I am traversing the eastern slope of Fremont Open space, and I’m walking along a terrace once trafficked perhaps by laborers on this former orchard as they roamed from tree to tree during harvest. What kinds of trees? I don’t know. Today their gnarled, leafless, stunted silhouettes stand arabesque upon the hill above me, black and static amid the flowing grasses, beneath the hovering falcon. Birdsong travels like a current over the terrain, bees are busy buzzing in the clover mats, hummingbirds fighting in the treelimbs. I stop along the trail while Seti sniffs the newspaper; it’s Sunday and the weeds hang with dog pee here and there along the worn trail. The entire hillside is tense with new life. You can almost feel the warm ground quake beneath you, a mycelium overtaking winter’s rot, aerating the bedrock, paving the way for shooting rhizomes and weeds. Little yellow wildflowers sway with glossy grass. If I were to try drawing three square inches of this space I might scream; beneath the mat of green urgency lies an even tinier world, a lilliputian army of plants and fungi working together to hold the soil firmly against the hillside. A linear delight, it reminds me of Dutch painting and discovering the architecture of dandelions and drawing for hours on end, without interruption. But today I’m plodding onwards, at times tugging the dog to urge him faster, so I might get back to unpack yet more boxes, and break down more boxes, making space in the mudroom for this naked and young morning light to pour into our house and penetrate the walls with its warm yawn.

It rained a lot last week, sheets and sheets of rain. But this morning, glorious sunshine. On top of Maisie’s Peak, out of breath after a week off and with an arm stretching towards San Francisco, downtown was as tall as a cuticle, my fingernail on the horizon. But I could see it! Amazing early spring air, damp with pungent Bay Laurel and lichen and moss.

Jerry met us at breakfast and decided that a post-rain Saturday was prime for mushroom hunting, so we drove up the hill to an alpine lake along skyline Ridge, ditched the canoe (whim #2) and went off the beaten path with the kidlets.

Chas surprised me with his reaction to a Banana slug. He was pretty offended, wouldn’t touch it at first. This blew me away; I think these things are the coolest molluscs around, like a cold slice of mango looking back at you.

We found a rough-skinned newt, too, that was hard to photograph in the deep shade of a thick, ancient redwook .It crept with fat, orange and humanlike fingers across our hands, drunkenlike yet determined to get back into the detritus. So I returned him to the ground before we exhausted the little guy, and he indeed honed immediately into a random opening in the lattice of wet pine and laurel litter.

We bypassed fallen trees, macerated by rain and time and recently, bear paws. Fresh fiddleleafs, little forest babies, unfurling and mushrooms everywhere. Fruiting above a mycelium beneath an oak tree, wrinkled black Elephant correction: “Elfin” saddles. Little brown mushrooms, maroon unbrellas, fluorescent capes and fans of turkey feathers. Matte black puffs, like ashballs, and salmon candylike clusters on rotting bark. In the split of a tree, neon orange jelly fungus.

Before the furniture arrived, there was a skateboard in an empty living room and me, in my adjacent studio, acting really silly.

SPC.

Despite my occasional irritations with way the boys continue to remain so close by my side, there are upsides to their lingering dependence on me. I can still redirect muddles between them by simply leaving the room, a perfect curveball. This morning, I quelled an escalating feud between them in the living room, one I was almost ready to fuel with my own frustration, by halting mid-step, turning round and retreating to the mudroom, where I silently baffled them as I put on my socks and boots and headed out into the yard. They watched me from the stoop as I opened the shed door, near the garage, and began excavating hoes, cultivators and shovels from an ethereal matrix of dusty cobwebs, spreading them like battle artillery, single-file, to rest along a low-lying branch. And within minutes, both were eagerly digging into the understory of a giant oak tree in the front yard, heaving shovelsful of composted peat into random piles around me.

Chas soon began to look for earthworms. Crouching over the dugout, in the space I’d carved beneath the tree, he picked fat glossy creepers between his fingers and carried them around the yard, through the house for a little while, taking them on a helpless tour of distraction before returning to my side. As if he’d forgotten it was still in his hand, Chas would ask to take another bath (perhaps his third?), doe-eyed and head tilted, and I’d look down at his hand to find another gleaming, limp, pinched annelid. “I wanna put him in the bathtub,” he’d say, quite matter-of-factly. And I’d have to disagree, smiling apologetically, as I turned the compost in the drizzling rain.

