From Krummholz to the Pygmy Forest

We began at the sea, on a cliff dotted with seaside daisies. We walked along the cliff, skirting a prairie of sweet vernal grass and velvet grass.  Thence we traveled to Krummholz, called The Goblin Fortress by the wee people.  From Krummholz we climbed the Ecological Staircase to the Pygmy Forest, stuffing ourselves with blue and red huckleberries on the way.

It sounds like a passage from a fantasy novel, but it was the first and longest hike we took.  And the most varied and exciting.  A little over five miles round trip.  The hike begins in Jug Handle State Park.

The Ecological Staircase is a series of 5 terraces uplifted from the sea.  As you climb, each terrace is 100,000 years older than the one before.

We began at the headlands, on the first terrace, or rather, the second, as the first is now being formed just beneath the sea, where the water is lighter and greener.

Just beyond the coastal prairie you find trees twisted and bent by salt winds, giving them a quality known as krummholz, German for bentwood.  Our kids dubbed these trees The Goblin Fortress.  It was the best natural playground I have ever seen.

On the next step of the staircase you find the same Grand firs and Douglas firs growing tall and true.

Or fallen over and hollowed by fire, making an irresistible, if sooty, tunnel.

Greta found this mushroom, with the volva, the remains of the universal veil, still visible at its base.  The volva is evidence that this mushroom is in the Amanita family and may be deadly poisonous.

If there are mushroom experts among my readers, tell us what you know about this mushroom.

The trees also fell between other trees, great for climbing.  See Evelyn leaning against the trunk.

Anyone know what this powdery yellow stuff is?

These are red huckleberries.

And these are our old friends, blue huckleberries.

We picked enough to make huckleberry syrup to drizzle over our breakfast crepes.

The trail rose up through a grove of coastal redwoods and on up again to the pygmy forest.

Evelyn looked like a giant walking among these trees bonsaied by too much water and soil depleted of minerals.

Greta caught a snake on the way down.

But we saw no mammals, not so much as a squirrel, on the Ecological Staircase.

10 Days

Eleven Museums, Two Memorials, One Walking Tour, One Fossil Hunt, and One Trip Down Memory Lane in 10 Days

Day 1
Maryland Science Center
Award: Best Dinosaur Exhibit.

Despite being much smaller The Maryland Science Center wins over DC's Natural History Museum.  Why?  It is much more interactive, and what is more, it conveys the feeling of science in action.  Check out the T. Rex above.  Does it look a little funny?  Yes, it has two rib cages.  That lower one is called a gastralia basket.  Video displays around the exhibit present controversies in paleontology, such as "Did sauropods travel in herds?", with interviews with paleontologists on both sides of the issue.  Fantastic.

Day 2
Natural History Museum
Award: Most Likely to Make You Wish You Lived Closer to DC




Note to self: always bring journals to museums.

The Natural History Museum is vast and rich and varied in quality of the exhibits.  Compared with our local California Academy of Sciences it has more information, but very few living animals.  New exhibits like the new Human Origins Hall are state of the art with video nooks where you are presented with evidence and try to solve a puzzle.  Written in Bone unites forensic science and historical documents.  Did a boat from Bermuda really save Jamestowne colonists from starvation as colonists' wrote in their journals?  Butchered bones of Bermuda petrels in the trash middens corroborate their accounts.  You could spend years at this museum.  We visited it 3 times this trip.

Day 3
Calvert Cliffs
Award: Most Insects

After two days of looking at fossils we had to go on a collecting trip of our own.  These cliffs were once an Ordovician sea bed.  They are full of shark teeth.  Medieval people called fossilized shark teeth glossipetrae--tongue stones--and believed they fell from the sky during thunderstorms.  A big storm two days earlier (while we were at the Maryland Science Center) gave me hope that there would be many teeth on the beach for collecting, but we were disappointed.  We did find 5 or 6 as well as stingray dental plate, but they could fit on your pinky fingernail.

