The Reservoir July 16, 2021

One of the many scenic pleasures along the drive to Point Reyes is the Nicasio Reservoir, just north of the hamlet of Nicasio itself. With its shimmering blue water, it is a refreshing contrast to the golden hills of West Marin and a prelude to the Tomales Bay and Pacific Ocean just beyond. But now, the Reservoir has withered to a low point I’ve never seen, exhausted by California’s prolonged drought. 

When the Reservoir was formed about six decades ago, several ranches had been forced to sell their land, and I was intrigued to read that ruins of some of the old structures had resurfaced. Certainly the old road was visible (this happens by August most years), but now vast areas of the shallow reservoir were dry, and walkable. I wanted to explore. 

I invited my friend Kathy to join me, and two weeks ago we parked near the dam, skirted around the fencing, and took a closer look. Initially, we had trouble getting close to the water, as the edge was steep and rocky. We walked along what seemed to be a path, though the grass was high and we were a bit repulsed by the ticks on our legs. Soon, we were able to scoot down along the exposed shoreline to the water’s edge. 

Two layers of reservoir bed were obvious, one for each of the two recent years of draught. The upper stratum had larger and more abundant vegetation, the lower one was just starting to sprout. I later heard these described as “bathtub rings”, an apt metaphor, indeed. 

We kept going, occasionally scrambling over exposed boulders and tree stumps and changing from one stratum to the next to secure the easiest footing. We were entering a section we didn’t even appreciate had existed before, when we encountered rusted old pipes and a raised area that might have initially drawn water from Nicasio Creek before it was dammed. Then came a pileup of broken concrete, what seemed to be the foundation for a barn. 

With a little Googling, Kathy later found an article by our local historian, Dewey Livingston, telling the tale of these sunken ranches. Turns out that we had stumbled upon the remains of the Garzoli Ranch. 

According to Dewey, there were more to be discovered, and my friend Gail was eager to get in on the look-see. This time, we headed to the southern-most edge of the would-be reservoir. Dewey had told me that there was an overrun trail near the Nicasio School, but we had trouble finding the trailhead. We stopped in for help at the Nicasio Valley Cheese Company, and met Dorothy Drady who gave us more detailed directions to the trailhead, as well an alternate approach. We found the trailhead near the school and embarked on the trail, but gave up when we hit overgrowth and poison oak in every direction. 

Plan B was to find a way in somewhere near the West Marin Compost site. Bingo, we were on it. We parked the car near a little bridge and climbed through a barbed wire fence. With a little walking in what seemed to be the right direction, we found a path and continued it over a small hill, down a bushy area, and then there appeared before us the vast Reservoir bed. 

Parts of it were incredibly lush with newly grown tall grasses, still squishy to walk on, while other parts were stone dry, with deep cracks that actually seemed a bit scary (think Indiana Jones and the golden idol). Fortunately the cracks, though deep, were not too wide, so we made good progress. A little bit of research later confirmed that clay riverbed cracks in quadrilaterals (OK, nerd heaven). 

With Dewey’s map in hand, we easily found the charred remains of the Gallagher Ranch at the southern-most end of the Reservoir. Working our way toward the northwest, we found the Tognalda Ranch and then the Tomasini Ranch, with a large extant base of what must have been a barn and a smaller one nearby, likely the creamery. At this point we made it to the water itself, where a squadron of white pelicans was hiding. Had we continued, we would have made it to the Garzoli Ranch. Instead, we tramped back through overgrowth, always seeking out the easiest route, and after scrambling around a bit we found our path back to the car. Gail made the brilliant suggestion of a refreshing beer at Rancho Nicasio, but I declined, eager to get home, check for ticks, and wash myself clean of poison oak residue, as I had accidently walked into a thicket of it. 

I have at least two more sections of the Reservoir to explore, and I am excited about the prospect. Even better, I have two friends who want to join me!

Orion November 15, 2020

Last night I happened to wake up in the wee hours.  My eyes opened to the west, as they usually do here at Pi, to a sight that took my breath away.  Even without my glasses, I had no trouble making out the constellation Orion, perfectly framed as it was by the large square window in my bedroom and perfectly brilliant as it was in the moonless, cloudless sky.  The effect was startling, as though Orion paused in suspension, communing with me, just waiting for the chance that I would take him in.  “Look at what magic passes by while you sleep,” he seemed to be saying.  

