TIME WELL SPENT
On one of last week’s warm afternoons my old friend Dennis and I took sandwiches and sodas to a recreational area in the Oakland Hills that’s part of the East Bay Regional Park. This is about as close to a road trip as I get these days.
In the car Dennis applied some Coppertone tanning lotion which, I‘d forgotten, is the hallmark smell of summer vacation.
We ate at one of the picnic tables scattered throughout a stand of second-growth redwoods. Dennis said they were probably a hundred years old, mere youngsters for the species. I could get my arms around the trunks.
The air had just the slightest movement. Occasional crow (gdmf) caws ricocheted off the bare trunks. And from across the parking lot came the most beautiful music of all, the whoops and screams of little kids at the swimming pool.
After eating we lay on our backs on the picnic table benches looking up through the branches at the sky. After a while I noticed that one or two trees were swaying slightly with the breeze.
I asked Dennis why only a couple of the trees were swaying.
First, we couldn’t be sure that all the trees WEREN’T swaying, only that some were swaying differently from the others.
“Maybe those trees are a little taller than the others, so they’re catching more wind,” Dennis said.
All my friends are geniuses.
There are a couple of Quicktime movies of ROBERTS RECREATION AREA at the bottom of the page linked. Look for the movies with “Roberts” in the name.
In the car Dennis applied some Coppertone tanning lotion which, I‘d forgotten, is the hallmark smell of summer vacation.
We ate at one of the picnic tables scattered throughout a stand of second-growth redwoods. Dennis said they were probably a hundred years old, mere youngsters for the species. I could get my arms around the trunks.
The air had just the slightest movement. Occasional crow (gdmf) caws ricocheted off the bare trunks. And from across the parking lot came the most beautiful music of all, the whoops and screams of little kids at the swimming pool.
After eating we lay on our backs on the picnic table benches looking up through the branches at the sky. After a while I noticed that one or two trees were swaying slightly with the breeze.
I asked Dennis why only a couple of the trees were swaying.
First, we couldn’t be sure that all the trees WEREN’T swaying, only that some were swaying differently from the others.
“Maybe those trees are a little taller than the others, so they’re catching more wind,” Dennis said.
All my friends are geniuses.
There are a couple of Quicktime movies of ROBERTS RECREATION AREA at the bottom of the page linked. Look for the movies with “Roberts” in the name.
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