Kayaking by Moonlight
I’ve wanted to do it for years, finally got it together last night. High tide in the Bolinas Lagoon was around midnight, the same time the full moon was high in the sky, so I went to sleep at 9, got up at 1 a.m., and set sail — er, paddle that is — around 1:30 in my Scrambler sit-on-top surf kayak. Wore a shorty wet suit. The lagoon used to be deep, but has filled in over the years so there’s a network of channels that vary in depth according to the tides. I dropped the kayak in at the boat dock, jumped aboard and headed for a winding channel that I’ve paddled through many times during the daylight. It was kind of cold, with a breeze blowing, but the water was glassy. It was beautiful! I paddled silently through the channel, which winds through mud flats with pickleweed just adjacent to a farmer’s field. I paddled about as far as I could go, then turned back and on the way back was paddling into silver moonlight reflected on the mirror-like water. The massive northern flank of Mt. Tamalpais is on the east side of the lagoon and it seemed to loom even closer in the moonlight. It was special, being there all alone, in the silence, in the silver…
It’s always amazing to me how much wonder and beauty there is in one’s own backyard. Just a little effort…
Technology in Search of an Application
Know what I mean? Overuse of Photoshop special effects. Websites with (long-loading) fanciness. Cell phones that play video. Here’s the m.o.: Nerd-types fix on some new slick technology and seek ways to utilize same. We’re surrounded by dumb uses for slick tech. The other day a guy was showing me how he would download web sites to his cell phone and then when he was waiting for his daughter in his car, he’d read stuff on his cell phone. (In tiny print, and slow, etc.) Is this tech necessary? Hopw about throwing into the mix the phrase “appropriate technology.”
Telemann and Canadian Geese
My friend Stuart gave me a bunch of music tapes yesterday, so on the way home in the afternoon, coming around same lagoon, I put on the Suite for Flute and Strings by Telemann. When I came around the corner here was a long line of Canadian Geese, elegant in their black and white and grey coloring, strung out single file paddling through the water. I pulled over and watched them for a while, they were moving in synch with the music. Synchronicity, it just stuns me every so often…