Insects, however, were plentiful: dragonflies, damselflies, velvet ants, cicadas, hornets and butterflies galore.


Day 4
Walking Tour of Annapolis
Award: Hottest, and according to Clementine, Most Boring Thing We Did

I love Annapolis.  My friends and I used to walk all over it instead of going to the mall when we were in middle school.  We'd watch the students reading on the grass at St. John's College and imagine ourselves there, reading 100 great books.   And we'd watch midshipmen at the Naval Academy doing pushups on the lawn and imagine ourselves anywhere but there.  We'd descend into the great naval hero John Paul Jones' crypt and imagine his bones moldering in their great, gaudy marble sarcophagus.  After our tour I know that, while the Navy won't admit any error, John Paul Jones' bones were found in France in an unmarked grave 105 years after his death and were identified by comparing them to a bust of him.  The claim is that the friends who buried him filled his lead coffin with alcohol and so therefore he was so well preserved that he could be recognized.  Uh huh.


Memory Lane
Award: Best Old Fashioned Fun, Most Nettle Stings

I grew up in the most wonderful community.  The Washington Post profiled it in an article entitled: No Cookie Cutter Community, Bayberry believes in dirt, difference

It was such a hot day and after our hot, hot Annapolis Walking Tour, everyone was ready for a swim.

And a greased watermelon race.

My kids couldn't grow up here, so I try to pack a summer's worth of fun into a day.  The greased watermelon was a 4th of July tradition for us.  Here my daughter, my sister's daughter, my oldest friend's son and my cousin's daughter vie to be the one to carry the slippery melon onto the beach.

Every single kid got stung by sea nettles.  I couldn't believe how brave they were--they got right back in the water anyway.  Except Greta.  She was having such fun and then she jumped right on one and got stung all over her leg.  My sister lifted her onto the pier and she ran screaming all the way into the beach.  She screamed herself hoarse and vowed never to ever go swimming there ever again.  She screamed for a good fifteen minutes and every time someone asked her how she was or why she was sad she would ramp back up to full volume.

Day 5
Udvar Hazy
Awards: Greatest Docent, Worst Coffee

The guided tour made all the difference here.  A real fighter pilot shared his love of planes with us.  Not that this enormous hangar filled with planes and satellites isn't beautiful and impressive, it is.  

I had a lot of bad coffee on this trip, but none as bad as I imagine this cosmonaut cuisine coffee and milk in a tube would be.

Spy Museum
Award: Best Museum

No picture because this sneaky museum doesn't allow any.  Sure, many of the exhibits are mock-ups and not real artifacts, sure it is expensive.  But it is so good.  Computer games: view a mugshot of a spy and then try to pick that spy, in disguise, out of the stream of people an airport security video.  Sit down on a comfy chair in a dim room and listen to audio as a spotlight highlights artifacts around the room and weaves a tale of intrigue.  One of my favorite exhibits was a movie theater with WWII propaganda films.  And that East German car with five dummies in it showing how people escaped East Berlin (behind the front grille, in the engine, with your head skimming over the road--yikes!)

Day 6
Air and Space Museum
Award: Worst Museum

My parents both worked on Hubble.  I grew up going to and loving the Air & Space Museum, but it is sadly out of date.  It definitely does not give the exhilarating sense that the stars are our future.  Instead it has a stuck in the 70s feel.  I overheard a teenager talking on her iPhone, saying Boring boring boring this place is so boring.  Ugh.  I had to agree.

Day 7
National Archive
Award: Most uneven in its reception by me and the kids

I just love those Charters of Freedom.  Ev and Clem were quite interested and we talked a lot about the Bill of Rights.

I am not sure why, but the kids did not like the rest of the National Archive. The sliding touchscreens that allowed you to "open files" on Watergate, or the Rosenbergs, and look through the evidence and read the documents, well I thought they were awesome.  They left the kids cold.

