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Most people seem to steal energy away from the efforts of the day to day. It is rare when someone gives energy. There is that uber rare sometimes where the person gives so much, you can only wonder how you do without them on a regular basis. Here is to those people, those rare gems in a life that provide enough mental and emotional sustenance to carry every dream of the heart up, and back to the mountain to once again fend against the plight that can occasionally call itself life. This is to those out there who cheer to life and turn the mundane into magic.
Unfortunately no photos exist to document the epicness of the other night, Saturday April 18th, so I will try my best to summarize some of it. Arriving at Stanford I was greeted by rows of palms and an absolutely perfect day. I found this storys’ other two players, Sarah and Toby, in the Enchanted Broccoli Forest where they had just completed their work for the day. We enjoyed the shade (as it was well in the 70′s) of the enchanted broccoli abound in wait for food. It was discovered soon after that we had waited a tad too long, but were able enough to fill our plates in satisfaction. We finished quickly, as hard workers and my free loading rear tend to do when presented feast in excess. I dare asked ”what now?” inquiring of some not-so-immediate future too vague to say I could have anticipated the obvious response.
“Now comes the cooperation.”
After watching a dozen or so freshman scramble to gain favor with the Enchanted Broccoli Elders by cleaning the industrial sized kitchen, we stood outside considering pursuit of great views, nature, an adventure, or as it should always happen, a combination of all three. We had almost considered frisbee on the lawn an option for such a day, but it was meant to be greater. We settled on pooling gas money for the thirty minutes drive up to a portion of distant ridge line to the west, void of the dense redwood growth that was instantly transforming to our settings the second we turned onto Old La Honda Road. If I were asked if this road were unusual..
“Kyle, standard?”
“Quite.”
I come from a town with road problems and miles of windy, one lane streets that all seem to crumble with a hurrying inevitability, so that is standard. But the road, is it -
“Epic?”
“Hella.”
It seems we use our education to master linguistic mine fields of northern California colloquialisms. It doesn’t come out that we may be intelligent people. Too much bay in me, a poisoned something awesome absorbed from years under the golden skies. I will carry it abroad with honor.
The road was windy, lined by grove after grove of redwood, it was all of these great things. As we drove past giant trunk roots spilling out at the car I noticed that much of this ecosystem was was familiar to back at home. This canyon we found ourselves traversing up, though not as appropriately named, was similar if not near identical to Canyon. I can imagine the springtime of my town spread across the entire state as I saw it here in Stanford. Quite thought full. The evening continued to greet our excited interest as we pulled over the last hill crest to views of the south bay from above heights of Stanford. Perfect. This place found our feelings of California solshine.
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Anyways, we pulled to the side of the road twenty feet past the stagger-fenced entrance of the fire trail, awestruck by views of an impressive ocean, its’ blanket of clouds and the impending sunset. Turning around, 70 percent of our horizon was bay and distant hills. Returning from this impressive spin, the ocean view was impeded only by the forehead of a large hill, where, had we the ability to penetrate a brush wall to its’ balding crest, would have seen the entirety of both bay and sea. We went down the fire trail thirty yards to find a line of wild chamomile down the center of the path. An air of romanticism tinted the scene as we got on hands and knees to serendipitously scour for large buds from premature chamomile thickets. As we sat we dreamt of a monster; the Nugmuncher. He scours as we had the grounds of fire and deer trail alike in search of the little ‘nugs’ of newly budding flowers. Slothlike in expenditure and as covetous of his treasure as any dragon (as he is a western cousin of the Komodo, though I use it in the sense of fire-breathing treasure-protecting), he finds his only needs in life are the buds. We happened to be nugmunching as well in our own sense. Unfortunately the tea we intended to make – after drying of course – turned out foul in its herbal taste.
We hiked up the hill through dense grass and brush to a fire trail curtailed by fields of California Purple Needle Grass, towers of Lupine, opening Buttercups, California Golden Poppies and little Scarlet Pimpernels, hiding out-measured beneath the reaching grass. The sun faded, the day shone, and we descended from our own history. All to live in the day was in that evening, as the night saw a decline in festivities of the sort to which I am engaged.
It is now something like three months twenty days. Hah.
I don’t think I can explain it, even as it comes.
It is imperative I commit to medium one of the epic adventures I have been on in the last month or so. On these sunny days, I have found myself in Moraga’s back country, scaling the interlaced Redwood growth valleys of Canyon and exploring the general spectacle that is Tilden. Having watched the entire process from its deadened winter to the first adventurers of herbaceous growth in late February, the newspring is alive with everything in as much detail and splendor as has ever been witnessed by this humbled son. Yesterday, Thursday the 9th I happened to find myself in one of the increasingly rare not-so-sunny days looking for adventure with Rahul Verma, a stereotypical Indian man I hire out as a friend.
