Take a Hike!

The year of the dog continues.  Sure, in the Chinese zodiac, it is still the Year of the Rat, to be soon followed by the Year of the Ox, but my dog, a three year-old chocolate labradoodle named Roxy, could care less.  She is a prolific hiker (and walker and runner), enjoying up to three a day for the past ten months.  The words “stay at home order” are music to her floppy ears.  Today, she enjoyed a four-mile hike to Pillar Point, about twenty miles south of San Francisco.  But for Fitzgerald Marine Preserve, she could roam the trails freely (on a leash). 

In the past month, Roxy has also enjoyed the Bay Trail (Redwood Shores), Portola Valley, and countless neighborhood adventures.  In August, Roxy enjoyed six days of hiking in and around Gold Beach, Oregon (https://johnpavolotsky.com/2020/10/03/gold-beach-oregon/).  To her chagrin (perhaps), she was not able to join me on hikes to Muir Woods, Eaton Park (San Carlos), and Pulgas Ridge Preserve (Redwood City), but doubtless more hikes are on the horizon.  Add on-demand snacks, belly rubs, and playtime (with her magnanimous owner home virtually all the time), as well as complete and utter ignorance of the pandemic, political turmoil, and so on, and you can see why the past ten months have been so golden for Roxy. 

These days, there is not much to do but to take a hike.  The San Francisco Bay Area has been under deep lockdown for the past month or so, with Intensive Care Unit (ICU) capacity, an apparent proxy for the current severity of the pandemic, below 15%.  Indoor venues are closed, as is outdoor dining.  Gatherings are prohibited.  Ask anyone what he or she is doing on a given weekend, and taking a walk or a hike is the best anyone can muster.  Other answers typically include cooking, reading, or binging on a new show on TV.  If anyone asked me last March that ten months later we would still be muddling through this, I would have told him to take a hike! 

Be it as it may, we are where we are, and I am hopeful that by the end of the year, we will be vaccinated, even more resilient, and still hiking, albeit locales perhaps slightly farther from home. 

Today was our fourth visit to Pillar Point, with the last one on New Year’s Eve.  It was sunny and breezy, comfortable for January.  Buttercups were beginning to the return to the trail.  Typically, we start on the Moss Beach side of the trail and hike south down to Pillar Point Harbor along dramatic bluffs overlooking the Pacific Ocean.  In 1769 the Spanish explorer Gaspar de Portola landed here, before setting on foot toward Yerba Buena (present day San Francisco).  Doubtless, and thanks to the efforts of preservationists, de Portola and I saw the same coast, the same coastal mountain range, the same perfect blue sky.  In his journey to the present-day San Francisco, de Portola passed the valley through which (much later) the Sawyer Camp Trail would run.  More on this in a future post. 

Most hikers, like us, were masked.  From time to time, and when no hikers were nearby, I would lower my mask, and take in the ocean air, the Monterey cypress and pine trees.  It was quiet off of the main trail.  Birds glided above.  I focused on the trail, the ocean, the quiet, the warm breeze.  Take a hike.  You will thank me. 

Comments welcomed (and stay safe).