The Friday Cyclotouriste

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April 13th. I can’t put off doing my taxes any longer. So I take a quick ride to my local library to pick up some tax forms.

After I get my forms, I’m suddenly struck by the view looking across the street at St. Rita’s Church.

Time to make a quick portrait of the Nishiki Mixte, I think.

For better or for worse, this pretty much sums up the way most of my photos come about: spontaneously and a quite randomly.

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This image was buried in my cleaning house 2009 posting. On second viewing, it deserves full-size treatment. A few others from that gallery will probably show up full size as well, if they deserve it.

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Noticed this passing through Woodacre on the back roads returning from Tomales Bay and Inverness. Woodacre is home to Zoltron, a local graphic art studio.

Lots of barbed wire fencing in West Marin. This particular barb was captured during a short rest before the final hill on the way home from Pt. Reyes.

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A couple weeks ago it was a small fawn (click here for that post) now a skunk.

I placed this guy off the road near a tree and covered him loosely with some sticks. Because the Marin County sky is filled with Turkey Vultures I have hope he will be recycled (if vultures can stand the smell, I don’t know).

And speaking of the often misunderstood vulture, I’m reminded of the final line from poet Lew Welch’s Song of the Turkey Buzzard: “to keep the highways clean, and bother no being.”

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Today’s thunder showers never materialized so I headed out toward Petaluma this afternoon. The image looking east on Nicasio Valley Rd. near the reservoir is made up of 12 vertically composed images stitched together using the “photomerge” tool in Adobe’s Photoshop CS3. The weather, the clouds, the light: it was jaw-droppingly beautiful!

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What’s a trip to Nicasio without an image (or two) of the local church, some cows, and a hint of the baseball diamond in the middle of the town square?

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I think Spirit Rock should bring over a Japanese bonsai master to do some pruning to this Valley Oak. Sacrilege? Perhaps. But once upon a time there was a rock with a small tree. As the tree has grow…well it just seems slightly unbalanced to my eye. Check out the depiction on the upper left of the meditation center’s website which suggests an earlier aesthetic.

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