All the Trails

We’ve always been a family of hikers and walkers, but since the pandemic began, our daily excursions have become quite sacred to us, whether in our neighborhood (blessed by many regional open spaces with great hilly walks) or in the greater Bay Area. We have been using an app called Gaia in the last year, which records our walks, and also shows us the many trails we have yet to travel (the free version is great). This has allowed us to find trails that we didn’t even know existed, and especially on weekends, we tend to go further afield to find new favorites.

One thing that has become so clear to us is that the Bay Area is littered with extensive trail systems, some maintained by local park systems, and some by state parks or even national parks. These are all non-profit groups, often dependent on volunteers to establish or maintain trails. We are so thankful for all of these organizations, and all the people, who make this kind of recreation possible.

We have long been supporters of East Bay Regional Parks. Many of these parks are free to enter, but supporting them by purchasing an annual pass is great. Individual memberships run $60 for a year (the price of three movies, or 10 fancy coffees). A family membership is $105. The wonderful thing about EBRP is that they have an extensive system which includes urban trails and parks, as well as more suburban parks. This promotes equity in the outdoors and makes these open spaces accessible to everyone, which is something that is really necessary.

EBRP also oversees two of the longer, linked trail systems we often find ourselves using. The California Riding and Hiking Trail is mainly a Contra Costa County trail system that links Mt. Diablo with Martinez, and will encompass 16 miles of trail. The Martinez-Concord section is already completed and will link to Mt. Diablo State Park in the future. The East Bay Skyline National Trail is part of the 1968 National Trail Systems Act. It begins at the Alvarado staging area in Richmond, and ends at the Proctor Gate station in Anthony Chabot regional park. We’ve hiked most of both of these trails and have found them quite interesting.

Other local trail systems include the scenic San Francisco Bay Trail, which is a planned 500 mile walking and cycling path around the entire bay, going through all nine counties, 47 cities, and seven major bridges. 350 miles are already in place. This project is also restoring wetlands around the Bay. They have a really cool navigational map that shows existing trails (whether paved or dirt) and planned trails. We’ve walked much of this trail system, too, including two bridges, and always enjoy these walks on days when it’s prohibitively hot in our neighborhood and we need the cooling influence of the Bay. The Bay trails are often flat, as well, offering an easier but longer walk, and there is always good wildlife viewing with shorebirds.

The Bay Area Ridge Trail, however, offers a completely different kind of hiking experience, taking walkers over the peaks that ring the Bay. This trail was the vision of William Penn Mott, Jr, who was Director of our National Park Service as well as EBRP and California State Parks. He wanted a 550 mile trail encircling the ridges of the Bay Area. 393 miles of trail have been established and they are all great, challenging miles! They have some neat trail maps and tools which include ‘curated’ trail adventures such as wheelchair accessible loops, or training ridge to bridge trails for those who want a challenge.

There is an interesting state trail system that we are just recently learning more about. This is the Mokelumne Coast-to-Crest Trail, which is planned to go all the way from the Bay to Yosemite. Currently three sections are complete: the East Bay/Contra Costa County section, the Camanche-Pardee Reservoir section, and the Upper Mokelumne River Canyon section. We have been on the Contra Costa section many times, as it winds through and over Mt. Diablo, Black Diamond, and Contra Loma parks. We are hoping to eventually get to the sections east of here and explore those, as well.

There are two interesting interstate trails here, one being (of course!) the Pacific Crest Trail, which runs from the Mexican border to the Canadian border, through California, Oregon, and Washington. We have been on a very short section of this trail when hiking in Yosemite, but other than that, this trail has been beyond our reach, as it runs through the interior mountain ranges and is primarily in wilderness. It has long been a dream of mine to hike this trail, and maybe we’ll have more time in the future to section hike portions of it, at least.

