marked ‘Senior’ in dignified white on blue, which bleeps me onto any bus train or ferry. And for less than $2 to get from Berkeley to SF where the trip on BART usually costs over $5. On days when I work in Berkeley, I get out on the road by 6 AM in order to hitch a ride with one of the anesthesiologists who live on our street, or perhaps the guy from the street above, or if that fails the engineer next door. They drop me at the bus stop, and I take the 4 commute bus over the Golden Gate to Montgomery in the Financial District, walk a few blocks to BART and then to Berkeley, where I take another one or two busses. It takes close to 2 hours, about twice as long as by car. On the other hand, I can get a lot of reading or just plain gawking done on the public transport. And it does give a smug feeling of at least being a tiny part of the solution, rather than a blatant single driver part of the problem.
This only works during commute hours. Lots of voting commuters live in Marin and in SF, so during those hours bus schedules are great, as long as you are going to right direction. Other times, or the wrong direction, the time required to travel roughly doubles…so it could take as long as 3-4 hours unless you know the schedules.
The cloud cover was at about 3thousand feet, with a wide clear horizontal view of the white horses, the huge cranes on the Oakland waterfront that unload the thousands of containers arriving on ships, and load the smaller number that are heading out. We send trash, scrap metal, and CD’s of Madonna. They send cars and things Made in China, which is everything. Is this what it felt like in Rome?
They are building a new bridge, to the North alongside the old, to handle the anticipated increased volume of traffic. They are not building much more public transport these days. Our priorities are as ill informed as our electorate.
There is a new building, slender as a willow and green with glass, standing next to the Bay Bridge on the SF side. I am sure it’s safer than most of the buildings I live and work in, but it looks quite vulnerable, and wistfully beautiful. Perhaps they might let me go up and look from the higher floors.
Luna and Rachel are having breakfast at a place near the traditional red gated entrance to Chinatown, on Grant. The Prius waits in a yellow zone while Sala goes in to get Luna. Luna is dressed in a pink t shirt and a knitted poncho that looks like a granny afghan, nicely set off with brown western boots. Amalia is wearing a green long sleeved T shirt and jeans, with Keene semi sandal type shoes. Sala is wearing something fashionale in black and grey. My jeans and jacket are an acceptable disguise.
The girls fall into each others arms, and begin to talk more or less continuously with each other, interspersed with clapping hand games or songs.
But first, we ask, what would you like to do? From the discussion it emerges that Luna would prefer the Aquarium to the Exploratorium. Amalia is fine with either, but wants to be sure we are not going to ‘that museum place’ by which she means the de Young (the Orsay collection of Impressionists was what we last took her to). We set the GPS for Academy of Sciences, and are off, flowing, if that is the correct word, with the traffic across SF, up the panhandle, and into Golden Gate Park. No rain at the moment, even a few smiles of sunlight. To assure a quiet place for Fuji, we head for the underground garage, which I still think of as ‘new’ (but then, I think of the Guggenheim as ‘new’). It’s already full; at 10:15 on a Wednesday? We go down to the second level (It’s really a very efficient parking system, sunk many levels below the plaza between the museums) and leave Fuji with the windows cracked. Although she has been reported to howl like a little coyote when we leave her at home, she seems to regard the car as a kind of mobile den, and generally just settles down.
Two floors up by stairs and a reason for the full garage is clear; this is the once a month free entry day. Touring herds of tagged children and elders, traffic jams of strollers and walkers, and groups of people carrying their bedrolls, are in line. But the line moves rapidly (no money to take, courtesy of the Osher Foundation, a small sign declares) and we are in!!
Amalia takes charge and hustles me off, with Luna of course, while Sala goes in search of something breakfasty. The first half hour we dash around, a stuffed golden eagle here, a blue whale skeleton there, and moments of viewing in between. Amalia can’t quite find the entrance to the Rainforest, before her energy has moved her on. But she does find the exit leading out to a lawn where she fell from a sculpted sealion several years ago, breaking her arm. Today, she and Luna ascend their sealions with loins of steel, and Amalia even reaches, once again, the final peaked nose of hers, exorcising the demons of fracture and pain triumphantly.
