VASCO CAVES REGIONAL PRESERVE: A Wind-Swept Journey Through Time Hiking Ancient Terrain and Witnessing Sunset Over Mt. Diablo on the Summer Solstice

A bobcat sits on furry haunches atop a rocky knoll surveying his grassy domain with casual feline regard, sniffing the air at nothing in particular. On the higher ridge opposite, a mother coyote and her young pup stop to look around, then scamper down and out of sight under cover of brush. Overhead, a cloudless cerulean sky buzzes with the avian antics of prairie falcons, kestrels, red-tailed hawks, and golden eagles. In the valley below, a herd of deer graze peacefully, while a kit fox paws at the ground and trots away triumphantly with a meal dangling from her jaws. On a hillside abloom with purple needlegrass, silver lupine and fiery orange poppies, industrious ground squirrels have dug out batteries of tunnels, which they share with burrowing owls, lined up like a row of wise sentinels with eyes sharpened on the lookout for a hapless vole. Somewhere a mountain lion stalks and lies in wait. Condors, antelopes and grizzly bears might appear. In the sheltered sanctuary of a guano-splattered rock overhang, a group of Central Valley Yokuts, or perhaps Delta Miwok, or more local Ohlone native people, gather in ceremony to paint ancestral symbols, dance the ritual stories of creation, pray to gods and spirits, and congregate as one to witness the sacred transition of seasons at the longest day of the year.

Life scenarios such as described above have unfolded for thousands of years at this special place in far eastern Contra Costa County, near Byron, northeast of Livermore, and about 40 miles east of Berkeley, in a land that, were it not for a carefully managed resource plan that allows for occasional visits by human beings, has all but been forgotten by time and civilization. Here, you can stand alone on a rocky promontory, lost to the world, eyes closed, and gaze into the infinite beyond, feeling infused with the ancient vibe of timelessness, at one with the eternal ebb and flow of creation, in synch and harmony with the undisturbed, natural rhythms of life.

This is a place that literally blows you away! On a naturalist-led guided tour on the final day of Spring, a group of twenty-two irrepressibly enthusiastic nature lovers brave unrelenting gusts of 30 mile per hour winds for the unique opportunity to walk among spectacular sandstone boulders, admire grassy hillsides dotted with venerable Valley oaks and California Buckeye trees, and take in otherwise off-limits high desert-like vistas overlooking four of California's nine distinct land forms, providing a stunning visual reference point for one of the East Bay's, and perhaps one of California's, most unusual ecosystems and precious natural resources -- the 775 acre Vasco Caves Regional Preserve.

Open to public tours just since 2005, access was preceded by years of wrangling with local land owners and finally a deal was struck with the Contra Costa Water District to help buy and protect the preserve. Indeed, because of the delicate balance of so many rare and threatened entities, Vasco Caves is a precious resource area deserving of the utmost protection, with access restricted to anyone not formally signed up with a guide through the East Bay Regional Park District. It's an ethic of deep respect meant to keep out the riff-raff and partiers, a conscious effort to preserve and protect the caves from destruction. (Drawing graffiti and incising initials, images and symbols in the soft sandstone is vandalism, pure and simple. . .just look at how people over the years have desecrated the awesome boulders at Mt. Diablo's Rock City.)

The ecological island, surrounded as it is by development, watershed lands, ranch lands, and vast tracts of wind turbines, exists in its own time and place, left alone all these years except for the scientifically and well-thought out land management practices to help restore certain pristine features. One account written by an elderly woman reminisces about having had the run of the place back in her youthful day – the forties? - when it was just a big backyard playground and she took everything for granted and now rues modern times when everything has to be restricted. The appeal, and precisely why it's restricted, is that isolated specimens of flora and fauna survive here, including rare and endangered species such as the red-legged frog, tiger salamander, western toad, and the San Joaquin kit fox. Adding to the aura of mystique worthy of the extra measures to safeguard Vasco Caves is its status as archaeological treasure trove -- grinding stones and mortar holes abound, where acorns and buckeye meal were ground; tool-making workshop sites exist, where occasionally flints and arrowheads and scattered pottery shards can be found; and, most notably, fragile, barely discernable pictographs decorate walls in tucked away alcoves, iconic representations of ancient creativity, probably the only surviving or known examples of Native American rock art in the immediate Bay Area. Archaeologists have concluded from forensic evidence that people have been active at Vasco ever since humans have been in California, dating back to about 8,000 to 10,000 years ago.

According to our affable guide, Mike Moran, a naturalist with the East Bay Regional Park District, "a lot comes together right here at Vasco Caves" - convergences of history, geology, geography, botany, zoology, ecology, and prehistoric archaeology. Before setting off, Mike gathers the group together and pulls out two large laminated maps (topo and linguistic) to spatially orient us and give a short lecture on what to expect. With the wind whipping ferociously, we duck behind the bus for a respite, and from the looks on some of the participants’ faces it’s obvious that some did not come prepared for the raw elements. If it weren't for the raging wind, it would be a spectacularly perfect evening. Well, it is anyway, despite the wind.

