The 59th annual Western Weekend in Point Reyes Station got off to a merry, but tiny, start Saturday at the Dance Palace. In a large corral across Sixth Street, Point Reyes-Olema 4-H Club members showed a total of only half a dozen dairy cows and heifers.

“Where are all the other animals?” asked architect Sim Van der Ryn, a long-time resident of Inverness. But aside from five chickens and five rabbits in cages outside the back door of the Dance Palace, there weren’t any more.

Janelle Kehoe’s Holstein cow was the livestock show’s grand champion.

As it happened, a copy of The Point Reyes Light with the 1995 livestock show results was lying around my cabin, and after Saturday’s show, it occurred to me to compare the number of entries this year with the number of winners back then. I was shocked by how dramatically participation has dropped off.

The 4-H Fair winners 13 years ago included: nine beef cattle (this year, no entries); 12 dairy cows (this year, six entries); six dogs (none); 10 horses (none); four sheep (none); three cavies aka guinea pigs (none); three small animals/pets (none); 11 rabbits (five).

One of the most fascinating facets of poultry competition in the 4-H Fair amounts to herding chickens with a pencil. Competitors are not supposed touch their bird with their hands while herding it down a folding table, so Frankie Kohrdt is carefully holding back although her chicken seems perplexed.

Nathan Hemelt’s Holstein was named reserve champion in the dairy cow showmanship competition.

With great concentration, River Aguire uses a pencil to nudge his wayward chicken down the judging table. Watching intensely are all his fellow competitors (from left): Frankie Kohrdt, McKenna Kohrdt, Adriano Puppo, and Olivia Puppo.

Carol Horick of Point Reyes Station keeps a tight lead on a rambunctious heifer during “adult showmanship” competition.

Instead of an animal show that in years past lasted all day, Saturday’s was over in less than two hours. And it would have been even shorter were it not for a mostly for-fun competition, adult showmanship. Adults, including parents of 4-H members and mere bystanders, were rounded up to show cows. Judges asked the adults not to chose their own children’s cow to show, and most complied.

Why is the livestock show shrinking so dramatically with each passing year? Certainly one reason is the reduction in ranching throughout West Marin.

Some ranches for economic reasons have had to greatly scale back, for example by replacing a dairy operation with beef-cattle grazing. A number of the ranches acquired by the National Park Service have been shut down. And the demographics of West Marin’s ranching community are also changing; fewer young parents can afford to live and raise 4-H members here.

In addition, 4-H clubs from throughout Marin and southern Sonoma counties once took part in the livestock show. No longer.

Ruler of the roost: Adriano Puppo’s chicken stands head and tail above the chicken belonging to his older sister Olivia.

The 4-H’ers father said that as newly hatched chickens, the two spent last winter in the family garage where they took to this close arrangement for staying warm.

Now that the weather is warmer, the two still prefer a vertical arrangement when hanging out together, and Olivia’s chicken pushes its way under her brother’s chicken almost as often as his chicken climbs on top.

Traditionally, the Western Weekend parade was held the day after Saturday’s livestock show, but this year there were “scheduling conflicts,” according to the sponsors, the West Marin Lions and Rotary clubs.

The parade down the main street of Point Reyes Station will begin at noon Sunday, June 8. There will be a silent auction from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. that day in the Dance Palace.

West Marin Senior Services will hold a chili and cornbread cookoff at 1 p.m. at Toby’s Feed Barn. And Halleck Creek Riding Club for the Disabled will sponsor a Cow-flop Drop; the fundraiser uses a grided field behind Toby’s and is sort of like roulette, with a cow and her plop substituted for a croupier and ball.

In addition, Marin Farm Bureau and Organics will hold a barbecue at Toby’s from 1 to 3 p.m., and winners of the Western Weekend raffle will be announced at 2 p.m. at Toby’s.

A Western Weekend Queen’s Dance will be held from 8 to 10 p.m. Saturday, June 7, in the Dance Palace.

California Lt. Governor John Garamendi, who served as Deputy Secretary of the Interior in President Clinton’s Administration, has joined the battle to save the Point Reyes National Seashore’s few surviving fallow and axis deer.

A copy of a letter from the lieutenant governor to the regional director of the National Park Service was provided to this blog today, Monday, a day after 75 people marched from Sacred Heart Church to the Vedanta Society Retreat in Olema to protest efforts to eliminate the deer.

