(“Skunked” is a fisherman’s term for catching nada.) We trailered my boat up to the bay and when we  got there it was blowing hard. At the ramp, a National Park rescue boat (600 horsepower) was just pulling in, towing a boat the same size as mine, with 3 guys in it. The ranger said the fishermen were in trouble, with waves starting to break over the boat, and they were heading back out to check on 2 other boats that could be in trouble (above). He advised us against going out. so we scratched the plan. Below, Billy in a 1940s-style phone booth, and a deep sea diving rig at Nick’s Cove restaurant, which has a lot of vintage stuff on display. We got a bunch of bay mussels off the rocks on the way home.

Saw a beautiful coyote on a recent (unsuccessful) mushroom hunt. The coyotes I see every so often on the highway are a bit scuzzy looking, but this one was grand. Reddish shiny coat, black tail tip; he was big and had a princely profile like a fox.

Left: coyote scat, indicating a diet high in mice, gophers. Looks like an art object.

Going through Stinson Beach Tuesday a deer bolted down the road. Galloping, two front feet, then two rear feet alternately. Rippling front leg muscles. Powerful and healthy. Then that night, on my nighttime run by headlight, another coyote at the nearby farm. Ran away from me, then climbed to the top of a pyramid-shaped compost pile. The Joker.

This morning more varieties of birds than I’ve ever seen outside the kitchen window. Crows, doves, quail, robins, red-winged blackbirds. a Rufus-sided towee (little beauty), sparrows (ugh), and the ever-spooky rock pigeons. Cornucopia of feathered flight.

   Some years ago I had a series of dreams about flying. It wasn’t like I was just floating in the air. I had to run along, flap arms, and take off. So utterly real, still thrills me to think about it. I often watch (in envy) the elegant-in-flight turkey buzzards riding updrafts by the ocean cliffs, or a line of Pelicans just inches above the water, gliding on the updraft of breaking waves. Eat my heart out.

   Here are some Fluted Black Elfin Saddle mushrooms Lew gathered in Inverness, too far past prime to eat, but the only half-way decent fungi in the woods right now. C’mon rain! C’mon low pressure, which allows the storms to come in off the ocean.

Got my 15 hp Evinrude outboard motor tuned up. Billy and I are going clamming, musseling, and crabbing on Saturday in Tomales Bay. I have a 12′ aluminum Klamath boat. It’s a little dicey getting out through the ocean waves here with a boat that small, but Tomales Bay is a piece of cake. I’m dedicated to getting ever more food from the wild.

   Spring is peeking around the corner. The light is richer, green grass growing, plum tree budding out, red-winged blackbirds singing their Spring song. I’m a child of Spring, born in April, so I feel exuberant this time of year.

When it came time to do our first e-book — Marathon: You Can Do It!, by Jeff Galloway — we couldn’t find anyone we thought would do a good enough job converting print book to ebook. So Rick Gordon did the book “in-house,” for the iPad and the Kindle. It came out really well: typography, color, graphics, and perhaps most importantly, smooth flowing of the many training charts in the book. I compared it with all the other iPad e-books on running, and it looks way better.

   We entered it in the non-fiction category of the Publishing Innovation Awards this year and it was was one of three runner-ups for the Publishing Innovation Awards in the non-fiction ebook category, from among a lot of entrants. (There were separate categories for apps and multimedia enhanced ebooks.) It was awarded the QED (Quality-Excellence-Design) seal.

   Here’s what the judges said about Rick’s work:

Read More …