Joulu, Free

Meet Joulu.

Joulu, in haste

Joulu is a happy California sea lion.  Joulu is running home to the Pacific Ocean from a kennel carrier in which he was placed at the crest of Rodeo Beach, facing west, for his release after a stint in rehab at The Marine Mammal Center (TMMC) in Sausalito, CA.

Joulu is one of about 600 California sea lions, elephant seals, and harbor seals that find their way, mostly involuntarily, to TMMC each year.  I say mostly, because TMMC admits a few marine mammals that are affectionately referred to as Repeat Offenders who just seem to prefer the hospitality in the company of other rescued marine mammals in an environment free of predators.  This is a fraction of the total number that checks into the network of marine mammal centers along American shorelines every year.  These centers rescue, rehabilitate, and release the animals back to the wild.  They also study the animals so that we can understand our oceans better, and educate the public.


Occasionally someone will call and report a fur seal, sea turtle, or a dolphin in distress.  When I arrived at TMMC on January 21, 2011, the day of Joulu's release, a concerned woman had just called to report that a penguin was walking along a road in Montara.  Penguins don't normally frequent the northern hemisphere, which is that half of the planet in which Montara is situated, so the dispatcher thanked her for the call and told her it was probably a migrating sea bird and to call us back if things got worse.   

But this is a story about Joulu, a lovely sea lion who got to go home that day.   

In his picture, he is dashing with impressive agility and speed as California sea lions do.  Unlike seals, for whom sea lions are commonly mistaken, and who scoot along the beach on their bellies, sea lions use their flippers to walk or run.


Joulu, a male juvenile, was first observed on Monterey State Beach on December 23, 2010 drinking water and lethargic on the sand by the base of Wharf #2.  A rescue attempt was aborted when Joulu returned to the ocean.  He was spotted again on December 29, and this time the rescue was a success.  Joulu was transported to Sausalito for the vet team to evaluate on December 30.  At 39 kilos he was moderately underweight, so he received treated for malnutrition and released 22 days later.


Some arrive at TMMC so young that they don't even know how to hunt for food.  As such, they are stabilized and then enrolled in Fish School, where a team of trained volunteers teaches these pups how to catch fish.  Once they are healthy and demonstrate they can hunt for, catch, and eat fish on their own in the pools, the pupils are about ready for release.


For Joulu's release, like most others, a team of TMMC staff and volunteers loaded him into a kennel carrier and lifted him onto the bed of a pick-up truck.

I drove the truck accompanied by a young volunteer who recently moved to the area from Rome, Italy by way of New Jersey.  When we arrived at the release point, a short lumber down the hill to Rodeo Beach from TMMC, a crowd had formed.  Several groups of school children on field trips anticipated Joulu's arrival and release.  They formed a wide lane through which Joulu would parade, hastily, to the water's edge before diving home.

Joulu was ready to go, and vocalized his impatience in the kennel just before another TMMC volunteer leaned down to open the gridded steel door to set him free.  Like most California sea lions in this situation, he bolted.  

Most of the sea lions that check out of TMMC are released in what is known as the Red Triangle.  One apex along the perimeter of this triangle is Bodega Bay, from which one side of the triangle heads southwest just far enough to encompass the Farallon Islands.  There, the triangle turns sharply southeast to Big Sur.  The shoreline along the north route back to Bodega Bay from this point makes up the third side of the triangle.  Any living creature inside this perimeter is part of the food chain, with great white sharks right up close to the top.  Despite sensationalism, sharks tend not to eat people.  They prefer to feed on sea lions.  Things get bloody, and that is why the triangle is named Red.  Which is something of a concern to a lot of people who think about this the first time they see one of these rehab graduates bolt for the water.  

Joulu is likely headed for the Farallon Islands.  We know this because the few animals TMMC has released with tracking mechanisms have done just that, swim almost a straight line west from the coast, skim across the Cordell Bank, and reunite with their cronies on the rocky cliffs of the Farallons.  There's a great book called Devil's Teeth by Susan Casey about the Farallons, which I highly recommend.