Park Supt. Don Neubacher last year brought in a hunting company to eradicate the two herds on grounds they are non-native and that the herds had (not-surprisingly) been growing since he stopped culling them upon becoming superintendent in 1994.

In his letter to Neubacher’s boss, Jon Jarvis, Pacific-West Regional Director of the National Park Service, Garamendi describes the eradication program as “a serious mistake on many levels.”

Sunday’s march (seen here being assembled at Sacred Heart) capped a week when the political tide began run in favor of the deer.

For months Supt. Neubacher had defied objections from groups ranging from hunters to the US Humane Society, who are offended by the hunting company’s cruel practices that cause many deer to suffer long and agonizing deaths.

Last week, US Senators Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi, and three other Bay Area members of the House, Lynn Woolsey, George Miller, and Anna Eshoo, jointly called for a six-month moratorium on the eradication program.

The moratorium would give the Park Service time to review US Humane Society studies on managing herd sizes with an easily administered contraceptive known as PZP.

In his letter, the lieutenant governor not only calls for a moratorium on the killing, he recommends that the Park Service “accept the fact that the non-native deer have established themselves and that a modest herd be kept in the [National Seashore].”

The letter was a followup to a phone conversation Garamendi (pictured) previously had with the regional director. The Park Service is, of course, part of the Interior Department, and as a former top official of the department, the lieutenant governor knows Jarvis well.

Here is the letter written by Garamendi:

LIEUTENANT GOVERNOR JOHN GARAMENDI

May 6, 2008

Jon Jarvis
Pacific-West Regional Director, National Park Service
United States Department of the Interior
One Jackson Center
1111 Jackson Street, Suite 700
Oakland, CA 94607

Dear Mr. Jarvis:

Thank you for taking my call and your attention to the Fallow and Axis Deer issue at Point Reyes National Seashore. Based on our conversation, I understand that the National Park Service (NPS) will not attempt to eradicate the deer population in the spring or summer. However, the NPS contractor will, in the month of May and beyond, conduct investigations on the deer herds to determine the effectiveness of contraception, health of the animals, and other related issues. I further understand that a very limited number of deer may be killed to further the investigation.

I recognize that this amounts to a temporary cessation of the eradication program and that the eradication will continue in the fall. Therefore, I urge you and the NPS to consider a different solution to the non-native deer issue. I recommend that the NPS accept the fact that the non-native deer have established themselves and that a modest herd be kept in the NPS area. This herd should be managed so as to maintain a constant number of animals.

The NPS should undertake the necessary to studies to determine herd size and management techniques. The existing herd, which I understand to be quite small, should be allowed to exist while this study is underway.

The bottom line for me is that it is a serious mistake on many levels to eradicate the entire population of Fallow and Axis deer at the Point Reyes National Seashore. If I am incorrect on my understanding of the NPS and their contractor’s program for the spring and summer, please let me know immediately. Thank you for considering my position for the long-term management of the herd.

Sincerely,
JOHN GARAMENDI
Lieutenant Governor

State Capitol, Room 1114, Sacramento, California 95814

The marchers’ destination was the Vedanta Retreat because the hunting company has been using it as a staging area for its eradication program.

The Hindu retreat, which is surrounded on three sides by the National Seashore, has given the hunting company permission to use its property for a variety of purposes, as long as any killing is carried out elsewhere.

On Sunday, Ella Walker of Olema (at left) complained about this to Swami Vedananda, aka Warner Hirsch (in center with back to camera), and Estol T. Carte (to his right), the Vedanta Society’s president.

Citing Hindu beliefs, Walker said that in allowing the park’s hunters to use Vedanta land, the retreat was complicit in the deer’s deaths. The Vedanta leaders responded by citing National Seashore claims that the eradication program is righteous.

The demonstrators had hoped to meet with the Vedanta leaders within the retreat but were told they could not enter the land beyond a small bridge near Highway 1.

The Vedanta Society had a security guard on hand, but the protest was somber and orderly, with none of the demonstrators showing any desire to force their way into the retreat.

