A Mad Rush of Seeds...

Like the chaos of a bunch sprint, seeds have been in full flight in San Dimas Canyon lately. If you ride up there mid-morning after the sun has cleared the enclosing ridges, stop at the high point of the road, just before that short descent to the fire station, turn around and look back along the road. Even if the air is calm, seed are floating up from the marsh at the canyon bottom, maybe from the slopes as well. Let a gust of wind increase the air speed and the casual floating turns into a mad dash. A virtual storm of plant spawn rising on the updraft of air. Looking back along the road it is hard to imagine how I rode through all that without inhaling mouthfuls in each intake of air. 

difficult to see, i know, but if you look at the dark areas, all those little white dots (some blurred) are seeds

When we ride a bike, we are able to change focus between the big picture and the small details. One moment we are taking in a view of the expansive landscape around us, from our front wheel to the far away horizon, from right periphery to left. The next instant we are flicking our bike to avoid a tiny inchworm slowly making its way across our path, or watching a host of seeds racing up the mountainside in the early morning sun. You know, there is a reason that our freeways are planted with great masses of single species of shrubs or ground cover. High speeds limit what we see, things blur together, detail is lost. This is the advantage of moving at human speed, that I have mentioned before, and allows for multiple perspectives of our surroundings, multiple readings of the landscape and the life thereon. 

the marsh in San Dimas Canyon