Finally, at about 6:30 pm, with crisp rays of sunlight bathing the eastern views in golden hues, and casting warm shadowy effects all about, we set off down the trail into this strange, never before seen world existing just a few hills over from Vasco Road. Considered one of the most dangerous stretches of highway in the Bay Area, the road was built as a concession by-way when Los Vaqueros Reservoir was built. It was never meant for so much traffic (as commuters from two counties use it and drive, cell phones in hand, like maniacs), and many fatal accidents have resulted mostly from cross-overs. Vasco Caves also happens to be within view of the somewhat unsightly, somewhat disturbing bird-killing wind turbines of the Altamont Pass Wind Research Area. And yet, despite....it's an amazing sensation to be sandwiched in amongst all this and still get the feeling of being smack dab in truly remote, wind-swept, rugged, ancient territory.

Along the way, at various spots of interest, mostly out of the wind, Mike stops and points something out -- a tree, a plant, a feature of the landscape, a dead snake, a buckeye, sheeps’ bones, an old well -- and holds forth knowledgably on everything that makes Vasco Caves such a one-of-a-kind experience. We learn how grazing management practices help restore native grasses and increase raptor habitat; about the large nesting populations of golden eagles and burrowing owls; and have a “wow” moment when Mike tells us that Yosemite Miwok peoples have stories about the Vasco Caves. “Look around you,” he exhorts with a sweeping gesture, “what do you see?” He is specifically pointing to a shallow depression with tule reeds growing in abundance. “How can it be,” he asks, “that water-loving plants can thrive in such a seemingly arid environment?” Same thing goes for the big cottonwoods and the 100+ year old Valley oaks, he explains, thirsty trees which require year-round access to water. The answer, Socratically rendered, turns out to be a conundrum of geology: the preserve is a very subtle water dependent ecosystem where plants exist and thrive in harsh conditions owing to ground water that is forced to the surface from far away by complex subterranean activities that somehow push it to this area. A real miracle, he says, one of several which make the preserve so special, and allow so many different species of wildflowers, trees, and large and small fauna to call this place home. Otherwise, scanning the lay of the land, there don't appear to be any natural drainages or water flow channels (missed by creek-lovin' Gambolin' Man? why no permanent settlements were established here?), so unseen groundwater, wells, springs and vernal pools are truly life-giving gifts provided by Mother Nature for her many creatures.

We walk on, the wind just pummeling us - I turn and strut backwards, a locomotor feat that proves to be a major improvement, but no one else catches the cue, instead trudging with heads down, and jackets turned up against their faces, causing them to miss out on so much of the scenery, also making it difficult to follow Mike's ad lib discourses. Looking about, I'm charmed by animated hillsides swaying with knee-high grasses; tree tops bending and swooshing to the will and whip of the Aeolian forces. We stop next to a beautiful outcrop of boulders tinged in chartreuse yellow algae and splotched with vermillion red lichen patterns, situated in a picturesque hollow like a Georgia O'Keeffe mirage. We gawk at and snap photos of the fortress-like bulk, while Mike tests out the group's Rorschach quotient at every turn – see who can spot what in the sculptural contortions of the wind-carved formations. Someone sees an eagle's beak, another person spots a manatee, someone else a badger. I see Valley of Fire like elephantine figures and other fanciful forms. It's easy to understand why native peoples worshipped such rocks and anthropomorphized them as gods and spirit beings.

We walk on - it's a very leisurely pace we're moving at, covering all told no more than two or three easy miles - and Mike continues to regale us with tidbits of this and nuggets of that. We learn about the expansion of native bunchgrass on the hillsides, owing to the grazing of sheep that eat the non-native foxtail grasses. Mike points to a distant copse of trees high on a ridge and notes they are the northernmost stand of Palmer Oak, an uncommon desert mountain species of Quercus generally found at altitudes of between 2300 and 4300 ft. and known for its large acorns and hollylike spiny leaves. At another outcrop of colorful rocks jumbled in a mass thirty feet tall pockmarked with holes, solution pockets, and alcoves where cliff swallows make their nests, Mike decides to test our knowledge of geology....how did these boulders get here? What caused their existence? Why haven't they eroded to dunes of colorful dust? The answer to these questions, we find out, is 50 million years ago an ocean covered the Central Valley to the foothills of the Sierra Nevada and over eons of time, it drained, receded, filled, and dried up, laid down sediment, and meanwhile the same tectonic forces at work that uplifted and created nearby Mt. Diablo also worked to thrust up bedrock through malleable sandstone and push it to the surface, tilting it angularly and moving it along the fault lines. Differing minerals tended to bind together in what are known as concretions - and the rocks were thus - uh - set in stone – making them resistant to weathering, and slowing the erosion process way down. Some of the concretions take on shapes resembling hoodoos, spheroids, cannonballs, and other odd-looking, whimsical configurations decorating the rock walls like artistic works of sculpture carved by an unseen creative hand.

