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Community Corner

Little Farm

Tilden Park's Little Farm, a goat walk with Farm Camp, a hike to the Rotary Peace Grove, and trail angels in Washington, this week in Walk About Martinez.

Tilden Park is the flagship of the East Bay Regional Parks District.  It was created during the height of the Depression when Alameda County residents voted to tax themselves to create it.  Later, Contra Costa County voted to join and the EBRPD now represents the largest Regional Parks District in the nation.  That’s foresight.  Given the rise in population in the East Bay since the ‘30s, we are blessed by the thousands of acres of open space and shoreline they protect, the developed parks and playgrounds they maintain, and by a little farm whose purpose is to give city and suburban kids the experience of seeing and feeding a cow, or a goat, maybe a turkey or two, little pigs, and rabbits, and maybe even hike with a goat.  

A few weeks ago Katie and I spent a day at the Little Farm and took a beautiful hike up Laurel Canyon to Wildcat Peak.  Our daughter Sarah is working as an Interpretive Ranger’s Assistant at Tilden and had invited us to come by and see the Little Farm where she was working with the “Farm Camp” kids.  They were going on a “goat walk” that day.  We had no idea what a goat walk was, but it was a good excuse to spend a day in Tilden, and she promised to introduce us to a new trail.

We started the day ooing and aahing over the new born piglets and Billy Bob the wobbly bull calf.  The place was full of families with children all with lettuce and celery, the two foods allowed to be fed to all the animals.  This is a hands on experience and it is one of the few places you can go today where you are encouraged to pet and feed the animals.  For little kids that can be seminal.  They get a personal experience of where their morning milk comes from, and just what an old family farm might have been like.  

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The EBRPD offers children’s programs all year, from the Junior Rangers which happens during the school year, to the Farm Camps during summer vacation, and there are many more you will find at the EBRPD web site.  Farm camp gives kids the experience of working in a vegetable garden, feeding and cleaning up after the various farm animals, learning crafts such as weaving and felting, and cooking and baking, and the little guys seem to love it.

When we got to the Little Farm -- which is very near Jewel Lake at the north end of the park -- Sarah and another Student Aid were hitching goats to fence posts in their corral.  Interpretive Ranger, James Wilson, was orienting all the kids for a hike.  They were all going on a hike with goats in tow.  That’s the kind of close up and personal connection to the animals the Farm Camp provides.  Even the barns and chicken coup provide teaching potential.  Look up at the most impressive display of spider webs you’ll ever see.  For children weaned on Charlotte’s Web, it could be magical.  James explained that they actually help keep the flies down and are a healthy part of a farm operation.  

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If you visit the Little Farm, make sure you spend some time in the Environmental Education Center -- the Visitor’s Center you pass on entering the area -- as the exhibits and book shop are terrific.  The staff of rangers welcome any and all questions you may have, and provide a very child friendly interpretive experience.  They’re all great folks.

When James returned with all the goats and children in a long rambling line, they made an impressive retinue, a walking menagerie, wending their way through all the families in the farm yard.  Have you ever gone on a goat walk?  Probably not, but enroll your children in Tilden’s Farm Camp, and they may.  They’ll probably never forget it either.

The trail Sarah recommended was up Laurel Canyon, a deeply wooded canyon that leads a thousand feet up on a gradual trail through a eucalyptus forest and eventually through the deepest, most trunk twisted oak forest I’ve been in.  It breaks out into mixed chaparral and pines near the dirt, Nimitz Road, on the ridge.    

We then branched onto the Wildcat Peak Trail for the hike back and soon came upon a grove of Giant Sequoias, the Sierra Redwood, that grows to be the largest tree on the planet.  This grove has a purpose, each tree being set with a marker for a person or organization honored with the yearly Rotary International Peace Award.  The Reverend Archbishop Desmond Tutu is there, as are the Doctors Without Borders, Martin Luther King, Mother Theresa and Jimmy Carter.  President Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev share a tree.  It’s a pretty impressive spot. 

It’s only a short distance to the spur trail to the top of Wildcat Peak, but make sure you take it as the views up there are incredible.  They stretch from San Francisco in the west  -- enveloped in a blanket of fog the day we hiked -- to Mount Diablo in the east, and far up into the Wine Country to the north.  South are Sibley and Redwood Regional Parks in the beauty of the Berkeley Hills.  

