I’ve climbed Big Rock Ridge, the massive 1882’ ridgeline that stretches from west to east across the center of Marin County. It’s all on very steep fire roads, and a long hard climb from any side. It’s been a number of years since I’ve been up here. The last time, I came up from the southeast and followed the ridgeline west toward a complex of microwave towers on the highest crest, but I was stopped to a locked gate where the Marin County Open Space preserve met private property. Recently I heard that the trail is now open due to agreements with the property owner. This time I tried another approach, from a trailhead to the northeast out of Indian Valley. Even though I could drive fairly high on the hill to the trailhead, it was still fifteen hundred feet of steep uphill, and it was four miles to the top.
It turned out that my information was partially correct. The gate is now gone and I could go on to the towers, where I admired the view. To the west is a confused series of wooded ridges stretching off to the ocean, but a dim haze in the distance. To the north I can see Mt. St. Helena in Calistoga on the horizon, and to the northeast the mouths of the wine country valleys of Sonoma and Napa. To the east stretches the blue expanse of San Pablo Bay, the immense, almost circular, northern lobe of San Francisco Bay, ten miles across but nearly everywhere too shallow for sailboats. To the south the ridge falls steeply into Lucas Valley, one of the few valleys allowing road access between eastern and western Marin.
At the high point of the road is a pass, the divide between Miller Creek draining eastward into the Bay and Nicasio Creek, tumbling down in a series of waterfalls westward to the Pacific. At the very top of the pass, just beside the road, is an immense standing outcrop of metamorphic rock known as Big Rock, for which the entire ridge is named. At this distance it looks very small and far away.
I pass the towers and go out on a grassy knoll to have lunch. The weather is nearly perfect fall weather, cool and clear with a gentle breeze. I’m wearing only a tee shirt and jeans and am perfectly comfortable, even though my shirt is soaked through by the hard climb up the ridge. I can see the ridgetop fire road continuing downhill to the west, but I don’t know where it goes or how far it is open. According to my map, it probably comes out on George Lucas’ Skywalker Ranch, but that’s still six or eight miles away. I want to explore it, but there’s no way I could go much further, especially downhill, and hope to get back to my car before dark. I call my wife and she agrees to pick me up at Big Rock in three hours.
Free now to explore, I pack up and head downward. In only a mile or so, however, I come to a trail forking to the left and a gate across the road. The gate’s locked, but there’s room to easily walk around it. The fire road continues along the ridge top and I can see it crossing the backs of several more crests further to the west. The trail to the left looks like it might drop down off the ridge toward Big Rock. I go along it a few hundred yards until I can see down the hill. I can see the trail switch-backing steeply down the south face of the ridge toward the new north campus of Skywalker Ranch, still under construction, and emerging right beside Big Rock. It would be the logical way to get to the rendezvous. But it should take less than an hour to get down there and I’d have to wait two hours beside the road for a ride. I have time to explore the road first.
I return to the gate and have to take off my fanny pack to squeeze through the cattle guard. The road descends gradually and passes into a grove of huge oaks. It’s the first time I’ve been under trees for several hours, and it’s very pleasant in the cool dappled shade. I soon emerge into the sun again and in only another hundred yards or so I come to a large gate across the road. It’s unsigned, but it’s high and barbed and has been extended a short distance into the thick brush on either side. I could get around it fairly easily with a little bushwhacking, but clearly I am not intended to. If I were accosted on the other side I couldn’t possibly maintain that I didn’t know I was trespassing. Since it’s probably Skywalker Ranch, who knows what kind of security they might have? Cameras and guards probably, possibly motion detectors. Perhaps I would be pursued by a security droid. I decide not to chance it and turn back.
Now what to do? I’ve come down a long way from the crest of the ridge and it would be a hard climb to go back up to the towers. I don’t want to leave this lovely area and sit beside a road for two hours. As I pass under the oak grove again, I decide this would be a good place to kill a little time. I scramble up a bank and flop down in the crunchy dead leaves under a huge massive old oak. I lay flat on my back, looking up through the branches at the sun, now slanting toward the west. Something in the color or the angle of the light has that indescribable, but unmistakable, air of autumn.
I hear strange bird calls somewhere nearby. They have a distinctly human sound to them, a gruff, humorous tone that sounds as if they’re being playful or trying to be funny. Soon a pair of large ravens starts to play in the air right above me. I realize they are the source of the earlier sounds, for they are constantly talking to one another, using an incredible variety of sounds. Then they circle higher, circling around each other. One says, "caw, caw," and the other repeats it exactly, "caw, caw." A moment of silent circling, then the call and response is repeated. They do this for perhaps ten or fifteen minutes. Then one makes a distinctive chirruping sound, folds his wings, and drops ten feet. The other, taken by surprise, rolls over and drops to join the first. They both laugh, then start the game over. I can’t believe they’re not playing the old game of, "watch, can you do this?" Gradually they move off, out over the meadow beyond the grove, and their cries diminish.
