February 4, 2025

Secret winter enshrouds the summit

The world I knew was gone, obliterated by an ocean of white and wind. Visibility was down to 30 yards. Ice crystals finer than grains of sand, driven by currents swirling from the southwest, struck my face. I lowered the brim of my hat a notch, turned and looked east. Home was 10 miles across the foothills and 3,800 feet down – I assumed. Since my watch read 6:57 a.m., I also assumed sunlight was beginning to flood East Bay with the dawn of Feb. 14, 2009. But that world was gone, no match for the white and wind on Mt. Diablo.

There’s a winter that’s kept secret from most East Bay folk. It’s not the winter we see from afar once or twice a year when our communal mountain is snowcapped, metamorphosed for a few days – if we’re lucky – into a vision of alpine splendor. We gaze admiringly at that distant winter and snap our photos till rain and Sun dispel the reverie. But when the mountain is wreathed in another form of white – the effluence of cloud factories that engulf Diablo’s Summit and North Peak like a sea surging over volcanic islands – inside those cloudworks is forged a secret winter: pale and severe.

My alarm had gone off at 3 a.m. and I’d taken a look out the window. High in the south, a half Moon was slipping behind scattered swift clouds like a soldier dodging enemy fire, advancing from cover to cover. The hike was on. A hundred minutes later I pushed off from the Donner Canyon trailhead. In the southwest towered the silhouette of Eagle Peak. Bald Ridge rose due south against the backdrop of a crown of mist clarified by moonlight. I traced the mist southeast as it condensed to obscure the upper elevations of the Summit and North Peak. A breeze with a hint of menace funneled down the canyon, inspired me to unscrew my flask and grab a swig of bourbon. Perhaps the wind would gather strength and drive the clouds from the mountaintop.

At the 1,700-foot level of Meridian Ridge the first patches of snow began spattering the trail’s shoulder. The Moon was still with me, drifting in and out of tendrils of vapor that rose and dissolved like steam from a kettle. Only when I made the turn east toward Prospector’s Gap did I lose the Moon behind the wall of Bald Ridge. Vega burned hot white high overhead, nearly bright enough, I fantasized, to navigate by. Northeast, the horizon skirting Olympia Summit betrayed the subtlest paling of blue. I checked my watch. Less than an hour till sunrise.

I came to the final assault of the gap and found snow I could sink my feet into. The trail’s rocky outcrops normally make its long and steep track slow going. But 2 inches of tacky snow smoothed over the bumps, allowed me to sail up through the bottom of the cloudbank to the saddle between Diablo’s twin peaks, 900 feet below the Summit. The wind had gathered strength but wasn’t driving the clouds from the mountaintop as I’d hoped. The mountaintop had seized the wind and was twirling it around its head like a rodeo artist his lariat.

I cut right and let North Peak Trail’s narrow course hoist me across the warp of the Summit’s east face. The snow had deepened and the drop-off to my left into the impenetrable white was sharp. I reined back my pace. At the trail’s first switchback I caught a faceful of ice dust ricocheting off rock and tree. The foliage was straight out of sci-fi. It had rained here as the mercury plunged. With nowhere to run and hide, the wind-whipped moisture had been frozen, like the victims of Pompeii, in mid stride. Streaming sideways from a thousand stems of buckbrush glinted blades of ice like barbers’ razors.

Wind-whipped ice razors stream from buckbrush on Summit Trail.

Farther up, bracketed by the Summit Trail’s sheltering chaparral, I spotted coyote track laced with blood and wondered who was doing the bleeding – the predator or some prey spirited away in the lethal sanctuary of jaws. The prints peeled off into the manzanita just below the summit of the Summit. I turned north toward the home stretch and in two minutes planted my hiking pole, flaglike, in 4 inches of snow at 3,849 feet above sea level. No more up to go.

I stood in a world of limitation: no tourists would be motoring to the Summit today. The only track here would be made by predators and prey, the tire tread of park rangers and cleat pattern of hikers. No sweeping panoramas would be gained – no sight of the Sierra or Farallons or Lassen. No sight of anything more than 30 yards away. I had caught a glimpse of our secret winter, but what secrets it had revealed – beyond its severe indifference to my comings and goings – I can’t say. I pulled my pole from the snow and began my descent toward the world I knew.

January 8, 2025

Frost on windowpane. Chicago, January of 1995.

Tree of light

Some things you can’t pencil into your agenda.

I stood in a forest at night under a quarter Moon so smudged by a sheet of altostratus that Luna looked like a cloud. The place was Kettle Moraine in Wisconsin, a month past Christmas of ’94; the mercury was a marrow-numbing 20 below zero. But these were factors I’d penciled into my agenda.

The most memorable moments on the trail are things I hadn’t penciled in: a tag-team of coyotes pursuing a pair of black-tailed deer on Mt. Diablo’s North Peak; crepuscular rays streaming through gaps in a massive oak on Mt. Tamalpais; marine fog at dawn whipped though Highland Ridge on a stiff west wind. Such moments aren’t boxes to check off a to-do list; they’re gifts, not achievements.

As the quarter moon broke the horizon on that minus-20 day in ’94, I decided to hit the trail and push the envelope’s frigid edge. I packed the essentials: a pastrami sandwich, Armagnac and a thermos of blistering coffee. I slipped layers over my torso and slid spectacles over my nose, hoping the frames wouldn’t freeze to my bridge. Yes, this hike was idiotic enough to be highly appealing.

In the Upper Midwest, you assault winter with recreation or cower indoors. I chose assault, but that winter had been quirky: too little snow for cross-country skiing; too much for hiking. I’d contracted an acute case of cabin fever and needed trail time. Never mind the mercury.

I hopped into my car and got the first good news of the evening: the engine started. Eighty minutes later I rolled to a stop at the Scuppernong trailhead north of Eagle. I stepped out and immediately felt the skin on my face tighten in the bitter air.

The trail had been dusted with a quarter inch of snow. Had it been a foot deep, my boots wouldn’t have noticed. Not much melts at minus 20 F. After 10 minutes on the trail I pressed a gloved finger to chin and nose. No sensation. I pulled my turtleneck over the bridge of my nose, losing the faint scent of pine needles but gaining feeling in my epidermis.

An hour later I rounded the northern arc of the trail through a grove of oaks and entered a prairie undulating south in shallow waves. Having escaped the forest’s sheltering friction, I felt the first hint of wind from the northwest graze my right cheek. I picked up my pace to get the blood churning.

Above, Capella, Rigel and Sirius pierced a sky washed pale by moonlight and streaked by altostratus gaining density. The other stars strained to break through. It was hard to look away from that sky, but something far down the trail, maybe 500 yards distant, caught my attention: a small orb of light.

Photo by mscornelius/Stock/Getty Images.

I descended the prairie’s next trough and lost sight of the orb. When I reached the next crest the picture wasn’t much clearer, except that the orb’s shape was more oval than circular and its light wasn’t solid and steady. Down the next swale I went, this time at a trot. At the top, 200 yards from the light, I found I’d only created more questions than I’d answered. I could make out a tree, not more than 10 feet tall – a tree emanating the softest of shimmering light.

I was stumped. The closer I drew, the dimmer the light fell, as if I were hurtling toward a galaxy that betrayed its true emptiness, the immense darkness between its stars, with greater vividness the nearer I approached.

The light disappeared below the final crest and I found myself running down the slope, a slope just steep enough to send me flying. I reined back the pace and climbed the final incline with impatient strides. When the light peeked above the crest, just 50 yards away, my puzzlement turned to anxiety. The tree was sparkling.

It was a perfectly ordinary scraggly young pin oak, but for one detail: from its bare branches a thousand slivers of light flared like meteors. I closed the distance, my heart pounding in my ears. Epiphanies are nice, I suppose, but I didn’t come out here to meet the Almighty in the form of a burning bush.

Finally, at a distance of 10 feet, the tree revealed its secret – something I’d never have thought to pencil into my agenda. Someone had been out here in December and draped the branches with tinsel. In the middle of nowhere. As the strands twisted in the breeze, splintered moonlight danced and vanished and danced again.

If a tree glitters on the prairie and no one sees it, does it radiate light? Yes, whether we’ve penciled it in or not. “Beauty and grace are performed whether or not we will or sense them,” wrote Annie Dillard. “The least we can do is try to be there.” So I stood there, straining to grasp the improbability of the convergence of moonlight and the silvery fire of tinsel warming that perilous air with beauty and grace, my belated Christmas gift from the universe.

May you be graced by the unexpected mystery made manifest this Christmas season. May the Father, whose intricacies of love glisten like the snowflake, cause you to shine with the brightness of the winter Sun. May the Christ Child, the small but growing light of solstice, bring you hope. And may the Spirit, like a current of wind across a frigid landscape, breathe steadily on the coals of your heart.

December 20, 2024

Christmas, solstice share star power

Whatever your view of Christmas, as Bible believer or secular skeptic, you can’t escape the star. Whether you celebrate the celestial event known for two millennia as the star of Bethlehem or the celestial event known for umpteen millennia as the winter solstice – or both – you’re subject to the power of the star.

Change on a grand but gradual scale can be impossible to detect. The grand transition from summer to winter is too subtle to sense from sunrise to sunrise. Since June 20 – the day of summer solstice – as incrementally as a loose lug nut unraveling on a wheel bolt, daylight has become increasingly scarce. The wheel came off on November’s exit ramp to Standard Time, when our road trip suddenly required headlights. Saturday, December 21 at 1:20 a.m. PST, the northern hemisphere of planet Earth achieves its ultimate tilt away from the light: the winter solstice. In East Contra Costa County, the Sun rises at 7:19 and sets at 4:51, doling out a mere nine hours and 32 minutes of daylight compared to the 14 hours and 48 minutes of daylight at the summer solstice. Dec. 21 – rock bottom of our darkness.

We need no astronomer to tell us what happens next. We know, from direct experience and collective memory stored in DNA, how this drama plays out. Daylight, nearly defeated, takes a deep breath, struggles to its feet and begins its trudge back up the mountain toward summer’s long days and short nights. The light prevails.

The human race has been attuned to these rhythms from the beginning. Ancient people whose survival depended on the accurate calculation of seasons and prediction of weather looked to the Sun, Moon and stars for guidance for when to plant the seed and harvest the grain; when the monsoon would sweep in and the drought desiccate.

In our time, insulated from most of nature’s hard knocks, we flip a switch and get light; turn a valve and get water. Our ability to predict the rhythms of the world is greater than ever – and so is our disconnection from those rhythms. We of the 21st century know the facts. But do we know the meaning?

Ancient people we label “primitive” knew exactly what winter solstice meant – deliverance from death – and through ritual wove the event into the fabric of their communal life. Their winter solstice celebrations dramatized the enduring question: will spring follow winter; will the most vital god in the pantheon, the Sun, return from exile and overcome darkness? The answer had always been yes but was never guaranteed.

“Solstice” comes from the Latin “Sun stands still.” In reality, nothing in our universe stands still. At our Bay Area latitude we’re burning rubber around Earth’s axis at 700 feet per second. As riders on the planet we’re clocking in at 19 miles per second in orbit around our Sun. Our Sun is dragging us on its scorching course around the galactic nucleus at 150 miles per second. And the galaxy’s velocity? A mere 372 miles per second. When we claim that the Sun stands still, what do we mean?

