Bay Area Outdoors: West Marin holds a few of my favorite things
A year ago, I took the biggest leap of my life: I left Silicon Valley and moved to a rural home with a wood stove, a sweeping view of Tomales Bay and easy access to the wilds of West Marin. It’s what I have wanted since before I can remember.
That one swift decision kicked off countless painstaking ones, forcing me to reevaluate just what, exactly, is valuable. I’ve traded a life of culture and convenience for different joys, such as hiking, swimming, photographing wildlife and connecting to the ancient rhythms of tides and sky.
Here on the edge of Point Reyes National Seashore, in a wild landscape of old forests and pristine beaches, are a few of my favorite things.
Elk Watching 101
Majestic, slow-moving tule elk, numbering in the thousands, are the Seashore’s signature wildlife viewing opportunity. They were hunted to near-extinction in the Civil War era, but the 2,781-acre Tomales Point Reserve has helped their numbers rebound.
They’re easiest to spot along Tomales Point Trail, an out-and-back hiking route which follows the crest of an open ridge along an old ranch road. The trail winds up and down along a narrowing peninsula, ending where two magnificent bays — Tomales and Bodega — meet.
Some elk herds are entirely bulls, with necks and humps that swell in late spring to make the animals look fiercer and larger. Others are all cows and calves. The sexes live separately for most of the year, but by late summer, they begin to mix, with bulls competing for cows by sparring violently with clashing antlers and “bugling,” a deep sound that can resonate in your bones.
The first mile of this trail is level and broad, with stellar views looking west over the Pacific Ocean. Your first elk sighting will likely be about a mile into the hike, when the trail drops into a saddle called Windy Gap and animals often gather at a perennial spring in the gulch. If they’re not there, keep walking for another mile — the trail ascends and then drops down to a stock pond at the long-gone Lower Pierce Point Ranch.
If you’d like to see ducks and seabirds, continue all the way to the tip of Tomales Point. The trail, which wanders through coastal scrub, is unmaintained, sandy and often overgrown, but you won’t get lost. Myriad paths weave and connect, ultimately merging into one route along the last half mile.
Sit and watch the choppy waves or lie back and feel the gusts. Dress warmly in long pants and long sleeves and plan to stay awhile. It’s the perfect place for a picnic lunch.
How to get there: The Tomales Point Trailhead starts at the end of Pierce Point Road. Spring, fall and winter are the best seasons to visit. In the summer, fog can limit visibility and fierce afternoon winds make the hike more challenging. Allow 40 to 60 minutes to hike to Windy Gap and back, two to three hours to hike to the Lower Pierce Ranch site and back, and four to five hours to hike to the end of the Tomales Point Trail and back.
Scanning the night skies
My favorite night of the month is spent with local astronomer and storyteller extraordinaire Don Jolley in a field near the Giacomini Wetlands, on the edge of downtown Point Reyes Station. Wrapped in a blanket on a lawn chair, hot drink in hand, I stargaze and hear Jolley’s spellbinding stories about the science and mythology of billions of celestial bodies.
To gaze at the West Marin sky is to see sights hidden to the rest of the Bay Area. If your back is turned to the horizon’s glare of Highway 101, it’s possible to view 2,000 stars. Want to stay out all night? As the Earth rotates, the number soars to 6,000. You can even see the soft spectacle of the Andromeda galaxy, 2.5 million light-years away and the most distant thing visible to the unaided eye.
The monthly event is part of the community’s growing effort to boost public awareness about the importance of night skies. Far from the Bay Area’s growing glow, Point Reyes has applied to become an official International Dark Sky Reserve – a cherished status shared by fewer than two dozen places on Earth.
The tricky part is timing. The event is always about an hour after sundown and during the darkest week before the new moon — but the exact date is always determined by the fog. Go to https://darkskypointreyes.com/ for the announcement of the precise date.
Can’t make it to the star party? Head to Limantour Beach, which has the Park’s darkest and most unblemished sight of the heavens.