Driving down Campolindo Road last week, my houseguest Linda Petersen spotted a western pond turtle on the pavement, so she stopped and took it off the road. (Photo below by Linda Petersen)

In mid-to-late spring, western pond turtles go in search of mates, which may explain this turtle’s wandering. Notwithstanding their name, western pond turtles are usually found around slow-moving bodies of water.

By creating stockponds, however, ranchers have now provided many pond turtles with actual ponds for habitat. This is good because the western pond turtle is on the federal government’s list of threatened species. There’s no shortage of them in Northern California, but they have mostly died out in Washington and British Columbia.

More cold-blooded carnality in the road: I found this western fence lizard in my driveway Tuesday. Her courtship having already concluded, she may be carrying as many as 17 eggs. Around eight would be more typical, but her condition appears so gravid my guess would be higher.

California newts, meanwhile, are reaching the end of their mating season. The skin of a newt such as this secretes a neurotoxin, tetrodotoxin, that is hundreds of times more toxic than cyanide. Newts, by the way, are amphibians.
Other amphibians native to West Marin include salamanders, red-legged frogs, and Pacific tree frogs such as this. Female tree frogs in West Marin are nearly finished laying this year’s eggs, which hatch in three to four weeks.

Tree frogs depend largely on camouflage to escape predators. Notice how the facial stripe hides this frog’s eyeball. In addition, the frog’s color changes as it moves around. But unlike the chameleon, which changes its color to match background colors, the Pacific tree frog’s color depends on how moist or dry its location is.

This garter snake is warming himself on my driveway. Like lizards and turtles, snakes are reptiles, and both reptiles and amphibians are characteristically cold blooded, which raises a couple of questions. Why are some animals cold blooded? Are there any advantages to it?

Clearly explained answers, I discovered with surprise, can be found on the website of NASA’s Infrared Processing and Analysis Center, which has created an online “infrared zoo.” Few of us would expect the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to be in the zoology business, so NASA tells why some of its staff are:

“Although our specialty is infrared astronomy, we feel that a first step in understanding the infrared universe is to learn what the world around us looks like in the infrared and to understand the unique knowledge that can be gained by viewing our world in a different light.”

Having said that, NASA goes on to explain the advantage of being cold blooded (such as this Pacific gopher snake on Campolindo Road) vis-à-vis being being warm blooded. Here are some excerpts:

“Warm-blooded creatures, like mammals and birds, try to keep the inside of their bodies at a constant temperature. They do this by generating their own heat when they are in a cooler environment, and by cooling themselves when they are in a hotter environment.

“To generate heat, warm-blooded animals convert the food that they eat into energy. They have to eat a lot of food, compared with cold-blooded animals, to maintain a constant body temperature….

“Cold-blooded creatures [like this Pacific ring-necked snake I found in a rotten log] take on the temperature of their surroundings. They are hot when their environment is hot and cold when their environment is cold…. Cold-blooded animals often like to bask in the sun to warm up and increase their metabolism….

“There are many advantages to being warm-blooded. Warm-blooded animals can remain active in cold environments in which cold-blooded animals can hardly move….

“Warm-blooded animals can… seek food and defend themselves in a wide range of outdoor temperatures. Cold-blooded animals can only do this when they are warm enough…. Cold-blooded animals also need to be warm and active to find a mate and reproduce….

“Being cold-blooded, however, also has its advantages. Cold-blooded animals [like this arboreal salamander] require much less energy to survive than warm-blooded animals do….
Many cold-blooded animals will try to keep their body temperatures as low as possible when food is scarce.”

It occurs to me that all this may have implications for coping with mankind’s energy crisis. The cold-blooded approach would be for everyone to consume less but be less active in order to get by on less energy. The warm-blooded approach would be to keep consuming in order to stay warm, safe, and active, but this requires continually finding new sources of energy. When you file ’em together, which class are you in?

Blacktail deer forage around my cabin on a daily basis, and I’ve often posted photos of them. But apropos May Day, I had a new experience last Thursday with my cloven-hoofed neighbors.

A doe brought this spring’s offspring into my field. They were the first fawns I’d seen this year, and they ultimately provided me with an opportunity to photograph a one- to two-week-old fawn at close range.

As it happened, I’d gone out on my deck to take in the afternoon when I spotted a doe grazing just below me. Soon it nosed around in some tall grass, and up jumped two fawns.

The fawns followed their mother through the grass to my driveway, where she surveyed the surroundings before leading them into the open.