Vasco Caves, like nearby Round Valley, Mike tells us, is believed to have been an ancestral gathering place for tribes from all over the region where people passing through would come together to trade, meet in council, socialize, have fun, gamble, rest up, and move on. There is no archaeological evidence of permanent settlements. It's also believed to have been – and continues to be for their descendants - a harmonic convergence / Solstice Site, a place that held – and continues to hold - special significance for those who came - and come - to celebrate and meditate. For the ancient ones whose spiritual leaders – shamans and medicine men – conducted sacred hunting and harvesting rituals and healing ceremonies in the shadows of the big rocks and giant oak trees, the caves held special, mystical meanings, as caves everywhere have, representing as they do passage to the underworld. Though not technically caverns or grotto type caves, these wind-carved boulders still must have been treated with the respect accorded any great cathedral or place of worship. The paintings on the walls, while pretty underwhelming, but no less remarkable for their very existence, leave open to interpretation the messages being conveyed – crosses, spirals and bird figures. There is no doubt magico-religious significance centered around the activity of pictographic art creation – attempts to symbolically represent and bridge the gap between the spirit and material worlds, perhaps, or invoke spiritual connections between human and animals to gain an edge in the mojo of hunting them. Who knows? And how many painted figures and symbols do we not see, that have been rendered invisible by the ravages of wind and rain? Even years of cattle grazing, when they would rub up against wall surfaces, could account for their disappearance and extreme scarcity. We'll never know. Nor will we ever know what the imputed messages were meant to convey. All we can do is revel in their unknowable antiquity, muse over their titillating mystery.

The sun was due to set at 8:32 pm, so from the pictographic panel we make our way up about 100 ft. along a single-track thread of a trail through chaparral and small boulders, with alpenglow sunlight filtering down on the backdrop of big boulders, lending them an almost religious aura. It's a beautiful time of evening to be cresting the high point, atop a 75 ft. high bluff, sandwiched between looming Mt. Oso behind us and imposing Mt. Diablo to the west. We are approaching the vernal pools. Owing to their seasonality, they are bone dry, but still quite photogenic and interesting geologic features for their shapes and functions, harboring as they do (when filled with water) assorted amphibious creatures and Longhorn fairy shrimp, odd little inch long 11-legged crustaceans found only in a few other locales. During dry periods, the shrimps' eggs, called cysts, go into an extended hibernation, and are capable of withstanding heat, cold and prolonged desiccation, before awakening to life with the coming of rains. More miracles of nature. The absence of notable surface water at Vasco Caves leaves it up to the imagination to picture these tinajas (shallow depressions in sandstone rocks that collect water) brimming with and then overflowing with water creating ephemeral gushers cascading down the sides of the rocks. That would be a sight to behold! Each season brings with it its own charms and surprises, though, and today, it's a dry and burnt auburn of a Summer Solstice day, marking one of the most mystical days of the year, celebrated around the globe at Solstice hot spots by thousands of animistic pagan earth worshippers, and some normal folk, too, no doubt, gathered together this evening to look, admire, wonder, offer up some silent prayer or invocation.

As the sun filters behind a huge cumulus cloud, coloring it pale lavender and orange, Mike elaborates some more on the topic at hand - that Vasco Caves was probably a Solstice Site for the ancient ones, a place they visited to experience the mystical energy evoked by the sun's overhead passage from east to its trajectory of setting perfectly in the west between the twin massifs of sacred Mt. Diablo. . .a time when prayers were heard and the barriers between the spirit and material world dissolved, facilitating passage into the great beyond, the nether/otherworld. At a perfectly timed moment, the sun dips below the horizon, casting Tuyshtak in fiery tones, and, if just for an illusory moment, the crack between two worlds opens....and I am mesmerized by a sense of timelessness, rebirth, connectedness, and age-old belongingness to something intimate and personal, but beyond the ken of human understanding.

FOUR PARKS IN THE OAKLAND HILLS: Chabot, Redwood, Huckleberry & Sibley Provide Alluring Natural Attractions and Quick Escapes from the Madding Crowd

Only a bona fide urban creature – someone whose idea of a nature get-away is lounging on a grassy meadow in citified Golden Gate Park, or jogging the asphalt loop around construction-choked Lake Merritt - could endure the passage of days without regular and extended forays to the wild places and open spaces abounding on the fringes of metropolitan Bay Area sprawl. For the rest of us (accidental?) city dwellers who crave nature like a hit off the hookah, life in the Bay Area is only (and barely) tolerable because of the vast swathes of greenbelt preserved in our midst, places of refuge that offer soulful escapes and sanity-saving immersions in a variety of landscapes.

