From the ridiculous to the sublime (and back)

8/2/06, 1710, Hotel (Lombard St.), San Francisco, CA – I’m on a roll. I might as well continue.

I awoke rested, despite having numerous dreams throughout the night. None bad., though I seem to recall some where pretty weird and featured a cast of strange characters.

Though I discovered Muir Woods just before departing and received encouragement to visit from my brother, I was not entirely certain I’d find time to make it a part of the journey. But, today’s visit is a direct result of my “overachieving” on Monday. The time was there.

After a light breakfast, I departed for Marin County via car and crossed the Golden Gate Bridge – shrouded in fog this morning - heading north, the opposite direction of rush hour traffic. The symbolism was not lost on me. I returned to Rt. 1 at Tamalais Valley, and began my twisting, turning climb back into the Marin Headlands. After crossing the summit of the mountains, I made a spontaneous decision to stop by Muir Beach before heading to the Woods. The drive down the mountain to the Pacific was every bit as twisty-turny as the drive up Tamalpais.

Muir Beach is small, but it was deserted and the surf was pounding away. I walked and paused on the beach and had time to reflect upon what brought me here. The pace of sightseeing, hiking, and keeping in touch with the home front had allowed me to forget that one major goal was solitude and soul searching. I sat on a rock and pondered the surf. Mother Earth’s constant metronome. It was a good opportunity to take stock of the stress, sadness, pain, rage, and confusion that prompted me to undertake this sojourn. Yeah, they’re all still there (though I have at least temporarily stopped biting my fingernails, a good sign). This will be a day to work with them some, I know.

After some time in thought, I continued to the rocks at the south end of the beach and took a photo (this one warranted the old Nikon to be put into use) before traversing to the north end, then slowly returning to my car. I suppose there’s some irony in the fact that a beach named after John Muir, who came to believe that humans and Mother Nature had equal stature in the wild, would be preserved in a pristine state, but be bounded on one side by a hillside liberally peppered with expensive homes clinging to the side of it.

I departed Muir Beach and quickly found myself at the entrance to Muir Woods. “Myself,” it turns out, is damn near literal. I must’ve been the second car to arrive at the park. I quickly changed into my hiking boots, slipped my backpack on, and took a look at the park map on a sign in the parking lot. Two major trails were available to me. One was a short “up-and-back” that didn’t stray beyond Muir’s Redwood Grove. The other, which incorporated the first trail, but branched off (way off, as I eventually discovered), looked like the challenge I was seeking, for, you see, I had to know if my feet and legs were up to back-to-back-to-back days of extensive hiking. This was the time, and that was the trail.

I paid my $3 entrance fee, and was immediately enveloped into what turned out to be a vast grove of coastal Redwoods. Now, this meeting between me and these Redwoods goes all the way back to elementary school, where I first learned of these astounding giants and marveled at them in the textbook and in my imagination. That memory struck me the moment I entered the grove and stayed with me throughout. The adult had reverted to being an eight or nine year-old and my sense of adventure was that much more keen. The Redwoods towered as high as you can imagine – and even higher than the child inside me imagined – and I was soon struck by how quiet things had become. Muir Woods is a National Monument, but it might as well have been named a National Cathedral. The deeper I hiked into the woods, the quieter it became. Not even the sound of birds chirping! It was both eerie and exhilarating, I stopped and “listened” several times and was amazed each time by the dead silence I encountered.

After a while, I came to the point where the two trails diverged and I…(sincere apologies to Robert Frost)…I took the one less traveled (the Hillside Trail), and that, indeed, has made all the difference. The Hillside Trail immediately began what turned out to be a long, grueling, and strenuous ascent through the Muir Redwood grove, up into part of the Tamalpais Peaks (there are three), and onto the Ben Johnson Trail, part of a vast Bay Area trail network. I went up, and up, and up, and up, and kept going up for what seemed forever, and never really perceived much in the way of sky. The canopy the Redwoods created, as well as the fact that - despite this relentless climb – the Redwoods just kept coming (even at the higher altitudes) made sunlight a rare commodity. Soon, I realized I’d far surpassed the tops of the first Redwoods I’d encountered in the grove (approximately 370 ft) and was STILL climbing. And I kept climbing! At some point, I met up with the Ben Johnson trail and, wouldn’t you know it, starting climbing again!

By this time, I was entering the fog bank that had covered the Bay Area all morning, but began to see occasional breaks and blue sky above. At last, after a number of switchbacks that gave me hope an end to the ascent was near, I reached the summit, popped out of the grove into an open meadow, and intersected with the Dipsea Trail. I’d hiked 2.5 miles, a good portion of which was straight up.

The Dipsea threaded through a vast meadow at the top of the Tamalpais Peaks. There, I saw striking blue Steller’s Jay, stood silent while a young white-tail buck fed off some succulent leaves about 50 yards from the trail, and heard the cry of a red-tailed hawk that sounded strikingly similar to the one that was sampled and used repeatedly on TV for way too many years (I KNOW you’ve all heard it at one time or another). Eventually, Dipsea broke off the main trail system, entered a Redwood-less forest, and began a long descent back into the Redwood Creek valley. I crossed Redwood Creek and emerged from the woods pretty exhausted into the overflow parking lot from which I’d begun.

Total mileage: 4.1 miles. If I have the time, I want to find out what kind of vertical ascent I made. It had to have been substantial. I kid you not. It was starting to feel as though I was in an Escher painting or that I’d eventually pop out of the fog bank and come face to face with St. Peter.

I must’ve looked pretty authentic, because two young couples asked my advice on how to proceed on the trails. I told them that if they wanted to do the whole shooting match, following my route would be preferred, otherwise their endless climb would be in a relatively mundane forest instead of a vast grove of Redwoods.

After changing back into sneakers (ahhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!), I departed for Stinson Beach (another twisty-turny stretch of Rt. 1), an isolated Marin County community on the Pacific. Quaint, arrogantly shabby (a South Carolina-ism), but still a pretty cool place, I walked the beach (must’ve been 150-200 others out) just as the fog started to get sucked back out to see and blue skies appeared. After finding some small, but brilliantly blue shells on the beach and visiting the huge rocks at Stinson’s south end, I dropped two post cards into the mail, packed it in, and drove back to San Francisco. The bridge was still shrouded in fog, but the city was partly sunny and bright.

What day! The complete opposite of yesterday’s stomp through the urban jungle and tourista Hell. For the good part of two hours, I was completely alone with Mother Nature and my thoughts. After yesterday’s walking tour of San Francisco, it was just what the doctor ordered.

So, tonight, I’m probably going to walk (oh, no…not MORE walking!) down Lombard to Mel’s Diner (no kidding) and then return to the hotel to begin the repacking process, prep for tomorrow’s move to Vallejo, and make final plans for my four-day siege of Napa Valley.