Corte Madera Mountain

Saturday I hiked Corte Madera Mountain, otherwise known as San Diego’s Half Dome…when we started in the morning, it was foggy, cold, and damp. Here we are at the trailhead (thanks to Keith and Maritie for their group photos)…

The trail starts out on a nice, oak-shaded, fairly wide road. You do need an Adventure Pass to park out on the road for this hike.

From there, the trail opens up into a bushy valley. To the west, we could have seen Los Pinos (if it wasn’t foggy)…we originally had a plan to climb that as well…

The wildflowers were blooming…

The deer (and some other pawed animal) had been on the trail before us…

The sky looked a bit gloomy, but it didn’t rain. This part of the trail, which really looks like a creek bed, was fairly easy to walk…a few small climbs, but not hard…until the last little bit up to the other road (I’m sure it has a name; haven’t got a clue what it is…wait, there’s this thing called the INTERNET…Ah…it’s Los Pinos Road, and yes, it’s actually a road.), which is on the saddle between Corte Madera and Los Pinos. This part was a bit steep at times.

Here we are on the saddle with Corte Madera hidden in the clouds.

There’s a sign there that marks out all the trails, some more officially than others.

This is about the only wildflower picture I took on purpose…

Here we are with Corte Madera in the distance…despite the fog, it’s starting to warm up (or we are starting to warm up because of the hiking)…

From the saddle, we took the road towards Corte Madera…apparently cars/off-road vehicles do drive this, but we didn’t see any of them.

From that road, here’s the path up to Los Pinos (which you can’t actually see, because it’s in a cloud). We did not do that hike, by the way…by the time we got back to the saddle, lots of time (and energy) had passed and there was a unanimous vote NOT to deal with this peak on this trip.

There is then a small, unmarked trail that has this raptor sign at the head…this is the one that goes up to Corte Madera. This time of year, the birds are mating and laying eggs, so there are rules about where to hike and not hike, although it was fairly difficult once we were up there to figure out where that actually was…more about that later…

At this point, the trail got narrow and sometimes climby…

The views were gorgeous though…

Lots of boulders and pine trees and tromping through manzanita that was waist- to shoulder-high. It was still cloudy/foggy at this point.

These two rocks had space between them…I have a later view of them from below.

Many of the rocks were colorful.

As was the manzanita…

Beautiful vistas stretching for miles…

You can see a raptor flying in the blue sky that is now peeking through the clouds…

We stopped around here for a snack break…with a view of Corte Madera in the background.

More raptors…I think this was a turkey vulture, actually.

I took a panorama shot here of the group eating and resting…

This is one of the hills on top of the long stretch towards Corte Madera…

The top was fairly flat, a narrow trail, but you could see forever on both sides…

This is looking back at the group coming down the trail on the other side…this was the only bit where we had to climb on the top at all.

This is to the north…toward Cuyamaca…

I think this is where I took the next panorama shot…

There were lots of stacked-rock cairns marking the trail.

Can you see the face in this rock?

Nose, eye, big chin?

This is at the top of Corte Madera, where the can is. We weren’t sure, due to conflicting maps, whether this was where we shouldn’t be, in order to protect the birds nesting, but we did a silent hike for this whole section, no noise, no talking, just in case. This is the view to the northwest…you can see all the clouds are finally clearing out.

I think this is more to the west, but I’m not positive!

We all sat and admired the view, and took lots of photos. It was very peaceful being up there, even with so many people, because we were all still silent.

There’s something to be said for hiking like that sometimes. This was taken up at the top…

This is Cuyamaca Peak in the distance (hiked it in November)…

And the group shot at the top, looking north…

On the way back, we were waiting for the other group to catch up with us…this is the valley between the two sorta peaks up there. The bushes are about waist high.

These are the two trees we had used as markers to remind us to take another trail down, instead of returning the way we came. So here, instead of going back south, we headed off to the northeast, through bushes that were often head height and very close together…

There’s a view of the Corte Madera valley and pond to the east…

The bushes are closing in! One person found a tick on their body. Many people ended up scratched from this section. We put on long sleeves and long pants for a reason…

On the far end of the long ridge, there were some rocks with iron inclusions…very pretty…

It turned out it was one of the leader’s birthdays next week, so we all brought potluck snacks for lunch and surprised him. Someone brought party favors for a goofy picture at the top. There was even cake (sort of) and candles (that kept blowing out). It was a nice birthday surprise…

Then we set off, way too full, down the back side of the mountain…there’s that pond again.

The path was difficult at times, but also there was a lot of wandering through areas like this, and one oak-covered area that was quite nice and shady.

Here’s those two rocks from below…

Lots of boulders and a wide trail at this point…

And a water barrel…that had holes in it and a bathtub at the front.

Yup. How often can you get in a bathtub with 11 other people? Not often enough apparently…

At this point, we were pretty tired…and then we realized something…we were on the wrong side of this fence…

Yeah. This one.

For the record, we never saw such a sign on the other side of our trail, and we didn’t see any patrols, but we did have to crawl through barbed wire to get out. So maybe that wasn’t the best choice for coming down the mountain.

So this is us curving back around the eastern side of the Corte Madera area, heading back to the saddle between Corte Madera and Los Pinos…because that’s Los Pinos (not in the fog now) in the distance…

And back at the saddle, there’s Corte Madera in the bright sunshine…

And we looked back at everything we’d spent all morning climbing over…

Then went back down into the creek bed, with Los Pinos rising over us to the west…

Back through the shady oaks towards the cars…

This was a gorgeous hike, not super strenuous, didn’t need poles (though many had them). The various GPS devices said this was 8.6 miles (which includes our backwards descent into somewhere we shouldn’t have been) with about 4.5 hours of hiking time (that doesn’t count all our stops for photos and food). It took us longer than we thought it would, but I think that was the fault of the potluck more than anything else, plus a meandering trail at the end that we had never hiked before. What’s interesting is that I think I hiked this back in 2003 when I was hiking regularly…but it was about 90 degrees that day and I got mild heat stroke. Today was wonderful…started out chilly and got a little warm in the end, but the transition from foggy and cloudy to bright-blue sunny skies was definitely a plus.

