Jane Merryman

Stewart, Ridge, Lake Ranch, Bolema, and Olema Valley Trails

Point Reyes National Seashore

Length of hike: 7-mile loop

Difficulty: Moderate

Best time: Summer

Highlights: Cool forest, solitude

To get there: From the junction of Sir Francis Drake Boulevard and California Highway 1 at Olema, continue south on Highway 1 for 3.5 miles to the turnoff signed for Five Brooks Trailhead.

The trail: On a warm summer’s day the journey to Mud Lake is shady and cool. The burblings of busy little creeks accompany me almost the entire way. This is one of the few routes at Point Reyes that does not travel through a variety of habitats. There are no meadows in this mixed evergreen forest and no expansive views, only brief glimpses of Bolinas Ridge baking in sunlight a mile or so to the east. However, every time I take this hike I wonder why I don’t come here more often. I love the leaves, birds, lichens, and mosses that compose a mosaic of subtle details and the hush that settles under the tall trees on this peaceful walk.

            Five Brooks is a prime destination for horseback riders and birders, but early in the morning in the middle of the week, even in summer, the huge parking lot is nearly empty. The trail begins near the round concrete horse trough and skirts the pond—usually home to wood ducks and herons, now deserted except for a few coots. In August the path is thick with dust, and a beige powder covers the willows, oaks, and bay trees. Only the bright yellow dandelions manage to keep their identity. Rift Zone Trail veers off to the north toward Bear Valley, about five miles away, but I continue straight ahead to the T-junction. Here I turn right onto Stewart Trail and enter a shadowy world of sword ferns, old Douglas fir trees, large bays and filberts, and the occasional big-leaf maple. Tanoaks, though few, stand out because their leaves are dry and brown—they are dying of sudden oak death, a fungal disease. The understory is a jumble of elderberry, thimbleberry, and blackberry. Graceful maidenhair and wood ferns throng with vigorous poison oak vines and dried stalks of cow parsnip.

            A perfect half moon hangs in the scrap of blue above the treetops. The only sounds are nervous animals from Stewart Horse Camp, a short distance downhill toward Rift Zone Trail, and the ceaseless bubble of an invisible, nameless creek. In the moist shade all along here grows elk clover, or false aralia, one of my favorite forest shrubs. Its height, up to ten feet, and its huge leaves make a bold statement against the restless background of ferns and vines. The compound leaf consists of three to five oblong leaflets, each about nine or ten inches long. At this time of year, the clusters of white flowers that rise above these leaves have turned into perfect starbursts of white berries. Later they will mature into purplish black beads. Elk clover is sometimes called spikenard, an ancient name for aromatic ointments. I don’t know if native inhabitants or European settlers used this plant medicinally. The latter might have called it spikenard because it reminded them of a plant back home.

            The trail is wide, soft with dust and marked with horse droppings, and climbs steadily but gently for several miles. The horsey smell mingles with the subtle fragrance of the firs.  These old conifers have craggy, bumpy, deeply fissured trunks, often moss covered. In winter the forest is foggy and damp—a good place to look for fungi. Now, at the end of summer, a mélange of brown, orange, yellow, and gold leaves litters the path. In sunny clearings I spot blue dragonflies. Small forest birds, mostly heard and not seen—Bewick’s wrens, chickadees, juncos, winter wrens—flit and chatter in the tangled underbrush.

            Narrow, steep Greenpicker Trail goes off to the right, but I keep to the broad track. Here I come across a lone bush of orange monkeyflower, which I can usually find blooming at Point Reyes every month of the year. Wild grape vines climb up young firs, and stinging nettles dangle their pale, droopy flower clusters close to my knees. The route winds sinuously up and up, dappled with warm yellow sunlight and blue shade. At many bends I have the feeling I have just walked here, each curve looks so much the same.

            At a Y-junction, I go left, following the sign for Ridge Trail into a younger, brighter forest of spindly firs. In places, the ground is soggy and trampled by horses. The wet comes from the morning fogs caught in the treetops of this ridgeline forest. Masses of shaggy chartreuse moss hang from the medley of branches. Kindbergia moss sprawls underfoot, and powdery cladonia lichens cling to the tree trunks. Clumps of orange watsonia, an old-fashioned garden plant, remind me that this used to be a road leading to one of the area’s defunct ranches. The lush vegetation seems to damp down sound; all I hear is the occasional strident call of a Stellar’s jay or Cooper’s hawk and the distant hum of an airplane.

            By the time I arrive at the meeting of Ridge, Bolema, and Lake Ranch trails, I have covered a little over four miles. Bolema Trail heads downhill toward the trailhead, about three miles away, but I make a short detour onto Lake Ranch Trail in order to have lunch at Mud Lake. This path heads down into an extravagance of bay trees, sword ferns, and towering firs. Crowds of huckleberries catch the light on their shiny leaves and make the woods sparkle. In about half a mile, at the bottom of the hill, slumbers Mud Lake, once a bowl of blue water covering a few acres, now a soggy depression clogged with cattails and knotweed. It no longer appears on park maps, officially does not exist, but for me it is still a destination.

            I settle down on a slope covered with golden grasses and unwrap my sandwich. Dry stalks rustle in a capricious breeze. Red dragonflies hover over rafts of duckweed floating on a bit of open water. Overhead, sun glints off a 747 headed for San Francisco; the silver airplane, too high to break the stillness down here, glides smoothly across the sky. Frogs plop (did Bashō pass this way?) and stir the duckweed. There seems to be no good reason for me to move.

            In ten minutes another airplane follows the path of the first, and again ten minutes later. Usually when I fly into SFO from eastern cities, the pilot makes a sharp left turn over Point Reyes right at the ocean’s edge. I can look down and name the trails I often wander. Does anyone up there today notice this opening in the forest and a tiny figure sitting on a golden hillside?

           Two horsemen wave as they shuffle by on Lake Ranch Trail, in no particular hurry to reach the coast. This breaks the drowsy spell I have fallen under and I head back to Bolema Trail. This trail is narrow and winding and more intimate than Stewart and Ridge, but it has the same trees and ferns and the same dappled light, the same silence. I’m glad I brought along my hiking stick because a good part of Bolema is precipitous and loose. After about twenty minutes, I reach Olema Valley Trail, where a left turn will take me in one and a half miles back to the parking lot. The path is steep at first, rutted and torn up by horses. I cross a modest wooden bridge with a shallow arch and gently curved rail that reminds me of something in the French countryside that Monet or Van Gogh might have come upon. Five kinds of fern thrive at this noisy little creek crossing. And a winter wren is often singing its heart out.

            After this, the trail is flat, flanked by great untidy piles of oak, bay, and alder leaves. In a sunny clearing a poison oak shrub has turned gloriously red. I meet one more horseman. This whole day I have seen no hikers.

            The path skirts Five Brooks pond and threads between a tangle of willows and blackberries and the sleepy afternoon stables. Here is the concrete horse trough and there is my car, covered with a film of warm dust.