First, let us give thanks and praise to the wondrous workings of local geology. In the East Bay, ten million years of turbulent uplift, shifting, folding and contorting, punctuated by cataclysmic volcanic eruptions and explosions, have warped and tortured the landscape, defining the natural features that gave rise to unique plant and animal communities, and eons later, to the human diorama. A Stegosaurus ridge spine, some 20 miles long, runs northwesterly along the urban boundary zone, jutting up an average of 1300 ft., with several 1700 footers, and topping out at Vollmer Peak, not the most dominating presence at 1905 ft. in the Berkeley Hills, but still an impressive rise of earth where civilization's relentless encroachment is halted and has no where to go. From the air, the prominent greenbelt reveals a rollicking topography of ravine-cleaved hills, blown volcano tops, large boulder outcrops, and modest peaks and canyons. The complex and varied landforms of the Berkeley Hills hold many surprises and treasures - sheltering second growth redwood forests and dense oak woodlands, alternating with chaparral, grasslands, and meadow environments; hiding tranquil lakes and ponds; harboring gentle riparian corridors; and nurturing sensitive ecosystems. Truly, the Berkeley Hills greenbelt is an ecological treasure trove, an animal and plant sanctuary, an outdoor lover's recreational paradise, and literally the only thing that has kept small-town Gambolin' Man from going crazy all these years or flying the coop long ago.

Four special parks, each as familiar as an old lover by now, make up a contiguous stretch of the Oakland foothills ridge system - starting from the southern end, the regional parks of Anthony Chabot and Redwood are super-popular destinations, but often, you’ll experience only silence and serenity in their sprawling acreage and might find yourself remarking over and over, "Six million people in the Bay Area and I've got the place all to myself! How can this be?" Moving northwest, the specially designated Botanic and Volcanic Regional Preserves of Huckleberry and Sibley are characterized by singular features found nowhere else – endemic and rare botany at Huckleberry, and geologic oddities and other surprises at Sibley. So, lace up your hiking boots, grab your hat and shades, load up your pack, and head for them thar hills!

Anthony Chabot Regional Park

Lake Chabot looks like a jewel in a natural setting. Its gleaming presence belies the relative destruction of a once-intact ecosystem comprised of numerous biomes and multiple creeks - Moraga, Indian, Redwood, Buckhorn, Grass Valley, and Elmhurst - that drained a large watershed, now much of it water district lands. The queen of the lot, San Leandro Creek, flows down southeasterly out of the rugged east side of the Berkeley Hills before looping to bay outlets and marshes near the Oakland Airport. In the classic vade mecum, The East Bay Out: A Personal Guide to the East Bay Regional Parks (1974), Malcolm Margolin remarks, "The creeks no longer flow through our cities - at least not as living creeks - but the waters have not disappeared. The waters are waiting for us in the hills as artificial lakes, big calm bodies of water standing patiently behind their dams, willing to give comfort to anyone who comes looking."

Covering a most comforting 315 acres, beautiful Lake Chabot is the result of a dam constructed in the 1870s by 800 Chinese laborers (at least four of whom were killed by dynamite blasts) brought in (as was customary) to do the dirty and dangerous work. Designed by Anthony Chabot - the man who invented the high powered and highly destructive hydraulic mining hoses used in the Sierra Nevada gold fields – the dam was a post-gold fever visionary scheme to bring a stable water supply to the burgeoning population of East Bay foothill cities. In yet another environmentally sensitive affront in the name of progress, the Quebec native turned his water cannons loose on pristine hillsides to blast out cliff faces to block creek flow. A reservoir was then created by damming the narrow confluence point where Grass Valley and San Leandro Creeks converged. Chabot Reservoir slaked the thirst of community residents for the next 65 years, until the late 1930s, and by 1966, with a fishing hungry public long clamoring for access, it finally became a recreational area. Once considered "one of the wonders of California", Chabot's dam accelerated the pace of development, and had the extra unintended tragic consequence of blocking egress for migrating steelhead and native rainbow trout - first identified as a species in Redwood Creek – forever trapping and isolating them physically and genetically in the upper reaches of the watershed. But who knew - or cared - back then when the only thing that mattered was progress.

