i recommend hopping right on

Here I am, getting one last post under the wire in 2013. Seems like a good idea, since I haven’t written here since November. It’s not that I haven’t tried. I have, in fact, written two nearly complete blog posts in the past few weeks; in both cases by the time I got around to finishing them, they were already moot and stale. Like those cranberry bars I made last week that nobody seemed to like. They’re in the freezer now. I’ll throw them out in February.

I suppose it isn’t a bad thing if you are too busy living to blog about it.

We took the boys to San Francisco on Sunday. Lulu stayed home and worked on college admissions essays, dutiful girl. H is home for three weeks, which is longer than he’s been home for a few years. It’s pretty wonderful, even if he doesn’t clean the juicer after he uses it each morning. We had big plans to go to lunch and the DeYoung Museum, but a “quick” errand downtown threw it all off, and Burma Superstar had a ridiculous wait, and someone in the car was about to explode from starvation, so we wound up eating a sit-down lunch at a place where no one really wanted to go, and ran out of time for the museum.

We headed, instead, to Andy Goldworthy’s installations in the Presidio. Have you seen the documentary on Goldsworthy, Rivers and Tides? Awe-inspiring art-making with nature. Inspiration for adults and kids alike.

Spire is an amazing work, thirty-five bound cypress trunks raising ninety feet into the sky.

But it’s Wood Line that I love. It’s a long, curving line of eucalyptus trunks that winds through a eucalyptus grove. It’s a piece of art that you can walk on, which is a satisfying way to experience art. I loved hearing how the heels of my boots sounded different with the change of each trunk, depending on its size and solidity. Click, click, click, clunk, clunk, clunk. 

H, budding cinematographer that he is, loved the place. It’s a gorgeous space at any time, and we happened to be there just before sunset, at the time of day cinematographers call the magic hour for its golden quality of light. We took lots of photos and he chastised me for not knowing more about my camera settings. I made a new year’s resolution right there.

It was one of those days that seemed, at about 2:30 when we were desperate for somewhere decent to eat, like it was careening towards disaster. Food in our stomachs and a walk on the Wood Line fixed all that. Funny how things can work out that way sometimes.

I’m using that curving line of eucalyptus as a metaphor for the new year. You can stand at the start of it, admire its undulations and see where it’s headed, but try as you might, you can’t see the end of it. The only way to know where it ends, how it ends, is to walk along it. I recommend hopping right on. Don’t worry about where you’re headed, just enjoy the light and the sounds as you go. Click, click, click, clunk, clunk, clunk. One trunk at a time.

Happy 2014, my friends.