I am sitting upon a large lichen covered rock on the hill overlooking SLO
high. It is a rock that is out of place amongst the green thick flora. The
cool wind blows everything in its path except this steady stone. I feel like
a king atop a pedestal overlooking his Kingdom. The populated valley bellow
is dwarfed to model size. I am rejuvenated and empowered!
Noel Carter
We’ve stopped to read poetry on a grassy hill above the trail. It’s
a beautiful
afternoon. The sun is setting behind the hill where we’re sitting. The
shade
of the hill hides us from the diminishing sunlight that is moving further away
from us every minute I write.”
Brandon Yee
Katherine Peterson
The Strand, Morro Bay, CA
April 17, 2002
The seagulls are flying high and Aggie, confused, cannot decide whether to
run after the bird, leaping into the air, or to chase the shadow.
Some of my paper blew away, just now, and we chased them--catching only one
before the other disappeared into untouchable territory. But as I flew
through the sand, with only my socks still on my feet and my bathing suit
straps falling off and a grin and a childish laughter in my heart, I thought--
How I wish to be a child, free again. Reminiscent and resounding. Oh yes,
the smell of the beach, drying out after a rainy night, somehoe reminds me of
my grandmother's home--a chicken farm in Riverside.
Teacy Hebden
Tonight began with the dwindling daylight, the roll of fog over the hills near
Morro Bay, and finally the artifical light that glowed in the overhanging fog
over San Luis Obispo.
It is is now late tonight, the night sky has revealed its blackness and bright
stars.
Ah Santa Cruz. Driving into town the fog slowly envelops me. After
driving through town up the 1 to the ranch the ocean speaks to me. I am
jealous of the long boarders preparing for the waves along the road.
Swanton Pacific Ranch is set within the Redwoods. The tall true trees stand
like giants. They create a peaceful serenity within their groves. Light is
filtered out. Only the fog creeps through. The air is cold. The canopy
provided by the Redwoods is great. Above me is a thatched roof of branches.
At my feet lies a soft bed of Redwood feathers. That is what the Coast
Redwood leaves look like to me. The soft needles are like feathers.
Gabriel Davis
Kim Hiroto
Old tired tree,
you have seen so much
of this world.
You have watched us
as we come and go,
servants to struggle and fortune.
You grasp grasp only
for the sun-
your branches outstretched
arms to hold each dawn.
But we-
we are impermanent,
we cannot root ourselves in
one soil too long.
You seem to know
this failing of man,
you seem to understand
that one day we too will be gone.
"Why struggle for a legacy-
why work for false wealth?"
Could your questions
sound any louder
than the silence you live by?
If I could have such reason,
if I could absorb such patience
from the earth-
I would not be afriad of tomorrows
that may never come,
then I could stretch my fingers to the
dawn and live in your quiet.
April 4, 2002 in Poly Canyon
Brett Phillips
Sitting here in Poly Canyon on a hill just above the arch, we see the beautiful
canyons around us, planes flying above, trains passing by on this sunny warm
day. Below us is a walking path under the arch, with rock walls along the side,
leading up to the architecture buildings above.
We sit here on this hill, with the cool breeze blowing through, listening to
the peaceful sounds of nature - the birds chirping, frogs croaking, insects
singing. I am reminded of how beautiful nature is. We get so wrapped up in our
lives that we forget about things like this. It is good to take a break and
walk around, go on a hike or a bi8ke ride and see the beauties around us. This
is such a beautiful time of year with everything so green, all the wildlife
out, and the fresh cool air with the sun out.
I am reminded of how much I love riding my bike around San Luis Obispo and up
and down the coast. For the past year and a half I have been so busy with school
and workthat I haven't had time to ride my bike much. I look forward to this
coming summer, after graduation, when I will go backpacking and bikeriding with
friends exploring this beatuiful countryside we live in.
As I look around, the sun is retreating behind the grey clouds now. There is
a large shados cast over the hillside, the hills across the way are turning
grey. I see the dikes created in the hillsides from the runoff water.