The lake’s shimmering blue waters and surrounding hills, fragrant with eucalyptus and dotted with wildflowers, provide endless recreation for family picnickers, boaters and kayakers, joggers, hikers, strollers, equestrians and cyclists. You can spend the day fishing, if that's your thing, or hiking, to your heart’s content around pretty lakeside trails to remote inlets and small bays. It can seem as if the busy world has disappeared from the face of the earth. For a different kind of enjoyment, rent an old-fashioned rowboat at the marina and spend hours burning fat and building muscle paddling like a maniac; or, if you prefer, just casually canoe about the shore's reedy edges, exploring islands and back channels alongside rolling eucalyptus-shaded hills, imagining that you are anywhere but in Alameda County with its 1.5 million population. Prime birding opportunities await here – on any given day you will see flamboyant cormorants flapping their wings or diving deeply for a tasty tidbit; observe herons, great blue and green, and snow white egrets, perched motionless in muddy flats, in silent hunt mode; track circling raptors, soaring vultures, and feeding water fowl; furry flotillas of ducks and honking geese will delight. . .all the while secretly hoping to catch a glimpse of the "Loch Ness" monster that reputedly dwells in the chthonic depths (some old-timers claim to have seen it; others say it is a released pet caiman that has grown to enormous proportions; others say hooey but relish the myth anyway for its exotic flavor).

You never know what you might see here. One day, floating listlessly in the hot sun, going nowhere in particular, we watched an unlikely creature – a regal orange-billed swan - maneuvering back 'n forth across the rippling water, gliding in and darting out of reeds, chased by glittering dragonfly chaperones. We followed this lovely animal around through mazes of reedy channels and across open waters, as though she were playing a game with us. Later on, I looked in my bird book and learned she was a Mute Swan, Eurasian in provenance, mostly at home on the East Coast, and rarely sighted in California. But there she was in all her Cygnus glory, entertaining us with her graceful swan antics, yet another small and unexpected miracle of existence for us to behold in silent, joyous appreciation.

The lake, adjacent picnic facilities, the super-popular campground, and the noisy, obnoxious shooting range (ugh!), comprise just a portion of the 4700 acre park. From the McDonald Staging Area off heavily forested Redwood Road, you can hike miles of trail through fabulous nooks and crannies of nature, or challenge yourself on the 13 mile Chabot mountain bike loop, a real butt-kicker that’ll definitely test your mettle with a couple of lung-busting climbs out of Bort Meadow and Chabot valley to sweeping ridge top views. Breathtaking, fun stuff. Yes, Anthony Chabot Regional Park defies all pretense - it is what it is - a simple but special place affording Margolin – and each of us - "the experience of cracking through what I've been programmed to see and catching a glimpse of the world beyond. . .when the murkiness of ordinary perception lifted and I felt that I could see things directly, immediately - as they really are."

Redwood Regional Park

Next up the road – or down – depending on which way you’re coming or going - is Redwood Regional Park – first “discovered” by Gambolin’ Man in his early days in the Bay Area (1983). So enthralled was he by its understated grandeur and mind-boggling proximity, no where else mattered. . .it took another several years to seek out and “discover” other “lesser” East Bay parks! Over the ensuing decades, I’ve no doubt visited Redwood Regional Park a thousand times (literally). Whether running long-distance loops up and down tough hill grades among the giant trees and Western ferns, or tromping through sun-dappled forests alongside babbling streams, or mountain biking my ass off through networks of rugged technical fire trails, each visit has been memorable. I’ve covered every spec of this land, over and over, to the point where you could blindfold me and drop me in the middle of a deep gully and I could tell you exactly where I was. I could point to individual trees, rocks and plants that have become familiar friends. After a thousand visits, though, don't things inevitably tend toward the seeming prosaic and ho-hum? But the minute I arrive at a favorite staging area or old familiar trail head, and disappear into the cool, protective understory of the towering trees, smell the pine duff, lay my eyes on sacred flowing water, I instantly regret my apostasies, for I'm in no less awe and wonder, never let down, always uplifted and inspired anew by the beauty and wild nature that has remained in this tract of land situated directly above the 44th largest city in the U.S. - Oakland, California.

Make no mistake - this ain't wilderness, but it once was, probably looking much like the last remaining tracts of primeval forests in Mendocino County today. Grizzly bears, mountain lions, and condors and bald eagles prowled the ridges and patrolled the skies. Before the saw mills of the 1860s wiped them out, this locale -- right here in "downtown Oakland" (as I always joked) - supported the largest, tallest and most magnificent Sequoia sempervirens on earth. Sixteen miles directly across from the Golden Gate, as history tells it, Sir Francis Drake and later mariners relied on the trees, which were visible from beyond the strait, to sight up their entry into the bay to avoid hazardous shoals. Margolin describes today’s present crop of offspring as a "race of adolescent giants rising out of logged off remains. . . .With their great size and a botanic history that stretches back 100 million years to the Age of Reptiles, the redwoods...seem aloof from the modern world." Indeed they are, and so are you when standing in their midst, lost and mindless to civilization’s buzzing, humming, whirring and mechanized noises down on the flats.

