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To enlarge it
I've never seen spider webs quite like these I spied at Edgewood Park last week.
Time portals for Arachnida, perhaps?
Tuesday, November 15, 2011
A Time Portal for Arachnida
I've never seen spider webs quite like these I spied at Edgewood Park last week.
Time portals for Arachnida, perhaps?
Sunday, November 13, 2011
Ohlone Autumn
Ohlone Autumn
Edgewood Park, San Mateo County, CA
Click on the illustration to enlarge.
Every time I'm sure I know what's ahead of me on the path, I get surprised.
Friday, October 21, 2011
Indian Summer at Edgewood (No. 3): Rose Hips
Edgewood County Park, San Mateo County, CA
Previous Segments in this Mini Story Series
Indian Summer at Edgewood
After the Ohlone folks had finished their dye-making, fishing, and berry gathering projects we all settled down to a spot of relaxation and recreation in the late afternoon sun. A big-eyed girl I took to be about twelve years old marshaled three younger children into a sort of impromptu performance of different kinds of animals.
The littlest girl, probably three or four, was adept at bouncing of her haunches and wiggling her nose like a rabbit. Of course she got got the loudest murmurs of appreciation. The two other kids, both boys, switched back and forth between pouncing like a cougar, or maybe a bobcat- onto the rabbit, swiping down fall berries - that was obviously a bear, and yipping and howling like a coyote. The also put on quite a very credible show involving a Western fence lizard (I recognized those push-up motions), and what was obviously a rattlesnake surprised in the act of devouring what I thought might be a gopher. The gopher, in this case, won. It had to win since it was the tiny girl doing her best. Nobody in her clan was going to sit idly by and watch her be turned into rattlesnake fodder. Even the rattlesnake seemed relieved when she got away.
Then the older girl began to emit a kind of buzzing noise and began to flap her arms about a cleared section of the creek. She did a lot of dipping and diving in on the older of the two boys who sat in mock stoic silence, giving every impression of an animal at his wit's end, unwilling to give in to persecution. At this point, I was starting to have a little trouble following the story line, as dictated in a sing-song voice by grandmother.
I suppose my confusion was obvious because the small band took pity on me and the director stopped her humming to give a direction to the older boy. I'm pretty sure she told him something along the lines of, "Let's move it along, Bud."
The boy came to life and began to snap, yip and growl at the irritating creature who was clearly making his life a misery. Before she'd had a chance to respond another buzz, pitched much higher than the big-eyed thespian, began to sound just above our heads.
When the jewel-toned throat of the Anna's hummingbird came into view everybody began laughing, pointing back and forth between the tiny bird and the oldest girl, who had resumed her darting, buzzing dance.
By the time coyote had consumed the pesky hummingbird, who of course didn't let that stop her fun, dusk was beginning to settle creekside.
It was time for me to hop into the closest time portal and head home.
* * *
Here's a link to an English version of some Ohlone stories, like the ones I heard down by the creek. There's one about Coyote and Hummingbird, which might be something similar to the one I heard that day. I still think the Rumsien version, and the acting talent I witnessed in past times Edgewood Park was the best version!
Thursday, October 20, 2011
Indian Summer at Edgewood (No. 2): Oak Apple
Edgewood Oak Apple
Please click on the illustration above to get the full picture
Please click on the illustration above to get the full picture
Yesterday I wrote a journal entry about the beginning of a trip back 300 years in time, to visit with a small group of Ohlone people in, what is today called, Edgewood Park. (Indian Summer at Edgewood (No. 1): Creekside.
Having slid through the time portal on the seat of my pants, I dusted the leaves off and greeted the small group working along the edge of the creek. Though busy fishing, foraging for late berries, and cutting sedge, they still seemed glad to have a visitor drop by.
Unfortunately, I'd forgotten my iPad with it's Rumsien dictionary pdf download at home. Luckily, I remembered how to say i (yes). We smiled a lot too.
Though the creek is low it had produced a few steelhead trout. Have you noticed that fish tastes better when somebody else cooks it? Somehow the berries tasted sweeter than the modern ones too. I'm pretty sure that if you add a beer that would be a nutritionally complete meal.
Some of the women were gathering up oak apples( which you maybe call oak galls) and smashing them with pestles, using a big flat rock to pound them against. About the only thing I've ever seen anybody use oak apples for, was the time my friend Suzanne painted a bunch of them as ornaments for her holiday craft booth. She never made those again, after she hung the leftovers on her warmly lit Christmas tree and the gall wasps started hatching out of the little manager scenes. I don't think she ever went back to that particular craft fair to hear what happened to the ones she sold either.
