There is a mountain, just North of San Francisco, across the Golden Gate bridge, called Mount Tamalpais.

The rumor has always floated around the Bay Area that the Native Americans who lived there before we so rudely came barging in, have always called the mountain ‘the Sleeping Lady’, or ‘the Sleeping Maiden’. That is certainly what we living across the bay from it have always called the mountain. Because from across the bay, that is exactly what it looks like…

From anywhere in the hills close to my mom’s house, you can see her reclining in all her glory. Her head is the highest point, to the right, with her long hair streaming off to the North. The funny thing is that the magic only works from some viewpoints, because it is actually two mountain peaks that are separated by a little valley. But I am not here to remove the magic. I am here to cast the spell ever wider…

From down by the bay on the East side, the maiden always seems to be there, waiting for some other magic to awaken her…

And your eyes cannot help but to be drawn to her slumbering form…

Like all the views in the Bay Area, it is simply a matter of what time of the day you let your eyes seek her, or what the sky and the clouds and the fog and the sun are doing at just that moment. It is also about where you choose to go to view her. One favorite local spot is Indian Rock, a small park nestled not too far up into the Berkeley hills…

There she is… rising above that little hill in the center of the picture, way over across the water.

She is a woman of many moods… which is odd when you consider that she is supposed to be asleep…

She waits patiently for her dreams to come at last to their end, so that she might walk the earth once more…

And when it is needed, to ward off night’s chill, she wraps her blanket of fog about herself as the dreams go ever on…