True Dirt

a walk in time

Speeding out of town east through the tunnel, past the suburbs into the greening hills. We pay our four bills to the guy in the kiosk with the Santa hat and park our car among the horse trailers and the Subarus topped with mountain bikes. We have only our feet, a bottle of water, and a camera. We are off to visit the winter gardens of inner coastal California.

Crunch of gravel beneath our feet, a sharp breeze penetrates my wool sweater. Above us a fingernail moon floats in the electric blue sky. Waves of dried thistles cast purple shadows on the flanks of the hills. Black-green groves of bay laurel and live oak nestle in the hill folds.

We head toward the line of snaking willows, the only sign a creek lives here in this cattle-mowed savannah. December light has lit the willow limbs a ruby glow. Finches and junkos appear and disappear from the thickets. We follow the meander along the still-dry creek bed. Splayed bark reveals the reddish cambrium beneath. A buck testing his antlers for the fall rutting?

The tell-tale "M" of deer hooves in the narrow dirt trail. We follow them up the grassy slope, stooping to pick out needle sharp thistles from our pant legs. The hillsides are scored by thin parallels of cattle trails as if turned on a giant lathe. The deer prefer the hidden paths of the creek canyons, invisible from a distance.

A gust of goldfinches rises from the steep hillside like pale leaves blown in the wind. They are feeding on the thistle seeds. We stop to catch our breath. Far off on the opposite slope a duet of bicyclists attack the hill.

Following our trail back down to the creek's alluvial plain we stop to admire the spectral beauty of an ancient buckeye tree.

Like the redwood and live oak, the california buckeye is a pleistocene relic - surviving into the eons following the Ice Ages, drought-adapted to shed its leaves in mid-summer then budding out after winter rains. Probably over two hundreds years old our tree glows in the winter light, it's branches gilded with lichen.

Standing under the buckeye I notice a rock at my feet. It seems out of place in the grassy field. I crouch to get a better look and see the sea shells. Stuck in the sand, turned to stone and, nine million years later, mine to wonder at in the waning afternoon.

Posted by briggs at December 24, 2004 4:42 PM | TrackBack