Turns out the people by the creek weren't making manager scenes. They cooked the busted up oak galls in a very tightly woven basket of water and rocks made intensely hot from their fire. When I saw the clan grandmother begin to stuff dried sheaves of sedge into the deep black liquid that emerged from the galls, I finally understood how they were using the galls.
Grandmother saw me looking, smiled back, and pointed at the dark design on the container holding the last of the blackberries. She said something in Rumsien that was as clear to me now as English, even if I didn't understand the actual words she spoke.
Did I think the gall dyed sedge make pretty baskets?
I grinned back.
I, absolutely i.
Having slid through the time portal on the seat of my pants, I dusted the leaves off and greeted the small group working along the edge of the creek. Though busy fishing, foraging for late berries, and cutting sedge, they still seemed glad to have a visitor drop by.
Unfortunately, I'd forgotten my iPad with it's Rumsien dictionary pdf download at home. Luckily, I remembered how to say i (yes). We smiled a lot too.
Though the creek is low it had produced a few steelhead trout. Have you noticed that fish tastes better when somebody else cooks it? Somehow the berries tasted sweeter than the modern ones too. I'm pretty sure that if you add a beer that would be a nutritionally complete meal.
Some of the women were gathering up oak apples( which you maybe call oak galls) and smashing them with pestles, using a big flat rock to pound them against. About the only thing I've ever seen anybody use oak apples for, was the time my friend Suzanne painted a bunch of them as ornaments for her holiday craft booth. She never made those again, after she hung the leftovers on her warmly lit Christmas tree and the gall wasps started hatching out of the little manager scenes. I don't think she ever went back to that particular craft fair to hear what happened to the ones she sold either.
Turns out the people by the creek weren't making manager scenes. They cooked the busted up oak galls in a very tightly woven basket of water and rocks made intensely hot from their fire. When I saw the clan grandmother begin to stuff dried sheaves of sedge into the deep black liquid that emerged from the galls, I finally understood how they were using the galls.
Grandmother saw me looking, smiled back, and pointed at the dark design on the container holding the last of the blackberries. She said something in Rumsien that was as clear to me now as English, even if I didn't understand the actual words she spoke.
Did I think the gall dyed sedge make pretty baskets?
I grinned back.
I, absolutely i.
Indian Summer at Edgewood
Part 1: Creekside
Part 3: Rose Hips
* * *
There were other Ohlone langues in addition to Rumsien. They include Mutsun, and Chochenyo. There are people speaking these languages today.
Wednesday, October 19, 2011
Indian Summer at Edgewood (No. 1): Creekside
Wikipedia's not always right. So everybody can decide on their own, or read something academic and let me know, eh?
I do know that Indian Summer is on full display right now in Edgewood Park, a county park nature reserve five minutes (driving) from Cañada College
where I take classes.
The Ohlone tribe were the first people who lived and gathered food in this area. If I slide down the bank of this creek into it's time passage, I might meet up with a few Ohlone. Could have still been a few fish down in this creek 300 years ago,
Indian Summer at Edgewood
Part 2: Oak Apples
Part 3: Rose Hips
Thursday, March 31, 2011
Fellow Time Traveller: Crotalus cerastes
Please click on the illustration above to enjoy all the lovely details
involved in Crotalus cerastes passing through her chosen time portal
The rains are over, the rabbits and gophers are out and soooo is sommmmebody else. Isn't she lovely? And she was ever so polite about letting me know she was there, about a foot up the side from the trail. I was irritated that I left my audio recorder in the car. Her conversation with me, would have been such great audio for my next podcast.
I knew when I created this background, that it was somebody's idea of the perfect time portal. I just hadn't realized, until I stopped by Edgewood Park* for a short hike on the way to a music lesson, that it was the preferred time portal for Crotalus cerastes (a.k.a. one beautiful California rattlesnake).
* Edgewood Park Preserve, San Carlos, San Mateo County, San Francisco Bay Area. Put your snake proof boots in the car, Take the Edgewood Exit off Highway 280, meander down the hill. Parking is just off Edgewood Road. Part of County Park System . No dogs (but just across the road is a Mid-Penninsula Open Space Region trail that permits dogs)
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