Recent moments

April 16th, 2009

Moment 1.
The fields on campus are blooming purple, small flowers blanketing the hillsides with my favorite color. Christina tells me the flowers are called “stork’s bills,” and I almost don’t believe her until she brings in one of the plants to show me. A purple blossom adorns part of the plant, but incredibly long, pointed, green spikes also extend outwards. “Stork’s bill” suddenly becomes appropriate and understandable. I’m sad to learn that this little flower that covers the fields in purple is an invasive species.

Moment 2.
It’s early in the morning, and I’m biking to the shuttle to get up to campus. The air is thick with fog, salt, kelp, and cold. The ocean often intrudes like this, reaching inland and reminding us that we live on the edge of a vast expanse of water with its own climate. The fog will burn off by mid-morning, but often returns again as the sun sets. On those nights, while lying in bed, I can hear the lighthouse calling warnings into the darkness, accompanying the regular chorus of sea lions.

Moment 3.
She’s so close to the shore, this particular sea otter, closer than one normally gets to see. She’s doing sea otter things, rolling around to stay wet, diving under water to get food, splitting it open to eat. But after several moments of watching, we can also see that she has a baby sea otter on her belly. The little otter seems to cling plenty well enough to stay attached during the rolls, but also keeps jumping off to swim around on its own. Occasionally it tries to follow its mother on a dive, but doesn’t appear to have learned that skill particularly well yet, as it arches into the water over and over until it finally gets under for a brief moment. The mother lets the baby swim around, but big waves lead her to swim over and swoop it back up onto her belly with her tail. The interaction is endearing and mesmerizing, and hard to leave behind.

Moment 4.
Red has overtaken the previous purple, and the cows lounge around in their self-cropped fields. Across the road, where the cows will be moved next week, the plants have grown a couple feet high, and are dominated by white and yellow gangly flowers. It looks like rich eating, and I imagine the cows thrilled as they’re let out of their well-grazed pasture and led into belly-deep food. I don’t think it’s such a bad life being a cow on the UCSC campus.