You can drive up the road to where the raptor sign was and shorten your hike, which might make it very doable for families, although there’s still some scrambling and some issues with the raptor nesting dates, but otherwise, a drop-dead beautiful trail. You can access the trail off of Buckman Springs (off Interstate 8). This website gives fairly clear directions (I obviously don’t write posts to get people TO the hikes…that’s what the internet is for). He also has a bunch of other San Diego hikes at different levels of difficulty with lots of great photography.

Hiking the Jamul Mountain Range

Last Saturday, I hiked with a group through the Jamul mountain range (a very small mountain range) on the hunt for wildflowers. It had only rained the week before, so we didn’t see many flowers, plus Southern California wildflowers are on the tiny side…but we did have a great excursion. We started on Otay Lakes Road…

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One of the hikers had a GPS device that mapped the trip: 8.5 miles in about 5 hours with a ton of ups and downs and about a 1600′ elevation gain. The blue line is the elevations during the trip. The orange is his speed. The red is that actual trail we took. Cool technology…I’m totally jealous.

This photo was taken about 10 minutes into the hike, so we’re all well-rested and possibly a little goofy (additional photos are courtesy of Ken T. and Maritie, the group leader).

Where the hike begins is a graffiti-covered dam in the distance with the rocks by the side of the road.

Here’s the dam from a bit of a distance…

And right above it…

I thought the blocky quality of the graffiti painted over old graffiti was interesting…

And there’s Otay Lake (aka Lower Otay Reservoir) in the distance…

To the north was San Miguel…

Notice how everyone has poles? Yeah. I forgot mine.

The majority of the first part of the hike, I was OK without poles…the second half? Not so much.

The day was warm in the end…this is looking towards the first summit of the Jamul range.

This is looking towards downtown San Diego over Chula Vista in the front…you can see we’re starting to climb.

A closeup of downtown…

We were pretty spread out for most of the trip…you can see someone way up at the top. The ups were challenging…the trail was fairly steep in places and had lots of rocks.

The Marines and a bunch of rock-pilers had been at the top of the first summit. I suspect this is where many people turn around and go back…

In fact, the only people we saw the entire time outside of our group passed us on the way up to here and went on to the second summit, and then came back past us. Here’s the trail up toward the second summit.

Yes, we live in a desert. In fact, there were very few trees on this trip, although some shrubs could pass for a tree if you were feeling really warm.

You can see for miles up there…this is facing east, trying to figure out what each of the peaks are…

In fact, the little hill in the middle, between the two in the foreground, is probably McGinty Mountain from the previous weekend.

A few of the yucca were blooming…I think that’s El Capitan in the background…

Beautiful flowers…

At this point, we started to work down a rocky trail on the eastern side of the range…

The back side had a lot more rocks, but there was greenery to be seen. In fact, this is where I saw most of the wildflowers.

And sometimes my shitty old camera behaved enough to let me take pictures of them. This is the flower of buckwheat…

I was lucky to have Ken T. also taking pictures (with obviously a MUCH better camera than I have), and he was nice enough to let me borrow some for the blog, so here was his buckwheat…

His blue-eyed grass…

His black sage…

His deerweed…

(I told you his camera was better…I have all of these, but they’re blurry) His Dichelostemma capitatum (aka blue dicks)…

Way too pretty a flower for either of those names…there were apparently only two trees on the entire trail (not quite, but close enough)…and this was one of them. You’re almost required to stop under the tree on a hot sunny day on a hike with few trees, so we did.

You can see green on the hills from the recent rains, off to the east…

And there are more trees down in that valley, but you’d have to bushwhack to get to them…

This was the view to the east off the back part of the range, quite beautiful…

Way down in the depth of that valley below, though, there was this structure…and we all had to try to guess what it was, why it was there…

We had lunch at this high point overlooking the reservoir, with Otay Mountain to the left…it was hot, but not horribly so.

Another group photo after lunch…we are looking a little less energetic…but still ready for whatever the trail might show us…

And the panoramas…this one from Ken’s camera…

And my phone, which is a little harder to control…

But still gives you an idea of what Southern California looked like before we built all those houses…

I was reading about all the trails in this area, and it used to be open to these off-road vehicles until they decided there was some sensitive habitat there and closed it, so there are all these “roads” that aren’t super wide and are definitely not maintained well (which is fine)…so the plus is you’re not walking on a single-track trail, but there were lots of rocks and rough ground.

We saw lots of these caterpillars, apparently for the Salt Marsh Moth…

They were often walking faster than we were, scurrying along the path. I’m not sure where they were going in such a hurry…

This is the red monkey flower…

We also saw people parachuting from airplanes and landing on an airstrip to the south…

At this point, the trail looked nice…flat but some green, looking south towards Mexico over that mountain…

And then started the “sorta crazy” part of the trip (I think that’s how the leader described this section)…downhill at a significant angle. This is where poles were, quite honestly, as someone who didn’t have them, necessary…

I’m not really sure how I managed this downhill portion without faceplanting about 17 times, but I did. And I felt it for the next three days…you can see the airstrip where the parachuters were landing in the middle of the photo.

You can see everyone coming down the slope, which luckily had enough rocks that were planted in the ground to give me some traction going down.

More parachuting…fascinating. It was on many people’s bucket lists to do this sometime in the future (including mine)…

Some landed crazy, some landed calmly…I’m sure I would be doing the former…

I didn’t take a lot of pictures coming down that hill…I was trying too hard to keep from falling (went down on my butt once)…it was hard work.

After that, we had a choice of a very flat trail with part of it on the road or a trail with, as the leader described it, “ups and downs.” We chose the latter, thinking that after coming down that hill, how bad could it be? Well, it was a challenge, because it was about 5 significant climbs, plus more crazy downhills (not THAT crazy, but still…poles would have helped), and by this time, it was warm…low 80s. And we were tired. It doesn’t look too bad in this photo…

Now we are on the western end of the range, and the plants have changed again…

That’s more of what the up and down looked like…neverending…

You’d get to the top of one thinking you were in the clear, that you were almost there, and then you’d see the next one..

It doesn’t look too bad until you see the people climbing and realize how steep it is. Again.

