October’s final weekend provided a reminder of why many of us have chosen to live in West Marin. With sunny skies Saturday and Sunday, temperatures were comfortable even along the Pacific and Tomales Bay. On Monday, the weather turned chilly, and fog still blanketed the coast on Tuesday and Wednesday. With Standard Time scheduled to begin Sunday and the shortest day of the year only six weeks off, the season of darkness will soon be upon us.

Barbecuing oysters beside Tomales Bay in Inverness, Molly Milner, who operates an oyster bar on the deck at Barnaby’s restaurant, held an end-of-the-season party Saturday, with oysters at half price. I alone ate a dozen. A folk-rock band entertained diners, some of whom were surprised when the bandleader urged them to join a heretofore-unheard-of cause: saving aberrant red variations of (normally black) Frisian horses in Europe.

It seemed to be a weekend for eating throughout West Marin. County and volunteer firefighters held a pancake breakfast in the Point Reyes Station firehouse Sunday morning to raise money for the West Marin Disaster Preparedness Council. In the foreground (from left): Donna Larkin of Inverness Park, Phillip McKee (back to camera), Tony Ragona of Point Reyes Station, and Heather Sundberg of Point Reyes Station.

Mike Meszaros, former chief of the Inverness Volunteer Fire Department, cooks eggs in the Point Reyes Station firehouse for Matt Gallagher of Point Reyes Station during the annual event.

Outside the pancake breakfast, firefighters tear apart a car to demonstrate how the Jaws of Life are used to free a victim trapped in a wreck. “Jaws of Life” (a trademark of Hale Products Inc.) is not just one single tool but a set of several types of piston-rod hydraulic tools, including cutters, spreaders and rams. In the background, a rescue basket hangs from a fire engine’s hoist.

While West Marin residents watched rescue demonstrations and ate pancakes at the Point Reyes Station firehouse, dozens of motorcyclists, enjoying the last Sunday of October, roared down Highway 1 a block away.

This photo exhibition in progress focuses on the variety of nature that can be seen from the two acres in Point Reyes Station where I live.

In his book The Natural History of the Point Reyes Peninsula, biologist Jules Evens of Point Reyes Station writes: “The Coast Miwok and the Pomo, who inhabited these shores for at least 5,000 years, were tideland collectors, acorn gatherers, and game hunters who survived and measured time by the seasonal abundance of food. For those early people each season, counted by phases of the moon, brought its own sustenance. One moon was for gathering herbs; one marked the return of the ducks; another marked their departure. On the bright full moon of midwinter, hunting could be difficult.”

Here is a look at what can be seen at this time of year.

A Buckeye butterfly lands on a chrysanthemum outside my cabin Sunday.

This week’s gibbous moon was waxing, and October’s full moon will be Friday night. A gibbous moon is one that’s not full, but more than half its facing hemisphere is illuminated. Since childhood I have been fascinated by being able to see the moon’s topography along its terminator, the boundary between the illuminated and unilluminated hemispheres. At upper left, the dark, mile-deep crater shaped like a five-pointed star is 69-mile-wide Crater Gassendi. The light area immediately below the crater is the Mare Humorum, Moist Sea, formed by lava 3.9 billion years ago. This photo, like most on my blog, was shot with a $270 Kodak EasyShare camera, which came with a 10-power zoom. Newer models cost less and have a 12-power zoom.

A young blacktail buck next to my cabin just before recent rains turned grass green.

A Lesser goldfinch eating buds on my rosemary bush. Lesser goldfinches eat seeds, flower buds, and berries. Point Reyes Station ornithologist Rich Stallcup, who identified the finch in the photo, this week told me, “Lesser goldfinches… are way less common than American goldfinches in West Marin during summer. There is an upward pulse in their numbers in the fall. Then both species withdraw a bit inland for the winter.”

A Western fence lizard suns herself outside my cabin. Western fence lizards eat insects and spiders, and they, in turn, are eaten by birds and snakes, which typically catch them while they’re sunning themselves.

