field notes:

1.12.2005

A boulder blocks Topanga Canyon

Ultimate Problems
-William Stafford

In the Aztec design God crowds
into the little pea that is rolling
out of the picture.
All the rest extends bleaker
because God has gone away.

In the White Man design, though,
no pea is there.
God is everywhere,
but hard to see.
The Aztecs frown at this.

How do you know he is everywhere?
And how did he get out of the pea?

posted by Lisa on 7:01 AM link |

1.10.2005

Last night, restless, I walked out the door. I wanted to walk into the National Park, and to keep walking out to Chimney Rock and beyond to the Lighthouse, to see what there was to see in the dark, to settle my anxious spirit. Instead, being a reasonable person, afraid of the night’s fast young cars, I let my feet carry me the other direction. I walked down the center of roads, navigating by stars glimpsed through treetops, by the feel of pavement underfoot, and by the faint glow of the center stripe when I got to a mid-sized road. I walked to Chicken Ranch Beach and followed my ears to the creek flowing into the bay. I crouched there in the sand and listened to the melody of the creek, my eyes casting about the surface of the bay, allowing both the stillness and the movement of water to work on me. Bioluminescent stars danced at my feet, inviting me into the ground so I got up and began to walk. Low tide beckoned me home by beach rather than road. The stars danced all around me, in the black sky, on sandy stretches at my feet, and across the bay in the lights of Tomales Bay Oyster company, the town of Marshall, and the ocassional car’s headlights illuminating the mist that hung on that side of the waters. The ground forced a slowness in me so that I could find my footing between rocks, under snags and piers, so that I could feel the peace of the water. I most feared a lion, but after a time put that thought to rest so there was only the ground, the water, and my movement north. When I got to our beach I heard the cry of a blue heron, alien voice welcoming me home. Up the path was the darkest part of my walk, where I couldn’t see the sky, nor my feet, but could only feel the ground either flat or sloping uphill on my right or downhill towards the sound of another rushing creek on my left. As I emerged from the trees and looked up at my house, faint light illuminating the windows I felt the restoration I had sought, the integration of imagination and heart, and I knew I could find sleep for one more night.

posted by Lisa on 6:36 AM link |

1.08.2005

Thursday nights have been changed forever in Point Reyes. It’s pizza night at Indian Peach. This is how it works. You call or stop by during the day to decide which of three pizzas you will want that night. You sign up for a pizza and a time slot during which to pick up your pie. You return during that fifteen minute time period to see happy people walking away with their white boxes, town dogs outside, savoring the whiff of pizzified air that wafts over their overexcited noses everytime the glass doors swing open. You wait anxiously, then run that pizza home with a friend, the inside of your car graciously filling with the promise of sublime magnificence. You make a salad, open a pale ale, fighting off your own dazzled dog now and open that pizza box. You all gaze at the pizza, originator of the olfactory wonder that has filled the last half hour like a bottle filling the world with genies. This pie has smoked salmon, meyer lemon, capers and finely distributed drops of sundried tomato tapenade. You take the first bite and moans of delight spread back and forth across the table like rounds in a song. The dog joins in and won’t quit until she’s had her due.

Earlier, you take a walk in the Olema Valley, hear some great horned owls in their own chorus of home. You take this picture.

You and your friend cast shadows on the land. Your hearts full with love for this ground, and aching with knowledge of limited time you get to walk upon it. You try to capture something of what you're feeling and seeing in a photograph, knowing you will fail, but unable not to try.

posted by Lisa on 8:20 AM link |

1.02.2005

I’m the kind of person you can tell a joke to several times. I simply don’t remember them. I like it that way—I have the true enjoyment of being made to laugh more than once. I’ve become that kind of bird watcher. No longer writing down and keeping track of which birds I see, and remembering which I “know” and which I don’t “know”, I’m free now to see them for the first time every time. Oh, obviously, some names stay in the mind: the spectaculars, roseate spoonbills and sandhill cranes; the unforgettables, great blue herons and tundra swans; and my neighbors, the crows, chickadees, osprey, kingfisher, and towhees. And the birds that I see daily, or annually, I get to know, in my own way. I become familiar with their activities, their calls and the particular way they occupy our terrain.

Those birds I don’t have a personal knowledge of simply become unfamiliar and new. I recall some of them from the days when I yearned to “know” them all. Many others, though, astound me with their surprising existence as if they only just appeared, and only for me. Yesterday, at Chimney Rock, I discovered a new species in just that way. The American Oystercatcher. Yes, I’d seen it before, and I realize that you have too. But it wasn’t one of the birds I “know”, and since I now only know what I really “know”, I didn’t know them when I saw them. What spectacular clumsiness, what absurd colors, what a find! My companions and I studied them in our shared pair of binoculars, attentive to every wonderful detail. In the evening, I sat in front of the fire and looked for them in my guide book, wondering if they might be some exotic species overwintering after a migratory mistake. When I found them, I realized that they were one of many birds I used to struggle to keep in my mental repository, and which dropped away when I surrendered my tentatively claimed title of birder.

I’m admitting it publicly now, and I’m proud to do so. I don’t know much about birds. But I sure do love to watch them.

posted by Lisa on 9:58 AM link |