Day 11: Henry W. Coe S.P. then north, crossing the Golden Gate Bridge into Marin County

Tuesday
The sweet peace held when I roused in the morning. Sitting over tea at the outside table I could hear the ruffling of feathers as birds shifted from branch to branch nearby or scuttled under brush on the ground. A water spigot 10 feet away attracted birds after my splashing there left tiny pockets of water near the drain. Now a ranger made the rounds in a pickup truck, checking trash containers. No words, just quiet clatter and then gone. A woodpecker with bright red head, about the size of one of our flickers, pock-pock-pocked away at a standing dead tree 100 yards behind me.

Happening upon this park was a stroke of good fortune. Now that I was here I wanted to wander out into it, so I put off leaving for a couple of hours and found more to admire:

Like a dancer who has the floor and knows how to fill it.

I nuzzled the manzanita silk, thinking of PT's words.

Cone of a Gray Pine

There were galls on many of the oak trees:

I don't think oak gall kills its host in all cases, but I did see several trees bearing galls that looked pretty dead. 

I could have stayed for hours, not on this hard bench but roaming the rest of the 87,000 acres.

I don't know what I would make of these if I hadn't heard about them at Pinnacles.

4 or 5 of these giant cribbage boards were clustered right next to the path:

I pictured the long drive ahead through San Jose, San Mateo, San Francisco and it jarred against the stillness of this Place Apart. It would be a pleasure to see it in spring wildflower season and I'd be equally happy to return on another quiet October day.

The drive down the long switchback road felt different, of course, than it had yesterday. This time I also had a better view of Anderson Lake Reservoir, which I'd passed on my way up and briefly noted. A wide, dark band above the water line showed past water levels.

Later note: they're draining the Anderson Lake Reservoir deliberately to make the dam more stable against earthquakes. The decision to do so was tough in this time of severe drought, but the reservoir holds so much water it would drown thousands in minutes if it burst suddenly: 8 feet of water would fill the streets of San Jose in 14 minutes. I think I may have been seeing evidence of that sickening drainage effort when I saw that mark.

Near San Mateo is the impressive Crystal Spring rest area, creeping up the side of a hill overlooking the highway. The architecture is wacky and interesting with chunks of serpentine worked into the walkways that lead from the restrooms further up to the top, where stands a giant craggy statue. It represents Father Junipero Serra, cause of many of California's missions.

Mike Fernwood has a great photo up on Flickr under Creative Commons License:

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/legalcode

 One commentator reports that for a while his daily commute was brightened by the sight of this statue with an added touch: someone hung a giant yoyo from that outstretched finger.

San Francisco was never my home but hearing the name takes me back to early life in Berkeley, like the smell of certain flowers. I must have heard the words often in my parents' conversations. Late afternoon traffic crept slowly up 19th Ave. from stoplight to stoplight until at last I reached the entrance to the Golden Gate Bridge. Then I was on the deck of it and became part of its history, and looking up to the ironworks above me I was also suddenly plunged back into my own history. I laughed and let out a whoop and next moment was in tears, thinking "This is still Home, never mind a lifetime spent elsewhere." That move to Ohio at age 7 was a major transplant and I did not send out new roots right away. There's a certain damp chill in the Bay Area that can also be found in other places (England, Scotland) but it takes the cold sharp smell of eucalyptus to carry me all the way back to the Bay Area on the Memory Express.

As I walked along the parapet of the vista point on the Marin County side I heard a man in his twenties on a cell phone reporting to a friend the results of a batch of job interviews he had just had. One of the potential employers was Google and that interview had gone pretty well but he had more enthusiasm about some others, unnamed. He looked pretty collected for someone who had just been through all that.

I found my way up a road that led to the top of the Marin Headlands overlooking the Bay. Folded and refolded rock layers exposed by the carving of the road were fascinating. The layers and folds reminded me of laborious directions for making croissant dough. (Being more of a rock person, I've never attempted that recipe for fear of results like these.)

I had no plans for the night but I was ready to settle somewhere and get flat and let go. It took another few hours to find the right spot for it. I drove down off the headland and north into Mill Valley, a high income commuter town. I parked for a while near a church of a vaguely generic and unfamiliar name:  Community Church, possibly. I thought it might be an overnight parking place but there was too much dropping off and picking up of youngsters. I continued roaming and went up the long, long climb of Edgewood Ave. which came to a junction with the Panoramic Highway. I made turns, backtracked, made new turns and finally found myself on a quiet road bordering Mt. Tamalpais S.P.

By this time I needed protein so I pulled over for a simple feed hoping it would clear my head. Only one car passed as I was eating and that was enough of a lead. As before, I started out fully clothed and lay down to see what would happen. It was a long time before another car appeared. Some teenagers out on a night walk passed by, and later a pair of runners, talking as they ran. I fell asleep and was wakened later by headlights close behind the van, lighting up the interior. "This could be it," I thought, bracing myself. Then the car pulled back out onto the road and went away. I slept again until morning.