“The Park: Part 2”

“As you start your hike, you immediately get the sense that these sinuous, narrow paths carry ancestral memories: of ferny forests in Paleozoic days, of Native Americans padding silently down the trail’s pressed earth. The massive boles of the wild oak and bay trees emanate a dense and heavy consciousness of vital life force. Down the steep hillsides spill wild tangles of shrubby chaparral. Cordovan-colored manzanita limbs slither in undulant dance before finally opening in what looks exactly like the spread jaws of a great serpent. Along the ground on the right side of the path grow ever-so-delicate miner’s lettuce: small, butterfly-shaped leaves from the middle of which shine tiny white flowers. You can eat these, enjoying their watery sweetness. Huckleberry bushes will soon offer up their tasty berries, to which meal the multi-trunked hazelnut trees will add their round fruits. The sword ferns glow with a florescent sheen; some of their parallel leaves are mere buds, snail-like coils that will unfurl into sharp pinnae. The bracken fern fronds carry leaves of ever-diminishing size. Your hand reaches out to rub the thick, smooth moss fur that covers the trunks of the live oak trees. Hoary, laced lichens cover the oak branches like crocheted doilies.”