Roxanne Staebler
The last time I came to Poly Canyon I just walked along the given path. i
never thought to look up or around at the beautiful hillsides, nor did I think
to listen to all of the creatures around me. This time someone made me
see the other side of the path, and it is a beautiful thing when you realize
that the path you are on is not always where you should be going or
looking.
Awakening in darkness
I'm welcomed by the night
To a resplendent roofless hall
Too grand for my poor sight.
The handle of the dipper
Goes swiveling overhead
A warm wind gusts across my face
And grasses sweep my bed.
The silence of the valley
Breaks with a coyote's sound
That's followed by responses
From all the hills around.
The stars look down from heaven
The owl gives a hoot
The earth supports my body
My pillow is my boot.
Steven Marx
April 12 2002
Poly Canyon 4/4/02
The cool breeze gently flows down the hillsides preparing for its journey
back to the ocean. The flies and the birds take advantage of the cool
evening as everything else is winding down. The sun is slowly setting
and the glow is fading. The clouds creep in and the darkness signals
the
crickets to start their soothing songs. The horses gracefully walk in from
the pastures preparing for a night of rest. Slowly, the shadows begin to
conquer the hillsides as the sun makes its way closer and closer to the
horizon until it is gone.
Katie Forrest
April 4, 2002
5:45pm
THE PEACE OF THE HILLSIDE
The afternoon wind
blows colder but with care,
for it is still settling in
the afternoon air
on this hillside.
Upon this large stone
the hillside welcomes me
as one of its own.
As the wildflowers
and the weeds and the
dirt does as well.
I feel a chill run
down my back
but what does this
mean but that I must
experience that.
As the stones and the
weeds and the wildflowers do,
I must endoure what
the hillside does too.
By, Ernesto Villegas
Spring 2002
The beauty of nature is in the everpresent childlike facination shone through
the human spirit.
Without being enveloped into beautiful surroundings we can not say that we truly
appreciate what
is around us. We have to feel the Earth, climb the trees and be humbled by the
stars. Then our
lives are complete because we have connected with the world.
Brianna Stine
John Paolini
I have been up in the canyon only a few times now. The first time was
while I was visiting Cal Poly during Open House, five years ago. I made a
few trips up here during the winter and sping quarters of my freshman
year to do some maintence and a few more times for a design project.
Second year I was "too busy," and so much more "busy" third
year. Fourth
year I studied abroad. I don't think I returned to the canyon until this
year, my fifth year, for CAED organization activities. I get so occupied with
things on campus that I forget how fortunate we are to have this canyon,
just minutes away from the heart of the campus. Coming so close to
graduation and leaving the Cal Poly, I have come to regret letting this
resource go un-enjoyed. I have one last quarter to enjoy it.
Lindsey Hayes Journal Entry: April 5, 2002
Each night before I go to sleep, I like to go outside for a bit, have a glass
of wine, maybe walk around. Out the back of the house and down someone’s
dirt driveway, there’s a small bit of land still unclaimed (or at least
undeveloped). I walk there tonight. The cool breeze moves over my bare arms.
I can hear the leaves rustle slightly. The trees loom large over my head, the
shrubs fill most of the space in between the trees. Because of the darkness,
I can’t see the colors – the darkness also blurs the edges of things.
Nothing is distinct. Smell . . . a smell of green, of earth . . . the faint
scent of feces (do my cats come out here?!). I hear the occasional bird, a quick
chirp and then silence. Something moves in the bushes to my left. I turn my
head quickly, but can’t make out a thing. Probably one of my cats –
they like to follow my daughter and me. I’ve seen possums out here many
times. I love their bodies, so rat-like, with the obscenely pink nose. They
must like me, too – once, one followed me back into the house. The cats
hissed him away.
My feet stumble as I walk around a high bush. I feel clumsy as I lurch to find
my balance. I’m on a small trail. It looks like the kind that I used to
ride on on my bike when I was a kid: hard, bumpy, curvy, challenging. Leaves
off of bushes caress and snag me as I go by. The dark and heavy presence of
the night strikes me as slightly ominous all of the sudden. I walk back to a
house faintly lit, my cats leading the way.
April 4, 2002
That adventurous afternoon seemed like nature at it's best. The air was cool
to the
touch and the scenery was so picture perfect that it just took my breath away.