A tip of the hat this week to Rod Ruiz, supervising ranger for Marin County parks. When alerted 10 days ago to a paradox at White House Pool (no scenery visible from some scenic overlooks along Papermill Creek), he promptly fixed the problem.

White House Pool Park is named after a wide spot in Papermill/Lagunitas Creek. Bounded by that creek to the east and Point Reyes Station’s levee road to the west, the park stretches from the Olema Creek tributary to a parking lot near the intersection of Sir Francis Drake Boulevard and Bear Valley Road. At each end is a rustic bridge.

Meandering the length of the park is a storybook-like path through lush foliage, making it popular with West Marin residents from seniors out for a stroll to bicyclists to dog walkers. As can be seen at upper left, here and there along the way, county Parks and Open Space has cut narrow lanes that branch off the main path and tunnel through foliage to the edge of the levee. At the end of each lane, permanent benches overlooking Papermill Creek provide places for walkers to rest and enjoy the scenery.

Unfortunately, in the past couple of years, foliage in front of half the benches got so high that views of the creek and the landscape beyond it were lost. Here Linda Petersen of Point Reyes Station two weeks ago tries to again spot four river otters she’d seen fishing just downstream the previous day. But from this lane and the bench at the end of it, the creek was mostly hidden. Linda was able to move to another vantage point, but her options were relatively few.

This week, Linda’s aging dog Sebastian had a much better view from the same bench. His vision needs all the help it can get, so the change was probably dramatic for him too. What had changed? Ten days ago, ranger Ruiz was told that although the benches had been been anchored where they would provide scenic views, there were no longer any views from several benches. The county was, in effect, maintaining lanes through foliage that came to dead-ends in more foliage. Ruiz said he would make sure the lanes were properly taken care of and did. It should be stressed that the county did not remove vegetation from the creek bank (i.e. riparian vegetation) but merely trimmed foliage on top of the levee. Those who enjoy looking out at the views from White House Pool can credit supervising ranger Ruiz with looking out for them.

Members of the Marin County Farm on Tuesday hosted their annual V.I.P. Luncheon for local officials that work with the agricultural community. The event was held at vineyard owner Hank Corda’s deer camp off San Antonio Road. At left in black shirt and black apron is chef Daniel DeLong.

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Chileno Valley beef and poultry rancher Mike Gale, president of the Farm Bureau, told the guests that the elegant fare they were eating was all produced by Marin County agriculture. Sitting in front of Gale (in white shirt) is county Agricultural Commissioner Stacy Carlson. Also on hand was county Fire Chief Ken Massucco.

Marin County Supervisor Judy Arnold, who represents the Novato area, attended, as did Supervisor Charles McGlashan, who represents Southern Marin. Supervisor Steve Kinsey, who represents West Marin where the bulk of the county’s agricultural is located, did not attend but was represented by aide Liza Crosse. Many Farm Bureau members are unhappy with Supervisor’s Kinsey’s support for parts of a new Countywide Plan that would make provisions for establishing public trails on ranchland and would limit housing for ranch families to 4,000 square feet.

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Attorney Gary Giacomini of Woodacre (in dark glasses and cap), formerly represented West Marin on the Marin County Board of Supervisors. When host Hank Corda spoke to the approximately 50 people present, he praised Giacomini for protecting agriculture throughout his 24 years in office. Behind Giacomini, Marin County Sheriff Bob Doyle listens to a story.

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Vineyard owner Hank Corda (at right) chatting with guests at his deer camp. The Corda family has owned the ranchland where the deer camp is located since 1936, he said.
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Bob Berner, executive director of Marin Agricultural Land Trust (at right), was one of several guests representing nonprofits ranging from the Marin Farmers Market to the Marin Humane Society.

