A New Year Wish

December 31, 2013
|In Landscape Architecture
|By Yasmine

Written and photographed by: Heather Clendenin

So….here we are approaching the end of  another year. Hope this finds you happy and healthy and enjoying wherever you are. I’d like to take this opportunity to share with you just one of the many ways I see the world in just one of my many favorite places…..

Supposedly, John Muir climbed a Douglas Fir tree in the Sierra to experience the full strength of a mountain storm. Maybe I’ll do that some day, but for now, I’ll place my vote for riding my bike up and over Mt Tamalpais in a driving rain and windstorm. Or on a blisteringly hot, dry dusty trail full of lounging bluebelly lizards type of day. Or, during a feezing, toe numbing, crystal clear dawn. Climbing, cresting, sailing through the landscape whatever the weather! A total sensory experience. A total landscape experience.

It’s one of the great things about living in the Bay Area. Here we are living in a cosmopolitan area of over 6 million people and yet, with not too much effort, the great stands of redwoods, the groves of madrones, or the solitary buckeye offer a good place to listen to the world.  If it’s the crowds you are seeking head over to the base of Pilots’ Knob at dusk where you’ll find yourself in the midst of hundreds of marsh birds….all shouting, trilling, warbling at the top of their lungs.

Whether it’s the glistening serpentine outcrops, the spicy green smell of fiddlehead ferns or the summery savory fragrance of sun warmed redwood duff, the perfectly scaled throne of moss covered chert, the ancient really ancient oak guarding the valley floor, the electric buzz of the hummingbirds or the clattering calls of the crows as they convene on their favorite fir on her eastern flanks, Mt. Tamalpais offers endlessly beautiful experiences. Any time of year.

That mountain….it’s always there waiting, watching. It’s silhouette beckons. In fact, as  I write this I realize it’s been a few weeks since I was last up there. Time to head out. In fact, that’s where I’ll start the new year!  My wish for you is that you begin the new year wherever you are right now by heading out there…outside! Go on –  go out and jump on a bike, climb a tree! See what there is to see!