Spring Peak

I learned something alarming this weekend while talking to my mother. She says that she’s told me this a million times – that I was born two or three months prematurely! When I pressed her for details she thinks it was closer to three months…

but that I was so alert when I was born that her friend, who delivered the baby, abstained from putting me in the incubator. And that I was only 2.5 kg when I was born. At first I was horrified because I’ve entered the later part of my pregnancy, the last six weeks, when I’ve begun wondering at what point could I go into labor and still have a normal, healthy baby. In other words, how many days until I’m out of the woods? Never really, I know, but this is one marker for me.

Then my sister, who happened to have done her doctoral research in the field of pre-term birth, assured me that there was no way my mother’s story could be true. First of all, a 2.5 kg (5.5 lb) is an average birth weight in Asia, so that I was probably closer to term – perhaps two to three weeks before the due date, but definitely not two to three months. Furthermore, my sister insists that there was no way a baby born two to three months prematurely forty years ago would not have spent a considerably amount of time in intensive prenatal care.

Whew.

So where does the wacky story come from? Well, we believe that my mother and father concocted that story about my premature birth so it would not have appeared that they had had sex before getting married in late 1967 (I was born in May 1968 ) and that now – that now my mother has actually come to believe her own story.

Talking to my sister put my mind at ease, because Chad and I had our big hike planned for this weekend and I had no intention of going if indeed there was a history of premature birth in my family.

I don’t harbor any grudge against my mother because I’ve been telling people for years that Bella was six pounds at birth and when I found her birth document this weekend, I discovered that Bella had actually been a full seven pounds when she was born – a completely average respectable weight. Well, a pound’s difference is different than a complete invention, but it is funny how time changes and solidifies your stories.

My mother also tried to convince me to have this baby in a hospital (because of my age) but then conceded that she and all nine of her own siblings were born at home without any incident between eighty-seven and sixty-eight years ago. As was my father and all three of his siblings.

So it was an interesting, lively conversation with my mom, but it didn’t change any of Chad’s and my plans: We intend to have a home birth and Saturday Chad and I hiked the roundtrip 9.5 miles to Sitton Peak and back.

We hiked very slowly and brought plenty of food, but the distance still kicked both our butts. Or more accurately, the distance, plus the heat (today it was 97 degrees!), and the final .5 mile goat trail scramble to the actual peak kicked both of our butts. We have spent a very leisurely Sunday moving as little as possible and consuming lots of calories. It was no San Jacinto, which we hiked this time last year, but there was a decent 2150′ elevation gain and Sitton Peak is considered the highest peak in the Santa Ana Mountains south of the Ortega Highway. It was our third weekend in the same area and it was nice to see and smell the passage of different spring flowers on the trail. This weekend a mint/sage type bush was in papery white bloom all over the place driving the bumblebees crazy and filling the air with a sweet fragrance.

I think it was enough of a hike to assuage Chad’s fear about being limited by my pregnancy and the soon-to-arrive baby. It had better be.

 

While Hiking Seven Miles on Sunday

Me: So, now you can’t call me a wimp anymore.

Chad: I never called you a wimp. You hiked 22 miles to the top of San Jacinto this time last year. You’re not a wimp.

M: You did so call me a wimp in so many words!

C: Well, we could’ve have hiked a little faster….[punctuated by a punch to the upper arm]

Hmmph.

Chad and I spent another lovely day in the Cleveland National Forest this past weekend hiking the Upper Bear Canyon Trail to Four Corners. No water in the creek bed but lots and lots of pale green spiky paw-paw and flowers of every variety. We parked across from the Candy Store again – although this hike is on the same side as the Candy Store. We found the hike in a little book called Best Easy Day Hikes: Orange County by Randy Vogel. We discovered once we got to the Four Corners that it was only another 1.3 miles to Sitton Peak, which we plan to bag next weekend before we head over to the CSA Members Day Potluck at South Coast Farms in San Juan Capistrano.

