Look to the Tidepool and Other Lessons from My Parents

"It is advisable to look from the tidepool to the stars, then back to the
tidepool again." -John Steinbeck, The Log from the Sea Of Cortez

My father says that almost the whole world is asleep. Everybody you know. Everybody you see. Everybody you talk to. He says that only a few people are awake, and they live in a state of constant, total amazement." -Joe vs. the Volcano 

My parents, especially my dad, tried to teach me not to swear. In this lesson, they did not succeed. For most of my adult life, my peers have been either zoo keepers or biologists---the ubiquity of swear words in my vocabulary is a testament to the influence of those two foul-mouthed peer groups over an albeit half-hearted parenting effort. I think their conviction on this particular point of discipline was weakening by their fifth and final child, as were many of their more traditional parental convictions. The first four in the birth order wore them out on those, rascals that they were. I remember the look of glee on Mom's face the first time she ever uttered the word "fuck" in front of me. It was as if all of her release from the thrall of my dad, her strict upbringing in a Midwestern Lutheran orphanage, and the societal expectation of feminine gentility were contained in that moment. Once I recovered from my initial shock and awe, I was proud of her. But there was one word (with all its forms) that was allowed no tolerance, and my aversion to using it stands up to the passage of time and the pressure of peers. To proclaim, as any child or teenage girl inevitably will, that I was bored, was to risk a torrent of shaming from my mother. I can't remember using the words "bored" or "boredom" much beyond my early teenage years, when I suspect mom went all in with her conviction to share this lesson with her last born. I don't recall a single lecture on drugs, alcohol, or sex, but there were many on the Sin of Boredom.

Mia in one of the great sycamores of the Laguna Canyon of the 1960s.
We road bicycles and picnicked under the huge branches.

The lesson was simple: there is no cause for boredom in a wondrous world. Inside was a creative carnival of toys, books, records, art supplies, make-believe forests, jungles, farms, and zoos; outside was the whole wide world and my home town of Laguna Beach with hills of chaparral, valleys of sycamores, and the shore of the greatest ocean within walking distance. Mom urged me to meet that sycamore from within its branches, watch the roadrunner catch lizards on the roof, read all of the Chronicles of Narnia, then reenact them in the garden, sing, paint, sculpt, depict and be utterly amazed every moment. If you are inside you have your imagination, she said. If you are outside you have wonder. To find yourself in a state of boredom is to have failed the world, not vice versa. The "B" word---the one swear word I hesitate to utter---will be forever anchored in my psyche. But I think I might be better served by fearing the word less and living the moral more: be awake in the world!

My mom, Mia, lived that lesson all the years of her life. She was relentless is her cheerfulness and her ability to find things to love. When I slip comfortably into a hearty laugh, I am following her example. Game to try new adventures, she was a joyful companion down the trails of Kauai's native rain forests, across the channel to Santa Catalina Island, and over the green at posh golf courses in search of tagged sea otters. She was equally at home under a comforter watching Dancing with the Stars. Much like Harry, mom's default state was that of choosing to love---except when it came to cilantro. 

Mom at the harbor at Avalon. The crossing from Newport was her first
 time at sea in 40 years of living in California.

Tracking otters with Michelle Staedler
at the most exclusive of golf courses.

While I believe my father's brilliant, expansive mind was prone to bouts of boredom, it was he who guided me down the sandy path to the beach and under the fence to the chaparral hills. He was my ambassador to the sea.  In all of my earliest memories of the ocean, I am accompanied by my dad and his camera. We experienced the waves and tidepools together, but while I felt the cold water on my toes, and giggled as the sand crabs tickled my fingers with their feathery legs, he was the distant artist watching, composing future paintings of a little girl at the shore to hang in the houses of others. These photo sessions at the beach with my dad returned closeness between father and daughter that was perhaps truest to who he was at heart. He was sharing with his littlest one his unique vision of the world---teaching her not only to look with an artist's eyes, but to see deeply. 

