![]() ![]() Crater Lake National Park – Early Winter Appearance in September.Remembering Willie – A Reminder to Love.Face to Face with an Endangered Species.Winter Portraits in Contrasting Climates.Time and Textures – The Company of Old Trees.Worth a Thousand Words – Wildflowers in Death Valley.Speaking Up as an Ally for My Fellow Humans.Seabirds and 100 Years of National Parks.Why I’m Going to Arizona for the Election.Wintering Waterfowl and Wading Birds in the Central Valley.This Is What Democracy Looks Like: Action at the Airport.Walking in the Footsteps of Galileo – The March for Science.Pinnacles National Park – At a Distance and Up Close.Spring Wildflowers in the Marin Headlands.Finding Beauty Series – Birds in San Francisco.Finding Beauty Series – The Bridge and the Bay.Finding Beauty Series – Egrets and Herons.Hidden Colors Revealed – Birds of an Unusual Feather.Trees – Redwoods, Bristlecone Pines, and Others.Listen to Kate Wolf singing Across the Great Divide, 1980.Įnter your email address to receive notifications of new posts. And exhaled a silent vow to embrace the night-time on the trail again. Standing on the bluff, I felt it as I breathed in-it has been too long since I have hiked in the darkness. I raised my arms to the night and the expansive view. We stopped at the overlook on the edge of the cliff where earlier we had looked down at the low tide below. I made my secret and unspoken wish on a star. In a few places under the trees, we turned on flashlights but the rest of the way we could see by the moonlight. We continued retracing our steps for two more miles as colors faded to grays. ![]() The night sounds came alive as our own voices fell naturally silent. We left the lakeshore to navigate the only steep section of the trail while we could still see. I recalled a stanza of Kate Wolf’s fine song Across the Great Divide and sang softly with the birds: Swainson’s thrushes led the chorus of birds that accompanied dusk. Beneath the canopy of the trees, we watched the sky and the moonrise through its reflection on the water. There is something that deeply moves me in the presence of day transitioning to night or night becoming day. We found a spot to sit under the trees, and the show began. We looked for shapes in the patterns.īy the time we reached Bass Lake, which had no doubt been busy with others basking and swimming earlier, we were the only people. We came across a section of crumbling rocks, the rust and orange popping against the cream background in the angle of the late-day sun. Our shadows lengthened as we strode further. We meandered along the clifftop, gradually climbing until the trail turned inland into the trees. A steady stream of hikers passed us going the opposite direction, some loud and chatty and others more quiet as they headed to their cars. My friend and I stopped to appreciate the scent of yarrow flowers and yerba buena leaves, to take in the bright oranges, yellows and purples of wildflowers, to enjoy the overlooks with the Pacific waves at low tide breaking 200 feet below the cliffs where we stood. The hike in would be very different than the hike out. This is the secret-the magic of night time in the outdoors goes unnoticed in even the most heavily visited places. But I smiled when I hoisted my pack on-knowing that what had been a crowded trail on a hot sunny day would become an empty one as the temperature dropped and the light faded. In the mostly full parking lot, others were arriving back at their cars, unpacking and settling their belongings before driving away. The trail leads to Bass Lake, a popular swimming destination two and a half miles in and continues onward to Alamere Falls at the beach. We arrived at the Palomarin trailhead at 5:15 on Sunday afternoon.
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