As a California sea lion, Joulu is a pinniped, which is a group of animals that includes seals, sea lions, fur seals, and walruses.  They are particularly fascinating.  For one, they are mammals, like us.  They are socialized, and I can tell you first hand they are very clear communicators even though they don't speak English.  They possess giant brown eyes and long whiskers.  They are wild.  They bite.  Their seafood diet is very similar to our seafood diet, so we learn a lot about the quality of our seafood supply by studying their health.

They will look you in the eye from depths no human has ever experienced.

In one special way, as evolution would have it, they have retained an unusual characteristic: they inhabit land and water.  Imagine a life with those dimensions.

I have observed at almost every California sea lion release that when the animal reaches the water's edge, it stops, looks left, looks right, gives something a thought, and then slips easily into the ocean.  You can see Joulu do this in the slide show above.  A few seconds later, a bob up, another look around, and like wild animals do, they dip under, gone.

Four Bakeries and 3,215 Google-Miles of Road Between

If you've ever driven anywhere near the rotary on Cape Cod, in Orleans, at the point where Route 6 veers northish toward Provincetown, then you've been within spitting distance from the Cottage Street Bakery.  I don't know how many times in my life I drove past this humble cottage bakery before learning about it in a cookbook 3,000 miles away in my California home.  This bakery leaves a deceptive first impression.  From the Orleans-Chatham Road, where you get your first view, it's tucked behind scrappy landscaping, across a gravel parking lot, and behind the much more eye-popping Ice Cream Cafe. Unless you knew you were going there, you probably wouldn't.


Lo!  It took a few circle-backs before I finally found it, the first time I knew I was going there.  Here's what happened.


I own a cookbook called The Cape Cod Table, by Lora Brody.  In that cookbook, there is a recipe for Dirt Bombs.  And even though I am not such a muffin fan, these babies are to DIE for.  You make them, people beg for more.  Beg.  As it happens, the Dirt Bombs in this cookbook were inspired by the Cottage Street Bakery.  The picture in the book is tantalizing, with oversized knobby muffins, crumbly, moist on the inside, dredged in butter, and rolled in cinamon sugar.  Hm, I thought.  Well, I'll make a batch and see what happens.  In one muffin, I knew I had to make the pilgrimmage.

Dirt Bombs

Several batches and months later,  I did.


That summer, as I have for many summers past, I spent a few weeks on Cape Cod.  On a late afternoon ride home from the Cape Cod National Seashore, I hijacked my mother and son, and hunted down the real deal, the home, the ground zero of the perfect Dirt Bomb.  The bakery was open, I bought and ate my dirt bomb, and my eyes rolled to the back of my head.


But if you're like most people, you don't live anywhere near Orleans, MA or the Cottage Street Bakery, so you need to do a couple of things.  One, you need to have the recipe to make your own Dirt Bombs.  Here it is, adapted from Lora Brody's recipe:


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For the muffins:
3 cups all purpose flour (I substitute 1/2 cup with almond meal)
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon ground cardamom
3/4 cup (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter
1 cup granulated sugar
2 large eggs
1 cup whole milk (I substitute buttermilk)


For the topping:
3/4 cup (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon


Preheat the oven to 400F with the rack in the center position.  Coat a 12-cup muffin with butter or spray.


Make the muffins:  Sift the flour, baking powder, salt, nutmeg and cardamom in a large bowl.  Using an electric mixer, cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.  Mix in the eggs.  Add the dry ingredients alternately with the milk in two additions, mixing gently by hand.  Avoid tough muffins by not over mixing or beating.  The batter will be thick and sticky.


Drop the batter into the muffin tins, and bake for about 20 minutes, just until the tops are tinged brown and a toothpick inserted comes out dry.  As soon as they are cool, turn them onto a rack.


