Road Trip...

...with POM and three nieces.  Portland by way of Yosemite, the Gold Country, and Crater Lake.  It's the first time for these kids, and it is true pleasure to get to introduce them to these amazing locations.  I'll post photos later, once I've had the chance to upload and sort them.  For now, a first-draft reflection on a much-loved place. 
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7/27
I think almost everyone has this experience:  you visit a place from your childhood and it seems so much smaller than your memory tells you it was.  A childhood home.  A former church.  A favorite library or museum.  Grandma's kitchen.  Yeah, well, Half Dome isn't any smaller than it used to be when I grew up in Yosemite's back yard.  In fact, when seen from Washburn Point, it is every bit as stark and breathstopping as it has ever been.  Maybe even more so, because since I was twelve, I have amassed experiences and perspective that inform my apprehension and appreciation of its mass, its scope, its importance.  I have since been at the top of a tower and looked down through a lucite floor and seen humans who look like little plastic figures from the game of Life.  It impresses upon me the significance, then, of the ant- or pebble-sized humans I observe on the top of Half Dome's beak through my high-powered binoculars.  I have seen, repetitively and in full harrowing color, the collapse into dust and smoke of two enormous skyscrapers, man's achievements, sandcastles kicked over by disgruntled playmates.  All the more resonant, then, the 8000-foot pinnacle of granite, sheared smooth but still standing after millennia of erosive weather and a shifting base and millions upon millions of tourist feet. 

Highlights from the week's highlight

I can't resist posting more photos from our blogger meet-up Bolsa Chica nature-fest! Most of these have been cropped and enlarged for your viewing pleasure. I hope you enjoy these even slightly as much as I do.

This is one of the fuzzy-poof baby terns.

One of the smoothhound sharks we saw in the estuary

A cute little piper couple, out on a hot dinner date

Look at the beak on this guy! Size does matter, apparently.

OMG, OMG, OMG! I actually got a mostly unblurry shot of them skimming!

These guys send me into waves of awe. (Click to embiggen this one.)

Watery pastoral

Tern in flight

Moi (hiding behind camera) and my friend and blogger buddy, Linda,

standing on the boardwalk, reflected in the estuary

Consider this our official blogger meet-up photo. :-)

Wildlife!

It was only my second ever blogger meet-up. I was so giddy! I was especially excited because she is the first blogger I ever emailed offblog and the first to whom I became unanonymous. (Is that a word?)

She wisely suggested we do something outdoors. It was an excellent suggestion, and there's so much to do here in SoCal that it would be a shame not to. Besides, we all know good and well that otherwise we'd just center everything around the event of eating. (Isn't that what all good former-Baptists do?)

We decided to go to the Bolsa Chica Wetlands, which is a fabulous restoration project here in SoCal. POM and I had been several times in the past, and it was really cool, but it had been some time since we'd been back. Last year they did a huge expansion project, and the newspaper just published a story indicating that it had proven extremely successful and that the animal population was undergoing a huge explosion. Awesome! We were so there!

The newspaper story didn't lie; it was better than we had remembered it. The bird population had extremely multiplied. We saw more life in the water than ever before. This is an amazing project!

This egret was the first up-close wildlife we saw as we crossed the boardwalk. (We think it's a Great Egret, but we could be wrong.)

This is the nesting ground of the tern population. (I think most of these are Least Terns. Again, I could be wrong about that.) These guys were noisy noisy noisy! They're hilarious. They constantly talk to one another as they fish the waters, totally giving away any stealth they may have hoped for. They dive -- splat! -- into the water, sometimes unexpectedly, with great splashes. When they fish, they fly in loose groupings; when they fly up high, it's in pairs, in perfect precision, with acrobatic speed and liquid skill. Their babies are grey fuzzpoofs, most of whom are learning to fly just about now.

(How much more quintessential SoCal does it get?)

We saw so many different species -- small sharks, round stingrays, unknown fishes that jumped and rippled the waters, terns, black skimmers, pipers of various sorts, sparrows, brown pelicans, egrets, a blue heron, and others whose names we did not know. Several of these species are endangered or threatened.

The black skimmers proved to be our consensus favorite. They fly over the water, then swoop down directly above it, open their beaks, and literally skim the water open-mouthed for food, lining a trail behind them in the water's surface. It is amazing, quiet, beautiful -- it is mystical and holy somehow. When they fly in twos or threes, their calls to one another are deeper and more resonant than the raucous soprano terns. The skimmer's call calms, pacifies.

We spent the time strolling leisurely, snapping pictures, talking, ogling nature, and marveling at God's creativity and sense of humor. We mused about the various behaviors and thought-processes of the birds we beheld. (The egrets who kept their faces in the water for literally ten minutes at a time surely must be depressed and suicidal, we speculated. The fish who were brazen enough to jump in the faces of all these hunting birds must surely know they are too big to fit in the gullets of these bird breeds and so flaunt their freedom. The piper with the ridiculously lengthy beak flew away when we joked and commented on it, so we were sure he was sensitive and offended about our remarks on the size of his...appendage.) The plonking-diving-splashing terns never got old and never failed to elicit a laugh. The skimmers evoked either low exclamations of amazement or reverential silence.

Just as the sun sank below the horizon, we left in search of sustenance and further conversation, which we were successful in finding. By the way, those three shadows on the island there are me, Linda, and POM...and an apparently depressed egret, poor dear.

We're hoping for breakfast tomorrow before she leaves our sunny clime, and you can be sure you'll see additional pictures of this event soon. There's more where that came from!

P.S. Click to embiggen any of these to ridiculous sizes for more detail.