Yesterday we got a call from our good friend Amy asking if we’d like to join them for a dinner picnic in the Marin Headlands to watch the full moon rise. (Sunset and moonrise were only 15 minutes apart last night, making it a particularly good night for viewing.) So we jumped at the chance!
At about six o’clock we got to Hawk Hill, which is a perfect lookout point not only for the bay and the bridge, but for the thousands of raptors that migrate over these hills each fall. I just learned that you see this many birds of prey here because they avoid flying over water (since it’s far more work without the thermals coming up from the land) so they all funnel down the Marin peninsula, making it a popular spot for amazing bird watching. The headlands are also home to a number of historic military fortifications, and to get to the top of the hill you walk through a couple of tunnels that used to hold some very big guns looking out over the water. It’s an odd juxtaposition of past and present vigilance.
We were all pretty awed by the gradation of glowing sunset to glittering night.
It was another moment I couldn’t believe that our kids will grow up thinking this is normal. Lucky, lucky, lucky.
