About a year ago I joined the Senior Saunters, a group that gets together once a month to walk (well, saunter) in one of our many regional parks. It's organized by Sonoma County Regional Parks and it's a free program. Our guide is Alexis, a young, energetic parks employee who clearly enjoys being with us "oldies" and who is a wonderful resource of knowledge about everything connected with our parks. The size of the group varies every time, but there is a core of people who always join in the saunters. We not only enjoy the environment where we walk, but we also have a lot of fun together.
Last week we met at the lake, but Alexis didn't want to walk around the lake but led us up the hill away from the lake. We stopped at the Discovery Center and enjoyed the view down to the lake. You almost can't see it!
We eventually arrived at this meadow with two vernal pools. This area is a bit of a "no man's land" since it's right on the border between the regional park and the adjacent state park. Employees of both parks take care of this area.
This morning Alexis spoke about newts. She did it with a lot of humour, which I like, and always has a matching story to tell. Then she took us to the vernal pools and told us to look for newt eggs and tiny newts. We were quite taken with this, discovered the eggs, saw some newts, until someone shouted "there's a coyote!".
No one was looking for newts anymore, everyone was mesmerized by this beautiful guy who wasn't afraid of us at all (we were a group of about 25). He - or she? - took his sweet time to cross the meadow to eventually disappear in the woods nearby.
What a wonderful encounter!
This certainly made my day.
We had a couple more great views of the lake. It looks so much bigger from up here.
We saw some beautiful mushrooms - I think these are Spring Fieldcap (Agrocybe praecox)
I tried to figure out what kind of fungi had settled on this branch. I'm not sure, but to me some of them look like dried up Turkey Tail (Trametes versicolor).
A last view down to the lake before we entered the Discovery Center and finally said our goodbyes.
1 comment:
...I would be happy to keep my distance, thank you!
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