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Margaret Grade and Daniel DeLong (left and right) of Manka’s restaurant catered the V.I.P. Luncheon with help from chef Denis Bold. The fare ran a gourmet gamut from goat-burger appetizers (from Evans goats on Point Reyes) to pork loin (from Bagley-Cunninghame hogs in Tomales) to apple pastry with whipped cream (from Gale apples in Chileno Valley). A storm-caused fire severely damaged Manka’s Inverness Lodge and Restaurant Dec. 27, but Grade said she hopes to reopen next year.

Two red-tailed hawks above my cabin, part of a family group of four. Biologist Jules Evans of Point Reyes Station notes this time of year is also the height of the coast’s hawk migration, which can best be seen at Hawk Hill on the Marin Headlands. For those who haven’t been there before, here are directions. While southbound on Highway 101, take the last Sausalito exit before the Golden Gate Bridge, turn left a short distance, and then turn right onto Conzelman Road. Go a ways and then watch for the sign for Hawk Hill.

Although this is the height of the hawk migration, which includes red-tailed and red-shouldered hawks along with falcons and turkey vultures, the migration can be seen throughout the fall at Hawk Hill. The hill is so named because migrating hawks, falcons, and vultures reconnoiter above it before crossing the Golden Gate, which is why so many hawks can be seen circling there. Biologist Evans notes that not all members of these species are migratory. Some are year-round residents of West Marin.

Caltrans repaved Point Reyes Station’s three-block-long main street, Highway 1, Wednesday and Thursday nights. Wednesday night the southbound lane was paved; Thursday night it was the northbound lane.

Each night, a state highway crew ground off a three-inch-deep layer of the main street and then filled the trench with asphalt.

Point Reyes Station resident Tony Ragona, owner of Windsong Cottage bed-and-breakfast inn, encountered the paving project Thursday evening while picking up his mail and was good enough to contribute these dramatic photos. Seen here at right is the Bank of Petaluma.

Road crews wear highly reflective vests to make sure nighttime drivers see them.

Preparing to lay down new pavement at the north end of the main street.

Chief Anita Tyrrell Brown parks at Bolinas’ new firehouse. The new station, which replaces one that was not earthquake safe, had been in the works for more than eight years. It has now been in use for almost a week. Scores of people showed up Sunday for a grand-opening party for the firehouse and adjoining medical clinic.

Congresswoman Lynn Woolsey Sunday told a grand-opening crowd that community clinics are a key to providing the United States with universal health care.

Retired Dr. John Doss of Bolinas and (balancing on a concrete bar) photographer Art Rogers of Point Reyes Station. The new Bolinas Clinic is in the background. To the left is the south side of the new firehouse.

Supervisor Steve Kinsey described the firehouse-clinic project as an example of cooperation between county government, which provided about $450,000, and the community of Bolinas.

The new clinic, part of the nonprofit Coastal Health Alliance, went into service last week. Handling the front desk is Sharon Lee.

Bolinas resident Mark Buell, who played a key role in fundraising, happily addressed Sunday’s throng. The firehouse and clinic project cost approximately $6.57 million.

Kim Bender of Bolinas, who has been directing the fundraising, reported half the money came from public sources and half from private and community sources. Public sources: Bolinas Fire Protection District parcel tax, $1.73 million; California Health Facilities Finance Administration (CHA), $750,000; County of Marin, $442,000; Fire Protection District operating funds, $237,000; other state and county grants, $108,000. Private and community sources: individuals, $1.2 million; Marin Community Foundation, $1 million; Fire Protection District bonds, $555,000; CHA mortgage, $300,000; Tides Foundation, $200,000; other foundations, $50,000.

Fundraising is still underway to repay $550,000 in loans, Bender said. Checks can be sent to Bolinas Firehouse & Clinic Project, Box 126, Bolinas, California, 94924. Contributions can also be made online at the project’s website.

Photographer Art Rogers (on a ladder at upper right) arranges Sunday’s crowd at the Bolinas Firehouse and Clinic opening before taking a portrait for his Point Reyes Family Album. While he is best known in West Marin for that collection of photos, he achieved international recognition four years ago when he photographed 50 women lying naked on Love Field in Point Reyes Station, spelling out PEACE with their bodies. Sunday he declined a suggestion to have the crowd take off their clothes, lie down, and spell out FIRE.