If you’re a devotee of dawn, you’re aware that the Sun rises at a different place on the horizon in summer than in winter. The corona of dawn swells behind points of reference (a tree, a lamp post, the chimney of your neighbor’s house) to the southeast in winter and northeast in summer.

Sunrise viewed from East Peak, Mt. Tamalpais.

Every day of the year, the Sun breaks the horizon at a different position along a line from northeast to southeast – with two exceptions: the summer and winter solstices. On those days, the Sun rises exactly where it rose the day before – for several consecutive mornings. Solstice.

The concurrence of the star of Bethlehem and the star that marks the winter solstice offers more than charming imagery. It offers a reminder that humanity is united in a fundamental splendor: we’re all receptacles of light. Christians believe (in the words of St. John’s gospel) that at the birth of Christ in Bethlehem, “the real light that enlightens everyone was even then coming into the world.” And Christians enact that belief in Holy Communion, internalizing that light in the form of Christ’s body and blood. “Christ in you, the hope of glory” is more than a figure of speech.

But if the light dwells in Christians through the Son, it dwells in us all through the Sun. Our Sun is a second-generation star, created from the debris of a first-generation star’s self destruction. We were forged inside that star; it’s literally in our blood: hydrogen to helium, helium to carbon, carbon to magnesium, magnesium to iron. And in that star’s death throe, those heavy elements were spewed into the interstellar medium and transformed by the alchemy of gravity into Sun and planet Earth. Every atom of hydrogen, helium, carbon, magnesium and iron in our bodies has its origin in starlight.

We can no more ignore the power of the star than a moth can ignore the flame. No wonder our hearts leap in response to the rebirth of nature in spring following winter, and the daily resurrection of light from darkness. Buried deep within us is a light-shaped void that only the light can fill.

Celebrate the victory of light over darkness however you choose, but celebrate it. Whether your focus is the star in the sky over Bethlehem heralding the Christ child or our daystar on the horizon heralding the breaking of night’s bleak siege, focus on it. Celebrate your journey back toward the light – and celebrate the light in you.

December 13, 2024

Trapped in the immediacy of grey

Stillness but for the motion of breath in steam. Silence but for the call of a distant owl, a smoke ring of sound disintegrating into heavy air. I was standing still and silent, hoping to spot a bobcat scouting for an ambush site among boulders hidden in mist, or a coyote loping warily through an arroyo laced in haze.

It was morning at Round Valley Regional Preserve but it could have been evening. The Sun’s disc, wherever it might be drifting in the cerulean blue, was veiled by a wave of grey saturating East County like a storm surge in slow motion. I was standing inside a cloud.

I hike in the fog not merely for the eerie imagery, for the vision of oaks drifting wraithlike in and out of view; I hike in the fog for the awareness of my own form drifting wraithlike in and out of view. I come to wear grey like a garment.

But I’d come to this place for more than the grey. I’d come to steal a glimpse of the hidden: a view denied the several hundred-thousand folk below. I’d come to see if the park’s 1,220-foot apex stood above or below the fog’s rippled plateau. If above, I’d be able to rotate through the panorama of Mt. Diablo’s twin peaks in the west, the broad brushstroke of Morgan Territory’s ridgeline southeast, south 25 miles to Ohlone Wilderness, and east 100 miles to Sierra’s granite spine – all floating above a sea of fog.

Thoreau believed that winter promotes an inward life. Standing on the banks of a frozen river, he imagined the human brain as “the kernel which winter itself matures.” As winter winds clear leaves from branches, the ordeal of winter clears the mind’s clutter. “The winter,” Thoreau wrote, “is thrown to us like a bone to a famished dog, and we are expected to get the marrow out of it.”

Fog would seem the natural enemy of transparency. The irony: fog aids, not inhibits, perception; helps us gnaw out the marrow. The fog ahead seems utterly opaque but with each step we’re able to resolve nearby images with striking clarity. We’re trapped in a bubble of the immediate. There is no ahead; there is only here.

I arrived at a summit drowned in fog. That vision of Diablo, Morgan Territory, Ohlone and the Sierra I’d desired was denied. No trace of bobcat or coyote. The visible universe had collapsed to a sphere 40 yards in diameter. What lay beyond was the stuff of theory; not evidence.

But I was in good company. That miniature cosmos, that fog-encased bubble I was dragging around resonated with the energy of creatures committed to the immediate task: cicada and butterfly larvae, great-horned owls and kit foxes; some dormant, some busy outwitting the cold Sun and long night. They don’t need fog to make them aware of the grass beneath their feet. Their existence is free of the riddle of existence, of melancholic musings over the uncertain promise of spring. They aren’t mesmerized by metaphors. They are metaphors.

And so I count among the season’s many blessings the grey – yes, even the cold Sun and long night that are its mandatory companions. May they pass into and through us, and lead us to find on the other side of winter a place where the first wildflowers grasp for the growing light, a place that without winter would be less sweet.

November 28, 2024

Giving thanks for the valley girl

The oak woodland of Round Valley’s Hardy Canyon in early winter.

Thanksgiving season can be overwhelming, and not merely as an exercise in cooking seven-course meals and scrubbing burnt turkey off roasting pans. As we turn our attention to the “thanks” in Thanksgiving and make a mental list of our blessings, the list triggers emotions that can overwhelm – and confuse. Our most treasured blessings, our relationships, are fraught with pains inflicted by ourselves. Some blessings come in disguise.

So today I give thanks for a relationship fraught with no pain, unless it’s the pain that helps me gain – elevation, that is. Elevation to a summit. Today I give thanks for my neighborhood sanctuary, Round Valley Regional Preserve.

It wasn’t love at first sight. I met her beneath a sear of summer Sun in ’03. I’d been warned that in summer she gets hot – not sexy hot but cruel. She cools off in the evening. By dawn her ridges are gripped by a delicious chill. But as the summer sun rises, you feel the heat in her breath; hear her golden hair, brittle since June, crackle in the breeze.

She’s no bombshell. Compared to the glamorous and statuesque chicks in her clique – Los Vaqueros, Morgan Territory, Mt. Diablo and Black Diamond Mines – Round Valley at first sight struck me as petite and plain. Then I got to know her; indifference turned to interest. When I strutted up and asked for a whirl on the dance floor, she said “Take a hike.” So I did.

That whirl was a hike through her northern hills. In the years before the whirl I’d stayed on her main trails. But on a grey January morning in ’08, on the Miwok Trail, I looked left to admire an intriguing ravine that rose southward and disappeared beneath a mantle of buckeyes, luring me in. Low clouds scudded from the east, threatening rain. I tightened my laces. Maybe I could find an off-trail shortcut through the hills and rejoin the trail at the canyon’s crest, 1,110’ above sea level.

I took the plunge and began climbing a network of ridges, draws, spurs and escarpments robed in oaks whose bare branches combed a rising east wind like receding surf hissing through shale. At the 700-foot level the wind blew off my cap. I retrieved it and clambered down the lee slope of the ridge I was exploring. Against the base of a blue oak I sat and sipped coffee to heat the bones. The hiss of wind masked the sound of my hip pack’s zipper as I stowed the thermos. Then, motionless for minutes, I became invisible, inaudible to three black-tailed deer crossing 30 yards below. They stopped twice, ears alert, possibly smelling my presence – I was upwind – but disappeared with unhurried strides behind the warp of the ridge.

“Language,” wrote Paul Tillich, “has created the word ‘loneliness’ to express the pain of being alone. And it has created the word ‘solitude’ to express the glory of being alone.” That oak woodland where I sheltered in solitude many years ago, a mere 30-minute descent back to the trailhead and 12-minute drive home, might as well have been hundreds of miles from a trace of humanity. No drone of road traffic, no chatter of nearby hikers encroached on the rattle of dry leaves twisting on twigs in the wind. No trail signpost – for that matter, no trail – distracted the eye. I was in the nearby middle of nowhere.

The view from the Summit in February of 2023.

Since that first encounter with Round Valley’s inner wonders, I’ve explored her ridges, draws, spurs and escarpments with the persistence of a suitor and methodical plod of a researcher. She’s given me beauty and I’ve given names to her features. Coyote Ridge, Antler Ravine and Arroyo Grande are inscribed not on the map you grab at the trailhead but the map in my mind. Whenever I visit the Summit I pay my respects to trees dubbed Old One, Samurai and Oliphaunt, trees that, as Hesse put it, “do not preach learning and precepts; they preach, undeterred by particulars, the ancient law of life.” Black Rock Garden and Buckeye Cascade feature boulders of repose and refreshment. And when running the narrow track of Dorsal Alley, I step high.

It wasn’t love at first sight but didn’t need to be love. Awe sufficed. That first summer melted into autumn; by November the blue oaks of Hardy Canyon had lost their leaves and betrayed their fractal structure. Struck by the oblique light of late morning, oak shadows streaked the canyon’s spurs in long, thin slashes. The romance began.

Round Valley is a place I not only hike over but watch over. Her seductiveness is her survival scheme. As years pass and our intimacy intensifies, I grow more determined that she endure, that my grandchildren grow to love her and safeguard her when I’m gone. “If you know wilderness in the way that you know love, you would be unwilling to let it go,” wrote Terry Tempest Williams. “We are talking about the body of the beloved, not real estate.”

So today I give thanks for a relationship: my romance with Round Valley. Here’s lookin’ at – and hikin’ – you, kid.

October 29, 2024

Coyote and the black box

Coyote in Murphy Meadow, Round Valley Regional Preserve.

A nightmare

There was nothing ominous about that morning. No warning signs. It began like most of my adventures at Round Valley: I stretched out at the trailhead – Achilles, hip flexor, lunge – and fired up my GPS. In two hours, 6½ miles and 1,760 feet of elevation gain I’d be standing on Wek-wek Ledge off Morgan Territory’s Prairie Falcon Trail, gazing at Mt. Diablo veiled in the hot haze of distance.

The Miwok Trail westbound ushered me beneath the shadows of blue oaks anchoring the lower lobes of spurs rippling toward the valley. The shadows were welcome; the forecast called for the mercury to hit 98 F. I crammed my pack with all the water the pack’s cubic space would allow.

Water would be the least of my concerns.

I came to the familiar Miwok/Hardy Canyon split. Not the least bit unnerving. A mile and a half south towered the hunter-green oak and maroon chaparral of Bob Walker Ridge: my staircase to splendor. I lowered my gaze and heard the valley’s tall, dry grasses seethe in a southeast breeze like retreating surf hissing through shale.

A mile later, just short of the Los Vaqueros gate, and still oblivious, I saw him: a solo coyote loping toward steeply cut Arroyo Grande, which skirted my trail on the right. He was about 200 yards southeast and moving with a purpose, probably to trade withering Sun for shade beneath valley oaks and California buckeye. It was clear the coyote hadn’t seen me: he kept coming. I’d also gotten lucky – the southeast breeze kept me downwind of his nose and ears.

The moment he disappeared behind the trees, now about a hundred yards distant, I bounded off the trail toward a massive valley oak on the arroyo’s east bank and set up my shooting zone. Out came the camera: on. Exposure: minus two clicks. F-stop: 8. Zoom: 250. I trained the lens on the only open area across the arroyo: a rock spattered with white lichen and dormant brown mosses. Then I scanned the scene for my quarry.

Animals are infuriatingly uncooperative photo subjects. My dog and cats, for cryin’ out loud, rarely hold a pose. Out in the wild, I’m lucky to get close enough to a coyote, bobcat or golden eagle – and be quick enough with my equipment – to bag a single respectable snapshot.

