Jane Merryman

Horse Trail

Point Reyes National Seashore 

Length of hike: Horse Trail is about 3 miles one-way; this loop, which brings you back to your car, covers about 8 miles.

Difficulty: Moderate.

Best time: Late spring.

Highlights: Pure dazzle.

To get there: Take Sir Francis Drake Boulevard to its end at State Highway 1 in Olema. Turn right, then left onto Bear Valley Road. Take a left at the Bear Valley park headquarters and visitor center. Drive past the Cordell Bank Office and the Red Barn Classroom and park in the first parking lot on the right.

The trail:  One misty day I met two elderly gentlemen fussing over a map at the Z Ranch junction; other than that, I have never met anyone on Horse Trail. I’ve seen evidence of the passing of horses, but I have not encountered one. In a park of many lonely stretches, this trail is one of the most solitary, rather surprising considering that it connects two well-used areas.

Horse Trail requires some effort to find even though the trailhead is located near the visitor center. At the east end of the parking lot, to the right of the gray barnlike building trimmed in red, a large board announces this is the way to Kule Loklo, a Coast Miwok village, and distracts attention from an insignificant sign for Horse Trail four-tenths of a mile farther on. The path requires ducking beneath huge old oaks and skirts a stand of pungent-smelling eucalyptus. Acorn woodpeckers, black phoebes, and Oregon juncos live along here. Deer often graze in the field to the left, part of the Morgan Horse Ranch. I don’t take the side trail signed for Kule Loklo, but follow the path as it curves toward a couple of weathered service buildings. One of them is a bright, clean restroom, a good first stop.

A few steps farther and I am now on the edge of Kule Loklo. This authentic re-creation of a typical encampment of the native people who used to live here is usually fog shrouded and eerily silent. The simple structures made of bark or tule consist of kotcas or huts, granaries where acorns were stored, a sweat lodge, and a roundhouse. In the spring Miwoks and Pomos still come here to celebrate the Big Time and the Strawberry Festival. [The visitor center can provide more information about these events.]

The trail has petered out, so I cut across the grassy hillside and go down past two bark huts, keeping to the left of the sweat lodge that is partly underground. I look for the small opening in the lichen-covered rail fence, turn left on the footpath through the forest, and cross the creek on a sturdy bridge. Now I am on Horse Trail.

In the last week of May I pick a day that is predicted to be warm inland, but foggy (and comfortable for hiking) on the coast. I like the new Horse Trail after it was closed about a year for renovation. There’s still an unkempt look about it, with lots of downed trees, scraggly limbs, and wild cucumber twining all over—my fingers twitch for my pruning shears. The tanoaks, smallish trees with deeply quilted leaves, are brown and falling over. They are infected with the plant pathogen Phytophthora ramorum, which causes Sudden Oak Death in native oak and tanoak trees. Hopefully, the acorns are hiding safely in the soil and will sprout and grow again in health.

Steep at first and deeply muddy in places, the trail eventually becomes a gradual climb over the shoulder of Mt. Wittenberg. Winter wrens are out in force today. These tiny brown birds hang out low in the understory and sing gorgeously. Their liquid silver notes tumble out in long song lines, belying the small size of their maker. I hear other birds—quail, jay, mourning dove, song sparrow—but don’t see them. A newt lumbers across the trail, oblivious to the hiker bearing down on him. This lizardlike reptile is dark brown and about four inches long. When not moving, it resembles a leaf, except for its orange belly, which shows itself occasionally with the same startling effect as the red lining of a man’s evening jacket.

Under the oaks, Douglas firs, filberts, and bay trees entwines a tangle of ferns, elderberry, and blackberry. The woods are dim and only sparsely inhabited by wildflowers, but I catch glimpses of milkmaids, bedstraw, miner’s lettuce, foxglove, and hedge nettle, as well as bee plant and mustard.

Soon Myosotis sylvatica begins to line the path. I love these forget-me-nots because a garden variety close to this wild species grows at my house year after year without any help from me; it’s just always there with its modest blue flowers from late winter into early summer, connecting my garden with the forest. The farther I hike on Horse Trail, the more forget-me-nots. Soon they form fat drifts reaching back into clearings and scrambling over upturned tree roots. Around each curve of the trail lie breathtaking displays. This is truly today’s dazzlement.

“Every day I walk out into the world to be dazzled . . . ,” writes the poet Mary Oliver. And, in another place, “What I want in my life is to be willing to be dazzled.” I think that is a pretty good reason to get out of bed each morning, so I go looking for dazzlement and I always find it. Since I have a garden, I’m already on second base. On my home ground there is more than enough dazzle in the praying mantis that lives in the hebe bush, the little red South African bulbs pushing up in unexpected places, the dusty blue culms of the Drepanostachyum falcatum bamboo, the afternoon flock of bushtits.

Horse Trail in May is full of dazzlement. The light created by a sky full of raindrops, mist, and fog brings out the electric blue of the Myosotis. Just when I think I’ve seen the last of them, more appear around the next bend. It’s hard for me to move on, to leave this spectacle that lasts only a few weeks. But I know it will happen again next year, and I will be able to chalk up another day’s dazzlement. I will have to work for it, though; my assignment is to be here at just the right time.

At the Z Ranch junction, I ponder a bit. This route goes up toward the top of Mt. Wittenberg, so it promises more work. I decide to stay on Horse Trail and in about three-tenth of a mile it debouches onto Sky Trail. Sky is wider and flatter than Horse Trail, but it does have its Hansel-and-Gretel moments of dark fern-filled woods. If Horse Trail is the realm of the forget-me-not, Sky Trail is the kingdom of the cow parsnip, which lurks about in clumps more than six feet tall. I also spot shiny yellow buttercups, small blue lupine, orange monkey flower, and pale lavender iris. Young Bishop pines, whose tight cones were burst open by the Vision Fire of October 1995, hold up candlesticks of powdery green-gold pollen at the ends of their branches. Through the Doug firs, views reach out toward Limantour Spit, Drake’s Bay, and the lighthouse. The sky is misty and thick fog is moving in. The forest darkens around the white umbels of cow parsnip.

I hike past Meadow Trail and through what I call the Cathedral—columns of fog-robed firs rising over a churchlike hush of huckleberry, elderberry, blackberry, salmonberry—a litany in themselves. I pause briefly at Woodward Valley and then go up a steep rise hemmed in by huckleberry bushes. Their berries won’t be ready until the end of summer—I’ll come back. I turn left on to Old Pine Trail, which will return me to my starting point.

Old Pine is just as solitary as Horse Trail. The narrow path is soft underfoot, densely covered with leaves and needles. Mosses are especially abundant here where the firs catch the fog and drip onto the understory—bright yellow-green Kindbergia blankets the ground; Isothecium, olive green and stringy, hangs in matted patches from low branches. This is also the place to find British soldiers, strange little lichens with  bright red caps. Toward the bottom of the trail two black-tailed deer are feeding in golden grass. They turn their heads to check me out and flick their tails, but don’t stop munching.

Old Pine comes out at Divide Meadow and I go left to follow Bear Valley Trail back to the visitor center. It is now early afternoon and, compared to the solitude of Horse Trail, and Old Pine, this well-traveled route seems to be a freeway of hikers and bike riders. But there is still a chance to catch more dazzle before I reach my car.