Continuing to photograph them, I followed the three until I caught their attention, and the doe with one fawn (seen here) ran off.

The other fawn, however, may have been to tired to stay with them. It simply wandered into tall grass, which happened to be next to my driveway. As can be seen in the photo above, the grass was far taller than the tiny fawn walking through it.

The fawn might have been expected to seek out a secluded spot in which to rest and not be seen, but this one lay down only a couple of feet off the edge of my driveway not far from where I was standing.

As is evident in the photo above, the fawn was well camouflaged by its spots, and even when I walked up to it, the fawn remained motionless. “It probably thought it was invisible,” Point Reyes Station biologist Jules Evens told me with a laugh Monday. When I walked away from the fawn without touching it, that impression was probably confirmed.

The fawn was so well hidden, in fact, the only way I could get a clear photo of it was by shooting directly down with the grass slightly parted. Even then, the fawn remained absolutely still.

I quickly departed, and for more than half an hour after I left, the fawn lay curled up beside my driveway before its mother returned and led it away.

If a fawn is continually stressed, Susan Sasso of Olema told me, it needs its mother’s licking, as well as her milk, when she returns, for both calm the young creature. Susan, who rehabilitates sick, injured, and orphaned fawns for Wildcare, noted that fawns can die of excessive stress.

At facilities on her property, Susan at present is feeding four very young wards every four hours seven days a week. This exhausting schedule will slow down in a few weeks, but the fawns will be in her care until sometime in August. She does it every year.

Here Susan (at left) and another Wildcare volunteer, Cindy Dicke of Olema, prepare to release a fawn in Chileno Valley.

It was one of six that in 2006 grew up on Susan’s property and then were trucked to Mike and Sally Gale’s ranch for release. The fawns were sedated for the trip but quickly revived once they had received wake-up injections.

Blacktail deer in West Marin are just beginning their fawning season, Susan noted. In total, she has received five fawns, but one, which arrived in bad shape, soon died. The other four, however, are healthy and putting on weight, Susan said.

Wildcare, for which Susan volunteers, ended up with these fawns for a variety of reasons. One was orphaned when its mother died in childbirth; another became separated from its mother after getting caught in a culvert; construction workers separated two from their mother…

“When the fawns are one to two weeks old,” Susan noted, “the mothers leave their babies for a while and graze until their udders are full.” So if you too find a fawn by itself, Susan said, “don’t bother it.” In all likelihood, its mother has simply left for a few minutes to pick up some milk and will be back shortly.

Fifty years ago this month, the late columnist Herb Caen of The San Francisco Chronicle coined the word “beatnik.”

As it happened, a recognized Beat Generation, epitomized in literature by poet Allen Ginsberg and novelist Jack Kerouac, had made its presence known over the previous decade, and six months earlier, the Soviet Union had begun the “space race” by launching Sputnik, the first satellite to orbit the globe. With his typical whimsy, Caen in April 1958 blended the two names into beatnik.

This much of what I remember I can confirm. What I can’t confirm is my vague recollection of why Caen did it. I welcome any correction, but if my memory is accurate, it was in reference to an otherwise-not-bad Beat who one day lost it and ended up destroying property in North Beach.*

On this mostly unnoticed but nonetheless historic anniversary, it would seem appropriate to comment on Sausalito’s No Name bar. It too began five decades ago, but its connection to the Beat Era runs deeper.

“When the bar first opened, it was a beatnik bar,” Michael Aragon, drummer and bandleader, told me last week. (Seen here performing with Aragon are Rob Roth on sax and Pierre Archain on bass.)

“Lots of folks like Jack Kerouac, [actor] Sterling Hayden, Allen Ginsberg, and the like hung out there and played chess, read poetry, wore lots of berets and horned-rimmed glasses, and played bongo drums,” said Aragon, who schedules the music at the No Name. “And how can we forget the cigarettes?”

In the No Name’s protected garden where smoking is still permitted, Michael Hall plays chess four times a week, as he has for 20 years. Hall, an electrical contractor who lives on a houseboat, is but one of the bar’s regular chess players.

Along with chess and smoking, cool jazz and bebop from the Beat Era are alive and well and living in Sausalito. “I have been blessed with the opportunity to keep jazz music alive at the No Name for the past 25 years,” Aragon said. “This is the longest-running, continuous jazz gig in Marin County.