Taking a right from Moraga Road after passing the traffic light at Miramonte along with the town sign, you will find yourself entering the Miramonte Gardens. Beyond is a golf course, and more immediate to the eye, a straight forested ridge line running roughly west to east. Facing this ridge from your automobile as it counts down from the first speed bump, you look up and there is one tree on the ridge line where the trunk is in actually visible. One. Non uno a est, non uno a ovest. It had been eyeing me back for many years now, and I knew it needed to be visited. We started out by coming up from the golf course. A short walk across it from my house left us awaiting ascent at the top a street near Moraga Country Club. It was still overcast, wet, and the dew on the grass leading up the hill towards the first density of oak forest soaked the boots I was considering might stay dry. They didn’t.
We snaked up and around oak enclaves on deer and game trails that gave way to our heavy path. We made an ill fated decision at a turn into underbrush trails, leading us into a forest of poison oak that tangled and crawled around everything in sight. After ten yards we fell upon an almost ominous den of sticks, pyramided in a small absence of the ever enclosing red-leaved branches. It had no signs of life, was no immediate means of shelter and successfully paused us to contemplate our next actions because, at it were, we were stuck in a forest of poison oak. Not the small bush-like and apparent poison oak, nor the small poison oak trees resembling ill-sought statuettes scattering the forest floor, but the long wiry whip-like branches with alternating leaves of three. You know, the kind that once or twice wraps opposing crescents around your ankle to nearly trip you into more branches. Some coiled vines extended were at least fifty feet in length. Once we had found the escape, we didn’t look back or intend to revisit that path. Exiting the forest some twenty feet later we opened to our trail, once again finding its way through the serene enclave of an ‘oak bubble’. We were smarter coming down.
One.. last.. turn, and it opens. A fire trail and a sky devoid, coming closer to raining by the minute. The trail a solid green, a backdrop to wildflowers all around. The path gradually enclosed the edge of the hill up onto what stood an igneous boulder large enough to sit three to four abreast off its easterly edge. As the eye was drawn up from the immediate field of wildflowers it was taken to the more profound. Views of both a new and old Moraga flanked the continuation of the ridge line we found ourselves on. With the remaining pear orchards and their old geometric borders serving as housing boundaries, the left of the ridge was Moraga as I knew it. Small, quaint and as green as spring defined, it was very much expected and pleasing. To the right lay a cleared grass valley of proportionate measure, scattered with its own remnant claim to the history of the town. Scenic. They were pear orchards, wild pear orchards encouraged towards their eventual dust by the incorrigible rain that was now sweeping valleys both east and west. To their parallel was the ridge before the descent of Canyon, a redwood forest tucked in between the Oakland hills at one extreme of Moraga. We chose to head down, away from the peace of both valley and ridge, and descended much more quickly than we had come up. Soaked from top to trough, poisoned from the oils crawling my hands and ready to find myself at the bottom with a Chicken and jack, bacon, avocado, no-pickle sandwich from Biancas in my stomach, it was a swift escape. Collected were specimens of the hill floors’ more common herbs and small plant life, I hope Rahul didn’t toss them.
This is just one adventure on one day. I make a point of having at least one a week, but there are many smaller ones in between. It really is keeping me moving foward, and there is very little I enjoy more. Bring it on, svizzera.
I will give a more detailed account of my last month in a later posting. For now, a slice, a glance minute in comparison, but a glance nonetheless. (Because this post is not accurate to my last month.) But Oh My, SPRINGTIME!
(Wild Indians still roam these parts)
Nobody is more thankful that winter has ended. Nobody. 5m 12d~
I had the fortune of hearing Andrew Bird’s new album Noble Beast at an old friend’s house, Rahul’s. Rahul and I have known each other since sixth grade and been friends ever since we realized we had the same birthday, right alongside much in common. We were doing what we always do when it came on and one song caught my attention: Anonanimal.
The lyrics that caught my attention:
“I will become this animal
Perfectly adapted to a music hall
I will become this animal”
For Andrew Bird that animal is adapted to his environment. I took it to see my own new environment, used it to clear up in my head what exactly is going on. I have very recently been thrown into a new cycle of wake, study, work, sleep, with very little in between, and to perform and to excel I must adapt and become this animal. I throw around the words ambition and determination as if they were glued to my forehead, but it is much more than that. I knocked on a door the other night and was greeted questioningly by a student in his early twenties. After giving him my rap he said “I don’t think I am ready for this kind of thing, i’m still in college”. In this statement (one repeated by almost every person I’ve tried to canvass under the age of 30, I see the folly of my generation and the pieces I try to pick up to build with myself. It is never too soon to plant your roots in unknown soil or foreign land, as you will always gain more ground as a person and by the end of it one will have much more to say for themselves. To say I feel alienated and distant from the vast majority of my peers is an understatement.
I really don’t have much going on. I wake, I work, I play (a tiny bit) and I study. I think it’s something I could really get used to, I have been enjoying myself immensely. I wake up every morning, fresh and ready and wanting to tackle the day. Cheers to that!
Oh, and it turns out that after months of less than agreeable weather and even less agreeable situations, Spring still comes to the Bay. And oh how it couldn’t have come sooner.
I happen to love Magnolia blossoms
Days until Spring: 15
