Travel, Silicon Valley -- Foothills Park bench

In California, leave the thoughts of Stanford U in Palo Alto and head towards the ocean. Walking up to the crest of the coastal foothills, pass sweeping views of the San Francisco Bay. Shaded by native trees such as Douglas fir, live oak, redwood, and madrone, watch out for poison oak vines. Deep in the woods, find a bench by a stream. Stop to read the inscription:

Rest here, honor nature, look around, and up. It is fall. Crisp fallen leaves litter the live green and mossy banks. Straight out from the bench is a tree, straight up.

This is in the month of November. Revisit three months later, in February. And again in May, June, and August.

November

Enter into a panorama: horizontal QTVR. This is the best all-around view. It is linked internally through the tree to the vertical QTVR. To see the highest quality movies, choose T1 for your QTVR connection speed setting (from QuickTime 3). The hi-res QTVR horizontal is 1MB, the vertical is 500KB. Hear the breeze, feel the moss, smell the fog blowing over the ridge, and sense the lift of the tree in your face.

If you don't have or want QuickTime, see the graphic versions of the panoramas: horizontal graphic and vertical graphic.

Selected photos:

• Tree roots down into the stream.
• Large vertical view of the background tree.
• Stream pool detail. Or a GIF version
• Paths detail. Very large version
• Bronze plaque with inscription, from the bench.
• Spring Tree painting, 1961. A far-off distant link to past art.

In 2005 I heard from Lynn Torin, who is still quite alive and appreciative. In 2006 I discovered wonderful views of this scene by Erik Goetze. On this page, http://www.virtualparks.org/parks/foothills-text-list.html, see the three Los Trancos trail scenes, nr1, nr2, and nr3. They are from different points of view around the bench: across and up the stream. Each movie is large, about 1 MB, and more beautiful than ever.