Another interstate trail which I have just recently discovered is the Juan Bautista de Anza trail, which is part of the National Park System and is a National Historic Trail. It runs through Arizona and California, following Juan Bautista de Anza’s route in 1775 as he established (colonized?) a settlement in San Francisco bay. I don’t know how much we should be celebrating the takeover of land from California Native Americans, but while we don’t need to honor questionable historic activity, we should certainly learn about it and face the truth of it, and what better way to do that then to walk those same paths?

The final trail that I want to bring to your attention is the American Discovery Trail, which runs from the West Coast to the East Coast, 6800+ miles of continuous multi-use track. It does run on some roads, but the organization is working to make the trail completely off-road in the future. It is not a wilderness trail, like the Pacific Crest Trail. It passes through cities, towns, farmland, and wild areas. It is meant to be a voyage of discovery of our country as a whole. On the website, you can find the trails in your state (if it passes through your state); the California portion starts in Pt. Reyes National Seashore, and goes right over Mt. Diablo, over to Lake Tahoe, so we’ve found ourselves on this trail many times.

We are lucky to live in the San Francisco Bay Area, a place that celebrates outdoor living year-round. That doesn’t mean the conditions are always idyllic (see my previous post), but it does mean that we are provided with a lot of opportunity to get out into nature, and explore. We have come to realize that this is extremely important to us, and it will dictate how we move forward into retirement (which isn’t happening anytime soon, but that doesn’t mean we don’t think about it). We don’t necessarily see ourselves living in California forever, but we do want to live in a place that offers a lot of outdoor recreation, no matter the season. That might mean that we need to get good at snowshoeing! But that’s years in the future, anyway. Right now, we are just happy to have plenty of adventures located right outside our front door.

PS: If you like to hike and get outdoors, and you’re looking for a new adventure, let me know - Tom and I have plenty of suggestions for great walks all over the Bay Area!

Consistency

The South Garden, which (also counterintuitively) gets mostly morning sun, due to middle-day shading from large trees.

According to the Oxford Dictionary, consistency is “conformity in the application of something, typically that which is necessary for the sake of logic, accuracy, or fairness.”

Consistency is something with which we struggle in our garden, even in normal years.

But what is a normal year? We haven’t had one of those for a long time now. We in the outer SF East Bay have experienced wide temperature swings. For example, last Saturday, according to our weather station, the high was 112.8 degrees (F) in our North Garden at 2:45 pm; by Wednesday morning at 6:15 am it was 53.8. it’s normal to get cool here at night due to the influence of the Pacific Ocean, but a 59 degree difference is extreme even by our standards.

And rain? Well, I’m sure you’ve heard about the lack of it; here in Walnut Creek, our local city weather station has recorded 5.98 inches this year. For comparison’s sake, let’s look at Springfield, Missouri, a city a friend of mine lives in. He’s been dismayed by the amount of rain they’ve had this year, but in actuality, it’s five inches less than in “normal years” - 2021 has recorded a total of 31.8 inches since January 1. We won’t get rain again until November, if we are lucky. Springfield will have regular rain through the rest of the year.

Living in a Mediterranean climate, we expect less rain. But we do expect about 3-4 times the amount we’ve had this year.

The combination of these heat and precipitation inconsistencies has resulted in a pretty terrible die-off in our food garden.

Dead pepper

Dead tomato

Blossom end rot. It’s on every single one of my tomatoes, regardless of variety. This is because when it’s over 100 degrees, I water them twice a day instead of just once, and tomatoes like consistent water. But otherwise they would have all died, and I just couldn’t let that happen.

Crispy hop bines

Crispy blueberry bushes

This last image is from drought.gov which is updated every Thursday. In the Bay Area, we are now in Exceptional Drought conditions. Our governor has asked for a 15% voluntary water reduction from all residents (I’m not sure what companies have been asked to do). As a family, we had to have a discussion: Which water will we give up? We’re pretty good about our consumption in the house - we have only one toilet, and it’s low-flow; we have one shower, and we’re good about keeping our time in there short; we have a dishwasher and it’s energy-and-water-efficient (which saves a ton of water over hand-washing); and our laundry washer is a tiny front-loader, which uses a lot less water. Our one big water ‘expense’ is the garden.

