When the Almond Tree Blooms

I fell in love with oak trees on a chilly day in January 2011. I was visiting friends in Davis and decided to explore. I decided to check out the arboretum and eventually happened upon the oak collection. UC Davis Oak Collection UC Davis Oak Collection At that moment in my life, I had no home, no job, and no plan. I was bouncing around Northern California, from San Francisco down to Santa Cruz and then up to Davis. I was feeling a lot of stress from being transient, trying to find some direction in my life. When I began wandering the path through the oaks, admiring the stately trees, with their various forms and leaf shapes, I felt at peace. It was not long after that I decided to stay in Yolo County, with the dream of studying something related to agriculture at UC Davis. Although my plan didn’t work out quite as I imagined, I remained enchanted by those oak trees. UC Davis Oak Collection UC Davis Oak Collection California has many endemic oak species, and d...

Note: I haven't published anything on this blog for years, but I decided to revive it, mostly to share the experience of relocating from California to Olympia, Washington.  This past Saturday, I decided to take advantage of beautiful fall weather and go on an adventure on the Olympic Peninsula. I headed west from Olympia, stopping for a delicious breakfast in Elma, then continued along country roads that wound through the emerald pastures and timberlands of rural Grays Harbor County. Eventually we arrived at our destination: the Quinault Rainforest. I had wanted to explore the Quinault Rainforest, which receives 12 feet of rain a year, and thought it would be a good place to see fall colors. I decided to try the Fletcher Canyon trail, a four mile round trip hike that begins near the Quinault river. The trail climbs along the slope of the canyon through a sea of ferns, past giant mossy trees. The first mile or the trail is fairly manageable, but conditions deteriorated after th...