Coat the muffins:  Melt the butter in a shallow bowl.  In a separate shallow bowl, mix the sugar and cinnamon.  Dip the muffins and twirl them around until they are completely coated in butter.  Promptly roll them in the sugar mixture to coat completely.  Best served warm or at room temperature with a tall glass of milk.


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Two, you need to have a backup bakery, a local go-to bakery of your own.  For anyone living near or visiting San Francisco, I have three!


The first is the uniquely organic Rustic Bakery in Kentfield, CA.  It's the best local breakfast around.  Let me tell you the pastries are to die for.  Everything I eat there is the best I've ever had in that food.  The cinnamon rolls-oh!-round, spirally, light, fluffy.  Like I said I'm not big on muffins, but holy cow the Banana Nut is amazing!  The mottled, dumpling-shaped blackberry scones with giant, juicy fruit.  Who knew oatmeal could taste so good?  And they serve coffee in real mugs, not those paper-paper ones.


The second, located precisely 3,214.8 google-miles from Dirt Bomb Central, is the Bovine Bakery in Pt. Reyes Station, CA.  This bakery, like the Cottage Street Bakery, is the perfect checkpoint between a wild seashore immersion and a sleepy afternoon ride home.  If you visit Pt. Reyes National Seashore, which I highly recommend, then you most likely have a good ride home.  A picker-upper at the Bovine Bakery is essential.

Pt. Reyes National Seashore

The third, in Inverness, CA, is Busy Bee Bakery.  If you're more of a berry-pie person, and you can't make it the extra 10 minutes to the Bovine, then this is your spot.  Stop.  Eat berry pie.


Beg for more.


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If you've got a favorite bakery anywhere in the world that makes a best-in-class pastry, I'd love to hear about it.


              

Spoons Plates and One Significant Orto

I was enjoying a brief moment of peace last Saturday morning in a particularly nice local Starbucks, when I realized there was something missing.  So obviously missing it was hard to believe that I was drinking coffee and eating a scone in what was trying to be a café.


I recently returned from Florence, Italy, where I consumed more cups of cappuccino in nine days than I have in the past five years, maybe ten.  Each morning began with a cup and saucer of coffee, piled with creamy foam, in the brightly lit dining room on the mezzanine level of the Orto de’ Medici hotel.  Orto means garden, and the significance of this garden is this:  Lorenzo the Magnificent, the Medici who fathered the Italian renaissance and who owned this building 525 years ago in which he placed an arts school, first met a certain Michelangelo Buonarotti there when the latter was a young teenager and new student of the arts.  The young Michelangelo impressed, and was immediately adopted into the House of Medici, and here we are today still ogling at the works of this master.


A morning cup of coffee in this scene is dazzling, even in the daze of jetlag.  Before the caffeine hits you, though, what really wakes you up is the sound.


The sound of metal spoons clinking on ceramic saucers. 

Firenze Breakfast

Walk into a real café anywhere, and you hear the din of people, orders, and production.  This is an orchestra of the murmur of friends catching up with the day’s news, events, and gossip accented by the sound of orders for a cappuccino or espresso, the airy, pent-up sound of the steamer, and the banging of the machinery, all punctuated by the frequent and high-pitched clinks of metal spoons on ceramic plates.  This last sound we take for granted, and may not even notice until we feel its absence.


Which is precisely what happened in the Starbucks.  In this “café,” we drank from paper cups!  Nibbled pastries from paper bags!  I felt robbed, duped, degraded.  Sure, there was the signature aroma of coffee.  The furniture was very nice, small wooden cafe and family-style bench tables, a few leather lounge chairs.  But the essence, the energy, of Café was absent.  There was hardly any noise.  Conversations were a low hum of chitter-chatter.  Every so often, I heard the thud of the espresso filter emptying its soggy grinds against the rim of a trash bin.  


This experience fell short of the Florentine café culture, where the symphony of sound reverberates, penetrates, and uplifts, where conversations are alive and impassioned, where  crowds form at the counters to shout orders, where people kiss and hug, even though they just saw each other yesterday, and where the sound of metal spoons clinking against plates binds and elevates the energy of The Café.


