Sutro Sam and Bottlenose Dolphins

Sutro Sam, the first river otter in San Francisco in 50 years! (photo by Beth Pratt)

For those of you not familiar with San Francisco's newest animal celebrity, Sutro Sam refers to the river otter who has taken up residence in Sutro Baths, a ruins located at Lands End in San Francisco. Aside from being pretty darn adorable, this intrepid animal is the first river otter to be seen in San Francisco in over 50 years! He now possesses quite a following and crowds gather around the baths to see him pop his head above water.

Sutro Baths, Lands End, San Francisco (photo by Beth Pratt)

Last week I made a field trip to check out Sutro Sam and spent a beautiful two hours strolling near the Pacific, alternatively watching sea birds and this river otter frolic in the adjacent waters. We receive so much bad news in the environmental field daily that I needed to celebrate this remarkable success story of an otter returning on his own to his historical habitat. As Megan Isadore from the River Otter Ecology Project observed to me in a recent interview: "Sutro Sam is a perfect example of the joy we gain from making the changes great and small that allow wildlife to return and thrive in areas where we haven't seen them in a long time."

Sutro Sam (photo by Beth Pratt)

At one point, as I took photos of Sam, I simply turned around to witness a group of bottlenose dolphins and their calves swimming in the ocean. Bill Keener, my friend at Golden Gate Cetacean Research, said there is a small group of dolphins hanging out around the San Francisco Coast even though they usually retreat further south for the winter.

Bottlenose dolphin from Sutro Baths (photo by Beth Pratt)Bottlenose dolphins and calves, (photo by Beth Pratt)

Just another reason I love California: river otters and dolphins within 500 feet of each other!

Don't miss the California Wildlife Festival in Berkeley!

Want to meet Ranger Rick? You can help him celebrate his 50th birthday at the California Wildlife Festival! We're going to have a fun evening at the David Brower Center, so be sure to join us. I'll be giving a talk on climate change and California wildlife, we'll be launching the Return of the Porpoise to San Francisco Bay campaign, and naturalist John Muir Laws will be doing onsite drawing demonstrations. Come learn about the great work of organizations like Save the Frogs, California Wolf Center, WildCare, Aquarium of the Bay, Felidae Conservation Fund and more! For more information visit our event page.

Yosemite Falls is flowing again!

The latest series of storms ended a long, hot summer (and fall) in the Sierra, and also restored the flow to Yosemite Falls. Check out the Yosemite Conservancy's live webcam of the falls for a virtual view.

According to our friends at NOAA, Tenaya Lake received 9 inches of snow as of Sunday. The last two years we experienced one of the wettest and one of the driest winters on record in the Sierra. Perhaps this year wil be average?

An evening of poetry not to be missed: Dan Gerber in Santa Barbara

Last year I simultaneously met a new friend and discovered the amazing body of work of a celebrated poet, Dan Gerber. We bonded over our ability to recite Eliot’s “The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock,” (not your typical dinner party conversation) and our love for nature and wildness. I literally devoured his volumes of poetry, and his musical writing reverberated with me like the wind echoing amidst canyon walls—his poems have a mighty force, yet invite contemplation with their delicate grace.

If it’s any indication of his style, or my reverence for his talent, his books occupy a coveted place in my poetry bookshelf, right next to Jim Harrison, Robinson Jeffers and not far from Gary Snyder. A small sampling of a couple of my favorite lines:  “Tonight the sky is holding its breath,” or “…that what we still long for/longs to be let go,/like that fleeting but unmistakable flavor in the air/just before it starts to rain.”

Dan is a prolific and diverse writer. He has authored eight books of poetry, and his poems have appeared in The New Yorker, Poetry, and Best American Poetry. He has also written a nonfiction account of the Indianapolis 500 automobile race, in Indy: The World’s Fastest Carnival Ride (1977), several novels, including Out of Control (1974) and A Voice from the River (1990), and a short story collection, Grass Fires (1987). Of his work across genres, Gerber told Contemporary Authors, “In poetry as well as prose, I feel less a creator than an instrument of experience. I write what presents itself to me as necessary.”

On November 10 at 2:00 pm at The Karpeles Manuscript Library in Santa Barbara, Dan will give a reading of his poetry and sign copies of his new book, Sailing Through Cassiopeia. He’ll also be signing books in Solvang at The Book Loft on November 28.

Glacier Canyon and Dana Lake

Glacier Canyon and Dana Lake (photo by Beth Pratt)Under the watchful eye of Mt Dana, I wandered up Glacier Canyon to her namesake lake recently, and lunched below her glacier. I make sure to trek up to the Dana Glacier at least once a year, as it's slowly disappearing with the changing climate. The remote, cerulean blue waters of Dana Lake provide a beautiful picnic spot, and the perfect place to contemplate the implications of a glacier slowly going extinct.

During my hike I also encountered a very curious Pacific chorus frog, who kept gazing at me from his underwater perch, and found some recent bear tracks in the mud. The fresh paw prints brought to mind the wonderful Mary Oliver poem, Bear, that captures the emotion of seeing (or not seeing a bear) so well. An excerpt: "This is not my track, and this is an extremely/ large foot, I wonder /how large a body must be to make/ such a track, I am beginning to make/ bad jokes...."

A curious Pacific chorus frog (photo by Beth Pratt)"This is not my track..." (photo by Beth Pratt)

For those of you interested in learning more about the plight of Yosemite's glaciers, check out the Alpine of the Americas project recent photo survey of the area  or an article with photos and videos on KQED's Climate Watch.

Dana Lake and Dana Glacier (photo by Beth Pratt)