Tom Peters, president of Marin Community Foundation, congratulated Bolinas residents for working together to create the firehouse and clinic project. The foundation has donated $1 million. The new complex is on Mesa Road.

In the lee of the new firehouse, the Fireflies (pictured), Bolinas Stinson School Singers, and Don Tshoot The Piano Player entertained the grand-opening-party crowd.

Among those listening to Sunday’s speakers was Dr. Michael Witte, medical director of the Coastal Health Alliance, which operates the clinic in Bolinas as well as clinics in Point Reyes Station and Stinson Beach. The Bolinas Clinic previously operated out of a tiny office on Wharf Road.

New firehouse with four fire engines in its bays. The firehouse, which will eventually be equipped for an ambulance, includes dormitory rooms, a meeting room, offices, a dayroom and kitchen, and facilities for washing firefighters’ contaminated garb.

My houseguest’s tiny Bichon Havanese mix becomes acquainted with one of my resident raccoons. The raccoon could see the elderly dog better than the dog could see her, but neither could smell the other through the glass pane of my dining-room window, so both soon lost interest in each other.

A former neighbor, who through no fault of her own had to abruptly move out of a home on Tomasini Canyon Road, is staying at my cabin for a few weeks as she prepares to move into a new home in Santa Rosa. My houseguest, Linda Petersen, previously lived in Puerto Rico 21 years where she acquired a now-14-year-old Bichon Havanese mix, which is also staying in my cabin.

Havanese, which are related to Pekinese, were originally bred in Havana, Cuba, and this particular pup weighs less than five pounds. Sebastian is almost deaf and almost blind but still has a keen sense of smell. That’s not necessarily a good combination, for whenever the dog gets lost, it follows its nose, as long as its nose is pointing downhill.

My houseguest Linda Petersen with Sebastian the dog at the mouth of the Russian River. Ten years ago, Linda’s daughter Saskia found Sebastian hunting for garbage in the streets of a densely packed suburb of San Juan.

Linda is a horsewoman, and a day or two after she moved in, she went for a ride in the Point Reyes National Seashore and left Sebastian in my care. No problem. The old dog sleeps most of the time. After working at my computer for a while, however, I thought it best to check up on Sebastian and discovered to my dismay that he had slipped out my kitchen door and was nowhere to be seen.

I searched around my house and a neighbor’s. No Sebastian. I then drove over to Tomasini Canyon Road to see if the dog had returned to his old home. Still no Sebastian. By now I was worried that the blind-and-deaf old dog would wander onto Highway 1 where it might be too small for a motorist to see it, so I drove up and down the highway, but still no Sebastian.

As I drove back up Campolindo Road to search my hill further, I surprised an unusually large red fox that skedaddled onto neighbor Jess Santana’s property. A short ways further up the road, I spotted another neighbor, Carol Waxman, and asked her if she had seen a small dog wandering around.

As it turned out, Carol had seen Sebastian only two or three minutes earlier and took me to the place. “He ran off the road right here,” she said, pointing to the spot where I had just seen the fox disappear. That was alarming because Sebastian is far smaller than a jackrabbit and is no match for a fox.

Frantically, I crawled under nearby barbed-wire fences and through thickets of willows to look for the dog while Carol took over my search along Highway 1. The more time went by, the more I worried about the fox getting a hold of Sebastian.

And then suddenly there he was, at the edge of Jess’s driveway heading toward the home of another neighbor, George Grimm. The dog was clearly lost and seemed as happy to see me as I was to see him. As for the fox, it was probably pleased just to have me out of its thicket.

By now Sebastian has had several uneventful encounters with the wildlife on my hill although it’s not clear how much he was aware any of them.

Two blacktail fawns watch Sebastian trot past them down my driveway too blind to see them. (Photo by Linda Petersen)

Let’s start with the wildlife and move on to language and politics.

