I like to go outdoors a lot. Primarily hiking, occasionally camping, and sometimes other fun activities.
On Saturday, Stephanie and I treated ourselves to a hike along the Land’s End Coastal Trail. The last time we made it out there was five years ago—when the idea of traveling by container ship first occurred to me. It’s no wonder why. Over the course of several hours, it seemed like there was always a ship coming or going. Sigh…
On the 1st of January, Stephanie and I drove out to Stinson Beach for a hike up into the hills below Mt Tam. It was an unexpectedly gorgeous day. The sun was so warm it must have been 70 or 80°F. The sky was clear except for a slight ocean haze that gave the horizon a soft focus.
We’d just returned home the day before, after spending the holidays in Austin with my family. It’s worth emphasizing that it was the first time we’d returned home in over a year and a half. Until then we’d simply been moving forward, traveling from one place to another in a linear progression, ever since we’d left San Francisco in August 2010. I thought I’d regain that sense of belonging when we first returned to San Francisco, but I didn’t. In retrospect, October and November and December were weird. I felt out-of-touch with my surroundings and pretty uncomfortable in my own skin.
But on that beautiful day, hiking up the Matt Davis Trail, through wooded glens and over exposed grassy hillsides, I felt completely in my element. I had returned. I realized that it becomes a home when you return to it. Simply reappearing in San Francisco after 13 months wasn’t enough. We could just as well have dropped our bags anywhere. It takes concentrated time in a place for it to become home. Then you have to leave it and return.
On my walk home tonight I saw these birds flying around in formations that resembled the Danish sort sol, or “black sun”. I felt compelled to pull out my camera and snap a few stills. As it happens, my 21mm lens broke last weekend, so instead I had my 35mm with me, which turned out to be the perfect focal length, capturing the whole flock without feeling too wide or too tight.
A few weeks after arriving in San Francisco, Stephanie and I hiked the Pomo Canyon trail in Sonoma Coast State Park with Jonathan, Stacey, and friends. Along the way, I took a few photos that I liked—I think they look quite nice together.
After thirteen months away, we returned to San Francisco on Friday, driving from Austin over seven days. Along the way, we stopped in Moab to complete a hike at Arches National Park that we had attempted four years earlier. It was overcast and we got caught in the rain at the end, but we did succeed in making it all the way around the Devils Garden Primitive Loop.
