Day 12: Muir Woods and Mt. Tamalpais

Wednesday
In the morning I brewed tea and returned to the business district of Mill Valley to shop and clean up at Whole Foods. I then did something I've never done before and sent the van through a full-service car wash. Now the windows were clean and the spills made by me and some previous renter on the carpet looked more respectable. Later, I had to wipe the inside of the windshield again to remove a smoky film left by the cleaner's cloth. What is that stuff?


The route to Muir Woods gave me daylight views of the Panoramic Highway, a twisting two-lane road with many turnouts for slower traffic.  The Monument is a small parcel of redwood forest enclosed by the larger Mount Tamalpais State Park, and it's a popular site with generous parking for large tour busses and an extensive wide, flat boardwalk  that offers long easy walks for people of all  inclinations and abilities.

Our grandparents'  papers and sketches are still stored in manila envelopes with Department of the Interior/ National Park Service printed in the upper left corner.

A simple patch, a thing of beauty.

Boardwalk repairs.

... he said, trustingly.

I took pictures and videos of trees, panning from top to bottom and from bottom to top, and with each snap thought, "This shot has been done and done better many times before I came along with my little iPhone and camera. Why am I doing it?"

I ask myself the same question about this whole blog thing. Who is it for? The world has no pressing need for more words about one more person's travels in a part of the world already well-documented. At the moment, it's so I can still the urgings of my would-be journalist soul: "Get it down and get over it."  But I don't wish to get over any of this adventure because it's been rich for me in a life that is dominated by a 6-to-5 schedule of work and commute. Daily life is a fascinating thing, if only to the person living it. Thank you, Nella Last, for the reminder and the inspiration. To write is to slow down and look and feel and notice. It may stir up conversations with others, and that repays the effort. It may prompt others to do their own recording,  or at least to slow down and look and notice.

I took a diversion from the boardwalk and got some hill climbing in, heading up the Canopy View Trail, then down again via Lost Trail and Lower Fern Creek Trail.

  


I asked a docent what groups have gathered in the parking lot under the auspices of this sign, and she said a Women for Peace group had marched through the park on a recent weekend but she was too new to know of other events.

From a kind park employee at the entrance booth I had been given valuable local camping information, and this led me to a small windy campsite called Pantoll Station in Mt. Tamalpais S.P. It was a tenting site and I registered and paid the Iron Ranger as if I were planning to set up in site number 4. Then I set out on another hike.

I took pictures and videos of trees, panning from top to bottom and from bottom to top, and with each snap thought, "This shot has been done and done better many times before I came along with my little iPhone and camera. Why am I doing it?"

I ask myself the same question about this whole blog thing. Who is it for? The world has no pressing need for more words about one more person's travels in a part of the world already well-documented. At the moment, it's so I can still the urgings of my would-be journalist soul: "Get it down and get over it."  But I don't wish to get over any of this adventure because it's been rich for me in a life that is dominated by a 6-to-5 schedule of work and commute. Daily life is a fascinating thing, if only to the person living it. Thank you, Nella Last, for the reminder and the inspiration. To write is to slow down and look and feel and notice. It may stir up conversations with others, and that repays the effort. It may prompt others to do their own recording,  or at least to slow down and look and notice.

From the journal:
I'm sitting at Mountain Theater within Mt. Tamalpais State Park, marveling at the scale of this work, all done by the CCC during the years of the Great Depression. These serpentine stones are massive --- 3 to 4 feet wide -- and there appear to be 40 rows of them, raking back into the hill from a large flat stage area with its own prompter's pit or cave. In the distance, as backdrop to the musical that is staged here every summer, I see sun lighting up the skyscrapers of San Francisco. Earlier on this 45-minute hike uphill from my camping spot at Pantoll Station, I had a view of the San Rafael-Richmond Bridge and the small lump of Red Rock Island. I'm not exactly on Mt. Tam, but close enough to feel its soul.

I returned by the Old Mine Trail which went through a grove of Madrone trees, then patches of oak and bay, and then out into the open with grass and outcroppings of blue-green serpentine.

Serpentine

I descended steep hills to return to Pantoll Station and tried to picture the work it took to build that theater. I read later that in 2008, the 75th anniversary of the founding of the Corps, three of the CCC workers who'd helped build this theater were present at a ceremony recognizing their labors. As one of the men said, 

"It opened me up to a whole new way of getting to know people from other backgrounds. And it was the first time I'd met people who were going to college. The CCC got me out of my limited life. I left feeling worthwhile, like I'd contributed." Article here.

After a dinner eaten on the table of the cold and windy site I was ostensibly occupying, I pecked out an email to my Sewing Sisters, hastily sketching my travels over the past few days. It was too cold to linger long and I soon packed everything away and got myself under the covers in the van. I read for a while, then lay awake making a mental list of things to take care of tomorrow to wrap things up, for it would be my last full day here. I wanted to end the day within striking distance of San Francisco in order to return the van by 6 a.m. Friday.