Looking up through the leaves, I become aware of the many levels above me. Close above my face, the yellow seedpods of the aptly named rattlesnake grass curve above me. The wind isn’t strong enough to make them rattle, but they nod and bounce in the breeze. I have to change the focus of my eyes to look beyond them. A great black twisted limb of the oak coils six feet above, hoary with lichen and hanging moss, alive with ants and other crawling insects. Its bark is so corrugated and convoluted it looks like a petrified brain. A few feet above that, the smaller branches make an intricate tracery, like Celtic knot work, black against the glowing leaves. Just beyond are the lower leaves, the brilliant sunlight and moving shadows causing them to blink off and on. A cloud of tiny insects hovers and darts amongst the leaves. This tiny community, with its grazers and hunters and complex interactions, would be invisible if the backlighting were not turning them to moving fuzzy white dots, like a distant galaxy. Above these are the higher branches, a complicated three-dimensional maze of branches and masses of leaves. Larger insects flutter in the airy lanes between: small white moths that beat their wings unceasingly and never seem to light. As if on cue, a large monarch butterfly passes across an opening just above me, pauses, dips, and departs. High above this city in the air, the upper branches of the tree nod in the gentle breeze. Now and again I can glimpse a sparkle of green or gold as some large fly catches the light as it flashes through a sunny opening. The leaves at the top are nearly all sunlit, green as jade knife blades. They cast shadows on the layers below, so that each successive level is more dappled and shifting in its color. Even the larger bugs up there cast shadows on the leaves far below. Close above my face, the lowest leaves are mostly in shadow, but the leaves that are lit are even more brilliant against their darker neighbors.
Gazing lazily up through all this color and life, I am startled by a sudden slanting blade of shadow that sweeps through the tree toward me. As it crosses my face, a huge turkey vulture, with a wingspan of at least six feet, flashes above me and for an instant eclipses the sun. Again I have to consciously refocus my eyes to see the new level, perhaps twenty feet above the highest branches. Following him with my eyes, I can just catch a few quick glimpses as he swoops off down the hill on a late afternoon thermal. Then he’s gone, out of sight behind the trees. Still, I can see his shadow moving away through the trees, like a black stick stirring a thick green soup. Made aware suddenly of the vast spaces above the topmost branches, I look straight up again. Just at the limit of visibility, a red-tailed hawk circles high above, aware of all that passes below. And just before I glance away, I become aware of a short white contrail miles above, pointing out an infinitesimal white speck that must be a metal can full of people winging through the high thin atmosphere on the verge of space. Even here, apparently alone on a remote hillside, life exists on a dozen levels right above me, each layer logarithmically higher.
I am struck by the total comfort of my position. The dead oak leaves are thick on the ground and my bed is soft. The temperature is perfect, the dappled light easy on the eyes. All I can hear is the hum of insects and the occasional playful croaks of the ravens. A woodpecker works at a dead snag somewhere nearby. Somewhere beyond my feet I hear the dry newspaper sound of a blue-belly lizard hunting in the dead leaves. At last I sit up on an elbow to look around at my surroundings.
Just below me is the fire road I followed into the grove. Out in the sun it’s baked hard and dry now at the end of the long hot dry season, but here under the trees it is soft powdery dust like yellow flour. The dappled light moves on its soft surface like a lover’s sleepy hand. To my left the road emerges into the sun and makes a sinuous S-curve across a windswept meadow of grass burned nearly white by the summer’s heat. Near the top of the ridge into disappears into the darkness of another grove of mighty oaks carved by the wind into a smooth dome. Just beyond, the main trail undulates down a grassy slope steep enough that if you fell, you’d roll a thousand feet. The corner of a fence rail peeps over a shoulder of the hill as if it’s afraid of the drop. A red-tail floats motionless just above the fence, supported by the steady wind coming up from the warmer valley below. A mile or two beyond, the massive brown dome of Loma Alta rises into the clear air, an imposing presence from any side. I’ve climbed it many times from several sides, and it always surprises me with the long unvarying steepness of its trails. From my much greater height it looks relatively insignificant, merely the highest of a number of ridges that crumple the central part of the county. The effect is increased by the loom of Mount Tamalpais directly beyond. The westering sun slants into the deep valley furrowing the mountain’s northern face, throwing it into deep relief. Over the mountain’s eastern shoulder, the towers and pyramid of San Francisco shimmer in the distance. The great bridges across the Bay are like a child’s toothpick construction, thin and impossibly fragile. Across the Bay, Berkeley and Oakland glow a rich gold in the sun.
Returning to my close surroundings, I look down through a hole in the trees to a curve of ranch road arcing across the steep hillside hundreds of feet below me. A half dozen black and white cows stand motionless on the road, vivid in the sun. They have been motionless since I arrived over an hour ago. Clearly they are no more inclined to activity than I am. This is a tranquil corner of the world, and I am most pleased to be here.
Eventually my enforced time of idleness is gone. I grab my old walking stick and with a grunt push myself to my feet and start the long walk down to meet my family.
copyright 2002 by Brian K. Crawford