Category Archives: Woodland

11-MAY

Inner Coast Range

Sunol Regional Wilderness

Flag Hill at Sunol Wilderness is a slab of ancient sea floor which, in response to pressure from below, was tilted up more on one side than the other, revealing a cross-section of its sedimentary layers.

The hill shows a vegetation pattern typical of the inner coast ranges. During summer, the hot sun dries the south-facing slope. Only grassland and soft chaparral can survive under these conditions. On the north-facing slope where moisture lasts longer, trees thrive.

Sunol is one of the most beautiful parks in the Bay Area.

06-MAY

Tree Trunk

Don’t strut too tall!

18-Rules to Live By

  1. Question every answer.
  2. Own all outcomes, good & bad.
  3. Be curious about what’s not right.
  4. Eschew comfort, but don’t give up seeking pleasure.
  5. Read books; only finish reading the good ones.
  6. Write the story of your life.
  7. Fix what you break; build what we need.
  8. Take care of yourself in order to take care of others.
  9. Surround yourself, on occasion, with pure silence.
  10. Calibrate the truth to tell.
  11. Tolerate imperfection.
  12. Look ahead, but act today.
  13. Start small and compound interest consistently.
  14. Quit bad moods; always remember the good times.
  15. Beat a day of distraction with one hour of intense effort.
  16. Stop what you’re doing and rest, then pace yourself.
  17. Explore your dreams at night.
  18. Direct your focus with a conditioning ritual:
    • Breathe
    • Gesture
    • Visualize

01-MAY

Isolated

Troubled Bridge

What society thinks of as reality is the hypnosis of social conditioning, an induced fiction in which we are all collectively participating.Deepak Chopra

Update April 26, 2023: still waiting for results of yesterday’s MRI.

28-APR

Panorama

A man walks upright.

For him it is strenuous to climb a steep hill, because he has to keep pushing his own vertical mass upward and cannot gain any momentum.

The rabbit is better off. His forelegs support his horizontal body and the great back legs do the work. They are more than equal to thrusting uphill the light mass in front of them. Rabbits can go fast uphill. In fact, they have so much power behind that they find going downhill awkward, and sometimes, in flight down a steep place, they may actually go head over heels.

On the other hand, the man is five or six feet above the hillside and can see all round. To him the ground may be steep and rough but on the whole it is even, and he can pick his direction easily from the top of his moving, six-foot tower.

Watership Down (1972) by Richard Adams

26-APR

Summertime

View from front yard of Willow Glen Community Center

It is a long time since my last visit,” said Dumbledore, peering down his crooked nose at Uncle Vernon. “I must say, your agapanthus are flourishing.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by J.K.Rowling

14-APR

Mischievous

UPDATE 2026: What’s happening is the weather. Rain this morning, sunshine later today. It’s all good.

UPDATE 2025: “Don’t Die!” is something Voldemort would espouse. “Stay Alive!” is closer to the wizard, Harry Potter”.

UPDATE 2024: Beliefs: 1. Women have a choice 2. No doubt there is a Highest power 3. Science seeks the Truth 4. Sex, like art, is what you make it 5. All good people are welcome to be a great country, yet scoundrels slide. It’s best to have a bias toward goodness unless proven otherwise.

UPDATE 2023: While the snail & snake proved to be problematic, and the mollusk impossible, at least I think I’m over Covid-19. Got one new YOGA pose out of all the suffering. It’s called Sleeping Bear; a good body position for taking the next breath while trying to sleep in the middle of the night.

From 2022: What is on his mind?

Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, having nothing to do: once she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures in it. “What is the use of a book,” thought Alice “without pictures or conversations?” ~Lewis Carroll