Thorny Roses

It's Thursday. I'm on my third cuppa coffee, my mood tangled somewhere between exhaustion and apathy. I suppose I'll perk up after I fill the bird feeders and go for a brisk walk while the north wind tries to push me around. Or maybe I'll just creep upstairs on my lunch and hide under the covers for 45 minutes.

This time of year is always a mixed bag of emotions for me.

Spring is such a delightful season, full of little joys: violets peep from their hiding places in the grass, plump buds adorn the trees, rhubarb's wrinkly nubs appear, birdsong fills the air, chocolate cake and presents are pending. But around the corner from my birthday come sad reminders: Rose's birth, and my mother's death. And then joy hits me again with Jade's birthday, lilacs and apple blossoms, spring rain and the music of frogs and crickets.

Isn't that just life all over though? A heady mix of exhilaration and despair, small moments of beauty and ugliness, unremarkable days and thrilling nights? Never boring, this life of mine. Never a rose without a thorn, or a thorn without a rose.

Muir Woods: the silent forest

My boss told me that she'd taken her son to Muir Woods because it was the place where Return of the Jedi had been filmed. I groaned inwardly, thinking, oh great - a forest full of majestic redwoods, desecrated by Ewoky marketing crap. But we went anyway. We needed some respite from the craziness of SF.

D and I braved an hour of hairpin, butt-clenching mountain roads to get there. I stepped out of the car in the parking lot and was amazed to see a puff of my breath cloud the air. The temperature in SF had hovered around 18 degrees; in Muir Woods, it was 9! On went a pair of pants under my new dress; on went the touristy San Francisco wind breaker D bought me at Fisherman's Wharf; on went my pink socks and running shoes. Only Ewoks would see me, right?

I'm happy to report that Muir woods remains blissfully Lucas-free. The only advertisement I saw was a sign strictly forbidding the feeding of baby chimpmunks ("We know they're cute, but please don't feed them.") There are dozens of trails you can take, most of which meander through the never-ending cathedral of towering redwoods or past trickling streams.

The air was crisp and pure. I felt as though I was drinking in gallons of oxygen - my city-starved lungs seemed to stretch open to twice their size.

I wish I could describe the silence of those woods to you. We felt we had to whisper most of the time. D tried speaking loudly, but the woods swallowed up his voice as though he'd spoken in a vaccum. I half expected to see something mythical coming towards me through the waist-deep ferns - a unicorn or one of those elves from LOTR. Instead, we met an assortment of hikers and tourists, all of whom greeted us in their native language. Muir woods was the only place we visited on our vacation where that happened. I don't know all redwood forests lend themselves to a sense of community and friendliness among strangers. If they do, we should all spend a couple of hours there at least once a week.

Next: oranges and avodados and cotton, oh my!

Ring around the Moon

What does it mean when there's a big, wide, misty ring around the moon? Snow? Harbinger of death? Good luck? Fertility? Hmm.

D and I went for a walk last night with Neko. I love moonlit walks, especially when the air is frosty and there's snow on the ground. Everything seems illuminated from within.

Things look different in the moonlight; more ethereal, less serious. I like how the trees are sharply outlined, how D's face is half-hidden, how Neko's eyes glint when she turns to stare at us from down the road.

I can't wait to walk in the moonlight through the fields at Someday. Someday...