Safe Travels

SAN FRANCISCO--I am a Wandering Naturalist because I love to wander. I appreciate the freedom we have to travel safely around the world. It wasn't always so.

I have begun commuting across the bay to Alcatraz Island five days a week. I have no fear of the ship going down. It wasn't always so. The first lighthouse on the West Coast was built there in the 1850s, for good reason. Many a ship foundered on the rocky hazards inside that Golden Gate.

Things have changed a bit, certainly. My father is a physicist and has spent much of his life improving satellite navigation and developing the Global Positioning System, especially for ships, at first. This was a difficult profession to explain to my elementary school classmates. "What does your daddy do?" "He's an engineer." "Cool! He drives a train?" "Uh, no, he's an aerospace engineer." "Cool! He flies a rocket?"

Nowadays it's a bit different. Instead of drawing treasure maps, "Go five paces left," kids are using their GPS receivers to go geocaching.

But I don't bring all this up just to brag about my dad. In fact, when he was the president of the Institute of Navigation, in 2001, the annual convention in Salt Lake City was not very well attended. He flew in the day before the conference to help prepare. The scheduled start date was Sept. 11. And from that time on, none of us took safe travel for granted any more.

These are a few of my favorite things

SAN FRANCISCO--With apologies to Rodgers and Hammerstein, I must sing the praises of this city by the bay.
The Wandering Naturalist list of stuff I like about S.F.:

1) Recycling--Curbside makes it so easy to recycle waste paper, bottles and cans, all sorts of food scraps, plastic containers. Hooray! And for all you recyclers out there, keep up the good work!

2) Millennium Restaurant--Where else but in San Francisco could you find a gourmet vegan restaurant, this one at the Savoy Hotel? I'm not gonna say every naturalist should be a vegetarian; that's a very personal choice. I'll just say this is the best thing that's happened to my mouth since I became one.

3) Parks, Community and National--I love my neighborhood parks. An elementary school has started restoring native habitat at Pine Lake Park; Stern Grove contains actual redwoods. Golden Gate National Parks and their partner, the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy care for a restored wetland at Crissy Field, beautiful public lands near the Bay, historical landmarks like the Presidio and Alcatraz Island. Three cheers for preservation and restoration!

4) Gardens and Pets--I delight in my landlord's garden and the free-running dogs at the park. Our closest connection to nature may be the plants and animals we "own." Let no one scoff at showering attention on pets, as though it were obscene when there are starving humans. Is love limited? Are not those who care for a creature considered "dumb," "mute," more likely to consider the cries of other suffering creatures even a continent away? We're all in this together, you know. Let's hear it for responsible pet-owners and gardeners!

5) Wild Things--My heart soars with the macho hummingbird who attains great heights in order to dive-bomb intruders. Banana slugs amaze me with their seeming ooziness which isn't, actually. Touch one. Watch how they can retract their antennae. Wild. Chickadees have no fear of me and fill me with a joy that makes me want to call all of you (with a W.C. Fields accent) "my little chickadee."

Thank you, San Francisco, and you, my little chickadees, for all the wonderful things I mentioned and all I have yet to discover about you. Give yourself a big, hearty pat on the back!

A Little Green Spot on the Map

SAN FRANCISCO--"Might I have a bit of earth?" asks the heroine in Frances Hodgson Burnett's Secret Garden. A simple enough request to grant, it would seem.

Yet our search for an apartment in proximity to a patch of green proved quite daunting, especially given the dearth of green in our wallets.

A small, relatively cheap place of one's own can easily be acquired, apparently, if one forgoes the pleasure of walking on dirt under trees without first taking the bus to get there, if one forgoes a view of anything more than neighboring walls or concrete.

Just when I was on the verge of forgoing these things, in order that this wandering naturalist could give up wandering for a time, we saw it.

What a difference a patch of green makes! The little park just down the street, Pine Lake Park, though mostly a dog-romping haven more appropriately dubbed Eucalyptus Pond Park, did contain the dirt trails beloved of joggers and birdwatchers of our ilk. And once inside the apartment, the view! That owner could garden. In a mere 12 x 18 feet or so, the profusion of flowers! An angel's trumpet tree laden with peach-colored blooms, big-headed red and yellow dahlias, orange California poppies, a bright purple bush of lisiandra, a bonsai-size Japanese maple--the list goes on. We liked the place. And agonized during the waiting period of credit and reference checks familiar to Bay Area renters. If we hadn't gotten it, we would have felt akin to Adam and Eve, cast out of the original garden.

For us, the trees, the water make a nicer place to live in the city. For wild birds, however--save, perhaps, pigeons, gulls, ravens, blackbirds, house sparrows and starlings--the trees, the water make the only place to live in the city.

So it is good to see you, hummingbirds, robins, warblers, and chickadees! You are just the ones I wanted to welcome me to our new home.