5-year-old Gena in a tidepool at Laguna Beach, 1968.
Photo by my dad, Robert Krantz

One evening when I was 17,  I sat with Dad on his balcony overlooking the ocean at dusk. My parents were separated and he had moved into this cliff edge house in South Laguna where I would come every week for dinner. I didn't really like the dinner visits, my dad often spoke in an intellectual language that I couldn't (or wouldn't) understand. I think he meant these talks to bring us closer, but I felt very far away.  The dipping sun backlit the leaf of a potted orchid revealing a ladybug traversing its underside. We both watched in silence for a moment, then I said,  "The ladybug's feet must be interacting with the surface of the leaf in a way we can't see so that she doesn't fall." Dad looked at me and smiled. "Yes" was all he said, but I saw pride in his eyes.  Because of him I can see universes and galleries bound together by the tides and the borders of a tidepool, and I care to imagine the sticky feet of a ladybug.

The adhesive hairs of a ladybug's feet with a scanning electron microscope.
Photo Jan Michels

Dad in his element in his classic torn jeans

Holding my dad's hand

The themes of this blog---to look at the world mindfully, to celebrate the beauty of the small and humble, to feel a part of a great oneness with the universe (yes, dad, I was listening when you talked about quantum theory)---all find their origins in the lessons of my parents. Their gifts to me could not have been more disparate or more complimentary. Mom was a champion of the unloved and the metaphorically orphaned, while Dad's view was more philosophical, lofty and unyielding (even when delivered in torn jeans from the humblest of apartments towards the end of his life). Every moment I am among the trees or stooped over a tidepool, they are watching with me: my mom admiring the ingenuity of a hermit crab and my dad the incomprehensible number of atomic interactions that make up the rock and the anemone. 

Rock and anemone

This last week of June is one of somber significance to me. June 21st marks the seventh anniversary of my mom's death just hours before her 86th birthday. She had been sick for over a month and in hospice for two weeks when she succumbed to the flood in her lungs known as congestive heart failure. She died in her bedroom, in her apartment in the pink "frat house" on Cliff Drive, in her beloved Laguna Beach, with her children, grandchildren and trusted friends at hand. I was witness to her final breath, to her final knowing of the answers that elude us all until that moment. She followed my dad who passed nearly fifteen years before, and seemed to speak with him in her final days of transitional consciousness. Now we are, all five of their children, orphans.

The pink "frat house"

This year, Father's Day and this anniversary have aligned like two partial sets of chromosomes merging into an embryo. My parents were very different people who's lives merged in post WWII Chicago. While their marital bond would dissolve in the Southern California beach town where my father brought our family in search of a dream, Mia and Robert Krantz joined forces in their creativity, love of their children and grandchildren and their acknowledgment of the power of a beautiful view.  As I stand at my front door waiting to step out, I am well equipped to look out with my father's eyes and my mother's heart. 

Happy Birthday Mom! 

Happy Father's Day, Dad!

View from Heisler Park in Laguna Beach where both
 mom and dad admired many a sunset

A Sight for Sori: Discovering California's Native Ferns

Tapestry of ferns, moss and wildflowers along the trail at Pinnacles National Park

For most of my life my association with ferns has been one of caretaker and houseplant. That relationship has been replete with drama with certain favorites---rabbit's foot fern, maidenhair---refusing to thrive under my care regardless of my dedication to meeting their needs. Or, if they find a spot that pleases them, expressing their displeasure with a change of venue by an initial drop of frond that inevitably leads to a catastrophic collapse. In my near half a century of indoor gardening I have committed fern herbicide on an epic scale. Why have so many been sacrificed for my love? I think ferns simultaneously intrigue and soothe us, and that is an alluring combination.

Sorry, I hate this movie but this just works here.

Ferns evoke memories of tropical places in me. In some cases the memory rush is a short trip from my conscious mind---my tropical life phase in Hawaii or a childhood moment curled under the fronds of a tree fern in my backyard---but I think some memory is coded in my genes, the one that have carried my elements up from the Carboniferous Period, 350 million years ago: the age of ferns. This is old love.