Than it’s back to the atrium, to comment on the exceptional whiteness of the albino alligator and the large snapping turtles that share the re-created center display that I remember from the old museum. Then downstairs to the Steinhart Aquarium, which does not have the celebrated but un-natural and hard to manage fish wheel that was in the old aquarium, but does have some spectacular exhibits. Top of my list; the rainforest river pool seen from below…Piraracu, Arapaima, and at least two kinds of giant catfish. Oh, memories of the Amazon, actually mostly the Rio Negro above the confluence at Manaus, in 1967; my reward for completing a PhD thesis. A month of amazing interactions with electric eels, two toes sloths, boa steaks, and jaguar kittens and ending in a tropical fever where my temperature hit 106 and I was hauled out of the dugout canoe in which I was unconsciously floating past the research vessel towards the sea.
This is definitely a level 4 or 5 museum. Lots of ‘bling’…bright ocean reef lighting alternating with the gloom of river and mangrove swamp. Specificity without attempting comprehensive coverage. The reef is specifically from the Phillipines, with spectacular fish and a montage of the Phillipina people who make conservation efforts possible. Not much space wasted on labels, and all that are there are legible and written at 8th grade level.
Amalia has slowed down in the restless rush from exhibit to exhibit, and she and Luna discuss the specificities of various fish and other critters on display. They spend some time at the touching pool, discovering the softness and hardnesses of echinoderms, before scampering to the bright jellyfish, and the ancient alligator gars, hanging like galactic battleships in their darkly natural but safe artificial world. I’ve seen them, chased them, even caught them in the borrow canals along Everglade by-ways. Long and accessible nerves in those long noses, you see. Not much for eating, but great for sodium channels.
Sala, using the miracles of modern texting, has gotten to within hailing distance, and we dive back into the aquarium space for the kids to return to a favorite, the little reverse snow dome at the end of a low tunnel designed to welcome short legs and discourage long. The special attraction are garden eels, with their cute stripy little heads protruding from the sand and extending to weave around looking for food, only to withdraw completely at the approach of any larger fish. Plus, Amalia has discovered that there is a major air blower set in the floor, and that by pulling out her T shirt while squatting over it, a delightfully cool stream of air can be directed up along one’s tummy.
Then it’s time for lunch. Sala likes the spring rolls with ebi; the kids want to share a ham and cheese sandwich. The desserts are discovered on our way to the cash register, and after some pleadings, they girls agree to wait until they have eaten their lunch to choose desert.
We eat outside, it’s not raining, and there is a gas heater right overhead. Toasty. No wind. Cloud show. Sala will go out to take Fuji for a walk (and perhaps read her book) and I will do dessert and then more museum.
They choose a chalk white meringue sea foam cookie and a triple chocolate torte; each will have half of each. They carry the desserts out in separate bags, carefully checking each others bag to be sure. Back at a new table, the matter of halving each treat is front and center. I introduce the old Solomonaic method (the one who chooses where to cut gets the second piece) and the kids bravely engage in a social dance that must be among the oldest in human affairs, the fair sharing of food. It is all scrumptious. Amalia finishes first, and wants to go while Luna is still enjoying her sea foam.
I draw a irregular outline on one of the brown paper bags, and then my version of a palm tree. What else would you want on your island?, I ask. Amalia grasps the pen, and an island paradise complete with birds passing over, a dock, a roaring monster and several houses emerges. Then Luna’s bag is ready, and she populates an island with a new version of a dock and a tree, plus some explanatory inscriptions and water waves. Wow, I would want to visit both of these. As I fold them up, both kids think of new items to add, and only after a while do we put the trash back on the tray and head for the exit.
Amalia is interested in reading the museum map, and likes the idea of aligning it with the reality of the place she is standing. And she reads it well, tracing out a route back to the atrium where they hope to get access to a igloo structure that is part of a temporary theme of ‘Winter Wonderland’ This exhibit would probably not go over well in New York this year, but here in California a machine, high up in the glass atrium, spews out artificial snow flakes, or rather bubble fuzz that floats around just like snow.
I remember reading about different conceptions of going places, of maps. That societies oriented to walking tend to draw maps of how to get there, with relevant turns and not to geometric scale, whereas people living in city quadrants tend to draw maps of blocks and intersections. But there is no time for musings, active Grandparenting is required to stand in line. Amalia and Luna play tag until stopped by a museum attendant. Bad Grandfather!!, I think, but there is no implied criticism, just a request for them to go outside if they want to run.
The domed ‘igloo’ is actually a projection room, and the 6 minute feature is about the aurora borealis, shown planetarium style. And I learn a lot, since the last time I checked in on this subject, there were no pictures from space.
Now there are; in fact, satellites have mapped the locations of the aurorae, and it’s now clear that the lights are the reaction of gas moleules to the impact of the solar winds, deflected by the magnetosphere, but sucked down into the polar regions. How satisfying to learn!! And of course, beautiful. I’ve seen them several times flying over the pole, and once in Minnesota, years ago.
