On 2/17/2016 10:49 PM, ChrisB wrote:
That is my sort of countryside, Moose.
I've put together a little gallery that should give a better sense of the area as a whole.
<http://galleries.moosemystic.net/MooseFoto/index.php?gallery=California/Marin%2C_Sonoma%2C_Mendocino_Coast/Marinoma>
Indeed, it could be some parts of England.
Weelll ... All those hills will be (golden) brown by summer. How soon depends on the amount and timing of late season
rain. I happen to think they are still beautiful; the shapes knock me out, but not everyone will have the same taste.
Carol, who grew up and lived in the NE tells of coming to California in the summer and wondering what terrible
ecological disaster we had wrought on ourselves. Then winter came, and everything turned thousands of shades of luscious
green. :-) I recall the opposite when I was flying into Dallas in the winter. As we banked over suburbs, the woman
next to me, (from Calif., obviously) asked why everything was sand. I was able to tell her that that's the way grass
looks in the winter there. (Darn near froze my tush off there on that trip.)
On 2/20/2016 7:15 AM, Chuck Norcutt wrote:
Perhaps "pastureland" explains it but I've always wondered if this land was cleared of trees for pasture or if the
trees only tend to grow in the narrow valleys because they're wetter.
You're mostly right. This gallery should give a somewhat more complete picture of this immediate area. But it's only a
very few miles to wild coast and redwood forests. Near the coast, it's generally wetter in the winter and the marine
layer protects it from drying out so much in the summer. Between that and the considerable variation in topography along
the coast, there are valleys like most of these that are natural pastureland and tree cover ranging creek beds, sinks,
etc. where there is water at least much later in the season to heavy forests and huge trees like Redwoods and Douglas
Firs not far away.
I imagine that this land looks overall much as it did when white men came, but the local Indians managed the land pretty
extensively, for example, burning it annually. Details would be different, with some trees undoubtedly gone and others,
windbreaks and shade trees, that weren't there before.
There would have been no cattle, more and deer and lots more elk. There were huge populations of Tule Elk in these
coastal valleys and the Central Valley. There are herds of them on the N. end of Point Reyes NP. It's sort of
segregated, dairy cattle to the S. and elk to the N. The elk are doing rather well, and spreading, so that there is
controversy about them in the dairy areas in my images. The NP herds are being used to reestablish them in parts of
their old range in the C. Valley. Further up the coast, there is another species, Roosevelt Elk, that like higher, more
rugged country.
California Dreaming Moose
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What if the Hokey Pokey *IS* what it's all about?
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