In the meantime, Chad’s come across a plethora of south OC hiking guides – several of which have many pages available online. For example, Afoot and Afield Orange County and 101 Hikes in Southern California. Now we just need to find a good one on swimming holes and hot springs!

And no need to worry – I’m not planning on having a Ben-from-Lost style labor and birth in the woods – we are hiking very slowly, taking lots of rests, and I’m not carrying anything (besides the baby). I had my 32-week prenatal appointment today and everything is tip-top: I’ve gained 25.5 pounds; my blood pressure is good; and the baby is as active as ever. (Also his or her head is firmly engaged in my pelvis, which is the position you want in the last month.) Next visit is a home visit, meaning our midwife comes to us mid-May.

 

More Adventuring

Despite the heat this weekend (yesterday it got up to 90 degrees), Chad and I got in another hike in the Cleveland National Forest. (If you’re wondering where Bella was, she was at home completely rejecting any physical activity after ten hours of track practice a week, and lounging around watching One Tree Hill on her laptop.)

This time we didn’t pass the Candy Store, we just parked directly across from it and took the Upper San Juan Loop trail. (The Candy Store was a bust. Good for a cold can of soda and an ice cream bar – but pathetic selection of candy. Just bite the bullet and call yourself what you are: Mountain Mini-Mart.)

And although the hike was only just over two miles, the heat and the climbing gave us enough of a workout to be satisfying. We managed to avoid all the poison oak and didn’t swallow any bugs, although there were plenty to be swallowed. We also managed to eat our chocolate and oranges by the water again.  And again we were completely alone on the trail. Where are all the people who belong to the cars in the trailhead parking lot? We even managed to forget our camera again.

But this time we thought to pull out our cellphones for pics. The images are small and fuzzy (I am so over my RAZR), but they do give an impression of how pleasant our day was together. I took the top three pics and Chad took the rest. He did better with the “landscapes” (I used quotations, because can a tree butthole be considered a landscape?)

My photo of Chad.

Chad’s photo of me.

Chad must have stopped for a pee break, because I don’t recollect ever being that far ahead of him on this hike – or on any hike for that matter…

 

More Hiking

Last weekend, Chad and I drove up Modjeska Canyon near where the fires had been last year and found that the trail we wanted was closed indefinitely (The Hardy Trail). We spent a rambling bit of time strolling in the Tucker Wildlife Sanctuary (run by Cal Fullerton) and then browsed in the bookstore, found another hike, and took off.

We ended up at the end of the 241 toll road and Oso at a park (Riley Park) neither of us had even known existed. There were lots of cars in the parking lot but very few people on the trail. The tall grasses and blooming sheets of yellow and purple were gorgeous and I wish my camera could have done them justice.

Shoot – you can’t even make out the purple flowers in these pics. But you do get a good feel for the open expanse. I imagined it was a little like hiking on the heath in the UK, but drier.

 

More Adventuring and Holy Jim

Well, now that we’ve gotten started, Chad and I have been off exploring two more times. Last Sunday we drove to top of residential hill finally found the dangnabbit trail head, only to discover that it ended only a quarter of a mile away. We were hesitant to check out the scenic view spot because of the crowds of weekend dog-walkers, but then we noticed that people were walking by us and then not ever reappearing. So we peeked over and discovered another trail heading down towards the ocean. Excellent! It was steep and pretty rocky and dusty, but we got a great work out climbing up and down hills to a peak overlooking the south end of Laguna Beach. Turned out that it was the same lookout that Chad had explored previously hiking from his sister Corrina’s old place. That was cool – we love exploring things from both ends. Heh heh, that sounds dirty now that I’ve written it.

Then this weekend we discovered another waterfall to hike to, up off the Holy Jim Trail. It’s not that WE’re so into waterfalls per se, but they do make for a good destination hike. And on the way there we never saw another hiker – so Chad took pics of me and the belly there. He convinced me to keep my undies on, which in retrospect, was a good idea, because now I can share one or two of the photos here.

