This Makes No Sense At All

I forget (block out?),  over time, the more trying aspects of a trip. Unless, of course, it was so terrible that I have a story to tell at appropriate occasions. We have a story to tell for part of this route, that I will hold for another time, or possibly never tell. However.... We are blessed (that word has religious overtones, but I just mean an earlier, intelligent set of voters), with a vast system of regional parks, home to coyotes, foxes, mountain lions, raptors, rattlesnakes, newts, spittle bugs and beetles, to name a few. Berkeley was the scene of radical politics in the 60s, and those matured radicals still have a positive effect on their local environment, though the fuddy-duddys are gaining. I digress. The Ohlone Wilderness Trail has a segment between Del Valle Regional Park and Sunol Regional Park that is about twenty miles long. Starting from Del Valle, at about 750 feet elevation, it is ten miles to Maggie's Half Acre campsite at elevation 3480. This is by any st...

Friday evening, we walked a few yards with friends, sat on a bench, sipped hot beverages from our insulated cups, and watched the sun go down over San Francisco Bay. The still of the evening seemed to mute the city noises, and it was just the flat bay, ducks in the foreground, in the far distance a freighter. For a few moments the peace brought me back to memories of sitting by lagoons in Baja California, seeing whales break the surface, and sometimes hearing their moaning calls. No peace now in Baja, but that's a different subject. The day before, we walked around our neighborhood for an hour, finding new routes, new yard art, and some Christmas displays still out. One I liked gave sincerity to a plastic Jesus. We live in an area formerly serviced by trolleys, trains and street cars, all supplying San Francisco with workers. Houses were up in the hills, transportation down in the canyons, so there were paths, stairways down to to the transport. Many of these are gone now, sinc...

Back on the EBRPD Sibley to Tilden Park trail after a couple of weeks of absence, and noticed that they have done their annual trail maintenance. A twelve foot wide swath cleared and about six feet of it scraped with a small tractor down to Old Tunnel Road. Bikes are allowed on that section. After that it is about six to eight feet cleared, and not total scraping. After Fish Ranch Road, EBMUD has also done their annual mowing of a big grassy field that the trail skirts along. Still, this entire trail is still one of the most pristine available in the East Bay. My question - thought is about the effect on the seasonal creek that runs along quite close to the trail for the first mile or so. The creek still has a trickle now, and later in the summer you will notice that it flows in early morning after heavy fog, but is dry in the afternoon. The plowing of the trail pushes berms of dirt right up close to the waterway. Never into it, but a heavy rain would carry a lot of dirt right into ...