Summer Travels, Part B

I haven't had an opportunity to post about our trips, yet, but I thought I'd like to record my own reflections and observations here, too. Libby's posts were really great, and I'm not really trying to add anything to them, just trying to give myself an opportunity to think about the trips.

Monterey was really cool. Libby had already been there twice, but it was my first trip. As you can see from her post, we took Highway 1 north. It was a long trip - including stops and traffic it was 12 hours - but it was totally worth it. The views are breathtakingly beautiful! I knew I would like the craggy coastline, but I was surprised to appreciate the more level country preceding it. It was neat to drive through the grass and flower covered slopes easing toward the ocean.

Ornithologically, I also really liked the strange combination of birds at that Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park. I've never seen Wrentits and Steller's Jays at the same place before. That felt a juxtaposition of Mammoth and Southern California for me - the separation seeming to come down a little from between my two homes. There was also a Winter Wren. That was my first lifer of the trip, and it was really cool. I had walked up the trail a little from Libby in a redwood grove, and as as I was looking back at her and we were talking, one popped out into the sunlight right above her head and started singing. Winter Wrens songs are amazing, and I had heard a lot about it (in Ornithology, Libby learned they can sing multiple notes simultaneously - on average, a Western Winter Wren sings 36 notes per second), so to both see and hear it was a treat. Just for posterity's sake, my other lifers were Black Oystercatcher, Pigeon Guillemot and Pelagic Cormorant. Libby's new bird was the Black Oystercatcher. The Condors can't officially count, but that doesn't mean we enjoyed them less - seeing them was a terrific treat.

Mammoth was wonderful, like always. There is nowhere harder for me to leave.

It's really wonderful to go there with Libby every year, now. This was her fourth year! It's hard to believe.

This year was a little different than I expected because I came down with a cold the day before we left. It was really bad, and I considered not going, except that we had promised Aunt Carol a ride. We picked her up at 5 the morning of the 4th. She was kind enough to stop at Baker meadow (outside of Big Pine) to look for some Yellow-billed Cuckoos and Indigo Buntings. We found it a little less hospitable than I expected, and at 9:30 in the morning, it was already getting very hot. All we saw was a Black Phoebe and a Lazuli Bunting, and then we got back in the car and headed uphill.

We took it easy because of my cold, and spent a lot of time fishing and reading Thursday and Friday. Saturday we did some birding at Crowley and the Jefferey Pine forests there on the east side, as well as stopping in the Aspen Grove for some lunch. We picked up several lifers on the trip: the Pine Grosbeaks were a real highlight. I'd planned on hiking up to Arrowhead, where someone reported some Grosbeaks were nesting, but I wasn't really feeling enthusiastic about it because of my cold. Suddenly, as I was sitting watching the Sapsucker nest, I saw a fairly large bird fly into a tree behind Audrey's cabin. I looked, and it was a female Pine Grosbeak, so I ran inside and got Libby. While we were trying to re-find the bird, Libby saw the male fly into the same tree the female had just left. He is a really beautiful bird, and he obliged us by just sitting there for a long time. It was great. Our other lifers were: Red-breasted Sapsucker (Aspen Grove!, and the meadows below Hart Lake and above the Consolidated Mine camps), Sage Sparrow (off the dirt roads near Crowley), and Pinyon Jay (these were off the road to Benton that passes South Tufa off 395 - we couldn't find any on the main road, but we took a dirt road right before the forest that seems to skirt along the edge of the Jefferies, and some Pinyons, and they were right there probably 100 yards in).

It was great spending time with Aunt Carol, Grandma and Grandpa. Family is a big part of what makes Mammoth as special as it is. It's not just trees, lakes, and majestic mountains, it's love. Honestly, I can't help but see the mountains as an expression of Divine Love, either. This year, I was humbled by the consideration that the Word through whom all of the Sierras was created was the same God that assumed our frail flesh and dwelt among us. That unites the two loves - the love of man and the love of nature into the love of One who loves us completely and perfectly.