Rebecca Bond is a graphic artist with a get-out-under-the-trees bent. Just last Friday she was haunting Redwood Regional Park, one of the few big Bay Area parks I have yet to check out. Starting out on a ridge at the…
Monthly Archives: November 2008
An idiot’s guide to orienteering
by tom • November 16, 2008 • 6 Comments
You’ve no doubt heard of the pastime of orienteering, in which you dress up in your finest hiking regalia, navigate miles of hairpin-turn mountain roads to an appointed trailhead, hit the trail with maps designed to get you lost, and…
Weasels at Point Reyes
by tom • November 16, 2008 • 5 Comments
I’m talking real weasels, not the metaphorical kind who always seem to be in the men’s room when it’s their turn to buy a round of beers. I’ve never seen one in the wild, or even on somebody’s blog, until…
Bonus hike at Ed Levin County Park
by tom • November 12, 2008 • 15 Comments
I saw the little black angus calf wandering about, baying for its mom, about 100 yards down the trail. I wondered where mom was because the only time a cow will trouble itself to stop grazing is if you block…
Hiking gear: the best birthday present
by tom • November 10, 2008 • 7 Comments
Every year my mom mails me a birthday check, which I promptly squander on hiking gear. This way I get to pretend like I’m a smelly, unshaven (but way-cool) outdoors dude who’s so broke he still needs checks from home…
Excellent wildlife shots
by tom • November 7, 2008 • 3 Comments
Stumbled across a great photo stream on Flickr kept by a guy who posts under the handle fitznatty. Here’s a slideshow of his stuff: More great shots at his web site. A fave: his encounter with a mountain lion in…
About those benches
by tom • November 6, 2008 • 0 Comments
You don’t have to be Wallace Stegner to get a bench named after you in the Midpeninsula Open Space Preserve, and a fat wallet alone won’t do it, either. In case you wondering how one gets one of those benches,…
East Bay parks bond passes
by tom • November 5, 2008 • 2 Comments
Contra Costa Times has the details: Measure WW put on the ballot by the East Bay Regional Park District got 71 percent of the vote, more than enough to pass the two-thirds majority it needed. Measure WW will finance $500…
A great time to be an American
by tom • November 5, 2008 • 0 Comments
A guiding principle among folks of Republican ilk is that the faults of these United States of America are vastly overblown and that the nation’s lefty-liberal critics are largely out to lunch. It took a smart, capable half-white liberal black…