Five and a half miles today in Morgan Territory with Matthew, a surprisingly warm day. Some of the trails are not marked on my topo: call it 1,000 feet climbed. I’m behind. I must have gotten distracted somehow. I found it hard to care about that today, either the lax hiking practices or the distraction. It was warm, and we sunned ourselves on a flake of rock two hundred feet above the abyss with vultures coasting along on thermals fifty feet below us, and then above us once they saw us sprawled out there. Manzanitas with boles as thick as wine barrels, Pacific chorus frogs by the thousands just around the next curve, and across the vallley to the east pale, fleeting hints of the Sierra Nevada through the haze. First dodecatheon of the year, near a solid slab of seeping sandstone taking up the entire hillside.
Now that is laconic understatement.
I really enjoy reading your descriptions of the place I once lived. I used to live in Byron, when I worked at Lawrence Livermore Lab. The little house in Byron was where my son (almost 22 years old now) spent the first year of his life. There was a place—I think it was called the Byron Inn—that had great food. They served the best burgers anywhere, and they had great breakfasts, “ham scrambles” and “ham and cheese scrambles” and the like—eggs scrambled with ham and cheese or whatever you ordered. I wonder if it’s still there…
Pliny named the Italian version, and Linnaeus formalized it as the genus’ name. The plant was supposed to be protected by the gods, hence the name.
The terrain definately looks rugged and not for the timid. Thank you for the great articles, I really enjoy your blog.