A spring in my step

There’s nothing more glorious than spring in Northern California. The golden hills turn green with splotches of purple and orange and yellow as wildflowers bloom. Everything is lush and verdant, bursting with life.

Yesterday, Andy and I decided to revel in the spring vibrance by going on one of our favorite hikes — Tennessee Valley in Marin County.

Even the drive to the trailhead was spring perfection, the sky clear and sunny We sailed over the Golden Gate Bridge, the Marin headlands looming green in front of us, Angel Island sprawling to our right. After going through the rainbow of Robin Williams Tunnel, we emerged through the trees, past the Sausalito houseboats, and twisted down the valley to the trailhead.

It was almost disorientingly warm — I only wore a t-shirt — but the ocean breezes provided some relief as we went down the path. The trail gently meandered through a valley nestled between tall green hills covered in brush and bushes with an occasional clump of trees — hardy and gnarled from the strong Pacific winds.

Wildflowers were in different states of bloom. Tiny peach-colored flowers and violet flowers bursting out of sage stems and long yellow flowers and stands of Calla Lillies, funereal and majestic.

The cheery orange-yellow California poppy was everywhere. A flower I missed the most when I was out of the country. I had hallucinatory sightings of them all over Spain — they were always marigolds and never poppies but my heart still jumped into my throat every time I saw a bit of orange in the distance. Here was the real thing.

The thing I love about California poppies is that they grow everywhere — yes on this bucolic hillside in Marin County but also in sidewalk cracks and highway medians and weird and weedy boulevards and abandoned lawns and scraggly hillsides. It’s a hardy little pop of joy, a sturdy reminder of the beauty we can find everywhere.

We eventually dipped into the valley bottom, a lush area full of trees that gradually gets marshy as you approach the ocean. A final rise and we were at the beach. It’s a pebble beach with a color that looks perpetually wet, even in the places the tide doesn’t regularly reach. The cove is a dangerous one — a strong current and lots of rocks. Not for swimmers and for experienced surfers only.

We laid out a blanket far up the beach and watched the waves. Big waves magically created waterfalls that seeped through the cracks in a hulking rock formation to our right. A few brave souls stood where the waves could grab them, splashing bare legs and eliciting shrieks.

Eventually it grew too cold, so we packed up and headed out. It was a banner hike for wildlife spotting. A giant, fuzzy, adorable caterpillar scurried across the trail. A lizard leaped into the grass. Giant yellow and little white butterflies flitted about. There were several large, unsettling black butterflies, which I thought were small black birds with a weird way of flying but Andy told me I was wrong, and we bickered about it every time we saw them, but I know he was right — I just found them startling and almost incomprehensible. We saw real birds too — predators high above the valley, lazily circling along the air currents.

A beautiful welcome home.