How to get there: Park at Third and C streets in downtown Point Reyes Station and follow the candles to find the stargazing party.
Swim with the Moon Jellies
I’ll never be a jellyfish. But every summer evening, I get to float among the graceful “blooms” of these alien-looking creatures, named for their translucent, moonlike shape. They don’t sting, but it takes mental discipline to stroke calmly past their fleshy bodies, feeling them brush against your skin.
Sometimes, they’re scarce; other times, abundant. Swimming in the sheltered coves of Tomales Bay is always a different adventure. Depending on tides and winds, the water may be calm or choppy, turquoise blue or slate gray.
Nervous about open water swimming? Start where it’s shallow and always swim with a friend. In deeper waters, you can flip onto your back, relax and regroup. Practice “sighting,” lifting your head every so often to check in and course correct. Swim towards a destination: Thanks to Marshall Livingston, an Inverness resident and regular Bay swimmer, the buoys and rafts at my two favorite beaches — Heart’s Desire and Shell — are back in place after two years of storage.
The water is always chilly, so bring hot tea and a jacket to throw on immediately after getting out of the water. The experience will make you feel brave, invigorated and attuned to the pulse of the Bay as an echo of your own.
How to get there: Hearts Desire Beach, 1100 Pierce Point Road, Inverness; www.parks.ca.gov
A walk through the ancients
Grand redwoods and Douglas fir trees get all the fanfare. But my heart belongs to the gnarled and ethereal Bishop pine trees of Tomales Bay State Park.
Once widespread throughout the coastal West, they now survive only in isolated relict stands. This small state park, often overlooked by visitors to the National Seashore, hosts one of the most extensive and picturesque groves of Bishop pine in the world. They are unique to granitic quartz-diorite soils.
My favorite route is the Johnston/Jepson Trail, a 2.6-mile loop. But you can also find them anywhere along the northern end of Inverness Ridge, such as the Drakes View Trail.
On a warm day, the aroma of the pine forest is a deeply nostalgic experience. I scan the trees for forest-loving birds, such as the hairy woodpecker, pileated woodpecker and Northern flicker. In addition to the pines, there are other evocative plants, such as evergreen huckleberry, golden chinquapin, California aster, orange bush monkeyflower and a rare type of manzanita found only in coastal Marin.
How to get there: Johnston/Jepson Trailhead, Tomales Bay State Park, 1100 Pierce Point Rd, Inverness
(Turnout on Pierce Point Road, one-tenth of a mile east of the entry to Tomales Bay State Park at the Johnston Trailhead.)
Watch bird banding
West Marin lies beneath the Pacific Flyway, a great artery of aerial migration. Every year, hundreds of bird species pass through — and many of them land at Point Blue Conservation Science’s Palomarin Field Station, based in Bolinas.
This wooded sanctuary serves a dual purpose. It’s a refuge for these winged migrants who travel north along the coast. And it also offers researchers the perfect spot for banding, part of a worldwide scientific effort to monitor the movements, distribution and life span of these magnificent creatures. As one of the most established field stations in Western North America, the 56-year-old facility has made important contributions to the fields of ornithology, ecology and conservation.
To watch, call or email for an appointment for a bird-banding demonstration. Visitors can join young Field Biology interns on their morning walks to scan the mesh nylon nets, called ”mist nets,” which are used to capture the birds. The nets stretch for hundreds of feet around the site and must be checked often, for the trapped birds can become easy prey for hawks and other predators.
The biologists hold the captured bird gingerly, smoothing its ruffled feathers with a finger. Then the bird is weighed, measured and fitted with a small colorful band, making it an unwitting participant in scientific study.
While visiting, be sure to take a walk on the wild side — an easy nature trail drops down into little Fern Canyon, where you can spot on your own such birds as wrentits, song sparrows, whitecrowned sparrows, spotted towhees and California quail.
How to get there: 999 Mesa Road, Bolinas. (415) 868-0655 https://www.pointblue.org/about-us/contact-visit-us/