Depiction of the Carboniferous at the Field Museum (photo fieldmuseum.org)

You may be surprised to know that California has a diverse array of native ferns. You have seen them, if you have hiked a trail through the redwoods or oaks, your brain decoding the feathery fronds into the category "fern" if only in the periphery of your awareness. Or, maybe you are a lover of house plants as I am, and your coding runs deeper: it's a maidenhair, or a sword fern. While Harry admires the great trees on our frequent strolls through the redwood groves crowning Monterey Bay, I have lately found myself stooping in admiration at every new fern species. You see, wild fern diversity is my latest discovery. In much the same way that birding first opened my eyes to the feathered ones as a teenager, phycology class at Oregon State inflamed my passion for algae and, most recently, the naming of butterflies elevated the "orange ones" and "yellow ones" to actual species, my fern universe has expanded and my consciousness will never be the same. I owe a good deal of my fern enlightenment to this $4 book, recommended to me by a fern expert:

If you'd like to know more ferns on a first name basis, I suggest this basic guide

On a recent hike in Santa Cruz I counted eight species, and those are only the ones I, as a novice, can identify. "We haven't seen that kind before!" I'd call to Harry, but he has no interest in a close inspection of the sporangia. As with most things in nature that we name and distinguish, each fern species has a unique set of characteristics that set it apart. If we are lucky (in that the species we want to identify has visible traits that can be distinguished in the field using our five unaided senses), and clever enough (in having a proper guide and knowing our fern parts), what was once a clump of fronds can now have a name. I find considerable satisfaction in that discovery.

Western sword fern, Polystichum munitum, from a newt's perspective

Five-fingered maidenhair fern, Adiantum aleuticum, amongst
the stream violets.

A wood fern, Dryopteris, reaches for the redwoods.

There are an array of new parts to learn, some of them familiar from phycology: not stem and leaf but stipe, frond, rachis, and pinnule. Rhizomes are the furry stems of ferns that give rise to common names like rabbit's foot and hare's paw. The key to unlocking a name may be on the underside of the frond where the spore-packed sori neatly sequester the fern's reproductive matters. Comments on my first fern observations on iNaturalist often suggested including a photo of the frond's underside, although at least one expert identified a species based on the imprint of the sori on the upper surface of the frond. But I am new to the fern puzzle and so struggle,"What the hell is the indusium?"

Wood ferns have distinctive sori lined up like cars in a parking lot

Bracken, Pteridium aquilinum, backs its sori up to the edge of each pinna

The glowing gold dust sori of the goldback fern, Pentogramma triangularis

If you're going to inspect the naughty bits of a fern, use care not to snap the stipe in the process! The spores grow into gametophytes (dig deep, back to biology class and the alteration of generations) which will produce eggs and sperm (yes, flagellate, motile sperm), which join to grow into the sporophyte, the familiar ferny part of the plant which produces the spores, and the whole thing starts over again. There is none of the bother of flowers and seeds. That swimming sperm needs a drop of water to make it's pilgrimage but ferns need not be limited to the moist tropics to thrive and can often do well (better than flowering plants in some cases) in marginal habitats by using alternative reproductive strategies that bypass the sperm entirely. I've spent a good deal of my life bypassing sperm, so I get it, ferns.

Ferns can be found along side the trail on many of my favorite hikes:

Coffee fern, Pellea andromedifolia, near the High Peaks at Pinnacles

Unfurling fiddlehead at Fremont Peak

Ladybug and bracken, Fremont Peak 

Fissure garden of Polypodium and lichen, Fremont Peak

Cheeky fern fists put 'em up at Manzanita Park

Bracken shadow play on the sand at Manzanita Park

Bracken lined trail---this species, while native, can be invasive

A search for ferns in Calflora brings up 95 results; some of these are endemic and rare and some are exotic and invasive. Some ferns are threatened by habitat destruction and poaching by rare plant collectors. Search for ferns in your neighborhood, admire them, maybe find their names, then leave them be to drop their millions of spores and carry on the alteration of generations. Taxonomy offers the naturalist the gift of diversity---suddenly the ferns are all around waiting to be noticed and named. They are more than a plant in a bathroom or greenery adorning a bouquet of the flowers they need not bear, but ambassadors of an ancient life form that has witnessed the births and extinctions of millenia. Take a deep breath and let the ferns tap into your inner Carboniferous.

The water fern, Azolla, shelters a Sierran treefrog, Pseudacris sierra.

Looking High and Low: Pinnacles National Park

High Peaks view, Pinnacles National Park

I think one is first drawn to the trails of Pinnacles for the high drama. It is especially gratifying to visit with those that have never been before---to witness the inevitable transition to discovery of the natural magic that lies within our nearest (and newest) National Park. Pinnacles unveils itself to its guests with style. My hiking buddy and Pinnacles initiate for this trip is Sarah, friend and former colleague from the sea otter days in SLO. Since this is her first visit, I insist that a trip to the High Peaks is in order, although I'm quite sure getting there will kick my butt about 25 years harder than hers. Sarah makes a fine substitute for Harry,who has to sit this one out---this National Park is particularly inhospitable to dogs.