Luckily, everyone was a good sport and realized that a trail is a trail…it can be easy, medium, or difficult, but it’s still being outside in the fresh air, and a challenge is never a bad thing out here…we all had plenty of water and were able to keep moving…

Ken’s shot of where we had come (I’m hiding behind the woman in pink) just to give you a better idea of the slope…

All in all, close to 9 miles, a hot day, lots of ups and downs, but there were flowers and wildlife…we saw mule deer and coyotes and California horned toads (I almost stepped on one…too fast for a photo), plus the caterpillars and the hawks and the parachuting folks…it was definitely worth the time and effort to hang out with a group with a remarkably good attitude about a difficult but not impossible trail. Will I do it again in two weeks to see more wildflowers (because it had just rained)? Um. Well. Probably not? But I’d consider it again next year around this time…we decided that some trails are like childbirth…you have to wait a while before it sounds like a sane thing to do again. It was good, though. Definitely worth the walk.

McGinty Mountain Hike

On Sunday, I hiked to the top of McGinty Mountain in the Jamul, California, area. It’s about 5 miles round trip and is fairly strenuously uphill. It was a day after a rather large rainstorm came through the area, so mud was sticking to our boots making me about an inch taller at times. Sticky mud helps on the uphills, but you slide on the downhills. The hike goes up about 1300 feet to an elevation of 2183′. Here’s a cool link to Derek Loranger’s 100 Peaks website, with video of rain and hail on the trail (hey, that rhymed). He also talks about the excessively sticky mud, but honestly, in San Diego, that probably only happens a few times a year.

Here’s the official government website. There is a regular Hike with a Ranger event on this trail, but amusingly, the government website doesn’t forward to the calendar properly, so I’m not sure how you’d find it.

There’s a nice little dirt parking lot at the trailhead with a view of this, which is NOT McGinty Mountain…

There’s another little hill and path to the left. Honestly, the hardest part about this trail besides the fairly strenuous uphill climb is trying to figure out which is the REAL trail and which are just dead-ends.

It is not marked particularly well…although you’re unlikely to get totally lost, you may wander around a bit if it didn’t just rain so you could totally track your own footprints back. There’s a chimney sticking up on this hill.

Here’s the trailhead itself, complete with warnings, doggie poop bags, and trail map.

Although again…it’s not always easy to tell where you should be going on the actual trail.

There are lots of sweeping views of the valleys on either side, with Rancho San Diego on one side, Jamul on the other.

The trail does track along next to houses on the lower slopes, and you can see more on the hills in the distance.

There is some steep climbing at the beginning and the end.

I think the parking lot is down in those trees in the middle of the picture.

We did see some weather, but it mostly left us alone…this is the view to the north, with Cowles Mountain in the distance (not the first peak in the middle, but the paler one to the right of it.

And a bird…which one of the hikers was able to identify…all I remember is that it’s a Spotted something (because of the wings, of course).

This is the view to the south of Jamul…the mountains on the right is where I’ll be next weekend.

Bailey was our faithful companion on the hike.

There was a mine off the trail on one side…

I’m not entirely sure what they mined (the Internet says gold), but these aren’t very big holes…we saw another one on the side of a rock on part of the hike.

I did not crawl inside. We took our first group picture up here…

It was a small group, due to the weather. And I am apparently short. You can decide which view is best…

Yes. I wore shorts. What can I say? It wasn’t actually super cold…cold enough that I had two shirts on for most of it, but went down to short sleeves for part of it…until the weather wandered back in…we could see rainstorms in the distance (or not-so-far distance). I have official zip-off hiking pants somewhere…I just don’t know where.

The trail consistently moved upwards…although most of the time, it wasn’t so bad that you couldn’t talk and hike (that’s my measure of how bad IS it…can I talk? Not so bad.).

Lots of valley views and vistas with big dark clouds…

It reminds me of what I love about San Diego County…all those mountains so close to home. I would die in Kansas…too flat.

This is looking north at where my house might be if you could see through hills.

On the right is San Miguel, which I’ve hiked previously. The trail was eroded by rain, definitely, but was also pretty rocky. Bailey was a trooper.

I think this is the portion the leader called “Heartbreak Hill”…here’s where talking and breathing had a bit of a conflict…

I was not the only one taking photos…you can see my naked legs up there in shorts…

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Still easier than San Miguel though…more mountain vistas, off to the east, this time.

And northeast…

I think that’s looking at San Miguel again, but I’m not really sure!

That’s definitely north again.

North…

At the top, we climbed as high as we could (that rock) and took another group photo…

And here was the big money shot…

This was on the way back, I think…easier going down, but had some issues with picking the right trail.

We didn’t have much rain in the end. The hike was just short of 5 miles in about two and a half hours (with a few stops for people to rest and/or catch up, plus playing in mines and on rocks)…I would definitely do this again, although I suspect it’s particularly difficult in the heat of summer. Apparently snakes are a real issue up there too. This is closer to home than Cowles Mountain is and definitely less populated. Strenuous? Yeah…a bit…you need to be in some sort of shape, but if you’re persistent, you could go up it even if you are a slow but steady hiker…and you don’t have to go all the way up. It’s an up and back hike, so you could stop whenever you were tired and come back. The trail does continue past the mountain peak…I didn’t really explore beyond that…maybe on another day.

Searching for Better Than This…

When my head gets all tied in knots, I have this stash of partially written or barely started posts in draft form on here, and that’s what I put on the blog. It’s like fill-in-the-blank posts, posting-lite, don’t have to think too hard about posting…like the Road to California post…I had all the pictures resized and stuck in the post. I just had to go through and add all the names and links. I can do that without hardly thinking about it…and yet it takes up mental space and time. So I don’t have to deal too much with the goo in my head that wants me to feel bad. Avoidance. Book reviews? Same thing. I have about 8 other posts that are started in draft form, just sitting there, waiting. The Chihuly glass one? Started with photos, but then words took over.

This weekend? Not so much fun. Just keeping my head above water. Trying not to think too hard about feeling bad, about feeling sad. Trying not to remember how I used to feel, because that Kathy does not live here any more. She has moved out. She is never coming back. She can’t get in past the hoard (imagining when they try to get in the front door and all the crap that’s been hoarded is blocking it, and you can only squeeze in).

I went to a movie last night. I used to go to the movies almost every Saturday night. I loved going to the movies. I don’t love it so much by myself. I did it, though, because I felt like I was being punished for being alone, that I didn’t feel like I could do the things I love because of that. I’m becoming a hermit. OK, I was kind of hermit-like before, but I’m getting worse. It’s because it’s honestly too hard to be with people. I often feel more lonely in groups than I do at home alone with my sketchbook and my fabric and a cat or two. It’s sad. I wish it weren’t true. But it is. Right now. And realistically, the movies cost money and money is really tight at the moment.