Fairy rings, or family circles of second and third generations of cloned offspring remind us of the prodigious dimensions of the original groves; within the empty space circumference of the fairy rings, you can imagine the original Mother Tree filling the area with millions of cubic feet of hairy woody tissue and rising so high that it strained the neck to glimpse just two-thirds of its height. Girth-wise, it would take thirty individuals linked with arms outstretched to encircle the largest specimen. These fire-scarred arboreal behemoths, if left to survive to today, would be 2000+ years old, and likely would have attained their maximal height of 360+ ft. – older and taller than the north coast's recently discovered dendro-giant, Hyperion. But, alas, fate - and the saws of men - intervened and the trees were zealously chopped down by ruthless profiteers caught up in the San Jose - San Francisco building boom of the mid-1800s. Can you imagine the ignorant mentality it took to just blithely wipe out this great forest? But who knew - or cared - back then when the only thing that mattered was progress. By 1863, the once Jurassic like park had been reduced to a "sea of stumps" and by the 1880s the "melancholy ruins" were hacked to pieces for firewood. John Muir, who worked so tirelessly around the turn of the century to ensure the salvation of the famous groves in Marin County’s Muir Woods National Monument, proclaimed that “these kings of the forest, the noblest of a noble race, rightly belong to the world . . . We cannot escape the responsibility as their guardians.” Unfortunately, Muir was about fifty years too late to do anything to help save Redwood Regional Park’s millennia-old trees from the killing fields of a dozen mill shantytowns that sprung up in the Oakland hills. What you see and experience today, however, is nothing to scoff at. Stands of princely 175 ft. tall redwoods adorn the restored banks of burbling Redwood Creek and the lower flanks of steep hills, such as you’ll encounter on French or Chown Trails, impressive specimens that will stop you in your tracks as you marvel and gaze skyward, grateful that at least some remnant of the original glory remains. Check back in five hundred to a thousand years from now, and they will be kings of the forest once more. We hope.

Huckleberry Botanic Regional Preserve

Thank God for this tiny but splendid sylvan haunt right off Skyline Boulevard situated between Redwood and Sibley parks - "a completely authentic remnant of native California," proclaims Margolin. Greatly heralded, but often overlooked by the hiking masses, the preserve offers a self-guided nature tour and a footpath leading into ecologically sensitive territory "that threads almost apologetically through the 132-acre preserve,” home to "relic" plants found in just a few other places in California owing to a specialized habitat that has somehow managed to avoid man’s destructive handiwork. Among the interesting species finding root and refuge here are the California hazelnut, Pink flowering currant, Dwarf chinquapin, Huckleberries, Western leatherwood, Silktassel, and rare ferns. An endangered variant species of manzanita (Arctostaphylos pallida) is found no where else on earth but the Bay Area, and in most abundance here. About 2500 of them have long flourished atop exposed rocky knolls, in poor soil, low in nutrients, but the colony of A. pallida found at Huckleberry is now on the decline due to fire suppression tactics, unnatural shading, and other deterrents to life for a tree struggling to survive in an increasingly unnatural world. Some of these old trees are half-dead with lifeless branches eerily outstretched like sun-baked skeletal arms, and half-alive, vibrantly thriving with chocolate-colored trunks, waxy leaves and pretty pink flowers – the perfect metaphor for the eternal rhythm of the life/death cycle. Bid the gnarled specimens good-bye and safe tidings, and head down a trail leading into the moist bowels of the dark, dank, bay-scented forest. It is spellbindingly charming. Hours pass investigating and trying to identify sprouting mushrooms and all the plants. You might chance upon curious packrat huts. More hours slip by inspecting dewy spider webs, or staring intently, as though absorbed in a Picasso painting, at colorful splotchy patterns of lichen eating away at sandstone and serpentine rocks, or marveling at the miniature grandeur of ephemeral waterfalls and bouncing cascades. After a while, you become lost to the incessant hubbub in this secluded world beyond the urban boundary zone, and, hours later, muddy, sweaty, thirsty, and hungry, you emerge with what Margolin describes as a “feeling of clarity, sharpness, and strength this land can bestow on those who become intimate with it."

