Living rivers, poetry, urban space, clouds of flies, and flocks of butterflies

A to-go bag for your early summer

There’s so much to bring to your attention! Tomorrow, I’ve got Robert MacFarlane on Forum… We’ll be talking about the rights of nature, the life of rivers, animism, and more. His new book is Is A River Alive?

Friday, you should go to North Beach for poetry things. I recommend you head to Kerouac Alley next to Vesuvio at 4:45 for poetry reading with Marthine Satris & friends. Then head to Golden Sardine at 6pm, and on up to Coit Tower Poetry Club at 9pm to read Shel Silverstein. Do not have too much fun. It will be hard.

Next week, I’ve got a few events coming up, too. First, midday on Wednesday the 11th, I’ll be at SPUR talking with Sujata Srivastava about The Pacific Circuit and the problems of urban space. I love the way Sujata thinks and I’m thrilled about that one. Thursday the 12th, I’ll be talking with Brian Goldstone about his new book There Is No Place for Us, which is about working families in Atlanta who are also homeless. That’s at Green Apple on 9th.

Wednesday night, June 11, I’ve got a big event with Davia Nelson (of the goddamn legendary Kitchen Sisters) at Fort Mason. We’ll be talking about my book, the transformation of the San Francisco waterfront, and the Fort Mason Center for Arts and Culture itself, which is coming up on its 50th anniversary. GET TICKETS!

I should say: I’m working on a project with the Fort Mason Center for Arts and Culture to commemorate the anniversary, and this will really the earliest preview of that new work. If you don’t know the story of the Fort Mason Center, let me tell you it is awesome and involves the Comet Kohoutek (look it up) among other things, AND I think it has some important lessons for this current moment where we are awash in vacant urban spaces.

Last thing… I’ve been running up Strawberry Canyon in Berkeley quite often. I know the fire roads now, at a cellular level (Strava says I am the Local Legend). As part of that carving process, I watch the plants and the insects, the lizards and the too-infrequent snakes. Even in our temperate climate, there is so much change to observe.

I haven’t run in Briones, or anywhere east of the Berkeley hills since a few weeks ago, for reasons no one can explain, that park was teeming with dark clouds of tiny flies. I’m talking flies so thick I had to cover my face with my arms as I ran, as they pelted my neck and chest and legs. Flies so thick that I involuntarily screamed “gaaaahhh!” (and less SFW things) whenever I emerged from the clouds of hovering bugs. Truly disgusting. One of the most unpleasant running experiences of my life. And I only ended up eating a few.

But the trails hold delights, too. And yesterday, Strawberry held one for me. Starting from the Cal Stadium, there are several stages to the Strawberry Canyon run:

• A mile or so next to a road, on too-loose gravel, a proprioception workout.

• A nice climbing mile winding next to and over Strawberry Creek, filled with trees and dog walkers, shady and wide.

• A short crushing ascent, a heart-rate spiking UP that always hurts no matter how slow you go.

• Quick break, look over at Tam, evaluate the air and fog and Bay.

• Then another mile up to the bench tucked in against the edge of the valley, heading up towards the path that curls into the deep-V of the canyon.

• Finally: the Bench. The climb is done and there is flat path for miles ahead.

The conditions brighten, terrain opening. Wildflowers clump up and down hill from the fire road (Indian paintbrush, sticky monkeyflowers). And on this day, for reasons unknown to me, flocks of butterflies were spiraling all around me. It wasn’t just one or two little guys beating their wings on the flowers or sloshing around the air. This was whole pods of medium-sized insects. I felt like a boat with attending dolphins in my wake.

I looked them up. They were Variable checkerspots (Euphydryas chalcedona for the nerds) and I don’t expect I’ll ever see more of them in a single run than on June 2, 2025. Something was just right and it was a perfect day in the Bay.