“This in itself is a miracle, considering that most people believe that the only way to survive in the club world is to constantly inundate the mind with tremendous amounts of decibels.”

Trombonist Mal Sharpe, who heads the Big Money in Jazz Band, has played Dixieland jazz Sunday afternoons at the the No Name for roughly 15 years, he told me this week. Thanks to YouTube, Sharpe and his band can be seen and heard playing at the bar by clicking on The Sunny Side of the Street or St. Louis Blues.

“The bar is a unique place,” Aragon remarked, “because on one side of you there could be sitting a homeless person and on the other side, someone that owns a $50 million yacht. What I have tried to do over the years is make sure that no matter what, everyone is treated the same.”

There is music at the bar seven nights a week. On Friday and Saturday, jazz groups play from 9 p.m. to 12:30 a.m., and on Sundays, there is Dixieland from 3 to 7 p.m.

On Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday, the No Name features blues and folk music from 8:30 p.m. to midnight. On Tuesdays, an open microphone is held from 8:30 p.m. to midnight.

The bar is now under its fifth ownership, Aragon told me, and as the sign out front reveals, No Name is not really the bar’s name. It literally is a bar with no name. Check the phone book; you’ll find it listed as “no name 757 Bridgeway Sau.”

There’s also no cover charge, and the audience is always a mix of oldtimers who were around for the Beat Era, tourists, and fans of live-music, especially jazz.

* Over time, the term “beatnik” came to refer anyone with the supposed trappings of Beat writers and artists: berets, dark glasses, dark clothing, and a propensity to use hipster slang. For Ginsberg and Kerouac, “Beats” were down-and-out wanderers who also were visionaries. Both writers resented their quixotic outcasts’ being confused with “beatniks.”

‘Still Life With Raccoon‘ (My school of art obviously lies somewhere between R. Crumb and Art Nouveau)

Black Mountain with the Giacomini Wetlands in the foreground. Much of what is now Nicasio Reservoir, Point Reyes Station, and the land in between was once owned by the Black family, whose daughter Mary married Dr. Galen Burdell, a dentist. When the narrow-gauge railroad between Cazadero and Sausalito went into service in 1875, with a stop in a pasture his wife had inherited. Dr. Burdell subdivided the pasture and created Point Reyes Station. (Photo by Linda Sturdivant of Inverness Park)

Point Reyes Station as seen from an airliner. (One of the plane’s jets is visible at upper right.) In the center at the top of the photo is Nicasio Reservoir with Black Mountain just below it while at the bottom, Papermill Creek empties into Tomales Bay. The row of whitish roofs at right is along the main street of town. Guido Hennig, a German friend working in Switzerland, shot this photo while en route from Europe.

A tight maneuver. Linda Sturdivant while driving home with her daughter Seeva one afternoon last week came upon this full-sized bus making a U-turn on the levee road.

The levee road (a section of Sir Francis Drake Boulevard) used to be straight. The jog in it was created by the 1906 Earthquake. Land on both sides of the San Andreas Fault, which runs under the roadway, was offset 20 feet by the temblor.

Linda, by the way, takes care of people’s pets when they’re away. Recent wards (each owned by a different master) have included a cat, a rat, and a duck. Sounds like the start of political joke.

So that’s how things look around town these days. And if you’re interested in some blossoms for your own cabin, Mrs. Raccoon appears to be selling some nice ones.

This yellow journalism stinks, I said to myself last Wednesday morning upon picking up my San Francisco Chronicle at the bottom of the driveway. As I discovered with displeasure, one of the neighborhood foxes had peed on it.

Foxes are like that, marking relatively prominent spots around their food sources and dens. Last year, neighbor Jay Haas discovered that foxes were leaving their scat on top of the fence posts between his property and mine.

Campolindo Road is a foxy neighborhood. Gray foxes periodically take shortcuts across my deck at night, and several of us on the hill have seen red foxes during the day.

Today I stopped in Point Reyes Station to photograph the Sir George Mallory of chickens, who can often be seen trekking along Highway 1 downhill from West Marin School.

“Why do you keep climbing through the fence?” I asked Sir George. “Because it is there,” he crowed. I urged him to be careful, remembering that his namesake had fallen to his death while making a third attempt to climb Mount Everest. “You’re probably also worried that the sky is falling,” Sir George clucked and went back to pecking.

