Every visitor to Almost Pi is an excuse to visit the Tule Elk.
The drive alone is worth the trip. Each mile on the northward climb of Pierce Point Road takes us farther back in time to the birth of historic cattle ranches, matter-of-factly named by letters of the alphabet. The narrow peninsula - the Pacific Ocean to the west and Tomales Bay to the east - is stunning, brilliant green, sparkling with lagoons and tiny lakes. Holsteins to the left of us, black angus and deer to the right, the elk straight ahead. What a place to be an ungulate!
At a hairpin in the road, we pull the car over to view the elk, grazing on the western edge of the ridge with the sun setting behind them. They are unafraid of us, but curious, and like a single organism, in unison they lift their heads, each haloed by a splay of generous ears. Their heads and necks are covered in brown fuzz, their trunks smooth coats of camel, and their rumps capped with wafers of white. I count at least sixty females in the herd with a single bull. He nuzzles clumps of dried grass, decorating his already generous antlers and keeping the females in line.
As we head home we spy two groups of rejected males, half a dozen in each, the road separating them from the harem like a screen partitioning sexes in a synagogue.
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