It was an interesting hike because you first have to drive several miles down a rocky dirt road. The dirt road was called Trabuco Creek Road and was off Trabuco Canyon Road – you’re driving by some major housing developments in total suburbia and then suddenly you’re dropping into a completely wild canyon.

There were quite a few cars parked at the start of the dirt road; we imagined that they were mostly mountain bikers, but we only ever saw one cyclist. After going for miles down this dirt road, the scenery changed from dusty scrub to western forest with lots of overgrown black oak and we passed an old firehouse. This seemed strange because we hadn’t passed any other structures or buildings previously, in fact it had seemed like we going further and further from civilization. But then small, apparently abandoned houses began to appear. And then a few definitely inhabited houses started to show up – Boy when these people hunkered down way back when, they must have really been in the boondocks. It was a curious mixture of cabins and houses, and Chad and I wondered a lot about what kind of people were living out here and what kind of community they must form.

The best part of the hike was that we were really truly in the woods and there were flowers blooming. All we could hear was the wind rushing through the trees, all kinds of birds, frogs, and the burbling of the creek we were following.

We only made it as far as the waterfall, because we needed to be back in ample time to pick Bella up from track practice. But this trail goes on for miles and miles and would probably make for a nice backpack or a 2-car shuttle hike with some prior planning.

We rested a bit at the waterfall, snapped a few pics and then headed back. We had not seen any other hikers the entire day and then on our way back to the car we ran into somebody I knew! She was somebody I had just met at last month’s La Leche League meeting – but what’s funny is that she and I were the only two moms who had attended both meetings in the south OC area last month. What’s more, out of all the women at both meetings, I had felt that she was the most likely candidate for potential friendship: 1) She’d been nursing a toddler and 2) She had a friendly open manner and I was going to tell her that I thought she would make a great LLL leader. To no surprise, she confided to me there on the trail that she had just completed her LLL leader training. We didn’t exchange more than a minute of conversation because we both had our husbands and she had several children tugging at her arm – But standing there in the middle of the woods talking to another nursing mom felt really, really right – and great. It was a serendipitous encounter.

But I am glad we ran into them after my photo shoot by the waterfall, even though I kept some clothes on.

 

Adventure Pass

It’s not that often I come upon a place that makes me want to take off all my clothes and ask my husband to start snapping pictures. Unfortunately, my camera was dead, so the photo shoot will have to wait until next time.

Last weekend, Chad and I finally got our butts into gear to check out the Grover Cleveland National Forest, which is about a half-hour drive southeast from here. The small obstacle that had been stumping us was the National Forest Pass, which, comes to find out, is available at any Sports Chalet for $30 a year. Believe me, if you wait to buy it at a ranger’s station, you’ll never get around to exploring any national forest legally. It’s $5 for a day pass, but I’d like to believe that I’ll get back out to a national forest six more times before May 2009…

We drove up the Ortega Highway, past the Upper San Juan Campground, past the Candy Store, and pulled over on a dirt turn-out. From there we could hear rushing water and see the glimmering promise of a waterfall among the tumbled granite and green scrub. Now a hike into a National Forest just off the freeway is a far cry from a hike in the protected thousands of acres of a National Park – meaning, that the trails from the dirt turn-out were many, narrow, and occasionally littered with reminders of ill-mannered hikers: cigarette butts, soda cans, water bottles. Unimpressive and forgettable graffiti was spray-painted on any flat rock surface like flamboyant cheap trail markers. But sometimes the strength of the wild outdoors makes human detritus look insignificant and ephemeral.

Here, with every step further from asphalt, there were more wild flowers springing up in bunches of hot pink, bobbing trumpets of purple, and sprawls of yellow; small visual treasures framed by the heady fragrance of crushed black sage. Ahead we could see the glinting gray-silver stones rising up, oblivious to all the petty human tromping and careless beer can crushing at their feet.