Unable or unwilling to let the garden die after investing work and expense to establish it, we decided that our first plan of attack would be toilet flushing. If we “let the yellow mellow” and “flush only the brown down,” we can save the 15% that has been asked of us. It’s an easy fix…. for NOW. Soon, we are going to be asked to reduce even more, and then, well, I’m going to have to make some hard decisions.

I have noticed that many things in the garden are doing well, despite the inconsistencies, and it’s no surprise which ones.

Basil, and other Mediterranean herbs

Pumpkins

Winter squashes

Native plants, like Toyon…

… and manzanita

Despite the fact that I believe I’m saving the state water by growing my own food rather than buying it at the store (consider the amount of water farms use, the amount of energy used to get the food to the store, the amount of energy I use to get myself to the store), I am now convicted that I cannot continue to grow in the way I always have. The climate is changing and even if we stop worldwide global emissions today, the effects from it are going to last for hundreds of years. This means I need to figure out how to garden for the future, not the past.

Let’s go back to that definition of consistency, which included “that which is necessary for the sake of logic.” Logically we know that the weather is only going to get more extreme as a result of climate change, so therefore it doesn’t make sense to continue doing the same things and expecting to get the results we used to get. It’s time to rethink how and which things to grow in our gardens. What does that look like? It means a slow transition (because it’s going to take both effort and money to make this change) in our yards and in our diets. We may have to choose perennial veg and fruit over annuals. We’ll have to be religious about mulching or growing plants more closely together to shade the soil. We might have to grow more at certain times of year, like spring and fall. rather than summer and winter. We’ll have to get even better at preserving what we grow for the lean months. We might even have to eat things we don’t particularly like, which might be the biggest shift of all.

Over the next year, I’m going to get serious at looking at my property in a new way, with a focus on what the next five years might look like, and make changes accordingly. I suggest you come along with me for the ride. Let’s do our part to usher in an even more conscious type of gardening, one that looks to improve our future.

Solar Power

This post will be a bit unusual, as both of us will chime in.

From Elizabeth:

In May, we were finally able to have solar power installed on our house. We used a local electrical company called Got Watts? and we were beyond satisfied with their services. The initial paperwork took a couple of weeks, the actual installation took two days, and PG&E (our local power company) took over a month to finally give us permission to operate. It’s been operating now for a couple of weeks, and we have an app on our phones that shows us how much power we are producing, consuming, importing, and exporting; the data is starting to stack up and that shows us further ways we can increase our energy independence.

I want to be totally transparent about our process and our feelings about it, so that you can determine if this is the right way for you to move forward. I believe that solar is something we will all eventually have to embrace and install on our homes, so the more we know, the better. First, the money side of things: The cost is still prohibitive, and though in California there is a tax break that will fund about 20% of it, it is still an absurd out-of-pocket expense. We paid over $20,000 for this system, which included a new electrical box (ours was from 1949 and did not have the capacity to handle the new 7680 watt PV system). This also included all permitting, and a discount because we paid in full by check. We used an inheritance from Tom’s parents to pay for the bulk of this. If we had not had that money, we would have been saving for a much longer time. To me it is clear that solar needs to be subsidized by the government so that it is viable for everyone. I am aware that this would be an enormous amount of money for the government to provide. We can argue about the true cost of climate change another time.

As for my philosophy, I do not think that solar alone is going to meet the world’s electricity needs, especially as global temperatures increase and those in the hottest, most humid environments begin to feel the health effects of it. We will need everything at our disposal to provide power - that is, everything EXCEPT fossil fuels. If we cut out oil and gas, what’s left? Wind, solar, existing hydro (although with the water crisis in the west, that is becoming a fragile technology), and nuclear power. We will also need a way to store power when it is not being produced, in the form of bigger, more efficient batteries. Our home system does not have a battery for back-up power, because it would have doubled our price and we simply could not afford it. Plus, it wouldn’t have been able to store much more power than what it would take to run our refrigerator for a day. When the technology improves and the price drops, we will consider adding a battery for back-up.