The kids are doing beautifully. They’ve settled into a comfortable jog trot of museum viewing. And now Amalia wants to go to the Rainforest. Luna doesn’t, but when we get there, on a mediated trial, it turns out that she was thinking of another exhibit that she didn’t want to see; the rainforest is fine. They swing, quite conservatively, on the metal bars along the exhibit entrance ramp, acting out a maritime fantasy of dangerous water and sharks, which I am immune to. Then we pass into the airlock that is the entrance, and into the huge spherical world that encloses a small but accurately detailed rainforest.
And it’s this exhibit, or perhaps the exhibit plus the calming effect of all the previous experiences, or perhaps the triple chocolate torte, who knows, that really captivates the kids. They play “I spy” at each separate enclosure of rain forest animals, vying gently for who can find the concealed reptiles or amphibians. They lean, but not dangerously, over the rails to look at the giant Amazonian fish, now seen from above with the people in the aquarium below, a fantastical image sobering in it’s allegory of human intrusion.
I saw a wild Piraracu once, from a bank over the tea coloredwaters of the Rio Negro rather than a railing in SF, but it’s the same ‘that fish is REALLY big’ reaction. Indeed, at least at that time half a century ago, families set baited lines and found it worth waiting beside them for up to several weeks, because one fish, properly butchered, smoked, and dried, would yield a years worth of meat. Now…well, I don’t even want to know, really.
The butterflies, another high point. Most of the butterfly exhibits I have seen are small translucent tunnels, cobbled into the sides of the museums that offer them. But this one, three stories high of open space, with bright tropical birds streaking across the space, and the canopies of living trees all around, is perfect. The blue and black iridescent Morpho butterflies flap and glide, the tiny black and white flitter, and the yellows and greens and oranges are flittering fluttering all around. Yes, they try to land on Luna, perhaps because of the pink of her shirt. Green shirted Amalia borrows Luna’s knit poncho in the hopes of attracting her own butterfly. Sala rejoins us, also marveling at the flittering crowds. Mist sprays out above, re-creating the required humidity. Again, the museum has used specificity and eschewed any attempt at comprehensivity. The second level is specific for Madagascar, with an exhibit of indigenous fish should attract icths from far and wide. Again, it’s the combination of general attraction and specificity enough for the expert that makes this great. And, of course, the butterflies.
Once during my trip in 1967, the bos’n of the S/S Alpha Helix, the research vessel that was out base thousands of miles up the Rio Negro from Manaus, put down his cigar, picked up a net, and announced his determination to ‘catch one of those damm things’, which regularly would set off on the mile long journey across the river, flittering only a few feet off the water. The mate volunteered to help, and together they lowered the launch and set off.
Through binoculars, we watched them in a comedic hunt. The bos’n up on the very bow, staggering and almost falling over and over, as the mate zigged and zagged the boat in pursuit. Wild sweeps of the net. From the distance we weren’t sure of their result. Soon they were back, butterfly-less, and giggling. But by then the humor of it had gripped them as well. We all had a beer and watched the abrupt green tinged termination of the equatorial day.
We take the elevator down, the approved way of exiting the Rainforest dome. Back out to the wide gracious entrance, to the view of the deYoung looking a little like a discarded tropical fruit from this angle, and back to rescue the little dog. Yes, and we went on to Chinatown, and the girls found surprisingly expensive but very cute and trendy dolls called Kimmi or suchlike, and then we went back through the homeless in St Marys park, and thence back across the city and eventually back over the bridge under the questioning sky and back to our old neighborhood where we stopped at the old Chinese takeout place and eventually, full of all the good things that museums can bring, to the birthday dinner at Rachels’. And the full moon sailed away behind the clouds.
Alan
That morning neither Sala nor I could find our keys to the new Prius . I still haven’t, but her’s were in another purse. So we left Muir Beach, roughly on time at 8:15 AM, headed for Tirien’s house in Berkeley to pick up Amalia for a girls day out in SF. It was Luna’s birthday, and the plan was for both of them to miss school and instead go to either the Exploratorium or the Aquarium, or both if possible, plus perhaps a little shopping trip to Chinatown.