But lo and behold, this Round Valley coyote trotted out from behind the bramble, hopped onto the rock into a photogenically optimal dappling of light and shadow and stood there while my shutter went ka-CHEE ka-CHEE ka-CHEE.

As if he knew the last shot was as good as it would get, and the photo-op was over, the creature hopped off the rock and disappeared behind the cape of an arroyo willow. Still leaning against the valley oak, I reviewed my shots and shook my head at the colossal blindness of my luck.

Time to go. I turned on my heel to high-step it through the thistle back to the trail – and jumped straight back. “Yow!” The shock lasted only a moment, but it was a moment of heightened electrification, a single synaptic flash short of panic. The next moment, crouched in a defensive pose, I heard myself laughing at myself.

Some guy was standing right behind me. Arm’s-length behind me.

“God Almighty! You scared the crap out of me!”

“‘God Almighty?’ Ha.” He raised his right eyebrow, lips pursed, suppressing a smile.

He was tall and spindly, as if he’d skipped a few meals. The ravines in his face were chiseled deep. Remnant strands of rust-brown whiskers flared across his cheeks. His long face was leather. But the eyes: the eyes were narrow and grey – and something else, something that sent a thin shiver up my neck. I took a step back. In all my wanderings I’d never seen anything as terrible as those gaunt and hungry eyes. They were not human.

“Nice scenery,” I said with a forced nonchalance.

“I believe I did a pretty good job,” he said in a voice softly growled from the back of the throat. A canine voice. So fixated was I on the eyes that it took a moment to register another disturbing fact: the hills behind him were undulating like a desert background blurred by heat ripples. The effect formed an oval just behind his head, like the halo of an Eastern Orthodox icon.

He must have registered my disorientation. “I have that effect on people,” he said.

Alright, that’s enough. I hereby resolve that this encounter is not happening. And the procedure was simple: I’d keep the conversation mundane and dispel this bad dream through sheer tedium.

“Did you see the coyote?” I asked.

“Did I see him? Hm. I would not put it that way.”

Geez, this guy’s hard to distract. “Ger Erickson,” I said, extending my hand.

I stood there, arm obstinately outstretched in empty space. Hey, this is my dream. I get to choose the vignette that makes me look least undignified.

The man looked at my hand as if it were radioactive, raised his arm and pinched the wide brim of his hat, the crown of which was tapered upward to form two pointed … wings, leaves, ears? Definitely not a Stetson.

“Olétte,” he replied, returning the introduction. “You stole a portion of my spirit and hid it in that black box,” he said, his eyes boring a hole through my camera. “Now give it back.”

Photo by kojihirano/iStock/Getty Images.

Uh-oh. Olétte: Coyote deity of the Native American Miwok. Creator of the world. Trickster. I am so screwed.

“You know why we are here,” he said. It was a statement, not a question.

Hey, this is my fevered fantasy and I’m gonna get my entertainment-dollar’s worth. “Let me guess,” I said. “I committed a cosmic offense: last night I paired Dover sole with cabernet.” I took a sideways glance at his malnourished eyes and decided to get off the subject of things digestible.

“You recognize my name,” he said, ignoring my sarcasm. “You recognize your transgression, you recognize the reparation. Fine. But that device slung around your neck – it holds more than a portion of my spirit; it holds a message.”

Before I could prevent it, my hand was peeling the camera strap off my neck. Wait a minute – I bagged some nice shots. Why should I surrender my camera without a fight? “What makes you think I stole a piece of your spirit?” I asked, stalling for time.

“If you understood that,” said Olétte smoothly, “you would never have taken that black box out here in the first place. That is why you are here: to learn what the box is trying to tell you.” And he locked eyes with me for what seemed about a decade. “Ah, but I believe you do understand. That image of me adds to the sum of the world. It takes something that is and makes from it something that has never been, as when I shook the tules and the land rose from the water. You also are a creator – of sorts. The question is: to whom does the image belong? You or me? I say me.” And he stretched his arm, palm up.

I felt like a ground squirrel stalked by a … well, a coyote. If I couldn’t outrun his single-minded pursuit of my camera, I’d dive into the nearest ground-squirrel hole. “So you’re saying I shouldn’t be out here taking pictures, stealing the world’s spirit? Why shouldn’t I steal that spirit and share it with others?”

He stifled a chuckle, recognizing my ruse but willing to play along. Then he knelt, scooped a handful of dirt and let it run through his fingers. “The people who once walked this valley had a word: ‘wachichu’: ‘to take the fat.’ Here is the fat of the matter,” he said. “That you stole a portion of my spirit merely offends me; it threatens nothing. I have spirit to spare. But that thing that hangs from your neck like a talisman: it is a greater danger to you than me.”

Before I could digest his thought, he stood and said, “It is not only what you see but what you fail to see that creates your world. You are like Wek-wek the Falcon – always darting around; always in a rush. Your black box makes you hurry to crest a ridge so you can steal an image before the light fails; hurry home to tell the story. You spend too much time marking the passage of time. You look at and seldom into what you see. It is your own spirit that is trapped in the black box.”

I looked away, to where the landscape wasn’t a wavering halo behind Olétte’s head. I knew he was right – right about the camera and me. “You’re saying the picture is an instrument of falsehood, not truth?” I said, pressing my disadvantage. “Hey, you’re The Trickster. Which am I supposed to believe: you or the picture?”

Olétte licked his thin lips. A terrible intelligence and hunger crouched behind those eyes. I knew I was playing a dangerous game. I also knew from mythology that the gods aren’t omniscient. They can be deceived by other gods – even humans. But tricking The Trickster? Is that possible? And if possible, is it such a bright idea?

I took the plunge: “If I tell you a story, a story that pleases you, will you let me keep the black box?”

His eyes widened; I’d struck a resonant chord. “I’ll make it a story of cosmic significance,” I said. In keeping with my previous remarks, I had no idea what I was talking about. But I had a plan: something about removing the memory stick from my camera while The Trickster was distracted. You can keep the camera.

“A story of cosmic significance, eh?” said Olétte, raising his arms and gazing skyward. “When Silver Fox and I danced the world into being, that was of cosmic significance. When I stole the Sun from the Mountain People, that was of cosmic significance,” he said, taking a step toward me; I, a step back. “I have heard many stories and told many more. My standards are high.” He smiled, and I caught the glint of saliva on one of his fangs. “Tell me your story. And make it – how do you say? – a humdinger.”

Olétte strode over to a hollow log and sat down, grasped his knees and bent slightly forward as if to say, “You’re on.”

My camera was resting against my chest. I slipped my left arm through the loop of the strap, shifted the camera to where it hung a few inches below my left armpit, and crossed my arms, grasping the camera with my right hand, shielding it from view. Olétte’s narrow grey eyes followed the whole operation.

I widened my stance and cleared my throat as prelude to a pronouncement weighty and wise. “Many are the tales of the world’s beginning; few of its ending. Hearken, Olétte, and I will tell you how the world ends,” I declaimed while opening the memory stick hatch with my right thumbnail and feeling for the stick with my index finger.

Now for the real trick: the tale. Assuming Olétte had heard it all, I needed to maneuver him into unfamiliar territory. I needed a story so outlandish, he wouldn’t know whether to devour me or deify me.

Photo by Philipp Pilz @buchstabenhausen.

With a nod of my head, I gestured to a nearby hill. “You see the large oak on that hilltop?” I said, ever so gently pressing the memory stick against its spring-lock release, feeling it come loose and pinching it out while Olétte’s gaze was diverted to the hill.

“When evening falls, a star will rise above that oak. We call the star Bingle-Dworp 677. Around it circles a world called Whygo. On it dwell the Whygons.”

Olétte was looking at me with an expression not overly favorable. I tiptoed farther out toward the precipice: “Whygons have been monitoring humanity from Earth orbit for 1,500 years, waiting for a positive trend,” I said with a scientific solemnity. “To a Whygon, 1,500 years is practically a lifetime.” Uh-oh. Where do I go from here? And how do I get this memory stick from my hand to my pocket?

“Now, the Whygons are divided,” I said as my fingertips perspired onto the stick. “Factions A and B want to destroy Earth right now; Faction C wants to spare us for another century or two.”

Olétte cocked his head and lifted an eyebrow. I could almost hear him forming the thought “don’t screw with me.”

“And how, you must be wondering, would the Whygons destroy Earth? Well, I’ll tell you how,” I said, padding the narrative for all it was worth. “Faction A wants to see Earth explode in a messy though expressionistically pleasing fwoof but Faction B claims that would leave a debris cloud in solar orbit ‘in clear contravention of the Space Littering Act of 200913.’ Faction B would rather plant a miniature black hole in Earth’s core and watch the planet get sucked right out of the space-time continuum.” (Need I mention I had no idea what I meant by “the space-time continuum”?) “Faction B calls Faction A ‘contrarian barbarians’ while Faction A calls Faction B ‘a bunch of neat freaks.’”

I felt my tether running out fast. Time to drive this train wreck home. “Faction C, comprising an overwhelming minority of Whygo, wants to watch humanity self-destruct a bit longer before the plug gets pulled. Factions A and B call Faction C ‘disgusting voyeurs.’ Oh, and then there’s Faction D, which –”

“Enough!” cried Olétte. He leaped from the log, I uncrossed my arms in reflex and found that the memory stick was poised smack above my pant pocket. I let go of the stick and it obeyed the law of gravity. I’d done it.

What else I’d done came as a shock. “I have not granted the Whygons permission to destroy Earth!” Olétte howled and yipped contrapuntally. “I shall journey to Bingle-Dworp 677 with Kélok the North Giant and slay the Whygons utterly. Molluk the Condor shall feast on their rotting flesh.”

Holy crap. He’s taken my story for fact, not fiction. And so, standing on the hangman’s drop, I said gratuitously, “Better not tangle with the Whygons; they’re pretty nasty hombres. Let Whygons be Whygons.”

Under normal circumstances I’d be miffed to see a perfectly serviceable quip go zinging over the head of its intended victim. In this case, I was counting on Olétte’s unfamiliarity with colloquial English – despite his earlier use of “humdinger” – to prevent something truly icky from happening to me.

“Your tale was … sufficient; your life is spared,” he said to my surprise. “But I require your black box.” No surprise there. I surrendered the camera and he turned to leave.

I couldn’t believe my stupid luck. I was home free. A dozen prime jpegs of the Miwok god Olétte were etched on my memory stick, safe in my pant pocket. Life was good. Then the god stopped in mid stride and made a half turn.

“One more thing,” he said, and for the first time I saw a gleam in his grey eyes. “As your medicine men are accustomed to saying: ‘Take off your pants.’”

October 12, 2024

Andromeda Galaxy. Photo by m-gucci/Stock/Getty Images.

How far can you see?

If you’ve ever wondered how far can you see with your naked eye, the answer hovers in the night sky of autumn. High in the east, under a clear sky away from light pollution, you can spot an object whose distance can’t be comprehended; only quantified.

Let’s start with distances we can comprehend. We resolve letters on an eye chart from a distance measured in feet; words and symbols on a road sign from a distance measured in yards; the outline of a city skyline or mountain range from a distance measured in miles. We Contra Costa County folk are graced with a magnificent long-distance object: Mt. Diablo, about 10 miles west of downtown Brentwood. Let’s use the mountain as a point of reference.