So I picked a movie I had wanted to see when I first saw the trailers ages ago (there were others, but they weren’t at convenient times), and I drove out there to the theater and I cried through almost the whole movie and all the way home. I saw Her.

It was good…although it had some slow bits and the ending was…eh. Thing is, when I see people with technology now, out to dinner, hanging out in groups, everyone is doing that…talking to themselves, to their OS instead of a human…so it’s creepy, but not that far off of reality. Shades of that book…crap…Wake, by Robert Sawyer, where the WWW becomes conscious and starts talking to a teenage girl…because I know that’s who I would choose to talk to if I were the web (not). Anyway. Here’s why I’m on Goodreads…so I can look shit like that up, books I read before that I can’t remember the name of because my brain is like mush.

I suspect it’s really that so much of my brain is otherwise occupied that stuff like that just slips through.

So that was really successful, guys! I joined a couple of movie-going groups on MeetUp…maybe it will be a better experience. Of course, I can only go like one night a week, and most of their movies are not on that night. Sigh. But it’s better than this. It’s got to be. Something has to be. I keep searching for Better Than This…it’s an island in the Atlantic and there are no boats that go there. I might have to swim.

All the hikes I wanted to go on this weekend were too many hours for a two-day weekend…I had too much I needed to get done, so I got up this morning and hiked Cowles Mountain instead. It’s a quickie, but still is a good workout. San Diego has two mountains that get the shit hiked out of them by every weekend-walker and lame-ass wannabe hiker in the whole town: Cowles and Iron Mountains. The annoying part is the number of people…and the number of people who don’t know trail rules (yes, I’m a hiking elitist, sorry, get the fuck over if you are hiking that slow please)…and the number of dumb bimbos and assholes who are hiking up the side of the mountain, not following the trails, destroying it for future generations. Yes, I yelled at two girls. I apologize. Wait. No I don’t. They were being stupid. Ladies, if there’s a fence, it’s there for a reason. Where are the vicious rattlesnakes when you need them? Avoiding Cowles, for sure. I should carry one in my pack for times like this, just hurl it at the dumbshits who can’t walk on a trail without damaging sensitive habitat. Yes, they went over a fence right next to a sensitive habitat sign. I don’t feel bad about yelling at them.

That said, I did it fast (the hike) and proved I am much more fit than I was 7 months ago, when I would have to stop to rest. I didn’t rest at all, and I ran the downhill, passing two of my former students. HA! That was funny. And their mom. YOUR MOM. Sorry. Middle-school brain took over. I did pass your mom though. She’s looking good. You should be proud of her.

I didn’t do much in the way of art, because I was doing a lot of work-related shit. Which sucks. Always. I did a whole 16 minutes of cutting out Wonder Under…

The thing is, there isn’t much more to do on this one…then I’ll be on to the next step of picking out fabrics. But to what purpose? Hell. I still don’t know. Still don’t feel it. Maybe that’s why I didn’t push it. I knew I’d be done and have to go on to the next step and I wasn’t in the mood. It’s depressing to finish a step right now. I hate that. It used to be fun, sometimes even exhilarating. Now it’s just fucked up.

Then I cleaned photos off my phone. My computer is actually getting full. I have too much music and too many photos. I need to do something about that, like soon. I meant to do it over Xmas and freakin’ ignored it. It’s too much for my brain to handle, like the broken sprinkler lines. I just can’t take it on. I have to though.

The girlchild got reading glasses.

Which is funny, because it was the boychild we thought needed glasses and turns out his vision is almost perfect. She describes her vision as “buzzy.” We said, “vibrating? blurry? fuzzy?” She said, “No, buzzy.” The child has her mother’s way with words. Oh well.

There was this…

Now, it’s one thing to put all those words on the back of your car (to remind you? because it’s not reminding others…driving along, OH SHIT…I’ve blown number 8. Dammit.); it’s another to spell one of them wrong. Sigh.

Jake helping the girlchild make her bed…

I am still learning to take panorama photos on my phone…I inevitably do it wrong three times before I do it right.

That’s Penasquitos last weekend. NOT a panorama.

And here it is again…done almost right this time…

Pretty, huh?

And here was the top of Cowles’ Mountain this morning…

San Diego does have the weather, doesn’t it? OK, summer will suck. I’m a little worried about summer. I won’t be able to hike like this. I don’t do heat well. Maybe I will borrow my ex’s kayak a lot. Maybe I will swim more. I don’t like swimming though.

I finished this book…A Dirty Job by Christopher Moore…

which is a good thing because book club is Wednesday. I liked it. I liked his turn of phrase. I like his weirdo stories. It’s the second of his books that I’ve read. It’s a little wacky, a little out there, but amusing and not dreary. Probably that was a good choice for the weekend, because it was a bit dreary…except for the hiking bit.

I watched this, a Tate Gallery video on nudity in art through the ages…

What’s funny is that to actually link to this video, I had to persuade YouTube that I didn’t need Safety Mode on my videos. They thought it was unsafe…I guess you shouldn’t watch it at work (I thought it was pretty benign myself). I like their shorts…educate the public about art. God knows we aren’t doing it in school any more.

This week? This week is the girlchild’s team finally making it to the CIF playoffs…two games this week guaranteed unless a volcano swallows us up (could happen), a book club meeting, and I think I signed up for two hikes next weekend, just because I think one will get canceled due to rain (she’s a real water wimp, the leader is). I set some goals on the art stuff for this week…I have two drawings I’d like to get done…one is in the sketchbook and one has been copied full size, but needs more. I want to finish the Wonder Under on the Mammogram quilt and start ironing it to fabric. I’d like to get all the wool cut out for Ivy’s quilt too, but I suspect I just shoved more into a busy week than can actually realistically get done. All that is better than thinking about the muck my brain wants to wallow in, though, so hopefully it will keep me distracted. If not, I may be back here again, clearing out photos and writing filler posts that don’t let my brain think too hard about reality. My other goal is to try to go to bed earlier…those super late nights aren’t helping. Maybe just 10 minutes earlier each night until I get back to something in the realm of sanity? Or not. It’s got to be better than this.

