day 29: point reyes station. only.

oh the usual rest day: sleep in, eat, linger, be sleepy, move slowly, rest, and eat. we literally sat under a shady tree or on a bench in the shade most of the day. it was perfect. 

(bovine bakery has amazing baked goods in huge portions. good for a bike tour, not good for daily life, size-wise. amy had two of her paintings featured!)

(amy made us salad for lunch with lettuce picked from her garden.)

(i miss poppies. so nice to see them popping up everywhere!)

(entrance to the place we stayed.)

(we ate sandwiches for dinner. it was good, but not big enough! :-( so i asked samuel to get another sandwich and we split it. we also devoured a large bag of chips.)

(sunset on the way home.)

the elk came out to play.

mom and i went hiking in point reyes, the friday after thanksgiving. it's one of my favorite places to be, and i've written about it a number of times on this blog. i feel at home when i'm roaming in that space, as if it was created for me as a respite where i can go to just be. it's where i go away to get re-centered, focused, and relaxed.

naturally, i took my mom there since she loves to hike and she loves the ocean. she normally takes 10+ mile hikes in the mountains every weekend, so this was an easy 10 mile hike for her. we went to the famous tule elk trail that starts at pierce point ranch. it's 4.7 miles to the tip of tomales point, with very few inclines. easy.

funny thing is that, as many times as i've been out to that trail, i never knew it went all the way to the tip of the bay! i felt like i had gotten robbed when i realized that trail was actually 10 miles total. in fact, i told my mom the trail would be only 4 miles or so because that's all i had ever done. to my delightful surprise, we hiked all 10 miles, ate mom-made kimbap at the end and then tailed it back in time to indulge in some fresh oysters on our way home.

 

 

point reyes | i stole it from the earth.

while sitting, looking at this...

i noticed these... 

...and i had to bring some home with me. so i pulled a few from their home with the exquisite view, to come and live in a barn, on a deep wine purple kitchen window sill. there ain't no waves crashing here, but they get to see cats sit on a fence, to hear kids run around and chickens squawking, and to watch me cut up fruit. i'm happy they live with me now. hope they're happy too.  ;-) 

i love succulents.

succulent. [suhk-yuh-luhnt]

1. full of juice; juicy

2. rich in desirable qualities

3. affording mental nourishment

point reyes | well spent

my friends steph & sei wei came into town from beijing, so we spent four days together in one of our favorite places: point reyes. their good friend jeff also joined us from the east coast to take a few days to relax and to be with. 


the last time i saw s&s, they hadn't yet conceived a small child (because you know, people conceive small children, not embryos) and definitely hadn't given birth to one. and the time before that, it was their wedding day. things change - a lot.


steph and i lived together during one of the toughest years of my life: 2005-2006. she saw me through a year of unraveling. and this past week, we reflected about how much each of us have changed since then. she has become a spontaneous and nurturing mother, kind wife, and light-hearted friend. and i was delighted to still experience her as a curious and adventurous kindred spirit, the quality that first drew my heart to hers, and vice versa.


connecting with s&s was without a doubt, meaningful, fun, and life-giving. sei wei is a good, good man, husband, and father. :) but the real surprise was connecting with jeff. i thoroughly enjoyed hearing his stories, interacting with his quirky nature, and bantering about our major differences. we are entirely different on many superficial levels. he has three higher ed degrees, is a b-school grad who can solve math problems within seconds, lives by his watch and his plans, and always stays at sheraton hotels because of his mileage points! i'm a banana slug who studied anthro (but questions if school was even for me), daydreams about outdoor survival school (but unique schooling experiences are ok), likes to scrap plans, and looks for hostels and/or campgrounds for my travel accommodations. but at the core, i found that we are both in some regard, vagabonds. independent travelers who find our way into strangers' lives and they into ours; we are marked by those encounters. i don't meet very many people who share that quality. so even if just for four days, i felt like i was reunited a long-lost tribemate. i'm thankful for a new friend!


and i haven't forgotten nathan. i'll let the pictures speak for themselves. but one thing i learned about children is that it's both the quality and quantity of consistent time spent with them makes the relationship. it was delightful to see him warm up to me each day... (but my guess is that feeding him ice cream/brownies and behaving like a wild cave woman helped that process move along more quickly.) 


& of course...photos! i find that point reyes draws out some of my most inspired work. my heart is at peace and i am at home. so when in that space, i can give birth to what i love - the spectacularly ordinary joys of life. 

  

finding life in the unexpected... (and sometimes planned).  ;-) 

point reyes | breath of fresh air

my love for this landscape grows exponentially every time i draw near and set foot.

this time, i stayed across the bay in marshall, where we watched the sun color this backdrop with its rising and setting.

28.

this birthday weekend, all i wanted to do was be under the stars, overlooking the ocean, & camping in point reyes. since i fractured my foot, i've avoided being in nature. it was too hard to be somewhere when i couldn't experience it the way i have found feeds my soul. so i stayed away from these tremendous places i called my home...my love.

but the hills, they waited for me
and they continue to,
until i can run again.

backpacking seemed okay to do though. ;-) he he
so i planned a little adventure that started on friday morning and ended on saturday afternoon.

just under 30 hours of:
persimmon & fig finds, milk tea,
a coffee search in the city.
trekking to the campsite in light-but-adds-up-to-be-a-lot rain
to set up shop under a slightly harder rain
a dusk-to-dark walk on the sand along low tide crashing waves
lentil soup in the rain
a leak
sleeping under the markings of a storm
waking up at 3am under a full belly moon that lit up all that its glow touched.
we looked at each other blissfully
while i ate a beloved persimmon.
a morning walk to the beach,
tree swinging
and a trek so beautiful it transports me to another world i never should've known, but now know.
i see amy walk out of her complex, with a mission.
as soon as i see her, i know that we were meant to exchange life that afternoon.
tears, stories, love exchanged.
we bovine bakery it up and head back to the south bay
on a mission to get matt into a theater seat to watch harry potter.

i love that point reyes invites me to just be. i feel absolutely myself when i am in that space. it's refreshing in every way. it was the perfect way to affirm all of year 27, as i embark on year 28.

to remember my last days as a 27 year old, i asked my very talented friend matt to take a few snaps of me while we stood on that beach saturday morning. i dislike being in front of a camera (photographer's honest confession), but it's been such an incredible year...i wanted to memorialize it (even if it meant i had to wear a mustache).

& of course, thank you so much for exceeding my birthday goal of $2828 for charity: water.
we raised $3000 together and helped 150 bayaka people in CAR get clean water. what a tremendous way to start this new year. fantastic!

away. over here.

when i went to point reyes a few weeks ago, i stayed in an old mansion built in the 1930s. the four-story home was converted into a retreat center and named after saint columba. it's nested in the beautiful town of inverness, tucked away for retreatants to come and rest. the space is welcoming because it is exactly what it is; there are no pretenses there. being at st. columba feels like putting on my most comfortable pair of big soft socks. (except when it's super dark and my mind makes up dark scenarios so i get freaked out.)

away.

it's vital to spend time away. far away from the dailys of everyday life.
to wake up to something new.
to smell fragrances foreign to your nose.
to create time & space to just be.

point reyes is a magical place to experience such a thing.

themes | point reyes. four.

sometimes, we just have to.

themes | point reyes. three.

to see the reality.
to see the unseen.

themes | point reyes. two.

it is a journey worth taking.

themes | point reyes.

just trying something a little different with pictures that i took in point reyes this past monday 10.19.09.