A 6:30 AM walk with Kate

Posted on November 30, 2006
Filed Under All, Dawn Community |

As Cassie and I made our 2 mile loop this morning, we fortuitously came upon our dawn community friend Kate, the plucky Brit. Bundled up against this morning’s sub-40F chill, and sporting one of her trademark chapeaux, Kate was kind enough to join me on the mile or so outbound leg of our circuit, which is also on her customary walk that takes her around Lake Lagunita.

The dawn this morning, showed rich hues low on the Eastern horizon: I commented how yesterday’s sunrise had presented a blush on the Western, not Eastern horizon, and how I’d initially misidentified the oaks in the foreground of the photo I took. Kate is very knowledgeable about local trees, and works with a volunteer group at Stanford to advise on preservation of important species.

So Kate responded by telling me more about Coast Live Oaks (they are indeed evergreen) and a couple of other kinds of quercus, and offered the opinion that Stanford was planting too many evergreen oaks, some of which have a scratcy appearance.

She recited from memory some six lines of very nice verse describing sunrise, as we walked almost directly East and were watching same, though she couldn’t remember the author. She also recited a couplet from Hamlet describing sunrise before we arrived at our departing point: she went on to the lake, I limped home with Cassie. Two wonderful morning encounters in a row with the redoubtable Kate…