2 May 2011 : Caspar Institute

Four Season Walk to the Beaches : Spring

On this page I am commemorating the First of May, and the annual Springtime walk we take on our headlands and down to the beach. This page is a work in progress, but I promise it will be ready by the time we head out for Italy.

Living right next to the world's largest body of water, we see a lot of moisture right through the year. Nevertheless, ours is a monsoon climate: six months of wet followed by six months without rain. An average rainfall of a meter (40 inches on average) a year all falls between November and June.

Bounty from the Garden

Spring is "Jungle Season" -- the grass grows six inches overnight -- well, it seems to! -- and it's so wet for days that we can't mow. It seldom freezes here, because of the looming presence of the great thermal mass of the Pacific, and so a wide variety of plants thrives here -- a nightmare for invasive exotics, but good news in the garden.

We are working toward something like 50% food self-sufficiency, but in the winter our weather doesn't help much with that: not enough sun, and cool soil temperatures. When we get back from Italy, we're planning to build a greenhouse.

A goodly part of our reason for traveling to Italy is to appreciate a place whose food and culture are so "close to the ground" and based on the land itself.

Morning dew on the kohlrabi leaves in Autumn. Mouse-over for Mother Earth's Pubic Hair in the Spring.

In Summer, the meadow turns golden

In Summer, hot temperatures inland pull moist air above the Pacific in over us like a blanket. This is called the "Marine Layer" and is responsible for keeping our temperatures down when inland valleys suffer in 100+ degree (F 37+ degree C) temperatures for weeks on end.

While Summer is often distinguished by fog, Autumn tends to be our most beautiful weather: dry, warm (but not too warm), and clement. Our "Indian Summer" sometimes extends well into November, often lasting through Thanksgiving.

The closest thing to Fall color: the Poison Oak's glossy three-leaved clusters turn bright red and produce berries ... sometimes. Sometimes, it just stays glossy green. It is always poisonous!

Living here on the edge of the continent allows for an amazing parade of beauty just over the edge. Spring and Autumn, the Grey Whales migrate past just offshore, spouting, tail slapping, and sometimes spy hopping. We are on the West Coast Flyway, and so almost all year we are treated to a parade of migrating birds, from tiny humming birds to the top of the line raptors and seabirds.

Storms often assault us from the southwest -- we see them coming, a roiling dark mass of clouds with a shaggy beard of rain hanging down.

In winter, when the sun sets far to the South, we get spectacular sunsets

We know the ocean is stormy when the gulls settle at the mouth of Caspar Creek to bathe and rest.

Often throughout the year, unsettled weather over the North Pacific drives seabirds to seek shelter here, gyring above the bay or landing at the mouth of Caspar Creek for a fresh water bath and a conclave.

Rafting Sea Lions

In Spring we often have a Lions Convention here -- that would be Sea Lions -- with hundreds of these large mammals "rafting" in the quiet waters of Caspar Anchorage, holding up a "solar panel" for warmth.

Caspar Creek connects directly to a large State Forest, the recovering forest from which the Lumber Company excavated the trees during the first half of the 20th Century, then, the logging exhausted, donated to California. The nearly intact wildlife continues to use this undeveloped thoroughfare to travel between ocean and forest. We often see evidence of fox, coyote, and deer on our walks.

In the Autumn, the grasses are grey and dry and the earth is rock hard. We try not to bring home too many foxtails and burrs. Grand-dog Pippin manages to keep them out of his nose and ears ...but he is a champion at getting ticks.

In the Winter, we walk in boots, because the water flowing across the artificially flattened tops of the Headlands are swampy, often inches deep in water after a downpour.

Water is the universal solvent and most critical element here in Caspar as it is throughout the west. Our civilizations wastefulness with all such precious materials -- flushing toilets with potable water! -- keeps us very mindful of our water usage toward the end of the dry season, when forest fires can come right into our village. Gorse -- see more on this scourge on the next page -- figures prominently in this story: the weed that wiped out Bandon, Oregon in 1936 came close to taking part of Caspar in 1987.

In the Spring, the Headlands are a wet ferment of mosses, grasses, mushrooms, and running water