I rooted around to find my glasses and walked onto the deck to get an even better view.  By the time I crawled back under the covers, Orion was already out of frame.  How lucky to have witnessed that special moment, when moon, fog, clouds, earth, stars – and even architecture – all conspired to captivate.

The Frost November 9, 2020

This morning I awoke to a pasture covered in frost.  It was our own West Marin winter wonderland.  The temperature outside was 26 degrees, the coldest I can recall.  Time for me, finally, to turn on the heat.

Cinderella November 9, 2020

While wildlife encounters here at Pi offer a near-steady source of wonder, the past few months have been a bit of dry spell metaphorically and physically.   By the end of July, my little bobcat and my large heron had ceased to stop by.  The badgers seem to have finally vacated their long-term squat in my septic system.  June had the first-time sighting of a quail couple, but never any offspring.  No coyotes visited this summer or fall; not even the sound of their howls pierced the night.  

On the other hand, I’ve had a few little mice to keep me company, as it were.  More than just droppings, in fact far too frequent sightings of the critters themselves. One was kind of plump, another very tiny with a bent tail.  They flash by me and disappear so quickly into who-knows-what crevice that I can’t really get to know them.  After failing to redirect them outside with the threat of a terrifying broom, I reluctantly lured them to their doom with old-fashioned Victor traps baited in almond butter.  My friends Kevin and Yang happened to be out here at the peak of their unfortunate extermination, and we three were astonished to catch two small mice in single trap.  

And then there are the birds – not the raptors or the shorebirds – but the little “backyard” birds that flit about my garden and pasture to delight.  Whether it’s real or just my perception, there seem to be many more birds this year than in the past.  Despite owning several local bird guides, I am nearly hopeless when it comes to wrapping my head around their names.  Some I can easily identify, like barn swallows, red-winged blackbirds, robins, goldfinches, and swifts.  But the little guys like sparrows, wrens, vireos and who know what else – they all just blend together in my mind as “little brown and white birds that occasionally sing”.  

The birds seem to take no notice of my ignorance, or at least they don’t begrudge it.  Every day they greet me. In fact, I’m beginning to feel like the Disney version of Cinderella, encircled by affectionate little mice and birds just hoping to play with me.  I knew it was getting bad when I started to envision making little jackets for my mice, as Cinderella did for Gus and Jaq.  Or when I imagine that the birds are really out there to keep me company, to help me with my chores, or even to inspire me to hope with a chorus of “A Dream is a Wish your Heart Makes.”  

Every day, the sunset October 27, 2020

I’ve been living at Pi since June 1, when the Point Reyes National Seashore re-opened its gates to hikers after COVID closures.   Life in the city was cozy enough, but with no job to engage me, no school to attend, and no cultural institutions open to enjoy, there was little to tie me there. 

I arrived, of course, with my cat Pogo, who celebrated his 17th birthday sniffing around the deck and garden, but keeping close by my side.  He was suffering from hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, barely summoning the strength to eat anymore, and he perished two weeks later, as it happened, on my own birthday.

Now, it is just me, joined by the occasional mouse who finds his way into the house or studio, or the friend who stops by for a masked chat or a hike, sometimes for an hour, sometimes for a weekend.  August brought my daughter Annie and her boyfriend’s visit, a COVID risk we were all willing to take and one that joyfully punctured my usual bubble of isolation and loneliness.

But two companions greet me on a daily basis, and though inanimate, they are lively enough to capture my attention.   I refer of course to the sun and the moon, whose quiet predictability – immune to politics, protests, or pandemics – are a balm during this troubling time.  

I keep a lookout for them.  Though their easterly arrival each day (or night, in the case of the moon) is obscured by the tall cypress and eucalyptus lining Route 1, I can track much of their arcs over the broad pasture and witness their descent behind the distant Inverness Ridge to the west. 

The moon, of course, is delightful.  Who cannot fall in love with the sliver of the new moon, the crescents of the first and third quarters, or the luminosity of its fullness? This weekend will be a “blue moon”, the second full moon in the month and timed perfectly to augment the spookiness of Halloween.  

Yet it is the sunset that interests me even more as I write this.  Each evening of these past five months, I have paused on my deck, often with a glass of wine, to witness and to salute the end of day. I’ve been tracking the setting sun, taking mental notes of its point of departure.  At the summer solstice, when the sun follows its northern-most path in the sky, it sank behind an enormous eucalyptus tree at my neighbor’s land.  Each night since then, it dips not only a little earlier, but also a little more southward.  At the fall equinox, it set midway over a large barn, due west, and I made a little mark on my deck to record the position.  Some of these sunsets have been spectacularly colorful, and some, with the fires and the choking smoke, spectacularly scary.

