Walk About Martinez

It was rain, sun, clear, cloudy, freezing and downright warm last week. On Sunday, the skies cleared, the trails had two days to dry out, and we had a whole bunch of long-distance hikers descend on Martinez like a cloud of proverbial locusts, only much more fun. Today's hike and trail story are all one, as I got those long-distance super hikers up into our beautiful hills.

For years, I’ve given out a standing invitation when I backpack for hikers to come to Martinez, to visit our wonderful little town, hike Mount Wanda and tour the . Well, this year, with the help of soon-to-be thru hiker Wild Hair (that's her trail name) from Oakland, the invitation hit the Pacific Crest Trail List, the web communications network among long-distance hikers interested in the PCT. We got folks from as far away as Los Angeles, San Luis Obispo, Santa Cruz, Crater Lake, Old Station, all over the Bay Area and the Sierra foothills here to our quiet bit of home, to visit the Muir site and have a barbecue at my place afterward.

Our walk last Sunday took us up and over Mount Wanda, down the backside through Strentzel Meadow, over to Muir’s grave and back down Alhambra to the Muir house for a proper tour of the great man’s home.  Organizing thru hikers is like herding cats, but somehow we got everybody together at the end of Canyon Way, marched 'em through the tunnel under Highway 4 and onto the beginning of the trail, just across Franklin Canyon Road.

The trail goes up a bit and down to the park and ride where we entered the Mount Wanda Trail proper. More than 20 of us hiked up and onto the nature trail loop and then up to the top of Mount Wanda, where we had a picnic in the grass. The views of Diablo were stunning and everywhere you turned nature sparkled, clean from all the recent rain. The grass is tall and the first buttercups have begun to bloom. Within two or three weeks, the trail up Mount Wanda will be a riot of color as the sequence of wildflowers begins its yearly show.  

As we looked over the Franklin Hills to the north, Sky Ranch to the west and Briones to the south, the out-of-town super hikers, one by one, expressed amazement at the beauty we’ve managed to preserve surrounding our town.  It was a day to really show it off.  

We packed up and headed down the backside trail, just across from where the Nature Trail ends, and made our way down past the Strain Ranch and into Strentzel Meadow, which has been restored recently to a meandering stream and flood plain.  There to greet us, as if on cue, were Jane and Ry Moore, and a whole troop of Girl Scouts being given a tour of the meadow. Jane is one of the founders of the Friends of Alhambra Creek, the organization largely responsible for the health of our main water course, Alhambra Creek, now enticing enough to provide for beavers, river otters and all the other wonderful wild critters that come along with those two important species.

From the meadow we walked on Alhambra Valley Way to the turn onto Sheridan Lane and a visit to the Muir family graves, a solemn moment for all.

Following Alhambra Valley Road, we ultimately ended up back at the Muir house and a tour by Ranger Dan. He gauged his audience well and gave a talk for people well versed in the basic Muir story. These folks already were converts to the idea of finding God in nature, that Muir so eloquently espoused. Dan used moving excerpts from Muir’s writings to tell his story.  

If you want to take your family on a hike and a tour of the Muir site in all its aspects, this is the route to take, as you hit it all.

We finished the day with a barbecue at my place and plenty of Dave Silva’s syrah, grown, crushed and bottled right here on what was once Muir’s ranch. Getting to know each other that evening was fun as there were so many points of confluence, so many spokes of the same wheel, always with the Pacific Crest Trail at the center hub.  

I met a young woman named Lisa from the Napa Valley who asked me over the course of the evening if I had met someone named Smiles last year on my thru hike.  I told her I had and that Smiles and I had hiked well over 1,500 miles together over the snows of the High Sierra, the toughest part of the whole trip. Smiles is a Swiss mountaineer and had been a great asset to our party. 

Lisa had met Smiles fleetingly at the PCT Kick Off weekend at Lake Morena last year.  Smiles had placed a flower lei on her shoulders in hopes that Lisa would hike the PCT next year. This was a story Smiles had shared with me several times in her broken English while we hiked together, and it had been important to her even though she didn’t know the woman’s name.  Someone had given the lei to Smiles the year before in the same way, in hopes that Smiles would hike the PCT in the future, and Smiles had passed it on to Lisa.  

Lisa came to the Muir tour and party because she will be starting the trail herself in April and wanted to meet some of the local hikers she’d be traveling with.  So the lei has worked on two people so far, and Lisa will bestow it on someone else this year at the Kick Off in hope and encouragement for a future trail journey. 