We headed down trail to Jewel Lake with its ducks and turtle floats and a trail that winds through marsh and willow and bramble to return you to the Little Farm.  The whole loop we did was under 5 miles and not too tough for those trying to get in shape, but there are many other trails you can access leading all throughout Tilden.  It’s the flagship park for a good reason, and there is a lot more to explore there.  Little Trains, a swimming lake, historical merry-go-round, botanical garden, and one of the premier spots for a wedding in the Bay Area, the Brazilian Room.  Tilden deserves at least a few days of exploration, especially if you’ve got kids.

Trail News

Last year while thru hiking the Pacific Crest Trail, I fell in love with the Northern Cascades of WA, but I only saw half of them as we had inclement weather for days at a time.  We got plenty of sun too, just enough to let me know I wanted to come back this year.  As I type I’m staying at Hiker Haven, the home and hiker respite of Andrea (trail name, PCT MOM) and Jerry Dinsmore, just down from Steven’s Pass on WA Hwy 2.  

The Dinsmores are two of the trail angels on the PCT.  They provide a place to rest, clean up and dry out in the little town of Baring in the center of WA, and they are the last trail angels before the hike to Stehekin, and finally the U.S. and Canadian border.  All the Trail Angels on the PCT are wonderful folks, opening their homes to complete strangers, dirty, tired and hungry strangers, but the Dinsmores also get us wet, really wet, and having a place to dry out mid WA is imperative.  

Their welcome to me last year -- and a year’s worth of email communication with PCT MOM, who is a regular poster on the PCT List -- prompted me to spend a few days helping them out while they put on a local car show this Saturday in Skykomish, before I  hike most of WA again this year.  And it’s a great chance to see Steve who runs the Baring Store, and made one of the best dinners we all got last year.   While I was having Steve’s breakfast this morning, in walks Blue Butterfly, a hiker I had met on the hot and dry Hat Creek Rim, north of Mt. Lassen last year.  We shared an umbrella and its shade at a water cache on a stifling day.  It was like old home week.  Stop in at Baring the next time you drive to Steven’s Pass and tell Steve that Shroomer sent you.

The PCT community is such a marvelous bunch, that when word got out that I was coming back north to hike this summer, I got a call from Chipmunk in Eugene offering a place to stay with her, or her family if she was on trail, on my drive north.  I had met Chipmunk at Firefly’s home -- a PCT trail angel in Old Station CA -- last year, and that was enough to have her offer help.  Then a day later I received a call from Wolf Taffy, a young man from Missouri with whom I had hiked the last 1,000 miles, and had crossed into Canada.  He was entering a teaching credential program on Bainbridge Island WA, and had heard I was coming north.  Did I need any angeling?  Wolf Taffy will be driving me and my friend Richard to the trailhead at White Pass this coming Monday, where we will begin our hike of the last 350 miles of WA to Canada again.

When I got to Hiker Haven yesterday there was one northbound thru hiker, Blood Bath, (Wayne from Maine) who is the first northbounder to make it this far this year.  There may be two Aussies (Ben and Kate) ahead of him, but they could also still be a day or so behind as they haven’t stopped at the Dinsmore’s yet.  Blood Bath got his terrible trail name at Kick Off in April when he entered the contest to see who could stuff the most junk food in a bear can in one minute.  He won it but caught his wrist on a sharp edge and bled all over the bear can, the junk food, and the rest of the contest.  He  received his trail name on the spot.  I watched this goofy, bloody bit of fun at KO, but never imagined I’d see Blood Bath after that.  Then again, it’s a really long trail but it’s very narrow.  He’s a wonderful guy who will be entering the Peace Corps in October for two years in Ethiopia.  We’ve been spending the day sharing hiking stories and gear info. and he’ll be hitting trail tomorrow for a last big push to the border.  He’s hiking many forty mile days, and is way ahead of the pack, which is almost a month behind our time last year because of the deep snow still covering much of their route.   

Maybe this time I’ll get to see Glacier Peak.  There’s still a lot of snow out there, and I’m ready to bail if it’s too much, as I don’t need to finish a thru hike this year, but if I am able to hike it, I’m hoping to send in my columns from the trail whenever I get cel service.  So if you find a column missing some Saturday morning, I’m probably late due to no communication with the outside world.  

For me, I’ll be hiking, feeling the closest to our nomadic ancestors as is possible in our modern world.  When people ask me why I hike such distances, I think the answer for me is, it just feels right.  Two million years as nomads and it just feels really, humanly right. 

See ya on trail.

"One touch of nature makes the whole world kin." 
— John Muir (Our National Parks)

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