Sequoia Bayview: Have You Heard the Redwoods Sing?

Today my writing residency begins! My program has been talked up by the California Writers Club and Friends of Joaquin Miller Park, the two organizations between which I shall weave a story this year. Welcome visitors and readers! I hope to bring a breath of adventure to this weekly(ish) blog, in which I shall bravely drive the five minutes up from the city each week, park my car and look around a bit before getting some work done.

The path I walk today is meaningful. The first walk I ever took in Joaquin Miller Park, in the late 1980s, was along Sequoia Bayview trail. I didn’t know that was the trail's name back then; we called it “Richard’s Run” because my uncle would come up for exercise after work. Back then there was a stretch of it where you could actually see the Bay. These days you can’t blink or you’ll miss the view; it’s in the gap between the laurels and oaks where the bike path comes down the hill. 

This is a nice flat trail, and on a day like this when it’s not too crowded, a longtime favorite place to get my feet moving and tune into my thoughts. Listen to my muses. Get my stories straight. On this trail I remembered a dream that I was Cinderella, which I turned it into a comic, then later an opera, then a musical, and finally a novel. 

The first few years I walked here there were mostly hikers and runners. Sometimes a cross country team from a nearby school would thunder by. Over the years there were more dogs, more poop bags, and then bikes. Lots and lots of them. The trail is twice as wide now, and the mysterious paths that would peel off down the hill are now well-worn and shored up. 

I used to walk with my mom until we were “halfway tired,” then turn around and come back. Many years later, for many years, I’d push a stroller and watch my husband and dog lope up the path. When they came back the other way, I’d turn the baby around and we’d all come back as a family. Today I’m thinking about the year ahead, excited with all my upcoming plans, happy to be back on a trail, to have a new routine that takes me to the woods every week. 

The wind kicks up a puff of dust, and I notice the poison oak leaves by the trail are disguised by dirt. Did my knuckles brush a stem a few steps back? I make a mental note to keep some Tecnu in my backpack.

Have you heard the redwoods sing? A gust comes up and tree trunks in a cluster squeak against one another like creepy doors in a haunted house. Somewhere up on the canopy, other rubbing branches sound like mice, like air out of stretched balloon lips, like whalesong. The dry breeze still says fall is coming soon, but September always feels like a new leaf. Especially this one.