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.
A deer leapt across the road and when she went into the brush, she seemed to float, as if time was frozen for a moment (brings to mind Baryshnikov). When I climbed up out of Jenner, to the winding road that’s maybe 500′ above the ocean, the fog was just at the edge of the road and cliff; it was like skimming the edge of a cloud. You could hear, but not see, the ocean below. A little while later I saw this turkey buzzard and he let me get pretty close. I’d hoped he’d spread his wings, as these birds do, looking somehow medieval, but he didn’t.
