Mixed Metaphors

With houseguests we travel the city, coast, and outlying areas as if we're seeing San Francisco for the first time, and that's how it feels.  Last week I toured Alcatraz with Mason. As we followed a circular path to the top of the rock, I remembered Mont-Saint-Michel  in Normandy--its wind-battered arches and  sharply ascending pathways.

Any joy I felt on this small island was erased at the sight of the cell blocks, two tiers of cages hardly large enough to hold the regulation cot, toilet, and bowl-sized sink.

The next day's journey was a hike through Muir Woods. If the cell blocks of Alcatraz suggested ultimate confinement, then this grand canyon of sequoias stood for unbridled freedom.  At every side, lush ferns and mosses  presided over rocky creeks.  Above us, arms of the sequoias soared to touch a white-paper sky, barely acknowledging that they, like us, were rooted in the soil.