A little elevation – say, the crest of Round Valley’s Hardy Canyon Trail – rewards us with a view of an object 10 times farther than Mt. Diablo: the granite majesty of the Sierra Nevada Range to our east. A greater challenge to the imagination is the view of our Moon sinking into the west behind Mt. Diablo. The Moon: 24,000 times more distant than the mountain – though not nearly as impressive as the Sun: 9 million times the distance of the mountain.

Our next step takes us into interstellar space. The nearest bright star in our autumn morning sky, found in the constellation Canis Major (just southeast of Orion), is the glinting diamond we call Sirius, a whopping nine light years from Earth. Now, if nine light years doesn’t sound impressively remote, it should.

A light year is a measure not of time but distance: the distance light travels in one year. Once we leave our tiny solar system, the space between stars, and galaxies of stars, becomes so enormous that astronomers express distance in light years instead of miles. It’s hard to wrap the mind around a number ending in 18 zeroes.

How far is a light year? Well, if you could hitch a ride on a wave of light, if you could go 186,000 miles per second – seven times around Earth in one second – it would take you 8½ minutes to reach our Sun and nine years to reach Sirius.

But in the scale of the cosmos, Sirius is our next-door neighbor. The main rectangle stars above Sirius in Orion – Betelgeuse, Bellatrix, Rigel and Saiph – range from 240 to 900 light years away. Hanging below Orion’s belt is M42, the Orion Nebula, at a distance of 1,350 light years.

But 1,350 light years is a piece of cake. You can see farther than the Orion Nebula – a lot farther. All the stars you can spot with your naked eye reside within our home galaxy, the pinwheel of between 200 and 400 billion stars we call the Milky Way. But there’s a naked-eye object out there that’s well beyond our galaxy. And that would be another galaxy.

Labeled M31, the Andromeda Galaxy floats in our autumn evening sky a staggering 2½ million light years away. Expressed in miles, that’s 12,900,000,000,000,000,000. What the heck, round it up to 13 quintillion miles. At that distance, the cumulative light of Andromeda’s trillion stars strikes your retinas with a few thousand photons per second – more than enough to flip the switch of your optical apparatus.

And more than enough to flip the switch of your imagination. When you finally resolve that gossamer oval, preferably through binoculars or a telescope, keep in mind that you’re not viewing Andromeda in the present; you’re viewing it as it was 2½ million years ago.

But why stop there?

How far you can see into the universe depends partly on the innate brightness, what astronomers call the “luminosity,” of the objects out there. From Brentwood, your naked eye might not be able to resolve a puny 15-watt light bulb atop Mt. Diablo, but it sure can resolve the 1,500-watt beacon on Diablo’s Summit. The strength of the light source, not the mere distance, matters too.

Which takes us well beyond Andromeda. The luminosity of stellar events such as supernovae or gamma ray bursts allows you to spot them with the naked eye from, as those in higher astronomical circles like to say, “a really really really long way away.” The afterglow of the gamma ray burst known as GRB 080319B, detected in the constellation Boötes by NASA’s Swift satellite on March 19, 2008, brightened to visual magnitudes between 5 and 6, bright enough to be spotted by the naked eye.

GRB 080319B’s distance? About 7.5 billion light years, halfway to the edge of the known universe – a universe unfurling at an astounding rate. By the time it takes you to finish this sentence, the universe will have expanded in volume by 100 trillion cubic light years. Period. Ready for the next 100 trillion? Here it comes.

The next time you squint at your optometrist’s Snellen chart and lament what’s become of the 20/20 vision of your youth, take heart. You might not be able to resolve that P in line 8, but there’s another object you can resolve.

“By the way, Doc. I stepped outside last night and saw something really far away.”

“Yah? How far?”

“Oh, about 13 quintillion miles,” you say with an air of scientific detachment.

“Riiight.”

September 21, 2024

Autumn – the human season

California buckeyes at sunset in autumn. Round Valley Regional Preserve.

The rumor is out. It’s whispered in the amber crowns of sycamores and spread by the gossip of southbound geese. The low Sun, casting long shadows even at midday, insinuates it. We feel its breath on our skin; its resonance in our bones like the bronze toll of a bell. Autumn is here.

If spring is the sunrise of the year, autumn is its sunset. It doesn’t matter what time of day you read these words; the Sun is setting – setting on A.D. 2024. Since the summer solstice on June 20, when we in the San Francisco Bay Area received 14 hours and 48 minutes of daylight, planet Earth has completed a quarter of its 584-million-mile voyage around the Sun, engraving an arc onto the black granite of space at 19 miles per second. Astronomical autumn arrives tomorrow, September 22 at 5:44 a.m. PDT, when we reach a mark along that arc where daylight and darkness measure about 12 hours each.

But darkness must have its season. Earth’s next port of call will be the winter solstice, Dec. 21 at 1:20 a.m. PST, when in our Bay Area latitude the Sun graces the sky for a mere nine hours and 32 minutes – the year’s midnight.

If autumn and sunset are vehicles of beauty, they’re also vehicles of dread. The dying of the year, like the dying of the day, awakens an ancient fear: we know what’s coming, and the knowledge underscores our frailty and vulnerability. We’re as capable of reversing the encroaching cold and darkness as a starfish, trapped in a tide pool, of reversing the ocean’s ebb. “As for the nights,” wrote the poet Archibald MacLeish, “I warn you the nights are dangerous. The wind changes at night and the dreams come.”

Autumn is what we are: transitional creatures, always in the process of becoming something else. The static landscapes of summer and winter symbolize an existence of perpetual paradise or desolation. The dynamic landscapes of autumn and spring – when before our eyes leaves fall and wildflowers bloom – symbolize a creature in whom something is always dying; something else is always being born.

More than 27,000 sunsets have dyed the western sky since I was born. Many have been spectacular but all have been meaningful. As time passes, time becomes more precious, and the symbols of its passing – the seasons of the year; the seasons of the day – more striking.

California wild grape leaf. Mitchell Canyon, Mt. Diablo State Park.

“We are symbols, and inhabit symbols,” wrote Emerson. As I approach the transition of my earthly existence into something more ineffable, autumn and sunset gain not only symbolic power; they gain factual power. Numerical power. The clock is ticking. I’ve numbered the days behind me; ahead, those days are numbered, too. As a human in his mid-70s I've become as explicit a symbol for sunset and autumn as they are for me.

But autumn is not the season for the blues; it offers other colors to embrace. Leaves in droves spatter creek beds in saffron and scarlet; litter the trail like colossal confetti. Leaves and reeds the color of footballs and pumpkins, of sunlight and blood. Let the woods drift into dream as we plot our adventures in chromatic splendor, let the moan of wind through wizened limbs be the sound of the forest yawning as we set our alarms and program our coffee pots for the world of wakefulness. Time for us to rise; time for the woods to shine.

May your path be firm and the air bracing beneath a sapphire sky. May every twig on every branch seem more finely etched than in summer’s sweltering air. May trees slipping into sleep seem strangely wakeful as the onset of autumn exhorts them to gather their energy for one final, defiant display.

Sure, winter is coming. But autumn is here.

September 2, 2024

Double grace on miraculous mountain

Fog blankets San Pablo Bay at sunrise, viewed from Mt. Tamalpais’ East Peak.

The sun would rise in less than an hour. I was six miles from the coast, motoring through fog so dense that oncoming headlamps burst into view only 30 yards ahead. The saving grace: not much traffic – oncoming or otherwise. Only a foolhardy day tripper would venture to navigate the acute angles of the Panoramic Highway in thick fog at 5:15, plowing through the marine layer smothering Mt. Tamalpais.

I was headed for the one unsmothered spot – the top. My goal: the 2,571-foot spike of East Peak thrust above the marine layer like a volcanic island above the surface of the sea. I’d hoped to gaze from that perch down to San Francisco, to the ribbon of the Bay Bridge and sawtooth spire of the Trans Am building and its retinue glinting in the gold of sunrise. But I’d checked the fog forecast and figured that vista would be a longshot. The fog wouldn’t dissolve till noon at best.

“The coldest winter I ever saw,” wrote Mark Twain, “was the summer I spent in San Francisco.” It’s a fair bet Twain meant more than the mercury level; he also meant moisture. But it was precisely low Fahrenheit and high water vapor that I was stalking that morning. Home lay 45 miles east in Contra Costa County, baking in the driest January-through-May stretch since 1920. Marin County, on the contrary, was a marvel of mist – just what my system craved.

Behind me a veil of pale violet would soon glide upward from the east: first light. But not for my eyes. Fog devoured my headlamp beams as I groped my way down the road to where it splits at Pantoll Station, elevation 1,500 feet. The left fork falls to Stinson Beach; the right rises to the mountain’s pinnacle. I hooked right, and that’s where the trip came to a screech. The gate to East Peak was shut. A sign announced that it wouldn’t swing open till 7 a.m. The clock read 5:45.

I parked in the Pantoll lot, strapped on my pack and made a beeline for the trailhead. I wouldn’t chalk up the 6 trail miles and 1,000 feet of elevation to East Peak by sunrise, but I was in no mood to abort the mission. I’d rolled out of bed in Brentwood at 3 a.m. to do Mt. Tam at sunrise, and whatever my elevation when the Sun did rise, I’d be somewhere on the mountain to witness it.

But before I stomped out of earshot of the area, something miraculous happened. Somewhere in the opaque grey a vehicle rolled to a stop, a door slammed shut, a padlock rattled and a gate creaked. I hustled back to the trailhead.

Fog drifts through the ravines surrounding Alpine and Bon Tempe lakes.

A park ranger had opened the road to the peak. Seems the 7 a.m. opening time was more a ballpark figure than a policy. I thanked the ranger, unhitched my pack and hopped into my car. One road mile and 300 vertical feet later I sailed through the fog’s ceiling. Far ahead on distant ridges in the east, the silhouettes of Douglas firs were etched against a crystalline sky. In the space of seconds I’d been delivered from the blear of night to sharp-edged dawn.

The ranger’s arrival was only half the miracle; the other half was my departure 105 minutes earlier. I’d planned to leave at 4 a.m. I left at 4:06. Had I left on time, I’d have been long gone on the trail and out of earshot of the gate creaking open.

When plotting an adventure requiring a 3 a.m. rising time, you’d best set a worthy goal. My goal had been sunrise on the top of Mt. Tam. Goal achieved. The strange and miraculous thing is this: no matter what particular thrill I seek on a particular outing, I’m nearly always given something else. Something greater. East Peak would be only half the gift.

A northwest wind stiffened as I sat on the ancient serpentine rocks of the summit and watched the sun crest the horizon. Mission accomplished. Behind me, toward the wind’s teeth, tendrils of mist slithered down ravines spilling into Alpine and Bon Tempe lakes. I took shelter from the wind farther down the peak’s southeast face. Thirty-seven miles across the marine layer rippling above San Pablo Bay rose the twin peaks of another mountain – Diablo, deep purple against a sky burnished in red and gold.

Crepuscular rays radiate from a coast live oak on Mt. Tam.

My senses sufficiently shellacked by a sunrise of utmost beauty – and a vicious wind – I drove down from the peak. Just before plunging back into the murk, reluctant to bid the sky farewell, I veered left into a small gravel parking lot swept by wisps of the fog’s ceiling. A path led south from the gravel to a tall coast live oak standing sentinel on a knoll. I was halfway up the path when a wave of fog rolled in; the tree disappeared.