National Gallery
Award: Best Guard

He ran up to us and insisted on taking a family photo.  It is one of two from the whole trip.
I would give them Best Audio Tour, but it wouldn't be fair since it was also Only Audio Tour We Took.


They also get an honorable mention for Sculpture You Can Sit On

Day 8
Jefferson Memorial
Award: Best Jumping, Sympathizing with Toddlers

We were all on information overload by this time.  Clem and Greta had no interest in the museum downstairs.  They spent their time going up and down the giant steps at the back of the memorial.  Each is nearly waist high.  It gives you a sense of what an accomplishment it is for a one year old to make it up a flight of stairs.  In retrospect we were perhaps not solemn and respectful enough.  Sorry, Thom!

George Mason Memorial
Award: So Close to Jefferson Memorial It is Hard to Justify Just Walking By Without Stopping Which Is What We Should Have Done

Nothing wrong with it, you know, just time is money.

Newseum
Award: Most Disturbing.

Between the 9/11 Exhibit and the Pulitzer Prize Winning photos, this museum is not for young kids.  Clem asked my why people would want to take a picture of those things and look at pictures of those things.  Some of them made sense to me: the picture of a starving child watched over by a vulture as she crawls towards a U.N. Food Center changed the world's attitude toward the famine in Ethiopia.  But what about the mangled radio flyer wagon with the white sheet covering a small, still form on the road?  And much, much worse.

Day 9
National Aquarium, Baltimore
Award: Best Demonstrations, Best Way to See a Sea Nettle

An archer fish spit on us!  The docents held a cricket on a stick over the water.  The archer fishes' aim was not so great, but they did squirt us several times, which I enjoyed a whole lot.  In my opinion it is a whole lot better than being in the dolphin splash zone.  Finally an archer fish jumped up and nabbed the cricket off the stick with his mouth.

  

Aren't they pretty.  They're such a nuisance, though.  And it turns out that they are pretty bad fellows, thriving in poor water and gobbling up fish, crab and oyster eggs.

Day 10
American History
Award: Funniest Statue of Washington

This was the original Washington Monument.  It is so Putin-esque.  Except for the Toga.  I love the displays of old toasters and lunchboxes.

We had to visit The Desk, of course.

Hirschorn Sculpture Garden
Award: Art Worth Risking a Parking Ticket For

Not only had our parking time expired, but it was time to head to the airport.  But we just couldn't pass up Yoko Ono's Wish Tree.  There were little package labels and pencils in a box nearby.  You write your wish and hang it on the tree.  Mike said his wish was that we would not get a parking ticket while we wrote our wishes.

Evelyn wished that the wishes would not fall on the ground and become litter.  There were surprisingly few cynical wishes.  Clementine wished for pet quail.

Greta wished to grow up well.

We read a few more tags.  Someone wished for a yo-yo and a safe trip home.  Greta tried to run back and make a wish for a safe trip home.

I said that her wish to grow up well already included a safe trip home.

By the way, thanks Yoko, Mike's wish came true: we didn't get a ticket.

Pride and Prejudice and Mussels

The California Coast looked as English as it ever does: green hillsides with purple flowers, that if you squinted, and looked directly into the sunlight and swayed a little, could be mistaken for foxglove...if only you swatted away the clouds of hummingbirds, of which Europe is entirely devoid.

 The conditions were suitably early 19th century.  Smoke curled out of the chimneys, smoke from our wood stoves, the only source of heat in our little cabins.  And light came from our candles and lanterns.  We ran outside to fetch the cooking water.
 
And were not great 19th century themes evoked when we set out with pocket knives and a Trader Joe's bag to harvest mussels?  There was Dickensian child labor in perilous conditions. 

There was child against nature.

The theme of children's downfall due to bad parenting, prominent in Pride and Prejudice, was conspicuously absent.  Ahem.  Even though there was blood

and sweat and (almost) tears when a wave nearly swept away the harvest in its bag. 

Oh dear, scratch the blood, sweat and tears.  Wrong century.