A female Anna’s hummingbird at my cabin. The website Hummingbirds in Motion reports, “The hummingbird (scientific family: trochilidae) does not fly in the same way other birds do. They can fly forward, backward, up, down, and even upside-down. The motion of their wings changes its angle with each flap. Unlike other birds, hummingbirds flap their wings horizontally in the shape of a figure 8. They also expand and contract their tail feathers, which allows them to hover in mid-air. However, hummingbirds flap their wings like this on an average of 50 times per second, and during courtship they can flap their wings up to 200 times a second.”

Red-winged blackbirds, with a few tri-color and Brewer’s blackbirds thrown in, forage outside my kitchen window. Stanford University researchers say the diet of the locally ubiquitous red-winged blackbird “includes few spiders; grass and forb seeds; rarely fruit. Young [are] fed 100 percent insects.” And what, you non-gardeners may ask, is “forb?” Wikipedia notes, “A forb is a flowering plant, with a non-woody stem, that is not a grass. Since it is non-woody, it is not a shrub or tree either. Thus most wild and garden flowers, herbs and vegetables are forbs.”

Male red-winged blackbirds fight ostensibly over seeds but mainly to establish their place in the flock’s hierarchy.

Harbor seals sunning themselves at the mouth of the Russian River in Jenner. Harbor seals spend roughly half their time on land and half in the water. They need their time on land to maintain body temperature, meaning that people should view them from a distance lest they be scared back into the water.

A blacktail doe watching me on my deck.

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A young buck in the shade of my persimmon tree. Blacktails love both the tree’s fruit and its leaves.

Turning now to language… As we were chatting last week, Inverness Park resident Linda Sturdivant was toying with her blonde locks when suddenly she said, “I don’t like the way my hair looks. I’m going to go home and dye it.”

“You don’t need to diet,” I assured her.

“I always dye it,” she responded.

“Why?” I asked.

“Because it makes my hair look better.”

“Why would your hair look better if you diet?”

To an eavesdropper, we would have sounded like George Burns and Gracie Allen, with me playing the role of Gracie.

As it happens, former Point Reyes Station resident Sheila Castelli sent me a similar story last week from her new home in Taos: “The County Ag Fair was this past weekend at the ‘One Eye Gonzales Building,’ as announced on the radio. I thought this a quite funny name for such a substantial building. But I happened to see a banner in town for the fair, and it actually is the Juan I. Gonzales Building.”

Obviously words mean different things to different people. Nina Howard of Inverness and I were discussing the meaning of the word “politics” a few months back. “Can union organizing be considered politics?” I asked. “Or are politics limited to government?”

“If they’re not, they should be,” replied Nina flatly. End of discussion.

Unfortunately, political rhetoric in this God-forsaken country no longer bears much resemblance to rational thought. Take, for example, the campaigning of Republican presidential hopeful Fred Thompson, formerly a lackluster senator from Tennessee. In courting the conservative vote, Senator Thompson has claimed “the Virginia Tech massacre proved that students should be allowed to carry guns on campus,” to quote the Sept. 1-7 Economist.

If Senator Thompson were right, highschoolers should also be packing heat to defend themselves. Year after year, they’re far more likely than college students to be gunned down in the vicinity of their schools.

To keep order in a well-armed classroom, teachers would, of course, have to be able to outgun their students, but that would merely require state-of-the-art weaponry plus a mastery of marksmanship and fast draw.

Senator Thompson may argue that because college students are older, they would be more responsible with their guns than high school students, but don’t believe it. Around the time I was a student at Stanford, members of an on-campus fraternity got drunk one night and shot out windows in a women’s dormitory across the street. That couldn’t happen at a high school because the students wouldn’t be old enough to drink.

As Winston Churchill aptly observed in 1920: “Politics are almost as exciting as war, and quite as dangerous.”

