Pomo Canyon, Sonoma Coast

I am very happy that I went here today. I thought I knew the North Bay pretty well but I keep stumbling across these absolute gems that are little-discussed and yet anywhere else would be the #1 trail. A great combination of redwood forests, views of the mouth of the Russian River, the incessant coastal struggle between fog and blue sky, and flowery single track trails going through beautiful meadows, along with the requisite climb - and the start is right next to the beach. Pictures are ascending Pomo Canyon Trail, going down to the campsite in the "back", then back down Red Hill. I was watching for sorrel which as a hallmark of healthy and undisturbed redwood forests is always nice to see. The meadows and moors are also really nice.

























A tangential thought: between the unique geology and climate of this area, this area is very atypical for this planet, and there really aren't many places that look or feel like it elsewhere. If aliens asked you for representative pictures of your planet and you showed them these, you'd be doing them a disservice. And yet, I (and many other people) really innately like these areas, despite its dissimilarity to Earth as a whole. Why? Does it remind us of wooded savannahs of the youth of our species? Except cooler, therefore more comfortable now that we wear clothes, and safer, ie yes mountain lions, but no regular lions, or leopards, or crocodiles, or cobras, or baboons, etc.) Probably a simplistic way to think about it but things like this keep me up at night.

Running the Coast: Mapping Language Boundaries

I finished running the civilian part of the San Diego County coast some months ago but if I want to do the whole county including Pendleton, I still have one more piece (from the southern border of Pendleton to Las Pulgas). Turns out that my most recent piece of it, from Las Pulgas to the O.C. border, was the southern half of the Juaneño (Acjachemen) territory. Next time if I run from the OC border to just south of Laguna Beach I'll have covered the rest of the Acjachemen Nation. Maybe I should start marking my runs in terms of languages or language families:

(That's a WikiMapi)

On second thought scratch that - everything along the coast in this picture is Uto-Aztecan, and it'll be awhile until I'm in Chumash territory up in Santa Monica. I have to say it's curious that the Kumeyaay were omitted from this map. I like Kumeyaay because it's the only coastal San Diego County group from a language family that also has members in the Bay Area or NorCal (Hokan, which contains Pomo, ancestral tongue of the Sonoma Coast and of thrash metal vocalist extraordinaire Chuck Billy). Which is why the only casino I go to is Sycuan.

Wow, that's a lot of digressions even for me.