inglorious wanderer

The Trans County Trail, initially known as Sea to Sea Trail, stretches from the coastal areas of Del Mar by the Torrey Pines State Reserve into the Salton Sea. The early morning rain didn't keep me off the trails. In fact, I even looked forward to a muddy trail, remembering the dirt path that led me to Barrio Nostalgia Community School many many years ago.  Some of the open space preserves that cover the corridors of the TCT does not allow allow camping, so thru hiking the entire hundred and ten more miles of the trail is out of the question. The Los Penasquitos Canyon Peserve section of the TCT passes thru a waterfall and meadows of goldfields, spring wildflowers of asteraceae family. The creek that was almost dried up some weeks ago is gurgling with life this morning. The frog that croaked and jumped on my path as I went back to  urban pace  at  the Sabre Springs trail connection seemed to be just as glad as I am after the morni...

From the wooden stairway, I counted 307  of them walk  past the South Fortuna Mountain summit  marker. I didn't need to stop to catch my breath. The switchback that could be the Fortuna Saddle was giving  me a breather.  I think of Haruki Murakami and made believe I was conditioning for the Cinco de Mayo trail run at Lake Poway. I took a photo of a lady running uphill with her dog before they disappeared. I run at my own pace, a snail's pace! I wish I was not so old.  I thought I was not so crazy bringing my hybrid bike. My Giant would have been  kiddie bike compared to a real mountain bike that a person crazier than I hiked with uphill. Last summer I summited South Fortuna with the sack Buddha I have been calling names.  There's still no other soul in sight.  The overlook at the North Fortuna Mountain summit  provides a 180 degree view of highway 52. The metal boxes left as relics at the summit seem to connect the northern peak to the d...

"I believe I can fly I believe I can touch the sky I think about it every night and day Spread my wings and fly away I believe I can soar...." Freeman reminds me of R. Kelly, the American singer-songwriter who popularized the hit single "I believe I can Fly".  Initially, was thinking of Joey Ayala singing about monkey-eating eagles in the Philippines.  "Nais kong lumipad tulad ng Agila..." I visited the Eagle Rock for the first time in 2012 with the Tiger Trail Hikers. It was Richard, the retired Chemistry teacher at Scripps Ranch High School, who asked me to get in touch with Lee Rae and get directions on how to get to Warner Springs.  Motherfucking nature would not have been solely responsible for the huge boulder formation that looks like an eagle with its wings spread and ready to soar. Liza thought her granite countertops looked like the eagle's right wing where we were perched at. I couldn't find any article about when or how the rock formati...

If not for Canyoneer Terri Varnelli showing me what a wild hyacinth plant look like, I would not have thought of plucking them out from the ground to propagate them.  This is my second year of trying to grow blue dicks. For the love of blue dicks! Last year, I pluck a few of them blue dicks in the canyon open space near my home thinking its  seeds would pop out and germinate on the ground. Blue dicks are not really like dickheads. If so they must have had vasectomy.  Blue dicks are bulbous plants like daffodils and onions. I would keep plucking them from the ground and plant them along with the mini daffodils by the mini guava tree in the backyard. I should have blue dicks planted by my unmarked headstone someday. Here lies a glorious holy shthead who couldn't have enough of blue dicks!

 I  am back at a PCT where I was  about four years ago, this time with the glorious holy shithead! It was a nature walk with the San Diego Canyoneers. My second time joining the group and I am sure I would have help identifying more native plants and wild plants along the trails. None of those whatchamacallit flowers this time. This whatthefuckitis fruit is not really a fruit but a  gall, an object of interest for Canyoneer Duane Tromby. The gall  is a benign growth that develops when a female insect injects its eggs on a branch. As the eggs mature, the benign growth changes its color like its a fruit ripening. I have this wild plan of returning to this trail to gather mature  seeds of this wild pea vine. Young pods of this wild pea plant is edible. Humans would surely survive on these pods if they produce their own cud. The pack rat nest that Canyoneer Terri Varnell showed me does not look anything like a pile of a hoarders's knick knack collection. Hoarde...