Sibley Volcanic Regional Preserve

Sibley is a favorite and easy get-away in the Oakland Hills. Despite its seeming confined and hemmed in feeling, it is an amazing place, really. Site of a 10,000,000 year old exploded volcano – 1763 ft. Round Top, with transmission towers, is all that remains - long-necked camels once grazed alongside saber-toothed tigers and other mega-fauna. More recently, it was the domain of herds of pronghorn antelope, mountain lions, and grizzly bears. No doubt Ohlone hunter and gatherers made their rounds collecting acorns from big oak trees, and stopping to camp, tell stories and dance and sing creation songs. Today, covering a mere 700 acres, Sibley is an outdoor museum of sorts, not a place for any major hiking, per se, although you can work up a lather climbing up and down the canyons, and once up on the blasted ridge top, you can extend your destination by hooking up to the Bay Area Ridge Trail and East Bay Skyline National Recreational Trail. Recently, a long-off-limits section was opened, giving the park a bit more breathing room. Mostly, though, Sibley is a place to slow down, let your mind drift and your imagination wander as you check out each sign post on the self-guided tour, noting some outstanding geological feature or event. Every so often, superlative views open up of Mt. Diablo, Mt. Tamalpais, and even the tiny rhomboid formation of Mt. St. Helena appears on the distant northern horizon, and beyond that, far away, the high country of inner coast ranges is visible on clear days. On your walks, you'll see darting rabbits and scurrying lizards and sun-struck snakes. The meadows and open rolling hills of Sibley provide ideal habitat for rodents to proliferate, which sates the appetites of soaring red-tailed hawks, kites, golden eagles, and, not unheard of, you might even catch a glimpse of the king of birds - a bald eagle, who nests nearby at San Pablo Reservoir. Below the ridge, down in a hidden canyon, a small reedy pond is ideal for exploring and seeking out newt eggs. And then there are the inscrutable labyrinths of Sibley, whose builders remain a mystery. Spend some quiet time listening to the wind whistling, while meditatively walking the circular pathway to the center of this little universe, giving thanks and praise and wonder evermore.

So there you have it - four of the loveliest parks, out of 55 owned and operated by the East Bay Regional Park District, right within cycling distance or public transportation on the fringes of a county with a population of 1.5 million! Truly pause to give thanks and praise and wonder evermore about! In an strained effort to imagine life in the Bay Area without the 90,000+ acres of wild places and open spaces bequeathed to us by eco-visionaries in the 1930s, Margolin writes, "I shudder to think what the East Bay would be like. . .. Without the East Bay Regional Park District we would live in a more crowded, ugly, vastly impoverished area - if we cared to live here at all."

Photos Identified:

1. Walking one of the sacred labyrinths, Sibley

2. Canyon wall with view of Mt. Diablo, Sibley

3. Poppies along sandy trail, Redwoods

4. Gambolin' Man merrily rowing his dream life, Lake Chabot

5. View north of coast ranges, Sibley

6. Glimpse of off-limits Upper San Leandro Reservoir, from Pinehurst Road

7. Redwood trees, Redwoods

8. Rugged landscape encompassing EBMUD lands and Sibley hills, from Skyline Blvd.

9. Reedy back channel, Lake Chabot

10. View of Sibley Hills, from Skyline Blvd.

11. Blown volcano caldera remains, Sibley

12. Orgiastic swarms of ladybugs, Redwoods

13. Trail to wind-swept tor, Sibley

14. Gambolin' Gal making her way into the moist bowels of the forest, Huckleberry

15. Richly textured madrone trees, Huckleberry

16. Green or Night Heron, captured in zen motionless stance, Lake Chabot

17. Skirting the edge of an island, Lake Chabot

18. Dewy spiderweb strung across early morning trail, Redwoods

19. A trio of cormorants preparing for their day, Lake Chabot

20. Aloof Mute Swan with Gambolin' Gal lookin' on, Lake Chabot

21. Canyon wall with scree slopes, Sibley

22. Reedy patches of shoreline, Lake Chabot

23. Colorful canyon wall and mixed vegetation, Sibley

24. Reedy channel, Lake Chabot

25. Long-distance view of Mt. Diablo and ranges, Huckleberry

26. Pretty scene, Lake Chabot

27. Geese, Lake Chabot

28. Eerie forest, Redwoods

29. Young redwood grove, Redwoods

30. Shimmering waters, Lake Chabot

LAGUNITAS CREEK: Exploring A Turbulent and Nearly Inaccessible Stretch of Marin County's Famous Salmon-Spawning Stream

Life-giving, replenishing rains, coming none too soon on the heels of the third driest January on record, have drenched the long-parched Bay Area, courtesy of a series of Pacific Rim storm systems in February and March that brought great relief with over eight inches soaking Marin County foothills. Thankfully, the badly needed precipitation fell in a steady absorption pattern instead of all at once, an all too typical California storm scenario which would have created hazardous flood and mudslide conditions. Instead, the rains have endowed the earthly hills with wellsprings of gradually released water to bring streams, tributaries and freshets roaring back to life as well as enabling reservoirs to inch back up to respectable capacity levels from drought-stricken lows. What better way to set the stage for a beautiful waterfall and bountiful wildflower-strewn season?

