I was at Cesar Chavez Park in Berkeley, unsuccessfully looking for burrowing owls, when the East Coast blizzard was in full storm. I’d driven about half an hour to get there and the SECOND I parked it started to pour rain, so I sat in my car for a little while and checked my email. I had an email from my mother saying everything was alright – though very, very, very snowy – at the parental homestead and that surprisingly they had not even lost internet service. That was good to hear, and also put a little perspective on the fact I was slightly inconvenienced by the rain. The rain lasted all of 5 minutes anyway, and then I was off on my owl quest. At one point during the day I was starting yet another lap of the park hoping in vain the owls would come out when I turned around and saw a rainbow! Which was quite lovely though it made me feel a wee bit guilty about friends and family being snowed in and miserable.
I nearly left the park after 3 unsuccessful laps because I was physically tired and mentally tired of walking around the same park repeatedly, but I decided that the sunset hour could be the best hour to be in that park as I figured sunsets over the San Fran skyline were regularly pretty spectacular. Plus the owls might be more active around dusk. I sort of had to choose one or the other – sunset or owls – though because they were on opposite sides of the park and separated by a huge hill of dogs. I chose owls (this should not surprise you), and though I still didn’t get to see them, I did try to get at least a little of the sunset.
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