Cazalea recounts a visit to Morrison Pond, highlighting a Seiko moonphase watch with a storied past, now worn by his wife. The post blends personal anecdotes about watch ownership and repair with observations of nature during their early morning hike.
We are having to think hard about where to go -- 75 walks under our feet, and 75 Seikos on our arms. Today we chose Morrison Pond in Bonita, a place we had visited before but we had never circled around it.
My wife is doing the honors today, wearing the Seiko moonphase watch I'm holding here. This was once like new but non-working, sitting in my fix-it-someday box. About 3 years ago I revived it for my brother-in-law, to give to his wife for Christmas. She didn't like it much and didn't wear it often (she's the outdoorsy type, interested in horses and golf). Eventually sister-in-law broke it, and handed it to my wife -- thus it ended up in my fix-it pile, again!
It's working fine today as we reached the Open Space Preserve 2 hours before its opening time.
No problem, we parked on the road and hopped the bar.
The sky was pretty clear so we did not expect too much drama with the sunrise.
It was still very pretty.
I enjoyed having the pond as a reflection surface for the sky. This is looking southeast across the pond.
The water's surface was still, with only 2 coots and a lone fisherman visible as we hiked around.
Red dot shows where we stopped walking so I could take pictures of the birds.
I suppose it would have been nice to have it on some of our other walks, but I don't like messing with an app while I have so many other things to watch out for - birds, for example, and my footing, and homeless people.
And river crossings, coming right up. As you can see on the map above, the river is a dotted line. We haven't had rain for a few weeks (and before that 5 months) so I don't expect much water.
The rocky ford allows us to easily get across without muddy boots.
I've never been a woodsman, but I have to say that these walks have opened my eyes to the beauty of trees in the winter morning dawn light.
This looks like the only sycamore in our pond's park. It's holding onto many more of its leaves than the ones we saw a few days ago in a cold canyon.
A red-trunked eucalyptus.
Here is a small cluster of "California" Pepper Trees. These actually come from Peru but were brought by Spanish settlers about 200 years ago.
The college I attended had a Pepper Tree Lane, and the trees were planted about 1900 by the first occupants of the property. The photo below shows the largest/oldest pepper in California, at the San Luis Rey Mission, about 50 miles north of here. A bit too far for our morning walks, but a site we have often visited.
The binocular house again. It was dropped onto the steep hillside lot, just a couple years ago.
We reached the car and here's the moonphase watch, on the arm of Mrs. C
Cazalea