It was a heroic sky of scudding clouds and showers of rain. A warning for wind on the San Rafael bridge was flashing in lights over the 101 Freeway north. Remembering the VW Kombi bus we once had that would move whole lanes from side to side on the windy bridge. This Prius streaks along all windworthy and sleekly aerodynamic, barely shuddering in the crossfire. And so 22 miles later we arrive; Earnesto is waiting to leave to leave for his day of studying, and Amalia is all ready to come with us. Fuji the little dog is coming with us because we won’t be home till late in the evening, and she is barely OK with a few hours alone. She dances around their living room, delirious with joy at the thereness of being included. The happiness of small dogs is infectious, and worth considering.
In the car heading to SF, we three are a car pool, and sweep majestically past in our special lane, marveling at the vast field of slowly moving single occupancy cars. I’ve recently been exploring the joys of public transport, spurred on by obtaining a plastic “Clipper” card marked ‘Senior’ in dignified white on blue, which bleeps me onto any bus train or ferry. And for less than $2 to get from Berkeley to SF where the trip on BART usually costs over $5. On days when I work in Berkeley, I get out on the road by 6 AM in order to hitch a ride with one of the anesthesiologists who live on our street, or perhaps the guy from the street above, or if that fails the engineer next door. They drop me at the bus stop, and I take the 4 commute bus over the Golden Gate to Montgomery in the Financial District, walk a few blocks to BART and then to Berkeley, where I take another one or two busses. It takes close to 2 hours, about twice as long as by car. On the other hand, I can get a lot of reading or just plain gawking done on the public transport. And it does give a smug feeling of at least being a tiny part of the solution, rather than a blatant single driver part of the problem.
This only works during commute hours. Lots of voting commuters live in Marin and in SF, so during those hours bus schedules are great, as long as you are going to right direction. Other times, or the wrong direction, the time required to travel roughly doubles…so it could take as long as 3-4 hours unless you know the schedules.
The cloud cover was at about 3thousand feet, with a wide clear horizontal view of the white horses, the huge cranes on the Oakland waterfront that unload the thousands of containers arriving on ships, and load the smaller number that are heading out. We send trash, scrap metal, and CD’s of Madonna. They send cars and things Made in China, which is everything. Is this what it felt like in Rome?
They are building a new bridge, to the North alongside the old, to handle the anticipated increased volume of traffic. They are not building much more public transport these days. Our priorities are as ill informed as our electorate.
There is a new building, slender as a willow and green with glass, standing next to the Bay Bridge on the SF side. I am sure it’s safer than most of the buildings I live and work in, but it looks quite vulnerable, and wistfully beautiful. Perhaps they might let me go up and look from the higher floors.
Luna and Rachel are having breakfast at a place near the traditional red gated entrance to Chinatown, on Grant. The Prius waits in a yellow zone while Sala goes in to get Luna. Luna is dressed in a pink t shirt and a knitted poncho that looks like a granny afghan, nicely set off with brown western boots. Amalia is wearing a green long sleeved T shirt and jeans, with Keene semi sandal type shoes. Sala is wearing something fashionale in black and grey. My jeans and jacket are an acceptable disguise.
The girls fall into each others arms, and begin to talk more or less continuously with each other, interspersed with clapping hand games or songs.
But first, we ask, what would you like to do? From the discussion it emerges that Luna would prefer the Aquarium to the Exploratorium. Amalia is fine with either, but wants to be sure we are not going to ‘that museum place’ by which she means the de Young (the Orsay collection of Impressionists was what we last took her to). We set the GPS for Academy of Sciences, and are off, flowing, if that is the correct word, with the traffic across SF, up the panhandle, and into Golden Gate Park. No rain at the moment, even a few smiles of sunlight. To assure a quiet place for Fuji, we head for the underground garage, which I still think of as ‘new’ (but then, I think of the Guggenheim as ‘new’). It’s already full; at 10:15 on a Wednesday? We go down to the second level (It’s really a very efficient parking system, sunk many levels below the plaza between the museums) and leave Fuji with the windows cracked. Although she has been reported to howl like a little coyote when we leave her at home, she seems to regard the car as a kind of mobile den, and generally just settles down.
Two floors up by stairs and a reason for the full garage is clear; this is the once a month free entry day. Touring herds of tagged children and elders, traffic jams of strollers and walkers, and groups of people carrying their bedrolls, are in line. But the line moves rapidly (no money to take, courtesy of the Osher Foundation, a small sign declares) and we are in!!