When a moment later the fog’s core cleared, I found myself enveloped in an aura so alien and angelic it took my breath away. The knoll had exploded in shafts of light radiating from a spectral corona behind the tree. As the breeze drove tufts of fog through the tree, the shafts fluctuated in intensity. I was surrounded by a kaleidoscopic pageant of god rays.

For a moment I was caught in a riptide of bliss and fear. Not having penciled “otherworldly ambush” onto the agenda, I tried to keep my composure, blindsided as I was by what Whitman felt striking out from Paumanok: “Prophetic spirit of materials shifting and flickering around me ... Vistas of glory, incessant and branching.”

I’m not suggesting the phenomenon can’t be explained in physical terms. The Sun supplied the light. Gaps between leaves and branches conspired with light and moist air to form crepuscular rays that appeared to emanate from the tree. The spectral orb crowning the Sun was produced by the diffraction of sunlight through the fog’s tiny water droplets. The rays were no supernatural event. But my presence in that place at that precise moment? That was miraculous: a collusion of the chance and providence hardwired into our universe.

If a tree radiates rays and no one sees them, do they produce a vision of glory? “Beauty and grace are performed whether or not we will or sense them,” wrote Annie Dillard. “The least we can do is try to be there.” So I stood there – not having tried to be there – savoring the convergence of light, mist and tree: my unexpected gift from the world.

Much later – for the spectacle lasted graciously long – I descended the knoll, took a final look back, and drove down through the grey to the world I called my other home.

August 8, 2024

A rattler in the bramble flashes its patented glare in Mt. Diablo’s Back Creek Canyon.

Unfazed by the fangs

The man, outward bound, reached for the gate at the Round Valley trailhead. Then he paused and said, “I hear there are rattlesnakes out here. Is it safe to hike?”

Inward bound, I said, “Yep. I’ve taken a couple hundred hikes out here and spotted precisely two rattlers. Besides, It’s not easy to get bitten by a rattler. It’s possible – but you’ve got to work at it.”

As midsummer heat keeps the trail baked, I’m struck by the number of folks singing the following tune: “Oh, I’d like to go hiking, but hey, there are rattlesnakes are out there. I’ll take a pass.”

While no one can be blamed for spurning the opportunity to get snakebit, my experience with rattlers cuts the other way. My problem with rattlesnakes: they slither away before I can get a good snapshot.

Trust me, rattlesnake bites come in mostly two flavors: carelessness and foolhardiness. The careless hiker thinks “Ah, that looks like a comfortable boulder … with some sort of, hmmm, squiggly thing on it” and proceeds to take a seat right beside Mr. Rattler. The foolhardy hiker thinks, “I’d like to get a tight photo of Mr. Rattler. I wonder how close he’ll let me get.”

Popular mythology puts the Northern Pacific rattlesnake on the ornery quotient somewhere between Attila the Hun and Chef Gordon Ramsay. The reality is more prosaic. Sure, the rattler wields intimidating incisors, but it’ll use them on a human only if it senses a threat and only at close range. The overriding principles in dealing with a rattlesnake: be aware and remain calm. And by all means, do not attempt to pet it.

A non-venomous gopher snake hisses a warning at Los Vaqueros Watershed.

First you need to spot the critter and identify it as a rattler. A rattler’s cunning camouflage makes it hard to spot even at close range. As you round a bend or crest a hill, make a visual sweep of the trail ahead before diverting your attention to scenic splendor. When rock climbing, don’t grab a handhold till you’re certain what’s up there. And watch where you sit. You might have company.

Chances are you’ll run across a different slithering creature out on the trail, a creature that’s paid a heavy price for its resemblance to the rattler: the non-venomous gopher snake. The key to distinguishing it from the rattler lies in the head and tail. The rattlesnake’s head is a large, triangular wedge, and its tail ends in the rattle. The gopher snake’s head is smaller and more rounded than a rattler’s, and its tail is pointed.

One of the gopher snake’s stratagems for warding off large creatures is to impersonate a rattlesnake. When a gopher snake feels cornered, it’ll hiss, flatten its head and shake its tail in the grass like a maraca player in a rumba band. It’s a clever but sometimes counterproductive adaptation. When the large creature in question is a human bent on killing a rattler, the gopher snake can be its own worst enemy.

Should you find a snake commandeering your picnic area or campsite, keep your cool and get the creature’s ID. If it’s a rattlesnake, don’t chase it off. It might return. And don’t try to kill it. You’re putting yourself in danger – and breaking the law. Notify park staffers; they have the expertise to remove it.

Let’s say you get unlucky and run afoul of the fangs. Again, don’t panic; call 911. If you’re in a cell phone dead zone, send someone for help and sit down, keeping the bitten area below heart level. If you’re on a solo hike, you should walk – not run – back to civilization. The puncture marks of a rattlesnake bite will feel like they’re burning. No burning sensation suggests that a different snake has bitten you, or that the rattler (as sometimes happens) didn’t inject any venom.

A coiling rattler eyes me with suspicion along Black Diamond Mines’ Corcoran Mine Trail.

There are two misconceptions about rattler bites. The first is that a snakebite kit will save you. Don’t count on it. Applying tourniquets, cutting around the puncture marks and sucking out the venom – these can cause more harm (such as nasty infections) than the venom itself. A rattler will rarely inject a human with a large enough dose of venom to cause death. It’s a skilled hunter. It knows it can’t swallow you, so it doesn’t waste precious venom warding you off. At least 25 percent of poisonous snake bites involve no release of venom.

This relates to our second misconception, that a young rattlesnake packs more potent venom than its elder. It doesn’t. But it can be more dangerous precisely because it’s young. Lacking expertise as a hunter, the young rattler will prolong the injection of venom into its victim. A small rattler looks less menacing than a large one, but don’t be fooled; don’t get cute and try to pick it up. If it sinks its fangs into you, you could get a full dose.

And don’t let these dire scenarios deter you from getting out onto the trail. Every single rattler I’ve run across in my wanderings has left me alone. That’s because I left it alone. Armed with knowledge, aware of your surroundings, relax and enjoy your hike. You’re out there for the scenery, right? You’re out there to look for things. Well, now you have one more thing to look for.

July 2, 2024

Citizen of nurturing planet takes the pledge

Oceans, clouds and continents adorn the orb of planet Earth as its citizens sail through the hostile ocean of outer space. Photo by NASA.

The month needn’t be specified. Two words suffice: the Fourth. And the flag needn’t be described in detail. Three words suffice: Stars and Stripes. From banners and bunting to face paint and lapel pins, the Fourth is when the primary colors of our spectrum hew to the hues of the holy trinity of red, white and blue.

Humans are flagoholics, and The Fourth is America’s day to binge. If you doubt it, consider the focus of our national anthem. Is it the people, the land, the ideals of democracy? Nope. It’s the flag.

I pledge allegiance to the flag that stands for the republic of the United States of America. I take pride in our nation. Many decades ago the poet Archibald MacLeish wrote, “There are those, I know, who will say that the liberation of humanity, the freedom of man and mind, is nothing but a dream. They are right. It is the American dream.”

But I also pledge allegiance to the planet – and that allegiance conjures an image. Let’s run it up the flagpole and see if anyone salutes. Color the image blue, white, green, brown and black.

Blue symbolizes water. Of all the planets circling our Sun, only Earth’s surface is graced by oceans. We occupy Lane No. 3 in the planetary speedway: the Habitable Zone, between 74 and 148 million miles from the Sun. Mercury and Venus occupy the inside lanes, where oceans boil off. In the outside lanes of Mars through Neptune, oceans freeze solid. End of life as we know it.

Next time you take a sunset walk on the beach, don’t leave till the sky is strewn with planets and stars. Look up, and know that in all that immensity you’ll not find many gems like our sapphire Earth. The color of water.

White stands for clouds. In our planet’s infancy, not a single cloud graced our skies. Earth was molten rock; its oceans were red, not blue. When the planet cooled, its magma formed a crust from which water vapor escaped and condensed in the primitive atmosphere. Water-rich comets and meteoroids bombarded the surface. The first clouds were born. Those primordial clouds lashed Earth with rains that further cooled the surface and flooded its hollows to form the first seas. About 3 billion years ago the seas gave birth to single-celled organisms. Life was up and running.

On Earth’s surface, our Sun gives life; beyond our thin atmosphere, the Sun takes life away.

Green and brown denote our planet’s continents: the grasslands, marshlands and forests, and the dirt – the earth of Earth. Three other planets in our solar system are covered in solid ground. But you wouldn’t want to vacation there.

Mercury’s surface temperatures range from -364 F at night to 788 F during the day. The maximum surface temperature of the runaway greenhouse machine known as Venus is worse: 864 F. Surface temperatures on Mars range from -225 F at the winter polar caps to a comfy 95 F in summer at the equator. But Mars’ average surface pressure is only 0.6 percent of Earth’s. On the Red Planet, you might be able to grow lichens unprotected, but not humans.

For Jupiter and Saturn, the term “solid ground” has no meaning. These gas giants comprise mainly of hydrogen and helium. The ice giants Uranus and Neptune are even less hospitable. Just below their cloud tops, water, methane and ammonia are suspended in an environment shivering at -350 F.

The blue, white, green and brown disc at the heart of our planetary flag needs a black background to put matters into perspective. In the oxygen-free environment of outer space, we lose consciousness within seconds. Minus the pressure of Earth’s atmosphere, our fluids boil, causing our skin and internal organs to expand. But don’t worry: before our fluids evaporate, they freeze.

Exposed to sunlight directly above Earth’s atmosphere, we sizzle at a temperature of 248 F. In the shade, we freeze at -148 F. The highly accelerated protons of solar winds batter us. Cosmic rays break our DNA molecule strands, mangle our genes and destroy our cells. All that shields us from this devastation is our planet’s atmosphere, so thin that if Earth were the size of a basketball, its atmosphere would be a layer of plastic wrap.

Astronauts are well aware of these realities. They’re also aware of another reality: from space they view a world etched by no dotted lines of national boundaries. They look through a fragile atmosphere onto the natural borders of oceans, rivers and mountain ranges, and view the effects of a climate that respects no ideology. If humanity is to survive its technological infancy – avoid thermonuclear winter or a perpetual scorching summer – this is the image we must embrace: one world, the only home we’ll know.

“There is nothing in the normal human mind that forbids the expansion of one’s loyalty above the level of one’s country,” wrote philosopher and scientist Ervin Lázsló. “We are not constrained to swear exclusive allegiance to one flag only. We can be loyal to our community without giving up loyalty to our province, state or region. We can be loyal to our region and feel at one with an entire culture, and even with the human family as a whole.”

Half Dome, Yosemite National Park, viewed from Snow Creek.

Our Earth flag is well and good, but the best flag is a mere human invention. When I think about the planet, a flag is not the first thing that comes to mind. What first comes to mind is Earth’s stunning beauty. The briefest account of it echoes the cadences of the Book of Job: “Have you seen the snowy crown of Mt. Fujiyama flushed with the rose of dawn, or descended the banded ancientry of the Grand Canyon? Has the Amazon revealed its sultry wonders to you, or have you glided on Lake Titicaca’s cerulean waters? Cliffs of ice crash into the sea on Alaska’s coastline, and mists enshroud the rainforests of Maui’s Haleakala. Declare, if you have seen all this.”