Then there was Sym from Concord. His trail name is Symbiosis. Several years ago, I was running the ridge above Alhambra Avenue early in the morning when I came upon a guy with a thru hiker’s pack. You can tell because they are much smaller than a backpacker’s pack, but larger than your typical day pack, as a thru hiker makes a science out of collecting gear that is ultralight and small. We struck up a conversation and it turned out he was hiking the Bay Ridge Trail from Martinez to the Sunol Regional Wilderness, south of Livermore.  He wasn’t sure how to connect from Mount Wanda to the Sky Ranch. I pointed out the route and we parted.

I continued my run toward the water, and he took off in the direction of Briones.  We had exchanged e-mails, but the connection had been brief. Within a short distance, however, I realized that it didn’t matter where I was running because I was just getting some exercise. I should have gone along with him and showed him the way. I probably would have learned some cool ultralight hiker stuff if I had. I really regretted not making more of the  moment.

I didn’t see Symbiosis again until a few months ago, when Wild Hair set up a PCT meeting at a pizza parlor in Oakland. We looked at each other, realized the connection and there we were again swapping ultralight gear tips. Well, Sym’s dream is to hike the whole trail someday, too. 

Georgi Heitman, one of the best and most loved Trail Angels of the whole PCT, and who used to work as a paid Girl Scout leader in Martinez many years ago, also came to the party with two friends, Coyote and Huff n Puff, thru hikers from 2008. Coyote works at Crater Lake, and Huff n Puff is from San Francisco, and really does huff and puff up a hill. I learned this Monday when I got them up the Waterfall Trail on Mount Diablo. They are planning to hike the Continental Divide Trail in 2012.  

But Georgi is one of the great trail personages whom everyone knows because of the years and years she and her husband, Dennis, have kept an open house for hikers in Old Station, north of Mount Lassen. They have a large property with a livable tree house, tents up all summer long, and breakfast and dinner for anyone on the property. Being an old Girl Scout Leader, she brooks no guff, and no public nudity on the property, and she can wrangle any number of wild and woolly thru hikers into washing and cooking, and just about everything else that needs doing. 

She is full of enthusiasm and spunk. She happened to be in town because she has just finished a five-week run of the Colorado River. I won’t tell you her age, but she is not young. What she lacks in physical youth, she makes up for in spades with a mind and spirit that seems no older than the 20-somethings she puts up with all summer long.  She is a worthy mentor for all of us. To keep alive a joie de vivre that would put her in a river raft in the dead of winter for over a month... But that’s what this crazy hiker community is so full of. Ageless people. Beautiful people.    

There were so many interesting hikers who showed up to see Muir’s home and to meet each other.  Some were prior thru hikers like Redwood from Brentwood, who hiked the PCT in 2003. Frank is a retired railroad worker who also had done it before. And there were a number of section hikers who just love the trail and plan to continue hiking as much of it as their vacations allow, like locals Tim, Dave and Sharon, who all hope to someday hike the trail.

Joe and Penny Bravo brought a laugh, and smiles to go with it. Joe got his trail name at the event because of his jokes and asides during the Muir Tour and at the party.  He is now and forever after Zinger!  

Best were the folks just starting thru hikes this season. Emily from Palo Alto, who will be hiking with her 21-year-old daughter and who was so excited she could hardly stand it. Lisa from Napa, Ben from San Francisco and Shelly from Santa Cruz. 

I talked to Shelly for quite awhile and learned that her partner didn’t hike, but she was thru hiking on her own anyway. When Shelly couldn’t quite understand why she was so excited to go to this Muir Tour and party, her partner very insightfully said, “You’re excited because you’ll be meeting your tribe.” And she was so right. Who else in this whole world can a hiker talk with ad nauseam about gear or weather or snow or blisters?  What do you do for chafe? I mean, come on.  Only a thru hiker wants to hear such nonsense, actually loves to hear such nonsense.  

All of us seemed to have been touched last Sunday by the spirit of Muir. The love of a trail that exists because of Muir. In a country that has somehow preserved such wonders because of Muir. We were here with a tribe of people, our friends, all of whose love of nature has its roots in the change in American thought brought on by Muir’s writings and campaigns. The idea that wilderness is essential to our own humanity. We were indeed in the spirit of a great visionary, a baptizing force, in our common love of the wonders of this great world.

“John the Baptist was not more eager to get all his fellow sinners into the Jordan than I to baptize all of mine in the beauty of God's mountains."   John Muir