For whatever reason, certain images never got posted during 2009. So this is some year-end housekeeping.
This shot is from the crest of the hill on Sir Francis Drake Blvd. just before descending into the town of Olema.
The turnaround point of my ride: the mouth of the Bolinas Lagoon.
(For a cool aerial perspective of this spot, click the geotag under the image then click the satellite map and zoom to taste!)
A pesky cyclotouriste with a camera (now at sea level having descending from Bolinas ridge) causes a Snowy Great Egret to make haste.
This fellow was just hanging out in the middle of the road. I don’t know how I spotted him (I guess I was just looking in the middle of the road.)
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.”
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?
For some, this may be an unpleasant image. But death is all around us and today it could not be denied. I saw the dead fawn as I was returning home from my familiar Fairfax-to-Alpine Lake ride. I made a quick u-turn to return to the spot and was able to remove the small creature from the road and perform an ad hoc burial. I fashioned a cross from some branches held together with vines.
I’m reminded of the book, Apologia, by the great writer Barry Lopez.
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