Nowhere is the spectacle of running water – the transformation from trickles or dry bedrock to gushing run-off - more powerful and flat-out remarkable than at Lagunitas Creek, just below the spillway dam at pretty Lake Alpine, where brownish water turns snow white as it crashes over stepped ledges 50 ft. high to begin a riparian journey through a boulder-choked section of wild and scenic creek that twists and turns for two miles until waylaid by draining into Kent Lake and then released on the other end at Peter's Dam spillway to continue its free flowing course through Samuel P. Taylor State Park and eventually to its terminus drainage point into Tomales Bay wetlands. Along the way, the 20+ mile long creek – fed by tributary streams such as Nicasio, San Geronimo, Olema, Devil's Gulch and Deadman's Gulch Creeks -- drains the hill country surrounding the West Marin communities of Woodacre, Forest Knolls, Lagunitas, and Pt. Reyes Station, covering an area of over 100 square miles. The watershed, perhaps Marin’s largest, provides ancestral home and hearth to redwood trees, newts, and coho and steelhead salmon who find their way upstream and into birthing tributaries by a near magical sense of what fish biologists call olfactory conditioning. In the very upper stretches, the creek originates out of Alpine Lake's impounded waters, fed from several classic ravine tributaries born on the northern flanks of Mt. Tamalpais - including the East Fork of Lagunitas Creek, Van Wyck and Swede George Creeks. Here, below the spillway, looking down from the trail about 50 ft. up, you get an eyeful of the raw force and jaw-dropping beauty of the swollen creek. An Aussie we met called it "the river" – at this time of year, it truly invites comparison to a much wetter Cascade Range temperate rainforest climate where snow melt and run-off create major tumultuous flows.

Setting off down the Kent Pump Road, at first glance, might not seem like much of an exciting hike, descending as it does into shaded forest with little variation and obscured views. The sprawling Bolinas Ridge - the major westerly running spur off Mt. Tamalpais - creates some decent topographical relief as it rises to heights of 1500 ft. but the elongated humpback forested formation with its many clefts and defiles isn't fully appreciated until the trail opens up a bit and you can get a sense of its dramatic contours. Below, the raging creek tantalizes with its white-water fury and force, but it's difficult to get up close and personal to really check it out unless you take a few risks. Your best bet is take the spur trail to the left at a quarter mile and explore the creek in this vicinity; it will be your first, last and only chance to do so because the four mile trail to Kent Lake winds high above the creek and views, let alone access, are completely lost the farther you traverse. You might see more people than you'd like here, since there are wonderful trailside views of the swirling creek gushing through the small canyon, and it's but a ten minute stroll from parking areas. . .but not a one of them will do what you do -- engage in a twenty minute detour by bushwhacking down 50 ft. on a 75 degree inclined slope to get better positioned for photographic vantage points and – more importantly! – to gain intimate communion with the spirit of this transcendent water. Passage downward is more dangerous and slippery than it looks - at water's edge, while rock-hopping, all it takes is one slip and you could be a goner. Huge, beautiful, mossy boulders line the shore’s edge; making your way from one to the next requires balance, coordination, extra-cautious footing, and just the right amount of foolhardy bravado. Tread with caution if you’re one of the few who can’t resist and need a dose of magic and negative ionic energy penetrating the core of your being! Certainly, this trail and smaller spurs leading down comprise the most exciting aspect of this hike for the next 3.4 miles until you reach the base of the rugged track taking you up the Little Carson Creek drainage with its giant redwoods, riffling pools and cascade drop falls. (Magical indeed!)

Inevitably, the desire to see what's beyond the next curve in the road leads us out of the sheltered nooks and crannies and into more open country through sun-splotched and boulder-lined patches of trail winding through redwood groves and oak, bay and madrone forests, replete with sensuous earthy aromas, ferns galore, puddles with swimming newts, and sideshow freshets gushing down from hillsides which spawn plenty of leisurely occasions to stop, gawk, picnic and generally while away the sunny day marveling at the wilderness-like setting and paucity of human beings in our presence. We finally make it past Old Vee Road, and, the allure of Carson Falls notwithstanding, we decide to turn around and head back, making it about a six mile out 'n back. All in all, a soul-satisfying, good work-out and not a bad adventure to boot.

Along the way back, we revel in the splendid isolation and moist lushness of the relatively untouched forest - how many people didn't we see? – and appreciate the extensive views opening up of Bolinas Ridge, looking rugged and majestic, with teaser glimpses far down into the canyon of Lagunitas Creek. Our imaginations strain to visualize what this place must have been like in pristine times – maybe like a mini-Alaska - when the salmon ran free and plenty, when the grizzly came to the shoreline to catch and eat them, when bald eagles and condors roamed the skies, and when native Miwok peoples, reigning supreme in harmonious consort with all creatures great and small, held their joyous ceremonies of renewal and rituals of supplication and propitiation each spring to celebrate the return of, not only life-giving rains, but sustenance borne from the tiny acorn and great inexhaustible runs of the salmon God.