Here in humble Contra Costa County, California we’re fortunate to see quite a lot: spacious skies above the San Joaquin River, amber waves of wild grasses undulating along the Vaqueros hills, the purple majesty at sunrise of a mountain called Diablo. And in summer, as we celebrate the fruited plain of fields, orchards and vineyards, it’s inarguable that God has shed his grace on us. If we could only crown our good with brotherhood, we’d have a nation for the ages.

A three-hour drive east of Contra Costa puts you in a place called Yosemite Valley, its soaring walls of granite unchanged for 14,000 years – 8,000 years before the first Native American set eyes on them; 14,000, rounded off, before the United States of America came into existence. Yosemite belongs to the people of Earth. If that seems overly generous, take heart: the Great Barrier Reef, the fjords of Scandinavia and the lava caves of Jeju belong to the people of Earth, too.

In my wanderings at Yosemite I’ve crossed paths with, chatted with and snapped photos of as many foreigners as Americans. Like me, they all crane their necks, rotate a slow 360 and say “Wow” in their native tongues.

At those moments we affirm our unity as citizens of the planet, and Earth’s flag – as yet unsewn, its azure orb swirled by clouds and dappled by continents, sailing on the black ocean of the cosmos – as an object worthy of reverence. Maybe even an anthem.

June 20, 2024

A gopher snake is roused from its morning drowse on Murchio Road, Mt. Diablo State Park.

Spring sheds its skin

Summer swooped into Contra Costa on dragon wings, withering the final wildflowers on wilderness hills, evaporating the last pools stagnating in creek beds. Solstice. The Sun would rise early and set late. The weekend forecast called for the Fahrenheit to hit 104.

I fell asleep as the crescent Moon sank into the west like a dewdrop bending a blade of prairie grass. When I awoke at 3 a.m. the Moon was gone, but so was the heat. I stepped outside. High in the southwest burned the stars of Aquila the Eagle like campfires in a canyon cut by the river of our Milky Way galaxy. The molten gold pendant of Venus hung low in the east; blue-white Jupiter led his retinue of moons west toward Mt. Diablo.

I crossed the mountain’s northern boundary at 4:44, 64 minutes before sunrise. The eastern horizon was dark and the air still. I shot a glance at the Diablo Summit, three miles south, and caught the blur of a darting bat snatching insects. Its work was almost done; mine was beginning. I cut southwest toward Back Creek Canyon and the black silhouette of Eagle Peak.

At the threshold of Eagle’s sweaty switchbacks I shed the skin of my long-sleeved layer. As I escaped the forest of Coulter pine and gained altitude, the subtlest gradations of blue were staining a porous sky low in the east. The threat of sunrise drove me up the slope into warm air falling from the peak like mist from a waterfall. Only 5:15 and things were heating up.

The day before, I’d surfed into a Kinks tune on the radio: “Girl – I want – to be with you – all of the time – all day – and all of the night” and as hard as I tried, couldn’t get it out of my head. Now, hauling my butt up the peak’s razor ridge, I swung with it: stone-age rock stomped in sync to the thwack of boots striking the rocky trail. When assaulting Eagle Peak, you exploit whatever aid to propulsion occurs to you.

At the apex, 2,369 feet above sea level, stands a wedge of rock in preternatural isolation, a Stonehenge of one. It has felt the solstice Sun strike it for centuries of centuries as our planet carves its helix onto the marbled cosmos. That morning was no different, except for the presence of human eyes to see it. “Beauty and grace are performed whether or not we will or sense them,” wrote Annie Dillard. “The least we can do is try to be there.” So I stood there, absorbing the miracle of dawn on the rock, night in the canyon below, and the silent glint of dragonflies trawling the peak’s rising warmth.

Morning on Eagle Peak, where the foreground rock mimics the trapezoidal shape of the entire peak. In the distance, Mitchell Canyon Road snakes up toward Deer Flat.

On the return, in the cool air of Back Creek Canyon, I crossed paths with hikers headed to the mountain’s hot heights, and was tempted to warn them of the ordeal to come. The time was 8:15 and the mercury was pushing 90. But some lessons need to be learned first-hand. “Enjoy the climb,” I chimed in gravity-assisted affability.

As the canyon tapered into the open gold of grassland, a shape on the trail’s shoulder caught my eye – at the last moment – and I slammed to a stop, kicking dust in the creature’s face. It was a gopher snake and it wasn’t budging; I’d caught it in the drowse of its morning warming ritual. But something else was going on. During the night the snake had shed its skin, and its tender scales were glistening, hardening in the swelling sizzle of sunrise.

The snake wasn’t alone. I’d watched Contra Costa shed its skin that morning: shed spring for summer; night for the hissing heat of dawn. I’d caught a glimpse of Earth’s essence: transition. Like the organisms inhabiting it, the planet is always in the process of becoming something else.

The shimmering zigzag lay motionless, watching me, its tongue tasting me in the air. Earth was falling toward autumn now; scorching summer was in ascent. Nothing was standing still, not even the snake and I, hurtling as we were around our planet’s axis, around our star, around our galaxy.

As if in a dream I shed my last damp layer, felt it slither against my glistening skin, felt the scales of my cells harden in the hot air. And at that moment I couldn’t shake the thought: Had I just dreamed I was a snake, and awakened to wonder: Am I a snake dreaming that I’m a man?

After all, it was summer, the season of long heat and short sleep. Many would dream strange dreams.

June 5, 2024

Poison oak begins leafing out on the shoulder of Middle Trail, Mt. Diablo State Park.

Stay off the shoulder

For us who savor the colors and aromas of spring, the lure of the trail is irresistible. A word about those trails: stay on them. Beneath the genial façade of all this blooming and burgeoning, organisms other than wildflowers are unfurling. Alongside the purple of lupine and the scarlet of paintbrush, something nasty is emerging in crimson: poison oak.

Toxicodendron diversilobum, the poison oak shrub, is scattered throughout California’s most attractive scenery. The pesky plant isn’t unattractive in its own right, especially in spring, when its leaves burst forth in glossy gradations of crimson, and in autumn, when they acquire a rusty hue. But its beauty – and menace – is skin deep.

Poison oak isn’t a member of the oak family, but its lobed leaves resemble those of the oak tree. Its stems put out leaves in clusters of three, and in summer and autumn the female plants sprout tiny ivory-colored fruits. The time-honored jingle is worth remembering: “Leaves of three, let it be; berries white, poisonous sight.”

What makes poison oak so hazardous to our health is the toxic oil coursing through the resin canals of its roots, stems, leaves and flowers. It’s called urushiol, and it’s strictly weapons grade. An amount covering the head of a pin is all that’s needed to cause a skin rash on 500 people. A mere quarter ounce of it could raise a rash on every person on the planet. And like nuclear waste, urushiol preserves its punch. Specimens of it several centuries old have produced rashes on sensitive people.

The allergic reaction caused by poison oak’s industrial-strength resin is a “cell-mediated immune response.” Does your immune system fire on all cylinders? Then you definitely want to stay out of poison oak’s way. When the urushiol residue on your skin penetrates the epidermal layer and attaches to proteins of deeper skin cell membranes, the attachment triggers an alarm that alerts your T-cells. Look out.

T-cells are the security guards of your circulatory system. They check membrane surfaces for unauthorized personnel, such as viruses, with utmost proficiency. Problem is, when they identify an intruder, those mild-mannered security guards become an army of Terminators. The T-cells go berserk, blasting the urushiol attached to the cell membrane – and everything in the vicinity. This collateral damage produces the blistering rash we know and loathe. Worse yet, the “peak misery” (yes, a technical term) of the response might not appear for days or weeks.

Should you accidentally sideswipe a poison oak plant, the first thing to do is wash the contaminated area thoroughly, some experts say within the first 10 minutes. (Urushiol can’t be rubbed off. Rubbing might work it only deeper into your skin.) Problem is, no trail I’ve ever hiked is equipped with resin-removing soap stations every half mile. If the poison oak allergen has penetrated your epidermal layer, washing won’t help. But if you want to take a shot at washing, consider using an organic solvent such as rubbing alcohol or the cleanser called Tecnu.

Tantalizing but toxic, poison oak flaunts its glossy glory on Canyon View Trail, Sunol Regional Wilderness.

Your skin isn’t the only thing that’ll need washing. Shoes, socks, backpack, all your clothing – wash them thoroughly or throw them away. They’ll recontaminate you if you don’t. But be consoled: the poison oak allergen can’t be spread through blister fluids. After thorough washing, you won’t be contaminating anyone else.

After those rashes and blisters develop, a product called Zanfel might be called for. It claims to attack the urushiol at any stage of development. I’ve found Zanfel helpful in dealing with my own outbreaks. As proactive measures, products such as StokoGard Outdoor Cream can be applied before the hike.

Should you run afoul of poison oak, be prepared to ride out the storm. Outbreaks ranging from mild to moderate can last 16 to 18 days. If you feel your case might be severe, get your rash to a doctor. Poison oak is no joke.

The temptation to wander into off-trail wonders can be strong. If you’re wise, you’ll resist scratching that itch. Succumb to the temptation and another itch awaits, one you’ll be scratching for a long time.

May 6, 2024

Yosemite space measured in time

Half Dome, rising 4,800 feet above the valley floor, viewed from Mirror Lake.

The same sunlight that awakens the hollows of the Diablo foothills awakens Yosemite Valley. That’s where the comparison ends. There is no ordinary light here; no ordinary marking of time and space. You feel it most acutely at dawn and dusk: granite walls thousands of feet tall rim the east and west. Sunlight strikes the valley floor late and departs early. Get close to those walls and you must look way up to see the sky.

The last morning star had been washed from the east long before Chris and I rolled into Yosemite Valley for our climb to Vernal and Nevada falls. The Sun was up, but something was blocking it from view, something rising 4,800 feet above the valley floor: the stone fortress called Half Dome, its sheer face stained in blue-grey shadow. No wind shredded the morning stillness.

As we approached the bridge spanning the Merced River at Happy Isles, the stillness was dispelled by a slow crescendo of rushing water and chit-chat of the day’s first hikers headed east to Mirror Lake and south to the Mist Trail. The scavenging bears had retreated from parking lots and campsites and were headed for the sanctuary of Tenaya Canyon and the trees below Ribbon Fall, far from the distressing two-legged creatures.

As we hoisted ourselves up the trail skirting the Merced’s perpetual thunder, I was struck by how Yosemite puts large matters into perspective. The scale of this place is measured not only in space – in the loft and mass of its granite and daring plummet of its water. It’s measured not only in the canyon-carving force of the mighty Merced. The scale of this place is measured in time: 15 million years ago the river was a mere creek zigzagging through a shallow valley half its present elevation. As 10 million years passed, the Sierra’s stone backbone drove upward and the river engraved a V-shaped valley. Half Dome rose to 5,000 of its present 8,800-foot mark.

Crepuscular rays shred a rainbow above the Mist Trail.

In the chill of dawn, as the shadow of the valley’s south walls rappelled down the north walls across a mile of space, I tried to visualize the next chapter of Yosemite’s tale. A million and a half years ago, a river of ice filled this valley to the brim. Millennia unfolded and the glacier retreated, scooping a U-shaped valley, sculpting the battleship prow and pilothouse of Washington Column and North Dome, chiseled a slit into Yosemite Point that would become the spout of the tallest waterfall on the continent.