Mule Hill Trail to Raptor Ridge

I spent about 3 1/2 hours this morning hiking Mule Hill Historic Trail in the San Dieguito River Valley to the beginning of the San Pasqual Valley Trail, going through Raptor Ridge (over? through?) on the way. The trail map is here, if you’re interested. We started in Escondido off of Sunset (across from the mall), and there happened to be a very small farmers’ market taking place, so traffic was a mess. I’m fairly sure I did a hike out of here over 10 years ago, but going the other direction, under the freeway towards some hill on the other side.

This is part of the Coast to Crest trail, which will eventually be 55 miles from the coast near Del Mar to Volcan Mountain near Julian.

We didn’t do the whole thing…went 5.9 miles out and back. I guess the whole thing of that section is more like 24 miles…11.8 seemed plenty for one day.

It was a little on the warm side, certainly in the high 70s/low 80s for part of it, although there was a decent breeze, and the clouds kept it a little cooler. You could totally feel the potential for nasty summer heat baking up off the dirt when the sun was shining down on the eastern side of the ridge, though. I mean, this is February.

The skies were amazing today.

The trail is mostly flat and fast through the valley, although there is a lot of competition with mountain bikers. In general, the bikers are good people, respectful of trail rules (everyone yields to horses, bikes yield to people). We didn’t see any horses today, although they are allowed on the path.

There is a section of the trail that travels next to farmland, mostly strawberries it looked like.

You can see the plastic covering some sections. When you get further out into the valley, you can see the beginning on the left of the hills that lead into Raptor Ridge, which peaks out at 1000′ in elevation (not super high, eh?).

There were very few trees on this trail…so very little shade. Summer would be difficult.

Once you get out of the valley and start climbing into the ridge, there is some green and trees to shade you for the first part…

This is also generally where the mountain bikes disappear. It’s a one-track trail at this point, and it climbs fairly steadily from the valley up to about 600′ elevation, maybe a little higher. You can see the San Pasqual Valley from this section.

In the beginning of the hike, I was out in front with about three other hikers. It was a really big group, about 36 people, and it was just too many people and too loud for me. I guess when I’m out in nature, I want to actually BE out in nature. I don’t mind talking, but it was just too many live bodies in one space. At this point, though, when we started to climb, somehow I ended up being first, so once I got into my rhythm, I just kept going.

They’re all strung out on the trail behind me…not too far behind…

More of the San Pasqual Valley, sort of towards the Wild Animal Park.

I wasn’t trying to be antisocial. I just find it hard to hike slowly. Or behind people who are slower than I am. Or in huge groups of people. Sigh.

There are a few viewpoints on that side of the ridge…this is looking up to the peak, although apparently the trail doesn’t go up there…you have to bushwhack it.

We kept going around the ridge to the San Pasqual Valley side looking for some mythical bench that never appeared. Once we realized we had hit 5.9 miles…this is where you remember that however far you hiked out, you still have to hike back…the organizer decided to have us go back to the viewpoint.

So we did…took the obligatory group photo and snacked a bit. After about 10 minutes of drying the sweat off your back and eating something, a couple of people said they were taking off, so instead of being a social butterfly (I’m not), I took off after them.

I was kinda tired of hearing boys tell girls to “work it.” Sigh. Sometimes. People.

There’s the rest of them at the viewpoint…they never did catch up with us…to our credit, we were moving pretty damn fast.

It only took about an hour and a half to get back to the parking lot…about 5.5 miles

I eventually caught up with the three ahead of me (garter snake on the path stopped them for a bit, just to move him out of the way) and hiked out with one of them, who is a high-school teacher…so we had lots in common. That was pretty much the only conversation I had.

I do better in smaller groups. This is a pretty easy section of the trail, even with the climb up to the ridge. Certainly, you could wander the river valley for a while with kids or dogs and have a good time, turning back when you’re ready, although I suspect it gets quite warm sometime in June or July through late October. Someday I will do the next section, across the San Pasqual Valley…maybe with someone to pick me up on the other end. I can do 12 miles…not sure I can double that though. The hips and knees eventually complain.

It was a good workout, a good day for it. Not sure where my next hike is…I don’t have one planned for another 3 weeks…will have to see if I can do something before that.

A Gesture of Release

Girlchild got me sick. I knew it yesterday, felt it lurking. This morning, I felt spacey…all day, spacey…but not really sick. Still a sore throat, headachey. I’ve had my flu shot. Think this is just a cold, but it’s holding off…maybe I’m actually fighting the damn thing. Maybe I’ll feel like shit tomorrow…maybe not? I don’t know. I debated going to the gym…for two reasons. (1) I didn’t feel great and (2) I didn’t want to infect people. In the end, I went. I needed it for my mental and physical state, and honestly, I felt better after I went. I disinfected every machine I was on (but I made sure I touched every kid who is annoying at school…OK, not really…but we did joke about it). I got to work out and read, and I came home and felt OK for about 2 hours before the spacey/sore throat stuff came back. We’ll see what tomorrow feels like. If it’s going to take me down, I want it to do it quickly, so I’m better before my weekend hike (priorities).

Girlchild had a soccer game, but she didn’t go to practice because she was sick yesterday, so she didn’t play…I did watch the sky…

It was beautiful…although apparently I should have been looking behind the bleachers…

I stitched during the game…

I think these two are almost done…I think all I have to do is stitch around the eyeballs and put the eye buttons on. Oh wait. They need feet. Damn. That’s a bunch of bullion knots. That’s time. Then there’s only one more of the Month 3 birds to finish. Then on to Month 4. Yes, I’m slow, but guaranteed I was the only person stitching palestrina knots in that stadium. It’s progress…on something. I measure my entire life a little tiny bit at a time, progress on this project and that project. I got one stitch done here. I got 30 minutes done there. It’s proof that I have things to do, to keep me going.

Some days are like that. What’s the one thing I can work on today that will let me feel like I’ve accomplished something decent? Not grades. Not dishes.

I came home to this…

There was a phone number too. It was shoved in the door handle. I too need joob and don’t know where to look. Lupe needs to be more specific.

