Abbotts Lagoon June 24, 2016

I made a new friend named Kathy not long ago through yoga class.  She, like me, is a retired professor, but unlike me, she made the huge move from Washington DC to Point Reyes to live here full-time.  Now that I am out here nearly full-time myself, she and I took a walk together at Abbotts Lagoon. 

Unbeknownst to me, she is a birder.  In fact, she and her partner chose to move out to Point Reyes specifically because of the fabulous birding.  She brought along an extra pair of binoculars for me to use, and we headed out to the lagoon in search of all things avian.  I learned to distinguish a white-crested sparrow from a song sparrow, and when we hit the ocean we were on the lookout for snowy plovers, as this is their breeding area.  We did spot a plover, but we couldn’t quite decide exactly what type.  It was close enough to snowy for me, and I was thrilled to learn something new.  Kathy was very encouraging, and I just may have to buy a pair of portable binocs so that I can enjoy many hikes with her in the days, months, and hopefully years to come.

The Fawns June 24, 2016

Three weeks ago, I watched two white-spotted fawns following their mother across the newly mown pasture.  The doe headed to a little gap in the wooden fencing, and one of the gangly pair followed her directly through the narrow passage.  But the other fawn got confused and discovered itself trapped near me.  We looked at each other in desperation, but I didn’t know how to help.  As a mother I had to ask, “Ms. Doe, how could you not look back to make sure your child was following?”

The little fawn was agitated, and started trying to find other ways out of the field.  He eventually settled into a waiting position, nestled between the uncut grass and a wire fence, through which he stared in the direction of his mother.  She was nowhere to be seen.

Saddened, but pressed for time, I had to leave and I wondered what would become of the lost fawn.  He was not there when I returned, and sure enough, in another few days I saw the trio together again, babies sucking vigorously.  By the end of the following week, they were already starting to lose their spots.  After a few more days, I saw the mother again with only one fawn; together they were lingering near my house, as if to wait for the other one to catch up.  “Not again!” I thought to myself.  And sadly, I haven’t seen any of them since.

Pogo Enlivened

It is Pogo’s thirteenth birthday and we celebrate it at Almost Pi with a shared scoop of homemade vanilla ice cream.  Pogo, of course, is my rather large black cat, a handsome tuxedo who travels back and forth with me to Point Reyes from San Francisco. 

As we now spend far more time here over the summer, Pogo is getting more comfortable with his second home.  He has literally come out of his closet – the large hallway chamber that houses the heater beside which he typically snuggles – and even pads outside routinely.  I have learned to leave a little opening between the sliding glass doors so he can poke about, but he likes it even better when the front door is open too, allowing him a choice of ingress and egress and the apparent delight of infinite looping. 

He has learned his boundary conditions, never venturing outside the perimeter of the cedar fence.  He digs under the parsley and slips under the deck, safe from raptors but able to observe the horses and the deer, the birds and the butterflies, the grass and lavender fluttering in the wind.  I have yet to see him go after a gopher, which is just as well. 

Surf Scoter June 12, 2016

My friend Julie and I drove out to Chimney Rock for a little look-see.  She came in her new Tesla and demonstrated its “look ma, no hands” feature, which was slightly scarier than its other trick, “look ma, no feet”!  We arrived at our destination without incident.

I suggested we head for the Life Saving Station, where a month earlier I had seen large numbers of elephant seals close-up.  Though their ranks had diminished, there were certainly enough to enjoy, including an enormous male who was barking it up and doing a little shoreline seal-to-seal combat.  Added into the mix were a dozen unusual looking birds with large flat beaks, each with a central bright orange stripe flanked by white stripes.  When pressed by another visitor to name this avian, I whipped out my iBird West app, which is a remarkably wonderful thing (only to be rivaled by my Topo Map app).   After surfing through geese and coot, which was my closest guesses, I somehow found surf scoter.  Bingo!  I wonder if Julie was impressed.  For two not-so-young gals, we are surprisingly hip.

Sula Marin June 4, 2016

I am a great-aunt again.  My sister’s daughter Molly gave birth to a girl on June 2 and christened her Sula, after my maternal grandmother, and Marin, as in this spectacular county.   It was a fascinating choice, tethering this dark-haired newborn to her long ancestry in farmlands of Pennsylvania and, perhaps, to future generations within the agriculture of West Marin.

Sula “the first” was Pennsylvania Dutch and spoke that dialect when she was a girl growing up in the country.  The one photo we have of Sula as a child shows her on the farm with her mother Sarah Eckhart Lazarus, with whom I bear an uncanny resemblance. 

We never could figure out where the name “Sula” came from, and suspect it was just a “made-up” name.  There is, of course, the fictional character Sula in the book of that name by Toni Morrison, written long after the birth of my grandmother.  There is also Sula sula, the genus and species for the red-footed booby (smallest member of the booby genus Sula), which I discovered to my great surprise at the Cal Academy of Sciences one day in San Francisco.  Surely my grandmother’s moniker could not have derived from a bird found in the Galapagos, but an intriguing anecdote just the same.

I look forward to meeting Sula “the second”.  I have my grandmother’s old recipes, some written in Dutch, a few old books, and some lovely rings that I hope to share with my grandniece some day.  I want to tell her about the ribbon candy my grandmother always placed in a glass dish at Christmas, the homemade coconut and peanut butter chocolate eggs she produced on Easter, the white Chiclets that she pulled from her black leather handbag when we were on outings, and the scent and taste of homemade bread that emerged from her tiny kitchen.  And of course, I hope that young Sula Marin will love the land of her middle namesake and come to visit me here often.

The Badger Reappears June 4, 2016

It has been nearly four years since the last sighting of a badger, who presumably had set up his home somewhere in the neighborhood.  How I have longed to see him again! 

As sunset approached today, I lingered on the deck to enjoy it.  Just after the sun descended behind the ridge, as I gathered up my book and glass to come indoors, a badger waddled into view.  Part of the pasture had just been mown, and he crept along the uncut fringe, in full view.  He was beautiful – four stumpy curved legs of chocolate velvet, a flattened head decorated in stripes and adorned by small protrusions of crinkled-up ears.  He kept moving from south to north at a steady pace, until he eventually slipped under the fence into the neighboring high grasses, eventually dipping out of view.  

I spend each evening at sunset looking for him, and hoping that another four years don’t go by before I get to enjoy his company.  Is it the same badger I had seen four years ago?  Maybe; American badgers can live fourteen years.