I felt a
deep connection with nature that day. I heard birds chirpping and in the distance
a
babbling brook was revealing natures secrets. I wanted this moment to last forever.
I
felt so inspired that I decided write a little poem.
Nature Poem
The raw beauty taht lay before me
must definitely be blessed by the hand of GOD
It seems so unreal to me that
the very ground I'm sitting on was
once without form like a huge
void in my being.
Sara
I thought the movement of the grass looked really peculiar. Usually the
wind goes in one main direction and so does the grass, but the grass on
this hill was dancing every which way. It was as though the wind was
just going to and fro, constantly changing directions. It was almost
like taking a calm pool of water, such as a pond, and watching the wind
make the water ripple out in all directions. The grass just flowed so
smoothly and together that it was just beautiful to just sit and watch
the grass dance as if choreographed.
Andrew Cohen
Sitting ackwardly atop the multifaceted rocks,
the smell of salt filling my lungs.
Unwaivering breezes blow at my face and a warm, comforting sun
beating down upon my back.
Picking up grains of sand and running it through my hands,
I look out to endlessw miles of blue.
Staring out into the horizon, my eyes capture the reflection of the sun
on the water's surface.
All I could think of doing was to run away and hide till the blindness left
me...
Resisting, temporarily impaired, I sat and listened to the repetitious
sound of the waves, crashing against the rocks surrounding me.
Providing further comfort was the gentle mist touching my skin.
Javier Hernandez
April 14, 2002
Morro Bay
April 4th 2002, 5:30pm - Hills behind Poly Canyon...
The dark clouds that contrast the landscape are moving in rather quickly
causing a chill amongst the land. Will the clouds bring rain? Or are they
coming to visit the wonderful sight that I am witnessing here today. Who's to
say. Maybe it will rain, maybe it won't. I won't mind either way, in fact
rain is probably a good thing, it causes the lush greenery that is here and
there is always more room for more greenery and less brownery.
Ryan Roberts
Besides quenching innate thirsts on the wild trial, these sunny crystalline
and shadowed teal streams continue to flow down the hillsides, over rocks
and through quaries to the sea. Before the droplets travel to their final
sea-level destination, and after some of the droplets succumb to the lips of
those thirsty high-elevation creatures, the body of water is used by
everyday humans in everyday agriculture. There it doesn't matter if soil and
mineral and decayed matter cloud the streams. The agricultural end absorbs
it all, and utilizes the un-water substances that the stream carried down
from it's birth under the hill.
Bridgette Vanherwege
14 April
The wind pushes through the treetops, ravishing each leaf as it
passes, so that a million green bodies flutter in protest at once and then
resettle themselves, waiting for the next current. It sounds like rushing
water, a distant stream. I wish I could see the brook that the wind so
falsely whispers...In the wind lies Nature's test of perseverance. It blows
hard, but the trees endure, and in the process become stronger. "The wind
blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it
comes from or where it is going. (John 3:8)"
Laticia Widman
In recent years, I have continuously increased my awareness of my great
fortune. I believe I have a reasonable amount of knowledge about things in
general. I owe this mostly to the many experiences that I have lived growing
up around nature, as well as within it. Through camping, hunting, fishing,
and exploring I have come to the conclusion that these activities are actually
scapegoats, or excuses, to get back to nature. It is within nature, or within
a "natural" surrounding that I can contemplate and relish in new thoughts,
ideas, and even buisiness strategy.
Jed Freitas
busy bee
The ability to do nothing,
Does Nature ever stop doing,
Or is it as busy as a bee
Can a bird sit and stare
or is it always on a life mission
Can a tree just be content
Or must it always be saving for the winter
Must grass always reach for the heavens
Or live in someone else’s showdow
Dose water always have somewhere to go
Or can it relax in its own tranquility
Is there anytime wasted, relaxing, feeling, contemplating
or is competition to fierce.
Does it have a choice.
-andrew johnson
As we sit here upon the Serpentine and vegetation on the backside of caballo
mountain, the birds
singing and fluttering around, the flys buzzing around my face, it seems so
peaceful. So quiet,
the horns, the cars, people talking, everything just seems to stop out here.
