Sea Ranch Chapel

Last week I had the good fortune to spend a few days with friends in Sea Ranch, a Sonoma County planned community known for its dramatic coastline, secluded beaches, as well as its characteristic architecture. A design review process ensures that homes don't dominate the beautiful natural landscape. While the homes certainly aren't cookie-cutter replicas, they do share key characteristics including unpainted wood siding/shingles, and many large windows that bring the landscape and natural light into the home and often help form comfortable interior nooks which are ideal for reading or napping.

One of the most intriguing structures is the Sea Ranch Chapel. This small non-denominational sanctuary, which resembles a hat with a feather protruding from the top, was completed in 1985 and is open to the public. Local materials such as redwood, stones and seashells help ground the chapel in the surrounding environment. The small size creates a very intimate interior where magnificent stained glass windows admit light from different angles and cast exquisite light patterns on the stone floor and redwood seating. The Sea Ranch Chapel, which is also frequently empty and very quiet, is not only something to behold, but is also highly conducive to personal reflection.

 Redwood seats and floral mosaic

Local materials including redwood, stones and seashells (abalone shell pictured here) are utilized in both chapel interior and exterior

Prie-dieu (prayer desk) with embedded shells and wrought iron prayer screen

Ostrea lurida, how we miss thee!

Native West Coast oysters known as Olympia oysters (Ostrea lurida) could once be found in great abundance from Alaska to Mexico and were a key food source for Native Americans and early settlers. While they may still appear today, the Olympia oyster is "functionally extinct" according to a recent San Francisco Chronicle article. The oysters we occasionally enjoy these days are actually farm-raised Japanese Pacific oysters. Personally, I love oysters and can only imagine, with envy, a day when they were a local staple found throughout SF Bay. However, personal taste and diet are trivial compared to the profound impact the demise of the native Olympia oyster has on the ecosystems of SF Bay and other areas. Olympia Oyster beds provide critical habitat for small fish, crabs, anemones, and other marine life. In addition, as a bivalve they are filter feeders who each clean gallons per day of pollutants. It's difficult to envision, but when Olympia oyster beds were found throughout SF Bay, residents regularly ate oysters and the Bay itself would have been significantly cleaner, more biodiverse, and literally teeming with marine life.

Sidebar: The Olympia oyster's taxonomy can be confusing. Ostrea lurida and Ostreola conchaphila are often considered to be synonymous. However, a 2009 study published in the Journal of Shellfish Research provides molecular evidence that they are indeed distinct species.