Geology Rocks September 21, 2014

Yesterday was the Point Reyes National Seashore Association’s fourth annual Dinner on the Pacific Plate.  PRNSA supports the efforts of the National Park Service.  It ran the Trails Challenge that I did two summers ago in honor of the Seashore’s 50^th Anniversary, as well as a myriad of nature and art courses, such as the plein air painting weekend I enjoyed in June a year ago.

This year I took up PRNSA’s offering of a rock tour, the geological kind.  Prior to the fund-raising dinner, we were given a choice of ten guided adventures in the Seashore, and I opted for “Discovering Drakes Bay Geology”.  Being geology-challenged, I relished the opportunity to learn something about those iconic bluffs that allegedly reminded Sir Francis Drake of the white cliffs of Dover.  The guide for our small group was John Karachewski, a fellow geek who clearly delighted in sharing his enthusiasm for all things geological.

John started with a basic tenet of geology: one must think in four dimensions, the fourth being time.  He took us through the book that described the evolution of the Point Reyes Peninsula, where each chapter covers a few million years or so, from a time when the Peninsula and all of the Western edge of California south of it – through San Francisco, Los Angeles and down to Baja California – came to slide northward on the Pacific Plate by about 400 miles.  After the great subduction of the Farallon Plate under the Atlantic Plate, the Pacific Plate started its slow migration northward, with fits and starts in the form of 80,000 earthquakes, each the size of the great 1906 quake.  He described how the granite bedrock in Point Reyes was once part of the southern end of the Sierras, near the Mohave desert and why we don’t see it just a few miles away here at Pi on the Atlantic Plate.

As for the cliffs themselves, they are formed from eons of clay, silt, sand, and other sedimentation when the land mass was still submerged under water.  He recommended that we could actually tell what each layer consisted of if we were willing to grab a bit and stick in our mouths.  None of us took him up on that - yet.

A visit from Mary September 20, 2014

A few weekends ago my sister Mary took a spur-of-the-moment trip from her home in Cleveland to visit me.  At 8am that Saturday, I retrieved her from her ridiculously early flight at SFO arrivals, scooped up Pogo the cat from my house in San Francisco, and to the pulse of periodic meowing we hightailed it up to Almost Pi.   The weather here was as lovely as I have ever seen it, and we planned to head out for a big hike but soon found our plans derailed by the many other enticements of Point Reyes.

First, we fortified ourselves with goodies and music at the Farmer’s Market surrounding Toby’s Feed Barn.  Then we thought, why not quickly stop by the opening of the BayWood Artists’ show at the Red Barn?  There, we ran into a friend of mine from Marin Oratorio, who pointed out the blue posts that marked the San Andreas Fault, which essentially passes right through the Red Barn itself.  It turns out Mary had never taken the Earthquake Trail, so that prompted another diversion; how I love to point out that displaced fence! 

We then noticed the sign for the Woodpecker Trail, which I had never been on, so that led us to yet another fascinating little hike.  Equipped with a Western Birds app on my iPhone, we checked out the calls for the various woodpeckers, and sure enough, we heard them calling back to us!  The path deposited us uphill at the Morgan Horse Ranch, so of course we had to poke around there, another first for me, I’m ashamed to say.  I knew nothing about this quintessential American horse, not to mention the importance of this Ranch in breeding and training Morgans for this and other national parks.  By this time we were ready to give up on the big hike, and opted instead for a look at the Bear Valley Visitor Center, where there was a small exhibit on the Marconi telegraph stations and where Mary treated herself, and me, to a few lovely souvenirs.  We packed in a very late lunch of burgers, root fries, and beer at Marin Sun Farms before returning to Pi to bundle up Pogo once again and watch the sun set over the horse pasture together.  We came inside to enjoy some Strauss vanilla ice cream (Pogo, too), pulled out our books, and Mary quickly conked out.

Every visitor is an opportunity to see something new or see it with fresh eyes.  Keep coming!