A Walk in the Park

There is something special about parks, especially to those of us who live in Urban areas. Parks offer a way to leave the city behind and get out into nature. Most of the parks that I have been to are small, even Central Park is small compared to the immenseness of Manhattan that surrounds it. But the East Bay Regional Park District is different. This network of parks in Alameda and Contra Costa counties are spectacular, both in size and beauty. Near my house are several regional parks that are all lined up one right after another: Chabot, Redwood, huckleberry, Sibley. Actually, I don't understand why these are considered separate parks, they are so close to one another that they might as well be one big, beautiful park. I first discovered the parks when I began running around Oakland, days after I moved here in February or March of 2001, it has been my "project," to off and on explore the parks. Today, I decided to meet my friend, P, at his Church, and then go on a hike after lunch. We first went to his place, where I changed out of my Church Clothes, and then drove up to the park. The first part of our trip took us down, and then up, the steep sides of a Ravine in Huckleberry Regional Preserve. I had been in there a few weeks before with another friend and had been unable to explore as much as I had wanted to because of time constraints. The vegetation in the park pretty dense, it's almost like a rain forest in there, but the trail was fairly wide and so we made our way with quite easily. We found a stream at the bottom of the Ravine, and then climbed up the other side, pausing briefly to take in the view down the valley before finally climbing out of the brush and into some tall trees. We took a left here and planned to walk around the edge of the ravine that we had just come through. However, we decided instead to go further into the park, where a woman we met on the trail had told us there was an old Volcano. We never found the volcano, but had a wonderful time wondering around some cliffs on the other side of the peak. From these cliffs, we could see out into Contra Costa County, probably parts of Lafayette and Walnut Creek. One of the most interesting things we saw were two places where there were small rocks arranged in patterns that resembled the Logo of the Park District. They were sort of maze shaped and I ran through them with my arms spread out like a little kid pretending to fly. I think P thought I was NUTS. Our return journey took us out to the road, where we walked back about three quarters of a mile to where P had parked the car, and then drove home.