The solar industry also has its share of problems. The process of making solar panels is a dangerous one; it uses many chemicals which are hazardous to both the people working on them and the environment when they are discarded. We currently do not have good battery recycling in place, and that is an urgent need. However, as I’ve often said, we have to begin now to make better choices. They may not be perfect choices, and there are trade-offs to everything, but we will continue to make even better choices as they become available.

With all of this in mind, here is some data for you to consider. Below is a typical day for us, one in which we are not charging one of our electric vehicles.

You can see that the bulk of the power is generated in the middle of the day, just as you’d expect. However, we are consuming small amounts of power over the course of the day, leaving quite a bit of the midday-generated power to go to the grid; alternatively, this means that we are buying power from the grid at the times we are not generating it. This particular day, though warm, was not hot enough for us to use air conditioning. On this kind of day, I figure it’s all a wash - the good we are doing for the grid at large, evens out our usage at times when we are not producing.

But - what happens when we plug in our electric cars to charge overnight? We have always charged our cars at night because it costs us less money to buy electricity at that time (and, we’re not using them at that time). Here is an example of that sort of day.

You can see that we are needing to pay to import energy from the grid overnight. This is one of the big challenges with solar, or many other kinds of renewable sources of energy – absent some kind of storage solution, you need to align power generation with power consumption every minute of the day.

From Tom:

One of the questions we’ve wondered is whether it would make sense for us to shift our car charging pattern to more closely align with the solar generation pattern (assuming that having a car plugged to charge in the middle of the day is logistically feasible). Like many questions, the answer is complicated, and depends on your frame of reference.

To look at it from an economic standpoint, we needed to look at the way PG&E is charging us for power and crediting us for power that the solar system is generating above what we’re consuming. After downloading our usage data and working through some spreadsheets, we’ve come to the conclusion that aligning our car charging with the solar generation (vs. overnight) probably doesn’t make much of a difference, and we might actually make out a little bit by charging it overnight.

Our usage data shows that our cost per kWh from PG&E is the same as the credit per kWh that we get when our panels are producing more than what we’re using. Those rates vary by time of day — right now, about $0.18 per kWh between midnight and 3PM; about $0.36 per kWh from 3-4PM and 9PM-midnight, and $0.46 per kWh from 4-9PM. Since most of our solar power is getting generated between 8AM and 4PM, we’re getting credited at about the same rate as we’d get charged if set the cars to charge between midnight and 7AM. We might make out a little bit charging in the early morning, and then selling back to PG&E at that higher 3-4PM rate, but that’s not a big difference.

Even though the time of day we choose to charge our cars is probably an economic wash, there is something that feels odd about charging the car when our panels are not generating power. Is there an environmental impact? Charging our car overnight means that we’re pulling power from the grid, with whatever sources of electricity the grid is using at that time. While we talk about getting our power from PG&E, technically we’re getting our power from MCE Green Energy, which means that 60% of the electricity is getting generated by renewable sources (solar, wind, hydro), but with our overnight charging pattern, it’s likely that the electricity we’re using is getting generated by hydro and some set of non-renewable sources. If we were to charge our car midday, we’d know that a bulk of the electricity to charge it comes from our solar, as opposed to those other sources.

All told, at this point we’re going to keep our overnight car charging pattern. This research has led us to a slight adjustment (starting charging at midnight instead of 10PM), so that we can avoid the higher 9PM - midnight rates. There’s also the convenience of charging the car when nobody is looking to drive it.

Of course, we’re also only about a month into this. It’ll be interesting to see how our electricity generation and usage varies over the course of the year.