What trail we followed was not very well-maintained, likely because it was not a trail at all, and I was surprised at how much my sense of balance had changed since my last hike. My boots slipped in the eroded dirt and I clung on to each passing rock face. Chad seemed more sprightly and goat-like than ever, ahead and behind, making sure I was safe before bounding off again. I didn’t mind inching my way downhill; it gave me plenty of face time with delicate blooms and their intricate shapes.

At the bottom of the ravine we were rewarded with an absolutely clear babbling brook flowing from a small pool in the rocks. Avoiding the other hiking party around the corner (they were hiking with beer cans in hand), we scrambled up through boulders to the shallow pool and found a spot where we could eat a few snacks in the light spray of a delightful waterfall. It’s worth a thousand bucks, I’m sure, the revitalization you get from breathing the heady oxygenated air around a waterfall, even a small one. Just a few minutes here made me realize what I missed about living in Joshua Tree: that easy access to the outside, to the wilderness. Sure, there’s plenty of green in Laguna Niguel, but so much of it is manicured and primped. Chad and I just sat and rested. We talked in low voices and Chad began exploring the possibilities of climbing the side of the waterfall. Then we decided to head up the bank and see how far up we could follow the water. With very minor heart palpitations, I climbed up after Chad, taking far too much time I’m sure, to find secure footing with every step.

In the end, it didn’t take much to be at the top of the waterfall, looking down. The wind was channeled through the narrow passageway here, whistling and reminding me of that spot in Rattlesnake Canyon where Chad had proposed almost two years ago now. After some more snacks, Chad took off for more exploring, and I just sat on the smooth boulders, right by the edge of the water. I sat and I thought about coming back and spending time here with our new kid later this summer.

 

Macho Ram

Saturday’s hike to Willow Hole was highlighted by a magical Bighorn Sheep sighting that I have completely neglected to mention.

There were five of us in the Toyota Corolla, comfortably crammed and gently jostled by the short dirt ride to Barker’s Dam. Foreshadowing the intense discussions we ended up having all day long on the hike, our conversation had already strayed into deeper metaphysical waters: yogic training, subtle body, authors I had never heard of…

When suddenly Ellen, who was sitting in the back seat behind the driver, began pointing and making choking sounds, “Look, look!” she spluttered, pointing out her window.

Betsy, the driver, luckily immediately slowed down, because at that moment a magnificent bighorn ram burst into view and swerved directly in the front of the car and pounding the pavement, lunged across the road only inches in front of our moving vehicle.

Hold your arms in the largest circle you can make, and it would not begin to measure the incredible musculature of this ram’s ass. Not only was this guy’s behind the heft of a full 50-gal water drum, but both cheeks were swirly white fur, swirling in opposite directions. The sheer strength and force of his gallop could only be rivaled by enraged bulls I have seen at the rodeo. And his face! No dumb sheep eyes, but the fierce intensity of a buck in full season intent on survival. Graced by full ram’s horns on either side.

And I know you’ll think I’m exaggerating, but his horns were shining.

See real-life pictures of a bighorn ram taken by Corrina this summer here.

 

Wonderland Hike to Willow Hole

This hike was a wonderful finale to my strenuous exercise days (fyi – no spotting since – I go to the lab to have blood drawn today). We started on level terrain and checked out local attractions by Wall Street Mill and then headed right into the boulders. We lunched at Willow Hole and headed out in  a different direction. We saw lots of rock art and got back to our cars as the sun was touching the horizon. It was quite a day of scrambling and gorgeous vistas. Yowza – a  good ten-miler.

Bill Keyes carved this marker while doing his time in prison. He sounds awful proud doesn’t he?

Wall Street Mill – the first settlers here were mining for gold.

Car carcass.

Impossible for me to capture the majestic scope of the horizon on my point-and-shoot.

Coyote remains?

Every time we got to a view like this, Ann the hike leader would point to a  distant boulder and say: That’s where we’re headed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A quick break to check out some rock art.

Adolescent-sized hand prints.

Again, impossible to show the sheer massiveness of this rock face. Really, a person climbing that face would be no bigger than a speck.

Leaving Willow Hole (dry year – no standing water)