Earth Day, 2006

We celebrated Earth Day by doing a little geocaching as a way of getting us out of the house. I don't like to give away geocaching hints, but let's just say our day started out at Buck's restaurant in Woodside, CA. I had scouted out their menu online and was pleased to find a veggie omelet made with eggbeaters and served with whole grain toast and fresh fruit. Yes!

We headed out to Huddart County park for a walk in the redwoods. We weren't necessarily thinking of a big hike when we set out in the morning, so I was a little unprepared in that I usually carry some food when I hike. I scraped up three starbursts to have in case of a bad sugar drop, but I figured the whole grain toast coupled with the protein - and let's face it, they probably sauteed those mushrooms in olive oil, and fat will make your food break down even slower - would keep my sugars steady for a few hours, even with exercise.

What a beautiful day Saturday turned out to be. The sky was cerulean blue with a few perfectly tufted clouds drifting by. It was cool without being cold, which is nice for hiking. Armed with a map, water, and 3 starbursts, we headed off to a trail that runs next to a creek amidst the second-growth redwoods.

A lot of veteran hikers will turn their nose up at second-growth redwood forests because the trees haven't reached their awesome girth, and somehow knowing that the area had once been completely logged makes the forest seem less natural. But I love these trees. They're so tall, vibrant and young you can't help but feel them stretching their branches in the long-awaited sun. We saw bright green evidence of spring everywhere. Every branch had a crop of pine needles at its tip that was a brighter shade, indicating new growth.

The rain has only let up in the last week or so, and the forest was still muddy, the creek full. The trail we took was a former road that runs along McGarvey Gulch creek. (We forgot to bring the camera; I found a few photos on bayareahiker.com of the creek. But picture a shadier, wetter, muddier day than pictured here.) We originally figured we would walk the length of the creek, then turn around and come back the same way for about a 1-mile walk.

But every bend of the creek revealed something new - mysterious milky pools and waterholes; bridges made for floating leaf boats underneath them; sprays of ferns nestled up against the redwoods. We were entranced. We checked our map and found that we could walk farther along the creek, take a connecting trail up the hill to a playground. From there, if I was really having trouble with my blood sugars, Nick would jog downhill on the paved road to where the car was at the bottom of the park.

Like most five-year-olds, my daughter will drag her feet if you ask her to hike, or walk for anything longer than five minutes. But we showed her the playground on the map, and she turned into Little Miss Drill Sargent. "You can sit down at the playground," she admonished me when I wanted to sit down on one of the wooden bridges. Yes ma'am!

When we got to the top of the big hill, not far from the playground, we stopped at a grassy spot and laid down to look up at the towering redwoods. "We're in a fairy ring," gasped Wini. I had forgotten that old-fashioned name. She has many books on flower fairies, and that's probably where she learned the term. (She reads on her own now...growing up so fast...)

After a rest and a cooldown, we hiked to the playground and watched Wini play with some kids who were there for a birthday party. Nick and I both wanted to go back by a different trail rather than cover the same ground, but it was slightly longer, and probably more time-consuming. Again I cursed my lack of planning - why didn't I bring an apple, or some crackers, anything to help out my sugars? We took stock of my physical state. I was starting to feel like my sugar was a little low, but I felt like I could make the 1.5 miles back because it was mostly downhill. I popped a starburst and we decided to give it a go.

I'm so glad we took the other path. This time we were traveling along the side of a hill and slowly wending our way down through a forest of tanoaks. We came across a field of forget-me-nots. Streams became mini-waterfalls down the side of the mountain, but the trail was a lot less muddy than at the bottom of the valley. At one spot, we turned the corner to find a magnificent stand of irises, more white than purple. How can such a delicate, intricate flower bloom in the middle of the forest? It was pure magic.

We found ourselves back at the meadow where we started our journey having walked farther than we'd planned, and seen much more than we'd expected. Happy Earth Day!