It is like this all of the
time but yet we get caught up in the lights and noise of the city and forget
that it is here.
Rebecca Ferrari
Black Hill Mt. 4/8/02
The light diminishes as the fog diffuses the yellow, red and purple beams of
light formed by the
sun as it continues west. The sounds of the night are amplified by the darkness
of what I cannot
see. The last bit of light abandons me as I stand up to see exactly what is
making all this noise.
As I look up, one star after another appears on cue, although they have been
identified by
man, no astronomer can describe what I see tonight. This night sky creates a
vast oceans of
creatures unidentified by man and only alluded to by children. A simple tilt
of the head invalidates
your constellations and forms my starry eyed configurations.
Kevin Barden
It is a wonderful peace to let my eyes focus to the distance. The monumental,
four-story buildings of the performing arts center and the library become
unimportant from here. The landscape is so organic. Only the buildings have
straight lines. The hills and crevasses departing from the mountain undulate
in a rhythmic pattern, like the bottom of a stream. The human form is much
more evocative of the landscape than the square buildings they are mostly
trapped in. An unspotted ladybug crawls up and down a stalk. A black line
bisects its back, like the line of a skunk. The people down there are so
small; I can’t see them. Yet, I, up here, seem so important to myself.
The
frog croaks have evolved into the repetitious ring of the cicadas. The most
marvelous thing about this position is the sky. I can lean back, and see only
sky, with a weed and the sun in the periphery of my vision. The sound must be
a woodpecker. I don’t think it a coincidence that the blue sky and the
green
landscape form the two most frequent colors in nature. Both are restful,
peaceful, cool, relaxing.
Flies flurry above me against a blue backdrop. Their movements are reminiscent
of my artistic brushstrokes, a flurry of passion and immediacy, and freeness.
They also mimic the movement of fluid over my eye, visible only when looking
at a flat field of color, such as the sky. The two overlay in a harmonious
pattern, the flies faster, the fluid more flowing, like water cascading down
a
slow waterfall, or covering over a rock. My elbow is in dried horse poop.
Adrian Foster
I think about God as I sit here. He never created suburbs. He
never built cities. God never came up with paved roads. God made nature.
God is wild.
Jason Schmidt
Thurs. Apr. 18
The cattle appear to use the (natural?) grooves on the
side of this mountain as a road system. It's really quite
impressive. It's an almost Atzecean looking Pyramid Of the Sun
type aesthetic. There's a theory about observing
something...the changes one's observation cause upon the thing
observed. The landscape here is absolutely beautuful;
no sounds of human voices to complicate matters.
Gregory P. Cavert
April 11, 2002
The emotion invoked while submerged in raw nature, no other can
be compared to. We cannot feel the same intensity, or divine appreciation
for what is truly pure and beautiful, as when we pursue the outer
boundaries of lives daily routines. "Head for the hills", I scream.
And so we
flocked to the green hills, swaying in the wind, the wild oats speak in
unison, as we seep beneath the horizon, enveloped by the tall grasses, singing
before our eyes. The sporadic nature of the Coast Live Oak, follow the ravines,
sharing their sides with the shadows. Only in hopes to touch their feet upon
the succulent springs. Appearing on occasion to show herself, trickling
through the earth. Permeating through leaves, and the rich, dark loamy soils,
beneath the surface. So the latent sun shines upon the skin, warming all
it surrounds. The grove of Oaks clustered as a team, diminish the grasses,
plotting to take over the hills. Incandescent light fades in the distance,
becoming hazy, taking away the glows of green, yellow, browns. Here I follow
the trend of anticipation, waiting for the day... O' thou art dominant
NATURE shall reign supreme... And there I go off the map.
Aron Nussbaum
April 20, 2002
The American River stretches throughout all of sacramento. As I sit here along
the bank I am able to tune out the sounds of all the families passing by and
look in amazement at the poppies that are growing wild. Their bright orange
petals and green stems are such a great contrast to the brown dirt of which
they are rooted. How amazing that such a beautiful yet fragile flower is able
to take root among the shallowest of soil and shine moe vibrantly than all the
other wildflowers around it. Perhaps this is an indication of the great state
for which it represents.
Sarah owen