Remembering

A ten-minute drive up Spruce, away from the buzz on San Pablo.

Cross Grizzly Peak and swoop down Canon drive.

On Canon, there is enough dirt ledge to hold up your vehicle so avoid parking in the cramped lot below.

A sliced-up redwood stump juts out from dust where you can plop down and give your Achilles a good tug, bring them back to life.

For the jaunt, all you need is a slab of rubber tied to your feet.

You can probably get away without it though.

It’s totally free, so leave your plastic at home.

Across the road, a tiny post, 12-point font marks, Memory trail.

Take four steps up, follow the single track under a canopy of Live Oak, Madrone and Coast Redwood.

They greet you crackling with their faded patchwork on a silky mattress below.   

However, steer clear from three-leaved daggers saluting you on the right and left.

Pause to suck in a pungent vapor originating from oil on arms of the most decorated Bay Laurel on this path

Invigorating, it’s too tempting not to press down on the dirt with big toes and push off into the canopy.

The downhill begs speed, take caution though passing an outstretched Bay toggle switch that flings you sinistrally down into a jungle of serrated and lacey swords.

With all of their edges, they won’t cut you, feel free to tap the seeds under their fingers to wake them up and inspire fiddleheads to shoot up in the spring

With your arms swinging forwards and backwards you swoop parallel inside the tree-line.

Cawk as you wish, the crows will grimace and cackle back in approval.

Down, down, down, then up, up, up

Your wings outstretched with each roll, knees thundering in a circular motion

The pounding is soft, a pleasant bread dough.

The hobo sticky monkey seizes your shoulder for a ride.

The path declines abruptly, sword ferns switch roles with Thimbleberry and Box elder vines that twist and tangle obscuring the light overhead.

The temperature drops and the trail continues to roll, turning left and right making you dizzy trying to maneuver with racecar precision through this convoluted greenway.

It is important to be ready to bound forward and upward, as there are logs flung in your path waiting to derail you so they can tell their sad tale of a time when they were rooted.

Leaping successfully lands you next to a Jewel, a lake equipped with a floating sanctuary log keeping twelve turtles dry and undisturbed from pesky boys with sticks and moms who try to tip toe out to them end up soaked and muddy.

Ancient Giant Sequoias at the lake’s edge direct you left for an outback adventure or right for a quick loop return to civilization. Whatever you need that day, is for you to decide.

The return is the same, the fireroad is there but the planked watershed is much more tantalizing. Breathe through your nose to avoid flossing your teeth with swamp flies.

Not that swamp flies do not taste good, but they tickle when accidentally inhaled.

Thimbleberry and White Alder twist over and around your head in this outdoor cave. Eventually you start to detect the sun peering through holes in the ropes, they become less dense and you emerge from the planked watershed onto the fireroad wide enough for three strollers across. There you find the rest of your clan happily beating each other with branches of Hemlock.

The trail circles back up into the treeline once more.

Switching left and right of coast redwood, climbing back to the car on the dusty ledge.

Mind swimming. Refueled. Replanted.

Again, and again, it’s there. Grateful for Memory.