Mt. Tam glimpsed from the Town Center in Corte Madera

It was nearly 80 degrees again today – at least according to the gauge in my car. It was also almost unbearably bright outside. The mountain glowed from just about every angle. Hard to believe we are in Northern California. Hard to believe it’s February. So many things are becoming hard to believe these days….

Mt. Tam glimpsed from Bon Air Road, Greenbrae

We are having spells of summer in Marin. Seems that February has been thoroughly summerized for this leap year. With lighter traffic all over, thanks to schools out for ski week, today almost felt like a typical day in August, when Marin seems emptied of people, cooled by morning fog, and heated to perfection by the fog-delayed sun. But I found a much better description of the ambiance of days like this one from the witty pen of  Anne Lamott in her latest column in Sunset magazine:

Northern California spring is not a nice orderly progression that you can recognize from any other part of your life. It’s a kaleidoscope. On almost any day, it can be almost any season. Hot, warm, very cold, rainy, then gray, then blue….Don’t get me wrong — there are aspects of spring that I do not like. Deer ticks, for instance, and everywhere you look, couples falling in love, and the air is saturated with the scent of giddiness and doom.

“March Madness,” by Anne Lamott Sunset, March 2012

Lamott nailed it for me with that “scent of giddiness and doom.” The heady onslaught of blossoms and the sense of a season missing as an omen for losses to come. Yep, “giddiness and doom” will do nicely to describe a day like this one.

Mt. Tam basking in February's summerized sun

Mt. Tam glimpsed near the end of sunset

Even as light fades and night seeps in, the eyes hold steady the landscape now redrawn by the constellation of streetlights and the haphazard quilt of lit-up windows. But the camera takes its cue from the hand, which has its own map of a world in motion – a world where light is the wave you hope to catch and hang on to for a ride that touches neither the gritty shore nor the formidable undertow….

Mt. Tam glimpsed from Marin Country Mart, Larkspur

There was a hint of winter in the air in the morning, but it didn’t last. Soon enough the sun came out and everywhere I walked, there was the scent of blossoms rushing to fill the air with sweet notes ahead of their proper season. All of which made me even more nostalgic for winter. Maybe not so much for the whimsy of wind and the lashing rain, or the odd dusting of snow on the peaks of Mt. Tam, but for the predictable rhythms that used to underscore our lives when the seasons played quartets.

The peaks of Mt. Tam barely glimpsed from the Corte Madera Creek path near the maze of ramps of US 101 at the Kentfield/San Anselmo & Richmond/San Rafael Bridge exit

This is the weekend the Bay Bridge is closed partially, so here in Marin we expected a lot of traffic – and we got it. The stacked concrete corridors of ramps around US 101 saw a stream of cars that is heavy for a Sunday, though not unbearably so.

I stayed put for the better part of the day. I wanted to keep off the roads, sure, but also, I had a lot of number-crunching to do – which might explain why at the last minute I chose this image of Mt. Tam barely visible over all the others I took as I walked along the Corte Madera Creek on the west side of US 101, from where the mountain looms large and beautiful from just about any angle.

Mt. Tam in the purple haze of sunset glimpsed from Bret Harte, San Rafael

Often, when I walk on Bret Harte Road around sunset and look across the gorge between the ridges of the undulating hills and happen to spot a house with the lights on I am reminded of fairy tales. Not that I feel lost, but there is a sense of other-worldliness in the space of twilight. Here the landscape rearranges itself. The mountain fades, first into a wash of pastels, then the slow tide of night swallows it whole. And the trees, seemingly so benign and gently green in the light of day, appear to fill out and grow as darkness comes to harvest whatever color still clings to the reflective leaves.

Mt. Tam concealed by palms along Sir Francis Drake Blvd at the intersection with Wolfe Grade, Kentfield

Were it not for the group of palms in front of my lens, the peaks of Mt. Tam would shine in the glorious sunshine in this frame…. But as it is, when I saw this image as I waited for the red light to change at the intersection of Sir Francis Drake and Wolfe Grade in Kentfield, I was reminded of the palm at the end of the mind, of which Wallace Stevens wrote:

Of Mere Being

The palm at the end of the mind,
Beyond the last thought, rises
In the bronze decor,

A gold-feathered bird
Sings in the palm, without human meaning,
Without human feeling, a foreign song.

You know then that is not the reason
That makes us happy or unhappy.
The bird sings. Its feathers shine.

The palm stands on the edge of space.
The wind moves slowly in the branches.
The bird’s fire-fangled feathers dangle down.

Mt. Tam glimpsed behind Dennis Patton's statue of the sleeping maiden at the Sir Francis Drake B;vd. entrance to the Bon Air Shopping Center in Greenbrae

Dennis Patton‘s giant sleeping maiden slumbers night and day out of reach even from the long shadow of her namesake. It’s a sleep that keeps many of us cozily marooned on little grass mounds, even as we dream of scaling those mountains that rise like so much blue smoke in the corner of our vision.

Mt. Tam glimpsed in morning light

After a night of high winds, everything was crystal clear this morning in the sun and the chilled blue dome of sky. Out the door I went early, moving from one thing to another. By the time I got back in the neighborhood the sun had set. I was without my camera for the day, so this photo from the morning that seems so far away, was the only one left for show today…