As for blacktail deer, which every day forage near my cabin….

Does chewing their cuds in the shade

West Marin is in the fawning season. Susan Sasso of Olema, who rehabilitates sick, injured, and orphaned fawns for Wildcare, six weeks ago took in her first fawn of the year. Its mother had died in childbirth.

But the greatest threat to blacktails, as it is in the short term for Sir George Mallory chicken, is the motor vehicle. “Night travel on the road is dangerous,” writes Point Reyes Station biologist Jules Evens in the maiden issue of The West Marin Review.

“Skunk, coon, opossum, and especially black-tailed deer are apt to appear around any curve. By day, one is assured of finding vultures feeding on the victims of our dispassionate, modern-day automotive predators, CRVs, 4-Runners, Humvees, twisted and splayed on the asphalt. The vultures gather in small groups, taking turns at the roadside deer dinner.”

So I ask you, friends, please slow down when you drive past Campolindo Road at night. These deer too are my friends.

Gathered on both sides of Papermill Creek Sunday morning, 125 West Marin residents demonstrated their support for a pedestrian bridge at the site of the onetime irrigation dam for the Giacomini Ranch.

Demonstrators including surfboarders, kayakers, several dogs, and people on opposite shores assemble for an Art Rogers photograph Sunday morning. A line over Papermill/Lagunitas Creek marks where the demonstrators want the Park Service to build a pedestrian bridge.

Originally a saltwater marsh, the ranchland was bought by the Giacomini family in 1944. Encouraged by the federal government (which wanted to increase wartime milk production) and subsidized under the Land Reclamation Act, the Giacominis built dikes surrounding the ranch to keep water from inundating their pastures at high tide. For half a century, the ranch prospered, but in 1998, the State Water Resources Control Board, stopped issuing permits for its seasonal irrigation dam.

In 2000, the Golden Gate National Recreation Area bought 550 acres of the ranch for $5.75 million. This Recreation Area land is being administered by the Point Reyes National Seashore, which last year began excavating it for a new marsh.

Even before the 550-acre sale eight years ago, the Giacomini family had sold more than 400 acres to public agencies, with Marin County Open Space District acquiring a slice of acreage just downstream from the Green Bridge. The acreage is bordered by the creek on the south and Point Reyes Station’s C Street on the north.

A footpath along the western edge of the county land from C Street to the dam site became popular for short walks.

Meanwhile, the County Open Space District — with assistance from the state — developed White House Pool park on the opposite bank. The park includes a scenic path along Papermill Creek from Inverness Park to the old dam site.

Demonstrators on the south shore of Papermill Creek last Sunday said they want a bridge so that pedestrians and bicyclists, especially children, are not forced to travel along the shoulder of the 45 mph levee road when going between Inverness Park and Point Reyes Station.

Not surprisingly, many of those at Sunday’s pro-bridge demonstration were residents of Inverness Park.

As administers of the Recreation Area land, the Point Reyes National Seashore has said it will soon hold a public meeting to discuss the proposed bridge. At this point, loudest opponents to the proposal are ideologues who insist that once a new marsh is created, humans should not sully nature with a path and bridge.

The new wetland will be located between downtown Point Reyes Station and downtown Inverness Park. The pathway above runs between the proposed bridge site and C Street in Point Reyes Station (seen in the background).

Folks, the land is not virgin terrain on either side of Papermill Creek below the Green Bridge. Not only has much of it been grazed for more than 50 years, humans have been reshaping it since at least 1855 when Samuel P. Taylor “built a warehouse at creekside for the paper he manufactured eight miles upstream,” to quote the late historian Jack Mason’s Earthquake Bay.

“It was here the steamer Monterey deposited passengers Olema-bound.

“A ferry crossed the creek here, Charlie Hall charging 25 cents one way per passenger. His bar, the Ferry House, was nearby to the south…. The county bridged the creek in 1875, the year the train came and the steamer pulled out.”

When the Park Service bought the Giacomini Ranch eight years ago, it’s stated goal was to create wetlands and thereby slow sedimentation of Tomales Bay and improve its overall environment. There was no mention of creating a wilderness area between the county firehouse and the Inverness Park Store. Remember, the former ranch is now part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, and the purpose of recreation areas is not to exclude humans.