After dinner (late), I organized all the financial aid paperwork; I’m missing three signatures from the boychild and then everything can go. Then I ironed his interviewing clothes…it’s Columbia tomorrow, he hopes the last interview. Probably true. Who knows. Then we wait. Apparently my brother and SIL are placing bets on what schools he will get into of those he’s applied to…better than the woman I hiked with who was the Queen of Negative Thinking about college apps. Whatever. He’ll get in somewhere, and that somewhere will have to be good enough at least for the first year. Am I worried? Of course. I’m mom. I worry. I’m Kathy. I worry. I will worry less in a couple of days when these damn envelopes are gone.

I meditated. That was not-so-good. I’ve spent the last 10 days trying to visualize a point of light in the center of my chest, warm and bright like the sun, which is supposed to expand and spread to fill my whole body. I suck at this. I start the spread and then black tarry stuff from my fingers and toes starts to encroach on sunny brightness and swallows it. Yesterday and today it was tears, oceans of tears, turning the sunlight into steam, covering it up, drowning it. I was trying so freakin’ hard to force the light to spread, and I finally stopped. I let it just sit at the size it could be in me right then, about the size of a cantaloupe. Interestingly, this is supposed to be an openness to creativity, which is not something with which I have a problem…so there’s just something about that meditative avenue that is causing me grief. Seriously weepy grief. Sometimes you just have to let the mind do its thing and you watch it and try to learn from it, but trying to force the change is not going to be a successful endeavor.

Then it was late and I had to choose…sleep? Or artmaking? I learned my lesson last night…I didn’t spend much time tracing, but I did spend some…

I got motivated after working on that drawing last night to finally restart the tracing on the mammogram quilt. I think I just need to have multiple projects in the works so I can pick and choose when I’m in a mood…something easy, something hard? Something that is totally engaging vs something that is more light and simple? Tracing isn’t usually easy, but it is engaging. And it helped. I was already a bit distant and numb from the gym experience (too many days of crying at the gym lately), so I guess I’m even more into that hole, but I’m not sure it’s a bad thing at the moment. It just is.

I committed to another challenging hike in March…looking forward to it, although I’m a little nervous about it…less so now that I know it is less elevation gain than San Miguel, but I don’t kid myself…it won’t be easy. It will be worth it, though. I made a comment on the last hike about dispelling demons from the tips of my fingers as I walked, and I think maybe I need to think of a way to do that for real, like a symbol of that maybe? I think this would be a good hike for that, although I don’t know if I feel comfortable with doing that with a bunch of mostly strangers (I know a few people who will be on the hike, but not well). We’ll see. Maybe. It’s on my mind…ritual to remove sad? Not a wake, not a memorial, but something more in the dirt. Thinking about it. How to persuade the brain to release things…a gesture of release?

Meanwhile, my gestures are in the art world…releasing grief and sad and even anger through the drawings. The guns, they’re about anger and pain…not hurting myself, but trying to mitigate hurt done on me. Trying to make it hurt less by drawing hurt? I can’t really explain how my brain is working…but it is trying to work through some of these things with symbols, images of things that hurt…thorns, cuts, tears, wounds…another gesture of release? Who knows.

Los Penasquitos Canyon Preserve Hike

On Saturday, a beautiful day in February in San Diego, I went on what ended up being over a 10-mile hike in Los Penasquitos Canyon Preserve. We started out at the western entrance near Sorrento Valley. There is a parking lot, but it had rained Thursday and a little bit on Friday, so the lot was closed (although it had opened by the time we returned). This meant having to park in a nearby residential area…by nearby, I mean almost half a mile away…this is coming down the hill to the entrance.

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You can see the start of this end of the trail, plus the trail off to Lopez Canyon, down below from the road. San Diego is full of canyons and open-space areas like this…

I’ve lived here for 25 years and still haven’t been to even half of them. It was a bright and sunny day…

This is the view of the hillsides from the parking lot. The entire preserve is surrounded by office buildings and houses, although they are fairly unobtrusive for most of the hike.

Here is a link to the website for the preserve, which includes trail maps. We hiked from the western entrance to the waterfall and then out towards the eastern entrance, where one of our members continued to her house, and then we looped back on a different trail to the parking lot.

Someone had placed rocks on the fenceposts…

These are typical California rolling hills, very dry at the moment, as we’re in yet another drought…even with last week’s rain, there is not a lot of green popping up.

You can barely see the houses on the ridge to the right.

There was some mud on the trail, but mostly it was dry. We encountered lots and lots of bikers, some in huge groups of 30, and a few runners.

There was actually water in the preserve. Here’s the official group photo, minus the organizer, whom I’m hiked with before.

It was a very fast hike…there weren’t many hills, but the organizer was also a superfast person…you can see the rest of the group way far behind us (yes, we did stop and let them catch up occasionally).

That’s why I’m sore today…speed exertion, not hilly stuff…although there was a little of it on the way to the waterfall.

This is one of the areas where we just had to stand aside to let all the bikes go past…the trail wasn’t wide enough for both of us.

When I lived in Britain for a year, this is the landscape I missed…that brown and olive green color, rolling grassy hillsides, California live oaks, the green showing where the stream lies.

The waterfall is in volcanic rock…

Not rare in San Diego…

The foam in the water was somewhat disturbing…especially when it looked like big blobs of detergent. Gotta love that after-storm effluvium.

Another group photo above the waterfall…most of us are sweaty at this point. It wasn’t hot, high 60s, low 70s, but we weren’t moving slowly. I think I said that already.

The leader took one photo of me talking while walking. Yes. I do actually talk sometimes. I had discussions about blogging, bad job situations, negative people, colleges (I tried to avoid that one), kids, being outside in nature, SEO, website traffic, and books about the Pacific Crest Trail…this group was fairly diverse.

There were shady areas on the hike…this will be a hot hike come summer, but the shady bits might make it doable.

That’s one problem with Southern California, is that there are about 4-5 months of the year when certain activities like hiking aren’t particularly easy or pleasant. I think this is when normal people go to the beach. I’m trying to get in as many hikes as possible before the heat comes…I don’t do heat well.

And there are lots of stretches of dry, hot, treelessness on this hike.

It was fine today though. We did a couple of stream crossings, some more wet than others…

I told you it was a gorgeous day, didn’t I? I took lots of deep, cleansing breaths, banishing demons from the tips of my fingertips out into the brush.