There was success through hard work and perseverance.  Getting barnacles off mussels is as arduous as running any cotton loom,

but in the California sunshine, less likely to cause rickets.

The pride of the harvesters spurred them on to sample their harvest.

But the prejudice of those who had been too young to participate in the harvest

held sway and they would not partake in the feast.

All in all it was a trip worthy of a novel.

But all it gets is a blog post.

Still Life

These fragments I have shored against my ruins.
-T.S. Eliot The Waste Land

It is amazing what the camera can see. Watching Clementine with my naked eyes, I had the fleeting impression of an arc of water. But here you can see a frozen spiral, as perfect as the spiral of a sea shell.

Greta had a go. Her water horns and spikes of hair were invisible to my naked eye.

Later, we tried other things.

Big rocks.

A skipped stone.

I wonder what we miss as chemicals migrate their way across our synapses.

Oliver Sacks talked with a Parkinson's victim after he had been "frozen" for several hours. Sacks showed his patient a photo of himself and asked why he had held his arm out, frozen, for so long. The bewildered patient said he wasn't frozen, he was wiping his nose.

The next time the man was "frozen" Sacks set up a camera and took photos of the him at one-minute intervals over two hours. When these stills were assembled into a time-lapse film the man could be seen smoothly bringing his hand up to wipe his nose. He had no sense that this had taken him any longer than usual. The man could wipe his nose 12 times and call it a day.

How fast his life must pass.

And how long our lives would seem if we were fast enough to see drops of water going over the falls or the iridescent beating wings of dragonflies.

On the river I am always confronted by my mortality. It is not just the bleached crayfish legs.

Or the huge trees, trees that welcomed Spanish missionaries and 49ers, trees that have lived three times as long as I can hope to, felled by the river.

It is the flow of the river itself, relentless and neverending.

The American is no longer a natural river. The Chili Bar dam controls the south fork, the Oxbow dam the middle fork, and the Clementine dam the North Fork. But we can never completely control the river.

I do not know much about gods; but I think that the river
Is a strong brown god—sullen, untamed and intractable,

Patient to some degree, at first recognised as a frontier;
Useful, untrustworthy, as a conveyor of commerce;
Then only a problem confronting the builder of bridges.
The problem once solved, the brown god is almost forgotten
By the dwellers in cities—ever, however, implacable.
Keeping his seasons and rages, destroyer, reminder
Of what men choose to forget.

-T.S. Eliot The Dry Salvages

The American may be a tame river, and yet, the remains of bridges, the undercut banks surmounted by trees awaiting their fates, remind me always of what I would choose to forget.

The flows on the American are brought up each day for the pleasure of boaters like us. But if we dawdle too long skipping stones or picking berries, the water will slip away from us, leaving us a bony river to bump and drag our way along. A reminder that time will get away from us.

I don't usually take my camera kayaking. The river is also destroyer of electronic devices. But this time I pack my camera in the dry bag, wrapped in a towel. I will not let the river carry away all our memories.

Of little feet.

Getting bigger.

Of skipping smooth stones and soaking hot heads.

I put away my camera and we get back on the river. The air is so hot that the herbs are giving up their spicy aromatic oils to the air. It is like a dry sauna. The water is deliciously cold. Greta, sitting in the front of the boat, holds up her hands with excitement and recognition.

"Mom," she whispers. "This is where we landed."

I don't think I have mentioned here before that Greta is an alien. It used to be her job to carry water from Pluto to put out the sun every night.

Evelyn has discovered that cottonwood bark makes good cordage. Whenever she isn't paddling she is making string. Clementine is sailing her crocs by the boat.

I am sieving moments out of the river of time and preserving them so one day I can spiral back and re-examine them, spiral back to the 100 degree day when the air was spiced with eucalyptus and fennel, when the spotted fawn lifted its dainty hooves in the shallows, when Clementine stuck her head in the river and tossed her hair.

These fragments I have shored against my ruins.