Dientes del Diablo

20 February 2010

Rani visited over the weekend. She and Ingrid shopped at the "White Elephant" sale in the morning while I got caught up on some editorial work for "Indoor Air." Then, in the afternoon, we headed out for a 6 mile hike around Diablo Foothills regional park, which has become one of my favorite places in the East Bay.



What do I like about it? The landscape is spectacular, with gently rolling hills mostly covered by grasses but also with a strong presence of mature trees, mainly stately oaks and horse chestnuts.



The trails meander through the valleys and over the hills so that the views are continuously varying. There are myriad ground squirrels running about and we saw several turkey vultures on this visit too. Mount Diablo rises a short distance to the southeast, although today it was too cloudy to see the summit. And because of the moderately high level of rain this winter, distributed over a few month period, the grasses are lush and beautifully green.



The "teeth" are a ridge of sedimentary rocks that have become tilted vertically and extend for several hundred meters from hill through saddle and to opposite hill. They appear in every photo in this post. Can you see them?

Fog and Faces of Berkeley

18 February 2010

Fog evokes many moods, mystery and danger among them. So long as I'm not driving, I like fog. It creates a calm stillness to the environment that I find peaceful.



The visual character of fog is also intriguing. The rapidly decreasing clarity with distance adds a strong third dimension to scenes that might otherwise appear flat in a photograph. The absence of shadow also raises new possibility and challenge for the photographer. Fog lends itself naturally to black & white photography.



These photos were snapped quickly as I arrived on campus this morning and walked from Sproul Plaza in the south toward the Engineering sector in the northeast. I found visual interest in the campus lights that ordinarily are on only at night. And these black and white photos of faces from our campus community take on a different look in the gray light, smiling out on the world and coming to life in their natural element.

Brief respite from rain

6 February 2010

I stopped at the north gate entrance of Mt. Diablo State Park to pay the $10 entrance fee. It was almost 4 PM; just about 90 minutes of sunlight remained. "Coming for a short hike?" asked the young ranger as she took my money. "It's like Ireland up there!" Nodding, I said, "That's what attracted me."



Last night it rained. Hard. This morning more rain fell. But in the afternoon it paused. Clouds parted. Blue sky emerged. On the green hillsides sunlight danced and black cows romped in the fresh green grass.



The horse chestnuts are in new leaf. But many trees are still bare. Winter and spring in California are not synchronized. Yes, we are nonconformist.



I hiked a few miles up to the ridge line above Castle Rocks. The trail was sloppy but passable. Other than some cyclists far away on the road, there was no one else around.



As I hiked along the ridge, nice local scenes of rock, grass, and tree complemented the outstanding distant views of Mount Diablo to the east and Castle Rocks to the south and west.

Santa Cruz-in’

24 January 2010

Friday was Rani's birthday. Tuesday is Ingrid's. On Sunday, Alexis, Ingrid and I drove down to Santa Cruz and Rani drove up. We met late morning and spent the day on foot wandering.



I have been to Santa Cruz several times, but we saw wonderful places on this visit that I didn't know about.



We parked along the sea coast on West Cliff Drive, near the Natural Bridges State Beach. From there, we ambled along a pedestrian/cycling path that followed the coast line to the wharf.



We next headed inland to Pacific Avenue, a nice shopping street. We had lunch at a Japanese restaurant and topped off with cappuccinos and pastries at Lulu Carpenters. (Ingrid remembers this spot from many years past as making the "best cappuccinos this side of Venice (Italy)." That is a tough memory to live up to, but they were good this time, too!)



On the return, we found a city park built at the end of an abandoned railway with a few cars set up on the end of the tracks. After following the tracks for awhile, we meandered through residential neighborhoods to find our way back out to the coast. In all, we walked more than 11 miles.



The weather was great for a wintertime outing on the coast: chilly and heavily overcast, but with very little rain. The uniform sky light and the bright rain clothes made for nice coloring in the photos. Because of the low light, I did have some trouble with landscape shots getting a sufficient combination of strong depth of field, fast enough shutter speed and fine enough resolution (that is, a low enough ISO number) to capture well what I saw.



It was a great outing!

Wet!

20 January 2010

Last semester, I never used motorized transport to get to campus.

Yesterday and today I did. On both mornings, it poured and so Ingrid drove me to College and Bancroft, on the south side of campus. Even with an umbrella, the half mile walk across campus was a challenge. This morning, the wind was blowing the rain sideways and my legs got soaked.

There's good news. We need the rain to offset the risk of drought. Also these storms are intense but intermittent. Each day, we've also had dry periods and have even seen a bit of clear sky.



With weather like this, sundials are not of much use, except maybe to reflect an image of the Campanile.



Strawberry Creek is running full and muddy! And salmon-colored rain boots are cute!

Sibley Volcanic Regional Preserve

18 January 2010

Sibley is another one of the great preserved spaces that belongs to the East Bay Regional Parks District. It's just about 4 miles from our house, up at the ridge line immediately east of us.

I especially like visiting on wet winter days and I had a nice visit this afternoon. It had rained fairly hard all morning. The storm let up in the afternoon, but heavy clouds and gusty winds persisted. I had been working at home and started losing steam in the early afternoon, so at 2:15 I drove up to the park and spent about 90 minutes on a nice photographic explore.

I first hiked to the summit of Round Top. According to the EBRPD website, Round Top is "made up of lava and volcanic debris left over from a 10 million year old volcano!

The summit is at an elevation of 1763 feet, which is only a few hundred feet above the parking lot. There are some creepy old communications towers at the top and some bushwhacking is necessary to see the views. The shot at the top of the post, looking east, was taken from the Round Top summit. There were also lots of mushrooms, mossy tree trunks, and these very cool dead weed heads!



Another great feature of the preserve is this old, long-abandoned quarry. It's situated on the eastern edge of the preserve, probably about a mile from the parking lot.



There is a labyrinth at the bottom with a definitely weird cache of items in the center. Just north of the labyrinth is a reed-filled pond. At times over the years, we've come here and seen loads of newts in the water or snakes or small frogs that fill the small space with their croaks. I suspect, though, that the reeds and sediment have choked most of this life out of the pond. Anyway, the water was far too muddy to see anything living today.



It started raining again, so I headed back. But then the rain stopped and I was treated to this lovely view of a sunburst over the bay on my drive back down the hill.

Sequoia Bayview Trail

17 January 2010

Here's the weather forecast: tonight — rain; tomorrow — rain/wind; Tuesday — rain/wind; Wednesday — rain; Thursday — rain. All this wetness was supposed to start yesterday, and it did, but only weakly. Today, we've had drizzly weather punctuated by brief periods of blue sky and sunshine.

We took an easy walk midday through Oakland's Joaquin Miller Park. The first mile or so of the trail, starting from Skyline, passes through a heavy forest of bay trees and coast redwoods. In the summer, the trail is dry and dusty. But in the winter it is delightful, surprisingly reminiscent of forest paths through some of the great western national parks. I especially like the bright green colors of the mosses, ferns, and grasses. In places, these are the only patches of brightness on the wet forest floor.

Toward the end of the walk, I spied this mushroom. I don't know anything about mushrooms. But I did a google search and decided that it might be an amanita muscaria, which is both psychodelic and poisonous.