The peacefulness of these groves of sycamores and oaks was wonderful.

And even the vast expanse of trail and sky was soothing…

It’s even better being out front with nothing human messing with the view…

I love the sky…

The trails were a variety of straight, wide, and flat, with some rocky bits, and some narrower rocky trails near the waterfall. Usually we could walk side-by-side, and didn’t have to go single file. You had to keep your ears open for bikes coming up behind, though.

This stretch had very few bikes…

When we finished, we still had to hike the 1/2 mile up the concrete hill to our cars, but it wasn’t too bad.

The actual hike that we did in the preserve was about 9.4 miles, and we added another 0.9 on the hike to and from cars. We did it in just over 3 hours, so pretty fast (and that included a couple of stops). It was a nice day for it. If you go look at the trail maps, you can get a better idea of all the different access points to the preserve and the mileages involved. There were lots of little kids and families out for walks or rides in the space, and many mountain bikes. There’s also a historic adobe on the preserve, although we didn’t see that on this trip. Those living in the Penasquitos area have a great resource nearby in this preserve.

Vacuuming the Brain

Another no-posting night. I was drawing instead…

I’ve done drawings of the bent-over figure before…but she has an umbrella this time. These are people who are weighed down by life, I think. My people are always damaged and cracked these days. Not surprising, I guess. Drawing is a way to move stuff out of my brain…to dust out the corners, vacuum the floors. I really should draw every day (time! not enough of it!).

Once I was done drawing, there was nothing left in my head but sadness, so I took that to bed, tucked it in, and tried to get it to stay asleep for a reasonable amount of time. It likes to wake up around 4 in the morning and torture me. Sure enough, it did. I told it to shut up and rolled over, put the pillow on my head. That got me another hour or so of not-pain. That’s what these weekend mornings are now…painful. Work mornings are such a rush of having to get up for work and all that, so I can’t get bogged down in moody crap. Weekend mornings don’t have the same urgency. I’m tired, I want to sleep in, maybe lie about in bed for a while, but it’s a depressing place, so I don’t do it. Which in itself is depressing. Vicious cycle.

I get to this point in my head where I just say to myself that everything is depressing…move on. If you’re moving, maybe you’ll see something that’s not so bad. Maybe you’ll even FEEL something that’s not so bad. Standing still? Depressing. Don’t do it.

Whatever.

So yesterday I did a long, semi-painful hike (in that I am still feeling it today…it wasn’t hard, just fast), I did a lot of financial aid forms, I wrote three blogposts for groups I’m in (although I’m waiting for info on two of them to be able to finish), and I finally finished cutting out all the fabrics for Ivy’s Memorial quilt…

Wool on the left, which actually needs to be trimmed down, and cotton on the right, which will be appliqued (yes, by hand) down to the wool bits. It took just over 4 hours to pick everything out, longer than normal for me, but I think that was because of limited wool options slowing me down.

I can’t say this piece thrills me…I mean, it’s a memorial to a dead dog that we miss a lot, and maybe in the mood I’m in, memorials to dead things are not a good plan, but it is something I wanted to get to the next stage, so I did. Usually I take a photo of all the fabrics used in the quilt, but this one isn’t really one of my art quilts and I couldn’t be bothered to try to figure out what in this pile (including cat) I had actually used…

So I didn’t (I used a lot of it). And then I took all the wool bits and zipped them into one of those plastic bag things that bedding comes in when you buy it…I love those bags and never use them. I don’t use wool that much in the stuff I do, but I do want to keep it all together. I don’t want to waste a drawer in my office with it, though, and honestly, it was going to be two drawers, and I need those for cottons (which are taking over the space), because I use them so much more…so I think I will store this under my bed with the crazy-ass flesh-colored crazy-quilt fabrics. There is sometimes an issue with storing under the bed, in that you forget they are there, so that’s a problem, but when the kids move out, I am just going to turn this whole house into a scary Hoarders episode of fabric stash, so who cares?

OK. Not really. OR! If I do that, then you know I’ve gone completely off the deep end. Note to kids: good luck cleaning mom’s stuff out when she dies. I’m not making it easy for you.

I finished the second book in the Zita the Spacegirl series, Legends of Zita the Spacegirl, by Ben Hatke…

These are quick reads for adults, and really are meant for elementary-school-aged kids, maybe middle school. I actually liked this one more than the first one. The story seemed to hold together better.

There’s a robot that pretends to be Zita and the two try to save a planet. There is a third book, but I didn’t get it from the library yet. I probably will, just because now I want to know what happens (and yes, they both end on cliffhangers…if you’re like me, you can’t NOT read the next one).

We do have a 3-day weekend (thank you, Lincoln), so I have an extra day, which is good, because the to-be-graded pile is deadly, I don’t feel like I’ve accomplished much yet, and I still have a to-do list that is a mile long. It starts this morning with a trip to the gym, which is a good thing…the muscles from yesterday are complaining and the best thing for them is to make them do more. Plus it’s good for the depressed part of the brain…well, people keep saying that exercise helps with depression. Then again, there’s a lot of things that people say about how to fix depression, and sometimes I think it’s just not a fixable thing. It’s there and if you’re lucky, you’ll figure out a way to live with it or persuade it to go away. I can’t take a screwdriver to it or make a list of things that make me happy and have it just disappear.

More drawing tonight I think. Hope. It’s like vacuuming the dust bunnies out of the brain.

No One Else Can…

The new meditation visualization is easier than the last. It starts as a pinprick of light in the center of the body that spreads to take up the whole body shape. That’s much easier than a football-shaped oval of light running up and down the center of my body. It kept getting snagged on my liver or my solar plexus, whatever that is…seriously, he keeps using that term, and I finally had to Google it. I knew it was in the middle, but that’s all I knew. Deficient education.

I spent a lot of time cooking tonight. I’m not sure why. I made barbecue sauce from scratch. It was pretty good stuff. I froze the extras for later. I made BBQ burgers with the sauce. They were really good. I made some potato things that were mostly eh. And I made a blueberry cheesecake galette that might kill people with joy. Seriously. It was fucking good. You’re jealous now because there isn’t any for you. Well, honestly, if you came over tomorrow and asked nicely, I’d give you some…I might have to wrest a serving out of the kids’ sweaty palms (I had to delineate ownership of each piece for tomorrow, so boychild wouldn’t eat all of it), but I’d give you some.