Sarah on the wildflower rich Junction Canyon Trail 

Our mission, besides introducing Sarah to the park, is maximum wildflower exposure and we come armed with trail choice recommendations from the Pinnacles' biologist which include not only the most spectacular flowers and a first timer's must see spots, but strategies for navigating the weekend crowds. This will be my first time accessing the park from the West Entrance via Soledad---which has mercifully changed its city catch phrase from "It's happening in Soledad" (I'm pretty sure that I don't want to know what "it" is or why it's happening next to a correctional facility) to the much less arguable, "Gateway to the Pinnacles". You chose wisely, Soledad city council.

The transition: see story here. Photo KSBW

We arrive at the West Entrance visitor's center before 9 and it's not yet open (probably because the ranger was stuck behind me up the very narrow entrance road to the park), so we self pay the entrance fee of $10, an incredible bargain that allows access for 7 days. Then we move on to the trail head at the Chaparral Ranger Station  where the parking lot is already sparsely occupied by other early-start hikers wishing to make the summit in the cool air before noon. Plenty of water? Check. Snacks? Check. Trail Map? Check. Headlamps? Doh! And we head up the Juniper Canyon Trail on our way to the High Peaks.

We don't have to wait long for flowers and are knee deep in Clarkia and Delphinium within minutes. It was adrift in this intoxicating sea of pinks and purples, that I became aware of two types of hikers on the trail that morning: those who are goal oriented and those who are detail oriented. I suspect every individual is a little of both (unless the hiker is my sister Rebecca who will joyfully sacrifice the goal for the details) but, while I definitely want to get to the summit some time today, I refuse to do so at the expense of the Venus thistle or the blister beetle. Contributing to my baseline dawdling are two related factors: my increasing obsession with documenting wildlife observations photographically for iNaturalist (affectionately, iNat), and this day being Day 2 of a Global Bioblitz (May 15-25) for which iNat users and other nature enthusiasts all over the world are documenting biodiversity (see the results here). So, I'm taking my time and recording as many species as possible. Sarah, who has also brought her camera, is adopting this pace, at least in part, by association. But I think it can grow on you; Or wear on you; One of the two.

The elegant Clarkia, Clarkia unguiculata

Larkspur violet against a pink Clarkia back drop

Speckled Clarkia, Clarkia cylindrica

The redundantly named butterfly mariposa lily, Calochortus venustus

Variable checkerspot, Euphydryas chalcedona, nectaring on the  Venus
thistle, Cirsium occidentale var. venustum, one of our few native thistles

Lytta blister beetles devouring a larkspur blossom

And so we slowly wander, awash in wonder, while the summit seekers speed past. In one sunny spot in the trail, the brilliant blue Echo Azure butterflies cluster, perhaps on a needed patch of mineral. Movement transforms their pale grey underwing, visible as they perch, to a flurry of violet---the color for which they are named. Hiker after hiker walks by, their very passage agitating mini cyclones of blue---"How can they not look stop to look at this?!" I ask Sarah. But I'm sure they are wondering as they pass, "How can they not hurry to the top?" 

Echo azure blues, Celastrina echo, showing their grey side in the trail

A glimpse of the azure side

Even with our dawdling, we make good time to the junction with the High Peaks trail and the road to the "Steep and Narrows", so nicknamed because of these (accurate) warning signs:

It is appropriate to be filled with gratitude to those that built this particular stretch of trail (Civilian Conservation Corps, 1933), making passable to the mere hiker what may have been left to the mountaineers. 

As we pass through the High Peaks, another hiker enthusiastically informs us that there is a condor perched just ahead and another soaring in the canyon below. Though hopeful, perhaps it is the biologists in us that consider it likely the condor will turn out to be a turkey vulture---in much the way a stranded sea otter turns out to be a harbor seal. What can I say? Ya get skeptical. We were wrong:

Pinnacles is one of a handful of release sites for captive bred California condors,
one of the mightiest(and most imperiled) birds in the world.

Here's a turkey vulture for comparison---I'll add insult to injury by making the picture smaller.