From Elizabeth:

What I’ve realized, and may seem obvious to many of you, but it certainly wasn’t to me, is that the power we are generating from our solar panels isn’t coming directly in to our house. It goes into the grid. If we were on a homestead somewhere, and we were not connected to any municipal power company, then we’d have our appliances connected directly to the solar panels. At night, lacking a battery stack, we’d have to use candles or oil for light, and a wood fire for heat (also not terribly sustainable). Because our house was built to be connected to the grid, the power we generate goes into the grid. We are still buying all the power we need; however, we are earning back the same rate for the power we generate.

This feels a little disappointing. We are not energy independent. If PG&E decides to cut the power in order to curtail the chance of a fire on a very hot, dry, windy day, then our power will be cut, too. If a terrorist attacks our power grid, we’re going to be out of power just like everyone else.

However, the good news is that we are contributing. The amount of power we generate using the sun replaces power that is being generated by other sources. Here in California, a lot of our power is provided by solar, wind, and hydro plants, but we do also use a lot of natural gas and nuclear for electricity generation. Here is recent data from EIA (US Energy Information Administration):

For information about your own state, you can visit EIA to determine how your electricity generated. HERE is the link.

This whole process has been an interesting one. We have learned a lot, and still have more to learn, but I hope our experience will help you make a more informed decision when it comes time for you to consider your own energy footprint.

Edit 7/13/21: Got a summary from Enlighten for the second half of June, and thought this was interesting:

Random Thoughts

This is Camp Okizu in 2007, our beloved cancer camp in Berry Creek, CA. We started going to camp as a family in 2004, and both Adam and Rin have attended by themselves every summer since they were eight. Adam has been a counselor for two years now, this past summer online, which was challenging but very rewarding for him. Okizu provides camp free of charge for children with cancer and their families. We love it there.

Okizu was badly burned this past week, in a massive fire that had been burning since our first terrible heatwave in August, but was fanned and spread by the high winds we had during our most recent terrible heatwave, a week ago. Berry Creek was one of the communities that was hardest hit, with a wave of fire that bore down so quickly that many people simply could not escape.

Here’s how the lodge looks now.

image credit: Sacramento Bee

We will do everything we can to help Okizu rebuild.

The smoke is still quite bad here in California, but we are hoping it will move out this week. Unfortunately we need wind to move it, and wind isn’t so great either, in terms of fire. Oregon is having a hell of a time right now, and our hearts are with everyone involved there. There are fires burning up and down the west coast and the western third of the country.

Fire has been much on our minds, but classes and work and life do continue despite it.

The day after Labor Day, a professor of mine read aloud an excellent poem, which I thought you might enjoy as much as I did. It’s called “Worker” and was written by the poet laureate of Berkeley, who also happens to be my professor’s neighbor.

“He who works with his hands is a laborer,

He who works with his hands & his head

is a craftsman, he who works with his hands

& his head and his heart is an artist,

so you said, brother Francis.

Were you then an artist, brother,

rebuilding St. Damian & the chapel

Our Lady Queen of the Angels of Porciúncula?

I do not know man or woman who works

only with the hands without the head

weighed down as it be or without heart

though it be bitter & hurting.

It is unjust circumstances that separate

the hands from the head & the heart.

Laborers, crafts-folk, artists

we are all workers —

we earn our bread & put

bread, & wine, on the tables.

If poverty there be it is no fault of ours;

the Earth is generous when it does not fall

into the hands of the greedy.

If there is baptism of water & blood

so also there is of sweat.
”

— Rafael Gonzales

As we drove down highway 101 from San Jose to San Luis Obispo on the 4th to drop Adam off at college, we drove through the beautiful salad bowl that is that particular valley in California. But the bowl was filled with smoke, and we were in a terrible heatwave, and the migrant workers, covered head to toe in flannel to ward off the rays of the sun, and masked because of Covid, were bent over harvesting cauliflower and romaine, working for pennies. That is definitely a baptism of sweat. I hope our future world honors labor, hard labor, essential workers, more than it does now.

Finally, here are a series of videos for you, which are part of my Environmental Justice module in one of my classes. Each one is inspiring - some are easy to watch and very entertaining, and some are hard to watch and may make you feel uncomfortable. Personally I learned from each one and thought you might be interested too.