Now the sun continues its southward march, setting a few minutes earlier each day until the winter solstice, when it reaches its inflection point and starts the journey northward.  I plan to be here, glass in hand, to catch it.  

Son et Lumiere August 21, 2020

July was uncharacteristically dreary here, and the NEOWISE comet came and went without a sighting. 

But August brightened up considerably. I was ready for star-gazing and preparing for the Perseids. My friend Yang and her husband happened to be up for a weekend of hiking, and over a “socially distanced” dinner on the deck, a very bright star caught Yang’s eye in the southeast, just as the sky darkened. A google search told us it was Jupiter, with a fainter Saturn just to its lower left.  I checked in with my friend Mike, an astronomy buff who confirmed my suspicion.  He told me to pull out my binoculars and that I should even be able to see a few of Jupiter’s moons.  It was, in a word, amazing! 

Damn if we weren’t channeling Galileo. 

A few days later I geared up for the Perseid meteor shower with another friend, Jeannette.  By 9:30 pm, with planets, constellations and the Milky Way effulgent, a few meteors started to appear.  I lay on the hammock and gazed overhead, letting the occasional streak of light singe a path along my retina.  Greedy for more, I repeated the process in the early morning hours.

By the weekend, the meteors had dissipated and the temperature had soared.  In the wee hours of Sunday morning, I was awaked by the sound of motorcycle speeding up Route 1.  As I tried to settle back into sleep, I notice a soft pink burst of light underneath the cloud cover.  I went out on the deck to look in all directions and concluded that this light show was another gift of the cosmos.  A radar map provided the answer: a thundershower in the Pacific Ocean, off the coast of Santa Cruz.  I crawled back under the covers, watched and waited with anticipation.  Over the course of the next hour, the sky lit up brilliantly and let loose with the longest riff of thunder I had ever heard.  Spectacular.

But also, devastating.  The lightening show that rocked the Bay Area that night also ignited dozens of small fires, now enormous and terrifying, encroaching on communities and exhausting firefighters.  A subsequent burst of lightening on Tuesday brought a fire to the Point Reyes National Seashore, near the Woodward trail.  I spent a restless night, signing up for various alerts, seeking out information, and offering to help at the evacuation center being set up at the West Marin Elementary School down the street.  It was difficult to sleep that night, and the subsequent nights, knowing that a fire was raging just a few miles from me and that a gust of wind carrying an ember could easily set a field ablaze. 

Yesterday brought new sights and sounds – of airplanes and helicopters as they head for the fire.  We humans like to think we are in control, and climate change has made clear that our power is indeed tremendous.  But when I witness the meteors, the planets, the stars, the lightening, even the fires, I am grateful that there are forces so much bigger than us, forces that will continue to be here forever. How long will we still be here to revel in them?

The calf and the coyote August 14, 2020

As my friend Jeannette and I started up the grassy Bolinas Ridge Trail from Sir Francis Drake Boulevard, we encountered a calf, attached to its mother and nursing right on our path.  We paused so as not to disturb the duo, and while waiting we spotted a coyote, who was also concentrating on the calf.  The mother noticed the coyote too, and there ensued a three-way standoff.  One could almost sense the coyote salivating, but the formidable presence of the mother gave him pause.  Eventually the calf and the mother joined their bovine cohort, the disgruntled coyote moved on to seek easier prey, and Jeannette and I continued on our walk. 

The Newspaper July 20, 2020

Phase 3 in my attempt to feel like a real resident here (after the acquisition of a mailbox and the installation of the internet) was to get home delivery of the New York Times.  I called to initiate a temporary change of address for my subscription, but once again my initiative was thwarted by the slippery nature of my address. Highway 1 (the Post Office version) didn’t ring a bell, nor did State Route 1 (the ATT version), so I had to resort to one of the other three options.  Ding ding ding – the New York Times managed to pull “Shoreline Highway” up in its system, and in theory, I was good to go.

But last Monday, when the change of address was to have been activated, no paper appeared in my driveway.  I called the NYT to let them know that delivery was likely having a problem.  When the paper didn’t show up again on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, I repeated the process.  Each time a new note was added for the delivery log, including my phone number to sort this out with me directly, and each time the note, allegedly, went higher up in the system, so that perhaps the problem might be noticed and resolved by a supervisor.

