Sat down on semi-damp earth in shade by the little creek
chiming, the water glossy on a damp log. I looked around for a
place to lay down, too tired after the long week. Found a bed of
oak leaves by a log. Earth lumped under the small of my back,
within earshot of the little creek. Sleep.
Sat down on semi-damp earth in shade by the little creek chiming, the water glossy on a damp log. I looked around for a place to lay down, too tired after the long week. Found a bed of oak leaves by a log. Earth lumped under the small of my back, within earshot of the little creek.
Sleep.
Head thick when I woke, lingered laying under the live oak hearing the wind in the trees high up on the canyon, in the bays and oaks, making symphony in the pines, then brushing through my oak, air fresh on my face and hands. Gnats’ touch too tickly. Then I’m up sitting, then pushing through hanging limbs, clomping through a band of nettles onto the clearing at Madrone Soda Springs, whose spring is long ago capped. Across on a path that dies at a brook, up ahead the old bridle path, now just a long bed of poison oak and snowberry across the slope. Tromping with arms up, then leaning under a low bay limb getting scratched by dead branches. The old cut stops at a chasm the size of a car standing on end, twice as wide, I go up alongside under the live oaks in and out of the sun splashes. Huff, huff, it’s steep. I pick it up and find the path again, it’s like a long ripple with two side berms and a middle one, nothing in some places. I look off a little and see it in the corner of my eye, a ghost trail from the past.
They had horse power back then, and came to the Springs by wagon. They came from San Francisco and sat in the soda water and laid in hammocks eating wild berries and took leisurely rides through the woods. Six miles south through the woods above Coyote Creek, they could have lunch at Gilroy Hot Springs then ride back for an afternoon soak, then chow.
Their route’s my mystery, though, and it’s a good one – so long returned to nature. I follow the ghost, looking away when it’s not there and stumble around. On the sunny side of two oaks there’s a wall of brush, chapparal and coyote bush, with a slight path through it the animals made. Brushing through, then picking up the two side berms again going uphill into the greenery sparkled with shiny spots of sunlight straight to a manzanita, perfect round arc stretched 15 feet high, and 20 feet across from ground level to ground level.
Up, up the ridge under the tree-filtered light, the two berms more phantom than visible, I’m just ambling along mostly. The grass is flecked with yellow mariposa lilies and Ithuriel’s Spears, candy purple cones with ripply edges. The lilies are a favorite, so much going on inside, so simply done. The color’s green-yellow, and these are smaller than the ones I’m used to seeing higher up on the grassy slopes, the cream ones with red spots and the three little soldiers inside, three on each of the four petals down inside guarding the glittery stamens standing like virgins whose time is here. Yea, these yellow ones are okay, though.
Two, three hundred yards up, the berms bend into a thick but low bunch of green, green poison oak that’s all shaded by pines and oaks and maples. It goes across the hill with logs across it, and I go straddling over them, then to a steep little creek way, damp still but no water. There it turns hard east, and I can still see the five to six-foot cut here pretty good. It’s under low hanging bay branches, then out a little more on the new hill, there’s an outcrop out there and the big sky and high stands of mountain across it all wooly sheathed in their late spring clothes. But the berms take another hard turn, back southwest and up again. I go stand out in the open on the rocks and see up canyon where the east fork of the Coyote Creek goes on into the hilly mountains, seeing Bear Mountain and Willow Ridge and Mahoney Ridge and Pine Ridge and the low end of Blue Ridge all folding one past the other.
I’m on a mission though and get back to it. Up, up the berms go, not too steep up but nicey up on the treed, narrow-hipped hillside.
It’s another great day at Coe Park.
Mike Meyer is a Coe Park volunteer.
