BioBlitz! Golden Gate National Parks, CA Friday-Saturday, March 28-29, 2014

LOTS of great events happening this weekend in the Bay Area. On the natural history and biodiversity front, Golden Gate National Parks is holding BioBlitz Festival, March 28-29, a 24-hour species count of the many inhabitants of GGNP. Birds and snakes and who knows what else (oh my!). 
Check it out at Crissy Field, Hawk Hill, Muir Beach and beyond....
"The three national park units that make up the Golden Gate National Parks encompass more than 80,000 acres and 91 miles of shoreline along the northern California coast. These parks are home to an amazing array of biodiversity, including over half of the bird species of North America and nearly one-third of California’s plant species!

To better understand, appreciate, and protect this natural treasure, the National Park Service, National Geographic, Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy, and Presidio Trust are teaming up to host a 24-hour BioBlitz species count and two-day Biodiversity Festival, Friday-Saturday, March 28-29, 2014.

BioBlitz 2014 will take place in several national parks, including Muir Woods National Monument, Fort Point National Historic Site, and locations in Golden Gate National Recreation Area including the Giacomini wetlands, Muir Beach, the Marin Headlands, Crissy Field, the Presidio, Mori Point, and Rancho Corral de Tierra.

Part scientific endeavor, part festival, and part outdoor classroom, BioBlitz will bring together more than 300 leading scientists and naturalists from around the country, thousands of local community members of all ages, and more than 2,000 students from across the Bay Area."

Hear more about the Blitz, and how scientists are working year-round to catalog and conserve local biodiversity on KQED's Forum, as host Dave Iverson talked with guests John Francis, biologist and vice president of research, conservation and exploration at National Geographic, and Allen Fish, director of the Golden Gate Raptor Observatory for the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy:

Hawk Hill during fall migration 

Sand & Water

Kwame cleaned the car this week and within an hour of being vacuumed and buffed there was sand in both foot wells. Despite dipping toes in the water before leaving the beach and shaking out my shoes before getting into the car, I seem to always trail some home. There's sand on my yoga mat, sand on the front porch next to the front door, sand in foyer. I came home from my trip to Southern California with sand in my suitcase. I'm not complaining. I consider it a victory that my current lifestyle allows me to get to the beach most days, even if only for a few minutes of toes-in-sand, gazing-at-water time. Living near a bay side beach the past two years has been a revelation. Instead of crashing waves, you get wind-pulled tides and pulsing currents. We live inland enough to be out of  sea-level rise's way, close enough to get to the sand in five minutes. Getting out to water's edge seems necessary, in my DNA. Beach blood is very likely: My grandparents were from a fishing village on the Adriatic; my dad grew up in a house built on the sand dunes of San Francisco.
After a recording session last week, we drove out to the ocean-side of things, the avenues of the Sunset District. After so many years, I finally had written down the correct address of my grandparents former home. I couldn't remember where it was, but as soon as I saw its 1920s era stucco facade, I remembered childhood visits, sitting in my grandparents home, trips to Original Joe's and my dad's old baseball pennant flags. My dad used to tell stories of playing in the dunes behind the house, as well as the very new Golden Gate Park. It's a different world nearly a century later — the avenues leading to the beach are filled with similar tracts homes of that time as well as restaurants, coffee bars (mmm Trouble Coffee & Coconut Club) and surf stores, groceries and Muni lines — but as ever, the beach was the beach, always changing, always what it is. Which is likely the real reason I love it so much.
 This isn't a new song, but it's surely one of the great ones: Sand & Water by Beth Nielsen Chapman