In memory of the the recent passing of music-meister Stephen Sondheim, we took a trip yesterday into the woods at Samuel P. Taylor State Park in Marin. . . . OK, that’s not why we really went there. But it was almost as far west as we could travel, and we thought it would allow us to experience something of a west side story. If we went any further, however, we would have hit the ocean, and we didn’t want to trespass into a turf war between the sharks and the, uh, . . . jet skiers.

Anyway, as I was saying, merrily we rolled along to the park. . . .

I chugged my big zoomy camera along to take bird photos, but the mixed redwood forest was eerily quiet of animal music aside from some occasional ravens and scrub jays screaming from their distant shadowy lairs. We didn’t even see any squirrels. Of course, we brought along with us our own Big Bad Wolf for a walk along the trails, so maybe the other creatures were all scared away by his bold, intimidating presence.

With no birds or other critters to take photos of, I resigned myself to tree and leaf photos. Luckily, redwoods and autumn maples aren’t too hard on the eyes.

Maple leaves have the ability to look pretty in almost any form, even in when disintegrating. No wonder the Canadians put them on a flag.

Of course the redwoods drop pretty things too, . . . . such as these redwood seedpods and old redwood leaves providing a ground cover for the redwood sorrel. . . .

Moss growing on the hollowed out base of a Sequoia stump:

I’m not sure if this is moss sprouting out of a redwood, or a redwood sprouting out of moss. Either way, I’m sure Sweeney Todd would love to give it a trim:

And then we all went home and lived happily ever after.

Just kidding. A wolf ate us.

The end.