Amalia takes charge and hustles me off, with Luna of course, while Sala goes in search of something breakfasty. The first half hour we dash around, a stuffed golden eagle here, a blue whale skeleton there, and moments of viewing in between. Amalia can’t quite find the entrance to the Rainforest, before her energy has moved her on. But she does find the exit leading out to a lawn where she fell from a sculpted sealion several years ago, breaking her arm. Today, she and Luna ascend their sealions with loins of steel, and Amalia even reaches, once again, the final peaked nose of hers, exorcising the demons of fracture and pain triumphantly.
Than it’s back to the atrium, to comment on the exceptional whiteness of the albino alligator and the large snapping turtles that share the re-created center display that I remember from the old museum. Then downstairs to the Steinhart Aquarium, which does not have the celebrated but un-natural and hard to manage fish wheel that was in the old aquarium, but does have some spectacular exhibits. Top of my list; the rainforest river pool seen from below…Piraracu, Arapaima, and at least two kinds of giant catfish. Oh, memories of the Amazon, actually mostly the Rio Negro above the confluence at Manaus, in 1967; my reward for completing a PhD thesis. A month of amazing interactions with electric eels, two toes sloths, boa steaks, and jaguar kittens and ending in a tropical fever where my temperature hit 106 and I was hauled out of the dugout canoe in which I was unconsciously floating past the research vessel towards the sea.
This is definitely a level 4 or 5 museum. Lots of ‘bling’…bright ocean reef lighting alternating with the gloom of river and mangrove swamp. Specificity without attempting comprehensive coverage. The reef is specifically from the Phillipines, with spectacular fish and a montage of the Phillipina people who make conservation efforts possible. Not much space wasted on labels, and all that are there are legible and written at 8th grade level.
Amalia has slowed down in the restless rush from exhibit to exhibit, and she and Luna discuss the specificities of various fish and other critters on display. They spend some time at the touching pool, discovering the softness and hardnesses of echinoderms, before scampering to the bright jellyfish, and the ancient alligator gars, hanging like galactic battleships in their darkly natural but safe artificial world. I’ve seen them, chased them, even caught them in the borrow canals along Everglade by-ways. Long and accessible nerves in those long noses, you see. Not much for eating, but great for sodium channels.
Sala, using the miracles of modern texting, has gotten to within hailing distance, and we dive back into the aquarium space for the kids to return to a favorite, the little reverse snow dome at the end of a low tunnel designed to welcome short legs and discourage long. The special attraction are garden eels, with their cute stripy little heads protruding from the sand and extending to weave around looking for food, only to withdraw completely at the approach of any larger fish. Plus, Amalia has discovered that there is a major air blower set in the floor, and that by pulling out her T shirt while squatting over it, a delightfully cool stream of air can be directed up along one’s tummy.
Then it’s time for lunch. Sala likes the spring rolls with ebi; the kids want to share a ham and cheese sandwich. The desserts are discovered on our way to the cash register, and after some pleadings, they girls agree to wait until they have eaten their lunch to choose desert.
We eat outside, it’s not raining, and there is a gas heater right overhead. Toasty. No wind. Cloud show. Sala will go out to take Fuji for a walk (and perhaps read her book) and I will do dessert and then more museum.
They choose a chalk white meringue sea foam cookie and a triple chocolate torte; each will have half of each. They carry the desserts out in separate bags, carefully checking each others bag to be sure. Back at a new table, the matter of halving each treat is front and center. I introduce the old Solomonaic method (the one who chooses where to cut gets the second piece) and the kids bravely engage in a social dance that must be among the oldest in human affairs, the fair sharing of food. It is all scrumptious. Amalia finishes first, and wants to go while Luna is still enjoying her sea foam.
I draw a irregular outline on one of the brown paper bags, and then my version of a palm tree. What else would you want on your island?, I ask. Amalia grasps the pen, and an island paradise complete with birds passing over, a dock, a roaring monster and several houses emerges. Then Luna’s bag is ready, and she populates an island with a new version of a dock and a tree, plus some explanatory inscriptions and water waves. Wow, I would want to visit both of these. As I fold them up, both kids think of new items to add, and only after a while do we put the trash back on the tray and head for the exit.
Amalia is interested in reading the museum map, and likes the idea of aligning it with the reality of the place she is standing. And she reads it well, tracing out a route back to the atrium where they hope to get access to a igloo structure that is part of a temporary theme of ‘Winter Wonderland’ This exhibit would probably not go over well in New York this year, but here in California a machine, high up in the glass atrium, spews out artificial snow flakes, or rather bubble fuzz that floats around just like snow.