On Friday morning, the familial blue plastic-wrapped lump appeared in my driveway, and I greeted it with the warmth I’d lay on an old friend.  So happy to see you!  Sorry the trip was so arduous.  Now let’s sit down and have a cup of coffee and catch up.

How Hard Can It Be? June 25, 2020

It is, after all, the 21^st Century, and this is the great state of California.  One expects that US mail can be delivered and that internet access lies within the realm of possibility.

Yet for a newcomer like myself in the hamlet of Point Reyes Station, which is literally falling off the edge of North America onto the Pacific Plate, establishing either a snail or electronic connection seems incomprehensibly complicated.

A few years ago, I decided to get a box at the local Post Office and was able to do so by producing my property-tax stub.  I got a very sturdy key to a rather puny metal box numbered 1213, and I asked a few people to try sending me something there. Though one birthday card managed to slip through, other mail was returned to sender.  The problem apparently was that I could not use “Route 1” as my street address.  It had to be “Highway 1”.  Also, I was then told, do not even think of putting the words “PO Box” on the address, especially for packages.  Just append #1213 and stuff will be delivered.

Highway 1, #1213 found its way into my address, and I finally started to receive letters and packages.  With the mail problem seemingly solved, I turned my attention to procuring WIFI.  Readers will know that I’ve been off the information grid since the inception of Pi, fifteen years ago.  No landline, no cable TV, no internet, no cellphone service.  But now that I’ve been contemplating moving to Point Reyes permanently, and especially with COVID isolation, I thought it was about time to get internet and to enable WIFI calling.

In my first effort to get connected, I contacted our local (and, in fact, only) cable service provider, Horizon.  I knew my house had been wired for cable when it was built, so I figured this would be an easy fix.  So close!  I walked into the Horizon office on Mesa Street, set up an appointment for the technician to inspect and install the following day.  The good news: cable is indeed wired in the house; the bad news: there was no connection from the house to the service line in the street.  This meant that I would have to hire someone to dig a trench and install the line; the estimate proved to be $1400.  (I should mention that the sweet technician retrieved my cat from the crawl space under the guest studio, so the visit wasn't a complete bust.)

But the cable technician also confirmed that a phone line, also installed during construction, was indeed connected to the trunk line at the street.  So Plan B: the phone line. I knew that some of my neighbors used ATT U-verse for their internet service and that it worked well.

However, upon inquiry, multiple ATT agents told me that service to my home was impossible.  It took about a dozen phone calls over as many months, to discover the problem.  While the Post Office insisted on Highway 1 as my address, ATT did not recognize Highway 1.  It didn’t recognize Route 1 either. But with State Route 1, bingo, we had a hit. (Note that I hadn’t even considered a fourth possibility, CA1, or a fifth, Shoreline Highway, which is what is used on the street sign!)

I put in an order for a U-verse hookup, but was informed that no one could come out to the house to install because of COVID.  Instead, they would send me the modem and I can just plug it in and of course it will work. 

You can see where this is headed.  I needed to get the modem delivered to the Post Office, and I made it clear to ATT that the modem must be delivered to Highway 1 (not State Route 1) and that is must contain the addition of #1213.  Well, of course, that instruction was ignored, the package was labeled State Route 1, and it was never delivered.  In fact, this happened three times over a period of two weeks, despite their assurances of "Yes, I will take care of this for you" and "Yes, yes, we have the correct shipping address."

Fortunately, the third package was sent by Fedex, and ATT emailed me a tracking number. I even managed to speak with a Fedex agent, but discovered that I had to be the sender rather than the receiver to change the address.  So I lied.  I talked to a supervisor and learned that at 6:30 pm the package would return to the Petaluma Fedex distribution center, which closed at 7 pm.  It was a Friday evening. I dashed out there during the little window of time and retrieved it.  

Not only did I have the modem in hand, but I also received a text from my neighbor that an ATT agent was spotted on my property initiating the service. (I guess COVID didn't stop him after all!)  I returned to Pi, poured a glass of wine, opened the box, plugged in the modem, and held my breath.  It worked.

That Poor Gopher June 14, 2020

Yesterday the glass doors to the deck were fully open, and swooping toward me at an alarming pace was the heron with a gopher in his mouth.  Just as he got to the house, he adjusted his altitude to clear the roof, but at the same time a red-tailed hawk came out of nowhere.  The poor little gopher dropped from the heron and into the clutches of the hawk.  It was all in the blink of an eye.