Full moon at Willow - September 4, 2009
Photo taken at 8:30 PM on Willow Trail
Starting on Lower Laurel there were many acorns to be seen on the Coast Live Oaks, as seen below.
High above and far away from us, sat a raptor of some sorts. In binoculars, I believe to have observed yellow talons and a yellow beak. The body of this raptor was a dark brown with red highlights, through and through. He/she was huge!!!!! What I love about this photo is the aura of light that surrounds this majestic beauty. Anyone want to say this is a rarely seen Golden Eagle? Laura and I are hoping it was!
The poison oak and the California Buckwheat were displaying rich and varied hues of red, contrasting wonderfully with the various yellow and blue greens, and that creamy golden tone that I love so much.
Our California False Indigo that I have been tracking over time was rather droopy and dry - no doubt due to the heat spell that we've been having. Usually, False Indigo is found at higher elevations - I felt badly for it.
But my feelings went quickly from sad to happy ones when I turned around and saw this beautiful rose-colored cloud grouping in the sky.
It was in the mid-80s when we began our hike at 6:00 PM and it was quite warm the whole evening, especially going up Lower Laurel (which is no easy walk in the park, let's admit it). In fact, the heat combined with the upward climb and challenging terrain reminded us of the importance of knowing the trails and coming to the park prepared.
Which leads me to my (important) side note.
For those of you who are volunteers and naturalists, please remember that it is vitally important to ensure that the public understands what the trails involve and demand physically. If you are leading/sweeping a hike, please tell your visitors what they can expect (what kind of terrain, elevation gain, for how long) and give an idea of how it might be more challenging for certain physical limitations (bad backs, knees, ankles, etc.).
For those of you coming to the park on your own, do your best to inform yourself as to the conditions of the trail and to what you need to get out and back safely. If an advertised hike sounds appealing to you because of its title, make sure to read the description of the hike, and double check with the hike leaders before embarking on your journey to make sure that the description in words truly reflects reality. (If the word "strenuous" is used in the hike's description, but you have a really bad back and cannot do inclines without shooting pains every ten seconds, don't just overlook the mention of "strenuous" because you want to see the full moon on a hike in the park... believe me, it's not fun!!!)
So now that my side-note has been said, what were the other memorable highlights of the evening? Hearing poorwills in the dark as we descended Willow, listening in the not-so-quiet night to Laura's bat detector (and me making tricky sounds to fool us all), Ranger Sarah using the black light to detect the florescence of rat urine, and learning about how cats need only 1/16th of the light that we humans need to see objects clearly were definitely highlights for me.
And then, of course, there was the moon.
Hope to see you on a Full Moon hike in the near future!
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1 comment:
Nice post Jen..John and I are doing BCV on Saturday at Dilley!! Five hours in the preserve, yeah!!
Beckie
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