November Part 3: My Girls

Oakland, November 15 - December 2

How lucky was I to have two weeks+ with my girls just when I needed it most? Kiva and I camped out in Ariel and Chad's small apartment, trying our darnedest to be low impact/ high value guests. We cooked, shopped, cleaned and did errands hoping that they might actually miss us when we left.

Having those two weeks convinced me all the more that my top priority is to live close to them and be an available part of their lives. With Kiva in Australia for perhaps 4 years while Beau gets his BS in Osteopathy, Ariel is the magnet that will draw me to the northwest. Don't know exactly where yet, but it will reveal itself.

I'm a big fan of Oakland. I know, everyone talks about the crime and racial tension, but much like Chicago, it's a city of extreme diversity that is striving to be a great place to be. I'd like to know the recipe for improving a city without the negative effects of gentrification. It's an essential dynamic that needs to be figured out for all of the struggling cities and towns in the U.S. But the walkable neighborhoods and good mass transit create some key sustainability ingredients. Plus it's sunny a lot of the time! And living on the Hayward Fault Line just adds that adrenaline high that is so attractive.

El Capitan, so massively, solidly there.

Ariel has a lot of work obligations as a manager at the San Francisco SPCA (Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals), a huge non-profit in the Mission district of SF, often keeping her there until 8:30 at night. So Kiva and I took off for two days to Yosemite for my first visit to the Cathedral of National Parks.

Approaching Yosemite was not a happy trip for me. The landscape looked awful- logging, fire-burned , the effects of the Pine Beetle, all combined to thoroughly bum me out. I felt fearful of what we would find in this legendary place, how much human-caused devastation would be there? But the Valley is just a place unto itself, seemingly immune to the Pine Beetle and just full on stunning. There were other visitors there but not in any way that diminished our enjoyment of the Park. It was cold, crisp and blue, just so uniquely huge.

Kiva next to the Merced River

Site of the prayer and the eagle.

There was a transcendent moment there, when the past week's angst came to a head and was healed. Kiva and I walked to the Merced River edge. I stood and looked up at those millions of years old rocks and prayed out loud. "Please protect this place that is so vastly strong and so frighteningly fragile from us humans. Help us in this particular time in our country's evolution to find the way forward in love." Tears streaming down my face, Kiva hugging me, she says, "look Mom." And there, rising from the crests I had been praying to was a bald eagle, soaring on the air currents, circling before us.

Sunrise in Yosemite.

That bird was the catalyst for a deep shift in me. I let go of trying to figure out my future, trying to answer all of the obvious questions: where, what, how, etc. I embraced the experience I have had on this trip of discovering what was in store for me moment by moment. The eagle watches keenly for opportunities from the big picture perspective- sharp eye and instant change of course as the present unfolds. I am channeling that way of the eagle as I walk forward.

On the Mist Trail with Vernal Falls 

There is so much more to say about Yosemite and my time with Kiva- another reminder of my fragile body as I fell backward climbing rocks to a waterfall ending up breaking the metacarpal of my left pinky finger, the Mist Trail hike to Vernal and Nevada Falls, lunch at the foot of Yosemite Falls, being in the valley of environmental heroes John Muir and Ansel Adams.

Lower Yosemite Falls, site of picnic

Top o' Mt. Tam overlooking the entire Bay area

Highlights of the time in Oakland: Thanksgiving in Lake County, hikes/walks in the neighborhood woods of Oakland, visit to Mt. Tam,

The Homeroom with nephew/cousin Matt Hodgson

dinner with Matt at Homeroom mac & cheese restaurant,

Crazy, memorable day on the top of the double decker bus.
Trip across the Golden Gate Bridge was wonderfully ridiculous!

double decker bus tour of San Francisco... in the rain, movies, food, coffee, and best of all, Trivia night at a Berkley pub- so fun as each of the four of us pulled a variety of answers from thin air.

A stop at a Napa Valley winery. Melanie has
learned her lesson and has confined herself
to no more than one beer or one hard cider.

Precious, precious time. We missed Ben, feeling the lack of his unique energy, but carrying on with the closeness that can come from great loss. The love is deep and rich.