I’m running with this theme, because life keeps handing me additional
material, and I realize that my walks and communion with nature are my
way of processing life, my personal religion. Call it trailism (or
pathology. Ha!)...
After a night out with friends visiting from L.A., they headed
up the coast, and I headed
down the coast for my planned weekend hike near the Marin Headlands. But then I remembered why I’ve dubbed San Francisco “
Schleprock
of the Bay”as a thick layer of fog overflowed that city’s boundaries
and enveloped me, and I remembered why Mark Twain (supposedly)
said
the coldest winter he’d ever spent was summer in San Francisco while my
car’s digital thermometer dropped from 86° F to 61°F. Lesson
one in not getting attached to “plans" when life
throws you a curve ball. I promptly turned around and headed back into
the Marin sun and navigated my way to a trail I hadn’t hiked for a good
6-7 years since I moved to the Bay Area.
It couldn’t have been more appropriate in this time of “rebooting”, as I found myself on a trail which, in
Proustian
fashion, immersed me back into the feelings of a time when I felt full
of hope and boundless exploration. I also remembered that the last time
I was on this trail, around 1999, a dead rabbit had fallen-plop!-out of
the sky and landed at my feet. I guess sometimes you need a jarring,
wake-up-call type of symbol on your path. Once I had determined that I
wasn’t in a
Monty Python skit or
Samuel Beckett play, I spotted a hawk in a nearby tree, who had obviously dropped his lunch while flying overhead.
No such surprise today, though the reconnection with this old trail
brought subtler messages. When I reached what used to be the end of the
trail today, I discovered that it had been extended over the years. I
used to feel quite satisfactorily tired at the old end of the trail,
and accepted that as the appropriate turn-around by the mere fact of is
existance. Now I found that with more trail tacked on and the end
further away, I still had reserves of energy to go further and find the
new end. So up I went.
The trail went straight up a steep mountain, and narrowed to the point
that I began to wonder if it was, in fact, a trail, and not a gully for
runoff winter rainwater. But I saw the summit looming ahead, and wanted
to see what was on the other side. I was amply rewarded, as one often
is in Marin, with an expansive panoramic view of the entire bay, little
white sailboats dotting the
Sausalito harbor below, 101 freeway snaking through the rolling hills,
Mount Tamalpais
rising up behind me, and the tree-filled valley extending far into the
distance. It was very good. I felt very good. These are the moments.
On the way back down, near the bottom, I remembered that this valley
had once been farmed at the turn of the century, and that I had
discovered the remains of an orchard off of the trail years before.
After some poking around and backtracking, I found the orchard back,
but none of the trees were fruiting as they had when I was there
before. I will have to return at the end of the summer to see if they
bear fruit.