There's more to it than caffeine.

The Hunt for a Campsite

My husband and I pride ourselves on our ability to find the best off-road campsites.  Our camping road trips, which in fact are always off-road trips, are our best vacations.  They start precisely where the pavement ends.  One of my most favorite-favorite points of that precision is somewhere in the vicinity of Hurricane, Utah, where there is no sign to indicate that you should turn here if you are looking for an off-road adventure of the several-day kind.  It’s one of those turn-offs that you just have to know.

It was from that very point that we started the first hunt on our last off-road trip of the several-day kind.  Our routine is such that we normally, or at least try to normally, start the hunt around five o’clock, so that we have time to set up camp, cook and eat dinner, and enjoy a fireside cocktail before the sun sets. 

When the hunt begins, there’s a certain energy that permeates the Jeep, our rugged, loyal, and capable chariot of fun.  This energy is very palpable.  We are one.  We scan the geography, using caveperson instincts to determine the general area where our site is most likely tucked.  Along that line of trees, next to the river, across the plain, at the base of the rock wall. 

Utah

What’s magical about the hunt is that my husband and I agree always on the hunt.  We just know, without saying, where to go.  No discussion.  It’s just obvious.

Our eyes peel the roadside, looking for signs of the site.  Just after that tree, just around the next bend in the road, over the next rise, near those rocks, and so on it goes until we arrive, as if we were home.

The best campsites are not just anywhere.  And here’s the trick:  they have to be invisible from and accessible from the road at the same time.  Which is of course why they are so hard to find.  They have to stand alone; they are one-off camp spots, not in any way associated with a campground.  There are no reservations.  Or permits.

Utah

The last one of these campsites was a real beauty.  Creamy, soft sand earth, sagebrush, and juniper, it was perched at the top of a low bluff, with long views all around.  No sign of man, save for the satellites orbiting the earth, the occasional airliner, seven miles high, and a few scattered stones around blackened wood.  We built a fire in a roughly hewn ring made of these stones.  And that’s it.  We felt cowboy.

Subtle Rituals

From here, forward, is a story of dust, snow, and coffee.

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My personal policy is to always have my next road trip lined up before I reach home from my last road trip. 

Right now, three days home from my last trip, which was to Key West, I find myself in a predicament. 

Morning Porch, Elizabeth Street

For the first time in years, I don’t actually have my next trip Planned.  In the proper sense, that is.

Which leads me to my next personal policy, which specifically applies only to the period of time between when ski resorts open in Tahoe and when they close.  And it goes like this: snowboard when the snow is fresh, and great, and soft and there are about 12 to 18 inches of powder between the trees.

That’s just how I like it.  Whether you are a meteorologist or not, you know that you cannot Plan a trip based on those conditions.  So, I know that I am going on a road trip, probably in the next ten days, I just don’t know exactly which day that will be.  And, really, I have to credit Wunderground for equipping me to operate snowboarding trips in this extremely targeted manner.

This next road trip will involve lots of snow.  Which is ironic because until I tried snowboarding seven years ago, I had absolutely zero love for snow.  I grew up in New England, I had plenty of snow, more than enough for a lifetime.  I prefer the California perspective on snow, which is that snow is more of a Place than a meteorological event.  You go to it, and when you are done you go home.



Snow, now that it is a choice six months of the year, is fun.  Really fun.  And, because I fall a lot when I snowboard, I've developed a special appreciation for the powdery kind of snow, beyond just how it looks.  Aside from those really fantastic runs down the mountain when I am channeling the Olympics, I find some of the happiest moments snowboarding right after I’ve fallen in powder, at that moment between when the momentum of the fall has stopped, and the next move is to get up. 

Lake Tahoe, from Northstar

Sometimes, I choose to collapse, and breathe the air, and enjoy that completely isolated surreal alone time with nature connecting with the trees, the mountains, the sky, and the snow.  Every May, June, July, August, September, and October, I daydream about those pauses.

They are Ritual.