Pogonip offers a wide variety of habitats and microclimates, including open meadows, dark cool forests, creek beds, and three virgin stands of redwood. Within the park there are miles of hiking trails and endless sites for informal picnics. The Circle Trail Route follows Spring Trail, Brayshaw Trail, and Golf Club Drive. Dogs should be kept on leash, both because they make the deer nervous and harder to see and because many parts of Pogonip are prime poison oak habitat. Dog owners regularly contract poison oak dermatitis after their pet has frisked about in Pogonip.
Among the many magnificent trees in the Pogonip is one whose grandeur has earned it it the name The Sacred Oak. It dominates a meadow that slopes down to the right of the Spring Trail about 300 yards north of the Brayshaw Trail junction.
For more information, see the Pogonip website sponsored by the Pogonip Foundation.
The Ballad of Rachel Carson
and the Historical Origins of
the Environmental Crisis and
Earth Day
An Earth Day, 2000, Talk, by Paul A. Lee, PhD
In the summer of l969, I took a wilderness canoe trip with Gaylord Nelson, the Senator from Wisconsin. It was part of Senator Nelson’s effort to pass a Wild Rivers’ Bill to save some of the waters of Northern Wisconsin. I should have told him about our organic garden at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and our remarkable gardener–Alan Chadwick–whom E. F. Schumacher called “the world’s greatest living gardener”, because, when months later I saw the Senator announce Earth Day on the Today Show, I thought, oh boy, our garden has prepared the way.
Florence is a goose. I think of her as my goose although I don’t own her. She belongs to me in my imagination, although she is a real flesh and blood and feathers goose. She lives in the park a block away, where there is a pond. It is called West Lake Park. When is a pond a lake? When you call it one. I met Florence when I was walking my dog, Esme, an Airedale. Esme is a wonderful dog with great high spirits. In fact, we called her “Christmas-every-day” Esme, when she was a puppy, because she acted like it was Christmas every day and all the presents were for her.
Esme didn’t bother Florence. Her name was Florence, I was soon to find out. I warned Esme to stand aside when Florence approached. Florence hissed in that expiration of breath that geese do when they want to make a threatening sound. It was the first sound I imitated when I talked to Florence. I hissed back at her. She liked that. I saw her coming. It was clear she was heading for me and was going to introduce herself. I braced myself for my encounter with a goose. It was perfectly clear that she was going to talk to me. It was an odd experience, understanding everything Florence said, including her name. She marched right up to me and said, “Haaaaaaaaaa.” I heard: “My name is Florence Nightingale…”
What a name for a goose. She was demanding and authoritative, knowing exactly what she wanted me to do. I understood her perfectly.
Homelessness is not easy to think about. In fact, one would rather do something about it than think about it. It is the tradition of the pragmatic American way. The plight of the homeless demands action more than thought. Nevertheless, there is much to think about in assessing the homeless and many questions come to mind after working with the homeless for the last six years. Why has there been a growing population of homeless every year since the late 1970s? What has happened in our country that people lack shelter and have nowhere to go at night when it turns cold and dark?
Isn’t the right to shelter one of the basic human rights not to be denied anyone?
Is a philosophy of homelessness possible to develop and is this a task this book should attempt to fulfill, even though, as Tillich says, in his address on the “Philosophy of Social Work”, appended to the end of this book, beyond anyone’s power to do so?
Pogonip offers a wide variety of habitats and microclimates, including open meadows, dark cool forests, creek beds, and three virgin stands of redwood. Within the park there are miles of hiking trails and endless sites for informal picnics. The Circle Trail Route follows Spring Trail, Brayshaw Trail, and Golf Club Drive. Dogs should be kept on leash, both because they make the deer nervous and harder to see and because many parts of Pogonip are prime poison oak habitat. Dog owners regularly contract poison oak dermatitis after their pet has frisked about in Pogonip.