Demonstrators on Sunday morning walk along the scenic path from White House Pool to the site of the proposed bridge. The Point Reyes National Seashore a while back argued for the elimination of this route near the creek, I have been told by county staff. In the background is Inverness Park.

The National Seashore, which would have to pay for much of the bridge, is also opposing it. For a public park, it is amazing how misanthropic its policies are. A while back, the park tried to convince Marin County Open Space District to reroute the scenic White House Pool path so that it ran along the edge of Sir Francis Drake Boulevard (the levee road) instead of along the creek. That way, nature would not be disturbed by humans walking through it. Fortunately, the county did not go along with the idea.

Now the National Seashore administration has raised a new objection. Even though the bridge would connect two rutted dirt paths, the park says it would have to be wheelchair accessible, and the requisite ramps for the eight-foot-wide bridge would double its length, making it 450 to 600 feet long. That’s more than twice the length of the Green Bridge and more than three times the length of Platform Bridge.

This Brooklyn Bridge over Papermill Creek — up to twice the length of a football field — would cost millions of dollars, the park says, and it is therefore unaffordable. I’m not buying any of it.

Here Joyce Goldfield of Inverness Park, who uses a motorized scooter to get around, takes part in the pro-bridge demonstration along with Duane Irving.

“A little Madness in the Spring/ Is wholesome even for the King” Emily Dickinson

We’re only four days into Spring, and already the world looks brighter. Of course, the return of Daylight Savings Time has probably helped. In any case, here are five faces that have brightened my cabin in the past few days.

My houseguest Linda Petersen’s dog Sebastian among the daffodils.

Deaf and legally blind, Sebastian will turn 15 in May. Linda’s daughter Saskia 10 years ago found the Havanese-mix filthy, matted, and hunting through garbage in the streets of San Juan, Puerto Rico. Saskia managed to locate Sebastian’s owners, who not only were willingly to give him to her but even had a few veterinary records for him.

A wild turkey showed up a few mornings ago just outside my kitchen window. The tom was displaying for some hens under the pine tree.

Neighbor Didi Thompson in early afternoon called excitedly to say a bobcat was in the Giacomini family’s field, which is next to her property and mine.

Another neighbor, George Stamoulis, had previously seen the bobcat on our hill, and Cat Cowles of Inverness while driving to work at Hog Island Oyster Company had spotted it walking up Campolindo Road downhill from our homes. Finally, it was my turn to see it, if only from a distance.

Vamping for cannabis: Seeva Cherms (daughter of Linda Sturdivant of Inverness Park) and her friend Michelle from Hollywood.

The two are working in the drive to qualify a ballot initiative that would legalize the use of marijuana and the cultivation of its non-euphoric cousin hemp. Please see Posting 104 for that story. While touring the state, they dropped by at sunset to say hi.

A herd of up to nine blacktail deer have taken to spending their days on this hill, here joining the horses of Point Reyes Arabians for a late-afternoon snack.

California’s Department of Fish and Game has estimated that well over half the roughly 560,000 deer in California are Columbian blacktails, the deer native to West Marin and the San Francisco Bay Area.

Mutual friends. Two blacktail does licking each other’s coats.

For years many people believed (and many websites still say) that blacktails are a subspecies of mule deer, a species found from the Northwest to the deserts of the Southwest and as far east as the Dakotas. DNA tests, however, have now found mule deer to be a hybrid of female whitetail deer and blacktail bucks. Or so says author Valerius Geist in Mule Deer Country.

Whitetails first appeared on the East Coast about 3.5 million years ago, as this blog previously noted. DNA evidence suggests they spread south and then west, arriving in California about 1.5 million years ago.

In moving up the coast, whitetails evolved into blacktails, which resemble them in appearance and temperament. Blacktails eventually extended their range eastward, meeting up with more whitetails coming from the east. Apparently the blacktail bucks were able to horn in on the harems of their parent species. The result: mule deer.

Mule deer as seen on the website of Wind Cave National Park in the Black Hills. The deer are so named because of their long ears.

And for an amazing look at a whitetail deer, check this YouTube clip of one running into the path of a motorcycle on a mountain highway, but avoiding a collision by jumping over the biker as he ducks.