Today we realized our family has been sheltering in place for six months.

I still haven’t torn out the summer garden. I keep meaning to, but every weekend carries its own challenges; one weekend it’s 110 degrees, the next the air quality is so bad that we have to stay inside with doors and windows shut. On Labor Day, it was 111 degrees here. Two days later it was 68 because the smoke had blocked so much sun. It’s been a hell of a ride.

Always a Trade-off

I have a confession to make. For the past many years, we’ve been using paper napkins. I don’t know why we had this disconnect…. perhaps it has something to do with the transition from having kids to young adults, and we’re behind in making that transition. Neither Tom nor I grew up with paper napkins, but when kids are little, it sure is handy. And I would comfort myself that many of those used napkins would go in our compost, to be reborn in our garden. But many went in the trash. What a waste of resources.

Likewise with paper towels. I tend to reach for them more than for the cloth towel that is hanging on the oven door.

Recently I somehow woke up to the fact that this was happening, and set about making a change. My mother has bins upon bins of unused cloth napkins and was happy to gift me a pile. I found cute napkin rings on Etsy which makes it more fun. I started putting cloth napkins in the kid’s lunch bags. And I asked my dad to figure out some kind of cloth towel rack that would sit next to our sink, in place of the paper towel rack. He immediately adapted an old Shaker design for a quilt rack and made me this beautiful thing.

I have a million cloth towels, so changing it out every couple of days is not an issue. And we won’t forgo paper towels entirely, I imagine. But just putting this in arm’s length, right next to the sink, will eliminate most of our paper towel use.

I recently, also, cleaned out our linen closet, and we had so many old towels and rags. There’s only so many that need to be saved for cleaning or painting; and so, when I packed up the Thanksgiving and Christmas items, I used these to cushion breakable things, instead of replacing the old ratty packing paper with fresh packing paper. It felt good to find a purpose for those cloths.

Tom also goes through undershirts; you know, those white t-shirts, and has to buy new ones a couple times a year. I had a pile of them that I wasn’t sure what to do with, and finally realized that I could spend 15 minutes cutting them into strips and storing them for summer, to use as tomato or pepper ties. And at the end of the season, they can be composted, since they are 100% cotton.

So all of this was making me feel pretty good! Maybe a little self-righteous… walking around like I had my stuff together, man. Then I went to do laundry. And I realized: All this stuff has to be washed. Which is fine, I don’t mind washing and folding (by the way, I love the Marie Kondo way of folding, I’ve become a convert), but WHAT ABOUT WATER? Isn’t that just as precious a resource as trees (which make paper)?

And so, chastened, I was newly cognizant of the fact that there is always a trade-off. Sure, you can argue that I’m doing laundry anyway, so adding these little towels and napkins isn’t that big a deal, and you’d be right about that. But it IS still using resources. No method is perfect. I mean, you can find this everywhere - like my seed starting mix from the other day. I’m not using peat, because it’s not renewable, but I AM using coconut coir, which comes from palm trees, which are a by-product of the coconut water and milk industry, which has it’s own BIG issues, not the least of which is shipping those coconuts to the United States. Or how about our electric car? It doesn’t use any oil, true, but it does use electricity, which in CA is partly wind-powered, partly water-powered, but also coal-powered.

I think, therefore, that we can’t be perfect. All we can do is make a better choice. And honestly, that takes some pressure off. We weigh our paths, our goods, our consumerism. And we make a knowledgable, conscious choice. That’s all we can do, really.

In other news:

I think we may have a skunk living under the train shed with the opossum.

My dad has a new website for his woodworking. You can access that site HERE. There are dozens of furniture plans available, along with step-by-step YouTube videos instructing you how to make them. Tom redesigned this website to make it more user-friendly, and I hope you’ll stop by and check it out, if for nothing else than to view the gorgeous period furniture.

Today is the 15-year anniversary of our son, Adam, being diagnosed with leukemia. He’s the healthiest person we know, now.