This is not just another wildflower article. I want to encourage
you to appreciate hiking in the rain. Imagine this is you: It
’s April; winter’s promise of an exceptional wildflower season
is here. You wake up on Saturday morning filled with anticipation
for the Coe Park hike you’ve been planning with your friends. It’s
been a year of generous rain, maybe not as much as in some years
past, but the rains started ear
ly, gently and evenly spaced – perfect conditions for nature’s
annual spring show.
This is not just another wildflower article. I want to encourage you to appreciate hiking in the rain. Imagine this is you:
It’s April; winter’s promise of an exceptional wildflower season is here. You wake up on Saturday morning filled with anticipation for the Coe Park hike you’ve been planning with your friends. It’s been a year of generous rain, maybe not as much as in some years past, but the rains started early, gently and evenly spaced – perfect conditions for nature’s annual spring show.
You know it’s a good year, you’ve already seen the prolific blues and yellows of lupine and goldfields along Highway 101 on your daily commute into Silicon Valley.
The day dawns dark, the weatherman has promised early morning clouds and possible showers, so you pack raingear just in case. The doorbell rings at 7:15, your cheery friends are here! You open the door to greet them, and, in turn, you are greeted by the fog and drizzle. So many sunny days in April and you get a rainy one. You chatter excitedly with your friends. You were expecting hoards because there have been so many stories in the local papers about an incredible wildflower season, but now you know there will be few people. Most people don’t seem to realize how special a walk in the rain can be. The four of you pile into the car, Gore-tex, power-bars and all.
The drive to Hunting Hollow is uneventful; at 8 AM the parking lot is nearly empty and no one else is there except a hardy ranger who arrived only minutes before you. As your friends tighten bootlaces, don day packs and otherwise fasten and adjust, you walk over to the ranger to pay your parking fee and ask about the wildflowers.
The ranger tells you about a bountiful wildflower display on Steer Ridge, showing you on the map how to get there; then he asks you to look for him when you get back and tell him what makes the flowers grow there. “I’ll give you a hint: the rocks know.” He’s so friendly and he so sparks your curiosity that you know you’ll seek him out when you get back. You rejoin your friends who are by now eager to get on the trail and you share the ranger’s challenge with them as you start out along Hunting Hollow.
A little over a half mile in, just before the Hunting Hollow Road crosses the creek for what seems like at least the sixth time, you see the corral on your left. This is where the Lyman Wilson trial starts the climb to Steer Ridge, the preferred route because it’s not nearly as steep as most other ways up to the ridge. The air is damp with drizzle, you walk under the clouds. You start up the trail, surrounded by Blue Oaks, branches trailing long, pea-soup green streamers of California Spanish Moss; you feel almost like you’re in a cloud forest as you hit the fog a little higher up the trail, a condition more usual in the dead of winter.
The solitude really strikes you after you hit the fog, the silence so complete, like the bustling world of man outside no longer exists.
We continue up the ridge, so filled with the silence that we hardly notice buttercups and Johnny Jump-ups; the Gilias and California poppies hug their petals tightly closed and wait for the sun. Near the top, past the Bowl Trail, the fog relents into the thinnest of mists and blue sky shows faintly through; suddenly you’re in the sunshine, fog below you and great white puffs of cumulous in the sky above you. You’ve reached the Steer Ridge Road and you turn west.
In the clear sunshine you start to see the wildflowers around you: the same ones you walked past in the fog without noticing, and more, abound. You’re in a sea of green, generously sprinkled with bright colors, pinks and yellows, orange and blue.
About three quarters of mile on Steer Ridge Road you come to the top of a hill; you crest the hill. The sight on the other side nearly takes your breath away: ahead of you the grassy green disappears into solid yellows and blues, earthy whites and greens. This is the place the ranger told you about.
Approaching it, you see that not all the color is flowers; the otherworldly earth-tones are soil and rock. You remember the ranger’s question: there is no doubt in your mind that this stuff must be part of the reason the wildflowers are so abundant here.
There’s still a little time left for a walk in the rain. If we’re lucky, we’ll get six or eight more weeks before the rainy season is over. Get out there and take advantage of it.
Larry Haimowitz is a Coe Park volunteer.
