The G Running Diary

Wide Open Spaces: 4/21/03

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Sunday Don and I went running with a mission. We had to find out the route through a park so that our Ridge Trail project wouldn't make us take the roads all the way around it. What project is this? Well, we are mapping out a route to run the Bay Area Ridge Trail. The problem is, long stretches of the proposed trail are not connected, so there will be a lot of road running. We are in the planning stages today.

Anyway, this section involved running through Garin and Dry Creek Open Spaces, which was not part of the Ridge Trail, but is a better route than running on Mission and other busy roads. We started off from the trail head at Ziele Creek Drive. This was kind of tucked away in a housing development, with no signs pointing it out and no parking lot. As we set off, we immediately were immersed in the trees and running along side a creek. This was one of those great, lush California trails. For a little ways. The patches of mud seemed like nothing compared to our Diablo adventure from the previous week (that's another story). We felt really peaceful out on the trail and Don even said that it seemed like we had our own personal park. We saw a woman on a horse. We saw a bunch of cows. Then, as we looked on the map, deciding which way to go, we realized we were going to head past a parking lot. This could be an encounter with civilization again. Don joked that we would suddenly find a thousand Hispanic people having a big picnic. I said they'd be wearing Easter clothes with the women in their Easter bonnets.

Some joke! As we got closer to the parking and picnic areas, we started to hear the noise. Kids screaming. Then it got louder. The music was playing. We could smell the barbeque. We then found a meadow packed with people. They were playing soccer, playing softball, running around screaming, eating, drinking, and cooking. It was a sight to behold. This was all to the left of us. To the right were about a hundred cars parked in and around the lot. We knew we didn't belong.

We kept going on the trail, and very quickly escaped the noise of the parties. We could see across the meadow to another hill, where groups of people were swarming up. I couldn't even tell if there were any trails. They were just all over the hillside. I wondered if things like this gave the park rangers heartburn. The good news for the park was that every car there had paid $4 to get in, and some paid an additional $1 donation to the park.

People have their own ways of enjoying nature. Theirs was very different from mine.