I closed my eyes and fast-forwarded to 12,000 B.C., to a Yosemite I’d still not recognize. Half Dome had grinded skyward to its present level, but the valley was deep underwater. And I was standing on the residue of the silt that filled the bottom of that lake: the valley floor of the 21st century.

My existence had been put in perspective, but so had Yosemite’s. Sure, I’d lived a paltry 66 years of the valley’s 15 million years on Planet Earth. A wisp. But wasn’t Yosemite’s paltry 15 million of Earth’s 4½ billion a wisp? I came to the Vernal Bridge and watched the river, like time, race beneath my feet – like time, inch beneath my feet.

But Earth was rotating beneath Sun; day was in relentless ascent. Pressed for time, we hadn’t the luxury of meditating on the nature of Time. If you target Yosemite’s Mist Trail in May – waterfall prime time – you start early.

We struck upward and eastward where far above, on the fall’s rim, the risen Sun glared through gaps in the silhouette of redwoods. Only a handful of hikers, some bound for Half Dome’s famed perch, joined the ascent.

When we reached the trail’s first granite stair, it was clear that the winter-spring of 2015-16 had unleashed a beast. Heavy snow had become heavy water in these high places of the world. Droplets had converged with trickles; trickles with rivulets; rivulets with streams; streams with creeks; creeks with rivers in a crescendo of mass and momentum. The Merced was set on full boil.

It was my fifth trip up the Mist Trail, a mile and a quarter of tall, steep and slippery steps to Vernal Fall; 2 miles more to Nevada Fall. Now, in 2016, Chris and I watched in awe as the Sierra’s winter melt rocketed down the riverbed, ricocheted off boulders like sparks in a foundry, fumed like steam off a kettle. The Mist Trail had morphed into the Suffocating Torrential Downpour Trail. We donned our ponchos. This climb was idiotic enough to be really appealing.

The Merced River roils below Vernal Fall.

Like kids in a splash park we giggled and groaned our way to the sun-dried sanctuary of the top. Along the way, rainbows exploded through sheets of wind-whipped spray. Below Vernal’s broad launching ramp the fall was barely visible through the monsoon of moisture; my thoughts barely audible through the barrage of water – tons per second – slamming onto the rocks below.

It wasn’t till later that day atop Glacier Point, as we gazed far down across Illilouette Gorge to the falls we’d climbed, that we came full circle. From stillness to stillness. The voice of the river of time had fallen to a whisper. I sat on the warm granite 3,200 feet above the valley floor and closed my eyes; felt the past and future fall off me like a garment. I existed in the naked now, the now of rock and water and the consciousness to know them.

I opened my eyes and time flooded back into the cosmos. Another world was calling, a world of obligations, deadlines, the tick of clocks. But a world of memories – good ones. We gave the valley, spread beneath us like a banquet table, one last taste.

March 31, 2024

Blasted by Easter starlight

Easter sunrise at Round Valley Regional Preserve. April 12, 2009.

Glory must begin in gloom. Easter expresses the principle, and one Easter in particular epitomized it.

April 12, 2009: I stood on the topmost hill of Round Valley Regional Preserve 90 minutes before sunrise. The climb imposed a welcome hardship: you can’t feel cold when you’re scaling 1,000 vertical feet in 1⅓ miles, circulation raging. But after reaching the top and cooling down I realized I’d underdressed; a stiff northwest wind got me shivering.

The boulders scattered across my summit sanctuary aren’t tall. I had no choice but to shelter against a phalanx of boulders by squatting on dirt, hunched over as crowbars of wind tried to pry my hat loose. I poured coffee from thermos to cup with shaking hands, saw on the liquid’s surface the wind-rippled reflection of a waning gibbous Moon in the west.

The glory began in gloom. Dawn began as a brushstroke of blue low in the east: ultramarine splitting the charcoal of earth and sky. The line spread slowly north and south like a tide flooding opposing shorelines; its center inflated to a shallow arch. The backlit silhouette of the Sierra Nevada Range, 100 miles distant, came into focus. High in the southwest, the sear of Luna’s disc softened, exposing the dark dappling of Mare Imbrium and Oceanus Procellarum. Directly above, Altair and Vega lost their luster. The cosmos began disappearing behind the silken veil of dawn.

Eastward, despite the wind, something like music was being played. The minor key of blue was modulating seamlessly, tempo largo, into the major keys of gold into bronze into copper. The horizon began to burn. That once-shallow arch swelled, forming a dome of blue played pianissimo, in my mind’s ear, by violins, flutes and oboes in their highest registers. Gazing into the darkness below, I imagined contrabassoons and double basses giving voice to stone and soil.

Then it happened: that moment, midway through the pageant of dawn, when you sense a shift in the balance of light. Measured from the first faint color in the east to the first flare of Sun atop the distant peaks – in clear air, an 80-minute crescendo – the moment came when my Moon shadow finally dissolved and my impending-sunrise shadow, cast westward, began blackening against the boulders.

I stood up and turned to view the gloom behind me. Barely visible through eight miles of atmosphere west between me and Mt. Diablo, a plume of marine fog drifted between the foothills and the mountain’s crown. The air was bitterly clear; no trace of cloud scarred the sky. Gusts of wind sent me hunkering back against the boulders.

I’d made this pre-dawn hike before and become accustomed to predictable intensities of light as dawn unfolds. But Easter of 2009 was different. Behind the mountains, the top of a small, glowing fan took shape, herald of the Sun’s corona. The alchemy of atmosphere had transmuted bronze and copper to gold. No strata of heavy air lounging on the horizon would stain today’s Sun in red; no blood of crucifixion would haunt the vision. I braced myself.

The Sun has been present every day of our lives, every day of the 4½-billion-year life of planet Earth. Rarely do we give our daystar a conscious thought. We don’t contemplate that star; we contemplate things lit by that star. But at 6:34 a.m. on April 12 of 2009 that star was impossible to ignore. It rose without warning in jets of dark gold flaring through a gap in the sawtooth Sierra, as if a volcano had erupted. It cleared the mountains naked and hot. I stood up, faced east and stretched my arms wide. The wind on my hilltop blew as viciously as before but its bite was gone. In a few minutes the landscape was as bright as at noon. Blasted by starlight.

Easter doesn’t belong to one religion. Easter is the expression of a world we all desire: a world where darkness is obliterated by light, where wounds are healed and suffering is overwhelmed by joy. Where death is defeated by resurrection. Easter is the glory of spring: deliverance from winter. And Easter is the glory of morning: deliverance from night.

Sunrise at Round Valley. September 1, 2013.

In the 15 years since that morning I’ve witnessed many sunrises from high places. On some mornings, sheets of tilted cirrus shimmer like a crimson mirror; on others, clouds in grotesque shapes at multiple levels bewilder the eye, slash the sky in violet and black and ivory. On some mornings the Sun struggles upward behind banks of purple-grey hugging the horizon. A mundane hour passes before shafts of light suddenly explode high overhead.

Humans, despite our best efforts, are night creatures. “We have come from the dark wood of the past, and our bodies carry the scars and unhealed wounds of that transition,” wrote Loren Eiseley. “Our minds are haunted by night terrors that arise from the subterranean domain of racial and private memories. … We imagine we are day creatures, but we grope in a lawless and smoky realm toward an exit that eludes us. We appear to know instinctively that such an exit exists.”

Trust your instinct. That exit is morning; it’s spring. That exit is the glory of Easter.

March 19, 2024

The Merced River below Vernal Fall, Yosemite National Park.

When rivers run wild

The San Joaquin River slips past Antioch with the stealth of a mother past her sleeping child’s bedroom door. Beneath the grey surface where bass boats hover, the current is slow. A breeze raises ridges like wrinkles on a bed sheet, not high enough along the bank to hinder a heron’s solemn search for dinner.

But the river is not what it seems. Far upstream in the high places of the world it’s a different parent: a stepmother out of mythology, majestic and terrible.

In those high places the river is renewed in a million moments at once, when single drops of melted snow merge with others to form steep trickles that meander down to junctions with other trickles. They find their way to concave avenues like bowling balls find gutters. In a reverse delta spanning mountains, ten thousand rivulets reduce to a thousand streams reduce to a hundred creeks reduce to a dozen rivers reduce to one.

Trace the San Joaquin upstream from Contra Costa County and you take a snaking journey southeast for more than a hundred miles through Central Valley before hooking east toward Fresno and up into Sierra National Forest. Halfway up that journey, 25 miles south of Modesto, the river is joined by one of its tributaries. Follow that tributary upstream to an elevation of 4,000 feet and you find a valley enclosed by soaring walls of granite plumed with waterfalls and streaked by tumbling creeks.

The tributary is called Merced. The valley is known as Yosemite. It’s here that the Sierra’s winter melt is most vividly dramatized.

The Merced’s tributaries are unlike any other: two of the world’s 10 tallest waterfalls – Sentinel and Yosemite, the latter being the tallest in North America – and their retinue, no less magnificent, with names like Bridalveil, Ribbon, Illilouette, Vernal, Nevada and Snow Creek. Right now they’re not so much waterfalls as water cannons. Today, March 19, the Merced discharge at Yosemite’s Pohono Bridge was clocked at 481 cubic feet per second. Toe-dipping not recommended.

In 1806, an expedition led by Gabriel Moraga came upon a river after a long, hot and dusty journey. To express his gratitude, Moraga named the river El Rio de Nuestra Señora de la Merced – River of Our Lady of Mercy. In the spring of 2024, there’s nothing merciful about the Merced. If our snowborn rivers are awe-inspiring, they’re also deadly.

On July 19, 2011, 21-year-old Ramina Badal of Manteca, 22-year-old Hormiz David of Modesto and 27-year-old Ninos Yacoub of Turlock climbed Yosemite’s Mist Trail to the rim of Vernal Fall. Witnesses reported that Badal, in an attempt to get her picture taken against the spectacular backdrop, hopped the guardrail and entered the shallow but swift water at the river’s edge. Several hikers at the scene yelled out warnings. To their horror they watched Badal lose her footing and get pulled by the current toward Vernal’s broad launching ramp. David and Yacoub rushed over the guardrail but were too late to save her – or themselves. All three were swept over the crest, fell 317 feet shrouded in a frigid curtain of cataract, and slammed onto the boulders at Vernal’s base.

The Merced River and Cathedral Spires, Yosemite National Park.

You needn’t pull a crazy stunt to be claimed by the river. Recreational boaters, skiers, swimmers, campers and hikers – all minding their own business – can be vulnerable to a sudden infusion of cold, fast and heavy water. A river suffused with winter melt is more than a match for the human body. The shock of icy water and grip of hypothermia rob the body of strength and muscle coordination. The mind becomes confused and panic sets in. Aiding and abetting in the assault are the river’s heavy volume and powerful currents, which can carry a victim miles downstream before rescue can be attempted.

In May of 2006, the Truckee River was flowing at four times its volume of the previous year. On May 1, 20-year-old Edward Wilt of Sun Valley and three friends waded to a small island along the Truckee near Painted Rock east of Reno. From there, Wilt and one of his friends jumped into the river, apparently for the fun of it. His friend made it out. Wilt’s remains were found three weeks later near Wadsworth.

