Palo Alto, June 14, 2022

Back in California as of 6 days ago. Yesterday we took our bikes up Alpine to the top—a trail locals call the Green Gate. There was heavy traffic up to the Portola Valley Road, then the bliss of a narrowing, quiet road—hardly any cars, a walker, other bikes—winding gradually up towards Skyline, to the spot where the road was cut off by a mudslide sometime in the past, and never reconnected. A hiking and dirt-bike trail does go on up.

The best is riding along the creek that flows down towards San Francisco Bay. Mostly it trickles, especially since the drought, but it has only ever, in my experience, dried up completely, only in patches, Last winter it raged, modestly, after a rainstorm. Light filters down through leaves, and it is common to see deer—yesterday a lone wild turkey—but it is the music of the creek that makes the ride such a pleasure, uphill in particular, because it is slow going, I keep my head down, and it is my ears that are on the lookout.

Last night I began—or restarted—reading Philippe Jaccottet’s last book La Clarté Notre Dame, a meditation on the sound of convent bells ringing for vespers (and whatever else comes to his mind) somewhere in the countryside under the Mont Ventoux.