After spending a day hiking in Henry Coe State Park, I could not fall asleep. When I closed my eyes that night, the hues of the day lingered in my mind. In my delight in their memory, I embraced the vivid images and relinquished a bit of rest.
Verdancy with blankets of purple and orange wildflowers. Azure with flashes and swirls of white butterflies. Clarity and fluidity gliding over rocks and soaking my feet.
I held on to these visions knowing that in a short while, spring’s color show will have disappeared. The rain will stop falling and the summer sun will suck the grasses, flowers and creeks dry. But images of the fleeting shades of revival will give me something to look forward to until the sky water colors the land again.
“In the spring, at the end of the day you should smell like dirt.”
- Margaret Atwood
As I wrote last weekend, this past week was my Spring Break and I had no travel plans. So I contacted the awesome Lauren Quinn to see if she could take me on the Palomarin Hike she’d mentioned in her Top Three Travel Secrets post.
The day of our hike was super foggy. As we arrived to begin the hike, it wasn’t pouring, so we went ahead with it. Lots of winter rain allowed us to enjoy a few things Californians don’t take for granted– colorful wildflowers, incredibly green vegetation and an abundance of flowing water. Alamere Falls was a nice surprise, it wasn’t like any other waterfall I’d seen before. The water tumbles over the cliff and splashes onto the beach before draining into the ocean.
I used to hate getting dirty, now it’s something I enjoy from time to time. Partly it’s a throwback to my childhood and the other part of it is a sense of being close to the earth. After the hike, I was soaked in mud up to my mid-calf. I washed the jeans and socks I was wearing that day and they are still caked with mud. It was a good day.