We’re still unpacking. The front entry to the house offers a mudroom, which we’ve cluttered with towers of broken-down boxes, and I have to climb over these in order to get in and out of my studio, which is also half-unpacked and, incidentally, chilly. In a former life, this room was a sunroom. Now, I have a pile of baskets in one corner, plastic binfuls of fabric, open boxes of different art mediums: an encaustics box, a box of kid’s art supplies (mostly kid-claimed art media made for grownups, since I insist they use the “real” stuff under my supervision), a box of stationery supplies, textile paints, watercolors, the list goes on and I wish it would never end, but it does. I’m short on space.

I’m finding a rhythm again with the kids, home-based, and feeling more stable. Last week I made a daily schedule, surprisingly fascist in its organization, and I started using it throughout the day as lifeline in this sea of chaos I sail with these two wildchildren. I noticed myself returning to the paper mostly during the early afternoon hours, reminding myself that it was quiet time, and following up with whatever needed to be done at the moment so that I’d stay on course. I found it oddly relaxing, comforting, knowing that this happens at such-and-such time and that happens at 2:30, so there was no guesswork or thinking on the fly about what to do next. For so long I’d been in transition-mode, hungry flotsam ready for anchor. It’s not enough to have the house, have the stuff, have the cars, and have the heat on. In my case, as with probably anyone, it’s not really home until you start to sink into the saddle and ride from the seat. Not quite autopilot, but operating more fluidly. Gracefully?

And I’m starting to feel like I’m home, as memory picks up and I am recognizing the seasonal shifts and nuances of the different habitat here. It has started raining periodically, like it’s supposed to. And the rain–it’s finally sinking into my head now–is not the torrential, melodramatic rain one is accustomed to in Texas, but instead a wispy, snivelling drawn-out weep, not unlike the vegetable misters in the grocery stores–that crisps the new fern fronds, standing attention over last summer’s spoils, and coaxes Spring out of the tips of each branch and stem and sleeping bulb. It smells like a florist’s shop, evergreen and eucalyptus, lily-of-the-valley, quince blossom perfection. We ate grapefruits off the tree in the yard, yesterday (delicious! like a sweet tart).

I’ve taken to a particular walking place that overlooks the bustling Silicon Valley. Today, a muddy trail where I did more skating than walking (and certainly not running). Rain has puddled in day-old hoofprints of horse and deer, a few lone large cat paws. Birds, everywhere; around a bend the quail
bolt in muffled exodus through the heather. It’s good to be connecting several times each week with the real natives of this paradise, hidden to the side of the sprawling concrete abandon of startups and box stores. We’re lucky enough to live close enough to it’s edge, in the agricultural transition zone, ripe with fruit trees and vineyards and borderline healthy air to breathe.

((sigh)) Back to unpacking…

I read somewhere, ten years ago when we were puppy-surfing, that a Jack Russell Terrier is like having a perpetual three year-old in the house. Well, that’s pretty true. Seti, our dog, is all about the “now” and the “me” and balls and toys. He doesn’t always share; in fact, he’s always hoarded his own ball at the dog park, fending off dumbfounded pit bulls and retrievers five times his size, just by the obnoxious tang in his snarl. And, just like any preschooler, you can distract him off the nasty scent of a dead rat in the backyard just by saying the magic words “where’s your ball?” It’s so easy.

Ball. Ball is life. Well, ball is second to frisbee, but we’re out of frisbees right now. We have two chronically wet tennis balls (you can see why, above) and one racquetball (a far superior choice to all manufactured dog toys for the medium dog set). Seti will carry the ball around the house, right under your feet, hoping you will throw it. When you sit down to talk on the phone, he will drop it at your feet. When you try disapppearning into the bathroom for ten minutes, he’ll unlock the door with his razor sharp Jack Russell perserverence and drop the ball at your feet. And certainly, when you slip into a nice warm bath, ready to erase the day’s grime off your body and soul, Seti will come and drop the dirty ball into the bathwater. Then he’ll sit and stare at you imploringly, his brown eyes now big obsidian orbs, penetrating their voodoo into your weariness, and there’s no way to resist him: you find yourself throwing the ball this way and that, trying to outwit the bastard but damned if he doesn’t catch your every curveball! He’s a machine. He’ll do this all day. And here he is, twisting Chas’ arm in the new bath.