It was May 21, 2006, a day before Wilt’s body was hauled out of the Truckee. I was at the source, standing on the edge of a rock as big as a room overhanging the Merced in Yosemite Valley, just west of Pohono Bridge. Tons of river per second thundered past. Sensing Merced’s mass reach out and drag me toward it like a maelstrom drags a doomed ship into its vortex, I got low fast, cross-legged, desperate to drop my center of gravity and dispel the fantasy of falling.

The river was a different creature out of mythology that day: not an angry stepmother but a beast trapped in the cage of its banks, infuriated by my lack of respect, leaping at me and slamming against my granite perch. Two feet to my right the rock dropped away a mere 10 feet to the water. In Yosemite, you can fall to your death from impressive elevations. All I needed was 10 feet.

It was a memorable day; should I fall, the Merced’s biting embrace would be my last memory. I hoisted myself onto all fours and crabbed my way to the middle of the rock. The river, catching the scent of other prey, snarled on by.

June 19, 2021

The summer Sun rises above the Sierra Nevada Range. Viewed from Morgan Territory Regional Preserve.

Day of longest light

I come here for the magic. I come to watch the eastern horizon, solid black, get blistered by a shallow dome of blue. Over a span of 80 minutes the dome swells and pales – blue to barn red to burnt amber. From this topmost hill of Round Valley I look east across Central Valley to the Sierra Nevada Range, 100 miles distant, and watch the pageant unfold.

The pageant climaxes in the sudden appearance of the star of the show. Before then, the horizon merely glows. When the Sun breaks the dark ripple of the mountains, it glares, sets the landscape aflame.

I awaken early to witness these things. In summer, extremely early. Sunday, the earliest. At my point on the planet, the Sun rises Sunday at 5:44 and sets at 8:32: the day of longest light. Sunday at 8:31 p.m. PDT the northern hemisphere of planet Earth achieves its maximum tilt toward the light: the summer solstice.

The word “solstice” comes from the Latin “Sun stands still.” In reality, nothing in our universe stands still. At our Bay Area latitude we’re whirling around Earth’s axis at more than 700 feet per second. As riders on the planet we’re clocking in at 19 miles per second in orbit around our Sun. And our Sun is dragging us on its scorching course around our Milky Way galaxy’s nucleus at more than 150 miles per second. When we claim the Sun stands still, what do we mean?

If you’re an early riser, you’ve noticed over the course of the year that the sky begins to flood with light in a different region of the horizon in summer than in winter. The corona of dawn swells behind points of reference (a tree, the chimney of your neighbor’s house, a lamp post) to the southeast in winter and points of reference to the northeast in summer. Every day of the year, the Sun breaks the horizon at a different position along a line from southeast to northeast – with two exceptions: the summer and winter solstices. Beginning today, the Sun will break the northeast horizon at the same position for four consecutive mornings. From our perspective (of the Sun’s rising position along the horizon), it will appear to be standing still.

The angle of mid-June sunrise accentuates the canyons carved in the face of Mt. Diablo’s North Peak. Viewed from Round Valley Regional Preserve.

If our Bay Area solstice’s 14 hours and 48 minutes of daylight calls for a party, imagine the blowout up north. Tonight at the stroke of 12 along the Arctic Circle (66.5° north of the equator) the Sun, having already put in a full day’s work, will skim the northern horizon like a pelican in search of a midnight snack. Then, instead of taking the plunge it’ll engage its takeoff flaps and begin a brightening ascent into the east. Perpetual day.

Folks along the Antarctic Circle (66.5° south of the equator) will see a different spectacle. Tomorrow around noon, following a morning of muted light, the sky along the northern horizon will pale with the broken promise of sunrise. The sky will pale but the light fail; short dusk surrendering to long night. If in winter you tend to sing the light-deprivation blues, if you’re vulnerable to SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder), you might want to skip the trip to Ross Ice Shelf this time of year.

Whatever our attitude toward latitude, one thing we agree on – people of all cultures agree on – is that the seasons should be celebrated. The impact on our senses of the transition from spring to summer, cool to hot (and in California, green to golden) should be celebrated. Spring emits a liquid glow, which summer’s sear desiccates. The onset of autumn, its chill air and long midday shadows, resonates in our bones like the toll of a cathedral bell. By winter the leafless skeletons of trees remind us of our mortality. These large movements, dictated by the axial tilt of our planet, and the sensation of awe and wonder they provoke, should be celebrated.

But I confess: I’m addicted to hiking at night, which makes summer my least favorite season. Whether the hike begins pre-sunset or pre-sunrise, I’m forced to hit the trail in summer later or earlier than I prefer: I return home long after midnight or roll out of bed at 2:45. I celebrate tomorrow’s summer solstice grudgingly.

And then I remember the magic – and set my alarm for 2:45.

August 16, 2016

Beneath the surface of surf

At Pescadero Beach, a plunging breaker crashes against the rocks.

Californians are notorious for making waves. From flaunting alternative lifestyles on Castro Street to enthroning stars of the silver screen in Sacramento, we love to soak the unsuspecting body politic in the spray of our cultural cannonballs.

Maybe we’re taking the cue from the ultimate wave maker, a certain large body of water to our west. Year-round, along 840 miles of coastline, we get to see and smell the swell and scent of the mighty Pacific Ocean; get to hear waves, like breath, exhale onto the shore and inhale back to the dark lungs of the deep. And once in a while, tide and wind conspire to create that paragon of fluid physics: the plunging breaker.

But what exactly is going on there? Why does a wave plunge? What physical forces produce the aesthetic event? And as a bonus puzzler: why do waves always roll in parallel to the shoreline?

To understand the inner workings of a wave, hold your breath; we’re taking it underwater. A wave isn’t primarily the movement of the surface of the water but the collective motion of water beneath the surface. If you’ve ever thrown a small piece of driftwood – or uncooperative Frisbee – onto a gentle incoming wave, you’ve seen this principle in action. The floating object rides up the wave crest’s leading edge and down its trailing edge with a slight forward, then backward motion. For its part, the wave rambles on toward the shore, leaving the object to bob atop the next incoming wave. In short, the wave moves toward the shore while the water on the surface moves up and down.

Boogie boarders test their mettle at Stinson Beach.

So what’s going on beneath the surface? Circular motion, that’s what. Once a wave gets organized out at sea, it resembles a long cylinder, like a roll of carpet in a warehouse. (The wave is actually a series of many rolls stacked on top of each other, decreasing in size the deeper they go.) A surfboarder knows this better than anyone. A breaking wave’s topmost roll forms the large tunnel along which the lucky surfer skims. When we say that waves “roll in” we’re speaking more than figuratively.

At a certain point in its tumble toward the shore, the deep water wave runs up against the ocean bottom, which causes two things to happen. First, as the wave brushes the bottom it’s pushed upward and its crest steepens. This causes the water at the crest to speed up. When the speed of the crest outruns the speed of the overall wave that supports it, the crest collapses as a plunging breaker. Imagine a slapstick comedian leaning nonchalantly on a cane. Someone sneaks up behind him and kicks away the cane, making him crash to the ground.

Parallel waves march in at sunset along the California coast.

The ocean bottom is also the culprit in our second cause of a wave’s collapse. When the water through which the wave spins becomes too shallow to allow the wave to complete a full rotation (that is, to get filled in with supporting water), the cane again gets kicked away and the wave falls on its face. But what a fall. If you’ve ever seen that translucent curved curtain strike a rocky cliff at the optimal gathering of energy, you’ll never forget it.

Finally, what explains the tendency of waves to approach the shoreline in parallel formation, like a well-disciplined marching band? Well, consider the marching band. That long, rolling cylinder zeroes in on the shoreline at, say, a 45-degree angle. One side of the cylinder’s length will feel the bottom first. Friction slows down that side, while the side out in deep water spirals along at its original clip. Like a marching band executing a wheel, the faster deep-water side rotates around the hinge of the slower shallow-water side till voilà! The wave marches home perfectly perpendicular to the shoreline.

Here’s wishing you a memorable escape at the coast, where breakers plunge and waves wheel – and your knowledge of the inner workings of these marvels makes them more dramatic.

December 14, 2015

Winter – gnawing the marrow

Devil's Peak, Royal Gorge, elevation 7,074'.

Winter couldn’t wait. A week short of the solstice, a snowstorm swept through the granite spine of the Sierra Nevada Range. Bear Valley registered 30 inches in the last 48 hours. The calendar belies it; the imagery clarifies it: black bears and big-leaf oaks lie dormant. Fangs of ice hang from the lips of cliffs and carpets of white weigh precariously on windward mountainsides. Winter is here.

For us west of Central Valley, the fee exacted for eight months of dry skies is four months of rain. No sub-zero temperatures crack our water pipes, no blizzards send our cars careening into ditches. Winter in the Bay Area: If this is as bad as it gets, we’ve got it good.

We Bay Area folk might wish our winters were more severe. According to Garrison Keillor, chronicler of Minnesota’s imaginary Lake Wobegon, harsh winters produce virtuous people. At the least, communal shivering discourages the vice of self-pity. “Winter is not a personal experience,” writes Keillor. “Everyone else is as cold as you are; so don’t complain about it too much.” And the physical challenges of winter – shoveling sidewalks, jump-starting dead batteries, pushing cars out of snowdrifts – provide ample opportunities for neighborly acts.

The naturalist Barry Lopez echoes Keillor’s take on winter. In his travels with Eskimo hunters, who live “in a world where swift and fatal violence, like ivu, the suddenly leaping shore ice, is inherent in the land,” Lopez was struck by the Eskimos’ acceptance of Nature’s hard knocks. “They have a quality of taking extravagant pleasure in being alive; and delight in finding it in other people.”

In the crucible of winter, our molten frailty hardens into a Promethean shape: resourceful and defiant. We bring down fire from heaven. Fire, in fact, has always been the chief weapon in our war on winter. Harnessing fire allowed us to emerge from the last Ice Age and pursue the woolly mammoth across the Arctic Circle into America. Tens of thousands of years later, the sparks thrown by those modest campfires have set the forest of our civilization ablaze, jumped the fire line and changed the face of the planet.

But there’s a catch. In the words of archaeologist and anthropologist Loren Eiseley, “The sorcerer’s gift of fire in a dark cave has brought us more than a simple kingdom. Like so many magical gifts it has conjured up that which cannot be subdued but henceforth demands unceasing attention lest it destroy us.” This applies not only to the fire of nuclear self-annihilation. Our modern version of primitive tinder and flint – coal, petroleum, natural gas, nuclear fission – might shield us from the ravages of this or that winter. But they cannot prevent the next Ice Age or global warming. They might, of course, bring them on sooner.

Wind-whipped ice razors on the Mt. Diablo summit.

If winter makes us tougher, it can also make us more thoughtful. Thoreau believed that winter promotes a more inward life. Standing on the banks of a frozen river, he imagined the human brain as “the kernel which winter itself matures.” Winter clears the mind’s clutter as it clears leaves from forest branches, giving our intellectual landscape a transparency that allows us to see through things. “The winter,” wrote Thoreau, “is thrown to us like a bone to a famished dog, and we are expected to get the marrow out of it.”

No matter how compassionately winter treats us in 2015-16, it’s clear that Nature has required us to submit to its terms. Be grateful for the challenge. If it’s a pass/fail test, we’ll surely pass. The greater achievement will be to embrace the cold rain and long nights, let them sweep into and through us, and find on the other side of the season a place where the first wildflowers grasp for the growing light, a place that without winter would be far less sweet.