I remember reading about different conceptions of going places, of maps. That societies oriented to walking tend to draw maps of how to get there, with relevant turns and not to geometric scale, whereas people living in city quadrants tend to draw maps of blocks and intersections. But there is no time for musings, active Grandparenting is required to stand in line. Amalia and Luna play tag until stopped by a museum attendant. Bad Grandfather!!, I think, but there is no implied criticism, just a request for them to go outside if they want to run.
The domed ‘igloo’ is actually a projection room, and the 6 minute feature is about the aurora borealis, shown planetarium style. And I learn a lot, since the last time I checked in on this subject, there were no pictures from space.
Now there are; in fact, satellites have mapped the locations of the aurorae, and it’s now clear that the lights are the reaction of gas moleules to the impact of the solar winds, deflected by the magnetosphere, but sucked down into the polar regions. How satisfying to learn!! And of course, beautiful. I’ve seen them several times flying over the pole, and once in Minnesota, years ago.
The kids are doing beautifully. They’ve settled into a comfortable jog trot of museum viewing. And now Amalia wants to go to the Rainforest. Luna doesn’t, but when we get there, on a mediated trial, it turns out that she was thinking of another exhibit that she didn’t want to see; the rainforest is fine. They swing, quite conservatively, on the metal bars along the exhibit entrance ramp, acting out a maritime fantasy of dangerous water and sharks, which I am immune to. Then we pass into the airlock that is the entrance, and into the huge spherical world that encloses a small but accurately detailed rainforest.
And it’s this exhibit, or perhaps the exhibit plus the calming effect of all the previous experiences, or perhaps the triple chocolate torte, who knows, that really captivates the kids. They play “I spy” at each separate enclosure of rain forest animals, vying gently for who can find the concealed reptiles or amphibians. They lean, but not dangerously, over the rails to look at the giant Amazonian fish, now seen from above with the people in the aquarium below, a fantastical image sobering in it’s allegory of human intrusion.
I saw a wild Piraracu once, from a bank over the tea coloredwaters of the Rio Negro rather than a railing in SF, but it’s the same ‘that fish is REALLY big’ reaction. Indeed, at least at that time half a century ago, families set baited lines and found it worth waiting beside them for up to several weeks, because one fish, properly butchered, smoked, and dried, would yield a years worth of meat. Now…well, I don’t even want to know, really.
The butterflies, another high point. Most of the butterfly exhibits I have seen are small translucent tunnels, cobbled into the sides of the museums that offer them. But this one, three stories high of open space, with bright tropical birds streaking across the space, and the canopies of living trees all around, is perfect. The blue and black iridescent Morpho butterflies flap and glide, the tiny black and white flitter, and the yellows and greens and oranges are flittering fluttering all around. Yes, they try to land on Luna, perhaps because of the pink of her shirt. Green shirted Amalia borrows Luna’s knit poncho in the hopes of attracting her own butterfly. Sala rejoins us, also marveling at the flittering crowds. Mist sprays out above, re-creating the required humidity. Again, the museum has used specificity and eschewed any attempt at comprehensivity. The second level is specific for Madagascar, with an exhibit of indigenous fish should attract icths from far and wide. Again, it’s the combination of general attraction and specificity enough for the expert that makes this great. And, of course, the butterflies.
Once during my trip in 1967, the bos’n of the S/S Alpha Helix, the research vessel that was out base thousands of miles up the Rio Negro from Manaus, put down his cigar, picked up a net, and announced his determination to ‘catch one of those damm things’, which regularly would set off on the mile long journey across the river, flittering only a few feet off the water. The mate volunteered to help, and together they lowered the launch and set off.
Through binoculars, we watched them in a comedic hunt. The bos’n up on the very bow, staggering and almost falling over and over, as the mate zigged and zagged the boat in pursuit. Wild sweeps of the net. From the distance we weren’t sure of their result. Soon they were back, butterfly-less, and giggling. But by then the humor of it had gripped them as well. We all had a beer and watched the abrupt green tinged termination of the equatorial day.
We take the elevator down, the approved way of exiting the Rainforest dome. Back out to the wide gracious entrance, to the view of the deYoung looking a little like a discarded tropical fruit from this angle, and back to rescue the little dog. Yes, and we went on to Chinatown, and the girls found surprisingly expensive but very cute and trendy dolls called Kimmi or suchlike, and then we went back through the homeless in St Marys park, and thence back across the city and eventually back over the bridge under the questioning sky and back to our old neighborhood where we stopped at the old Chinese takeout place and eventually, full of all the good things that museums can bring, to the birthday dinner at Rachels’. And the full moon sailed away behind the clouds.
Alan
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)