A Wilderness Experience in an Urban Park

In the beginning it looked simple, a little gully, and at first it was.

On each shoulder of the gully, the graded formal trail framed it. At the switchback I step onto a dirt line between the fringe of grasses along the downhill side of the formal trail. About ten feet down was a small circle of composting leaves and needles and twigs and little branches. This it was that had beckoned me down from the switchback.

Backing this small spot of composting are branches arching at chest level barring the way further. I bow to get under them.

Now I pick my way and choose among several faint social trails, and come to a sizeable hole below a large root right next to the trail. What might be down in that hole?

It’s large enough for a badger, which I do not want to meet. Badgers are fierce, solitary, weigh up to 25 pounds and have two-inch claws. There have been no badger sightings in Alameda County from 1919 to 1987, but there were five sightings in the surrounding counties as late as the 1970s and 1980s. I become aware that I am in Tivas, not premier footgear for hiking offtrail, so I edge to the opposite side of the trail and quietly sneak past.

A sunny spot between the redwoods and bays hosts a mat of dense and low-growing green through which on a single slightly indented line I cross, following other occasional scofflaws.

I was hunting for old-growth redwood stumps, of which there are a number in this park. There are second-growth redwoods here, now some 150 years old and quite large — circumference in the neighborhood of 15 feet. But none so large as the old-growth redwoods, one of which on the high shelf above was used as a navigation landmark by Gold Rush ships bringing goldseekers in the 1850s. Marked today by a small stone monument, this grand tree was over 70 feet in circumference.

This park has that high shelf of redwoods, from which extend large fingers of land. In between each finger seasonal creeks have cut deep, deep ravines. Few have formal trails. Perhaps in one of these enclaves of wilderness I might find another old-growth stump — who knows, maybe even a giant one…

I cross the hint of a meandering dry creekbed as I move toward the tall redwood family that I had seen from the formal trail above. Where there is a family circle, there was once an old-growth redwood. Maybe here —

Here is a smashed beer can. Disgusting that people should leave such disrespect for the wilderness. I’ll pick it up on the way out. I choose not to let it spoil these rare moments for me.

The thought occurs to me that I haven’t told anyone where I was going. Offtrail, mostly hidden from the trail. Nobody. Well. I immediately dismiss the thought. With this freshness, this unknown, this beautiful…? The whole process — recognition of a potential danger, then reflexively dismissing it — feels like a default response. I’ll be fine. I certainly wasn’t going to turn around. What could go wrong?

The redwood family looks more and more promising as I get closer. Just as I saw from the formal trail above, there are four giant redwoods in a part circle facing the trail, hiding what drew me here. It’s open, not a complete circle, and here are the remnants of the stump of the virgin tree, roughly completing the family circle. I see now into the center of the stump but it’s not a level floor. There are hillocks and two large holes on either side of a large stump remnant. The creek is much deeper here because the holes are dark and I can see creekbed just a bit on either side, running under the far side of the stump.

I think of looking closer but it’s unclear how stable the ground is around the holes. It’s not a place anyway to sit and be in the presence of the spirit of a great tree, which is I guess why I wanted to come here.

Well. Mission accomplished. No virgin stump for meditation, but another potential site checked.

Go back now? Here is a random thought: my cell will not have a signal down here. Even on the formal trail, it’s weak and spotty. I do not even check.

I wonder how much further before this ravine meets a formal trail below. I don’t know what that trail would be, but I’m quite sure it can’t be too far — there are more trails down there. It would be impossible to get to the freeway below the park without crossing at least one real trail.

And look! The social trail widens and rises onto a shelf that looks almost formal. It’s about two feet wide and beckons on, level and innocent in sun dappled by an oak on the slope above.

Well, I’ll just see if I can see a real trail below. Ahead though, in the sun-dapple shading an oakleaf layer of years composting, there are splotches of black. Deep black — mushrooms, I think — but very strange, misshapen bumps, like extrusions of tar. Many. Repulsive.

Several yards beyond, the trail remains level while the valley has dropped rapidly, so that now I am high above the creekbed, able to see that downstream is much undergrowth.

There is a fork here. I could go down and perhaps find a way through the undergrowth. But I see that the trail narrows and peters out. It would be bushwhacking. The other way leads upward. Maybe, if it goes all the way up to the real trail on the other side of the switchback, I could get out this way, just make a loop of it. It is time to get out, though I do not look at the timer I had set to remind me to turn around. The idea is a relief, and I start up.

It rises nicely, but then another fork. To the right it peters out, so left and on upward.

Another few yards upward, past a tree, but then it rises steeply and grows faint. Is the trail edge even visible? If it is, maybe a scramble…but I am in Tivas.

Even in more secure shoes, a scramble up loose or questionable soil is a poor bet. Decades ago in high school, a friend and I would drive off in his old Volvo with no preparation to find a place to sleep outdoors for the night and ideally something to climb. One night we slept on the beach in Santa Barbara beneath a fine 60’ high cliff to climb in the morning. The night was fine, the dawn wonderful with pelicans diving to fish for breakfast, and we set to climbing. Up, up on something between packed sand and sandstone. It soon grew so steep that we were kicking footholds into the wall and grabbing small plants — gently so as to not uproot them. Three-quarters of the way to the top, my friend went down in a cloud of sand. Two more steps and I had one foothold and a tenuous hold on a questionable plant, when I felt the foothold slowly giving way. The plant came with me in another cloud of sand. There were no injuries beyond our pride.

This all flooded back to me as I considered another scramble. Similar: no one knew where I was, a steep unstable surface. Dissimilar: nobody with me, worse footgear, redwood trees to slide helplessly into, no top visible. Oh yeah, and I was about 50 years older. I laid it to hard-won wisdom and plain horse sense and fear that I concluded against going up.

I did not like the idea of those black mushrooms. But they were not in the trail, not blocking it. They were on the side shaded by the oak. They were just mushrooms, anchored to the earth. Not mobile.

I walk past them, acutely conscious but not looking. Back down to the old-growth stump, I feel a decided relief just seeing it. It was familiar, safe, and on the way out.

The smashed beer can I am now happy to see. It is a blessing. Not beautiful, but physical evidence of other humans. I leave it in place.

The potential badger hole I now see had two or three sticks in it — sticks that humans had poked into it to see whether there was anything there. That they were dumb is not important right now, just that they were humans.

Next is the small space of composting twigs and leaves welcoming me and the real trail’s edge visible just above — more relief flooding me.

Back on the formal, traveled, real trail, I felt entirely safe once again. The turnaround timer had gone off partway back, and I got out 20 minutes before schedule.

I had expected hardly a sense of being outside — only an hour. But I felt scraped clean and cleansed, restored and renewed. And my soul was singing.

What is the essence of the wilderness experience? How can it happen inside an hour? In an urban park?

Away from the built environment, immersed in the natural world, where there is unbounded possibility, indecision, danger, beauty, and the soul sings, there — 50 yards off the formal, graded trail on a faint and fading meandering social trail — was an entirely different world. A wilderness.

Today in forty minutes I had an exploratory wilderness adventure — just off the most popular trail in a city park of Oakland, California.

dah, 2/4/16, rev2