Even in the jagged, dramatic landscape of the High Peaks, born of geological forces volcanic, tectonic and climatic, one can look low and find beauty.

Dudleya cymosa and lichen decorate a fissure in the rhyolite wall

But it sure doesn't hurt to look high...

These monolithic vistas are Pinnacles' gift-wrapped surprise. All around they are cloaked in the familiarly gentle, chaparral dressed peaks of the California coast---unveiled as you follow the trail deeper into her lofty heart. To be here is to feel simultaneously at home (I know these plants and animals...) and away (...but what world is this?), to feel comfort and awe in the same moment. That kind of magic is the stuff of both the thistle and peak.

After snacks and a rest on a rocky ledge with a view suitable for a condor, we take the aptly named Tunnel Trail back to Juniper Canyon. As we began our descent we were overtaken by a lone boy scout who had missed a critical trial junction on his way to the summit and had lost his troop. "Is this the trail to the summit?" he asked, red-faced with exertion. "You're heading down the west side---you missed the High Peaks junction...We passed your troop up top." He would have been in for a major bummer if he hadn't run into us. Aren't boy scouts trained to stay in herds?

Tunnel Trail: "Go towards the light, boyscout..."

Full disclosure: there are a number of drawbacks to dawdling over details on the trail. You may get a better look at some of the flora and fauna than the speed hikers, but there are some things that you will miss simply because you have allowed others to go ahead and flush them from the trail. Sarah and I, most unfortunately, did not see any of Pinnacles' lovely reptiles this day and we saw few birds. Sometimes being first helps. As we found on our supplementary hike of the Balconies Cave Loop, dawdling also allows you to be overtaken by large groups of shrieking 5-year-old girls. 

There is always an unsettling notion when scrambling though the talus caves at Pinnacles, that these are passages built by the tumbling of massive boulders into canyons from the cliffs above. The caves are the offspring of deadly avalanches and we are teetering on the edge of the San Andreas Fault. Best not to think about it too much while gazing at the boulder ceiling overhead.

The San Andreas Fault has left Pinnacles sister half
back in southern California. Image NPS

Above the caves

And inside--this is the Bear Gulch Cave in April of 2011

As we approached the Balconies Cave, I realized that I had not told Sarah to bring the necessary head lamp. Oops. Fortunately, all iPhone users come equipped with flashlights---the Swiss army tool of the digital age. We have the CCC to thank once again for building the trails through the caves, a pretty descent scrabble up,down and under boulders in some places. At least one bump of the head is inevitable. Some spots are so low as to make passage with a backpack challenging, and a pack bearer can find themselves wedged if they don't limbo quite low enough---a feature that might be troubling for the infant in a baby backpack we spot just heading in as we exit. "Should we have warned her mum?"

It was bumper to bumper hikers going through Balconies on this Saturday afternoon. Misanthrope that I am, I'd much prefer to navigate these passages in lighter traffic. If you're a mysophobe, consider bringing hand sanitizer as you will be squeezing through where many have squeezed before. This is probably only one on a long list of phobias that you might want to address before visiting the caves.

From the east side you can access the beautiful Bear Gulch Caves (my favorite), but only when they are not being used by Townsend's big-eared bats. During pupping season, bats are give the right of way and exclusive access so be sure to check the Pinnacle NP website for cave status if you are especially keen to explore them on your visit. Since I am a chirophile (and not a chirophobe---add this to the list), I am drawn to the idea of seeing and hearing bats. I highly recommend a night hike to the Bear Gulch Reservoir if you are similarly enamored.

And so we are back in the west side parking lot and loading into Emmy (who is a good 200 degrees inside). Time to stretch the muscles and make a stop in Soledad for ice cream (which I should have applied to my quads instead of my belly). The next day I send Sarah a text message:

G: "How are your quads feeling today?" 

S:"They are fine....I've been working out a lot...."

Oh shut up.

Happiness at the High Peaks

Note: Thanks, Sarah for being great company on this hike and for not complaining for a moment about my dawdling. Thanks to Pinnacles Biologist Paul for trail advice and taking the time to confirm many of my iNat IDs. Readers can see all of my wildlife observations from Pinnacles National Park by clicking my iNaturalist link to the right. You may have to scroll down a bit as the day of our visit (May 16) marked the seconds day of a Global Bioblitz.