Birthdays. They just keep getting sweeter. Alis and I celebrated our birthdays tonight by having a fondue party up at her place in the Santa Cruz mountains. I think we both might be missing the absence of the yearly Red & Chocolate party, which used to include a few more guests than just the ten of us that were there tonight. It’s normally such a wet, cold time of the year here, especially up in the mountains, where the rain freezes and sometimes turns to snow. But the weather is warmer this year. I cut a quince branch, already in flower, and attached it to the bow on her present. Fruit trees along the Saratoga avenues are white with blossoms, rolling hills at the open space preserve, where I run, are adorned in special corners with tiny pink and white buds, showering petals along the path. It’s already Spring and it’s righteous.

Every time I think it’s a beautiful day down here in the valley, I’m blown away when I step out of my car in her driveway up on Skyline ridge. For starters, there’s the quiet outdoor air there that’s almost deafening, like the sound of nighttime in the suburbs after two fresh feet of snow. After the birds have gone to roost, near dusk, I can almost hear my ears ringing (thanks due in part to Chas and to a lesser extent, Ford, the loudest children I’ve ever known). And then there’s the view. The breathtaking view that, were it not for the fog, would include the Pacific, beyond Santa Cruz.

Birthdays are sweeter and sweeter. I can cook in the same kitchen with my college buddy, smile about where we are right now, and look into the living room to see benchmarks we’ve left over the years since we met: solid ties with men that became important to us along the way; the three beautiful, vibrant children that this love made possible; our two little dogs who are getting older, followed by the ghosts we’ve grieved to tell goodbye, recently: three other dogs, a horse; a mother, a grandfather.

Turning 35 this year is the sweet little nudge in the arm, reminding me about babies and books and other priorities that can’t wait behind my hedonism. But I think this year I might start lying about my age. Alis and I made a deal: it’s not important for anyone to know. Except for the clerks at the grocery store, but I’ll tell them my age any time because they still card me when I buy groceries (which, I now realize, tells me that I buy entirely too much booze). 35 used to be old. But I’ve never carried myself better (thank you, yoga. why didn’t we meet sooner?) and my smile, most often, has a careworn grace to it that I am proud of, suggesting achievement and the attainment of purpose. I think motherhood did it to me.
…The rest of time I think I’m frowning, though, and I can attribute that to motherhood, too 😉

Damon, thanks for the photos! You’re getting gooood!

Ford is poking a sea anemone, again, at Moss Beach, again. Because I can’t get enough of the beach, and after all, it’s a new moon (very very low tide). I’m in heaven here, atop briny algal mats and whirling fogscape, closing in on us at twilight.
We arrived too late in the day, as the fog shut the door on sunset. Quickly yielding to the cold and dark, we left with this one unruffled shot. We’re learning to use available light, so Damon and I swapped the camera back and forth the whole fifteen minutes we were there. One of us would hold Chas (who was freezing) and the other would frantically stand still in the blue light, hoping that Ford would do the same.

The big difference I feel, being in this house, is the announcement I make with every move within it; the floorboards do most of the talking, try as I may to pussyfoot from room to room, as I imagine what will go where. Our belongings arrive within the week. I’m enjoying the graceful expanse of sunlight across the hardwood floors, this immensity of personal space, after being in a hotel room for one month.

Arranging our nature walk loot on a quiet surface in the sunroom, I look out the window to spy quail silhouettes scampering beneath the rhododendron and a scrub jay punctuate the clover in blue. Unknown bulbs peep through pine needles. These walls, this acre, is filled with hope for the coming years. I’ll complain a lot about the Los Palo-Gato-Altos-View smog of silicon valley, but I’m amazed at how we manage to still smell grass and trees here in Saratoga, at the foot of the Santa Cruz mountains, who are (these days) obscured through milk glass. Here, the cleansing respite of a eucalyptus grove: towering twisted trunks with warping bark. Although the blossoms are brown, the hummingbirds are still fighting among the drooping boughs.

and the strange thing is that I fabricated this image from scratch exactly one year ago in my sketchbook.
Serendipity?