I’m not sure why I had a sudden urge to cook good stuff, but I did it. Maybe it was to make up for the largely useless day at school, where very few people listened or changed their behavior based on my directions. I love days like that. Those are the days when teachers wonder what it must be like to work with adults. Having spent the first 13 years of my work life working with adults, I can tell them it’s not a whole lot different…except that you have more control over your own stuff and politicians don’t expect you to work miracles with rocks. Or teenagers. Because sometimes they’re hard to tell apart.

There was definitely some frustration involved. So the cooking helped. And the girlchild cleaned up the kitchen. It almost looks normal. We had a discussion the other day about available hours in the day and why I don’t care as much about cleaning as I do about fabric. I explained to her my theory that in a household, whether you are married, dating, or roommating, that if there is something that really truly bugs you about how things look or are being done, then you should do them yourself…it’s not OK to force your ideas of cleanliness or household importance on other people. It’s about the only good thing I got out of marriage counseling a million years ago…and since I’m the only adult here, that’s how we roll. She’s welcome to mop or sweep any time she likes…and when her friend came over on Sunday, because we were the only household in East County that wasn’t watching the Super Bowl, well then she cleaned what she thought she needed to clean. It was different than what I would have done in some ways, but I was grateful for any help…because honestly, I don’t usually get any help.

Things I’ve learned from the girlchild: how to use fresh garlic and ginger, how to embrace weird-ass ingredient combinations, how to use every dish you own for only one meal. She’s an amazing cook. I don’t know where she gets it from. I am a much better cook now because of her. It’s her fault that blueberry thing got made…and all the calories that were in it? Probably also her fault.

There are only so many hours in the day. I choose to do the things that make me more at peace. If I watch a Hoarders episode, my priorities might change…but only briefly.

I’m not sure where the rest of the evening went. I did have detention and tutorial after school, so I was home late…and I did meditate and exercise and talk to my health coach for the last time and work on more of these crazy financial aid forms and help dry dishes and help pick out boys soccer photos for the school newspaper and butt heads with the boychild about the next college interview (sigh. if you want to go there, and this is your first choice, then stop bitching and set up the interview. or don’t. just don’t give ME shit about it. I did not design this world. I am no happier living in it than you are.). It’s his third college interview…good sign. I hope. But I didn’t do art stuff, and that is starting to wear on me…nothing in two days. Need a fix. Tomorrow is staff meeting, soccer game, and gym. It will be a miracle if anything else happens. No photos even today. Barely even got to read my book. Feel disconnected from my own head at the moment. I can stitch during the game at least. Have to remember to take it all with me. Car full of supplies so I can survive a game. Boots, sweatshirt(s), gloves, stitching, blanket, chair. Tea.

The awesome hike I was going to do on Sunday got canceled…the trail is closed. I picked another hike. I’m not as excited about it, but it will be semi-challenging…although I’ve done it before. I was looking forward to the other one. Sigh. I rarely look forward to anything any more. Sad but true.

OK. I need to do that sleep thing…even though it doesn’t work right. Too much of that stupid sad brain talking back to me. Actually, it doesn’t even do that. It mutters in a corner and when I say, “What? What did you say? Repeat that?”, it replies in a surly fashion, “nothing. I said nothing. Shut up. Go away,” like I’m just going to stop paying attention to it. I mad dog it a little, giving it the eye, getting up close and personal with it, and it gets nervous, fidgets, uncomfortable, tosses some now-painful memory out at me, a picture, a scene from the past and I seize up with it, with the view of what the artist-formerly-known-as-happy looked like (this one was from Oregon), and it takes the opportunity to duck out under my arm, slipping past me, and I feel it slide gently past into another space, out of reach. Damn brain. You talk too damn much. Heal thyself. No one else can.

San Elijo Lagoon

This is another one of those…is this really a HIKE or a WALK? I think the latter, although it’s a very nice walk at that. We did about 7 miles…there’s a group picture somewhere, but only my arm is in it (not quite on purpose, but you know how I am about pictures). Here’s the trailhead in Solana Beach (California, by the way…I often forget most people reading have no idea where I live)…

I’ve always wanted to do this walk…driven past the lagoon on the freeway and said to myself that I should go do it, but it never happened…I mean, like for YEARS I’ve been saying this. It is a long drive from my house. That doesn’t help. I can’t just pop up there after work and do a quick walk, although many people are using it for a quick run.

There are many birds in the lagoon, including this Great Blue Heron…who posed…

Yes, I am beautiful. And then flew…

But not very far…just enough so we could get his/her good side.

I do not know how to sex a heron. Sorry. Apparently it’s by size. Well. There we are.

The walk was mostly flat, with only a few minor hilly bits, nothing challenging. There were also some rocky and narrow bits, especially going under the freeway bridge, but most kids and seniors could handle it.

There were about a million ducks.

This is the view towards the freeway and housing areas that surround the lagoon.

This is the view back towards where we started.

And the lovely view under the freeway.

It’s strange to hike with all that freeway noise, but eventually we got out into THAT below, and the noise faded away.

There’s less water in this section, fewer birds as well, and still lots of flat.

That’s the thing…it’s 7 miles, but a flat 7 miles, so we hiked it in less than 2 hours.

And it wasn’t very challenging. Sometimes that’s OK…apparently I felt like I needed a bigger challenge? Who knows. I spent most of my time walking with a Russian yoga instructor who had saved a turtle in Malaysia by massaging it. We talked about the mind-body connection, even in turtles, and lots of other enlightening stuff, from kids, to travel, yoga, Seattle, college, financial aid, self-employment, art, and men. It was entertaining at times, depressing at others. She and I walked fast, ditching the strollers. Again, walk? Or hike? Or run?

There were Torrey Pines about…

And it was definitely a beautiful day for a walk or a hike…

San Diego is great this time of year for such things. There were many flowering plants, even in the “dead of winter”…I sucked at taking photos of most of them (moving too fast), but got this acacia…

And a view of the clouds reflected in the water…

I bet this is a really popular walk during the summer, when East County is unbearable.

We made it back to the trailhead quickly and finally gave up on the rest of them…which was probably a good thing, because they stopped to take a bunch of group photos.

I’d do it again. I might run it though. Put it in the file for summer evening walks…