Jeny and Her "Ampie" Gail: Their Coastal Wander

I was the last stop at the western end, the turn-around point, of Jeny's first solo cross-country journey. After a couple days of catching up and immersion in my daily life--a meeting of my writers' group, a 12-step gathering, a hike in Cloverdale's "wilderness area" with friends--we headed across scenic route 128. The curving road is a slice, a cross-section, of the California landscape: bare golden hills with live oak and shadows; woods of manzanita, madrone, dogwood in the spring and the spectrum of autumn leaves in the fall; long stretches of redwoods; the smell of the sea. We planned to spend a few hours at the Mendocino Botanical Gardens. We stayed all day.

Another cross-section of California's variousness lay before us--from the tended succulent gardens to cactus and heather to woods and stream and bog and all the way to the headlands above the ocean, where Nature had done all the planting. Sea grasses. Wild flowers. Little paths winding out to the Edge for the overlook. We were guided to wander through the open house filled with begonias in bloom, fuschia hanging above us. The rose-colored begonia had the same name as the wine we had just tasted at our winery stop on 128.

The seasonal spectacle of the day was the dahlia garden. Every color, all of the brightest range, circled the green grass lawn. No pastels here. This garden shouted "summer."

This fine piliated woodpecker seemed to pose for us against the overcast sky of late afternoon.

Echoed in the scatter of sea grasses, the sea sound:

the wash and splash of the waves below us.

After a river view dinner, we checked into the Surf Motel, whose gardens nearly matched the formal sanctuary where we'd spent the day.

Next morning, the fog was heavy over the Mendocino Headlands; the spring fields of wildflowers had faded to the soft beige tones of summer under the heat of the days when the fog dissolved or moved back out to sea. I discovered the macro feature on my camera and came in close to the velvet cat's paws.

Our stop for a roadside picnic gained each of us a "life bird," one seen for the first time. On the huge rock islands in front of us, we could see nesting colonies of murre (my first sighting) and pelagic cormorants (Jeny's ). Through her scope we could see the nesting mothers feeding their largish babies!

We spent the afternoon along the lake at MacKerricher State Park, north of Fort Bragg, walking along the lake shore, then over the boardwalk to Seal Rock. Ground squirrels scurried about their business as though they thought themselves invisible to the human traffic. Across the water, harbor seals, nearly white as albinos, lolled on the rocks.

Jeny managed a shot through her birding scope with the camera, a vision that seemed very old somehow, as though it might be an illustration for Moby Dick.

Home then across route 20, as splendid as our drive from Cloverdale. This road tucks itself between walls of hills and stone all the way to Willetts. We drove south to Ukiah, to the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas, where we bowed to the Buddha.

As we left the ground to the shrieks of the resident peacocks, most rainbow-splendid of feather, a few all white, we were witness to the mating dance of a male, whose fanny shook like a fan dancer's.

The object of his effort strolled by, seemingly unimpressed.

The next morning, Jeny packed up Cricketeer and headed east on a route through more national parks, wilderness areas, the homes of Chicago friends, headed for her own new home in Kentucky, where she and her partner Mike have new jobs. Jeny is teaching Earth Sciences to eight graders, with fresh visions of the beauty of the planet, American-style.

Photographs of the rose begonia and the resting seals and the peacocks by Jennifer Gail Randall. You'll find Jeny's journal of her journey at http://cricketeer2010.blogspot.com. All other photographs by Luna Zeffer.