Tag: Bonny Doon

Living at Mount Hermon

As the year draws to a close, we find ourselves living in Mount Hermon while our house in Albany undergoes remodeling. Our adventure here begins on December 1st, when we drove our rental U-Haul truck up the driveway at #6 Pine Avenue in Mount Hermon.

Thanks to our daughter, Amy, we found a very cute house to rent for our stay here, which will keep us comfortable through the end of January when we anticipate moving back to Albany.

Originally, we were going to stay through December with the idea that we would take the pop-up camper on a road trip for part of January. On December 14 through, I broke my left wrist, so I no driving and thus no road trip. We could do worse than have such a comfortable place to stay in such a beautiful location here in the Santa Cruz Mountains.

We’ve been coming to Mount Hermon for over 40 years for church retreats, so we have some familiarity with the place. And our daughter and family live here as well. We are a 5-minute walk from our grandson.

On December 8th Amy hosted a gingerbread party and we were happy to participate. Cutting out dough shapes, gluing them together and decorating the resulting houses with frosting and candy.

On December 24th our son Aaron arrived with his family. We were blessed with having our whole family together for Christmas with both of our kids, our two grandkids and our son-in-law’s parents as well.

With family together we enjoyed hiking through the majestic redwoods, up to the cross on the top of the mountain and exploring the Bonny Doon Ecological Preserve.

And when the rain prevailed, we contented ourselves with putting together jigsaw puzzles. Jigsaw puzzles have been a holiday tradition in my family since I was a kid. More photos are available in an online gallery.

Bonny Doon Ecological Reserve

The Bonny Doon Ecological Reserve encompasses 552 acres protecting a habitat known as the Santa Cruz Sandhills. These sandhills are perched high above the bluffs, prairies and forests of the central California coast. The sandhills are outcrops of ancient marine life, sediment deposited over 15 million years ago when the region was beneath the sea. These habitats are host to a number of rare plants and animals. The reserve is managed by the California Department of Fish and Wildlife.

Grandson Micah was quite the nature guide, pointing out various plants and trees including Ponderosa Pine, Redwood and Madrone. We also saw a number of wildflowers.

What’s notable is that in 1989 The Nature Conservancy hired me to photograph this location as part of a fundraising effort to purchase the property. Fun to think that I played a role in protecting this environment.

Also it’s a joy to be able to enjoy this hike pain free. Nine months have passed since I had knee replacement surgery. A year ago I would have been hobbling in pain. I still have work to do on the recovery. I’m continuing Physical Therapy and building strength in the muscles that I hadn’t used for years.

We spent about two hours exploring the preserve, covering 2.3 miles of varied terrain from pines to redwoods, through ferns and chaparral. A glorious day to be exploring nature with family.