Mary Golden is the Executive Director of the Central Coast Natural History Association, a private nonprofit working in partnership with our local State Parks to support and fund science and nature education from Pismo State Beach to Harmony Headlands State Park. She welcomes stories and comments at MaryGolden@slocoastjournal.com.

The Tip of the Iceburg

by Mary Golden

When I first started with Central Coast Natural History Association, I couldn't believe my good fortune to work towards such a great cause that was so close to my heart: preserving and promoting our local State Parks. The Parks were so spectacular, and I thought, having just been here a year when I started, do the people who grew up here know how lucky they are to have these parks? (I have since been learning, that yes, the natives do in fact know).

But I have come to realize that the parks themselves are just the tip of the iceburg. Working with about 200 volunteer docents, I see them enrich and educate our visitors to bring a deeper level of understanding, joy, and connection to the parks. I keep putting off writing about specific docents because there are just so dang many outstanding people. So I thought about an exercise I used to do when I was teaching writing at Colorado State University and students invariably said, "I don't know what to write about."

Flannery O'Conner said anyone who survived his or her childhood has enough to write about for the rest of their lives. I found this poem called "100 Memories" in which the author simply listed 100 lines of snapshot memories without explanation, the sum of which gave a lovely overview of her life. Some of the lines were just things like, "red knee socks" or "Nana's perfume." I made my students write their own 100 memories poem, accompanied by numerous groans until they finished, and then they were always amazed by what they came up with.

So, that is a very long explanation of how I want to introduce our docent community to you:

100 Memories of State Park Docents

1. Phytoplankton birthday cake. Can you identify?
2. Children cleaning mud off their boots after exploring the Salt Marsh
3. Yellow School Buses
4. Mary, you have to see this sticky worm
5. Baleen
6. "There are 250,000 hairs per inch on an otter's pelt"
7. The Black Hill Trail Gang
8. Falling off the Rainbow bridge
9. Back into the ocean
10. Now a dolphin
11. The romantic life of a Monarch Butterfly
12. "No, no, look HERE."
13. WOW
14. "The Blue Heron chicks are my grandbabies"
15. Did I tell you about the food?
16. An Island Called California
17. Sea Stars vs. Star Fish
18. Coyote Brush
19. Stinky Monkey Flower
20. Strawberry Jam and White Bread
21. Quilting when it's 113
22. Pigs down the chute
23. My warm hand in a bag lined with Crisco.
24. Translation. Whale fat is good in the ocean.
25. Gambling with Acorns
26. Bug for a day
27. Where's my thorax???
28. Can I use glitter on my wings?
29. Save Our State Parks
30. Signatures, signatures, signatures
31. Flagging down the Amtrak train
32. "Oh, that's what that is"
33. Roadkill freezer. (Please don't ask).
34. Did I mention the smiles??
35. Two big snakes hold up the earth
36. When these snakes are angry and move
37. Earthquakes
38. Milking the 2X4 "cow"
39. Truth or Consequences
40. "My favorite tool is a crowbar"
41. Chocolate Lilies
42. Whale cookies
43. Cleaning whale bones is stinky
44. "Incoming" (Brown Pelicans)
45. Eating Pickleweed
46. Imagine you only see the muzzle of a horse
47. And have to imagine the rest
48. Now you know how most of us see whales
49. Bobcat on the hood of a car
50. Beavers in the lagoon
51. Weeding, weeding, weeding
52. Butterfly Spa
53. Bored teenagers, then they see the otters, 8 again
54. Mary, you're standing in poison oak.
55. Did I mention the hugs?
56. Elephant seals can dive 5,000 feet
57. "That walk with the docent was one of the best days I ever had"
58. Grandbabies flew out of the nest.
59. Mary, you are standing in poison oak, again.
60. "It's my responsibility"
61. "What can I do to help?"
62. "We have to let people know what's going on."
63. Chasing an Anna's hummingbird around a ship
64. California is going to run into the Himalayas one day.
65. Looking at the estuary through the eyes of fish
66. Did you know we get 10 inches of rain through fog every year?
67. "My lens is bigger than yours"
68. "It's okay to get dirty."
69. Instead of traffic reports, feeding frenzy reports
70. Nature's supermarket
71. The romantic life of the lonely otter….
72. 85% of all life on earth lives 20 miles from shore
73. whether you are on land or in water
74. Nature deficit disorder
75. What's that purple shrub on the hillside?
76. Ceanothus
77. Okay, thanks…
78. Good thing he knows his Latin
79. California Lilac
80. Oh, thanks.
81. The Chumash called it Washiko
82. Oh, thanks.
83. Mary, you're standing in poison oak, again.
84. In my defense, until I moved here, I never lived where there was poison oak.
85. They pushed cattle off the ships and they swam ashore.
86. It takes ten docents 7 hours to grind and cook two cups of acorn mush.
87. No one likes the acorn mush
88. until someone bakes into oatmeal cookies
89. which nobody knows until the cookies are gone
90. Children today don't know how to just play in nature
91. "I have never seen the ocean until today."
92. Shooing rattlesnakes
93. You need what for curatorial??
94. Anonymous flowers, rocks, pictures, coffee cups appear on my desk
95. "Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens"
96. "We can move that trail."
97. "I don't need to record my hours"
98. "How many hours was I here this week?
99. "Huh, I only thought it was ten.
100. Mary, you're standing . . . 

Photo by Mike Baird: Freeman Hall - in memoriam of our beloved friend, docent,
humanitarian, birder and scientist. Freeman passed away on 02 April 2010
Deep condolences to Worth Hall and the family. Worth and Freeman are shown here
with Rouvaishyana, installing a new display at the Morro Bay Heron Rookery.