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Another snake in the grass… Friday morning, I spotted this small gopher snake warming itself in the sun near the top of my driveway. Gopher snakes can grow to nine feet long and often live to be teenagers. In captivity, they sometimes live into their 20s. The snake has a large shield on its nose for burrowing in search of small mammals.

A spotted axis doe with a white fallow doe in the Olema Valley. Ever since the Point Reyes National Seashore in defiance of public opinion set out to eradicate their herds, the park administration has repeatedly contradicted itself regarding who would benefit from their meat. (Photo by Janine Warner, founder of DigitalFamily.com)

Seldom are prophecies as quickly fulfilled as one in my Aug. 8 posting regarding the duplicity of the Point Reyes National Seashore administration. Anyone who still takes seriously the park administration’s public statements might do better to take note of this chronology:

In an attempt to sugarcoat the shooting of axis and fallow deer in the National Seashore, the park administration in early summer repeatedly told the press that dead deer would be given to the Redwood Empire Food Bank in Santa Rosa and the St. Vincent de Paul Society in San Rafael.

In late July as White Buffalo Inc., the gunmen hired by the park, were preparing to begin their slaughter of 80 deer, the National Seashore administration told the press that no longer were all the slain deer earmarked for feeding the needy. Some carcasses would now go to Hopper Mountain Wildlife Refuge to feed condors.

On Aug. 8 just after White Buffalo started shooting deer, this blog warned that National Seashore statements about what would happen to all the dead deer were not to be trusted. When culling had been carried out in the park 20 years earlier, it was noted, those deer shot where the park’s hunters would have had to carry them a ways had been left where they dropped. It eventually turned out that most dead deer had not gone to feeding the needy even though the park had told the public that’s what was happening.

The Point Reyes Light on Aug. 23 published a photo of a dead fallow deer and said members of the public had found two such carcasses in the Olema Valley. The Light also reported: “National Park officials had received word of the deer but were as of yet unable to determine who was responsible for their shooting.” There has been a history of poaching in the park and park officials noted that poaching is ongoing. “It could very well have nothing to do with us,” said park spokesperson John Dell’Osso.

The West Marin Citizen that same day reported that someone else had found six carcasses of deer shot to death in the Olema Valley. The paper quoted park spokesman Dell’Osso as by then saying, “We’re basically stopping the work that was going on so we can look into this specific situation a bit more. If we find out this was part of our program, then it’s not acceptable.”

The Citizen also quoted Tony DeNicola, president of White Buffalo, as saying none of the dead deer found in the Olema Valley were shot by his gunmen. “He asserted that his hunters would have removed any animals they killed within a matter of hours,” The Citizen reported.

But the park administration’s line kept changing, and by the time The Marin Independent Journal interviewed Dell’Osso for its Aug. 23 edition, the park spokesman was saying that, contrary to what he and White Buffalo had previously told the press, some dead deer were deliberately “left in the park to provide food for scavenging animals.”

This is an arrogant indifference to truth masquerading as wildlife management. In a month’s time, the National Seashore administration’s story went from: 1) all the deer meat is earmarked for feeding the needy; to 2) some of the meat will not go to the needy but will be fed to condors; to 3) rotting carcasses of deer found shot to death in the park could well have been killed by poachers; to 4) if White Buffalo did, in fact, leave dead deer lying around, that would be contrary to park policy; to 5) the park told White Buffalo to leave some carcasses strewn about as food for scavengers.

And as The Light’s photo demonstrated, the main scavengers are typically vultures and maggots. The park administration wants to increase the amount of flies around here? And is willing to withhold meat from poor people to do so?

And what about the killing itself? The Aug. 2 Point Reyes Light reported that White Buffalo’s gunmen “aim for the head because a bullet to the head kills a deer in 30 to 90 seconds.” Yet the Aug. 23 Light notes the dead deer in its photo was shot in the shoulder. And The West Marin Citizen simultaneously reported receiving photos of six dead deer that “were shot primarily in the body, which could have caused unnecessary suffering.”

Welcome to the Abu Ghraib National Seashore where only the bad guys know how bad things really are.